The Queen of Kentucky

by Alecia Whitaker

  As my dad takes a bite of blackberry cobbler I think I see him trying to hide a grin under his mustache, and my heart skips. This is working! So I continue, really hamming it up.

  “Now, you might be thinking, ‘Why the sudden interest in cheerleading, Ricki Jo?’ Well, we all know that what I lack in height and size, I make up for in spunk. I really want to fit in at my new school, and I figure that cheerleading is the best way to boldly display my intense school pride to my peers. Four-H just isn’t gonna cut it anymore.”

  I pound my fist into my palm, furrowing my brow. My dad chokes on his dessert. I am emboldened.

  “I want to wear the maroon and gold—the same maroon and gold you two wore when you fell in love all those years ago. Without that maroon and gold, you never would have fallen in love at prom, and I never would have been born. I am maroon and gold.”

  The drama builds.

  “I have spirit! Yes I do! I’ve got spirit, how ’bout you?” At this, I wildly wave fierce spirit fingers and heartily attempt the splits.

  Key word: attempt.

  “Ow!” I cry, my crotch a foot from the floor, pain burning my groin.

  At this, neither of my parents can hold it in anymore and, along with their eye rolling and head shaking, there is gut-wrenching laughter. I fall over to one side—sweet relief.

  My dad pushes his cap back and wheezes, “What are we gonna do with this girl, Toots?”

  My momma wipes at the tears in her eyes. “Don’t ask me. She’s your daughter.”

  My dad slaps at his knees and my momma starts snorting. Snorting! I’ve got ’em. I’ve so got ’em. I get up off the floor, sit down at the table, and cut myself a piece of cobbler. My work here is done.

  Trying out is one thing; making the squad is another thing altogether. I walk into the gymnasium and freeze. All around me, ponytails and gym shoes are back-flipping, round-off-back-handspringing, and toe-touch jumping. I don’t see a whole lot of “cheering,” per se, but I’m seriously rethinking the marching band idea.

  “Ericka! Over here!” Mackenzie waves me over to where she and Laura are stretching. I force one tennis shoe in front of the other and walk toward them, terrified.

  “Are you okay?” Laura asks, wrangling her long auburn hair into a tighter ponytail. “Your face is white as a ghost!”

  Mackenzie offers me her water bottle, but I shake my head. “I’m just a little nervous,” I croak.

  I sit down beside Laura and begin to stretch out, mimicking her every move. Mackenzie is going on about how worried she is as a new girl, whether or not she’ll fit in with the Kentucky style of cheering, but all I hear is blah, blah, blah and the strange buzzing sound in my ears that I usually get right before I vomit. A whistle blows from somewhere in the atmosphere, bringing me back to my senses.

  “Ladies!” Coach Thomas yells, her voice authoritative. She reminds me of a beauty pageant queen past her prime. “We’ll see one tumbling pass, a short group number to the fight song, and then your individual chants. Let’s go!”

  As Coach passes out sheets of paper printed with our chants, I grab Mackenzie’s elbow and pull her aside. “I think I’m gonna get out of here.”

  “What? Why?” she asks, her hands suddenly tight on my biceps.

  “I just think maybe it was a bad idea. I can’t do all those crazy flips, and I’ve never learned a dance routine. I don’t even know the fight song!” I assert.

  “Neither do I,” she reminds me. Hmmm… I should’ve pulled Laura aside.

  “Listen, can you do a cartwheel?” Mackenzie continues. I nod. She perks up. “Awesome! So for your tumbling pass, you’ll do as many cartwheels in a row as you can. And if you want, end it with a round-off—it’s basically just a cartwheel where you bring both feet down at the same time. Okay?” Her vigorous head bobbing is intoxicating.

  I nod along, involuntarily.

  “Then, for the group routine, stick by me and Laura. When we go through the practice with the senior girls, just keep the count in your head. Count out loud if you need to; just keep the count. One through eight, over and over again. It won’t be super dance-y; it’ll probably be more like motions and angles.” She demonstrates a few arm movements that look pretty easy. I’m feeling… less nauseous.

  “Finally, the individual chant. Sounds scary, but I bet it’ll be your best part. You’ve got tons of energy, you’ve got a huge smile, and you really want this. That’ll go a long way,” she assures me.

  “But we have to do a jump in the individual chant!” I remind her.

  “You can’t touch your toes?” she asks. I shake my head, embarrassed. “Can you bring your knees up like this?” She demonstrates a tuck. It looks possible. I take a deep breath and try it.

  “Perfect! Just do a tuck jump!” she squeals. “Listen, the secret to great cheerleading is confident head nodding and nonstop smiling.”

  The whistle blows and we take our places among the masses in a three-row formation to learn the dance. Mackenzie squeezes my hand, her blue eyes sparkling, then tightens her salon-blond ponytail. That girl’s one helluva cheerleader.

  Following the seniors as they dance to the Lady Gaga party mix blaring from the gym speakers, I count to eight like my life depends on it. The majority of my previous dance experience consists of one preschool ballet recital and self-taught moves to Top 40 hits in front of my full-length mirror at home. After thirty minutes of learning and rehearsing this routine, I’ve decided to never show my aforementioned self-taught moves to the public. Today’s dance style seems to involve a dash of bump and a cup of grind, with a heavy dose of attitude… ingredients I haven’t incorporated before. Not having cable television can really keep a girl out of the loop.

  “Watts! Whitman! Wilson! Winstead! Let’s go!”

  Mackenzie, Sarah, Kimi, and I take the floor. Sarah looks awake and focused, and even unconcerned about her bangs for the first time since school started. And Kimi is the picture of confidence in an old cheer T-shirt that she’s cut deep at the neck and tied up into a knot in the back. All three girls are smiling fiercely and standing at perfect attention, so I pull myself up to my full height and flash my biggest smile to the coaches as the music starts again.

  “Five, six,” Coach counts. “Five, six, seven, eight.”

  The music is blaring, and I’m glad Coach counted us in. With each mark, I bump, hit, and grind as hard as my little body will let me. The angles aren’t a problem—I’m all knees and elbows—but “rolling my body” just feels creepy and unnatural. Still, truth be told, the dance routine isn’t as awful as I’d imagined it would be. A few jazz squares and grapevines, but mainly a lot of hand slicing in the air. It’s kind of like karate mixed with aerobics. The eight count is brilliant, and Mackenzie’s smile-and-nod method, although a bit perkier than the one I’ve been using at school, is a tool with which I am already comfortable. There are a few moments of borderline flailing, but overall I gallop off court feeling okay.

  My tumbling pass is another story. My confidence wavers as I watch Mackenzie’s nonstop back tucks and Sarah’s sky-high back layouts. Then Kimi and Laura back-handspring their way across the floor without a hitch. On my turn, I take a deep breath and manage eight cartwheels before ending with my first ever round-off (which I nail). Looking up excitedly at the judges, I see shock and pity in their eyes. So I do the only thing I can do: smile wider, wiggle spirit fingers ferociously, and give a few controlled fist pumps into the air, shouting, “Let’s go! PCHS! Number one!”

  The hour and a half that we’ve spent in the gym has flown by; I guess self-discovery is a fast-paced affair. I’m getting a lot of encouragement from the other girls who are trying out and feel good about myself for trying something new. As I watch my classmates go through their individual chants, I’m glad to be a W for the first time in my life: It allows me to watch everyone else and learn from their routines. I go through the words over and over in my head and mark the motions modestly on the sideline.

  “
Winstead!” Coach Thomas calls out.

  Now or never.

  I muster up all the spunk I’ve got and run/skip to center court, prepared to give the performance of my life.

  “Ready? O-kay!” I head nod with all my might and plaster the biggest smile you’ve ever seen across my face. Then I freeze.

  I am mid-court, by myself, all kinds of pit stains and body odor, when I see Wolf saunter into the gym with some other guys from our school. He’s wearing a Stallions basketball jersey, probably his older brother’s, and his lean body climbs up the bleachers quickly and effortlessly. The cheerleading chant has something to do with our team, winning, and yelling, but my mind is void of all but the killer grin laser beam he gives me when he sits down. He passed me a note today in Spanish—“ Buena suerte. Good luck.”—and signed it with X’s and O’s.

  “Miss Winstead?” Coach Thomas’s voice echoes over the loudspeakers and I snap to attention. Does she really need a microphone?

  I smile and begin again, my focus strong and my will to impress even stronger.

  “Ready? O-kay!” (fierce head nod)

  “Cheer for the Stallions!” (pom-poms up in a V)

  “Cheer for a win!” (poms down in a V, spin)

  “Come on, crowd!” (crazy uncontrolled pom-pom air chops)

  “Yell go, fight, win!” (and the tuck jump of my life)

  There is the briefest pause before I hear Mackenzie and Laura cheering for me. The coach seems more curious than pleased, and I gallop off the floor, yelling, “Let’s go Stallions! Go, fight, win!” and pumping my pom-poms in the air.

  Back at the sidelines, Mackenzie gives me a huge hug. “I’m so proud of you, Ericka!”

  Laura gives my thick ponytail a playful tug and says, “Yeah, you hustled us out there!”

  I feel incredible. Seriously, I know I’m not the best, but I did my best, and I’m on top of the world. I’ll get better with practice. I’ll work hard. I grab a Gatorade and soak it up. Tryouts are officially over. My pulse can finally slow down.

  From the bleachers comes a screeching male voice: “Let’s go, Stallions!” We all look up and see Wolf, surrounded by a small group of guys, all of them cracking up. Coach gives him a quick, stern look, he waves and gives a big thumbs-up, and she turns back to the tabulation table with the other coaches. Once her eyes are off him, he stands and ties his jersey in a knot, puts his hands on his hips, and flashes a wicked smile. None of us knows what to expect, but Mackenzie and I share a look. After just a week of school, we know he’s got “mischief” written all over him.

  “He’s gonna get in so much trouble,” she whispers to me, and I nod in agreement.

  “Ready? Okay!” he starts, slapping his hand against his outer thigh.

  I can’t help but giggle.

  “I am a redneck! New to this school!” he yells. “I wanna be a cheerleader, so I can be cool!”

  His motions are herky-jerky, fists balled up tight, shooting directly out at me. I feel them like punches in my gut.

  I originally thought that the guys around him were looking in my general direction, but at this moment, I fully comprehend that those knee-slapping, laughing-their-butts-off idiots are looking in my exact direction. And now a few of the girls are, too.

  I feel the blood rush to my face and know I’m bright red. I want it to stop. I need him to stop.

  “I’m just a farm girl, short and flat!” he continues, hands smoothing down his own chest.

  A whistle echoes through the gymnasium, high and angry, effectively cutting him off. For a beat, all eyes leave my face for Coach Thomas’s. I take the opportunity to blink.

  This is not a dream.

  I don’t think he’s finished, or maybe he can’t find a word to rhyme with flat, but Coach is furious and making her way up the bleachers two at a time. “Basketball tryouts aren’t for another twenty minutes! If you can’t behave like a gentleman, then you can wait outside. Wolfenbaker, out of here! Now!”

  He slides out of his row, getting high fives and fist pumps along the way, and exits the gym a general hero, blowing a kiss at me as he leaves. His bleacher posse erupts.

  Coach’s whistle takes the brunt of her anger; she blows it shrilly over and over as she explodes. “That’s it! All of you, out of here! Let’s go!”

  Wolf’s pack exits the gym in a fit, blowing air kisses to me or throwing up mocking spirit fingers. My face and ears are on fire, and I can’t look down or the big tears that line my lower lids will definitely fall. I lean back against the wall padding behind me, keeping my chin as up as it will go, and stare at the far basketball hoop until we’re dismissed. I feel small and ugly and country.

  In the tunnel behind the bleachers, I finally crumble, knees up, head on arms, and let the tears fall.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHT

  “You’ve been crying,” Momma says as I get in her blue Corolla.

  “I don’t wanna talk about it,” I reply, slamming the door shut and staring out the window at the water tower. My dad once told me that as a teenager my granddad climbed it with his buddies and swam around in it to impress a girl. Boys are so dumb.

  “Well, sweetie, we’re proud of you no matter what,” she says, patting my hand. I know this is one of those moments that she wants to hold it and try to make everything okay. I slide my hand out from under hers and fish around in the glove box for my shades. I can’t look at her.

  Waiting is the worst. There’s nothing to do but keep our eyes on the front door of the high school, where the list will be posted once this year’s cheerleaders have been selected. Nothing to do but wait, replay the most horrifying moment of my life over and over again in my head, and listen to soft rock.

  “You sure—” Momma starts again.

  “Ma!” I give her a foul look, one of my specialties, and she backs off.

  Instead, she takes up the issue of cheerleading skirts, how they were much longer in her day and she only had to shave up to her knees. Meanwhile, “Girls today flash their panties to the crowd with every rah, rah, rah.” I try to imagine my mother, the farmer’s wife, as a cheerleader. When she starts on bikini lines, it all gets very uncomfortable; and yet, it’s still better than waiting on the front lawn with the other girls. I’m not in the mood for sympathy or awkward chitchat.

  Finally, Coach appears. She tapes a white sheet of paper to the door and the girls claw past one another to get at the results, like a pack of wolves fighting over a piece of meat. Wolves, I think bitterly.

  “Go ahead, Ricki Jo,” my mom fusses. I open the door slowly and make my way up the sidewalk. Mackenzie sees me coming and bounds toward me maniacally. Obviously, she made the squad.

  “Ericka!” she cries and slams into me with a huge hug.

  “Congratulations,” I say, hugging her back and faking a smile.

  “You made it! You made it!” she squeals.

  I pull back from her, my mouth open wide. I watch her blue eyes twinkle and see her mouth moving, but my brain is struggling to understand. “I made it?”

  She bobs her bouncy blond ponytail so hard that I worry for her neck and we race to the list eagerly, so I can find my name. It’s there. It’s actually on there. Ericka Winstead—Junior Varsity.

  I made it.

  “Can you come over?” I ask Luke on the telephone. “I’ve got some big news.”

  He agrees and I run out to the back deck. My brother’s little hand is full of plastic spoons and he really concentrates as he sets one beside each bowl on the patio table. I ruffle his light hair and walk over to my dad, who’s manning the grill.

  “Hamburgers and hot dogs?” I ask.

  “Hey, it’s a big night! Uncle Jim and Aunt Bev are bringing the kids over, too. We had ice cream and a cookout on call, just in case you made it,” he says and kisses my forehead. “I knew you would.”

  I float on cloud nine over to the grapevine by our plank fence. Although my momma is controlling and my dad is corny and a workaholic, I feel really ble
ssed. I look over our farm toward Luke’s, eager to see his frame appear on the horizon. I pop grape after grape into my mouth. After a little while, I hear my uncle and his family show up and soda cans crack open. Luke should be here by now.

  “I’ll be right back!” I call to the group assembled in my honor.

  “We’re eating in a few, Ricki Jo,” Momma warns.

  I head over to Bandit’s doghouse and unleash him. He’s a Heinz 57—a true mutt, fifty-seven varieties of dog—but I love him. He howls and jumps and runs in front of me through the field. He catches a scent and takes off through the high grass. I catch glimpses of his brown and white splotches as he hunts rabbits in the weeds, but as I walk farther and farther from the rabbit trail he gives up and comes back for a scratching. He never wanders too far. I grab a stick and throw it, then run in the opposite direction, toward Luke’s. Bandit is always torn—the stick or me—but today he goes after the stick and then runs like hell to bring it back to me.

  “Good boy,” I purr, scratching his head. It may sound silly, but Bandit really is my best friend. I tell him everything, and even though we can’t share clothes, he’s a great listener and loves me unconditionally. He flops down on my feet and rolls over, all four paws up in the air, just like he used to do as an attention-starved puppy. I bend down and scratch his belly, watching his right leg, which always goes berserk and really makes me laugh. I grab the stick and toss it again, then climb onto the top rail of our wood plank fence to wait for Luke. Sitting on my perch at the highest point of our land, I’ll be able to see him coming, and I’m still in earshot in case Momma calls. As the sun dips down lower and lower, I absentmindedly play fetch with Bandit, and wonder where in the world Luke is.

  “To Ricki Jo Winstead. The best little cheerleader in the county!” Dad toasts.

  “Not a bad little worker, either,” my uncle adds.

  We all take hearty sips of my momma’s homemade sweet tea and I feel great. Uncle Jim and my dad exchange a proud look and I know it won’t be long ’til they’re reliving memories of their farm-boy glory days. My cousins drag Ben out to the backyard for a game of Wiffle Ball and my momma and Aunt Beverly trade recipes.