might have been different. This year the pageant is held in the old Angel Town Hall on Main Street. Old pho tographs line the walls. Main Street, 1889. Main Street, 1900. Nuevo, Angel's original name, written in white ink across the buckboard in front of the Pioneer Market, the first Miss Angel in her gown of turkey feathers. Angel is the turkey capi- tol of the world. The hall is jumping. Television crews from San Diego’s three s t a t io n s , one f rom Los Angeles, a hundred miles to the north. The three judges, two men and a woman, are escorted in with much pomp and applause. One of the men is a well-known TV personality for Channel 6. The current reigning Miss Angel, Annie Alison, stands benevolently with everyone. Her mother, Miss Angel, 1936, is wearing the antique gown of turkey feathers. She was the last queen required to wear it. The Los Coyotes Reservation band plays its savage mix of Catholic, patriotic, school songs, San Diego Back-Country Blues, swing of our parents, be-bop jazz o f our older brothers and sisters, Mission Indian tribal stomp, Tijuana Mariachi, our * very own rock ’n’ roll. I hold onto my escort’s big arm, his Navy stripes. People move aside as we walk up the steps. But not their eyes. They stare as they never have before, as if this event fina lly gives them complete rights. I guess it does. We hover with the other girls in their formals, leaning on the arms of their escorts. The smell of Evening in Paris and aftershave. The lights of the hall spark off their eyes. They are more beautiful than I realized. They have their real boyfriends with them. It is awkward that Diane Smith is with the wildest, most terrifying Indian of the whole coun ty , L inco ln Qu in ta rra , th ir ty years old. “ Do you recognize the lady judge?” Jennifer asks me. Jennifer is the one I think should win. “ It ’s Miss Fairest of the Fair from three years ago, Raquel Tejada. Remember her?” Raquel Tejada is moving among the dignitaries, the adults. She is very small. In her photos she always looks large. I remember the strange compulsion I felt toward the first picture I saw of her. I can’t really see that i t ’s the same person. “ Can you believe? She just had a baby— two weeks ago !” Jenn ifer says. “ She sure got her figure back quick,” Susan says. “ Yeah, but her boobs are s t ill small,” Diane says. “ No bigger than mine.” Everyone laughs. “ When did she get married?” I ask. I want to be married. I want to be an adult. I want a meaningful existence before I die. I want to sleep all night with the man I love. “ Well,” Jennifer snickers. “ Of course she had to. Her name now is Raquel Welch.” “ Raquel Welch is wearing a strapless full-length gown too. Ice blue. She isn’t as pretty in real life as her photos but she holds my attention. The other judge I recognize from the woman’s page of the Tribune, don Juan, a famous figure of San Diego high society. I s till don’t understand the concept “ society” except that where he goes, it is. He’s always being photographed with a celebrity family of blondes, mothers, daughters, cousins. He escorts them in parades, many of which I’ve marched in, to charity balls and museum openings, down to the docks to meet important ships from across the seas, big Gabor lips across everything, the Captain, the sea, the newspaper, don Juan. Raquel makes her way across the crowded room. Don Juan rises from his seat. He wears a red cummerbund around his small waist, a white Mexican tuxedo, a sombrero with tassles around the brim. She is being introduced by the TV host, Mrs. Raquel Welch, nee our very own, our favorite ex-Miss Fairest of the Fair, Miss Raquel Tejada from La Jolla. Though the don has often announced h is pre ference fo r b londes, and though she is an ex-queen, married, two times a mother, for th is night he will be the gracious escort, like Gino is mine, fo rth is damsel in distress. He removes his sombrero, a grandiose gesture, sweeps it behind his back as he bows, and, holding out his hand, into which she slides her small fingers, he bends, very deliberately, the upper lip lined in a pencil-thin moustache, and kisses them. The Indians finger the strings of their guitars. A little snare. God. What w ill I do if he does that to me? The contest begins. Lily, Susan, Jennifer, Ella, Mona, Jamie’s dream is to run her own business. “ I know I can do it,” she says, “ but it w ill be like climbing the tallest mountain in the world.” Diane says she’s going to be an airline stewardess if she can just make it to twenty-one. Everyone laughs. For the first time I realize Diane has personality. And now, for our only blonde in the contest. The spotlight blinds me. I can’t see anyone. But I’m smiling. I’m smiling t i l l my face hurts, the bilateral sides of my face. People always complain that I don’t smile enough. I’m determined not to lose the contest for that old fault. They said the crash was so sudden Bobbie Sue s till had a smile on her face though every bone behind it was broken. The host is so stupid I don’t know how to answer his questions. A TV camera zooms in. Under hobbies I finally wrote “ drawing.” “ Oh,” he jokes, his grin omnipotently large, the camera moving into my aching mouth. “ I bet you really mean drawing men.” The room roars and something rushes through my face. I guess so. Relax. Relax, the last thing Gino said as he shoved me forward. “ Relax!" Cal ordered. “ The Chamber is counting on you. We’ ll never win unless you relax.” Relax. Relax. The chant up and down, my strapless falling down. The smile on my face w ill kill me. I ’m in the second grade and my parents take me to an office on Sunset Boulevard. A Hollywood movie agent. He has seen The two famous sex queens are standing in very high heels and very low cut dresses, facing the camera. Monroe has one arm around Mansfield’s deeply indented waist, the other slid into her enormous left breast. Mansfield has one arm around Monroe’s shoulders and the other plunged up her dress into her crotch. Both blondes are laughing uproariously at the joke, their big joke on the world. me in two school plays, one in which I star as the diptheria germ and the other in which I ’m an old woman. As Diptheria I wear a bedsheet dyed with black spots to symbolize the lethal germs, I loom and hover evilly around the world. As Granny, my hair is brushed with cornstarch, turns silver. I rock, cackle, make witty, sarcastic remarks to a ll the young ones. I t ’s magic to step into another’s body. I love the stage, the audience watching. But ever since then I ’ve been cast in straight roles, always the pretty innocent girl, a role I can’t play. The dark-suited movie agent pulls on his cigar, leans way back in his swivel chair and demands, “Alright. Let’s see how cute you are.” Recite nursery rhymes. I don’t know any. Mirror Mirror on the wall. They bore me. The only verses I can recite are from the Bible. Who’s the Fairest o f them All? Can’t you be cute and coy like you’re suppose to be? Like a seven year old. Like a sixteen year old. I t ’s awful to disappoint him. And my parents. I don’t know how to be cute. I have no personality. When I try to be as they want I embarrass myself. Mama always blesses this day though. She says the natu re o f Hollywood is contrary to mine. From then on she applies herself very seriously to the task o f making sure I don’t grow up to be a movie star. Letters from agents, the agents themselves come to the house, telephone, but she never lets them talk with me. So why am I here now? When I leave the spotligh t, my oldest name is hissed at me, Blondie, hey Blondie! During the balloting we crowd together into the restroom to refresh our make-up, comb our hair, consult Liz. To rest my face from smiling. In the huddled group I lose myself a l ittle. I feel like one of them, a part of the human flux, a feeling I love. Once I read that an a rtis t’s collage of a thousand faces makes the most beautiful face anyone has ever seen. But then suddenly this old sense fills me with alarm. Tonight I’m in competition with my friends, I’m to be the most visible. “ Oooh! Just imagine! One of us w ill soon be Miss Ange l!” Diane squeals in the center of the swarm. A wave o f embarrassmen t sweeps through us. Her lust to win, as with so many things about Diane, is undisguised. But light irradiates her large eyes. She’s beautiful. I never thought so before. She’s an F student and her reputation is horrible. Probably none of us is without sexual experience, but she makes no effort to hide hers. Somehow she’s related to Ramon, a cousin. Like his, her Mojave mother disappeared after her birth. The Mo- javes are superstitious about halfbreeds. The county is always taking her away from her white father, the local car mechanic who never got over his penchant for drunk reservation women. He disappears for days at a time into the local reservations and Diane runs from her newest foster home. That’s what she’s doing with Lincoln Quintarra. She runs to older men. I move out of the bathroom, into Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1988 41
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