Part 9

So I lied, I'm going to still try when my computer programmers elbow and lots of vicodin will allow me to..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once we head into the ballroom a sort of nervous hysteria can be felt, just right below the surface. It’s quiet, a quiet as a graveyard but the undercurrent is there just the same, just like in the ocean when a killer tsunami is on the way. The surface of the water is calm, dead calm, with just the few ripples breaking the glassy surface but beneath that placid exterior a deadly force roils at hundreds of miles an hour with the potential to destroy everything in it’s path. You can just tell secrets have been exchanged, mulled over and passed on. Everyone is suspecting everyone else, the slightest look or whisper is subject to scornful suspicion.

I see lots of teary faces on the kids and hear the occasional whimper. This has been going on at least two hours now and I don’t know how much longer the Houston police dept. is going to be able to keep everyone penned up here without an uprising on their hands. Most of the moms look restless in their jeans and polyester clothing. I see looks of frowning faces to go with the murmuring voices. Restlessness and agitation telegraphed by body language. The cops have to do something soon or the mutiny will get ugly quickly.

After a quick secretive look around Giselle and I take a seat towards the front of the ballroom as it seems the farther back seats are all filled. Unfortunately the seats we’ve chosen happen to be next to Mary Byrd Walters. Mary is pretty vile, she’s extremely obese with a short hairdo like someone slapped a bowl over her round head and cur around with dull shears. But it’s deeper than the physical, she’s foul mouthed, unpleasant and supposedly a Christian. The problem is that she blames everything on the devil, every little tiny monkey-blessed frickity thing. Raining outside? The devil. Run in your pantyhose? The devil. Your kid didn’t even place at a pageant? The devil and his whorish minions - other pageant moms. And she doesn’t shut up. You get in her way and she’ll start shouting about casting your demonic addled ass out with the blood of the lamb and end trying to call down fire from heaven on your cloven hoofs. Mary has been on one of those dumb reality shows that lets you switch with another wife for a week and behaved the same exact way she does here. Really gave Amite, Louisiana a black eye.

Before the first pageant she attended she started talking trash on the boards about her daughter, how she was going to win everything against the reigning pageant queen, Laureen Ying. She’d say things like , “She is a newbie.. hasnt ocmpeted nationally yet been trained by the best coach, has new top clothes. And she is by far prettier than any kids anyones ever seen at pageants.. and Ive knows beautiful.. seriously. She is 5, has gorgeous long dark brown hair, huge green eyes (odd bright green too), perfectly arched eyebrows, big nice natural white teeth (and no flipper hmmph), and a butt chin...she is perfect. shes gonna kick laurren yings chink ass” Truly classy huh?

Well that’s not exactly what happened. Her tiny version of herself, tubby with pasty white flesh and triple chins except with longer hair, arrived at Toytown Girls pageant and didn’t even place. Momma cried and demanded to see the score sheets, cornered judges and harangued them about what does and doesn’t count for scores to no avail. And it’s been like that at most of the pageants since even as she’s bought more and more expensive dresses, piled the makeup on deeper and kissed a million miles of ass. Tiny Tubs has only scored a few runner ups. In the week following a competition two things will happen that I know of, she’ll call me up to bitch and moan about how this latest dress didn’t help before trying to beat down my price for making a custom dress followed by her posting wild accusations all over the internet about what happened at the pageant to stop her little sweetums from winning. The funny thing to me is that every pageant she wants to moan to me about her dresses yet I’ve never actually sold her a thing.

Sure enough, Lil Louisiana Fats is starting to cry and rub her face on her momma’s shoulder as Mary Byrd barks out an order not to smear her makeup. Just behind Mary Byrd I hear the gravid tones of another mother, a newbie from West Virginia, Sheila Conners, all of about 20 years old. She works at a 7-11 most days, standing behind the counter with a bored expression on her flaccid face selling Big Bites and Marlboros in between refilling the coffee pots. She’s reputed to have the foulest mouth of all the pageant moms. Most of the moms save their nastiness and their vitriol for the message boards and groups online, masquerading behind the anonymousness of the internet to spew their annoyance with each other. Not Sheila, she’ll call you a motherfucking cunt right to your face, while she’s spitting in your face and you stand there confused, trying to figure out which eye to look at in her face because her false eye doesn’t point in the same direction as her one remaining real eye. She’s nothing much to look at and she’s got an impressive collection of tattoos on her exposed flesh. I look at her angelic two year old, all blonde ringlets, blue eyes and smiles and wonder who’s kid she stole. LaWonder could not be her natural child you think. But she is. I’m not sure exactly what type of freakish situation occurred or what twisted humor exists in heaven to allow her spawn to look so beautiful. Sweet child as well.

At that moment Sheila is telling the lady next to her that she’s going to kick some cops ass if he thinks he can shut down the contest her baby is winning just because some idiot can’t figure out where her kid ran off to while she’s drunk. I have to shake my head at that statement, as much as I dislike Miz Tanya I actually am starting to feel sorry for her, the crowd in here would willingly string her up by her thumbs right at this moment. The feeling in the room is ugly, like what you’d imagine the mood would be in a Roman coliseum waiting for the lions to attack the Christians.