Cinnamon Girl Page 2
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