Growl Power! (6 page)

Big Momma has brought out the rest of the food, and overhears the end of our deep discussion. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

We explain the predicament to her while shoveling food into our mouths.

“I think y’all should go—one monkey don’t stop no show,” Big Momma says, giving us her familiar line of advice.

“All right,” I respond, looking at Angie, who nods her head like she agrees.

“Momma, where is Skeeter?” Ma asks Big Momma again. She’s been quiet all this time, and I guess she’s been worrying about her brother.

I chuckle to myself. He’s probably down at Slick Willie’s in Bayou Place, playing pool as usual. That’s one of the reasons he and Aunt Neffie used to fight—’cuz he wasn’t home half the time.

“Never mind about Skeeter, Junifred.” Big Momma only calls Ma by her real name when she is irritated. I wonder why that should be….

I dig into my macaroni and cheese, and a thought hits me like a can of lard upside my head:
How can we go on an audition without the Cheetah Girls
?

I look over at Angie. Like always, she knows just what I’m thinking. Big Momma is right. One monkey don’t stop no show. We’ll just go on the audition and see what happens. Judging by what Egyptian said, probably everybody and their mother will be there. We’ll be lucky if we even
get
to audition.

We go out in the garden to play. Outside, Egyptian rushes up to me and blurts out what’s been on her mind the whole time. “Daddy hasn’t been home for three whole days!” she says.

“Is that right?” I gasp, alarmed.

India runs outside when she hears us out there. “We don’t know where he is. He hasn’t called or anything. Big Momma is worried sick—and so are we!” India looks exasperated, which seems to make her wandering eye wander even farther.

I check through the window. Ma and Big Momma are still chattering away in the living room.

“You don’t know where Uncle Skeeter is?” Angie asks.

Egyptian firmly shakes her head “no.”

India’s eyes light up, and she says, “He has a girlfriend downtown. I heard him talking on the phone with her.”

“How do you know he was talking to his girlfriend?” Egyptian asks, like she doesn’t believe her sister.

“’Cuz he was giggling a lot,” India says, like she knows what she’s talking about.

Angie and I just smile at her. I think my cousin India really does have the makings of a “divette detective,” but now is not the time to make a big fuss over her. We have more important matters at hand.

I don’t like this situation one bit—especially since Big Momma is trying to cover it up. “Do you have the girlfriend’s phone number?” I ask India.

“No,” she says, disappointed.

“What was her name?”

“I don’t know, but Daddy said into the phone, ‘Girl, you are just like your name—softer than a mink coat.”’ Sadness flickers in India’s eyes.

“We’ll find out what’s going on,” I assure my cousins, trying to sound hopeful. They seem so scared about their daddy having disappeared for three days, and I don’t blame them one bit. I’m anxious about it myself.

“Can Porgy and Bess stay here with us one more day?” India asks, not missing a beat.

“Of course they can,” I say, pleased that I’m able to give my cousins something that’ll make them happy.

At the end of the evening, walking back to Ma’s car, Angie mutters, “We’d better call Galleria as soon as we get home.”

“Yeah—I don’t feel right about this whole thing.”

“You mean about Uncle Skeeter?” Angie asks, as we lean against Ma’s Katmobile, waiting for her to come outside.

“No—about going on some audition without them.”

“Yeah,” Angie agrees.

When Ma gets in the car, I blurt out what our cousins told us about Uncle Skeeter. “Ma, he hasn’t been home for three days.”

Ma lets out a sigh. “Big Momma was never good at lying—I’ll tell you that,” she says.

W
hen we get home, I ask Ma if we can call Galleria on the phone. I
know
it would be too much to ask if we could log on to her computer, but we’re dying to talk to all of the Cheetah Girls. If there was ever a time when we needed a council meeting, it’s
right now
.

“Whazzup, Houston?” Galleria cackles into the phone.

It’s kinda weird telling Bubbles about our predicament—an audition that popped up outta nowhere.

“Well, the three of us can’t afford to come down to Houston and tiptoe through the tulips with the two of you, Miz Aquanette,” Galleria says, trying to sound like it doesn’t bother her. But I
know
Bubbles—she’s usually down for anything, and always up to something, as Big Momma would say. She says good-bye with a chirp in her voice, but I can hear the sadness underneath.

“We could just end up singing in a soup kitchen, for all we know,” Angie says, spritzing the dining room table with Splendid cleaning spray.

“Angie, don’t use that!” I hiss to my absent-minded sister. She’s always pulling stuff like that when she’s too lazy to do something the right way. “Go get the lemon oil and a nice soft rag.”

It’s nine o’clock in the morning, but Ma is still upstairs sleeping, which is very unusual in itself. On top of her not wearing her high heels with her pantsuit, and her chipped nails, things are beginning to add up, and I don’t like the answer I’m getting—something is wrong with our ma.

We’re creeping around downstairs trying to clean, because I can’t believe how messy the house is. It’s just not like her—
especially
leaving cigarette butts in the ashtrays.

“Those are Uncle Skeeter’s,” Angie says, picking up one of the butts and seeing the “Lucky Ducky” brand on the filter. Yes, that’s Uncle Skeeter’s brand, all right.

Suddenly, I feel a pang in my chest. I can just see him smoking, cackling and coughing at the same time. I wonder where he could be?

“Do you think Galleria was upset?” Angie asks, spreading a few drops of lemon oil on a corner of the table and wiping it carefully with the rag like she should.

“I think Bubbles is more upset about her grandmother than anything else,” I tell Angie.

“We’d better wake Ma up,” Angie says with a sigh. Ma is driving us to the audition, and we’d rather go earlier than later, just to get it over with. Like I said before, who knows what we’re walking into?

Just then, right on cue, Ma walks past us and plops down at the kitchen counter.

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Angie says.

“I knew something was fishy when Skeeter came over the other day,” Ma says. Heaving a deep sigh, she covers her face with her hands.

“When did he come over?” I ask concerned.

“Monday—no, it was last Sunday, that’s right. His eyes were glassy. I could tell he’d been drinking.”

Ma screws up her face like Uncle Skeeter and imitates him. “‘That uptight husband of yours, John Walker, may be my brother-in-law—but Johnnie Walker Red is my
cuzzin
.”’

Johnnie Walker Red is the brand of Scotch Uncle Skeeter likes. Even Daddy keeps it in the bar at our house in New York, but he has never made one joke about having the same name as a brand of liquor. That’s Daddy for you.

I walk over and give Ma a hug. I’m so glad she has stopped pretending we are too young to understand these things. We’ve known since we were real little that Uncle Skeeter drinks, smokes, and doesn’t go to church, and that it bothers everybody in my family. We also know that Uncle Skeeter and Daddy never got along.

“What did Skeeter say when he came over?” Angie asks.

“He said he was tired of trying to make everybody happy, and just wanted to go somewhere he could ‘rest in peace,”’ Ma says sadly. Then she chuckles, because Uncle Skeeter was probably making a joke off Granddaddy Walker’s funeral parlor, Rest in Peace.

“But India says he has a new girlfriend?” Angie asks gingerly.

Ma doesn’t seem at all bothered that we know. “Yeah. I don’t remember her name—something Wilkerson. Skeeter said, ‘That Wilkerson woman sure knows how to treat a man.’ That’s all I remember.”

Hmmm. “India says she heard him on the phone with his girlfriend, saying something like, ‘you sure are just like your name—softer than a mink coat!”’

Ma rubs her eyes and dismisses me. “What would India know? She’s just a child.” No sooner than the words are out of her mouth, Ma realizes what she’s said, and who she’s talking to. We chuckle along with her.

“Ma, what’s wrong?” I ask, hoping that now that we’ve been so honest with each other, she won’t try to cover up other things. “I mean,
besides
Uncle Skeeter being missing?”

All of a sudden, I see the tears well up in Ma’s eyes, and she lets them roll down her cheeks without even wiping them. Angie and I sit real still at the table, waiting for Ma to talk.

“I don’t know which is worse, living with your father and being miserable, or living without him and being so damn
lonely
,” Ma says, her voice cracking. “All I do now is get up, go to work, pay bills, then get up and do it all over again. Not that I have anything to get up for now, with y’all gone.”

Now
I know what’s bothering Ma. She
misses
us—all this time pretending she didn’t mind if we lived with Daddy! Angie starts whimpering, and now I feel the tears well up in my eyes, too.

“We don’t want to go on the audition,” Angie says. “Let’s just stay here together. I mean, what if it isn’t for real?”

“Egyptian and India told you about it, right?” Ma stops her.

“Yeah,” Angie replies, wiping tears from her cheeks.

“Well, then I suggest the two of you go, because those kids seem to be the only ones around here who
do
know what’s going on.” Ma laughs, then looks down at her raggedy nails. “Lord knows I need to do something with these claws.”

Angie and I chuckle, but I know we both feel guilty inside.
Our
hair and nails look nice, ’cuz Daddy pays for us to go to the beauty parlor twice a month in New York. But I don’t think we deserve that, if Ma is miserable.

I look over at Ma, and she suddenly breaks out in a smile. It’s the first time her smile has seemed genuine since we’ve been here. “I love y’all, you know that?” she says. “It’s so good to have you back here—even if it’s only for one week.”

Galveston Bay is about thirty minutes by car from where we live. Ma puts the top down on her Katmobile, and Angie and I start singing “It’s Raining Benjamins.”

Ma is bopping along with us. “Y’all sound g-o-o-d!” she shouts over the noise of the wind.

“That’s what we’re gonna sing for our audition,” I say triumphantly.

“We are?” Angie seems surprised, even though that’s the song we were rehearsing just before we left. “I guess I’m just used to us singing ‘Wanna-be Stars in the Jiggy Jungle.”’

I can tell Angie is a little nervous, but that’s too bad—
I’ve
made up
our
mind.

“We’re only going to be doing two-part harmonies instead of five—it’s a better song for that, Angie,” I say, just wishing she would go along, just this once, without questioning things.

“Okay,” she says, shrugging her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. We’ll be lucky if we even get
into
this dag-on audition.”

“If nothing else, we got out of the house!” Ma says chirpily. I can definitely see she is feeling much better. “Y’all sing so different than you used to in church.”

“We’re not in church, Ma!” I exclaim. “We can’t sing the same way.”

“I know, I know. Don’t worry, I like it,” Ma says nicely, then asks, “Who thought up that song?”

“Well—it’s a long story,” I say, looking over at Angie. “See, Chanel’s mom—”

“Who’s Chanel?” Ma asks, smiling, like she knows I’m gonna brain her if she doesn’t get all these names right.

“Chanel and Galleria are best—well, I mean, oldest—friends, because their mothers were friends—”

“And big models,” Angie blurts out.

“Okay, so Chanel’s mom, Mrs. Simmons, she’s got this boyfriend we call Mr. Tycoon—he’s a sheik or something—”

“
Real
rich!” Angie chuckles, but I poke her. She knows Ma is feeling lonely, so why does she have to rub it in?

“Anyway, Mrs. Simmons is writing this book, called
It’s Raining Sheiks
, about women who have sheiks for boyfriends or something.”

“But not all of them are happy,” Angie adds, like she knows what she’s talking about.

“Stop interrupting me,” I hiss.

“Okay, I’m sorry, I’m just trying—”

“I know.” I cut her off. “So, Chanel—that’s our friend from the Cheetah Girls—”

“I
know
who Chanel is now,” Ma says, switching on her blinker because she is about to change lanes on the freeway.

“So Chanel had this dream about money falling from the sky, and she told Galleria. But see, Chanel doesn’t like it that
Galleria
writes all our songs, so she goes ahead and writes two lines for the new song—”

“Uh-uh,” Angie says, holding up her hand. “She only wrote
one
line.”

“Yes, you’re right—bless her heart—she wrote one little line in her notebook, Galleria said. Galleria went over to Chanel’s house, and
she
wrote the rest of the song—but it’s cute, right?”

“Yeah, it’s cute,” Ma says as we approach the exit for Kemah Boardwalk, which is right on the water.

I hum some more of the song. I wish Ma could meet the Cheetah Girls, and Ms. Dorothea, and even Mr. Garibaldi. They sure know how to have fun. Ma would love them.