She Walks in Beauty (9 page)

5

Around eight, just about the time the show was starting over on the big stage, Big Gloria got a call from Clothilde. Clothilde’s voice, real tight, said: “Bee Gee, I think you better get on up here to 1803.”

Oh, Lord. What was it was
now?
She ought not to be here anyway. She ought to be home having some supper with Junior, pretending they were some kind of nuclear family instead of supervising turndown. But, when they asked her, even two days in a row, it was hard to pass up the extra shift. Especially with the car payment due and Junior spending money like it grew on trees.

So what was it now? Another drunk had punched his hand through a wall? That was nothing, but multiply it times 6,000 rooms in the casino hotels alone, if she had any sense, she’d be in the dry-wall business. Her daddy and her brothers had taught her how to do all that when she was growing up back in Bastrop.

Of course, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried. People just didn’t want to give construction work to a woman, especially a black woman, even if she was as big as Gloria. So here she was, messing around with a bunch of white people’s bed sheets.

All the way up in the service elevator Big Gloria was thinking about how much she loved getting her hands on a bunch of brand-new two-by-fours, the clean, piney smell of them reminding her of home, of building kitchens with her daddy. It wasn’t until the elevator stopped at 18 that Gloria remembered who was in 1803.

“What you doing out here, girl?” she said to Clothilde, who was standing in the hall staring at her. “Come show me what you’re talking about. It couldn’t be
that
bad.”

It was a mess, though.

6

SHAME! re
ad the placards, big red letters printed on white. SHAME!

“Who they?” Harry asked Sam, who didn’t know.

The 30 young women carrying the signs shuffled in a single line outside the main doors to the Convention Hall. They were dressed in long robes of brown burlap, and on their chests hung silver crucifixes that looked suspiciously like aluminum foil. The crowd had to pass through them to get inside. Security police were giving the women hard looks.

“Disappointed also-rans?” Harry joked.

Hardly, thought Sam. These pale, grim-faced girls didn’t look as if they’d ever practiced their smiles, much less paraded in swimsuits. And none of them were pretty, though, of course, that would be tough, wearing a long potato sack.

Now they were shaking tambourines, shuffling in their single line, chanting:
Shame, shame, shame.

Chain, chain, chain,
Harry sang, taking Sam’s hand and juking to the opening words of that oldie.

One of the girls cast her ice-pale eyes on Harry and said, “God sees what you do.”

He shivered in mock fright and hurried Sam into the auditorium. There they were sucked into a buzzing, glittering crowd where
no one
wore burlap.

“Who’d of thunk?” Sam stared amazed at men in black tie, women in sequined gowns. Of course there were elderly day-trippers too, who hadn’t changed from their ice cream–colored polyester and sensible shoes. And gangs of New Jersey boys in T-shirts, jeans, and running shoes who’d come to punch one another and leer.

The seating in the mammoth space spread across the floor, up tiers, risers, and then two levels before disappearing into the rafters.

They found Harry’s seat near the ramp with the Louisiana delegation. His friend Lavert hadn’t yet arrived.

Sam was in the press section nearby, directly rampside. The seat itself was of the orange padded plastic 1940s kitchen chair variety, but there was a ledge for her laptop computer and an electrical outlet. The
Inquirer,
on Sam’s right, was carrying her own phone.

Sam hadn’t realized the girls would have cheering sections. Each state marked its territory with banners and flags. The fans wore huge badges with color photos of their favorite girl trailing red, white, and blue ribbons. Hawaiians boasted orchid leis, Texans were in 10-gallon hats and boots. Alaskans were in furs.

“Some of the state delegations bring a hundred people. So you could easily have five thousand groupies here,” the
Inquirer
informed her.

It was hard to believe.

“Oh, they’re real enthusiasts. They do pageants instead of football, or gardening, or torturing small animals—whatever it is Americans out there do.”

“Look at all the spangles!”

“They’re bugle beads.” The woman on Sam’s left corrected her. “That’s what their dresses are done with, hundreds of thousands of hand-sewn bugle beads—just like the girls’ gowns. But tonight’s nothing. It’ll get dressier tomorrow and Thursday, but Saturday’s when you see the
really
fancy duds.”

The woman’s own scarlet suit was aglitter with the dancing lights of intricate beadwork. She had snow-white hair and a beautiful face. She was quite something.

“I’m Sally Griffin.” She had a firm handshake. “I’m an image consultant from Raleigh, NC. I just finagled this press seat because I want to see close up what my girls do.”

Image consultant? Her girls?

“Sally does figure and wardrobe analysis for pageant contestants,” explained the
Inquirer.

“And interview coaching,” added Sally. “I’m full-service. I also recommend speech coaches and designers, hairstylists and makeup artists, and workout coaches for swimsuit. And, of course, I have my pageant workshops.”

Workshops?

Sally laughed. “Your first time? Well, most girls are as naive as you when they first enter pageants, but once I get my hands on them, they learn fast. They have to, if they’re going to get anywhere in this business. Listen up and work hard, I tell them. I do a workshop on looks, on interview, on first impressions. I also hold one for judges.”

Judging school?

“Oh, my, yes. You know, pageant officials and judges want to move up in the rankings, too. You start off as a volunteer on the local level, doing whatever you can to help your pageant, and then after a while you want to go to state. Once you’re at the state level, you start to get into the nationwide network of pageant people. And, of course, the ultimate is to judge Miss America.

“For that, you need years of experience, and that extra something, just like the winning girls have, to catch the attention of the judges chairman and make him pick
you.
I’ve judged and emceed pageants for years. And I used to participate, of course, when I was younger.”

Sam looked at Sally carefully as the music rose, the lights lowered.

“I was Miss North Carolina ages ago.” Sally smiled, feeling Sam’s scrutiny. “I’m .” She patted Sam’s knee in that way southern women do. “Better to be over the hill than under it. No shame in getting old.”

At that, Sam remembered the Shame Girls outside. But it was too late to ask the
Inquirer.
“Here we go!” the young blonde said.

The curtain rose on the Miss America dancers, young men in white pants and white pullovers. In their midst strutted a figure in devilish black.

“Nickie Brasco. He works the casino circuit the rest of the year,” the
Inquirer
whispered.

The gentlemen soft-shoed and sang their way through a verse and chorus of “Tonight.” Then a back curtain lifted and there they were in all their glory: the Miss America finalists.

The fifty of them sported short, tailored dresses in fuchsia, blue, and off-white, no two dresses quite the same. The girls posed and modeled their way through another chorus and verse of “Tonight,” then sang a chorus of “There She Is.” They did a quick turn down the runway and back, singing, smiling, waving all the while.

“Let’s meet them face-to-face,” Brasco called, the signal for the Parade of States to begin from the two sides of the great stage.

“I’m Miss Alabama, Ashley Dunbar, a graduate of Auburn University,” announced a big redhead with a booming voice from stage left, then strutted down the runway.

Miss Alaska, a brunette with quite a bounce, declared from stage right that she was “Tricia Lewis, bringing you greetings from the frozen North. I’m a graduate of the University of Washington and a speech therapist.” She bounced behind Miss Alabama.

They all had the same walk. The Miss America Suck-and-Tuck Glide, said the
Inquirer.
They suck in their tummies and tuck their buns under. Swing their arms like wings to alternate with the legs. It covers thunder thighs.

“You’re looking wonderful,” Sally Griffin shouted to Miss Arkansas as she sucked-and-tucked above them on the runway. It
was
rather dazzling to be so close. “One of mine,” Sally said to Sam. Miss Arkansas beamed and waved and shot Sally a thumbs-up.

The
Inquirer
shouted to Miss Colorado, one of her personal favorites. So when Miss Georgia paraded by, Sam called, “Hey, Rae Ann, looking good.”

Rae Ann was flying. Her eyes sparkled, and her color was high.

It was tough not to be excited. The enthusiasm in the hall was wildly contagious. The evening felt exactly like the semifinals of any sporting event—the music, the fans, the lights, the banners, the shouts, the applause, and the players themselves, pumped within an inch of their very lives.

Sitting right at the edge of the runway, Sam almost could have reached over and touched the girls. And she found herself wanting to, they were so vibrant, so alive. And though they weren’t all beautiful, not what you might think a Miss America ought to look like (whatever
that
was), when she was prancing down that runway, each girl looked like she held the title to that long, narrow piece of Atlantic City real estate.

Now here was Miss Louisiana, Lucinda Washington, Lavert’s drop-dead-gorgeous cousin. One of two black contestants, she had the queenly bearing of Jessye Norman—though she’d spot the diva a hundred and fifty pounds.

There were bouquets of long-stemmed blondes. More brunettes. A few redheads.

What Sam noticed most was their bodies: how tall they all were—though of course she was looking up—and how thin, with long, shapely legs, not much fanny, and considerable chests. Their heads were different, but the bodies were all by Barbie. This was it: the Role Model. The Golden Mean. Twenty-two years of age, 35-22-34, 5′7″, 117 pounds. No wonder the average American woman was perpetually dieting.

Following the Parade of States was some banter between the emcees Phyllis George (Miss America 1971, former pro football commentator, wife of a former governor, and a fried chicken entrepreneur) and Gary Collins (NBC game show host and husband of Mary Ann Mobley, Miss America 1959).

They introduced the reigning Miss America, Lynn Anderson, who was stunning in a low-cut dress of gold and silver. As Lynn paraded and waved to the roaring crowd, Sam, swept away by the moment, actually found herself tearing up.

Ridiculous! Though she did remember crying along with the winner of every Miss America Pageant of her girlhood.

Beauty pageants have always been especially popular in the South, and growing up in Atlanta, Sam had loved the Miss America Pageant even more than the Oscars. The second Saturday in September, it was timed just perfectly, right after the opening of school. She and a dozen of her friends had huddled together in their pj’s, draped over one another like so many cats on her bed before the television.

“Yeeeeeeew!
Ugly!
Too fat! Look at those thighs!” they’d screamed. Or, “Wow! But get up in front of all those people, play the piano, answer questions, I’d diiiiiiie!”

They’d stayed awake until midnight—and past. However long it took, they were there when Bert Parks announced the first runner-up, and it dawned on the other one, the girl whose name wasn’t called, that she was IT!

There she is.
They’d sung along as
she
paraded down the runway, each and every one of them fighting a big lump in her throat, squeezing her eyes tight trying to imagine what
she
must feel like. To be the fairest in the land, smack-dab in the middle of a fairy tale. An ordinary girl from an ordinary family in an ordinary town—now crowned like Cinderella. And it was
permanent.
You
always
would be Miss America. Always and forever. No matter what.

But then Sam had grown up and gone on to Real Life, and the pageant hadn’t. The girls on TV, if she happened to flip past them on that September evening, were exactly like these girls before her now. Looking older than their peers because of the makeup and silly hair, they were plastic Barbies mouthing platitudes. Real women had thrown away their pushup bras along with the old second-class ways of thinking.

Yet here she was, and there they were, and she was the one with tears in her eyes.

Go figure. She surreptitiously blew her nose. But the
Inquirer
never missed a trick.

“Getting to you already, I see.” She rubbed her hands together. “I can’t wait to collect.”

“The day I become a pageant junkie, I’ll not only give you the hundred, I’ll buy myself one of those spangled gowns,” said Sam, pointing at Lynn Anderson’s rear as she made her way offstage.