Shop in the Name of Love (2 page)

O
nce upon a rhyme, there were two beautiful, bubble-icious girls named Galleria and Chanel who were the best of friends and the brightest wanna-be stars in all the land. One night, they looked up in the sky at all the real, glittering stars and dreamed of a place where they, too, could shine forever. Under the spell of the moonlight, they made a secret pact that they would find this place no matter how long it took, no matter how hard they had to try Then they would travel all over the world and share their cheetah-licious songs and supadupa sparkles with everyone who crossed their path.

But it wasn’t until Galleria and Chanel banded together with three other girls and unleashed their growl power that they discovered the jiggy jungle: that magical, cheetah-licious place inside of every dangerous, scary, crowded city where dreams really do come true. The jiggy jungle is the only place where every cheetah has its day!

Princess Pamela does
la dopa
braids, thanks to me. When I was ten years old, I taught her how to do all the
coolio
styles—frozen Shirley Temple curls, supa dupa
flipas
that don’t flop, and even unbeweavable weaves. Of course, I was too young to go to beauty school, but sometimes,
tú sabes que tú sabes—
you know what you know—as my Abuela Florita says.
Abuela
means grandma in Spanish. And my
abuela
knows what she knows,
está bien?

Doing hair and singing are what
I
—Chanel Coco Cristalle Duarte Rodriguez Domingo Simmons—know best. (You don’t have to worry about remembering all my names, because everyone just calls me Chanel, Chuchie, or Miss Cuchifrita—except for my Abuela Florita, who now calls me by my Confirmation name, Cristalle, because, she says, I’m a shining star—
una estrella.
)

Now that I’m part of the Cheetah Girls—a girl group that is destined to become
muy famoso
—one day I will have lots of
dinero
to open my own hair salons. Miss Cuchifrita’s Curlz—yeah, there’ll be two of them, right next door to both of my dad’s restaurants, so that I get to see him more.

“Chanel, you musta wear the braids bigger, like thiz, from now on. Don’t you think you look so boot-i-full?” Princess Pamela coos in her sugar-cane accent. I love the way she talks. She is from Transylvania, Romania, home of Count Dracula and a thousand vampire stories. Her native language is Romanian, which is one of the romance languages—like Spanish, my second language. Now me and Bubbles, my best friend since the goo-goo ga-ga days, say “boot-i-full,” exactly the way Princess Pamela does.

My mom doesn’t know that Princess Pamela braids my hair. She thinks that Bubbles does it.
Qué broma
—what a joke! Bubbles (aka Galleria Garibaldi) does not have a “green thumb” for hair. She knows how to write songs, and how to make things happen faster than Minute Rice—but I would look like “Baldi-locks” if she did my hair,
comprende
?

I think that once you find out who Princess Pamela is, though, you’ll understand why a smart
señorita
such as myself must resort to “fib-eronis” (as Bubbles calls them) just to keep
poco paz
—a little peace—in my house.

“Oooh, they do look nice bigger like this,” I coo back at Princess Pamela, looking in the mirror at my longer, fatter braids and shaking them.

I’m so glad I got my hair done today. I usually wait three months, or until I have collected “fuzz balls” on my braids—whichever comes first. But this time is different. We, the Cheetah Girls, have a very important
lonchando
meeting coming up, with Mr. Jackal Johnson of Johnson Management. He was at our first show: at the Kats and Kittys Halloween bash at the world-famous Cheetah-Rama nightclub. We turned the place upside down, if I do say so myself—and we even made four hundred dollars each after expenses,
muchas gracias
!

Anyway, Mr. Johnson came backstage after, and said he wanted to be our manager—and take us to the top!
Está bien
with me, because the top is where I belong.

Now back to the real-life Spanish soap opera that is my
vida loca
—my crazy life—and why I have to make up stories about who does my hair.

Five long years ago, when I was nine years old, my dad left my mom for Princess Pamela. I still see him every once in a while, but I miss him a lot. So does Pucci, my younger brother.

Back then, when my dad first met Princess Pamela, she had a “winky dink” tarot shop around the corner from our loft in Soho on Mercer Street. It was so small, if you blinked or winked, you missed it, get it? Back then, her name was Pasha Pavlovia, or something like that, but we just called her “the psychic lady.”

My dad’s name is Dodo, but he is not a dodo. His nickname is short for Darius Diego Domingo Simmons. He was only four years old when he and his sister had to get out of their beds in Havana, Cuba, and escape when Fidel Castro took over. They were sent to relatives in Jamaica, but my dad says he misses his father every day He misses the smell of the grass, too, and more than anything else, the water. There are no beaches like the ones in Havana, my dad says.

In that way, he and Princess Pamela have a lot in common. She had to leave Romania as a child when the Communists took over there, too. They both know what it’s like to lose everything you have and never see your home again. They both have that sadness in their eyes sometimes.

Princess Pamela says when she saw my dad it was “love at first bite.” He came into the shop for a reading and I guess he fell under her spell. Princess Pamela is a
bruja
—a witch—who can see the future. Mom hates her, but I think she is a good witch, not a bad one.

“Let me see how it looks with the headband!” I exclaim excitedly, and jump out of the beauty salon chair, hitting myself in the forehead with the red crystal bead curtains that divide the psychic salon from the beauty salon in the back.

“Ouch,” I wince as I separate them to go to the front. See, thanks to my dad, Princess Pamela’s Psychic Palace on Spring Street is now
muy grande
and beautiful. He built the whole place with his own two hands. He also helped Pamela install her Psychic Hotline, where she gives advice over the phone.

And thanks to her nimble fingers (and me), she now has a hair salon in the back. She even changed her name to Princess Pamela—because “it is a very good name for business—Pamela rhymes with stamina. It can unleash the secret energy into the universe.”

Princess Pamela also loves music with flavor—
con sabor
—reggae music, rap, salsa. Sometimes I bring her cassettes, and we dance around if there aren’t any customers. She likes Princess Erika, Nefertiti, and Queen Latifah the best. “Why not the Black people here should be like royalty? They can make their own royal family,” she jokes, her accent as thick as ever.

My dad also built two other stores for Princess Pamela—Princess Pamela’s Pampering Palace and Princess Pamela’s Pound Cake Palace— both on 210th Street and Broadway.
The New York Times
rated her pound cake “the finger-lickin’ best in New York City.”

I am proud of her, and I think Princess Pamela is going to be Pamela
Trumpa
one day, and take a huge bite out of the Big Apple!

“Which headband do you think I should wear, the pink one or the green one?” I yell back to her, as I pull them out of my cheetah backpack. I just got these headbands from Oophelia’s catalog—my favorite un-store in the entire universe.

Pink is my favorite color. Or sometimes red is. I like them both a lot. So does Princess Pamela—her whole place is covered in red velvet. Leopard, which is a “color” the Cheetah Girls use a lot, is my third favorite.

“
Ay, Dios mío
, what time is it?” I shriek. “I’ve got to get home!”

Bubbles, Dorinda Rogers, and Aquanette and Anginette Walker—the other members of the Cheetah Girls—are coming over to my house at seven o’clock so we can practice table manners for our
lonchando
meeting with Mr. Johnson. It may be the most important meeting I ever have. My mom is making dinner for us, and she doesn’t like it if I’m not around to help—even though she won’t let me get near the kitchen when she’s working in there.

See, my mom is very
dramática
. She likes to have her way all the time—and know where I am
all the time
, which is right about now, so I’d better get home.

“I have to go!” I yell to Princess Pamela, who is on the phone fighting with someone.

“No! For that money, I can order flour from the King of Romania, you
strudelhead
!” she huffs into the phone. Then she wraps herself in her flowered shawl and comes toward me, with a little blue box in her hand. “Before you run off—this is for you, dahling,” she says, smiling.

My heart is pounding. It is a present from Tiffany’s!

“Chanel, this will bring you good luck with your meeting, so you will get many royalties,” Princess Pamela says, kissing me on my cheeks and handing me my present. “You get my joke, no?”

“Joke?” I repeat, squinching up my nose.

“When you have a record, you get the royalties. You understand now?”

“Yeah,” I giggle. “Besides, maybe I am going to be royalty for real, soon, because of my mom’s new boyfriend, Mr. Tycoon, right?”

“Right, dahling. And how is he?”

“He’s in Paris right now, and Mom’s going crazy waiting for him to get back,” I say, rolling my eyes. “You should see her—she’s on my case all the time.”

I don’t want to get into my problems with my mom in front of Princess Pamela, so I keep my mouth shut and open the box. “
Ay, Dios mío!
Real diamonds!” I cry, and hug the princess. I hold up the diamonds to the light to admire them, and then I put my beautiful little diamond studs in my ears.

“Diamonds are a Cheetah Girl’s best friend!” Princess Pamela sings, in such a funny voice that I can’t stop laughing. “You think I could be a Cheetah Girl, too, and be in your group, Chanel?”

I just giggle at her, wishing I could stay longer. Princess Pamela is so dope—being with her is just like being with my crew. I wish it could be like that between me and my mom, instead of things always being so tense.

“La
revedere
—I gotta go!” I kiss her on the cheek, and hug her tight.

“La
revedere
,” she whispers back, saying goodbye in Romanian, and kisses me on the cheek.

When I get outside on Spring Street, it is really crowded. On the weekends, thousands of tourists and native New Yorkers come down to Soho to shop. They will do the Road Runner over you, too, if you happen to be walking by one of the boutiques where there is a sale! One lady gets a little huffy, like Puff the Magic Dragon, when I don’t walk fast enough in front of her—but that is like a breath of fresh air compared to the fire my mom is puffing down my back when I get home.

She is standing in the kitchen, with a spatula in her hand and an Yves Saint Bernard facial mask on her face. It covers her whole face except her eyes and mouth, and it is this putrid shade of yellow-green.

Cuatro yuks!
She does the mask thing every Sunday afternoon. She thinks it keeps her looking young for her tycoon, and it must work, too, because he seems pretty gaga for her.

“Do you know what time it is? I’m not here to cook dinner for you and your friends, and to entertain them while you’re out somewhere having fun, you understand me?”

“
Lo siento, Mamí.
I’m sorry. I know I’m late!” I exclaim.

“Why aren’t you wearing a sweater?” Mom drills me.

“I’m not cold,” I squeak.

“Wear a sweater anyway. And what is that on your head?” Mom waves the spatula at me, then uses it to stir the pot of Goya
frijoles
for our Dominican-style
arroz con pollo
dinner.

“It’s a headband. Isn’t it cute?” I exclaim.

“It looks like a bra strap!”

“It’s not a bra strap. It’s a headband,
Mamí
.”

“Well, it
looks
like you’re wearing a bra strap on your head, okay? And where did you get those?” Mom asks, pointing to my diamond stud earrings.

Uh-oh. Where is Bubbles when I need her? She’d be able to come up with something. She always does.

But I’m not that quick, and anyway, this is not the time to tell a real
mentira
—a lie that will come back to haunt me like
Tales from the Crypt
. So I decide to be honest. Why should I have to lie just because Princess Pamela gave me a present? After all, she is my dad’s girlfriend, so she is
la familia
to me, I think, trying to get up my courage.

“Princess Pamela gave them to me as good luck for the meeting with Mr. Johnson. Aren’t they boot-i-full?” I squeak, hoping to tap into Mom’s weakness for “carats.”

“She did
what
!?” she screams at the top of her lungs. Her facial mask cracks in a dozen places, and her eyes are popping big-time. Suddenly, she looks like The Mummy. Even through her tight lips, her voice is loud enough to send coyotes running for the hills.

“
When
did you see her?
Cuándo?
” Mom demands, standing with one hand on her hip and the other holding the spatula straight up in the air.

“I just stopped by there on my way home,” I whine.

“Don’t you
ever
take anything from that
bruja
again. Do you hear me?
Me sientes?
” she screeches, squinting her eyes. The Mummy is walking toward me. I think I’m going to faint.

“And if Bubbles did your hair, how come she didn’t come back with you?” my mom asks me suspiciously. “That
bruja
Pamela does your hair, doesn’t she? You think I’m stupid.” She pulls on one of my braids. “You try and lie to me?”

I have not seen my mom this angry since my dad left and she threw his clothes out the window into the street, and the police came because she hit a lady on the head with one of his Oxford wing-tipped shoes.

“I’m sorry,
Mamí
,” I cry, praying she will stop. “I won’t do it again!”