9/30/01 Sunday, late night, at the Cinnamon Palace
playa boricua
See my bed?
Show Rezzy, a crumpled roll
of newspapers, cardboard pillows, Mamá’s rebozo
and a fancy old velvet blanket of palm trees
and parrots, just like uncle DJ said, life is a playa boricua,
a Puerto Rican beach.
And we got food, Rezzy.
Light another candle in the cellar.
See this little shoebox. Thass our dining
room table and see here inside this box, there’s
cheese and crackers, candy and some
soda cans, oh, and bread, got lots of bread,
thass our refrigerator.
Come, Rezzy, sit, sit, just wait a minute.
Okeh, I know what you’re thinking,
Wula, this is not a bedroom! Okeh, okeh, right?
Wait, look.
Cup my hand and scrape it against
the floor and hold it up next to the candles
by my bed.
See?
What?
Closer!
What? Dirt?
You can’t see it?
Here open your hand, Rezzy.
Let me pour it on you. Now?
It feels so fine. Wula. What is it, Yo’?
Looks like dust, huh?
Kinda silvery, huh?
It’s the voices, Rezzy.
It’s all the voices.
They came flying down the stairs of every
city building after the Twin Towers
came crashing and then they hit bottom.
Thass why they talk to me. Thass why we are here,
Rezzy, are you listening? We are going
to put them back where they will rest,
back where uncle DJ fell too, okeh,
repeat after me okeh—
Down the long white stairs in the night
all the falling voices you will cure of fright . . .
Down the long white stairs in the night
all the falling voices you will cure of fright . . .
Give Rezzy some school sandwich bags
from Mamá’s kitchen and an empty shoebox.
These are little apartments
for the voicedust, okeh, okeh, I say
Uncle Beto!
Uncle DJ!
Squint through the dust still flowering
gray in the cellar.
Where are you? In what mouth or cave or bodega
of cinders and concrete?
Why do I call him? Stupid, huh?
Donde estás? Where?
Breathe. I breathe.
Never
thought about
breathing.
It is like beginning something.
New.
In the cellar, gray light.
Gray walls.
The halls
at school are gray too.
The floors shine, wave
and then
they dissolve.
Down-down we go.
Cellar of shredded leaves
rivers, forgotten explosive oceans, Rezzy and me
laughing and swimming
holding hands. Remembering
just a few seconds ago
when we were
thirteen.
Kneel like tía Gladys on the hospital floor,
it makes me feel like I am with uncle DJ
in some weird way. Scoop, scoop the voicedust
with our hands, scoop, Rezzy sings, a little nervous,
Come little voices,
come little ones,
we are taking you back home,
come now, come.
10/1/01 Monday, late night, at the Cinnamon Palace
ballet
Yo’,
we got two hundred and seventy
little voicedust baggies
in shoeboxes now! Smiles
with circles under her eyes.
Red rings
around her lips from drinking too many
cherry sodas.
Yo’, are you listening to me, wula?
You know uncle Rummi is probably going crazy
wondering where I am too, you know?
He’s probably saying, Where is that fatty-girl!
That’s what he calls me. Where’s that baby-barrel?
When are you going to lose all that pudding?
In America girls have thin necks like swans,
that’s why ballet is so beautiful. And it’s not belly,
it’s ballet, can you pronounce that, Rezan, let me hear
you say ballet, now! He gives me a candy,
Here, learn with a sweet.
I see Rezzy’s eyes grow shadows and her
lips stretch into wispy waves, smeared and jerky.
Rezzy slumps down on our cardboard bed.
Bows her head and sighs. Drags to the corner
of the cellar with a candle and slides down
to the floor. Scoops voices. A rat scurries into a pile
of rotten rags smashed like brains.
I don’t want to go out anymore, Yo’.
She says shaking her head.
Okeh, okeh, Rez.
Hold her hand. Okeh.
You cannot show your face
You cannot leave a trace . . .
I say to myself.
I know what we’ll do, Rez.
Take her hand and lift her up
and swing her around our palace
as if we are dancing ballet—
Glide across the stone stage. Fly.
From now on, Rezzy
we’ll trade places. I’ll be you.
And you’ll—be me. Me.
Me?
10/2/01 Tuesday, evening, Loisaida on to Broadway
fades
After we run home
from Sister Lopez’s Tarot Card Shoppe
Rezzy pastes on a tight halter top and pounds
herself into a pair of pink gypsy bell-bottoms.
Gotta be like you, Yo’, right and you like me?
I wrap a thick cloth around my belly and put
on an extra pair of pants. Wear serious shoes.
All I need is a pinafore, heh, I tell her,
Heh.
Yeh, this way nobody will know us.
And we can know everybody, Rezzy, yeh.
Jus’ like Sister Lopez said—
You cannot show your face.
You cannot show your face,
Rezzy copies and licks a PowerBar.
Not going to eat, Yo’, this way
I’ll lose all the pudding—like a swan.
Gonna get on a Zoney diet! She laughs.
What? Rezzy sucks on an orange and squirts
my eyes. Laughs. You donkey.
Shuts her eyes, makes a face
of a naughty bus driver, lets a seed roll off
her chalky-white tongue.
Stop posing! We have stuff to do.
Rezzy freezes. Her face
drops the smiles. Silence. Only the dust seems
to say things—Hurry! Hurry!
We both bounce up,
spin around our
cardboard boxes and folded clothes
on the floor. Except we switch clothes
and sides of the bed.
Stuff more baggies into our backpacks.
Come, Rezzy, we have a ways to go.
Hold her hand and walk upstairs.
Climb and peek outside the Cinnamon Palace.
Jump a bus.
Pass Maiden Street and Broadway.
A fireman
on a high crane shoots water
into a blue-gray box of wires and torn concrete.
Clock on a storefront
stutters and starts. Things are on
and off. In between there is strange static.
Like when the TV breaks
and the channels forget how to speak
and where to aim. Hear sirens.
Sniff, sniff, something’s on fire.
It is the earth, I can’t explain it,
Rezzy answers weird.
We scoop voicedust
from the bus seats, scoop more dust.
Scoop.
Rezzy turns her head, in a daze,
slowly, as if looking for something
that used to be there, like a deli or a little dog,
but she can’t find it now.
I can’t explain it, she repeats.
I open my backpack
and pick a few poems out of my cereal box.
These poems are about you, Rezzy,
I tell her to cheer her up a little. Listen.
e dge
Rezzy flies me
a note in
hot orange
ink:
Guess what, Yo’?
I am going on a Zoney diet.
Just chicken and pastrami,
wula! Pulls a beaded strand of hair
down to her dark lips. She looks
sooo cute. Her eyes blink fast
and her smooth skin is sweaty sweet.
September 1, 01
rezzy scrapes off her fingernail polish
then she scrapes a scab in her head
in between her braids, under her baseball cap
she tastes the blood on her finger
tastes like bacon she says,
scratches her elbow, giggles,
then her armpit. She listens to
the Dixie Chicks. At St. Mark’s, we sit
on the stairs with Cicatríz and stare at the guys
coming to a poetry reading—
ooooh, uuuuh. blah.
September 3, 01
stick out my
tongue at rezzy
Trace my hand
on a blank sheet of paper
five squiggly candles
five soft towers of heat
five ways of talking at the same time
to five friends—
Rezzy,
Alma & Carmela (they’re always together)
Jenikajade &
McKenzie.
September 6, 01
Rezzy coughs, sniffs the air,
bites her crunchy fingernails.
Get off at the Cinnamon Palace
where we started.
Let’s sneak to the hospital to see uncle DJ!
I ask her. Can’t, Yo’, just can’t.
I am going back
home to see uncle Rummi.
She empties
her backpack of dustvoices, piles them into mine.
I’m in enough trouble as it is, wula!
Leaves with her head droopy.
She whistles funny and fades.
Rezzy fades.
10/3/01 Wednesday, F train to Coney Island, night
halloween
Hey—Moondraggin’?
Is that you?
Dressed up for Halloween,
Ain’t that weeks from now? WashUdoin’?
A blurry boy calls me leaning on the door
to the Cinnamon Palace.
You gettin’ chopped? Look like
you been smokin’ the pipe. Bugged out yet?
Why you wearin’ Rezan’s rags?
You’re out of it, man! Haven’t seen ya’
at school. Remember me? Hey . . . it’s just me
Zako, at your service, as they say.
His smooth weasel voice. I remember.
So what are you? A witch? A scarecrow?
Grabs the coil of shirts rolled around my waist.
Spins me—to him. You from California, huh?
Nah, I say, Puertoricans are from here.
You be one crazy girl. Total wack.
Zako lights up and says as he puffs,
Come . . .
on . . .
portee . . .
reecan . . .
I’m a smokareecan.
You don’t know nothing, do ya’?
He tells me and gives me a mean look.
I notice a bruised bump
on his forehead from long ago,
underneath his skin, a torn cloud,
a falling flag.
Hunch my shoulders like Rezzy
and say nothing. My chest doesn’t move.
I don’t know where my breath goes.
Maybe after a while you don’t need
to breathe, huh, uncle DJ, I whisper. Huh?
Come on, Rezan, oops, I mean, Rezzy,
Wait, wait, hold it, excuse me, I mean,
Zako jokes and laughs—
Yo’. That’s your name, isn’t it?
Yolandah . . . huh. You and me got the same trip.
Everyone calls me Zako. But they don’t really
know my name. I mean, my for-reals name.
It’s Zacarías.
Can you say it?
Za-ca-rías . . . Zac . . .
Shhh . . . Just say once.
Thass right, Yolandah. Promise
never to tell Marietta or anybody, eh?
Yolandah . . . you listening or what!
My name’s not Yolandah.
My name’s not Rezan. It’s not me
or you or we or this or that or what!
Man, you’re so chopped, Porteereecan.
Porteereecan? Thass not my name either.
What-what did you say?
My name is noche—night,
You can’t touch it, you think you see it
but you can’t. That’s what these clothes
are made of—black
nightdust.
I say things to get out of things
but I just get tangled up and tired, uncle DJ.
So tired. But I can’t let him know
what I’m doing. Can’t let him know
about the voices asleep
in their little baggie-beds downstairs
in the Palace. Gotta get him away from here
so he won’t find out. Hear me, uncle DJ?
Man, you are loaded—mumbling
to yourself and all that. Come on,
Yolandah . . . I’ll show you how
to get really high.
Okeh, okeh,
I say through a hole
in my head into another hole
in the streets.
We take the F train
to the last stop. Grabs my hand,
Welcome to my island. Zako says
with a long skinny voice.
Welcome to Coney Island, dude.
Take a hit!
Zako pops
his short pipe into my mouth.
Maybe if I smoke a little I can rest.
Maybe if I loosen up a bit
I can breathe, maybe,
like I used to
in the sweet winds of Iowa.
In . . .
out . . .
In . . . in . . .
In.
The night sky squirms
neon cobras
blue-fire snakes, pink
dragons on
old women faces
flamey makeup
look at
their narrow
wasp
waists
like
sucking
on a tube
of mustard, sad-eyed
girls flap
their hair
hot lipstick gloss
and candy hairspray
sticks to the air
they scream
they sing
the dahk-dahk of darts
and a thousand ant people
down below
bubble in circles around me
but it
is only
me
and Zako
up way up
in a painted metal cage
crazy cars and faces
crashing
in space.
Been on the Zyklone
before?
Zako asks me. It’s like a giant hungry
dumb lizard. Wish it would come rolling
down, dude, on top of the world!
Zako squeals into a shovel of air
pouring over our faces.
You hear me, Yoland . . . I mean, uh . . .
Call me Yo’, okeh. I tell Zako,
trying to shake off the hot-cold wires
buzzin’ and snappin’ in my head.
Take a deep-deep breath. But it gets
jammed up in my nose. Wish I could see
Puerto Rico, like uncle DJ says:
Una playa boricua will cure you for life!
All I see is black waves, flashes
and watery-dots, and sharp streaks thin
as hairs. A giant flat clock by the moon.
Almost midnight.
Make up a story
In my head—barely breathing—
Bet mamá Mercedes sits by uncle DJ
and pull-pulls her pomegranate-colored rosary
from herself. Where is my Yolanda María?
She’s asking. She’s been gone for three days!
It’s her manda, she’s pulling. Just as I am
spinning my manda here in the air.
She rubs each bead as if it was
a seed, a river, she presses it
as if it was a mountain,
a machete from Cidra,
as if she was holding her father’s hand
across the oceans, as if he never forgot her
so far away waving adios
leaning on a small wooden bohío in Caguas,
thick green leaves
at his feet and the violin voice of the coquí frog
in the blue-green night air. Papi Reinaldo
rolls over on his side of the hospital room.
Mamá kisses uncle DJ’s hand buenas noches,
then sits back in her own small frame
and closes her eyes, her lips open
with my name again and again and her
hands shaky. Mamá?
All I see are the gooey heads
of Zako and Rezzy exploding
puff-puffing the night smoke,
gettin’ chopped, gettin’ loaded,
next to me. Sucking in, in, in, then—
Zako wraps his arms around Rezzy.
Lisssen to the ocean, he says
with his teeth out. He smears his
face against her cheek,
Come here, lisssen. He pushes her head down
into his shirt. For a moment, I see Rezzy
with Zako, she looks up and asks him,
Aren’t you going out with Marietta?
But, it isn’t Rezzy I am looking at.
Me. It’s only me
afraid and shattered.
10/4/01 Thursday, Avenue D, Loisaida, dawn
flamenco
Slouch on a pile of gypsy clothes
on the floor of the Palace. Rezzy gone.
Where did she go?
My head’s wired, tight. Gotta keep
the voices calm. Under my pillow. Some
in my China chinelas, my Chinese slippers.
Cinnamon Girl Page 4