Cinnamon Girl
Page 1
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