Cinnamon Girl Read online

  Dedication

  For my lovely cousin,

  Nanú Paloma Quintana Guerrero,

  February 2, 1978–August 4, 2003, in memory

  For all the Cinnamon Girls

  Epigraph

  See the steel of Tompkins gate bent back and wise

  See the dead grass that fights to climb and rise

  See that boy trippin’ into a cool pool of dirty moonlight

  See that girl lickin’ her pocked arm as if sugar bright

  See the last limbs of autumn, frayed and yet, still alive

  See those kids lean on the fence as if their secret knife

  See the wind scoot and scoop their last ragged sighs

  See the leaves drift away and tremble by the cellar ice

  See that muchacha swaying to a song in the fiery storm

  See my shadow dancing to its own silence—so alone.

  Canelita, lower east side, nyc

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Cinnamon Girl

  Cinnamon Words

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Juan Felipe Herrera

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Cinnamon Girl

  9/19/01 Wednesday night, Lower East Side, hospital,

  4th floor

  wrapped in gauze

  Uncle DJ’s

  wrapped in gauze.

  He dreams inside a foreign islita

  that no one has discovered except himself.

  There are congas under a tropical moon

  gold nectar saxophones and pale blue-blue maraca stars.

  The galaxy spins and then fire-bursts into a bird

  from San Juan,

  wings red-red as the Flamboyan tree,

  and it speaks with the dark cinnamon of

  the Caribbean night. Its eyes are aquamarine and

  when it sings green-green rain pours and the soft

  island sways to a hip-hop mambo of amor, then

  adios. But—

  I don’t want to say adios.

  Tape across the mouth

  hands strapped

  to the side of the hospital bed rails.

  IV and blood bottle lines tangle

  down to uncle DJ’s arm.

  A Darth Vader machine beeps

  every time he breathes through a sky-white

  see-through hose down his throat.

  Sweep my thin hand across the bed rail

  just in case there is dust

  gnawing around the chrome.

  Uncle DJ’s swallowed enough dust—

  two buildings of dust, Twin Towers of dust.

  Last week, he called mamá Mercedes and said,

  Hey sis, gotta do something—I came to deliver roses,

  as usual, ya’ know. A jet or something hit Tower One.

  A blast, and then, another. Now, I gotta do something.

  There’s fire and screams all around.

  Eleven thirty pm.

  News TV. Blue flash inside

  the eerie hospital room. Tía Gladys

  talks loud to Mamá:

  What’s happening to my city?

  The feeling’s gone, Mercedes. The melao’ is missin’.

  Yolanda María is my melao’, Mamá says.

  Last night I dreamt

  I went with Mamá and tía Gladys to Ground Zero.

  Tía Gladys digs

  with her glossy orange fingernails.

  A police dog barks and digs-digs too.

  There is a tiny cone,

  a hole

  full of black nothing and tapping—

  deep below the rubble. A moan. A long moan

  from underground. Echoes up Canal Street to Chambers.

  Rubble echoes—one hundred feet high of broken

  steel bones and tiny lives crushed forever.

  Echo. Echo.

  Sálvamelo, tía Gladys prays out loud

  in her plastic tiger-print jacket,

  Diosito sálvamelo, save him for me,

  Haré lo que quieras, I’ll do whatevah.

  She makes a manda, a promise

  like she did when mamá Mercedes told her

  last month that I was getting into trouble

  at Longfellow School in West Liberty, Iowa.

  She promised La Virgencita

  that she would take us in

  so I could get better. This morning,

  tía Gladys mumbles another manda, something

  about going back to Puerto Rico and helping

  poor kids in Aguas Buenas.

  In my dream,

  Mamá and aunt Gladys

  kneel down slow on the sharp dust of the World

  Trade Center—like a church all broken.

  A rescue worker with a dog says

  I can hear him tapping . . .

  tap, tap, tap!

  Rescue Company #1

  on his bitten shirt.

  All of a sudden, bam! Like the crushed

  tower, my throat gets fiery, then empty

  in the hospital room—uncle DJ!

  I want to shout louder than

  the Darth Vader machine. Nada, Nada.

  Say something! Rezzy, my cool friend

  from PS 1486, elbows me and says

  in her typical English accent, Wula,

  say something, Yolanda!

  Rezzy’s from Kuwait, new here too,

  like me, tenth grade. Rezzy’s hazel eyes

  glow by the candlelight.

  Are those the secret things that you

  promised you would show me?

  It’s jes’ a cereal box,

  with my writing and some letters inside.

  Pull them out in little bundles tied together with

  red strings. Untie one and read it.

  Maybe uncle DJ will hear me and wake up, I tell Rezzy.

  Maybe, she says. Jes’ maybe.

  June 10, 01

  Dear Canelita

  My sister said your papi Reinaldo got you

  a weasel or something. So that you could feel better,

  you know, about Sky gone. So what you gonna do?

  Flirt with la weasel instead of talking to me?

  Love con windy skies,

  Uncle DJ

  P.S. Write me.

  May 5, 01

  Querida Carnelita,

  Been visiting tía Aurelia in San Francisco

  for a few weeks.

  Hope she gets better soon. Or I’ll lose my job at

  Rosie’s Roses back in Nueva York.

  San Francisco on a Saturday’s just like Puerto Rico.

  Well, you know what I mean, nena—la playa, la música.

  Man, haven’t been here for so looong! Born here

  right after the Army transferred my pops from Puerto Rico to

  Treasure Island. Boom! He met my mamá Angeles at the

  Golden Gate Theatre off of Market Street.

  ¡Oye, fíjate! Just like that!

  Watching Al Capone with Rod Steiger and Faye Dunaway

  con popcorn. From coquitos to coctails de camarón.

  Back in ’57.

  After that stint, we moved to the nearest salsa center in

  the City, right where your tía Aurelia lives now,

  in the Mission District where

  Pops did odd jobs to make ends meet

  until he passed away in ’78.

  That’s about the same time Gladys’s papi went AWOL

  in New Jersey and ran to the border because

  he didn’t like the food.

  Guess where the border was? Loisaida!

  Or as you say, Alphabet City.
<
br />   You can’t beat that with a pair of timbales!

  Guess what?

  Just today, while I was buying tortillas at La Palma,

  I got a little taste of Willie Colón. Man, he was hitting

  the trombone like I hit Abuelita’s gandinga. He was busting up

  the streets. I love this city. Thinking of my Canelita.

  Amor con chocolate,

  Uncle DJ

  P.S. How’s school in West Liver? Happy Cinco de Mayo!

  Yo’, your uncle DJ was so cool,

  Rezzy whispers as I drop the letters

  back into the cereal box in my backpack.

  A fine-tuned voice from the Twin Towers

  sings from afar—I wanted to help. So,

  I stayed holding her hands.

  The voice

  sounds like a violin.

  Each word is a note

  each note is a heart.

  Papi says,

  Every heart

  sings forever.

  Roses so light

  in feathery sight

  high above

  bitter clouds

  broken stems and infinite particles

  their hands

  wrapped

  as

  they rise

  and

  F

  A

  L

  L

  to me. Come then, come

  so I can water you, give you

  my breath.

  Squeeze Rezzy’s hand. A few days ago

  a rush of letters

  lifted uncle DJ onto a stretcher

  covered in dirt, half blue, almost gone,

  a cocoon caked in gray-white.

  His tongue made of chalk—I wrote

  the letters on my hand,

  FBI

  DEA

  ATF

  FDNY

  Why do you write? Why

  do you keep these old letters?

  Rezzy asks me. I say nothing.

  Write to hold back my tears. Write

  with my hard eyes open wide in the hospital room

  flickering with candles, yellow, green,

  red-red.

  9/20/01 Thursday, PS 1486, early morning

  sky

  Yo’ Moondragon!

  Marietta snags me by the stairs

  on the way to class. Mondragón, I say in a whisper.

  Moondragooon! Marietta smacks me on the back,

  like she does every time she sees me.

  Floats away cool with her little gang—

  Fat RGB with crazy colored hair

  and his boney boy, Lil’ Weez. And, of course

  there’s Shannon Iler who’s always laughing

  and Zako, Marietta’s pimple-necked boyfriend.

  Marietta turns back,

  struts up to me, shouts out,

  Moondragon, with your brain-a-saggin’,

  say something, freak!

  Pulls my cheeks like Silly Putty.

  She lets go, and cracks up, walks off,

  her jeans so tight her hair stubble pops out.

  Zako, with thick eyebrows and a sneaky smile

  pulls her to him and turns to me, smirks

  with his teeth out. Rezzy jumps

  in and hauls me away.

  You forget them,

  she says and asks me if I am going to visit

  Uncle DJ at the hospital tonight. Bite my lips,

  stare down hard as we walk silent down the hall.

  Scrape my fingernails against the walls of cartoons

  and crooked lockers all the way to Mrs. Lucy Camacho’s

  English class. Think of Longfellow school,

  my school in Iowa. Think of my friend, Sky,

  laying

  down on the highway looking up at the stars,

  playing “Chicken” with Cheyenne, a runaway boy

  that I liked kinda. Wonder what she was looking at

  so far away. Is uncle DJ looking up there too?

  Gotta take care of him. Like he took care of me

  and even ol’ mean tía Aurelia in San Francisco.

  May 9, 01

  Dear Canelita mía,

  Don’t worry when you read this. Ok?

  Took tía Aurelia to St. Luke’s hospital again where we

  had to wait for hours until they checked her into the

  fluoroscope room. Man, was she jumping mad at me

  afterwards. As a matter of fact she’s still not talking to me.

  They made her drink a gallon of gray malt so that they

  could trace it in her tripas. The doctors think she has a

  hernia in her esophagus. Es la pobreza, she tells me.

  All those years of wishing I could eat all the food los ricos

  had on the table while I scrubbed their floors on my knees.

  I got blisters on my lips from looking at the T-bone steaks!

  Then she laughs.

  She always tells me the same story about working

  in Miami in the thirties, about how she worked as a maid

  in the resorts and as a salad girl at the Plaza Hotel

  in Manhattan in the late forties. Makes me sad, Canelita.

  That’s why I want you to go to school too and not be

  like me taking odd jobs, playing congas in small-time

  bands, being a part-time DJ, or delivering cakes, pizzas

  and even flowers for Valentine’s Day.

  That’s the only real gig I got . . . delivering flowers for

  Rosie’s Roses for All Occasions back home in Loisaida.

  Promise me you’ll be the first one to make it

  all the way to colegio.

  Love con mangos,

  Uncle DJ

  P.S. Oh, I forgot to tell you that I borrowed a pair

  of Latin Percussions from Babatunde. Man, I was hotter

  than sofrito, I was el rey del cuero, well, almost.

  Abraham, one of the guys here from Ghana was on fire.

  And guess what? I dedicated a song to you.

  9/21/01 Friday, intensive care unit, late night

  cinnamon girl

  Mamá Mercedes pins up photos

  of Aguas Buenas on the wall.

  No hay mal que por bien venga,

  There’s always some good with the bad.

  She’s always making up words like that

  you’d think she was born to be a gypsy

  or an opera singer.

  Tía Gladys unmakes

  and makes a funky altar like Mamá in Iowa—

  A San Martín de Caballero statue and another

  of La Virgen María with roses by the window,

  a basket of mangoes, candles, candles, candles,

  velas, velas, velas and a heavy boom box.

  There’s always room for a rumba or merengue,

  Chica, they’ll nevah know if this is a hospital room

  or a salsa club, she tells me with a half smile.

  Tía kneels by uncle DJ’s bed.

  Mamá sits quietly next to her.

  Beto can hear the music, Chica, tía Gladys

  says as she pats uncle DJ on the forehead

  with a towelette. Ya’ know, that’s how I met him.

  I’d go to “Rap Nites” at Negril’s on 2nd and 11th Street,

  there he was in the crowd, with los jevos, DJ Kool Herc

  and FabFiveFreddy.

  Tía Gladys wants to tell me a happy story and

  then she stops and drops her head on Mamá’s lap.

  Say something, Yolanda, she whimpers.

  Está bién, todo está bién,

  Mamá says in a thick voice. Brushes Tía’s long

  blackish hair with her fingers.

  Yolanda’s like me, remember? Never said a thing,

  bendito, ’til I was twenty-nine.

  Mamá lowers her head and speaks soft words.

  Never was allowed to go out with a man

  until my thir
ties. I wanted to be a dancer,

  remember, Gladys?

  Well, with that stubborn half brother Tito of yours,

  contrayao’, I bet you couldn’t even put on new shoes,

  especially red ones!

  Tía Gladys half jokes from the floor,

  plays with a handkerchief.

  I pull out a couple more letters

  so I can pretend uncle DJ is talking to me.

  May 15, 01

  Dear Canela,

  Just a few blocks from where I am standing,

  the old Fantasy Records building glows in the sun.

  That’s where Mongo Santamaría, Paul Desmond

  and Cal Tjader put their música together. Maybe

  this summer I’ll drive from Loisaida and pick

  you up and I’ll show you the place. Just wait, when I

  get back to New York I am gonna build me a recording

  studio like no other, on the roof, el rufeh, it’s gonna

  be just like the old days, I’ll be mixin’ and blastin’

  música like I used to at the Rockland Parkway, I am gonna

  build it on top of the world, well, on top of Loisaida, and

  maybe you can help me, we’ll call it RadioSabor! And

  we’ll paint it like the Fanstasy Records building, all dressed

  up in candy colors, with murals, you gotta come here,

  check it out for yourself so you can see what I am saying . . .

  right? Your tía Aurelia would love to see you too.

  We’re gonna stay with her for a while, well, on the floor.

  La viejita is still strong

  but I am afraid she may go any day too. Pray

  to San Martín de Caballero, bendito, you know what I mean.

  Keeping an eye on her making sure her esófago’ heals.

  Not to mention her anemia and her heart!

  She’s a walking Puerto Rican Revolution.

  Love con arroz y lechón,

  Uncle DJ

  P.S. Your tía Gladys can’t wait to call you tonight.

  She says you better be off the phone too.

  Siéntate,

  Come sit down, Mamá tells tía Gladys.

  They both grow small and quiet in the cold

  room beeping with a little television

  by uncle DJ’s head. It makes wavy lines,

  comets

  in electric dust and shooting stars

  in yellow frosty light.

  I move up to him, his eyes closed

  and whisper into his ear—

  Uncle DJ,

  This is Yolanda, your cinnamon girl.

  Remember you called me Canelita,

  how you sent me letters in Iowa,

  when I was feeling so lost, after my friend

  Sky died and you told me how music fills

  the holes in your heart and how you wanted