Who's 'Bout to Bounce? (9 page)

“Why you calling yourself fat, baby?” Mrs. Bosco says to Bubbles, misunderstanding. “You so pretty, and there ain’t nothing wrong with a little meat and potatoes.”

We all start laughing so hard,
everybody
is looking at us—including Derek Hambone and Mackerel Johnson.

“Mrs. Bosco,
phat
doesn’t mean fat—it means
dope
,” Chanel tries to explain, confusing my foster mother even more. This sends us all into fits of giggles again.

“It means, like, fabulous,” Bubbles adds, sounding like her mom, Dorothea—my namesake.

Now the Mackerel and the Red Snapper have worked their way over to us, and are standing behind Bubbles, listening to our conversation! I’m trying to get Bubbles’s or Chanel’s attention, but they aren’t looking at me.

“Oh, I understand, baby You girls are so smart, with all your words. Dorinda is always telling me some new words y’all made up,” Mrs. Bosco says, fixing her bifocal glasses again.

“Hey, Cheetah Girls, what’s the word for the day?” Derek busts in, trying to cash in his two cents.

“Cute but no loot, Red Snapper,” Bubbles says, but nicer than she usually talks to Derek-probably because my foster mother is standing right there.

“Come on with it, Kitty Kat, and show me where the money’s at!” Derek says, slapping his boy Mackerel a high five, like he’s saying something.

“See ya,
schemo
, we gotta bounce,” Bubbles says, then motions for Chanel to walk with her.

Mackerel and the Red Snapper follow them for a while, then give up and walk away. I’m so relieved that I didn’t have to introduce them to Mrs. Bosco.

Not that I’m ashamed of her—I’m not. But still, I don’t want everybody at school to know my business. My private life is private, you know what I’m sayin’? Why should they even know I have a foster family, not a real one? I mean, not even my crew knows everything about me, right?

Bubbles and Chanel are off to Toto in New York. I’m alone with my foster mother now, and she’s being really quiet. Unusually quiet. I wonder what’s up with her. “Are you okay?” I ask, scared. “You’re not getting sick again, are you?”

“No, baby, I’ll be all right. Doctor says all’s I need is rest.”

“Rest? You never rest,” I say, worried.

“Don’t worry ’bout me,” she says. “I’ll be all right. Long’s I have my nap every afternoon …”

“But how will you do that when I’m on tour?” I ask. “Who’s gonna look after Kenya and all them?”

“Monie will have to help out. She’s been spending too much time with that Hector anyway. Don’t you worry, baby, like I said. You go off on your tour and don’t even think about us.”

Yeah, right. “Here. Let me hold that bag.”

“Awright, child.” Mrs. Bosco hands me the Piggy Wiggly shopping bag, but it’s really heavy.

“What’s in here?” I ask.

“Q-Tips,” Mrs. Bosco says, chuckling at her little joke. See, she uses Q-Tips dipped in peroxide to clean Corky’s ears, ’cuz she says he must be hard of hearing. She always yells at him, “Why else do I have to tell you to pick up your socks and pants fifty times and you
still
don’t do it?”

We’re almost to the subway entrance now, and I start thinking again about why Mrs. Bosco is being so quiet. And how my friends all acted like they knew her, when I know I made sure they never got to come to my house.

Something is definitely going on, I can feel it. And if it isn’t about Mrs. Bosco’s health, then what is it?

As if she can hear my thoughts, Mrs. Bosco stops at the bottom of the subway steps and turns to face me. “How would you feel about me and Mr. Bosco adopting you?” she asks all of a sudden.

We’ve never talked about this before. Never. When I first got to her house, she told me that my birth mother might come back to get me at any time, so I shouldn’t get too attached to her or Mr. Bosco—but that she would always be my second mom.

I wonder why she’s asking me this now? “I don’t know how I feel about it,” I say. This is making me really nervous. “What about my, um,
real
mother?” I ask her, but I’m looking down at my shoes. I can feel my whole body shaking.

“Well, I’m just asking you a question. If I could adopt you, would you want me to?” Mrs. Bosco repeats, coughing into a tissue. She always loses her breath when we have to go up or down subway stairs.

“But what about the money you get from foster care for taking care of me?” I ask nervously. I don’t want Mrs. Bosco to have to stop getting her foster care checks, just to adopt me. I know she loves me anyway. I wouldn’t want to cost her that money.

“Don’t worry about that,” Mrs. Bosco says. Then she puts her arm around my shoulder and leans in toward me. She always used to do this when I was little, and I know exactly what she is going to say.

“I know when you grow up, we gonna go live in a big ole fancy house together, with a whole lot of bedrooms—’cuz you always had the smartest head on your shoulders.”

Now I
do
smooth down the crease that’s riding up in the front of dress, and she lets me, too. “Yeah,” I say.

“Yeah, what,” Mrs. Bosco asks.

“Yes! Yes, I want to be adopted!”

“Awright, baby,” she says with a sweet smile. “I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t promise you anything—’cuz you know how trifling those people can be.”

“Those people” are what my foster mother calls everyone who works at the Department of Child Welfare, Division of Foster Care Services, which is a big, dingy office in downtown Manhattan. I go once a year for psychological testing, and to visit my social worker, Mrs. Carter. She is in charge of all the caseworkers who make visits in the field.

“Do you really want me to go on tour with Mo’ Money Monique?” I ask my foster mother.

“If that’s what you want to do, that’s fine with me, Dorinda. You always was dancing around the house, even when you wuz little. I know you got your new friends, and you don’t wanna leave them—but you got to do what’s right for you. You know I always say, ain’t nuthin’ wrong with Mo’ Money!”

Mrs. Bosco puts her arm through mine, and leads me onto the subway platform. “But if you’re not ready to go off around the world and be a working girl, don’t worry ’bout that, either,” she says. “After all, we got plenty of time to go live in that big ole mansion somewhere.”

Suddenly, I feel like crying. It’s almost too good to be true. Me—adopted after all these years, with Mr. and Mrs. Bosco as my real parents. And going on tour with Mo’ Money Monique!

I guess Monie the meanie will have to finally help out for a change. And I guess the Cheetah Girls will have to carry on without me.

I wonder if I’ll still be around for the Apollo Amateur Night. I mean, the tour probably won’t leave town that soon, right? Maybe I can get away with not telling my crew about the tour until after we perform at the Apollo. That way, I can still be a Cheetah Girl for just a little longer.

I like this new plan of mine. Sure, it means I have to keep my secret for a whole ’nother week. But it’s worth the stress. I mean, what if I go to rehearsal tomorrow, and it turns out there was a big mistake, and I didn’t really get the job after all? You know what I’m sayin’? Or what if I mess up so bad at the rehearsal that they fire me? I’d be so embarrassed if I’d already told my crew about my big new job!

Besides, I figure, the longer I don’t tell them, the better. ’Cuz once I do, the Cheetah Girls are really gonna pounce. They’ll probably never even speak to me again!

When you’re standing on the corner of 210th Street and Broadway, you’d think that Princess Pamela owns the whole block or something. Both of her businesses—Princess Pamela’s Pampering Palace, and Princess Pamela’s Poundcake Palace—take up several doorways on each side.

The Pampering Palace is really the bomb. It’s got a glittery ruby red sign outside, with stars, balls, and moon shapes hanging in the window.

“The stars, moon, and planets are supposed to symbolize another galaxy—’cuz that’s where you are when you step inside the Palace,” Chanel explains to us proudly.

When you walk in the Palace, you feel like you’re taking a magic carpet ride, because everything is covered in red velvet, and the floor is covered with red carpet! When I look up at the ceiling, there are all these chandeliers that look like crystal drops falling from the sky! It’s the dopiest dope place I’ve ever been—besides Bubbles’s mom’s store, Toto in New York.

“Close your mouth!” Bubbles instructs Angie, who is as awestruck as I am by the Princess’s Palace. It’s a diggable planet look, all right.

“Ah, my boot-i-full Chanel and her friends!” Princess Pamela says, rushing to greet us with open arms. She goes over to Chanel and starts crushing her to death. I wish my foster mother would hug me like that. Maybe once she really adopts me, she will….

When you put the
P
to the
P
, Princess Pamela looks just like a gypsy psychic lady is supposed to. She is really pretty, and she has dark, curly hair streaked with white in the front. Her eyebrows are dark and thick, and she has a red, red mouth. She probably doesn’t eat bologna and cheese sandwiches like I do, because she has to keep her lipstick looking so dope.

“Is that rayon crushed velvet?” I ask Princess Pamela, goggling at all the yards it must have taken to make her dress, which is sweeping to the floor like Cinderella’s gown.

“Yes, dahling. You like?” Princess Pamela asks me, her big brown eyes twinkling. “I know where you can get an
excellent
price on velvet. Let me know if you want to go, dahling.”

“Awright, ’cuz I’d be hooked up if I had a dress like that,” I tell her.

“You, dahling, are so boot-i-full, like my little Chanel, that you could wear nothing but a leaf, and e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e would be
green
with Gucci Envy!” she says, pinching my cheeks. Usually I hate when grown-ups do that, but she’s so cool, I don’t mind.

You can tell Chanel is proud of Princess Pamela by the way she beams with pride at the Princess’s jokes.

The receptionist, who has a hairstyle that looks more like a “boo-boo” than a bouffant, tells us in this heavy British accent to “go back and change into your robes and slippers in the dressing room, and someone will be with you in a jiffy” Then she starts sneezing into a tissue, and her eyes are watering like she’s crying.

“Is the English lady sick?” I ask Princess Pamela. I don’t know the lady’s name, but I don’t want to call her a receptionist, in case she turns out to be royalty, or something.

“No, she has allergies, dahling, and she’s not from England. She’s from Idaho,” Princess Pamela whispers, putting her arm around me.

“Then why does she talk like that—with an accent?” I ask, puzzled.

“When you’re from a place named after a potato, you have to do something to make yourself interesting, no?” Princess Pamela says, smiling mischievously. Now I see why Chanel loves her. Princess Pamela’s got mad flava.

“Okay, Mademoiselle Do’ Re Mi, what will it be?” Bubbles asks, whipping out the beauty menu like she’s a French waiter. “Le lavender mousse conditioning body scrub, or le peppermint pedicure?”

“Gee, Bubbles, I never really thought about it,” I quip. “But now that you mention it, I would like a cherry sundae back rub!”

“You’re a mess, Dorinda!” Aqua heckles me. Then she turns to Galleria and asks, “You think they got anything for athlete’s foot? All these dance classes are giving me fungus right in between my toes. See right there.” Aqua holds up her foot so Bubbles can get a good view.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t be worried about fungus ’till I took care of those
Boomerang
toes, Aqua,” Bubbles says, holding her nose closed like something stinks. “I mean, you got any hot dogs to go with those corn fritters?”

“That’s all right, I’m not mad at you,” Aqua says. “But I sure hope they got something for them.”

Seriously studying the beauty menu, Bubbles exclaims, “Aqua, look, it says here that a tea tree oil bath is such a powerful antiseptic, it will even get rid of the cock-a-roaches between your toes!”

“Lemme see that menu, ’cuz I know it does not say that,” Angie says, coming to the defense of her twin sister.

Angie is the more “chill” of the two, but sometimes the Walker twins are so much alike I can’t tell them apart—especially now that they are wearing matching red velvet robes and slippers.

I wish I had a twin sister like that. A
real
sister, anyway. Someone who’d stick up for me. When I turn around from putting my robe on, I catch Bubbles, Chanel, and the twins whispering together.

“Don’t be making fun of me!” I say, wincing. “So what if the robe
is
really big on me!”

My crew looks at me all serious, and Aqua says, “What makes you think we wuz talking about you anyway, Dorinda?”

“’Cuz I know you four. You’ll read me through the floor,” I say. Aqua never calls me by my nickname, Do’ Re Mi, but I like the way she says Dorinda, because it sounds cute with her southern drawl.

“Well, we have a special treat for you, Miss Dorinda,” Bubbles says.

All of a sudden, an attendant appears, in a white uniform and white shoes, with a white towel draped around her arm. She looks like a nurse in a cuckoo hospital, and I’m beginning to feel like a cuckoo patient.

“Could you come with me,
mademoiselle
?” she says, looking at me.

Princess Pamela’s place is like the United Nations, I think to myself. Kinda like my house. But I think the French nurse’s accent is real, and I’m not sure I wanna go anywhere with her.

“Not having it,” I moan, looking right at Bubbles, who is probably the ringleader behind this whole situation.

“Come on, Dorinda, we’re going with you, too,” Aqua volunteers. They all escort me to a room with red velvet walls, and a long, pod-shaped tub that looks really weird.

“What’s this for?” I ask the French nurse lady.

“It is for
ze cell-yoo-lete
treatment,
mademoiselle
,” she explains to me.

“
Mademoiselle
doesn’t want any treatment,” I say, looking at Angie and Aqua, and not even trying to pronounce whatever that word was she said.