Cinnamon Girl letters found inside a cereal box Chapter One 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. Cinnamon Girl letters found inside a cereal box . Copyright © by Juan Herrera. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box by Juan Felipe Herrera All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
