Growl Power! (4 page)

Daddy is lost in his own thoughts, but he hears the tail end of our conversation. “When are you girls gonna perform again?” he asks.

“We sure don’t know,” I groan. “It just seems like we can’t get a break—sitting around waiting for some record company to tell us what to do. It just seems like
forever
.”

“Well, on a happier note, we got here in record time,” Dad says, smiling as we pull up to the Ready Rabbit Airlines entrance at the airport.

I am so furious. He’s acting like he didn’t even hear what I said! I heave a big sigh. That’s just the way Daddy is, I tell myself.

I look at my watch. It’s 9:30. It only took us twenty-five minutes to get here! Now we’re gonna have to wait around for two and a half hours! “That was quick,” I say, sure that Daddy won’t notice the sarcastic tone in my voice either.

Before we get out of the Bronco, he turns to us and says, “Let me give you girls some extra money,” then hands us each a twenty-dollar bill.

“Thank you, Daddy!” I exclaim, tears coming to my eyes. I suddenly feel terrible again, for thinking such bad things about a person when he doesn’t deserve it. I’ve gotta stop doing that, and Angie too!

I realize now that we’ve been stupid and selfish, sneaking Porgy and Bess out of the house. Daddy is gonna be piping hot when he finds out, too.

“You sure twenty dollars is enough money?” he asks, concerned.

“We haven’t spent one penny of our prize money yet,” Angie says proudly. That reminds me that poor Chanel had to give her money to her mother to pay off her credit card debt. Now I feel bad for her
and
Daddy.

With him being so nice, suddenly I lose my resolve for Operation: Save Porgy and Bess.

“Daddy, we wanted to bring the guinea pigs with us to Houston. Is that okay?”

“What? Now why do you want to do that?” he asks, getting that mean tone in his voice.

“Because, um, we’d miss them.” It seems I’ve suddenly lost my resolve to tell Daddy the truth. I know if anyone disses Abala Shaballa in front of him, he loses it completely.

“Well, they’re home, right where they belong. They’ll be fine,” Daddy says sternly, like he has dismissed me.

Angie is as quiet as a church mouse. Dag on, she’s never any help when I need her!

A Ready Rabbit porter comes over to help us with our luggage. “That’s okay,” Daddy says to him briskly. Daddy doesn’t like anybody helping him with anything.

I feel my heart pounding. Now is as good a time as any to tell Daddy the truth. “Daddy—Porgy and Bess are in the back with our luggage.”

When Daddy gets mad, he breathes more fire than Puff the Magic Dragon! Without saying a word, he takes our luggage out of the van, then grabs the two shopping bags of leftover food—almost spilling the collard greens on the ground.

“I’ll get it!” Angie says, like a little scaredy-cat, running after the plastic container that is rolling away down the sidewalk.

“I’m raising two daughters without their mother’s help—I can certainly take care of a pair of
guinea pigs
,” Daddy says, emphasizing the words like he was talking about a bunch of rodents he had to kill with S.W.A.T. flea spray!

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” I say, tears coming to my eyes. I look over and see that Angie is about to cry, too.

Daddy frowns, then sighs. “Ah, go ahead and take them with you,” he says, putting the cage on the luggage cart and pushing it inside. “Let them be your headache, not mine.”

Well, we’re just fine with that. Fine, that is, until a Ready Rabbit Airlines representative comes up to Daddy and says, “That will be seventy-five dollars for the pets, sir.”

“Oh, I won’t be paying for it,” Daddy says. “
They
will,” he says, pointing to us.

The representative turns to Angie and me. “If you plan on bringing your pets on board, ladies, you’ll have to pay an additional seventy-five dollars.”

I almost start stuttering, I’m so upset. “I’ll pay it,” Angie says, whipping out her wallet.

I can feel Daddy’s gaze on us, but I’m too scared to look at him. I reach into my backpack and take out my bottle of air-sickness pills. I’m already feeling airsick, and we’re not even off the ground yet.

I hand one to Angie, too, and she pops it into her mouth. Last month, when we flew to Hollywood with the Cheetah Girls, Angie and I were so excited we forgot to take our pills. We ended up throwing up
everything
. It was so embarrassing!

“Bye, Daddy,” Angie says, after she’s parted with most of
her
prize money and we’ve been checked in. Bye, Daddy, is right. And bye, prize money, too.

When we finally reach Porgy and Bess’s storage space, which is almost at the tail of the plane, I set the cage down on its rack. “I hope you two enjoy the ride—’cuz it sure cost enough,” I tell them.

“I bet
our
tickets cost a whole lot more than seventy-five dollars,” Angie reminds me as we walk back to our seats in the middle of the plane. “Come on, let’s forget about it. We still have some spending money left. Let’s just pray that Galleria, Chanel, and Dorinda have a blessed Thanksgiving.”

We sit down, buckle up, and Angie takes my hand. Like we do every time we fly, we hold hands now, and say a prayer until the plane takes off.

When we’re finally airborne, and we can see the big, white fluffy clouds that look just like cotton balls, we let go of each other’s hands and breathe a deep sigh of relief.

Hot sauce, Houston, and Karma’s Children, here we come
!

I
never thought I’d be so happy just to walk through a busy airport terminal—but that’s exactly the exhilaration I feel when we hit George Bush Intercontinental after our six-hour journey, which included a layover in Chicago, where we caught our connecting flight to Houston.

“Hi, Ma!” Angie screeches, throwing her arms around our mother like she’s been lost at sea, and Ma’s a lifesaver.

Meanwhile, Ma is peeking over Angie’s shoulder at Porgy and Bess in their cage.

“What on earth?” Ma mumbles, her eyes twinkling because she knows we are up to something.

“Um …” I hesitate when Angie looks at me. We have to be
very
careful what we tell Ma. Angie and I have decided we are not going to tell her about Daddy’s kookiness—drinking concoctions out of the blender and such—and definitely not one word about his new girlfriend Abala, not even if Ma spoon-feeds us turnips for forty straight hours to force a confession out of us!

“Um—we’ve never been away from Porgy and Bess for a whole week, and we don’t want them getting lonely,” I say.

“Your father let you bring them down here?” Ma asks, her eyes bright with disbelief.

“Well, we had to pay an extra seventy-five dollars and the flight attendant didn’t even serve them lunch!” Angie moans.

“If we’d have known about that, Porgy and Bess would still be home, munching on their carrots!” I quickly add.

Laughing, Ma grabs the handle of the cage and puts it on the luggage cart. She looks smaller than I remember her. At first I think it must be because Angie and I have gotten taller. But then, looking down at her feet, I realize it’s probably because she isn’t wearing high heels. I wonder why not. Ma always wears high heels with her pantsuits, and she is wearing a pantsuit today—this one is powder blue with a pretty (fake) flower in the lapel of the jacket.

“You look nice,” I tell Ma, giving her a hug, and savoring the sweet scent of her Shalimar cologne. I sure miss that smell.

“Thank you, ‘Nettie One,”’ Mom says, stroking some misplaced strands on my bob into place. (That’s Mom’s nickname for me. Angie’s is “Nettie Two.” I guess it’s because I was born first—by five minutes.)

“I don’t know where your uncle Skeeter is, but he was supposed to come to the airport with me to pick you girls up,” Ma adds, a flicker of darkness passing through her warm, brown eyes.

I feel a twinge of disappointment, but I try to hide it. I love my uncle Skeeter, and I just assumed he would come with Ma to meet us. Uncle Skeeter is Ma’s younger brother—and a whole lot of fun.

“How was your flight?” Ma asks, regaining her sweet composure.

“Everybody loved our corn bread!” I tell her, breaking out into a big grin.

“We made dinner all by ourselves, for our friends the Cheetah Girls,” Angie explains. “And we thought we’d bring you the leftovers. But you know how bad airline food is. Well, Angie and I ended up feeding half the passengers!”

“Angie is exaggerating, of course,” I say. “We only fed about
fifty
.” I chuckle as I hand Ma the last container of potato salad, which we saved just for her. “Tell us what you think—it’s not as good as Big Momma’s, but I think you’ll like it. Our friends loved it.”

“I’ll bet they did,” Ma says with a big smile. “Thank you, sweeties.”

“Oh—here are some chocolate cannolis Mr. Garibaldi made for us,” Angie says, handing Ma the box.

“Who is Mr. Gari-body?”

“He’s Bubbles’s father—you know, Galleria from the Cheetah Girls,” Angie says, acting kinda “bubbly” herself.

“We wish you could meet our friends. You’ll love the Cheetah Girls!” I add.

“Well, I love these outfits—you picked these out yourselves?” Ma asks, curious.

“No, remember we told you about Ms. Dorothea—that’s Bubbles’s mom, and she’s now our manager, too. Well, she made them for us after we performed at the Apollo Theatre. They were supposed to be a victory gift, but you know—we lost. So she surprised us with them anyway.”

“Well, they are beautiful,” Ma says, but there is a tinge of something sad in her voice. Suddenly I feel guilty about being so close with Ms. Dorothea. ’Course, I know that’s silly, because Ma wants the best for us, even if she can’t be there to share in all the good and bad times.

We all get real quiet for a second, and that’s when I notice Ma’s nails. The polish on them is chipped—which is strange, because she always keeps her nails nice. I can tell Ma’s still thinking—probably about Ms. Dorothea making us outfits and doing stuff for us. I can tell she feels sad about
something
.

We drive onto the Southwest Freeway to get to our house in Sugar Land, which is a suburb in southwest Houston. Mom has put on her dark Gucci sunglasses, and her permed hair is blowing like feathers fluttering in the wind.

“You just washed the car?” I ask her, admiring the spanking-clean upholstery.

“Yes, indeed,” she says, taking a deep sigh. “You girls got any concerts coming up?”

Dag on, why does everybody ask us that? You’d think we were Karma’s Children or something—touring around the world, and only coming back home to Houston for some corn bread and bedtime stories when we got exhausted from all that fame and fortune!

“No, we don’t,” I respond.

“Well, when are you gonna start recording for the record company—what’s it called again, Daffy Duck?”

“No. It’s called Def Duck Records, Ma—but they might as well be ‘Daffy’, ’cuz we sure haven’t heard anything yet,” I huff. “Ms. Dorothea says we just have to sit tight.”

Ma gets real quiet again. Why is it every time I mention Ms. Dorothea’s name, she seems to get upset?

There
is
something different about Ma. Maybe it’s just because we haven’t seen her since June. That’s when we moved to New York, after a whole lot of hushed phone conversations and long-distance screaming. Personally, I think CIA negotiations for hostages went smoother than our parents’ dee-vorce. Oh, well—at least now that it’s over, Daddy and Ma are polite and civil to each other on the phone.

“Big Momma is expecting us at her house, but I told her y’all probably wanted to hang out at home for a little while first,” Ma says.

“I know Big Momma can’t wait to see us, but we do need a bubble bath!” Angie chuckles.

“You know how Big Momma is. She wants to see her ‘babies.’ Egyptian and India are waiting for y’all too.”

Egyptian and India are our cousins—Uncle Skeeter’s children from his first marriage. They spend a lot of time over at Big Momma’s now that their father is living there. Uncle Skeeter is a grown man, but Ma says he seems to have fallen on hard times. That’s why he moved back into Big Momma’s house.

“Wait till y’all see the outfit Skeeter put together for the Karma’s Children benefit,” Ma says, chuckling. She doesn’t realize that she has just opened up an old wound for me and Angie. “He went to Born-Again Threads and bought himself some metallic purple bell-bottoms, and an even more ridiculous fedora—oh, and a red fake-fur jacket—”

“Ma!” Angie says, chiding her.

“Don’t ‘Ma’ me—just wait till you see Mr. Disco! I told him just because it’s a benefit for the homeless, doesn’t mean he has to
look
homeless!”

Angie puts Her hand over her mouth and giggles. She can pretend she isn’t jealous of Karma’s Children all she wants. I
know
she is
just
as jealous as I am.

“I don’t know if we’re gonna go to the benefit,” I blurt out.

“Why not?” Ma asks, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “I told you, I’ll pay for the tickets.”

The tickets for the Karma’s Children benefit concert are fifty dollars each. All the money is going to the Montgomery Homeless Shelter, which is in the worst part of Houston.

Ma is still waiting for an answer, but then she figures it out all by herself. “Don’t tell me y’all are jealous of those girls, just ’cuz they’re famous now. You used to
love
them. I ’member that time when nobody knew who they were, and y’all wanted to go see them at the Crabcake Lounge. You cried for two days ’cuz I wouldn’t let you go!”

“We were nine years old—that was a long time ago!” I grumble. “They aren’t any more talented than we are. Why should we go see
them
perform?”

“You should be happy they’re doing well—that means
you
have a chance, too,” Ma says, in that tone of voice she uses when she’s giving us a lecture.

We all get quiet, for what seems like hours. Then Angie asks Ma, “Do you think Big Momma will mind if we bring Porgy and Bess over to her house, so they can run around in her garden?”

“I don’t know—you’d better call and ask her first,” Ma says hesitantly.