Crystal Read online

  “How do you feel now?” Jerry said. “Better?”

  “I didn’t feel bad before,” Crystal said.

  “I thought you did,” Jerry said.

  “You think the pictures are coming out bad?”

  “We’ll see,” Jerry said, flatly. “Look, try on the white coat. Maybe we can get something going with that.”

  “Can I have a minute?”

  Jerry looked up from the camera. “A minute? Yeah, sure. You know where the washroom is.”

  Crystal got up from the log and stepped out of the set. Jerry went to the phone and started dialing as Crystal went to the washroom.

  She knew it was going wrong. She didn’t feel that the session was working. Jerry wasn’t saying much; he wasn’t being very encouraging at all. She didn’t feel beautiful or even pretty. She wasn’t feeling sexy, either.

  One of her first jobs had been modeling wide fabric belts with another girl. The belts were elastic and had brass catches in the back that left marks on her ribs. She had been uncomfortable the entire session, and she hadn’t done a very good job. The client had watched the shoot and kept saying she should be sexier. Afterward, she had asked the other girl how she managed to look so sexy.

  “Just forget who you really are,” the girl had said. “Make believe you’re some kind of a sexy thing.”

  Crystal took a deep breath and tried to remember the kind of sexy thing the girl had pretended to be that day.

  In the washroom she took the black coat off and put it on one of the racks. How could she forget who she was?

  The bra of the swimsuit fastened in front and Crystal undid it easily. The walls of the small room were mirrored and she looked at herself in them. Her breasts weren’t large, but they were well shaped and stood out nicely. Loretta had said that in a year or two she would have to do exercises to keep them firm.

  How could she forget who she was?

  She refastened the swimsuit bra.

  But Jerry was right. She was selling sex and glamour and all the things that she had, or might have, to people who believed in them.

  Just forget who you are.

  Crystal slipped into the white coat and returned to the set. Jerry was still on the phone. He was looking at her as he spoke. She winked at him and he winked back.

  Just forget who you are, she said to herself again. There were things that were right and things that were wrong, and so many things that fell in between, gray, confusing things that nobody ever quite mentioned and that would go away if you didn’t notice them.

  “You look sexier already,” Jerry said. “I really mean it.”

  “Thank you.” Crystal managed a smile. “I feel sexier, too.”

  “Take a look at this Polaroid while I change the film.” Jerry brought the picture to Crystal.

  It was a nice shot. She was sitting on the chair, leaning on the table. The coat was bunched between her thighs.

  “Like it?” Jerry asked.

  “I like it,” Crystal said.

  Jerry changed the Bronica’s film holder. Once he had let her shoot a few pictures of him. She had enjoyed looking down into the large screen of the camera. She remembered how self-conscious Jerry was to have his picture taken.

  “Let’s try a few shots in front of the city background again,” Jerry said.

  “Sure,” Crystal said.

  Jerry put the chair back in the set and handed Crystal the flower that had been in the bottle.

  “Give the camera a smile,” Jerry said.

  Crystal turned slowly toward the camera. She smiled. She let the smile fade gradually, licking her lips slowly.

  “You look sooo sexy!”

  She turned. Stretched her legs, put her head down, and looked coquettishly up at the camera. She thought she might have looked silly.

  “Sooo sexy!” Jerry said as the camera’s motor whirred furiously.

  The coat was slightly large for her and she could move, could turn her shoulders slightly, without turning the coat. The silk lining of the large coat felt cool against her bare skin.

  “Pout!”

  She pouted. She put her finger in her mouth.

  “Good! You’re great! You’re simply great!”

  She pulled the bottom of the coat up slowly until it was around her thighs. She had seen Rowena doing that once; she had done it herself in front of a mirror at home.

  “Sensational!” he said. Jerry stopped shooting for a moment, just long enough to put a tape on the recorder. Marc Anthony’s voice came over the speakers, filling the room, the rhythm pulsating against the walls.

  Crystal pretended that she was someone else, some other girl who would do anything that Jerry wanted. Almost anything.

  “Move!” he said. “You’re free as a bird!”

  The girl fastened one button of the coat and then began to turn, her arms out, her head down and then back. Turned, spun, the hem of the coat whipping against her legs.

  Jerry came closer, his face obscured behind the camera. The girl looked into it.

  The girl did everything the photographer wanted. It was almost as if she had to get into all the poses, all the sexy positions, that Crystal wouldn’t.

  “Sooo sexy,” the photographer was saying.

  The camera clicked and whirred.

  “Lean back…don’t smile, just think how beautiful you are.”

  The girl didn’t think of how beautiful she was. In her mind she watched a photographer take pictures of another girl.

  “Okay! Okay! We got it—you were wonderful!” Jerry’s voice startled Crystal. He was standing near her, smiling. “You know, I think you’re really a very sexy girl, but you hold it back. I think you just have to let others see it in you.”

  As Jerry turned away to his cameras Crystal thought of what he had said about her being really sexy. It was funny; there was a song they sang in church about letting others see you. Only in church it was “Let Others See Jesus in You.”

  She took the coat off and hung it up carefully. She gathered her own clothing and went into the washroom. She washed quickly and dressed even faster. For some reason she thought that Jerry might come in.

  She was glad to get into her street clothes.

  “Are you going back to Brooklyn, now?” Crystal saw that Jerry already had on the old army fatigue jacket he always wore.

  “You wouldn’t want to stop for a soda, would you?” she asked.

  “I don’t want to stop for anything until I get the film to the lab.” Jerry tapped his camera bag. “I’ll carry them over to Modernage and then start thinking about how to do a presentation for Everby.”

  “Oh, sure,” Crystal said.

  “You have cab fare home?”

  “Yes.”

  Jerry kissed her on the forehead in the lobby. Then he hustled off into the crowd along Fifty-eighth Street.

  Crystal walked slowly along Fifty-eighth until she reached Fifth Avenue. She thought of taking the “A” train to Brooklyn. She would take the “F” to West Fourth and then switch to the “A” there. It was a long ride, but she wasn’t in a hurry.

  8

  The rocking and jerking of the “A” train made Crystal feel uncomfortable. Across from her, two men in overalls leaned against the door. One of them winked at her and she looked away. She couldn’t stop thinking about the photo session. She wished that she could have had a soda with Jerry. She wondered if he really was as high on the pictures as he seemed. She wondered, too, what the pictures were like.

  The train pulled into Utica and the small woman sitting next to her got up and left. A large woman with heavy breasts that seemed to almost fall into her lap sat down quickly, her wide hips jostling Crystal slightly. Crystal looked at her and saw that her forehead was wet with perspiration. In her mind, Crystal quickly made the woman up. A concealer, a little lipstick—it didn’t help.

  “This train go to East New York?” the woman asked in a singsong voice that sounded West Indian.

  “I think so,” Crystal sa
id. She smiled.

  “You a pretty little thing,” the woman said.

  “Thank you.”

  “You got to thank Jesus on your knees to be sanctified and safe from the devil’s hands,” the woman said. “You got to thank Him on your knees.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Lord knows I been tempted!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But I keeps my skirts down and my eyes up to heaven.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The woman nodded firmly and looked straight ahead. Crystal hoped she wasn’t one of the crazy women who rode the subway.

  The woman got off at the same stop as Crystal, on Fulton Street. A young girl met her at the subway. The girl looked vaguely like the woman but was very pretty. She was dark, with smooth skin and almond eyes. Crystal followed behind them for a while, listening to the lilt of their voices, watching how nicely the girl moved. The girl was older than Crystal, and Crystal wondered if she was safe from the devil’s hands.

  She got home and her mother was talking to Sister Gibbs. Crystal kissed her mother before slipping out of her jacket.

  “How did the shooting go today?” her mother asked.

  “Okay,” Crystal said. “A little risqué, though.”

  “Loretta said we’d have full approval of any shots,” Carol Brown said. “Was Jerry happy?”

  “I guess.”

  “What you taking pictures for now?” Sister Gibbs asked.

  “A magazine,” Crystal answered.

  “Not Ebony?”

  “No,” Crystal said, opening the door to the refrigerator. “Anything here to eat?”

  “There’s tuna salad,” Mrs. Brown said. “It’s fresh.”

  “How you keep your pretty little figure and eat so much, girl?” Sister Gibbs asked.

  “I eat salads, mostly,” Crystal answered. “And I exercise like crazy.

  “What’s Daddy going to eat?” Crystal spotted a cucumber in the back of the refrigerator and took it.

  “Wash that thing before you eat it,” her mother said.

  “You ought to try to get into Ebony,” Sister Gibbs said. “I think you can get famous in Ebony.”

  “She’s been in Ebony and she is famous,” Crystal’s mother said.

  “I mean really famous,” Sister Gibbs said. “Where everybody know you and everything!”

  “How you doing, Sister Gibbs?” Crystal sat at the table across from her. “Did I tell you that I saw Fat Pugh over on Marcy Avenue?”

  “What I’m interested in him for?” Sister Gibbs shifted her ample weight in the chair. “I ain’t a bit steadin’ about where he is or who he be with.”

  “I wasn’t even going to mention her,” Crystal said. She was slicing the cucumber and putting the wafer-thin pieces on a saucer.

  “Who?”

  “I thought you weren’t interested?”

  “I ain’t,” Sister Gibbs said. “I just want to know who the hussy is. He don’t go with but one old bag, anyway. That’s that Dorothy Nixon from Bibleway. She ain’t got no more hair than take wings and fly! Is she, Miss Brown?”

  “Not much more,” Crystal’s mother responded to the Miss Brown.

  “I think I’m going to lie down awhile,” Crystal said. “I’m really pooped!”

  “Who he be with, Crystal?” Sister Gibbs looked serious.

  “Nobody but his sister, Jennie,” Crystal said. “Every time I see him he’s with her and asking about you.”

  “He better not be going out with nobody else and asking me to no dinner!” Sister Gibbs said. “I don’t play no two-way street!”

  “Pugh told Mattie’s sister that he’s got something to ask Sister Gibbs,” Mrs. Brown said. “I think he’s about ready to pop the question.”

  “I got to baby-sit for my cousin Evelyn tonight and I got to work tomorrow and I don’t know when I’ll get home,” Sister Gibbs said. “I’m gonna do my hair tonight, and I wonder if you can kind of help me with my makeup, Crystal? I don’t mean nothing too fancy or nothing, because I ain’t trying to backslide.”

  “Sure,” Crystal said.

  “Oh, Loretta called and asked if you could make a party tomorrow night, and I said that you probably could.”

  “I’ll have to call her,” Crystal said. “I promised Pat I’d study with her.”

  “Perhaps we can talk about it later?”

  “I guess so,” Crystal said. “I think I’m going to lie down awhile.”

  “They working you too hard, girl,” Sister Gibbs said. “That smiling in front of a camera and them hot lights will suck the juice right out of you.”

  Crystal went to her room and headed for the bed. She noticed a basket in the corner of the room and went to it. It was the basket her father had bought for Gizmo. The kitten was curled in one corner of the basket in a tight little ball. There was a saucer with milk in it next to the basket. Crystal knelt near the basket and rubbed her fingertips lightly through the kitten’s amber fur. It moved slightly and then was still.

  “Crystal?”

  Crystal turned to see Sister Gibbs at the door. “Just watching Gizmo sleep.”

  “You all right, girl?”

  “Yes, I’m fine,” Crystal said.

  “Your mama figured you didn’t want that tuny salad so she run out to the supermarket to get you something else.”

  “Oh. I’m not really that hungry,” Crystal said, sitting up.

  “I hope you don’t mind helping me with my makeup. You know, when the Good Lord was giving out looks, He must have been kind of low on His supplies when He got to me.”

  “I like making people up,” Crystal said.

  “You looking kind of down,” Sister Gibbs said. “You have a rough day today?”

  “The photographer wanted me to take my clothes off,” Crystal said. “Nothing wrong with it, I’m just not too used to it, that’s all.”

  “You take off all your clothes?”

  “I was wearing a fur coat,” Crystal said. “And a swimsuit, but it didn’t show.”

  “Well, no wonder you is tired. Ain’t nothing weary the body like a restless soul,” Sister Gibbs said. “You gettin’ into this modeling mess deeper than you want to be, huh?”

  “No, it’s okay.” Crystal smiled. “Modeling is a business and some things in the business you have to learn. Anyway they’re so professional, those photographers. Sometimes I think they don’t even see women as people.”

  Sister Gibbs sat on the bed next to Crystal. She reached down and picked up the sleeping Gizmo. In her large hand the fluffy kitten looked tiny. Sister Gibbs spoke in a low voice without turning to Crystal.

  “You told your mama you posing without your clothes on?”

  “Sure, she knows what modeling is like,” Crystal said. “I mean, it’s not like I’m doing anything wrong, Sister Gibbs.”

  “Uh-huh. I hear you, but you start to taking my number around with you, girl,” she said. “You need you somebody to pray with you, just call me. If you find yourself in some kind of way and you can’t pray, you call Sister Gibbs and we can talk till you can pray, okay?”

  “Sure, Sister Gibbs.” Crystal liked Sister Gibbs, but she didn’t think the nut-brown woman would ever understand modeling or any other kind of modern business.

  “And you just keep this one thing in mind, child,” Sister Gibbs said. “It ain’t knowing what’s the right thing or the wrong thing that gets us into trouble. That ain’t what it is. What gets us into trouble is not making up our minds about things. We goes around pretending that we don’t know what to do, or we ain’t thinking on it because we ain’t talking about it. You get yourself into some trouble, you take a minute to make your mind up. You got the right kind of training to bring yourself through. Now you just get you some sleep and dream about something nice.”

  “I’ll dream about making you up,” Crystal said.

  Sister Gibbs patted Crystal’s hand, put Gizmo down, and left, hesitating at the door for a moment as if she had
something else to say and then changing her mind.

  “Did you ever want to be a model?” Crystal asked. “I mean, when you were my age?”

  “Me?” Crystal’s mother put both hands on her chest. “No, when I was a girl they didn’t use as many models as they do now. There weren’t as many television programs and the ones that were on had less advertising. And when they did use models they didn’t use Black models.

  “What I wanted to do was to sing on stage. I wanted to be in musical comedy. I was in a school production of Oklahoma! when I was fifteen, and it was just about the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me. A singing coach heard me, he was Italian, and asked my parents to let me take lessons with him. When they agreed, I could have flown over the city like a bird. I just could have. I studied with him for almost two years. He even got me a small part in a chorale up at Lewisohn Stadium. He talked about me studying in Europe and maybe getting into opera, because there were so few opportunities in this country. I thought I would just go from there.”

  “What happened?”

  “I met your father, and we started going together, and before I knew it, we were married. I thought it wouldn’t make a difference. He had his ideas about what we should do and I had mine. At first I was strong. I was really strong.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I was pregnant,” Crystal’s mother said, wistfully. “But that turned out to be wonderful, too, because you were the child. Isn’t that great?”

  “Yeah, it’s great for me,” Crystal said.

  “You have to be strong to do anything worthwhile, I think.”

  “Something funny happened at the studio today,” Crystal said, not looking up from her math book. “I think Jerry really wanted me to take all my clothes off.”

  “He asked you to…” Her mother traced her fingers along the raised figures on the sides of the antique coffee set. “Of course, he didn’t say anything out of line, did he?”

  “No,” Crystal said. “I just wanted to let you know.”

  “Oh, good.” Carol Brown’s fingers drummed nervously on her legs. “Of course, learning to pose is part of being professional. You can’t think like someone who isn’t in the business.”