Crystal (2 page)

Crystal looked at Rowena, who stood with the bathrobe open. She was naked underneath, and she did have a nice body.

“You know how I got to be a model?” Rowena asked. “I was in the park with my kid brother, and Jerry came along and started taking pictures of me. I thought he was just trying to come on to me, you know what I mean? But he was kind of cute, so when he asked me my name and address I gave them to him.”

“And he called you for a job?”

“Almost four months later,” Rowena said. “A client came in and saw my picture on his wall. He said I was ‘different,’ and wanted to know if Jerry could get me. Jerry called up and was all cool and everything, but he really wanted me bad. He was flat-out broke. How’d you break in?”

“They were doing this commercial for fried chicken at my church,” Crystal said. “They just shot the choir singing, and then cut to a family eating chicken at home. Anyway, this guy saw me and he mentioned me to Loretta, she’s my agent.”

“You take any classes or anything?” Rowena asked, stepping into the swimsuit.

“No. Loretta contacted me through the pastor of the church. She had a photographer she knows take some pictures to see how I looked. The pictures were okay and she started finding jobs for me.”

“You’ve got a good face. You can probably look cool or hot or anything,” Rowena said. “I’ve only got one look. You know, real sexy, like this…”

Rowena closed her eyes halfway and parted her lips slightly.

“Verrry sexy!” Crystal said.

“Yeah, that’s cool,” Rowena said. “But it’s only one look. I can’t look like a girl scout or anything like that. My eyes are wrong. I’ve got thick eyelids and that makes my eyes look too small. When I first started, I was really hot. Everyone liked my eyes, and then some other girls came along with my look. But I was still hot. Now I’m not so hot, but Jerry thinks my look will come back. I’m only eighteen, so I got time.”

“I think you’re pretty,” Crystal said.

“I am,” Rowena said. “But your look has to be in or you’re dead. Jerry thinks I could go to Rome, where I’d be different and do a whole step number.”

“Step number?”

“The fashion shows.” Rowena smiled. She stepped backward three steps, then forward two steps and turned. “I did it once for a lady in Chicago. She kept giving me these steps to do, the kind they teach you in modeling school. You walk down this runway showing off the clothes. It’s okay, but Chicago was so hot it was unbelievable. Maybe I can go back to doing that again.”

“Jerry liked you,” Crystal said, adjusting the strap that came from the waist of the swimsuit. “Loretta, that’s my agent, says he’s really good.”

“That’s why I do anything he asks me,” Rowena said. She seemed, for a moment, as if she were going to smile, and then she glanced quickly away. “I mean, just anything he asks me.”

“Okay, girls, this is what I want.” Jerry Goodwin finished adjusting the lights. “I want you to look sexy in these swim
suits. And sexy isn’t wiggling your hips, Rowena. Sexy is what you feel and what you send out to the camera. I want you both to get into the set and crawl around like tigers—I guess it’s tigresses.”

Crystal watched as Rowena slipped out of the bathrobe and went on to the set. She thought Rowena looked great in the tiger-print suit. Rowena went down on her knees and started walking on all fours as if she were an animal.

“That’s it!” Jerry said. “You got it, Rowena!”

The camera clicked and whirred as Jerry started taking pictures of Rowena. He had a camera on a tripod, which he looked down into. There was another camera on the wall, and he had a long cable release for that one.

“You want me to get in, too?” Crystal asked.

“Well, you’re not here to paint the studio,” Jerry said gruffly, without looking up.

Crystal got down on the floor of the set and started crawling around as she saw Rowena doing. Rowena was making noises, low noises, like an animal growling, and Crystal wondered if she had done this before.

“Get your rear end up, Crystal!” Jerry called. “Arch your back!”

She knew what Jerry meant, and how to do it. She had seen pictures of models doing that kind of thing, making themselves look as if their proportions were all wrong. Boys in school would look at magazines with the girls doing that and make comments. Crystal tried not to think about what she was doing so much. She imagined that she was an animal, slinking about in the jungle. The lights were hot, but not as hot as the photographer’s lights when she modeled the tops.

“That’s it.” Jerry spoke as the cameras clicked. “Keep those backs arched.”

Rowena was going crazy. Her face looked angry. She got down really low, so that her chest was on the ground and her rear end high. She started toward Crystal as if she were going to attack her, and Crystal backed away. Then Crystal moved toward Rowena, and Rowena moved back but not much.

“Look toward me and freeze, Crystal,” Jerry said.

Crystal looked at him and smiled.

“Don’t smile! Tigers don’t smile!”

Crystal stopped smiling.

“Wake up, Rowena!”

Rowena put her hands on Crystal’s back and then her head. It was hard for Crystal to imagine just what Rowena was doing. She tried to imagine what the pictures would be like, how they would look on the proof sheets. Images of herself crawling around in the small set combined with images of herself in church that morning.

“Okay, Crystal, come out of the set and let me get some shots of Rowena.”

Crystal stood up and walked out of the set. She pulled the bathing suit down in front where it was binding into her hip. There was a wooden chair by the wall, and she sat on it and watched as Jerry kept photographing Rowena. Rowena rolled and slid across the plastic grass of the set. She growled at the camera and used her hands as if they were claws to swing at it. Crystal wondered if Jerry really wanted Rowena to do that. She wondered what he really thought of her.

When the session was over, Jerry turned off the lights that were on the jungle set. Crystal watched him go from
light to light, putting his hand in front of each bulb to see how warm it was after he had turned it off. He went back to the camera.

“Hold it!” Jerry held up his hand.

Crystal looked to where the camera was pointing and saw Rowena. She was in a robe and wiping the perspiration from her legs with the bathing suit she had been wearing.

Jerry didn’t say much to Crystal afterward, just that he would be in touch with Loretta.

By the time Crystal got home, she was exhausted. There was a note on the refrigerator from her mother, saying that she was going to the store for milk and would be right back. Crystal took a shower and put on a robe. Her mother was home when she came out.

“How did it go?” Carol Brown leaned against the kitchen sink as she talked to her daughter.

“Okay,” Crystal said. “Did Loretta tell you about the new foundation she wanted me to try?”

“I wanted to ask you about the session today.” Crystal’s mother had a cup of tea cradled in her hands. “I didn’t tell your father that you were going to a photographer’s studio by yourself.”

“I don’t think it was that big a deal,” Crystal said.

“Then why did Loretta ask me not to come?”

“She said that some mothers are—you know—”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Brown said. “Some mothers are what?”

“I guess they want to tell people what to do or something,” Crystal said. “She also said that if your mother comes along, they think about you as if you’re still a kid or something.”

“And you’re grown, right?” Carol Brown touched her daughter’s hair to see if it was still wet.

“I didn’t say that,” Crystal said, returning her mother’s smile.

“Girl, I was pretty when I was your age.”

“You’re pretty now, Mama,” Crystal said. “Loretta said you could be a model. You could model for JCPenney. She even said it.”

“That’s behind me,” her mother said. She had put on the water for more tea and now poured it into the dark porcelain pot. “What I did with my being pretty was go out and find a pretty Black man and think I had everything. I didn’t even know how much was out there. I’m not going to stand in your way.”

“It wasn’t my idea, Mama,” Crystal said.

“I didn’t think it was,” Mrs. Brown said. “I just wanted you to know that I’m pushing for you. And I don’t think you should talk about going to the studio today with your father unless he brings it up.”

“You going to tell him?”

“Nope. Crystal, let me tell you something about men. They all want to see pretty women, but they don’t want their wives and daughters being seen,” she said. “Believe it, child.”

The
Caliper
was the DuBois High School magazine. It had been once called
The Pen
but had been changed when another high school magazine of the same name won a prize in the regional contest. Crystal’s homeroom teacher, Mrs. Sposato, said that not many students made it, but Crystal decided to try out for it anyway. She had submitted the required essay, filled out the questionnaire, and compiled a list of books she had read over the summer.

“Why do you want to be on the
Caliper
?” Mr. Dennison asked. He was the faculty adviser on the
Caliper.

“I like to write,” Crystal said. Mr. Dennison was nice looking. He had a strange way of turning his head to one side when he talked, but Crystal liked it. “I used to write poetry when I was in the seventh grade and my teacher said it wasn’t bad.”

“You write for any other school papers or magazines?” he asked.

“No,” Crystal answered.

“So you’ve just been in magazines as a model?”

“You know about that?”

“I couldn’t miss it,” he said. “You’re the biggest celebrity the school’s ever had. Want me to tell you something? You’re the first model I’ve ever talked to.”

“This is the first magazine I’ve ever wanted to get on,” she said.

“Okay, Miss Brown.” Mr. Dennison smiled. “Let’s you and I take a chance on each other. I think your experiences as a model might flesh out your writing a bit. Right now it’s pretty thin. You put words together well, but there’s not a lot of substance. I’ve scheduled a staff meeting in my office next Wednesday at three-thirty. If you have anything else you’ve written, I’d like to see it then.”

He walked away, and Crystal wrote down the time of the meeting in the appointment book that Loretta had given her.

“Two things you have to be in this business,” Loretta had said, “are beautiful and punctual.”

“Crissie!” Crystal knew it was Pat. She was the only one she allowed to call her anything but Crystal.

“Hi, Pat, how’s it going?”

“Terrible! There are two new boys, transfers.” Pat carried her books in front of her. “One is cute and little, and the other one is cute and tall. So I take a look at both of them and they take a look at me because we’re all in the library, see?”

“You taking that Library Science course?”

“It was either that or Gym, and I’m
not
taking Gym at nine o’clock in anybody’s morning,” Pat said. “Anyway, I decided that I like both of them and I’m going to let them fight it out for me, see? Then they come over and they ask
me which of them I want to go out with first.”

“They said that?”

“Yeah, child.” Pat sucked her teeth. “Just as big as you please.”

“So what did you say?”

“I said I’ve got a steady boyfriend and I didn’t go out with boys my age, anyway.”

“Since when did you get a steady boyfriend?” Crystal asked.

“I didn’t, but I had to tell those fools something.”

“You’re too much, girl,” Crystal said. “I just came from seeing Mr. Dennison about the
Caliper.
”

“You make it?”

“Yeah—he said he’d ‘take a chance’ on me.”

“Is he married?”

“I don’t know.” Crystal caught a glimpse of herself in the glass of the trophy case and pushed her hair away from her face. “You think he’s cute?”

“You talking about
the
Mr. Dennison? That gorgeous dude who teaches English?”

“That’s him.”

“If I could write, I’d be there tomorrow trying out for the
Caliper
,” Pat said.

“How did the volleyball tryouts go?”

“I didn’t make the team,” Pat said. “They only had room for two players, and they chose these two tall girls. That’s where I’m going now, to get my medical slip from Mr. Fishman. I think I’ll try out for the lacrosse team.”

“You play that, too?”

“I don’t even know what lacrosse is,” Pat said. “But I might as well try out for it.”

There was a volleyball game going on in the gym, and they stopped to watch it for a while. Crystal saw the look on Pat’s face as she watched the players. Mr. Fishman, the gym teacher, was also the volleyball coach. Pat asked him for her medical slip.

“You think I can make the lacrosse team?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Fishman said. Then he turned to Crystal. “You play tennis or something, you seem familiar.”

“Crystal’s a model,” Pat said. “She was in
Vibe
about a month ago.”

“Washing my teeth,” Crystal said.

“You trying out for any teams?”

“I don’t think I’m athletic.”

“Well, you certainly look healthy,” Mr. Fishman said, smiling. Crystal smiled back.

The volleyball came bouncing in their direction and Crystal kicked it back toward the girls playing.

“That’s not exactly how it’s done,” Mr. Fishman said.

“Why don’t you teach Pat and she can teach me,” Crystal said.

“Well…” Mr. Fishman looked at Pat. “Yeah, okay. I figure we can carry an extra girl on the team. Bring your things to the gym tomorrow after school.”

“Did you hear that Jeannie wants to sing a solo next Sunday?” Crystal asked in the hallway outside of the gym. “John Williams told me.”

“Who wants to sing a solo?”

“Jeannie,” Crystal said. “Jeannie Curry.”

“Oh.”

“You think she shouldn’t?”

“She can if she wants to,” Pat said. “I mean, it’s all right with me.”

“Then why such a pitiful little ‘Oh’?”

“If you knew how I busted my rear end trying to make that volleyball team—”

“He said you were on the team,” Crystal said.

“Sure—I try like crazy for the team and he says no,” Pat said, shaking her head. “You give him a smile and he says yes.”

“Oh, you know how men are, Pat,” Crystal said.

“Crissie Brown, this is your best friend talking, and you
know
I do not know how men are,” Pat said. “However, I am willing to learn, and I’ll take any help I can get.”

“Did I tell you about the White model I worked with Sunday?” Crystal asked.

“What was she like?”

“You remember that model that was in the ads for
I Dare
perfume?”

“Uh-uh. I just started looking at models when you started doing it.”

“Anyway, she was the one,” Crystal said. “I took pictures with her Sunday.”

“She rich?”

“She should be,” Crystal said. “All the layouts she was in.”

“Say, look, girl”—Pat stopped in front of the water cooler—“are you going to be rich?”

“How do you know I’m not rich now?” Crystal asked, giving Pat a nudge.

“Because I don’t think you’re stupid,” Pat said. “You live on Gates Avenue, in the heart of the ghetto. Ain’t nobody
live there unless they are poor. If you are not poor, then you are stupid!”

“I’d like to be rich,” Crystal said. “Who knows…maybe one day.”

“Just don’t forget your friends,” Pat said. “You’ll need me around to keep your books or something.”

“If I get rich, we’ll hire ourselves an English butler,” Crystal said.

“What you mean?” Pat said. “We need two, and they can’t be older than eighteen. And then we got to learn to walk around like we’re fragile or something.”

“Go on, girl.” Crystal laughed as Pat sashayed down the hall to her next class.

Rich was something Crystal thought she could get used to being. At first she didn’t think much about money. Modeling was just something she could do to help the family out. But that wasn’t what Loretta was talking about.

“You don’t get many chances to make real money in this life,” Loretta had said. “When you see a chance, you have to reach out and snatch it. If you don’t, somebody’s going to, you can bet on that.”

When she thought of having a lot of money, it was usually in some kind of silly way. She imagined a maid waking her in the morning with a silver bowl of cornflakes. Cornflakes with thin slices of fresh peaches with the fuzz cut off. Then the dream would switch to her mother. She would look so elegant being rich. She’d probably have a silver silk nightgown and a powder blue housecoat to wear over it. Her mother would like that. Her mother would know how to be rich, that was for sure. Her father, now that was another story.

When she got home, there were two phone calls on her message machine. One was from Loretta. She said that she had an offer from an agency dealing with a computer account.

“They want you to audition for a television spot.” Loretta’s voice coming from the answering machine seemed far away. “I think you’re supposed to look adorable while your father explains how the computer works.”

Crystal was excited when she called her agent but found that Loretta was against her taking the job.

“It sounds good to me,” Crystal said.

“I don’t think so,” Loretta said. “I wanted to tell you about it, but I don’t think we should make that kind of a move. If the agencies start seeing you around in that kind of spot, they want to keep you there. You can go from Bloomingdale’s to JCPenney in this business, but you can’t go from JCPenney to Bloomingdale’s. At any rate, I think we should wait until we see what Jerry thinks about your pictures. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And don’t forget we have a shooting tomorrow. I’ll send a car for you in the morning,” she said. “It’s going to be there at four so get to bed e-a-r-l-y. They want to shoot between five-thirty and six. Got it?”

Crystal had said okay about the television but she hadn’t
meant
okay. She really wanted to try something on television. Sometimes Loretta was confusing. She would talk about needing to be exposed, and making it big, and then she would turn things down that Crystal thought would be just right for her.

The other call was from Pat. She wanted the History assignment.

“Don’t do it,” Crystal said. “Didn’t you have to go for the tryouts during History?”

“Yeah, but I might as well do it,” Pat said.

“Look, Pat,” Crystal said. “If you’re trying out for something in the school, then that’s what you’re doing. You’re not going to History, and so you don’t have to do your homework. I went to the
Caliper
and I’m not doing it.”

“I guess you’re right,” Pat answered.

Crystal had thought about doing the History homework. She had promised her mother that she would keep up with her schoolwork. She didn’t really
have to
, she knew, but she’d said she would. On the other hand, nobody expected her to be perfect.

Crystal had known Sister Gibbs for as long as she remembered. Her mother had said that she should stop doing Sister Gibbs’ hair when she started working as a model. She couldn’t, her mother had said, do everything that people from the church wanted her to, and they would just have to understand that. But the seventy-seven-year-old Sister Gibbs was special to Crystal. Crystal looked at the clock above the refrigerator and figured she could go upstairs and do Sister Gibbs’ hair and still have time to get in her exercises before dinner. If not, she could always do the exercises after dinner.

“Crystal?” The small, thin woman leaned forward. “That you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Crystal replied.

“Well, if you’re sure it’s you, come on in.” Sister Gibbs
moved away from the door.

“I figured I could do your hair this afternoon instead of tonight,” Crystal said. “If that’s all right with you, of course.”

“I don’t know.” Sister Gibbs sat at the kitchen table, her white hair just reaching the top of the high-back chair. “The little girl I used to know that did my hair used to do it in the evenings. Now this big glamorous woman come ringing my doorbell…”

“Sister Gibbs, now you just go on!” Crystal said.

“What you done heard in the streets that’s juicy?” Sister Gibbs asked.

“Nothing much,” Crystal answered. She had brought her combs and makeup kit with her and put them on the table next to the bowl of wax fruit that sat in the middle of a doily.

“What you mean ‘nothing much’?” Sister Gibbs tilted her head back so she could look at Crystal through the bottoms of her bifocals. “When I was a young girl I could always find me something juicy to carry around. Now who out here doing the dirt?”

“Sister Gibbs.” Crystal was behind the old Black woman, taking the bobby pins out of her hair. “You know the Bible says ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’”

“I ain’t asking you to do no judging,” Sister Gibbs said. “I’m just asking you to do some reportin’! Now the Bible don’t say nothin’ about no reportin’!”

“Well…” Crystal loved working on Sister Gibbs’ hair. It was so soft, it reminded her of spun silk. “I heard that Dotty, Sister Kaye’s girl—you know who I’m talking about?”

“Skinny girl with a big butt,” Sister Gibbs said dryly. “Got about as much tittie as a boy.”

“That’s the one.” Crystal smiled to herself. “I heard she
was running around with Deacon Turner’s cousin. I don’t know if it’s true or not, though.”

“’Course it’s true!” Sister Gibbs said. “They was over in that bar on Gates Avenue, ’cross from the funeral parlor, last Saturday night. Sister Williams told me she saw her coming out of it, and she walked up to her and asked her what she was doing in a bar when she was supposed to be at Bible study.”

“What she say?” Crystal was gently brushing out Sister Gibbs’ hair.

“Sister Williams said she come talking about how she was looking for her brother in there. Now you know Vernon don’t be hanging out in no bars,” Sister Gibbs said. “And Sister Williams said Dotty’s eyes was as red as a fire truck. I know she been in there nippin’!”

“Her mother’s really disappointed in her,” Crystal said. “You want some henna in your hair?”

“What I want that mess in my hair for?” Sister Gibbs asked. “You go on and comb it out like you usually do and pin it up so it look nice. Maybe put some of that moussey in it. Now what you saying about her mama being disappointed?”

“I said I thought she would be disappointed if she knew she was in that bar,” Crystal said.