by Gayl Jones
After I got through talking to Miguelita I did go back up to the bar and try to tell Delgadina her story, about her schizophrenic episodes, but Delgadina didn’t want to hear it. She’s just a lying gringa, she said. I might be the biggest bitch in my old high school, but she’s the biggest bitch in this cantina.
That the first thing she said, then she said, Take my advice and don’t start spending too much time thinking about the Miguelitas. I don’t know who she is and don’t want to know who she is. I know I’ve not seen Mr. Delgado at all and he’s the one I’m truly interested in. Sometimes I think that even Mr. Delgado is a fabrication of Miguelitas.
I tells her that I saw a vato with Miguelita at her play when she were doing that play La Raza Pura and that I’m pretty sure that was Mr. Delgado. She were too busy courting that vato. You know, the vato that were singing about the Argentine tango, so I didn’t ask her if that Mr. Delgado.
Delgadina don’t say nothing, she just wipe off the counter. Some vatos come in the cantina and she takes their order, then comes back and sits at the counter and starts writing in her notebook. I asks her what she writing.
A praise poem for my people, she say. It’s about an intelligent people. I’m going to tell them how intelligent they are, how good their spirit is, how balanced their minds are, how sane they are when everybody’s trying to tell them they’re not, how. . . .
And she just be praising her people, telling me what a great people they is, and specifying them to they origins, ’cept it the good specification, ’cause it specifying they greatness. Course Delgadina the kind that don’t praise the people all the time. She prefers to praise the people, but she ain’t got no immitigable rules, and don’t praise every vato and chica that comes in her cantina. Sometimes she tells me what she likes about me, other times she describes me for the fool that I am.
It a while before she starts talking to Miguelita again. First she lectured her on the war crimes of her people, then she asked Miguelita to tell her the story that Miguelita had told me. Miguelita told her the same story, except she revealed to her the different identities that she had assumed when she was assuming identities. And then she told Delgadina all that about Mr. Delgado helping her to decide her true self. I thought Delgadina would specify her about that, but she didn’t. Then we all gets in her rented Land-Rover and goes out into the desert so’s she can show us her new house. I mean, Delgadina’s new house. She got one of them adobe houses, you know in the pueblo-type style, in the Native American and Mexican style, she say she prefer that to her little apartment in Texas City, plus she don’t have to just grow them container plants but can grow real plants in her own garden, ’cause I have told y’all how Delgadina is about buds and blossoms, and she probably be growing a lot of them flowering cactus-type plants, and it exactly the same house that Alvarado told me where to find. Y’all know I told y’all about the house in the desert that Alvarado described to me as being a stop on the new Underground Railroad. At least, I assumed that was what he was telling me, I mean when I wasn’t assuming that he was trying to get me to come out to that house for hoochie purposes. I knows it the same house, though, and I knows that it were purchased from Alvarado, but I ain’t tell Delgadina I knows. Delgadina and Miguelita and I sits upon the roof of her new house and looks at the stars.
The next day, though, I got to drive Maria and Journal back to Mexico. I ain’t supposed to drive them to the rebellion. I’m just supposed to drive them to the northern part of Mexico and they’s supposed to meet with Maria’s husband, who a Quechua-speaking Mayan Indian or Native Mexican. There’s a lot of story about Maria that I can’t tell y’all for security purposes. I could tell y’all everything about Maria and her Mayan lover. Some of y’all thinks that them Mayans is just people of history, but they is people of today, and they has they own language. I ain’t going to tell y’all none of that, for it is Maria to decide if any of y’all is worthy to hear her story. I don’t think that Maria would tell anyone, and not even me, the whole story, though, because it has to do with Chiapas rebels. True rebels don’t tell everything. True rebels is not who you believes them to be or who you decides them to be, but who they is. And they true identity, they true self, is nonnegotiable.
The other Ray is coming along with us. He supposed to pretend to be my husband and Maria our daughter and Journal our grandbaby. Them border people might believe all that going into Mexico. I tells them, getting into Nuevo Laredo, but what about when us tries to come back to the Laredo in the USA. They’s got strategies for getting back in the USA that they don’t share with me. As for now, though, I’s got all the documents proving I’m Mrs. Mendoza. I know them Mexicans be wondering what an Aztec god sees in me.
May mujer, says Maria as we get into the Land-Rover. I know it’s the same Land-Rover that Delgadina rents all the time, but I don’t say so.
Ray Mendoza sits in the front with me, Maria in the back with Journal who’s in his baby’s seat.
May mujer, says Maria as we head first east toward Laredo. I’ve already written to Ray to tell him that I’m only playing Mrs. Mendoza. I used everything in the letter that I learned in my hidden agenda conspiracy specialist class, ’cause I don’t know who would be opening my correspondences to Ray. The spies amongst y’all can read all the correspondence I writes to Ray. Y’all’ll only know what I says. It be Ray that knows what I means.
Dear Ray,
I has started the Mosquito Trucking Company which is a worker-owned company. The motto of our trucking company, as suggested by Gladys Knight and the Pips song is “The Mosquito Trucking Company keeps on keeping on.” (“Keeps on keeping on” is printed on many of our trucks.) Mosquito trucks travels throughout the USA, Canada, and Mexico. We is also considering having us franchises internationally. We has all-new, custom-made trucks that is streamlined and solar-powered. They also runs on gasoline. They is strong and powerful trucks, and we believes they is the soundest trucks they is. The trucks have many different components and changeable colors, though my favorite trucks I always keep with my own favorite color. I designed them myself, with the assistance of an African magician and astrophysicist, and they uses all the new international knowledge that I learned from years of my addiction to trade shows. All our trucks ain’t named Mosquito, because many of our independent owners likes to name they trucks after theyselves or even they favorite peoples, including movie stars. Denzel, Sidney, Billy Dee. ’Cept some of the movie stars don’t want us trucks named after them because they names is they trademarks, so us just nicknames us trucks after us favorite movie stars or even us favorite revolutionaries and guerrilla personalities.
I hopes that this letter reaches your village. The other Ray and I has purchased a motel-restaurant in Cuba, New Mexico, and is in business with some Navajos who manages the motel while we manages the restaurant. We purchased the motel-restaurant from Delgadina. It were formerly a motel-restaurant owned by her and her ex-husband Charlie T. Juarez, the famous Chicano artist. When he married Eden Prine (Delgadina calls her Eden Pride) and moved to New York, he gave the property to Delgadina. Since Delgadina prefers to be a private detective and no bullshit private investigator, she sold the motel-restaurant to me. She was going to give the motel-restaurant to me, but we decided on a sale price that also includes her maintaining equity in the motel-restaurant.
People thinks that I am Mrs. Mendoza. Ray and I encourages the thought and likes to tease peoples. Everybody that comes in the restaurant I praises Ray to them and tells them he’s like a Aztec god, and he’s always telling peoples I’m like a African goddess. I has seen photographs of some African goddesses and they does kinda resemble me, or I should say I kinda resembles them. I kinda likes the fact that they is goddesses that I resembles. However, I am still a Perfectability Baptist. All my peoples is Baptists except them who is Catholics, and the ones who ain’t Catholics is African Methodist Episcopals and there is a few Witnesses for Jehovah amongst us, and they says that some of us ancestors was Mohammeda
ns and us mighta even had some Buddhists. My uncle Buddy Johnson, rumor has it, were the first amongst us to become a Perfectability Baptist. We have even added Gladys Knight Pipism to the church. Originally Perfectability Baptism combined only Southern Baptism, Holler Roller Theology, Scientific Christianity, and African Methodist Episcopalism.
“Do not submit to your own ignorance”; the motto of the Daughters of Nzingha is actually derived from a speech given by Malcolm X. That is what is different about the Daughters of Nzingha. They don’t just include wisdom derived from Afro-womanhood but also includes Afro-manhood wisdom books in they archives, books which I has in my memory. I first heard that quoted by the Daughters of Nzingha, though, in a newsletter as one of the requirements for being an archives keeper. To tell you the truth, I am an archives keeper and I have been submitting to my own ignorance since preschool. I still submits to my own ignorance unless I’m in the presence of someone who refuses to allow me to submit to my own ignorance. I try not to submit to other people’s ignorance, but I have certainly been known to submit to my own ignorance. Of course, once I knows it for the ignorance it is, I stops submitting to it. Perhaps that is why they allows me to be a archives keeper.
Some members of the Perfectability Baptist Church are Negroes, others is colored people, others is blacks (with a small b), others is Blacks (with a big b), others is Afro-Americans, others is African-Americans (hyphenated), others is African Americans (unhyphenated), others is Just Plain Americans, others is New World Africans, others is Descendants of the Victims of the African Diaspora Holocaust, others is Multiracialists, others is Multiethnics, others is Sweeter the Juice Multiracial Multiethnics (these are people like myself who have other races and ethnic groups, like Mexicans, Irish, Greeks, and Italians in they ancestry but who resemble pure African gods and goddesses), others is Cosmopolitan Neo-Africans, others is African-Internationalists, others is African Memphians from the Republic of New Africa Memphis and drapes theyselves in the Africa Memphis flags, ’cause when I give them some of my Republic of Texas literature that talked about gringos freeing theyselves from imperial Mexico they decided to form they own Independent African Republic in Memphis, not the whole state but just they own city, though like the Texans they still considers theyselves to be Americans but not citizens of the “corporate United States.”
There is some members of the Perfectability Baptist Church, though, who don’t believe that we should keep Gladys Knight Pipism as part of the official church doctrine. They don’t want people to think that we are the William Faulkner Stereotypical Colored Peoples Southern Baptist Church. They don’t want people to think that we’re silly, even if they do believe in Keep on keeping on. Cayenne Goodling wanted us to add some of the doctrines of the Church of Elvis, but we ain’t that silly. There is some members of the church, myself included, that believes we should add to us church doctrine Mama Didn’t Raise No Foolism. Since I don’t have any children of my own, they have made me a Official Mama of the Perfectability Baptist Church, which ain’t the same as a matriarch, ’cause they is also Official Papas of the Church. I ain’t allowed to tell other peoples children Mama Didn’t Raise No Fool, though. We is modernists and you can’t just be telling other people’s childrens they ain’t been raised to be a fool.
Ain’t James Brown have a song say “Papa Don’t Raise No Fool”? I think that you can acknowledge that they is a subtle difference to Mama didn’t raise no fool and Papa don’t raise no fool. When peoples talks about the difference between masculine and feminine languages, I thinks you can see the difference in saying Mama didn’t raise no fool and Papa don’t raise no fool. Papa don’t raise no fool is the language of command. Mamas just tells they children that they didn’t raise no fool. I am glad they have named me one of the Official Mamas of the Church and not the Official Fool.
The church still don’t allow no women preachers but they lets us along with the mens who ain’t official preachers to assume the role of griots in our various African Diaspora communities. I am the official griot to the small New World African community of Cuba, New Mexico. We might tell warrior stories or culture stories or children’s stories or whatever stories we wants to tell. We are not required just to tell stories that have to do with Perfectability Baptist theology, though most of us have at least got to mention the Perfectability Baptist Church. We is also required to be as much listeners as we is storytellers. And if peoples asks us questions while we is telling stories, we’s got to answer them questions. If we prefers not to answer them questions or ain’t got no answers for them questions, then we has got to say so and include it in us stories. As storytellers we has got to know that the listener is as important to the story as the storyteller. As for the other Ray being a Aztec god and me being a African goddess and us being married, we just gets playful with the peoples. I uses my name Nadine for the restaurant name and the other Ray uses his whole name, so the restaurant’s name is Nadine and Ray Mendoza’s. That is why the peoples thinks that I’m Mrs. Nadine Mendoza when my true name is who I am.
Most people still calls me Mosquito, and they don’t know my full name. You know a lot of people don’t even know what your full name is, either Ray, even the other Ray, and I had to tell him your full name is Ray Guerrero Sacerdote Ku’oko’a-Maikai. I know it is because you have the same name as your aunt Electra, whose story I know as well as my own because of all the documents that Amanda Ku’oko’a-Maikai Mariner Wordlaw has sent me to read aloud and keep them in my memory. I have in my memory all the mystical and prophetic writings of your aunt Electra and all of her other writings and all the documents. I have also in my memory all of the documents of the Spiritual Mother project. I has got so many auditory memory obligations: to you and your people, to Monkey Bread and the Daughters of Nzingha, and even to being an Official Mama of the Perfectability Baptist Church. I gots to keep the official doctrine of Mama and Papa Didn’t and Don’t Raise No Fool in my auditory memory to keep us childrens from becoming fools and to help them that is fools already, as well as all the stories and histories of everybody of color who sends they stories and histories to the Daughters of Nzingha archives, and to be able to distinguish between the stories that is wisdom stories and them that is trickster stories, and also to be able to think deep. Monkey Bread refers to me as the worthy listener when she is not calling me Nadine. Even though I am a griot for the Perfectability Baptists, Monkey Bread still prefers to refer to me as a listener.
I know how people of color is about stories, though. If the African traditional story about wisdom and its many variations can come all the way from Africa to America and be told to me by my Papa Didn’t Raise No Fool Neither Daddy, who has as much Mexican in him as African, and my mama, whose maternal grandmother looks just like Miguelita, the crazy gringa I told you about but my maternal great-grandmother was sane and “went for black,” as my mama says, with a sane mind, can tell me stories of an uncle Bud and aunt Blossom, escaped slaves from slavery times, and stories about my granny Jane, who looked just like a African and who kept on keeping on and who kinda remind me of Kate Hickman in one of my favorite books I reads and about John Free who fought in the Civil War and also wrote letters for colored soldiers and Big Warrior the Seminole African who fought with the Seminoles in Florida and about Africans of the warrior class; this letter would be too long if I tells you their story, including all the other stories in my auditory memory—not the same Uncle Bud as the Uncle Bud World War II Uncle Bud but Aunt Blossom’s Uncle Bud of slavery times, but Mama says they is many Buds and Blossoms in us family—then I knows that in your African-Mexican village you can hear tales about a Mrs. Nadine Mendoza of Cuba, New Mexico, so I wants you to know the truth of the story, for the purposes of the revolution, you know what I mean, Ray, even though I know that you more than anybody knows me for who I really am.
Sojourner Nadine Jane Nzingha Johnson
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I have included in this novel characters (among them Saturna the Indian, his
horse Chew Sue, and Jo Jo Cushoff), a song (“Playing a Game of Romance”), and a poem (“My Seventh Love”) written by my mother, Lucille Jones, as well as her play, Blessings for Coliene.
BEACON PRESS
Boston, Massachusetts
www.beacon.org
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices
of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 1999 by Gayl Jones
Works by Lucille Jones (see Author’s Note) © 1999 by Lucille Jones
All rights reserved
Text design by Charles Nix
Typeset in Nix Rift
Composition by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jones, Gayl.
Mosquito / Gayl Jones.
p. cm.
eISBN 978-0-8070-9575-1
ISBN 978-0-8070-8346-8 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8070-8347-5 (paper)
1. Afro-American women—Southwestern States—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3560.0483M67 1999
813′.54—DC21 98-27644