All of a sudden, Dorinda, who is facing us, gets a look on her face like she has just seen the Sandman practicing with his hook.
Galleria, don’t look, but we’ve got a situation,” Dorinda says.
Bubbles turns her head immediately, and so do the rest of us.
“Tell me I’m not having déjá vu,” Bubbles says, imitating Fantasia from Pepto B.’s.
“Tell me I’m not seeing double,” Aqua says, staring with her mouth open at the girl group on the other side of the dressing room. The four girls, who are about our age, are all decked out in brown cheetah tube tops and miniskirts! Of course, they are staring at us too now. As a matter of fact, they are radiating supa attitude in our direction.
“Who are they?” Dorinda asks nervously. And we’re all wondering the same thing—out of what jungle did the fake wannabe cheetahs crawl?
“Mom will handle this situation,” Bubbles says, biting her lip while trying to keep her nostrils from flaring which means she is caliente mad. The five of us stand there like mummies waiting for Madrina to come back into the dressing room. She told us she would be waiting in the front for Uncle Franco to park the car. It could take him a long time to find a parking space in this neighborhood.
Danitra runs over with Fabulina Fredericks, who is huffing and puffing like she just ran track. “You are not going to believe this.”
“Trust me, well believe anything ’cuz this has just turned into another ‘Nightmare on Elm Street,’” Aqua says. A lightbulb goes off in my piñata head. Now I know what Bubbles meant by déjà vu. She was talking about the nightmare we went through at the Apollo Amateur Hour contest. I feel a chill running through my body, remembering that horrible “aghast from the past,” as Madrina would say.
“The name of their group is the Fabulations,” Fabulina says in disbelief. “They are true haters!” We all stand there like deer caught in the headlights instead of cheetahs. Fabulina stomps her foot and folds her arms across her chest. “I’m ready to lose it. I don’t think I’m going to perform.”
“Oh, I get it now. They don’t care whose flavor they’re biting—just as long as they’re biting,” Bubbles says, nodding her head in a daze. “Maybe we shouldn’t perform either.”
Aqua and Angie stop changing into their outfits and sit down on the aluminum chairs with their hands in their laps like they are about to start a prayer vigil in church.
“Um, what are we gonna do?” Dorinda asks, squirming in her chair.
“Everybody just chill—’cuz we may just have to blow this Popsicle stand,” Bubbles says, her eyes dancing all over the place as she tries to figure out our next move.
Finally, Madrina walks into the dressing room with Toto, and everybody turns to stare at her because she is six feet tall and decked out in cheetah from toe to head, including her big furry (fake) cheetah hat. “Oh, dear, what do we have here?” Madrina says out loud, almost as if she is talking to herself. Madrina stops dead in her cheetah tracks and stares in disbelief at the bite-happy fake wannabe Cheetah Girls. Even Toto rests on his haunches and stares at the pathetic girls.
“Young ladies, can I have a word with you or your management?” Madrina asks them, staring at the girl closest to her who is wearing black rubber earrings that look more hula than hoop, está bien. All of a sudden, the girls start acting like they swallowed a bag of canaries.
“Hmm. Hmm. Where’s all that serious attitude they were radiating before, I wonder?” Bubbles says to Fabulina. “Gone like cucarachas running from a Roach Motel eviction notice, that’s where.”
Even Fabulina puts her hands on her hips, waiting for Madrina to get this rodeo started.
“Could someone pass the pumice stone, please,” Fabulina says, as the roughest-looking girl in the bunch who has ashy knees walks over to Madrina.
“Whom am I speaking to?” Madrina asks the girl who is trying hard to look up at Madrina.
“Cassandra,” she mumbles.
“Well, Cassandra, may I ask who your costume designer is?”
Cassandra gives Madrina a very puzzled look.
“Exactly—that’s what I thought,” Madrina responds. “What about your manager?”
Cassandra gives Madrina another puzzled look.
“Okay, so some of us don’t know our ABCs. Let me try another approach. Do you know who we are?” Madrina asks, pointing over to the five of us.
“Yeah—I guess,” Cassandra says, sucking her mouth. “They the girls that lost the Amateur Hour contest at the Apollo?”
“That’s right—so why would you want to be wearing outfits that represent the theme of our group instead of wearing something that represents the theme of yours. On that note, may I suggest chokers with dangling fangs?” Madrina says, getting huffy.
“’Cuz we didn’t know they would be here, that’s why,” Cassandra says, getting huffy back at Madrina.
“I see, said the blind man—and obviously blind girls,” Madrina says, shaking her head at Cassandra and her crew like they’re anything but faboo. “You know what I think? You girls need to rethink your image and right now would be as good a time as any to get started.”
“What you mean rethink?” shouts the one with the supersize-me hoop earrings. “I know you don’t mean we should change our outfits!”
Fabulina can’t hold herself back anymore. She stands next to Madrina and blurts out, “We mean you need to change the name of your group—and your whole safari situation.”
“We’re not having it,” says the hoop-ty girl.
By now the other acts in the dressing room—Sonia Santes, the Smugaboos, the Twilights, and Juju Quinnonez—are watching us like a Pay Per View boxing match. “I’ll be right back, girls. Somebody is going to lose their spots over this,” Madrina says. The Fabulations start pacing up and down in the dressing room and whispering among themselves. We hang tight. Nervous but very tight.
“Everytime we come uptown, somebody is trying to start some mess with us,” Aqua says, shaking her head. “I don’t understand. Are we jinxed or something?”
“Aqua, take the pins out of the voodoo doll, okay? Staying downtown is not going to solve our problems,” Bubbles says, waving her hands. “There’s always going be some drama and kaflamma, and right about now that just happens to be these, um …” Galleria pauses as if she is trying to think of the right word.
“Heffas,” Aqua butts in. “Just call them what they are. Plain ole heffas.”
Madrina returns with Ms. Coley, the talent coordinator for the competition. We watch as she carefully explains everything. “Frankly, I don’t understand how you could let this happen,” Madrina adds politely.
“Okay, girls,” Ms. Coley says, turning to all of us. “This talent show is for a very good cause. At the Harlem School of the Arts we nurture performing artists unique self-expression.”
“Unique self-expression?” Madrina says in disbelief. “These girls are shameless copycats. And from the looks of their scraggly ragtag outfits, I’d say they aren’t even good at that!”
“Oh, I’m about to go off on Mama Bear over there,” cuts in the hoop-ty girl who calls herself Sonaysha.
“Young lady, if you continue in this fashion, then I will have to ask your group to leave,” Ms. Coley says bluntly.
The room gets eerily quiet.
“As I was saying, all artists have the right to find their own unique voice—and image. At the Harlem School of the Arts our mission is to nurture those choices. We are here today to provide an opportunity to all the talent in this room to find that unique self-expression,” Ms. Coley says adamantly. “Am I making myself clear?”
We all look at Ms. Coley with a blank stare.
“I will tape up the lineup for the competition in each of the dressing rooms,” Ms. Coley says, taping sheets to the wall. “I suggest that each of you reads the lineup sheet so that you will know the order of the competition. If there is any more disturbance in this room, you’ll be asked to leave.”
After M
s. Coley leaves the room, Bubbles asks Madrina, “Mom, what do you think we should do?”
“Well,” Madrina says, pausing for what seems like forever, “in the immortal words of James Brown, Tina Turner, and every performer who has ever had to subject themselves to the chitlin’ circuit just to get some respect, I say, The show must go on!”
We stand there, silent for un segundo—a long moment—trying to take in what Madrina just said.
“I don’t care about this stupid performance anymore,” Bubbles says, pouting. “And Aqua is right too. Every time we come uptown, we’re getting static. We should stay downtown so peeps can stop swiping our porridge!”
Now my stomach is upset, but I don’t say anything. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I say, wincing as I run to the toilet. Just what I need—all of a sudden I have a bad case of the “runnies.”
Let’s just say I’m in the bathroom for more than a minute trying to get my runnies situation under control. All of a sudden, I hear Bubbles knocking on the restroom stall. “Chuchie, you okay in there?” she asks, concerned, like maybe I’m sneaking carrots again or something.
“I have the runnies—that’s all, Bubbles, I swear. Te juro,” I say, whining.
I don’t tell Bubbles that I don’t want to come out of the restroom. I just want to hide in here forever!
“Can you believe this drama? I can’t believe Eddie Lizard is coming—of all the times he is coming to see us perform,” Bubbles says moaning through the stall door. I knew it. Bubbles still has a crush on Eddie Lizard. “Why does he have to come tonight?”
I get scared by the tone of Bubbles’s voice. “You don’t think we’re gonna lose, do you?” I ask, but I really don’t want to know the answer for real.
“I don’t know what to think anymore—not tonight anyway,” Bubbles says, tapping the melody to “Wannabe Stars in the Jiggy Jungle” on the stall door. “You should be glad that Mackerel isn’t coming.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, even though I still feel disappointed about him dissing me like that in front of everybody at school.
“You know I was kinda jealous of him goospitating over you all of a sudden,” Bubbles admits.
“I know,” I say, smiling to myself, then flushing the toilet. “Sorry for the stinky poo.” Taking my Yves Saint Bernard cologne out, I spray around the stall. Bubbles doesn’t answer me because she has run to the stall next to me and it sounds like she’s throwing up.
“Bubbles!” I shriek, standing on the toilet seat so I can peek into the stall next to me to see what she is doing. “What happened?”
Bubbles is bent over the toilet throwing up. “Should I go get Madrina?” I ask, scared. Bubbles is never sick. I am always the one who is sick.
“No!” she yells adamantly. “I’m fine. God, this sucks!” Bubbles jumps up and kicks the side of the restroom stall. Then all of a sudden, she starts balling her eyes out like a baby. I don’t know what to do. I’m freaking out. My head feels dizzy and I think I’m going to faint. Bubbles sits down on the toilet seat and grabs lots of toilet paper and starts blowing her nose. I rest my head on the stall so that I can keep calm. “Bubbles, you were right about Princess Pamela. She didn’t know what she was talking about—about the furry creature and everything,” I say, moaning. “Maybe this is a sign—you know what’s happening to us—and maybe we should listen. I mean, we don’t have to be in a singing group. We could open a pet store like we wanted to before or a beauty parlor for people—and pets together.”
All of a sudden, Bubbles starts laughing through all her slobbering. “You always make me laugh, Chuchie.”
“But this could be horrible if we go out there and perform,” I say, pleading with Bubbles because I’m really afraid. But Bubbles isn’t listening to me.
“Sorry for what I said about Princess Pamela, by the way,” Bubbles says, smirking. “Maybe her crystal ball just got a little cloudy or something. I know she really loves you.”
“Yeah,” I say. Now I feel my eyes starting to water.
“Please, Chuchie, don’t start with the Niagara Falls display again—please!” Bubbles says, looking at me straight in the face. “Come on, let’s just do this. We can twist again like we did last summer!”
Every time Bubbles says that, it makes me laugh.
Chapter
11
We all try not to freak out that the Fabulations are scheduled to perform before the Cheetah Girls. “There’s never a Sandman around when you really need one,” Aqua says, like she’s talking to a church choir.
“You look fabulous,” Madrina says to each of us as we hold hands to say our Cheetah Girls prayer. “No, you look fabulous!” Angie says to Madrina, and starts laughing hysterically. I guess we are all really nervous now. When we say the line in our prayer, “May we summon the growl power of all the divas who came before us right here, right now,” we look at each other hard because we know that we really mean it now.
One of Ms. Coley’s assistants ushers us out of the dressing room and into the backstage area to stand in position. When the assistant positions the Fabulation fakes nearest to the curtain because it’s their turn to perform, Aqua pretends to poke her finger into her left eyeball and moans, “This ought to be a real eye opener.”
“It sounds like it’s really crowded in the audience,” Dorinda says, getting amped. So far some of the acts have been really good, so the show isn’t as corny as we thought it was going to be. In other words, it’s not just full of imitators like the Fabulations.
The crowd roars as the master of ceremonies, Show Bizza, takes the microphone onstage and proceeds to announce the Fabulations. He is a rapper from the Bronx who had one hit record back in the Nineties called “Datz a Hoot.”
“Hailing from my hometown—that’s right—the Boogie Down ain’t just a borough y’all—the Bronx—these four freshman from Soundview High are here to tell us all about the tribulations of being downright fabulous. Please welcome our next contestants in the Can We Get a Groove? competition at the fabulous Harlem School of the Arts—THE FABULATIONS!”
We all put our hands together and do a fake clap in unison, then sneer out loud. The track music to Britney Spears’s “Oops, I Did It Again” pipes up loudly and we look at each other in disgust. “It figures—taking bites wherever they can,” Bubbles says, nodding at us like, What are we sweating? We’ve got this comp on lockdown.
It turns out that Sonaysa is the lead singer of the group because she leads the vocals. “Oops, I did it again, I broke all the rules, then stole your heart. I guess I’m just too fabulous!”
We burst into fits of giggles because we are soo relieved that the Fabulations are just that—“Something made up out of plain nothing!” Aqua says, shaking her head in disbelief. “We’re gonna go out there and tear it up, you hear me?”
It turns out that we’re not the only ones laughing at the Fabulations’ amateurish act. (There is nothing other groups hate more than singers who use other singers’ material in competition shows.) As we look around backstage, we see some of the other acts laughing too. So far, our biggest competition turns out to be Danitra. “It’s a good thing she left all that pink stuff behind and came out solo,” Bubbles riffs. It’s true. Danitra seems to be finding her own groove, as Drinka Champagne would say. I’m proud of Danitra for not being a copycat like the silly girls on stage right now.
Madrina stands right by the stage so she can let Toto run on at the right moment to do his little dance number. “Keep your eye on the prize,” she yells at us as we hit the stage. The best and worst part about performing is the moment you hit the stage and see the audience. My stomach is doing the salsa, but this time in a good way because I don’t feel sick anymore. As we sing our favorite number, “Wannabe Stars in the Jiggy Jungle,” I can tell that the audience is digging our flavor. Right on the chorus, Toto runs onto the stage and does his twirling dance number. The audience loses it! They start clapping hysterically. I look over at Bubbles and smile. She was right�
��Toto could take us straight to the top. All of a sudden, I start thinking about our world tour—Toto comes onstage in a little cape studded with rhinestones. I see the poster for our world tour—Toto is right in the middle of us wearing his little cheetah hat draped in diamonds.
As we take our bows, I am grinning from ear to ear. Right there standing on the stage I realize, Who cares if we win the competition? Or even if we get a record deal. The fun part is performing. There is nothing else like that. Nada, está bien?
Finally, the moment we have been waiting for arrives. After the last act performs (two rappers named the Buddha Boys whose raps were weak), Show Bizza comes onstage to announce the winners of the “Can We Get a Groove?” competition. I take back everything I said before. Now all I care about is that we win this competition! I start to pray and grab Dorinda’s hand, “Please, God, let us win and I’ll never ask you for anything again,” I say, giggling, “until tomorrow—manana!”
Show Bizza prowls on the stage in his black tailcoat, zoot pants and top hat. “Now that was a show—am I right?” Show Bizza asks the audience, spreading his arms wide like a scarecrow on a post. “We had a little safari action—okay, a lot of that,” he says, pausing so the audience gets a laugh at our expense. “We had some spiritual riffs, a dancing dog, okay, and a few hyenas.” The audience bursts out laughing again. I feel a chill go through my body—like was the hyena part supposed to be about us too? I look at Aqua who just shakes her head like, Don’t mind that.
“And most of all,” Show Bizza continues, “we had a lot of fun and gave some of the young talent in our community a chance to shine on scholarship time if they’re lucky—am I right?” Show Bizza nods his head at the audience.
“Okay, in third place—winning a Radio Shack certificate and dinner for two at Red Lobster, we have,” Show Bizza says, fumbling while he tries to take the paper out of the envelope. “Please bear with an old school player like myself. What’s that say—I’m just joking—all right—the winner is those Brooklyn tap dancers—Smugaboo!”
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