Cinnamon Girl
Page 3
On the miniature stove,
tía Gladys stirs sofrito
on a pebbly black caldero—
our makeshift kitchen
in the Everything Room.
Mamá washes more cilantro,
a bouquet she can afford.
Then, garlic, onions and green peppers.
Look at her so tiny, still
with watery
dark eyes and her heart
bigger than the chopping block,
her sofrito art
for me.
August 16, 01
nod, nod
Morning black cafecito
mamá Mercedes sips slow, stares out
our tenement window to quiensabedonde—I close
my eyes.
PS 1486.
New school since we arrived this summer.
Ninth. A crate of windows made of chalk,
huddled boys and girls that stare cold.
I doze off.
Say,
Mamá talks to me serious
in a thread thin voice,
Dime algo, Yolanda María. Please
say—something. No seas
abochorrna’ como yo, Don’t be
so embarrassed like I was.
Nod, nod
then I smile
sunflowers in one
second.
September 5, 01
rumblesdown
i want
to be a dust flower
a light
gray
rose.
words in my head.
i want to speak them—then they c
rumble
float to the ground. Lift them up
that’s all i can do now,
come on, lift
them just like
this.
September 14, 01
There goes your tía Gladys!
Rezzy grabs the poems from my hand
and points down the street.
Yeah, she’s going
to Seven Happiness Café by Houston Street
where she works as a mesera, a waitress, on Tuesdays
through Fridays. Every time I pass by
I wave. On the weekends she colors hair
at Tunomás Honey Hair Salon.
And my mamá cooks and cleans at home,
or you can find her sweeping the incense
dust at Sister Lopez’s place.
Mamá’s always telling me, Life ain’t peachy,
La vida no es un güame. I wish she’d speak in English,
it’s embarrass . . .
Yolandah, Yolandah!
A voice
pops out
from my purple-gray paw-print top,
up windy by my belly button.
Hurry up!
Get those flowerpots, I yell to Rezzy
and that pile of dirty wood panels.
Okeh, okeh, we are workin’ on it, okeh,
rumble downstairs and grab Papi’s hammers
and a baby bag of nails.
Okeh, okeh, and pick up whatever chipped pieces
of broken plates and more wet wood. Okeh, okeh
and one of uncle DJ’s handpainted signs
that reads RadioSabor and there it is!
Uh-oh,
I forgot the plastic garbage bags for windows
and the door, thass right. Now step inside,
huddle under the hard crooked tent and
sit down on milk crates. Hold Rezzy’s hand.
Tight. Tight.
This is our station, Rezzy. On top of the world.
This is where we will play uncle DJ’s music
so he will live, I whisper,
lean my head on Rezzy’s head, until
we’re almost one body
that barely breathes
in little teary hiccups,
so, so
he, he,
will live.
9/26/01 Wednesday, RadioSabor, after school, Loisaida rufeh
cereal box
Are
the voices coming
Yo’? Yo’?
Rezzy asks me inside our RadioSabor tent.
Just play this, I tell her.
We slip off our headphones, hang them
on the wire antennas and bump up the volume.
Play J. Lo and Arsenio
from uncle DJ’s collection.
I would’ve brought my boom boxer, Yo’,
but uncle Rummi thinks I am at the library.
Boom box! I tell her, Not boom boxer!
Turn up the volume all the way.
Pick at a tiny plate of Mamá’s sofrito,
and set it on a milk crate. Fried garlic, onions,
cilantro makes the spirits happy, I make up a story
and explain it to Rezzy. She ignores me.
Lights a blue candle and a stick of sandalwood.
It’s like playing house but
with a little altar. Eh?
Yeah, yeah, I say.
The aromas mix
and make me dreamy. Remember
when we got here a few months ago,
after two years of living in Iowa. Papi’s idea.
You gotta move, nena, if you stand still you turn
into stone. Move-move, breathe under the sky,
make your own islita wherevah you go.
So, we went to West Liberty, Iowa, ’cause that’s
where my papi’s cucumber-shaped pickup
broke down, was supposed to make it to San Francisco
so we could hook up with my oldest tía, my tía Aurelia
and maybe Papi could get a job at the Fairmont Hotel where you can see famous people like James Brown. But, tía Aurelia is too mean and just talks about going back to San Juan, and makes me say all kinds of prayers every hour like you swear the world is ending all the time.
So Papi
worked for the Muscatine Sausage & Poultry Company,
taking care of millions of chickens
in four long stanky houses
and he’d bring some home, swing them in the air,
by their crazy heads, their feet
whirling like busted jump ropes.
And he slammed them
against the fence.
That’s how the Mexicanos do it, he would say.
We living a new life now, nena, he said,
just like I promised.
Promises, promises.
Open my backpack and stare inside.
Got more letters, Yo’? Read me one of yours,
Yo’? Please?
April 8, 01
Dear uncle DJ,
Got your postcard of the Golden Gate. Showed it to my teacher at Longfellow.
He liked what you said when you wrote,
“The Golden Gate is like a funky Brooklyn Bridge dipped in hot sauce and love.”
It takes a lot for my teacher, Mr. Rolodex, to smile,
well, that’s not his name-name.
Me and my friend Sky call him that because his desk is
always a mess and he needs to get himself organized.
He couldn’t figure out my poetry,
said it was about seeing things
before they happen, yeah, right.
Have you ever seen Iowa rain?
It’s thick as nails. And I am not that skinny anymore.
Yesterday, I pulled Mamá out on the porch
(they have those here)
and made her dance with me—in the rain!
We were so chévere, so cool!
Did I tell you that I have lots of boy friends?
Let me tell you,
Rudy Fink, Matt Drury, Jason Estrada, Adolfo Robles,
Sammy Ketchenblauer or something like that
and Reymundo Arreglado, he’s so cute.
I am also good at sports, did I tell you?
Soccer, kickball, dodgeball, basketball, skating, running, swimming, baseball, football and Ping-Pong!
&nb
sp; I think I am the first porto’rican that knows how to play Ping-Pong!
You’d love our new house, well, it’s an old one but I have a room all to myself
and a mirror—and a bed.
Write me sooner,
Love, your Canelita,
Y
Tell me about Sammy Ketchupflour, Rezzy asks.
And Sky. Did she ever stay over? Is she tall?
Yolanda María! Mamá calls.
Where are you? Come down here right now!
We have to go to the hospital, Dr. Weisberg says.
It’s time.
Time?
Time?
9/27/01 Thursday, intensive care unit, evening
absolutely nothing but night
Roberto had two seizures, Mrs. Santos.
We are going to take him in for a scan.
Dr. Weisberg says to tía Gladys
in a soft voice. I really thought it was his time.
We wait, wait
for the orderly to come and
get him ready.
Uncle DJ’s chest goes up, down, the oxygen
in, out, in ocean sounds, wind and skies
mixing inside his body, he is light, nothing.
Tictic, I hear
a clock snap, little gears buzz and
make his finger jitter, deep water swishes
and bubbles in a broken fountain inside his throat,
no voice—
Bend
into his ear again,
Uncle DJ, uncle DJ,
it’s Cinnamon Girl.
I made a manda for you,
played J. Lo and Arsenio,
your favorites, well, J. Lo
is my favorite, on the rufeh.
Put my headphones
on his pillow and play the wavy beats.
Can you hear that, uncle DJ? Thass it.
When you take out the tubes?
Tía Gladys asks Dr. Weisberg,
patting down one of the plastic packs
on the IV rack with the orderly.
Dr. Weisberg’s eyes soften.
Something’s keeping him going. I guess,
as soon as he can breathe on his own.
He says kinda quiet. Dr. Weisberg
checks uncle DJ’s pulse.
He’s got a strong heart, Mrs. Santos.
Leaves with uncle DJ.
The door opens and closes,
Breathes in, then out. In and out
they are the same.
Light
dust
tumbles down to my
shredded shoe
laces.
’Juerte, ’juerte, Beto. Be strong.
Tía Gladys says
and leans into the menthol breeze
of the shiny nurses’ station.
Open my backpack
grab my cereal box and pull out a poem.
bluish habichuelas
Night’s when i listen to uncle DJ’s songs
from his tenement rooftop—RadioSabor
Porto’rican Oldies, he would say.
Machito and ’ol time güagüancó’s with Celia Cruz
while tía Gladys swings her hips under
our ceiling, dreamy under
the chalky sky dots
bluish habichuelas of the Milky Way.
Así, así
like this, Yola! Tía Gladys kinda smiles.
Night
Where are you?
September 24, 01
ins ide
Put
one
hand
over my
eyes.
Then, the other hand. Petal
hands.
Drag my feet
to school. Peek
through
my fingers.
Dust inside
the dust. i want to
laugh at my serious face
in the girl’s bathroom.
September 24, 01
Mamá and I sit alone. Clean the dust
on uncle DJ’s bed rail. Wait. Wait.
Rub my neck, Yolanda, por favor.
Mamá’s always hurting. Always aching.
Her skin is smooth and young, a yellow-brown
from not enough sunlight maybe,
and her hair is long and dry. Rub her neck.
Face the empty bed, twisted and tired.
Mandas don’t work,
they just make things worse! I grumble
and scratch Mamá’s neck by accident.
Mamá turns and pinches my arm.
The virgencita on a thin gold chain
around her neck swings out and lands
outside her collar.
I am not leaving here, Yolanda María!
That’s my manda, okeh, Mamá says in
her stubborn scratchy voice.
She lets go of my arm, smoothes
the red blotchy pinch-star on my skin.
Her virgencita slips back into her blouse.
Feel like running. Run
into the avenues,
let them run through me too, run, run
full of absolutely nothing but
night.
9/28/01 Friday, tenement kitchen, Loisaida, early morning
rooster claw
Just Papi and me.
On opposite sides of the Everything Room.
Mamá and Tía are at the hospital.
Play with a thimble
from Mamá’s Puerto Rico
of colmados where she listens to tía Aurelia’s stories or
visits Don Arturo’s shop where he teaches her
how to roll cigars. She’s twelve, has a birthday trulla
and strolls to the playas and
tosses a seashell into the waters
mirroring back to the
sandy sparkles in her hair.
Maybe in that green-blue water there is
a silvery thread of my hair. Play, play.
What did Sister Lopez mean?
Squeeze out my cereal box
and squint at my poetry sheets.
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.
What stairs?
White? Falling?
Fold the inky sheets and slide them back
slow into the cereal box . . . shhh
push it slowly under my sofa so Papi
won’t wake up.
He tosses in his sofa corner.
Snores. Mumbles.
In Iowa he used to come home all drowsy
with beer and sing out,
Yola, did you know
that you can make seventy-nine
by-products with chicken?
Fridays he would stumble home
swaying from side to side and say,
A rooster claw can be sanded into gambling dice.
That’s why the devil has rooster feet!
On my last birthday, he fell and bounced
on the bed facedown with his chicken-parts apron
and his rubber chicken bloody boots
and mumbled, Did I tell you I invented
Chickabree?
That was supposed to be
some kinda tortilla-shaped chicken chip
that flies like a Frisbee. Not funny. That’s when
he saw me crying and made his manda.
From now on,
he said pulling me hard by the arm
from the living room all the way to the porch,
No more trago, no more drink, eh, chica?
and, your papi’s gonna study, one
of these days, maybe, be a lawyer.
One day . . . and you will be proud, eh?
Papi threw his arms wild around me
to kiss me, saying
and spitting,
Perdóname, I am sorrrry, Yolandita,
slipping off the porch down the stairs
to the street. You’re always saying that,
I wanted to scream but I didn’t, just
ran out into the night, my head down
seeing my feet slap the dark road, hitch rides
to the 620 Club where Cheyenne and Sky
hung out.
Papi tosses on the sofa, wakes up
blinks at me for a second, rubs his eyes.
Buttons his shirt, one of uncle DJ’s shirts
with palm-tree islands and flying saxophones on it.
Goes back to sleep with one arm
slung over his face. Papi’s always tossing
and turning. Alone. With red eyes,
smoking his cigarros. Handsome and alone.
Wish I knew what’s inside his head. Why
he stares at me and says nothing and
then all of a sudden
he gives me a fake ruby ring. Or he buys me
dictionaries from used book tables on the street
and leaves them on my bed.
Mamá says I am like him, ’cause she never
knows what I am doing next, look like him too,
dark brown, a brown-red, fiery.
A hot airy wind comes to me. Papi’s island shirt
gives me an idea. Pack some clothes fast.
Stuff sloppy mayonnaise sandwiches
into my backpack, make sure Cicatríz
is happy inside one of the side pockets
with her bony head and wet nose sticking out.
Scribble a note:
Papi,
Going to help the others
so uncle DJ can live. Don’t worry.
Going to do it my way.
Love,
Canelita
P.S. Cinnamon Girl.
Gonna do what you said, Papi,
gonna get my own islita, my own sky.
Gonna find those “long white stairs.”
Ditch class. Ditch-ditch.
9/29/01 Saturday, Loisaida, after lunch at uncle Rummi’s
cool again
Wait for Rezzy after school at her uncle’s shop
by the Tanya Towers. Read the sign
Royal Robes: Used & Almost Used
Look, look, Rezzy,
show her my backpack.
It’s my luggage, heh. Got a place for us.
Before she can say anything, we pick
funny-looking colored hats and shaggy clothes
from the racks. Come on, come, we gotta go
to the Cinnamon Palace.
Where, wula?
You donkey!
Pull Rezzy down the stairs
of an abandoned building on Avenue D, down, down
the cellar, way down past smoky ashes, beer bottles
of urine, and baby mice. Okeh, okeh, we’ll clean it up.
Everything is going to be cool again.
Down
we go.