Then I feel a wave of pity come over me. “Freddy, I hope your little dreams came true before you left this earth,” I mutter. “I hope all of our dreams come true….”
After school, Angie always waits for me outside, and I can tell by her long face that she’s still feeling down at the bottom of the crab barrel. “I wish we could go to Pappadeux’s and get some Cajun crawfish right about now,” I moan.
She nods her head like she could put a bib on and chow down, too. They’ve got everything in New York except Pappadeux’s—and I’m sorry, but nobody makes crawfish like they do. You get a big ol’ pot of Cajun crawfish, with pieces of corn on the cob, and small red potatoes, and all this spicy juice. Then you just crack the itty-bitty shells in your hands, and suck out those tasty “chil’rens,” as Big Momma calls them. Those were some of the best times we ever had as a family, going there on Friday nights for dinner. Everybody would come—Uncle Skeeter, Big Momma, Grandma Winnie, Ma, and all our cousins, too.
“I don’t understand why we have to go to Drinka Champagne’s Conservatory today,” Angie says sheepishly. “What’s the use of practicing if we’re not performing anywhere?
“I know that’s right, but you know what Galleria says. We should be practicing more, just in case we get to perform somewhere, for somebody, somehow.”
My voice trails off, because I see the newspaper in Angie’s hand, and I realize we haven’t read our horoscope today.
“What’s it say?” I ask, as we cross the street to catch the subway.
I hope it’s not real crowded today, I think, as we wait to ride the IRT down to Drinka’s. Dag on, there are so many people on the sidewalks and subway platforms in New York, you feel like you’re gonna get trampled or something!
“Dag on, don’t you know what page it’s on by now?” I say, getting annoyed at Angie, who is still fumbling with the newspaper as we get on the crowded train. But why I’m really upset is because this man with a big ol’ briefcase keeps knocking into me like I’m a rag doll.
“Here it is,” Angie says, all serious, like she’s getting ready to give a sermon in church. Sometimes she is so slow! “Let’s see. ‘Get ready for a big unexpected trip. You’re gonna be flying the friendly skies real soon. Pack your party clothes!”’
“Oh, great, that just means we gotta go home to Houston for Thanksgiving, and do something real exciting, like work in Big Momma’s garden. We know that,” I say, curling my upper lip. (Angie and I both do that sometimes when we get mad.)
Angie gets quiet and closes the newspaper. She doesn’t have to tell me. I know she feels disappointed, too.
We normally don’t go to Drinka Champagne’s Conservatory on school nights. But they have a new choreographer, and she can only work with us tonight, because she’s working on Sista Fudge’s new music video all weekend. Sista Fudge is one of our favorite singers, because she can “scream and testify”—back home, that’s what we say when a singer can really wail, and has vocal “chops.”
But we’re not here studying singing. We’re here to get our moves down. See, Galleria is always fussing at us to get the dance steps right. It’s very important when you put on a show to have real good choreography—to give people something to watch. That’s just as important when you perform as how you sing.
Since Angie and I are the background singers, we don’t have to dance as much as Dorinda, Chanel, and Galleria, but we all have to do the same dance steps.
“Hi, Miss Winnie,” I say, smiling to the receptionist at Drinka’s as we enter the building. I like Miss Winnie, because she’s real nice, and she has the same name as our grandma who passed.
The rest of the Cheetah Girls have already changed into their leotards, and are waiting in Studio A for us. They are huddled together in one corner, while the rest of the class is on the other side.
After we do our Cheetah Girls handshake, which just tickles me to death, Galleria hugs us. “Smooches for the pooches!” she says. Every day she has a new saying, and we never know what to expect.
Galleria and Chanel are wearing such cute leotards! Angie and I look so plain, in our white shirts and black jeans. It’ll be so nice when we can all dress alike all the time, like a real girl group. Yeah, right … like that’ll ever happen.
“How’s Porgy and Bess?” Chanel asks. She thinks it’s cute that we have guinea pigs, because she isn’t allowed to have any pets. She loves animals, too.
“They iz fine,” Angie says, playing back.
“What do you feed them?” Dorinda asks.
“They love lettuce,” I answer.
“Yeah, I bet—sprinkled with hot sauce!” Galleria blurts out, then looks at the door, because our dance teacher has arrived.
“Hi, I’m Raven Richards,” says the teacher, who is real tall and skinny. She is wearing a red leotard and skirt, with a big black belt in the middle. None of us are tall like that. It must be real nice, having those long legs!
“Okay, let’s get some combinations down,” Raven says, moving her hips. “The movement in the hips is to a one-two, one-two-three combo. Okay, girls?”
Raven looks at me and adds, “Slink, don’t bounce.”
Raven? She looks more like Wes Craven! I say to myself, because she makes me so mad, embarrassing me like that in front of everybody. It’s bad enough that Galleria is always on us about dancing, and Daddy is always on us about practicing more …
Dag on, I suddenly realize—she’s right. I am bouncing!
After class, I feel real tired and sick. “Forget about buffalo wings—I could eat a whole buffalo right about now,” I moan.
“That’s funny. I thought you were on a seafood diet, Aqua,” Galleria quips, pushing me with her backpack.
“Seafood?” I say, squinching up my nose. I just wanna go home and get into bed. I don’t care if Kahlua never calls.
“Yeah, you see food, and you eat it!”
Galleria always makes me laugh. She is real funny.
“Don’t be down, Aqua and Angie,” she says then, holding my arm.“Operation Kahlua is in full effect. We just keep doing our thing, so that we’re ready for Freddy. You know what I’m sayin’?”
“Yes, Galleria. We know what you’re saying!” I answer, feeling a little better—at least good enough to get on the subway again and go home.
Chapter
9
Daddy is grinning from ear to ear when we get home. His job interview this morning must have gone well. See, he wants to leave his job as senior vice president of marketing at Avon. He and Ma decided that, since he used to be her boss, it wasn’t a good idea that they work at the same company anymore.
“Daddy, how did the job interview go?” I ask. Angie and I sit down at the kitchen counter, and wait for Daddy to give us our dinner.
“I took the job,” he says smiling. “Now I’m a SWAT man.”
“That’s real good, Daddy,” I exclaim, then kiss him on the cheek. SWAT is the biggest bug repellent company in the country, he told us. They make all kinds of sprays for crawling insects, flying insects, lazy insects—you name it, they got a spray for it.
“Here’s the campaign I’m gonna be working on,” he says, pushing a black folder toward us. On the folder it has the company’s slogan, Flee, Flea, you hear me?
Now Daddy is grinning and looking at us. I guess he wants us to say something funny about the slogan or something.
“What?” I ask, looking at him.
“That’s not the best news I had all day,” he says, still smiling like a Cheshire Cat who ate an insect.
“No?” Angie asks sheepishly.
“No. The best news I got just arrived in a phone call,” he says, still smiling.
Daddy sure knows how to drag things out. When we were little, it used to take us two hours just to open our Christmas presents, because he would have to hand them to us first, then wait till he said to open them!
“Well, girls, maybe you should call your friend Galleria and find out for yourselves. She jus
t called.”
“Daddy, how could you wait so long to tell us?” I whine playfully. He always gets us real good with his tricks.
Angie and I jump up and down and hug each other, then I dial the phone, and she listens at the receiver.
When Galleria picks up the phone, she is yelling so loud, I can hardly understand her.
“Stop screaming, Galleria!”
Trying to catch her breath, Galleria says between gasps, “They’re gonna give us a showcase in Los Angeles!!!”
“Hush your mouth!” I exclaim—the same thing Big Momma always says when she gets excited. “For real?”
“Wheel-a-deal for real!” Galleria retorts. “Kahlua and her moms told the Def Duck Records peeps that we were ‘off the hook, snook,’ and they said, ‘Well, come on with it!”’
I’m not exactly sure what Galleria means, so I have to ask again, “Does that mean we got a record deal?”
“No, Aqua—just try and go with my flow. It means they’ll fly us to Los Angeles, and arrange a showcase for us. They’ll make sure all the right peeps are in the house to get a read on our Cheetah Girl groove. There are no guarantees, but at least we get a free trip to Hey, ho, Hollywood!”
“Omigod, I think I’m gonna faint!” I scream into the phone receiver. Angie grabs it from me, to talk to Galleria herself. I stand in the middle of the kitchen with my hand on my forehead. Then I just hug Daddy, and start crying tears of gratitude. I can’t believe I ever doubted what God had in store for us! Now, the rest is up to us.
“How’d you find out?” Angie asks Galleria, then yells to me and Daddy, “They called Ms. Dorothea at her store, and asked her if we would be interested. Can you believe that?”
“Please, I’ll pack my bags and fly the plane right now myself!” I yell, so Galleria can hear me—and trying to sound like I’m not scared of airplanes, which I am.
Daddy gives me a look, like “We’ll see how you feel when you get up in the air.” That’s all right—I’ll take a whole box of Cloud Nine pills if I have to, to keep from getting sick on the plane. Hallelujah, thank you, Jesus, we are going to Hollywood!
Chapter
10
After we finish talking with Galleria, we go over the whole story again with Ms. Dorothea. Then, of course, we call Chanel, and after that, Dorinda. But we’re only just crankin’ up. We call Big Momma to share the news. And finally, we reach our Ma, who is in Seattle on business.
She is surprised to hear from us, because unless it’s an emergency, we usually only talk on Sunday after church.
“But this is an emergency, Ma,” I tell her, “because if I wake up tomorrow and find out this is all a dream, I’m gonna need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation!”
“Hush your mouth, Aqua,” Ma says.
“You’re gonna let us go, right?” I ask Ma nervously. She gets mad if we do things without asking her permission, even if we are living with Daddy. She says she’s “still the boss of this house,” no matter what Daddy thinks.
“You just make sure you do your homework while you’re there, so you don’t fall behind in school,” Ma warns us. “But you go and have a good time. It’s a shame the two of you haven’t really been anywhere before this.”
I feel like the whole world is right outside our front door, waiting for us. “That’s all right, Ma—if things work out, we’re going to be going everywhere—and we’ll send plane tickets for you to come see us perform!”
“Well, for now, I think you’d better just get off the phone and go to bed, it’s past your bedtime,” Ma says sternly.
“Yes, ma’am, we’re going right now. You wanna speak to Daddy?” I ask, hoping our good news will help them not be mad at each other—for at least a little while. As it is, I have to bite my tongue half the time, not to blurt and tell Ma about High Priestess Abala Shaballa.
“No, Aquanette, I don’t have the time. I have to finish some reports before I go to bed. I’m real proud of you, though. Real proud.”
I don’t even look at Daddy when I get off the phone, because I feel so bad Ma didn’t want to talk to him.
“Good night, Daddy,” I say, kissing him on the cheek.
“Good night, Daddy,” Angie says, then kisses him on the other cheek. When I pass that scary-looking Bogo Mogo Warrior Mask on the way upstairs, I stick my tongue out at it, then poke Angie in the stomach, and we both start giggling.
“That’s enough, y’all,” Daddy says, leaning over his record collection in the living room. Daddy doesn’t like us playing around before we go to bed—he wouldn’t care if God came to the door and said it was okay. He likes peace and quiet when he’s getting ready to play his music.
Angie and I spend another hour yakking in whispers about this most incredible day. When we’re finally lying in bed, trying to get some sleep, I suddenly hear a noise in the bedroom closet!
“Angie, you hear that?” I whisper, sitting upright in my bed. “Lawd, you think that thing got out of the shoe boxes or something?”
We hear more scratching noises in the closet, and we both sit real quiet. “I don’t care if it did, ’cuz I ain’t going in there to find out!” Angie says, then hides under her covers.
It figures. That scaredy cat. Well, I ain’t getting out of the bed either. They’ll have to drag me out the bed before I get up and go look in that closet.
All of a sudden, I have the strangest thought. “Angie! You don’t think that Teddy Bear Poodle thing brought us good luck, do you?”
“Maybe,” Angie says, real quiet. “But I don’t care—I’m just going to Hollywooooood!” she says, imitating Galleria.
“Not without me, you ain’t!” I retort, and hide farther under the covers, till my feet are hanging out the bed. Feeling the cool air on my toes, I get a creepy feeling, and scrunch them back under the covers real quick. I’m not taking any chances—I mean, what if that thing in the closet is hungry?
Please God—make it stop raining! If it keeps raining this hard much longer, Mighty Mouth Airlines will cancel our flight for sure!
Daddy keeps coming up to our room, to give us the latest weather report—like he’s Sonny Shinbone, the weatherman on television. Daddy used to travel all over the country with his job at Avon, so I guess he could be a weatherman, but right now, he is “getting on our last good nerve,” as Big Momma would say. I wish he would just stay downstairs with the “sacred one,” so we can pack our suitcases in peace.
“‘Furious Flo’ is heading north,” he says, hovering over us in our bedroom. Furious Flo is this terrible tropical storm that started a few days ago in Florida, and is wreaking havoc all over the place.
She must be mighty mad, because she’s making people lose their homes and everything, with all the water she’s sending their way. Thank God, Big Momma called and says everything is okay in Houston. Daddy is pacing back and forth, wearing out our rug. He’s making us more nervous than we already are!
“What if you don’t have enough material to perform?” Daddy asks, smoking his pipe. He must be real nervous, too, because he usually only smokes his pipe late at night, when he’s listening to his music or watching television. I hope he doesn’t drop any ashes on our white carpet. He’s always fussing at us to be careful about staining the carpet, because it costs a lot of money to get it cleaned professionally.
“Daddy, we’re not the only singers performing in the New Talent Showcase,” I explain to him. “The record company does this all the time. They have scouts all over the country looking for new artists. Then they fly them to Los Angeles, and put them in a showcase in front of industry people. There’ll probably be a lot of other singers there. We’ll be lucky if we get to perform three songs.”
“That’s right,” Angie adds. “They told us to have three songs to perform.”
“Okay, okay, I’m just trying to understand how all this works,” Daddy says, puffing on his pipe quietly—which means he’s thinking about something. “You think maybe that magic spell Abala prepared for you girls had
something to do with this stroke of luck?”
“Daddy!” I yell. “This is no stroke of luck! If it wasn’t for Galleria and Ms. Dorothea, we’d be packing to go to Big Momma’s, and playing ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ in her garden—again!”
Daddy gives me that stern look, like, “Don’t get too grown for your britches.”
“I’m just asking a question,” he says. “Maybe the spell worked just a little late, that’s all I’m saying.”
Angie and I get real quiet.
“What’s the name of the place where you’re performing?” Daddy asks for the hundredth time!
“The Tinkerbell Lounge,” I say quietly. “It’s in West Hollywood, and we wrote down all the information on the paper on the kitchen table—and we gave it to Ma, too.”
I carefully fold the leopard miniskirt and vest that Ms. Dorothea made for us, and put it in the suitcase. I’m just waiting for Daddy to say something else.
“You know, maybe you should bring the navy blue dresses you wore to church last Sunday.”
I don’t want to fight with him anymore. “Yes, Daddy,” I mumble, then go to the closet to get the dresses he wants us to wear.
Thank God, Daddy walks out of our bedroom then, to go downstairs. Angie and I stop packing, and just plop down on our beds.
I’m so nervous, I’m sweating like a tree trunk. Angie and I look at each other, and I know we’re thinking the same thing. Giggling, she jumps up and takes the navy blue dresses and sticks them back in the closet!
“No, silly willy,” I exclaim, imitating Galleria, “stick those things in the back of the closet, so he doesn’t see them if he comes snooping around our room while we’re gone!”
“Yeah, that’s if we get to go,” Angie sighs, going over to the window to look at the rain.
“Well, let’s pack our bathing suits just in case. Maybe they’ll have a swimming pool or something.”
Angie runs to the closet and gets out our bathing suits.
“Did you see anything strange in the back of the closet?” I ask her, kinda joking. But inside, I’m kinda serious. What if Daddy is right about Abala’s magic spell? What if Mr. Teddy Poodly is running around in there?
Hey, Ho, Hollywood! Page 7