Mosquitoland: Chapters 6–13

The doctor prescribed something, but my infantile esophagus persisted with savage tenacity.

I’ve developed a theory I like to call the Pain Principle. The gist of it is this: pain makes people who they are.

"Independence."
"The land of autonomy," I whisper, smiling.

Girding my nostrils, my lungs, my everything else, I poke my head around the corner and gag.

I wish I hadn't thrown away those letters. I wish I hadn't squandered my proof.

I wish I still had a tangible I-don't-know-what...thing.

Poncho Man (I will not call him Joe) does not relinquish his grin. In fact, it's wider than ever.

Yeah, listen, I really don't have the energy to point out each of the ways you've shirked the social cues of...well, society, so I'm just gonna say this: I don't care, man.

Traveling through synapses and neurotransmitters, the memory is whisked into a delectable roux, now ready to serve: My mother is sitting in her yellow Victorian reading Dickens.

"You sort of went all...catatonic on me. You okay?"

"I got it from the library. It's called Clinical Psychopathology."

The light comes on automatically, flooding the tiny room with a sickly yellow tint, as if everything were suddenly jaundiced.

Through the jagged perforation of hacked metal, I step outside, transported from one dreamlike scene to another.

My Objective is a bulwark never failing.

The idea that this was abnormal hit early, around third or fourth grade. (A girl knows when she’s being talked about, am I right?) But I didn’t care. I rolled with it. Abnormalities abound!

The league was a fledgling operation run by a throng of kids, meatheads mostly, looking for an excuse to punch someone.

Bubba looked exactly as you’d expect. Big, beefy—he even had a full-fledged beard, which at his age commanded enormous respect.

My parents had always been sticklers for film ratings (though I suspected Dad was the driving force behind this), and since Titanic was PG-13, I’d had to wait until—you guessed it—my thirteenth birthday, at which point, Mom and I watched it exclusively and repetitively.

Hanging there with aplomb is a brass L.

I picture Mom writing this, impetuous and angry.

A couple of hours later, we pull off for lunch at a remote exit; Carl gets on the mic and goes through his spiel about not leaving valuables on the bus, and how much time we have at this stop.

"I overheard your little convo with Ed out there—you wouldn't drink Hills Brothers Original Blend if your life depended on it. Which means that coffee can I just saw"—he points to my backpack—"isn't yours. Ergo, what's inside probably isn't either."

His words are ice. They hit my gut first, then spread in all directions, filling my ears, elbows, knees, toes—the extremities of Mim, once a balmy ninety-eight point six, now a glacial effigy.

His words are ice. They hit my gut first, then spread in all directions, filling my ears, elbows, knees, toes—the extremities of Mim, once a balmy ninety-eight point six, now a glacial effigy.

Until this moment, the uncomfortable nearness of Poncho Man had been held at bay by other passengers and locks on doors. Now, it's just us. There are no devices, no buffers.

In my mind, the bathroom dissolves into a reddish hue, the corners dimming like the vignette of an old art house film.

His poncho stiffens, hardens, ripples into a spotted fur coat; matted and dirty, the blacks and oranges and browns of his mangy hide reflect the red light of the room, and behold!

Spinning, I unlock the door and exit the bathroom, breathing in the freedom of the rarely savvy gazelle.

However, if you’re cursed as I am with a love of storytelling and adventures in galaxies far, far away, and mythical creatures from fictional lands who are more real to you than actual people with blood and bones—which is to say, people who exist—well, let me be the first to pass on my condolences.
Because life is rarely what you imagined it would be.
Signing off,
Mary Iris Malone,
Storytelling Lackey

I had it down to that, or cheeky, and by my reckoning, it would be far easier to define my many moods with a word whose very definition was a person or thing that couldn't be defined by any one thing.

"In summary, I am 110 percent Anomaly, plus maybe 33 percent Independent Spirit, and 7 percent Free-Thinking Genius. My sum total is 150 percent, but as a living, breathing Anomaly, this is to be expected. Boom."

Back then, I closed all my papers with Boom. It added a certain profound punctuation—a little high class among the meandering bourgeois.

Back then, I closed all my papers with Boom. It added a certain profound punctuation—a little high class among the meandering bourgeois.

As we pulled up, Mom reached for the window down button, but before she could press it, Dad started in on what a lazy bunch the homeless were, being the dregs of society and whatnot.

Here’s the thing, Iz: my mom needs help right now. And I know it, even if she doesn’t.
Signing off,
Mary Iris Malone,
Samaritan Avenue Vagabond

A waste bin sits by my bench, beckoning. I could just throw the stupid thing away, be rid of Stevie Wonder and His Sonic Detritus once and for all.

What little sustenance may have been garnered from a hockey pucked-burger, I'd put to far greater use during the Incident of the Bile in the Restroom. Which is to say, I'm starving.

The more admiration this garnered from teachers and friends, the closer I felt to my ancient ancestry, my kinswomen, my tribe.

So from whatever minutia of my heart that pumps authentic Cherokee blood, I pass this phrase along to you: have a vision, unclouded by fear.

It's a shame, because Mom loves all things David Byrne, but I won't have any piece of Poncho Man sully our time together.