Chapter TWO

“Mama, I told you already. I am fine. It’s just a bump on the head,” Noemi poured herself a tall glass of iced sweet tea and sat down at the tiny table in her eat-in kitchen.

Every apartment she’d looked at in NYC seemed to be the same size. As in teeny weeny. Still, she loved some of the older homes with their big sandstone brick facades and wrought iron fences. The architecture was so different from back home. Noemi especially loved the ones with the tiny secret gardens out back. She noted several in the neighborhood, and they all called to that special place inside of her that loved to commune with nature.

People never expected to feel that way in the city, but it was truly teeming with life. So much energy existed in New York. All of it flowing in and out of the millions of people, animals, and plants. The structures and monuments, heck, even the graffiti, were full of life.