Who's 'Bout to Bounce? (3 page)

Galleria always makes us feel better. That’s why she’s Cheetah number one. Anything goes wrong, and we all look to her, just naturally. She’s not takin’ any shorts.

We are running in Central Park now, and suddenly, a funny-looking guy with a silver thing on his head zooms by on his bicycle, and almost runs down Aquanette. “Dag on, he almost knocked me over,” yells Aqua, looking back at him as he rides away.

The twins are not used to the ways of the Big Apple, or how fast everybody moves here. They say everybody moves a lot slower in Houston, which is where they grew up—in a big house with a porch and everything in the suburbs.

“Beam me up, Scottie, you wack-a-doodle helmet head!” Galleria yells back at the guy on the bike, then gasps for breath. She sticks up for us a lot, because she isn’t afraid of anybody.

“Y’all, there are a lot of crazy people here,” Anginette chimes in.

“Helmet Head probably woulda knocked her over if nobody was looking!” Bubbles says.

“I wonder if that was a strainer on his head,” Chanel says, giggling.

“And what were those funny-looking antenna things sticking up?” I giggle back.

“Come on, you lazy
muchachas
!” Juanita yells back at us, waving for us to follow her.

I don’t know how long we’ve been running, but I am so grateful when we finally reach the park exit at 110th Street.

“Thank
gooseness
,” Galleria yelps, as we stop by the benches where Juanita is waiting for us impatiently, her hands on her hips. Bubbles bends over and is panting heavily, holding on to her knees. Her hair is so wild it’s flopping all over the place like a mop.

This is where I get off, I think with a sad sigh. I wish I could invite my crew over to my house for some “Snapple and snaps.” After all, I only live six blocks from here. But after seeing where
they
all live, I’m too embarrassed to let them see my home.

I live with my foster mother, Mrs. Bosco, her husband, Mr. Bosco, and about nine or ten foster brothers and sisters—depending on which day you ask me. We all share an apartment in the Cornwall Projects. We keep it clean, but still, it’s real small and crowded. It needs some fixing up by the landlord, too—if you know what I’m sayin’.

It bothers me a lot to be a foster child but Mrs. Bosco is a pretty nice lady, even though she’s not really my mom or anything—but now, I’m hanging with my new crew, and all of them have such nice houses, and real families….

“Ms. Simmons, can’t we at least
walk
to our house from here?” Angie asks, whining to Juanita.

Since I never invite anybody over, the next stop on this gravy train is the twins’ house on 96th Street. Angie and Aqua live with their father in a nice apartment that faces Riverside Park. My apartment faces the stupid post office.

“Okay, lazy,” Juanita huffs back.

“Well,” I say, “bye, everybody.”

Chanel puts her sweaty arms around me to kiss me good-bye.

“Ugh, Chanel!” I wince.

“Do’ Re Mi, can’t you see I love you!” she giggles back, kissing me on cheek and making silly noises. Then Chanel whispers in my ear, laying on the Spanish accent, “You know I was just playing
wichoo
. I know you can run as fast as me.”

“Okay,
Señorita
, just get off me!” I giggle back. “Bye, Bubbles, and all you boo-boo heads!”

“Bye, Dorinda,” Juanita says. Then she adds, “Don’t stay up late, ’cuz
we’re
going to bed
early
,” giving me that look like “you better not be trying to hog the chat room on the Internet tonight.”

See, Chanel’s kinda grounded for life—until she pays back the money she charged on her mom’s credit card last month. She’s not supposed to be on the phone or the Internet, runnin’ up more bills.

“See y’all tomorrow at school,” I yell, then add, “not you two!” to Angie and Aqua. The twins don’t go to Fashion Industries High, like me, Chanel, and Bubbles. They go to LaGuardia Performing Arts High School, which is even doper.

Maybe next year, me, Bubbles, and Chuchie can transfer to LaGuardia, so we can all be together….

You know, you have to audition to get into LaGuardia. Chanel was too chicken to audition last year, coming out of junior high—even though Bubbles wanted to go to LaGuardia in the worst way. But Bubbles didn’t want to audition without Chuchie, so they didn’t go. That’s why they both wound up at Fashion Industries, which is lucky for me!

But now, who knows? Sure, auditioning is kinda scary, but now that we’re the Cheetah Girls, we’ve got each other, and we’ve had some experience performing—so I know we can do it.

Besides, Bubbles says if the Cheetah Girls really take off, and our lives get too hectic, we’ll have to get private tutors anyway. Private tutors! Wouldn’t that be the dopest?

That’s Bubbles for you, always planning ahead to “destination: jiggy jungle.” That’s the place, she says, where dreams really do come true—
if
you go for
yours
.

Listening to Bubbles, we all feel like we really can do anything we set our minds to.

I head uptown alone, on my way back to the apartment. Soon, my thoughts drift forward to next Saturday night.

What if the Sandman really does chase us off the stage
? Or if somebody hits me on the head with a can of Burpy soda while I’m performing? Then I’ll get a concussion … and I won’t be able to take care of Mrs. Bosco and all my brothers and sisters….

“Hey! Watch where you’re goin’, shorty!”

By the time I hear Can Man’s warning, it’s too late, ’cuz he’s slammed his shopping cart filled with empty cans right into my back. I trip over a mound of rocks, and a thousand cans go flying everywhere.

“
You
watch where
you’re
goin’!” I scream back at him. From my knees, I pick up a can and make like I’m gonna throw it at him.

Can Man is one of those people in New York who are out all day, collecting empty soda and beer cans, and returning them to places like the Piggly Wiggly supermarket around the corner for the deposit money.

In other words, he is a homeless man, but I think he is “sippin’ more times than he is tip-pin’,” because he screams a lot for no reason, and does wack things—like this.

“You better not take one of my cans, shorty!” Can Man yells. Now he is foaming at the mouth. His eyes are bugging too.

I drop the can and run. I don’t even listen to the people who ask me if they can help. No, they
can’t
help me!

Why does everything happen to me? My real mother gave me away. My first foster mother, Mrs. Parkay, gave me up when I was little, for no reason. And now, Can Man runs into me with his stupid shopping cart!

My ankle really hurts, and I sit down on somebody’s front stoop to massage it.

Sometimes I get scared that I’m just gonna end up like a bag lady, and get married to Can Man or something. Who am I kidding? Maybe I’ll never be anything! In fact, if it wasn’t for my crew, I’d be just a wanna-be, I tell myself. Look at Bubbles and Chanel. You can tell they are born stars.

Me? Well, everybody says I can dance really good, and I guess I can sing okay But I’m never gonna be famous. In fact, when I’m alone, and not with the group, I’m really scared of performing—and especially auditioning.

Now my legs
really
hurt from running all those miles, and I think Can Man might’ve broken my left ankle! I’m so mad, I wanna punch somebody. Let somebody—
anybody
—be stupid enough to get in my way now! Fuming like a fire engine, I hobble, step by step on my one good foot, to my apartment building.

“Hi, Dorinda! How come you limping?” asks Pookie, who is sitting in the courtyard. See, there are a lot of buildings in the Cornwall Projects, but only two of them have a courtyard, so all the kids hang out here.

Pookie is sitting with his mom, Ms. Keisha, and his sister, Walkie-talkie Tamela. We call her that because she never shuts up.

“Heh, Pookie,” I respond, huffing and puffing. “Can Man hit me with his cart and knocked me over.”

“You know he’s crazy. You better stay out of his way, Dorinda, before he really hurts you,” mumbles Ms. Keisha.

“I know, Ms. Keisha, but I didn’t see him because he was behind me. Is Mrs. Bosco home?”

“Yep,” she says, nodding her head at me. See, Ms. Keisha is nosy, and she knows that
we
know she’s nosy. She sits outside all day, with a head full of pink hair rollers and even pinker bedroom slippers, talking about people’s business like she’s Miss Clucky on the gossip show.

Not that her motormouth doesn’t come in “handy dandy,” as Bubbles would say. See, if you’re in trouble, and you wanna know if you’re gonna get it when you get upstairs, you just ask Ms. Keisha. She knows if your mother is home—
and
if she’s mad at you.

The courtyard isn’t much of a playground for all the kids who live here, but it’s better than hanging out in front with the “good-for-nothings,” as Mrs. Bosco calls the knuckleheads who hang around all day and don’t go to school or to work.

Some of the people who live here try to make it look nice, too. Once somebody tried to plant a tree right in the cement, but it was gone the next morning. So now there are no trees—just a few po’ little brown shrubs that look like nubs. And there aren’t any slides, swings, or jungle gym to play on, either—just some big old “X” marks scribbled with chalk on the ground, for playing jumping jacks.

I used to jump double Dutch rope out here all the time when I was little. I was the rope-a-dopest double Dutcher, too, even though Tawanna, who lives in Building C, thinks
she’s
the bomb. She’s such a big show-off, it just looks like she’s got more moves than she
really
does.

It’s getting dark out already. I know I’ve missed dinner, but Mrs. Bosco will still have something waiting for me. Hobbling on my good ankle, I open the door to the building, and get my keys out of my sweatpants. After dinner, I think, I’d better go see if Mrs. Gallstone down the hall is home. She’s a nurse, and she’ll know if my ankle is broken or not.

I hope little Arba is over her cold, too, I think, as I limp to the elevator. Arba is my new little sister. She’s almost five years old—the same age I was when I came to live with Mrs. Bosco. She doesn’t speak English very well, but we’re teaching her.

Arba is Albanian by nationality, but her mother had her here, then died. Mrs. Bosco says a lot of people come to the Big Apple looking for the streets paved in gold, but instead they get “chewed up and spit out.”

Most of the time, the caseworkers never say much about where foster kids come from, or what happened to them. They just drop them off, sometimes with bags of clothes and toys. Anyway, someone took Arba to the Child Welfare Department because she had no family, and they gave her to Mrs. Bosco to take care of until somebody adopts her—if anybody ever does.

You could say our house is kinda like the United Nations or something. My seven-year-old foster brother, Topwe, is African—real African, from Africa. He speaks English all funny, but it’s his native language. They all talk like that over there!

Topwe gets the most attention, because he is HIV-positive, which means he was infected with the AIDS virus. His mother was a crack addict, Mrs. Bosco told me, but I’m not supposed to say anything to Topwe or the other kids. I’m the only one, she says, who can keep a secret. It’s true, too. I really can.

Like I said, the United Nations. There’s Arba for one, and Topwe for another. Then there’s my four-year-old brother, Corky, who is part Mexican and part Bajin. (Bajin is what you call people from Barbados, which is in the British West Indies.)

Corky is really cute, and he has the most beautiful greenish-gray eyes you’ve ever seen. His father is fighting with Child Welfare, trying to get him back. I hope he doesn’t. I don’t want Corky to leave.

I know kids are supposed to live with their families, but I feel like Corky’s
my
family, too—I mean, he’s been here practically his whole life! What’s his father know about him, anyway?

See, sometimes the kids in our house go back to their real parents. Once in a blue moon, they even get adopted by new families, who are looking for a child to love. Nobody has ever tried to adopt
me
, though.

Sometimes I cry about that—nobody wanting me. See, most parents who adopt want little kids, and by the time I got to Mrs. Bosco’s, I was already too old—almost five. So yeah, it hurts when one of my brothers or sisters gets adopted and I don’t. But I feel glad to have a place to live anyway. It could be worse—I could be out on the street, like a lot of other people. Like Can Man …

Besides, we may not have much, but life is pretty good here. We all stick up for each other when the chips are down. And Mrs. Bosco loves us all—she just doesn’t let herself show it very often. I guess it’s because that way, it won’t hurt so much when the caseworkers take one of her kids away.

Even in the lobby, I can tell that somebody upstairs is cooking fried chicken. I
love
fried chicken—with collard greens, potato salad, and corn bread. That’s the bomb meal.

We call where we live the “Corn Bread Projects” since, when you walk down the hallway, you can smell all the different kinds of food people are cooking in their apartments.

That’s actually better than the elevators, which sometimes smell like
eau de pee pee
. When the elevator door closes now, I get a whiff of some nasty smell. I hold my breath the whole ride up.

Everybody says the Cornwall Projects are dangerous, but nobody bothers us around here. That’s because my foster father, Mr. Bosco, is
really
big, and he wears a uniform to work—plus he has a nightstick he says is for “clubbing knuckleheads.”

He is a security guard who works the night shift, so he sleeps during the day. Most of us kids don’t see him much, but he is really nice. He laughs like a big grizzly bear. Both times I got skipped in school, he gave me five dollars and said, “I’ll- give you five dollars every time you get skipped again!”

As soon as I open the front door of the apartment, Twinkie jumps out from the corner. That’s the game we play every day.