Crystal (4 page)

“Yes,” Crystal said sullenly.

“Good, then tell us the differences between the French and the American revolutions.”

Crystal took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Mrs. Reyes always got on her nerves. She glanced at the clock above the side blackboard. It was a quarter to ten, another ten minutes before the end of class.

“Crystal, do you intend to answer the question?”

“I don’t know the answer,” Crystal said.

“You’ll see me after class,” Mrs. Reyes said. “Frank, you want to give us one difference?”

“The people the French were fighting against, the kings and the royalty, they were right there,” Frank said. “With the American Revolution, the king was across the ocean.”

“That’s one important difference,” Mrs. Reyes said. “Pat?”

“The French people were more interested in getting more rights for the different classes while the Americans wanted to have a completely different country.”

“Very good, Pat,” Mrs. Reyes said. “Perhaps you should spend a little time with your friend Crystal, convincing her that she’s not royalty yet.”

The rest of the class went quickly, and Mrs. Reyes was surrounded by students picking up test papers when Crystal walked out.

“Crissie, didn’t Mrs. Reyes say she wanted to see you?” Pat caught up to her in the hallway.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to do the homework?” Crystal said.

“I said maybe I wouldn’t,” Pat said. “But I had the time so…”

“So you figure you’d make me look like a fool!” Crystal said. “Thanks a lot.”

“Have you seen my grades in History?” Pat asked. “Last year I had straight A’s, and this year I’ll be lucky to pull down a B.”

“Look, Mrs. Reyes doesn’t like me, and you know it,” Crystal said. “She likes making me look stupid, and you’re helping her.”

“I think she likes you,” Pat said. “Why would she have anything against you?”

“You heard that bit about the limo,” Crystal said. “I think she’s jealous, that’s all.”

“Just because you come to school once in a while in a limo?”

“And maybe because she’s not very pretty,” Crystal said.
“Maybe she figures she’ll show me up. How do I know?”

“People aren’t like that, Crissie. I mean, just because somebody’s not as pretty as you are, that doesn’t mean they’re out to mess over you.”

“Then why
did
you do the homework?”

“Crissie!”

Crystal watched as Pat turned sharply and walked down the hallway from her. She and Pat had always been close friends, but there wasn’t any question that Pat did a lot better than Crystal in school. What had the guidance counselor said? That Pat was definitely college material. Crystal had been maintaining a C average before she started modeling and was just barely managing that since she had been working.

It bothered Crystal to hurt Pat. They had been best friends for a long time, but the modeling seemed to get in the way somehow. There were times when she would be so glad to see Pat, to tell her what she had done during the day, and to talk things over with her. But more often than not she didn’t talk to her about what was really on her mind, and sometimes she would find herself saying things that she knew had hurt her friend.

Pat had been as excited as Crystal when she found out that Crystal would be modeling. And Pat wasn’t the jealous type, that wasn’t it. It was just that modeling wasn’t like she and Pat had thought it would be. The work was harder, more boring, than she ever thought it could be and made more demands on Crystal than she could handle at times. It was, Crystal felt, almost as if she were jealous of Pat for some reason. But she
was
pretty and she
was
making a lot of money doing what she was doing. There wasn’t any need
to apologize for that.

Still, Crystal wished that Pat could be with her some of the time. Maybe when she was waiting for a shoot to begin and heard the clients talking about her. Or when a job was done and everyone was packing up to go home, and no one seemed to care about anything except that the shoes she had been wearing looked good or that the name of the product was centered well in the pictures.

At breakfast the next morning, her father was putting too much butter on his toast, as usual, and talking up a blue streak, also as usual.

“So they want me to go to Chicago and show it to some bigwigs.” Daniel Brown stirred just the top of his coffee as he spoke. “I don’t know, though. Sometimes they get you in them big buildings and try to steal your ideas. They pick your brain and tell you they’ll get back to you. Then the first thing you know they coming out with your idea and talking about how somebody else developed it.”

“I don’t see what’s so wonderful about these dyes when you didn’t even invent them.” Carol Brown had poured a measured quarter cup of half-and-half into a mixing bowl with two eggs. “I think you’re just frustrated because you’re not a doctor.”

“Frustrated?” Daniel’s forehead furrowed. “Damn right, I’m frustrated. Anytime you can’t be what you want to be, you’re either frustrated or a fool!”

“So what’s your idea, Daddy?” Crystal was doing her face-stretching exercises in front of a makeup mirror on the table.

“Are you in pain or something?”

“Her facial exercises,” Mrs. Brown said. “To keep her face firm. You wouldn’t understand.”

“You’re right about that,” Daniel said. “I sure don’t understand what a sixteen-year-old girl needs to do exercises to keep her face looking good for. Suppose a ugly girl do the exercises, do she stay ugly?”

“Tell me about your idea, Daddy.”

“Yeah, well, I figure if all the hospitals in the country would use these inert dyes as wrist markers to color code basic patient information—allergies and whatnot—then there would be a lot fewer accidents.”

“If people were more careful, then there wouldn’t be any accidents,” Carol said.

“Yeah, but they ain’t and that’s that,” Daniel responded. “Put some fire under the coffee, baby.

“Anyway, if I do go, I’ll get a lot of recognition from the hospital,” he went on. “Then, if they put my idea in practice, maybe they’ll even name it after me.”

“The Brown Plan?” Crystal looked up. “Sounds like Dull City to me.”

“What’s wrong with Brown? Brown’s a nice name. If you were smart you’d look around for a boy named Brown to marry so you wouldn’t have to change your name.”

“Can’t you think of anything else for your daughter than getting married?” Crystal’s mother asked.

“Loretta thinks I should just use Crystal. She says it has a nice feel about it.”

“Sure does, baby.” Daniel closed his eyes and put his head back. “I remember when I went to see you for the first time. I was working at Sydenham Hospital and you were born in Metropolitan.”

“Do you want coffee?” Carol poured two eggs into a small frying pan and ran the whisk through them in a quick, counterclockwise motion.

“Yeah, give me a little more coffee,” Daniel said, his eyes still closed. “The last snow of the season had just fallen and it was cold as anything for March. I was walking down along Fifth Avenue, and there was a newsstand with icicles hanging from it.”

“I think I’ve heard this story a thousand times, and it doesn’t get a bit better,” Carol said.

“Yeah, it do,” Daniel said. “Now listen to this part. I saw them icicles and they look just like crystals to me and that’s how you got your name.”

“If I had known that’s what you were naming her after, I wouldn’t have accepted it,” Carol said.

“Crystal.” Daniel opened his eyes and put his hand on his daughter’s wrist. “The way your mama used to love me, I could have called you Snowflake and she would have loved the sound of me saying it.”

“She still does, right, Mama?” Crystal was cutting the cantaloupe her mother had given her.

“Can you imagine?” Carol put the perfectly scrambled eggs in the middle of the table. “If we had had a boy, he wanted to name him Roosevelt.”

“After
Teddy
, not Franklin,” Daniel said.

“What difference does it make?” Carol asked.

“It makes a lot of difference,” Daniel said. “Franklin was a politician, Teddy was a fighter. That’s what the Browns are, fighters.”

“When you going to Chicago, Daddy?”

“They want me to go the end of October,” Daniel Brown
said. “I guess I’ll go. What the heck, they can use the thrill of seeing a real Brown in action.”

“Mama, did you tell Daddy?”

“I don’t see why we have to discuss everything in the world with your father, Crystal,” Carol said, glancing toward her husband. “We wouldn’t, either, if he could drag himself out of the Stone Age.”

“Tell me what?” Daniel Brown looked at Crystal.

“Daniel, please don’t start acting colored,” Carol said. She turned out the fire under the coffee and poured him a cup.

“Tell me what?”

“Loretta wants Crystal to go out with a boy in public so they’ll be seen together.”

“In public?” Daniel put two teaspoons of sugar in his coffee and stirred it. “Who’s the boy, King Kong?”

“Sean Farrell, Daddy,” Crystal said. “He was the teenager in
US Inc.
last year, but he’s going to have his own show in the fall.”

“This date is going to be in public?”

“Yes.” Carol turned and looked at her husband. “They’ll be taken to a nightclub in a limousine, stay for two hours, and then Crystal will be brought back to the house in the limousine.”

“Yeah, so why you so worried about me acting ‘colored’?” Daniel asked.

“Sean Farrell’s White,” Crystal said.

“You are the funniest people in the world,” Daniel Brown said, shaking his head. “You keep thinking I got something against White folks and I don’t. I mean as long as this whole thing is in public, it’s okay. You just take a hatpin or some
thing along in case he gets frisky in the back of the car.”

“I heard he wasn’t the frisky type,” Crystal said, smiling.

“You can’t tell about them show-business types,” Daniel answered. He brought the coffee to his lips and tasted it. Then he made a face. “This is the worse coffee I have ever tasted in my whole life, woman. Didn’t your mama teach you nothing?”

“Not enough,” Carol Brown said.

“Now what’s that supposed to mean?” Daniel asked. “Crystal, what is your mother talking about?”

Crystal shrugged and stretched her face in the mirror, this time sticking out her tongue. Her father did the same thing and they both laughed.

Loretta said that she would be working all day for Crystal, and that Crystal, in turn, would be working for two hours for her.

“Jerry called this morning—he has this shoot to do with the Waterman agency, something about Swiss watches. He was going to let it go by, but then he thought about shooting you and Alyce Winslow together.”

“Who’s Alyce Winslow?” Crystal was in the back of the limo with Loretta, facing her on one of the small seats.

“She was with Mannequin, but now she’s with Corolla. She’s
very
hot. I understand she’s not very nice, though.”

Crystal shrugged.

“When Jerry asked if you were free this morning, he was really beside himself. He apologized all over the place, but I think we have to bend for somebody like Jerry once in a while—don’t you think so?”

“I don’t mind,” Crystal said. “It beats Geometry.”

“I even picked up the wardrobe for him,” she said, indicat
ing the boxes on the seat next to Crystal. “We still have to do the thing with Sean Farrell tonight, too. Do you know Rosemarie’s column in the
Journal
?”

“I’ve seen it,” Crystal said. “It has all the inside information on stars and everything.”

“You’re going to be in it tomorrow,” Loretta said. “Rosemarie owes us. You’ll change at the office.”

“Okay,” Crystal said. “Do I go back there after I leave the club?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Loretta leaned across and looked closely at Crystal. “Do you have a base on?”

“No.”

“You’re marvelous,” she said. “I’d kill to have skin like yours.”

“Black?” Crystal asked.

“Maybe not Black—no, wait—if I got the youth to go with it, I’d take the Black, too,” Loretta said.

“You’re so sweet,” Crystal said.

“Only because you’re so lovely,” Loretta said. “And speaking of lovely, have you ever seen Sean Farrell? He’s beautiful! And he’s going to try to outshine you tonight. But we have a little something special planned. It was Rosemarie’s idea. We might even get the top of her column.”

“Will I see you later?” Crystal asked as they pulled up outside of Jerry Goodwin’s studio.

“No, I have to go and talk to the movie people about you. I want to talk to them today, and then tomorrow they’ll see the column, et cetera. It builds.”

“I feel like a project,” Crystal said.

“You are, baby,” Loretta said as they stood in front of Jerry’s brownstone. “You’re getting seven-fifty for the
shoot this morning. I sent your mother a check last week, did she get it?”

“Yes,” Crystal answered.

“How are you doing for money?”

“Fine,” Crystal said. “I’ve never had so much money in my life. I’ve never even dreamed of so much.”

“Think about this, baby,” Loretta said softly and slowly. “Modeling is a tough racket. You have to put up with a lot of garbage. You’re
earning
this money. No one is giving it to you. Watch for Rosemarie’s leads tonight.”

Jerry had a problem with the lights flickering and was trying to find the landlord. He told Crystal to go up to the studio.

“Alyce Winslow is there already,” he said. “Rowena’s there, too. She’ll fill you in on the details.”

Going up the stairs to the studio the second time was different from the first. Crystal felt more comfortable with it than she had the first time, and she was glad to see Rowena again. She rarely had time to talk to other models. Even when there were other girls on the same job, they rarely spoke. The mothers of the other girls would be fixing their hair or somehow fussing with them or just talking to them while they stared at one another, especially during auditions.

There was usually a lot of staring. Crystal would stare at the other girls to see how attractive they were, or if their breasts were more developed than hers. They would look at one another’s hair or legs or the way each girl moved, and compare themselves. It was not one of the nicer parts of the job.

A tall, incredibly thin man brushed past Crystal as she went into the studio. He seemed annoyed. Crystal turned to
watch him storm down the stairs she had just climbed and into Jerry’s first-floor apartment.

“Oh, are you Crystal?” The voice from behind her had a slight English accent.

“Yes.” Crystal turned to see a young girl, near her own age, sitting astride a chair.

“I’m Alyce Winslow,” the girl said. “That mad, mad stork was my tutor. He’s quite annoyed that I don’t choose to learn anything about subjunctive clauses.”

She was the most exquisitely beautiful girl that Crystal had ever seen. The brown hair, disappearing behind her shoulders, framed a face that Crystal somehow remembered from story-books. She was the beautiful princess of every story that Crystal had ever read. Her eyes were blue but not the sparkling kind that Crystal had seen in some White models. Instead, they were incredibly calm and distant.

“I’m glad to be working this morning,” Crystal said. “I would have Geometry if I didn’t.”

“Do you go to school?” Alyce asked.

“You could call it a school,” Crystal said. “I’d call it a zoo.”

“Jerry told me you were beautiful, but I couldn’t imagine how you would look,” Alyce said. “I like to do that, to hear about someone and imagine how they might look.”

“How did you think I would look?” Crystal asked.

“Well, of course he said that you were Black, so I imagined someone darker,” Alyce said. “I thought of Iman, the African girl. I envy her neck. Then I thought you might look like one of the rock stars. But you’re quite special. You’re vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable?”

“It means that you look as if you can be hurt easily,” Alyce said. “Men like that sort of thing, I’m told.”

“I think you’re very attractive,” Crystal said.

“But I’m different than you, so we won’t be competing,” Alyce said. “We’ll work well together. I have a cold look. Men adore that in young girls.”

“Do you know what we’re doing today?”

“Probably nothing. The electricity’s not right or something and Jerry think’s he’s too upset to work. He’s already spoken to the account, and they’ve agreed to put off the shoot until next week.”

“Oh, he didn’t tell me that,” Crystal said.

“He’s upset,” Alyce said. “Have you seen Rowena?”

“No. Jerry said she’s here, though.” Crystal slid down the wall until she reached the floor.

“She’s slinking around in Jerry’s bathrobe.” Alyce smiled with her mouth, but her eyes didn’t change expression. “I’m supposed to work with her next Wednesday, but I don’t have to if I don’t want to.”

“For Jerry?”

“No, for Bob Stiller. Do you know him?”

“I don’t think so,” Crystal said.

“He’s fat and all hands, if you know what I mean. Rowena probably likes him.”

“Here she comes,” Crystal said, noticing Rowena bringing in a bowl of fruit.

“Hello, Rowena.” Alyce put her head to one side and smiled. This time her whole face lit up. Crystal wondered if her smile was as good as Alyce’s.

“Hi, Jerry said it looks like it’s really off,” Rowena said. “I mean, the stupid electricity! That kind of stuff really bugs me.”

“I was telling Crystal that I was looking for someone to work with when I shoot with Bob Stiller next Wednesday,” Alyce said. “I have to figure out who’s free.”

“I’m working with you,” Rowena said. “Jerry said it’ll be good for me to work in jewelry again.”

“The guy from the account said I could choose,” Alyce said matter-of-factly, as she rose from the chair, turned it around, and sat again. “I told him I didn’t like working with just anyone.”

“Oh?” Rowena looked at Alyce.

“The account doesn’t use Blacks, so that leaves Crystal out,” Alyce said. “Who do you think I should choose, Rowena?”

“Do you want fruit?” Rowena asked, holding out the bowl.

“Any bananas?” Crystal asked.

Rowena took a banana from the bowl and handed it to Crystal.

“Are you free Wednesday?” Alyce asked, turning to Crystal. “Maybe I could get the account to change his mind.”

“I—I don’t know,” Crystal said.

“Are you free, Rowena?” Alyce asked.

“You know I am,” Rowena said. “We were supposed to do the shoot together.”

“I could work with you; it might be nice,” Alyce said. “I would, too, if you would do me a favor. Would you?”

“What kind of favor?” Rowena asked. She sat cross-legged on the floor, answering without looking at the younger girl.

“Well, you see”—Alyce crossed her legs and looked over
to where Crystal watched in fascination—“I was told that to be a really great model you had to experience all sorts of things that great women experienced. And I imagined that I was a queen of a faraway place….”

“I do that sometimes,” Rowena said, looking up. She was eating an apple, and the juice from it moistened her full lips. “Once I imagined I was a princess and—who was it?—oh, yes, Russell Crowe rescued me from the Huns or some other sort of bad guys. I was a princess and my mom was the queen. It was a neat dream.”

“I imagined I was a queen and my subjects came and asked me for bread,” Alyce said. “And, being a good queen, of course, I gave it to them. And then each of them curtsied to me three times in gratitude. I thought, in the dream, that it was a nice feeling. That if I could do it in real life, it could be useful if I ever got a job that needed that sort of feeling.”

“You want a job as a queen? You’re too young,” Rowena said. “You’d have to be a princess.”

“Rowena, if you do me a favor and curtsy to me three times, so I would know how it felt, I will do you a favor and work with you next Wednesday.”

Rowena didn’t move.

The windows of Jerry’s studio were covered with white sheeting. The morning sun, slanting through them, caught the dust in the air and made it shimmer. The soft light was becoming to Alyce as she sat, head high, almost motionless, in the chair.

Crystal pushed the peels of the banana together and held them as if the banana were again whole. Then, one by one, she let the peels fall, revealing the half-eaten flesh within.

“Rowena?” Alyce’s voice broke the stillness.

Rowena didn’t move.

Crystal, from the corner of her eye, saw Alyce’s head move. Crystal looked up to see Alyce looking at her and smiling. Then the girl turned away and spoke again.

“Rowena?”

Rowena got up and stood before Alyce. Crystal held her breath as Rowena curtsied slowly once, twice, and then a third time. Then Rowena turned quickly and picked up the fruit bowl.

“Want any more fruit?” she asked, smiling.

“No,” Crystal answered, not looking at her.

“Better save it for Wednesday,” Alyce said. “You know how long Bob takes in his shoots.”

Rowena took the fruit and left.

“Do you think that was cruel?” Alyce asked after Rowena had left.

“I don’t know,” Crystal said. “I mean, if it was really a dream…”

“I think it was,” Alyce said, smiling prettily.

“Darling”—George looked over Crystal’s head at her mirror image—“it’s not going to be easy to do you.”

“
Do
me?” Crystal wrinkled up her nose.

“Don’t wrinkle your nose, it’ll only lead to permanent wrinkles later on.”

“Okay.” Crystal forced a smile. She didn’t particularly like George. He always made her feel uncomfortable somehow, in a way that most older men didn’t.

George was in his late forties, perhaps even early fifties, Crystal couldn’t tell. He was a striking-looking man with silver-gray hair and sharp features. What made him look odd
to Crystal, at least close up, was the fact that he always wore a powder base and eyeliner.

Crystal sat stiffly in front of the makeup table as George fluttered about her, carefully applying her makeup. First there was the liquid foundation that was slightly lighter than her skin color.

“You have good skin and it’ll last as long as you take care of it.” George put different-colored face powders on the inside of Crystal’s arms. “You’ll have trouble if you ever try to get a face-lift, though. You people scar easily.”

“I’m only sixteen,” Crystal said.

“It won’t last, believe me,” George said. He selected the powder he preferred and sponged the others off.

“That’s a different powder than I’ve been using,” Crystal said.

“Fashion Fair is very good,” George countered. “And it’s different than you’ve been using because Loretta wants you to be different than you’ve been.”

“How?”

“Keep still,” George said as he applied the translucent powder. “You’re going to be in your twenties tonight.”

Crystal watched in the mirror as George worked. He dusted her face very gently and then began applying highlighter. He worked slowly, stepping away from her now and again to see how he was doing.

“Don’t sweat,” George said as he wielded the small sponge he used. He highlighted Crystal’s cheekbones, blending the light powder carefully upward toward her temples, making her eyes appear slanted. It was a nice effect, making her look almost Asian.

“How can I keep from sweating?” Crystal said, with
out moving her face.

“Think about money,” George replied. “Money thoughts are very calming when you have the stuff.”

“How do you know I have money?” Crystal asked.

“Stop talking,” George said. “You have youth and you look delicious. It’s like having a blank check. You just have to decide how many signatures you’ll take. Lift your chin up.”

Crystal lifted her chin.

George did Crystal’s eyes with dark-brown eye shadow, making them look deeper, adding years to her face. There were touches of highlighter on her brows and deep gold on the lid itself.

The last bits of roundness from her face were taken out with contour shadow on her cheeks. Crystal hardly recognized herself in the mirror.

“Don’t be surprised,” George murmured. “Given a decent bone structure, and enough time, I can perform all sorts of little miracles.”

“I do look older,” Crystal said.

“Ssh!” George put on the lipliner and brushed on two shades of lipstick, a brown shade on her upper lip and a reddish-brown shade on her lower. Then he touched them lightly with gloss.