The Legacy of Miss Baltimore Crabs
Amber Delgado-nee-Van Tussel checked the mountainous pile of blonde hair that wreathed her bland face. Was it big enough? The right kind of big? 'New' big?
She pulled the hem of her bright pink tank top until it covered the right parts - then tucked the acid-washed halves of her denim jacket together and fluffed at her hair one more time. Mousse just wasn't as good at holding it all together as Ultra Clutch had been. She comforted herself with the notion that she looked just like her daughter's Barbie Doll.
Pasting a smile on her mauve lips, she zipped her purse, then stepped out of the lady's room and into the bustling studio of the Corny Collins show.
It was odd that little in room had changed since the hundreds of hours she'd spent there thirty years before. There were neon lights bordering the main stage, there wasn't a "bandstand" anymore for Corny to stand behind, and someone had removed the tote board in the mid-70's because it was "too low tech"; otherwise, everything seemed to be exactly the same.
She scanned the stage for a familiar face or two, knowing that she would be an unwelcome presence at the gathering. She saw Doreen and Noreen; Becky and Darlene, but they all turned their gazes from her face. Head up, she walked over to her mark and heard the 'watermelon, watermelon' of the angry and caught sight of a few familiar faces - scowling ones.
She started right back, her teenaged prima-donna self coming back to life.
"All right," came the experience-dulled voice of their choreographer - a hag with a cigarette voice and fat-laden thighs. "Who're Tracy, Amber and Inez?"
Amber held up her hand and stepped forward, then was nearly mowed over by the locomotive charge of something small and compact smacking her lower back.
"Gosh, I'm sorry!" bubbled a too-familiar voice. "I'm just so excited to be here - isn't it the most? I haven't been here since I was seventeen..." she trailed off and reached down with a pudgy hand. "Amber?"
Amber looked up through stray locks of hair into the face of Tracy Turnblad. Outside of a few streaks of gray, which she wore as she had the white streaks in her youth, Tracy looked largely untouched by the past twenty years. In her denim skirt and orange neon top, she didn't even look old enough to be Maryland's most popular senator.
"Are you okay, Amber?"
She snapped to attention, managed a smile. "I'm fine," she said. "Hi Tracy," she said, attempting friendliness.
It went over easily with still-giddy Tracy. "How are you? I didn't see you at Corny's twentieth anniversary party - were you there?"
"No - I was busy," she lied smoothly. "How have you been?" she asked, barely able to believe she was having a conversation with a girl who had once been her mortal enemy.
"Everyone's okay - my mom and dad retired to Bocca last year, not that she's resting! She's still managing gigs for Inez. We're still here, of course, whenever Congress isn't in session. Link and me are still looking for someone to run the Hardy Har Hut - Roc is too young, and Don - could you IMAGINE? I love him so much, but wouldn't trust him to handle a pencil by himself! I'm sorry, I never told you I have two boys - Roc's twelve and Don's sixteen."
The smallest ache caused Amber's insides to clench - she'd stopped believing that Link was her one and only years ago, but it still stung a little to be reminded of his marriage and children.
"What about you, Amber? Do you have any kids?"
She took a deep breath - explaining to her would oddly be the easiest. "I have a daughter - she's over in the make-up room eating McDonalds."
Tracy smiled genuinely - and it was nice to know someone from her past could tolerate her.
"MS DELGADO," said Haggy the Choreographer, "could you PLEASE get to your feet? And where is Inez?"
"INEZ?" Someone shouted from the back of the crowd, "has anyone seen Inez?"
"HEY!" the authoritative voice that could only belong to Inez. "Sorry - someone locked the front door. You know Tracy Larkin’s back in the house!"
Amber tried to make her amazement at Inez' growth unobvious. In the eighteen years since she'd seen her, the girl had gained every sort of available inch - she towered over Tracy as they hugged.
Haggy rolled her eyes. "PLEASE TAKE YOUR PLACE." She handed out sheets of lyrics to the three girls. "Inez is to sing lead - are any of you familiar with 'The New Girl In Town'?"
More than, thought Amber, but she didn't say anything out loud. The three women nodded their heads.
"You're to perform it together while doing the pony - are any of you familiar with the pony?"
The three women nodded their heads again.
"Well, don't stand still! Show me!"
Bonded temporarily by their mutual hatred of Haggy, the three women stepped into place, their youthful enthusiasm returning to the fore. Flawlessly, they acted out the desired choreography, but didn’t earn any blandishments from Haggy.
“PIVOT! YOU, THE CHUNKY ONE! YOU ARE NOT PIVOTING YOUR ELBOWS!”
Tracy, as always, had an honest but kind answer. “I’m trying my hardest. Gee, I must be rusty.”
“MORE CRISPLY! THINK OF THE SALAD YOU OBVIOUSLY NEED.”
“Hey,” a familiar voice entreated, “I wouldn’t throw stones if I were you!”
Penny Pingleton, whose sheath dress suited her well but displayed to everyone around that she’d never left the mid 60’s, drew Haggy’s angry gaze. “Are you in this number?”
“No.”
“Then I suggest you shut up.”
Amber felt the bitterness she’d caged up inside unleash itself. “Gee, Tracy, you think show business would’ve gotten nicer in the past twenty years.” Penny’s eyes alighted on Amber, and in a quick glance she saw a tad of new respect.
“Missus Delgado,” Haggy snapped, enveloping Amber in a cloud of Benson and Hedges Lo Tar, “show business has never been nor will it ever be nice.”
“Show business is nice.. It’s the people who are in it that don’t have a clue about kindness…”
“Amber knows that from experience,” said Tammy from her spot in the peanut gallery. Amber knuckled down, concentrating on the routine, knowing exactly what was coming – what had been coming since Tammy had been shunted into the background during Amber’s short stint as the Nicest of The Nicest Kids In Town. “Everyone knows her mother was a nutbag, and a slut to boot,” she said. “Velma would do anything to make her famous even though Amber was a no-talent, ruthless loser…”
To her surprise, Tracy had left the line and had mounted “Stifle, Tammy!” Tracy interjected. “It’s not Amber’s fault her mom put her on the show before she was ready…” the last word died in Tracy’s throat and she covered her mouth with her hands.
Her mother’s voice returned to haunt her – Von Tussels NEVER cry – but they only made those humiliating tears fill Amber’s eyes more quickly. Before they could ruin her makeup she quickly bolted from the line, seeking sanctity outside in the steamy Baltimore evening.
“Mama?”
She turned around to see her baby standing in the doorway. “Honey,” she said softly, dashing her mascara away on the back of her fists. She held out her arms. “It’s okay.”
“You’re sad,” the three-year-old pointed out, rubbing a hand over her mother’s pale cheek and drawing off a palmful of peachy cake makeup. “Are you sick?”
“No,” Velma squeezed the girl. “Mama’s all right. It’s just something silly.”
“Amber?” Tracy appeared over Honey’s shoulder. She smiled automatically at the young girl – then her face registered momentary surprise as she took in the child’s appearance. Typically, she covered brilliantly. “Corny wants everyone on their mark,” she said. “We need to run through the choreo one more time for New Girl In Town.”
“Who’re you?” the little girl finally asked Tracy.
“My name’s Tracy Larkin,” she bubbled. “Are you Amber’s little girl?”
With practiced dignity, she said, “My name is Honey Carmen Delgado,” she offered her small hand to Tracy’s for the taking. “How do you do?”
“I do,” Tracy smiled. “You’re pretty as your mom was at your age…” she groped for a tasteful choice of words, then gave up. “A long time ago.”
Honey looked very bored by all of this grown-up stuff. “Mama, can I have money for the Pac Man machine?”
Amber reached into the pocket of her jeans and handed her daughter two quarters. “Be careful,” she instructed the girl, but Honey was already headed back into the building, nearly bumping into Penny as she wobbled over to Tracy in her spikes.
Penny frowned. “Did Angel have a little girl?” Angel was one of the Hispanic girls from the Council’s later days.
“She’s mine,” Amber said, bracing herself for the cavalcade of questions headed her way. She saw the dim spark in Penny’s eyes burst into confusion and knew, without a doubt, she was about to be subjected to a Classic Penny Pingelton Question.
“But Amber, she’s so…”
Tracy was on the spot. “Penny,” she warned.
“But, golly, Tracy, she’s so…”
“PENNY…”
“TRACY?”
“PENNY!”
Amber whistled to draw the argument to a close. “If you want to know what happened,” she said, “you can ask me.”
Both girls shared an old, well-worn look – the same sort they sent each other when they were all five and had made a pirate fort from old supply boxes gleaned from the Hardy Har Hut and refused to let Amber join.
“Okay,” the two women agreed, and Amber headed back inside to find them a private place to talk.
***
While Penny grabbed them some coffee, Tracy and Amber grabbed a place at craft services. Haggy had found a new target for her ire in the Council Kids from the ‘70’s, and otherwise the area was deserted.
Penny returned with two watery cups of coffee, which the women proceeded to choke down. When Tracy regained usage of her throat, she asked Amber, “where did you go after junior year?” Tracy strove for politeness, but Amber remembered that year well, and how they’d avoided each other for most of the summer after the Miss Hairspray Contest.
“Mom decided it was best we move out of Maryland after that disaster,” Amber said – they needed no clarification on ‘the disaster’. “She picked the whitest place she could find.”
“Gee, where was that?”
“She picked Minnesota. I went to school at Thor Erickson High,” she continued. “Mom started pushing me back onto the pageant circuit – she said for the scholarships, since our finances were ‘such a disaster’.” She drew quickly on the coffee and continued, “She took a job programming at the local NBC affiliate, and I started winning minor pageants. I was,” she counted on her fingers, “Miss Cheese Curd ’65, Miss Goodyear Tire ’65, Miss Shetland Pony ’65…And unlike mom, I didn’t have to sleep my way to the top to nail them.”
Tracy seemed impressed, while Penny was blasé, “Far out – you had to ride horses while eating cheese curds and juggling tires?”
“I might as well have,” Amber chuckled. “Mom was trying to get me in shape for Miss Minnesota, but I was third runner up in the regionals. That was when she finally lost it.”
Tracy and Penny sat, open-mouthed, wondering what ‘it’ was.
“We were driving back that night and she just started screaming at me – that I was a flatfoot, and had no talent, that she had ruined her career for me and I could have at least shown her some GREATFULNESS and taken the title. She said my career was over and I’d never be useful to anyone again, then pulled over on the side of Route 52, threw my suitcase out of the car and told me to start walking – she wasn’t going to support me when I couldn’t pull my weight.”
“Witch,” Penny remarked, her teeth sinking into her red lips.
“What did you do next?” Tracy gaped.
“I hitched a ride to the nearest bank and tried to cash out my savings bonds – she’d spent them all, of course – but at least I had one thing she couldn’t take from me. In the Miss Cheese Curd competition I’d won an educational grant to the University of New Mexico. I got my grandmother to wire me a hundred dollars and took the first bus down there.”
“Then?” Tracy wondered.
“Then,” Amber said, “I took a job as a car hop in Santa Fe. I worked for Carmen and Jose Delgado,” she smiled. “Their son Andre was very cute.”
“Is Honey Andre’s daughter?” Penny wondered.
She nodded. “We moved in together after a year, then after I graduated I went to cosmetology school. We did a lot of the protest marches in town…he was very socially forward. He sort of dragged me kicking and screaming into the 20th century…”
“Me too – I mean in this town,” Tracy cut in. “I’m sorry…”
“I figured you might,” Amber said, injecting kindness. “Andre went to Vietnam, and I took care of the restaurant with his mother – Jose had suffered a stroke a year before he went. We were all so thankful when Andrew came home without a scratch on him– we got married first thing, but I couldn’t get pregnant. That was at the start of the women’s movement, so I thought to myself – hey, you’re a modern chick, start your own business. So I opened my own salon – Amber’s Waves – it’s still doing well. Then a few years ago, I got pregnant with Honey. He was so ecstatic…” She swallowed hard. “Two days after she was born, a drunk in a semi truck side-swiped him off the road.”
She felt Tracy’s fingers wind around her numb ones. “I’m so sorry, Amber.”
With practiced reserve, she squeezed Tracy’s hand. “I’m all right – day by day.”
“Have you ever heard from your mom?” Penny wondered.
Amber shrugged. “I tried to track her down after Honey was born. Someone knew someone who knew someone – and then one day she called me out of the blue. We were having a great time – she wanted to come see us – but then I gave her my last name. And she hung up.”
“You mom just wasn’t ready for the twenty-first century,” Tracy sighed.
Penny patted her hand. “I know what it’s like to lose your mom like that,” she glanced over at Seaweed, who sat by the payphones near the front lobby, his ear glued to the receiver. Through the grapevines Amber had heard that Seaweed was a sitting justice with the Baltimore Circuit Court, with his eye on ascending to the superior branch. “Sometimes,” she heard Penny mumble to her shock, “ I wonder if it’s worth it.”
The revelation made Amber reel. Then again, Seaweed had always been the Sir Lancelot type, ready to rush off and rescue the princess. What to do with her when the Evil Queen was cut from their lives and the dragon was slain had probably never crossed his mind.
“She doesn’t mean that,” Tracy said, patting Amber’s hand again. “It’s the stress. We have a banquet to cook for everyone who works in Seaweed’s office….” Abruptly, Tracy said, “Amber, I’m glad we got to talk.”
Amber knew she was indeed glad – Tracy Larkin was no liar. “Me too,” she meant it right back.
The two women smiled at each other. They’d never be fast friends, but now they could both look back at Baltimore and laugh.
“COUNCIL MEMBERS,” the loudspeakers blared, “PLEASE TAKE YOUR PLACES.”
“Oh no!” Tracy burst out. “We never got to finish rehearsals!”
“Well then, little mama,” said a warm, familiar voice, “I think it’d be best for you to wing it.”
Amber glanced at Link Larkin as he came up to see his wife. The boy still had his charm, but he’d gained weight and his hair was thinning out.
“This is a crisis, Link!” Tracy protested. “We have less than ten minutes of practice.”
“It’s just the pony – you gals could do that with your eyes closed.” He winked at Amber, then pointed at her. “Hey, pink lady.”
Amber’s lips twitched – God, why had she thought of him as a cool, sophisticated stud? “Hey, Link. Ready to roll?”
“You best believe it.”
The loudspeaker crackled again. “MISSUS DELGADO! MISSUS LARKIN! MISTER LARKIN! TAKE YOUR PLACES, PLEASE!”
“I’ll see you up there,” he said to Amber. “Try not to hog the camera too much,” he winked, then pasted a sloppy kiss on Tracy’s mouth. As Amber headed to her mark she smiled at Tracy’s starry-eyed delight.
Beneath the curtain, the graduating classes of Corny’s Council all flittered nervously about. Amber – unsurprisingly, was placed directly between Tracy and Link. She looked around at the familiar faces – the paunchy bellies not-at-all-hidden by spandex and the balding spiked heads.
She looked up at Link when he came to stand beside her. Her eyes focused right on the pink stage curtain, Amber remembered how she had yearned for Link, worshipped him, had wanted him more than anything. But fate had worked its magic in her life, showing her that Link was the perfect guy for Tracy – malleable, nice, submissive. Amber needed – and had received – a man with more will and spice and fight. Looking at his sweet, dumb face, Amber realized that if they had stayed together she would have eventually crushed Link alive.
“AND FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO…CUE CORNY!”
Corny Collins’ voice came over the loudspeaker. “…And here we are with Our Council Of 1980, sadly the very last Council, as on Tuesday we’re being replaced by Small Wonder. What do you think about that, Chad?”
“WHOO! MTV RU-“
“Ha ha! You know, you kids make me think back to an older time, a better time, a time when men didn’t wear eye shadow and women’s hair was really, really big…Ladies and Gentlemen, the Graduates of Corny’s Council!”
Amber heard “CUE COUNCIL” and her body moved as it had years before, with instinct, without grace. But for once she was accepted into the union of the counsel – no pressure to be her mother, to relive the glory. She wasn’t just Velma’s daughter – and she wasn’t required to be the best and brightest star on Corny’s stage. For the rest of her life she would be Amber, Honey’s mom, and she was finally okay with that. Her smile dazzled the first row. It was suddenly ’63 again as Corny cried
“Hey there, teenage Baltimore!”