Cinnamon Girl Read online

  me to help you build RadioSabor on your rufeh,

  a little music station on the roof where I could help you

  mix sounds like you used to at Rockland Parkway

  and listen to your Willie Colón albums, you

  promised to tell me all the family secretos like when

  tía Gladys’s father, Fernando, went AWOL

  in New Jersey because he didn’t like the mashed potatoes

  in the navy . . . I won’t tell, just like your letters,

  I keep them all sealed in a cereal box, well,

  anyway, just want to tell you

  that I am going to make a manda too, a promise

  for you. My manda is, uh,

  I am going to build RadioSabor

  on the rufeh-roof, and let all your music out

  for the Lower East Side to hear, I mean, Loisaida,

  like you always say, all the world

  will hear your music, uncle DJ,

  but I won’t say nada to nobody right now

  this is just between you—and me.

  Just then uncle DJ’s eyes open,

  well, barely.

  And I hear a voice in my head:

  Help the others, Canelita . . .

  You must save the others . . .

  the others . . .

  Who, uncle DJ?

  Rock back with Mamá and tía Gladys, asleep.

  The others—

  where are they now?

  How will I

  find them?

  9/22/01 Saturday, on West 10th

  witchy wind

  A witchy wind

  swells above the gray city.

  On a dirty bus,

  for a ride, going nowhere

  in the fuzzy smog, metal seats. Tía Gladys

  and Mamá. Rezzy with me

  on the front seat. Cicatríz, my pet ferret,

  snuggles on my shoulder. Papi found her in a train,

  told me, Just don’t give her human food.

  We pass a firehouse on West 10th.

  Rezzy laughs out loud when

  I tell her about how Papi feeds Cicatríz in a shoe.

  Rezzy’s got raggedy green bell-bottoms

  and my plastic panther-black jacket,

  her hair in spirals

  under a funky Yankees cap.

  Where are they—los firefighters?

  Mamá asks no one.

  Where are the others?

  I ask myself. The others . . .

  The firehouse looks tired,

  ancient, beaten. Nearby,

  at St. Vincent’s Hospital,

  there are hundreds of people crowding

  to read little posters with photographs.

  They read and hold each other

  at the same time.

  On what floor?

  Someone asks out loud. Maybe she stopped

  for breakfast and wasn’t there.

  Hundreth floor, Yola! A little dusty voice

  crawls up my sleeve and tucks itself into my ear.

  Another voice says—

  I stayed, no way out, dear, just fire.

  It’s ok, Yolanda

  Mother was waiting for me.

  I grasp at the air

  as if whisking away a strange butterfly.

  Whatya doing, wula, are you falling asleep?

  Rezzy asks. Says wula for everything.

  Remember when you first came to school?

  All you did was sit in the back of Mrs. Camacho’s class

  and scribble-scribble. Rezzy kicks my backpack.

  Who were you writing to?

  I don’t know, I tell Rezzy.

  After the towers went down,

  so many words came rushing out of me

  more than ever before.

  Open my backpack

  and show Rezzy—

  d us t voi ces

  Near the Exodus Boxing Gym.

  Peek out from my classroom window.

  Just printed the date on my poetry assignment,

  September 20th.

  Gaze

  freeze. The rose

  grows. Tiny

  petals

  flare

  again, dust

  voices. Some

  open toward me.

  others mix

  into the empty

  sky. A new sky

  covers me. And i cover it

  with my sky.

  September 20, 01

  a thousand little days i

  keep secret

  Today

  lasts

  forever.

  School

  trembles. Blocks crumble—

  next block, Avenue C

  C for crumbleagain.

  Sister Lopez’s Tarot Card Shoppe,

  school floats in

  between

  no night. Stay

  awake, Yolanda stay

  awake in a

  thousand little days i

  keep secret

  inside my head.

  September 21, 01

  o positive

  Helicopters chopchop

  spray find

  dive deep

  hoses stretch hiss

  bulldozers cranes cameras flash

  dump trucks line up

  for 20 blocks

  aid workers wrap the street

  Cup-a-Soup 123

  baskets of cheeseburgers

  Chelsea Piers turns

  into an emergency room

  Hudson River and 23rd Street

  Rabbis and fries

  EMTs and med students

  O positive

  bloodlines—

  O positive?

  Thass me.

  September 22, today

  Back on the street, Loisaida.

  Rezzy flies home

  on her scratched-up skateboard.

  I wear

  purple everything. Or black.

  Tops

  and pants, sneakers too. I go slow.

  A so-what

  slow. But fast on the way to Shorty’s bodega

  by Tompkins Square Park and East 8th.

  Grab a cola, lean cool on the iron gates.

  Notice the whirls of

  fine-sharp cloud dust mix

  into the dark hairs

  on my arms.

  9/23/01 Sunday, Sister Lopez’s Tarot Card Shoppe, Loisaida, afternoon

  strong, ’juerte

  After Tía’s gandules,

  I race to my room. Sofa room

  with a glassy bead curtain separating it

  from the living room,

  Cicatríz on my shoulder. Uncle DJ calls it

  the Everything Room because it’s a place of mambos

  and fútbol, corner kitchen of home cooking like

  tostones and pasteles, everybody always talking, singing.

  Hot orange posters of Puerto Rican boxers on the wall—

  Wilfredo Benitez, Carlos Ortiz and Tía’s favorite,

  Felix Trinidad, and little photos of grandfather

  Salomé carrying his black machete in Cidra.

  Papi Reinaldo and Mamá on one corner,

  tía Gladys on the other. I push through the glassy red beads,

  listen to sirens outside and grab my backpack

  with raisin cookies for Cicatríz.

  Sometimes, after

  everyone is asleep tía Gladys snores.

  Spotlight my flashlight

  on her honey-colored belly, heh-heh.

  I go to

  the brown dry bathroom. In front of the mirror—

  over the homemade tendedero, wiggle

  my red plumpy tongue.

  Wiggle in the

  D

  A

  R

  K

  L

  I

  G

  H

  T

  I remember

  liking myself.

  My own few, wild, funny

&
nbsp; faces.

  The Everything Room is waxy and still as the saints

  on Mamá’s altar. You can hear each bead knock-knock

  on my fingernails like a rosary. Chipped paint

  by the light switch cracks and I rush out

  to meet Rezzy, we run through Avenue C. Run-run past

  wet black cellars, Shorty’s Liquors,

  the trashjunk gardens,

  stop, rub my eyes,

  didn’t sleep much last night.

  We go quiet

  to Sister Lopez’s Tarot Card Shoppe

  to hang out, buy roses for uncle DJ’s room.

  Mamá works here part-time,

  I tell Rezzy. She should be here

  any minute. There’s confections, gypsy clothes,

  incense and cool gold string rings too.

  Rezzy, Rezzy,

  poke her in the ribs, You gotta help me

  find the others. Okeh? Okeh?

  Still can see Rezzy

  the first day I met her, just a couple

  of months ago. She looked like a little round lawyer.

  Briefcase, blue shirt, black tie and a light blue pinafore.

  What’s a pinafore? Something

  you wear while you play piano?

  I asked her. Almost look the same. Same hair, same eyes,

  same-same except she’s big and I am so-sooo skinny.

  Now she tries on a plastic zebra-striped jacket

  from Sister Lopez’s clearance rack.

  Floppy shark-tooth lapels,

  like the one uncle DJ sent me last summer.

  How do you like my new style from “da village,”

  Rezzy says making a funny face and wobbling her head.

  She slumps her shoulders and

  sits next to a rough-faced black cat.

  Ummie and Papa

  want me to just be me, but uncle Rummi

  who I stay with says

  In America, be American!

  Like you, Yo’!

  We sit on the floor by the velvet handbags

  with Egyptian pyramids and girls’ faces,

  one eye outlined in charcoal mascara.

  Read me some more of your letters, Yo’,

  Rezzy peeks into my backpack. Your letters,

  wula!

  March 2, 01

  Dear uncle DJ,

  Say gracias

  to tía Gladys for sending me the two CDs

  and a book of poems by Julia de Burgos.

  But I don’t understand them, weird. Anyway,

  I am so excited. I’ll be thirteen next month

  and guess what? If we move, I’ll be going

  to City High next year, in Iowa City.

  Papi was right, there’s a lot of Mexicanos here.

  But they don’t speak. Well, English. Dunno,

  Hello? Told Papi that I think we are the only

  Puerto Ricans in the whole state of Iowa.

  Maraca! He shouted and laughed.

  Am I a maraca, uncle DJ?

  Love con toasted baseball game peanuts,

  Canela

  P.S. Ma ra ca, ha!

  March 7, 01

  Dear Canelita,

  Corazonsito,

  You are not a maraca,

  You are a lovely manguito or should I say manguita?

  How about a guayabita? Sounds funny, huh?

  Gonna borrow a pair of congas from Babatunde,

  one of the best congeros in The City. See ya’.

  Amor con pescao’ frito,

  uncle DJ

  P.S. Hip-Hop? I’ll let you in on a secreto.

  I was right there in the middle of it when it started.

  March 14, 01

  Dear Canela,

  Didn’t get a chance to talk to you last night

  about my early DJ days like I promised you.

  Let me tell you,

  I started my DJ cosa back in the early eighties,

  when Hip-Hop was just comin’ on with the NYC Breakers,

  that’s when Rock Steady was the mero-mero and the Roxy

  was the only Hip-Hop club in Manhattan.

  Shudda seen your tía! Cheverisima!

  Well, gotta go and hustle gigs, jobs

  and pay los biles—and take care of your tía Aurelia.

  Still dreamin’ of those sweet days in Noba’ Yor.

  Your tío DJ

  P.S. Got a feeling my job at Rosie’s Roses is gone.

  Don’t matter, she’ll make room for me. I am her best delivery man.

  Look, Rezzy

  You gotta help me find the others, I whisper

  and take her behind the crystal balls and incense burners,

  Rezzy, please, so uncle DJ will live,

  I made a manda.

  What are you talking about? She says.

  Maybe I can help you,

  an old woman with a husky voice croons.

  She has a thin long nose, thick

  ruby lips and green glasses,

  her hair is night-black pulled back into a braid.

  With wine-red ribbons, coarse turquoise silk shirt

  half open with an old gold virgensita, hanging

  from her neck.

  Sister Lopez sits down

  opens her large hands

  and raises them as if feeling the heat

  of the table puffing up from an oven below the floor.

  I am Sister Lopez, been here since

  the days when we took over Tompkins Park, snatched

  it back from the city peoples

  like a spider steals a fly, niña.

  Sister Lopez peers into me,

  kinda dreamy and then looks at Rezzy. Sister Lopez

  pulls out a deck of cards from her breast pocket

  and leans over the round glass table between us.

  Asks me to shuffle the deck, worn with little moons

  in persimmon colors, soft as feathers. A card printed

  with nine floating gold coins flips out by itself.

  Someone

  is calling you, niña, she says before I finish.

  The calling is strong, ’juerte.

  9/24/01 Monday, PS 1486, Mrs. Lucy Camacho’s English class

  white stairs

  Mrs. Camacho slides back her wire rims

  over her oily nose and scribbles a poem

  by Joey Piñero on the board.

  Something about the barrio and whoknowswhat,

  then she asks us to read it aloud. Everything has changed,

  she says, Things aren’t all chulisnaquis, so cool, ya’ know?

  You gotta do something, are you listenin’?

  Take out your letters to the president, she asks us,

  and then sits in front of the class, picks an

  autumn leaf from her hair. Half of it

  dipped in fire, the other half in

  lemony moonlight.

  Marietta squirts a little box of Hawaiian Punch

  into her mouth

  and slams her head down on her desk. Alma and Carmela, the twins, pass tiny notes next to me.

  Jenikajade and McKenzie

  whisper something to Rezzy,

  something about Marietta and Zako

  getting high last week and standing

  on a roller coaster.

  Thinking of Sister Lopez and what she told me—

  “Strong, ’juerte,” a voice calling. And

  what she said after that.

  School here so easy, Yo’, Rezzy jabbers behind me

  while she plays with my hair. Back home, right now

  I’d have to take the CBSE, wula!

  The what?

  The Central Board Secondary Education Exam!

  Rezan Sabah! Maybe you two want to visit

  Principal Giannoni this morning?

  Mrs. Camacho says almost politely

  by the overhead projector showing

  Marietta’s letter that starts with curly

  loopy
letters. Mrs. Camacho turns off the light

  so we can read it out loud:

  Dear Mr. President,

  Big letters. Big deal.

  I turn away and put my ear to my desk.

  Sister Lopez’s husky voice comes to me.

  Down the long white stairs in the night

  All the falling voices you will cure of fright

  You cannot show your face

  You cannot leave a trace

  Do this with all your heart and all your might

  And your uncle will rest in the highest place.

  Sister Lopez’s low voice circles me. Nah,

  it’s nothing, just spooky-smokey words,

  like her cheap incense.

  Rezzy says in class, half dark. Sometimes

  uncle Rummi sounds spooky too when he talks

  of Kuwait and the Royals

  driving in their Rolls-Royces around the block

  spitting nondigestible chocolate until they go crazy.

  Or when he talks of the Gulf War and how he

  couldn’t find his gas mask in the kitchen, wula!

  Later, we leap

  across the curb outside school and run by my building

  up, up, floor after floor until we are out of breath

  on the rufeh. The sky wrinkled and droopy with ash.

  This is where

  you will help me collect voices, Rezzy.

  This is where you will help me build RadioSabor.

  Ah. Ahh.

  9/25/01 Tuesday, on the rufeh, Loisaida tenements, evening

  RadioSabor

  On the rufeh,

  guzzling sodas and chomping lime-flavored

  Cheetos we got from Shorty’s bodega.

  Saw Zako, from class, with cork skin,

  he leaned so cool on the iron gates at the park and

  so skinny-skinny sucking a tobacco-smeared pipe,

  staring through the swings going back and forth, going.

  Wonder what he was seeing? Wonder.

  Now tell me, Yo’, what radio thing are you

  talking about?

  Hold on, I say, picking some poems

  from my cereal box, then I lean over

  the edge of the rufeh and sniff the air, sniff,

  sniff. Smells like alcohol,

  burnt perfume, eggs and a bloody nose. Blood

  always reminds me of Christmas because dead flowers

  smell like dried blood. But it’s not Christmas.

  I hear sirens, maybe like the ones

  that cried when the rescue workers

  dug uncle DJ out of the earth.

  Like the ones in my dream . . .

  men in yellow raincoats

  and orange striped vests,

  steel hats, buckets

  of ashes, wires and dirt, FDNY and NYPD

  on their shirts—

  bulldozers and dump trucks

  and sirens fading in and

  out.

  Sniff, sniff,

  read softly.

  sofrito