Crystal

by Walter Dean Myers

  As they left, Crystal saw the assistant director offering a tissue to the author of the book Roger Hallen thought she had written.

  12

  “She’s at St. John’s Hospital in Queens,” Loretta said. “She asked for you but I don’t think you should go. Very frankly, I think Rowena’s got herself into a very bad emotional state, and I don’t want you to get into one, too.”

  “I won’t,” Crystal said. “But maybe I’ll drop by to see her after school.”

  “What time do you plan on being there?”

  “I’ll be out at two-thirty today,” Crystal said. “I guess I can get there by three-thirty.”

  “You’ll call me afterwards?”

  “Sure.”

  The subway ride from Brooklyn to St. John’s Hospital was a long one. On the way, Crystal thought about getting a private tutor. It was a good idea. She knew that she was slipping way behind in her work, and she didn’t know how she was going to catch up. A private tutor could work with her at home, perhaps. At any rate, it wouldn’t be as embarrassing as not knowing the answers in school.

  St. John’s didn’t smell like some hospitals she had been in. It was clean and fresh and the nurses looked good in their crisp white outfits. There were younger girls in pink-and-white striped outfits, whom Crystal figured to be nursing assistants. She could easily imagine herself doing that kind of work. Just helping people, not being anything special. She watched two girls talking. They were a little older than she was, maybe eighteen. They looked happy together.

  “Visiting hours are not until four, it’s ten minutes to four,” the heavy, white-haired lady at the reception desk said. “Are you over fourteen? You have to be at least fourteen to go on the wards.”

  “I saw the sign,” Crystal said.

  “Do you have school I.D.?” the woman asked.

  Crystal showed the woman her school I.D.

  “Haven’t I seen you someplace before?” The woman pulled her glasses to the end of her nose and peered at Crystal over them.

  “I’ve done some modeling work,” Crystal said. “You might have seen me in a magazine.”

  “Well, isn’t that nice.” The woman smiled pleasantly. “I thought I had seen you somewhere before!”

  “I’ll wait over here.” Crystal started walking toward the leatherette couches.

  “Oh, you can go on up,” the woman said. “Your friend’s in room two-twenty-seven.”

  There were two nurses at the reception desk on the second floor. They were watching a small television set. One of them glanced toward Crystal and beckoned her over.

  “Visiting hours are—Who are you visiting?”

  “Rowena,” Crystal said. “I think she’s in two-twenty-seven?”

  “Are you a model?” The younger nurse—a tall, red-haired girl with freckles that seemed concentrated around her nose—leaned forward.

  “Yes,” Crystal said. “How’s Rowena doing?”

  “She could be doing better,” the red-haired nurse said to Crystal. “What kinds of things do you model for?”

  “Perfume, other stuff,” Crystal said.

  “I’ll look for your picture,” the other nurse said. “You can go in now.”

  “What’s wrong with Rowena?”

  The two nurses exchanged glances. “She tried very hard to hurt herself,” the older nurse said. “She cut her wrists and took some pills.”

  “What?”

  “Are you sure you’re over fourteen?” The red-haired nurse stood up.

  Crystal fumbled through her bag and took out her I.D. again. She showed it to the two women.

  “Don’t stay too long,” the red-haired nurse said. “And why don’t you stop by the desk on your way out, okay?”

  Crystal nodded and started down the hall. She felt nervous, almost afraid. Loretta had just said that Rowena was ill. She didn’t say that Rowena had tried to kill herself.

  The room was fairly large. There were two beds. The one near the door was empty. Rowena, incredibly pale, was in the other. Crystal stood in the door for a long moment, then entered. She went as quietly as she could to the bed.

  Rowena’s eyes were puffy, but they were open. Crystal stood near the bed. There was an I.V. going into Rowena’s left arm. Both of her wrists were bandaged. On one wrist was the plastic identification bracelet all patients wore.

  “Hi.” Crystal spoke softly.

  Rowena moved her eyes away from where Crystal stood, without moving her head.

  Crystal heard a doctor being paged. The sound of the intercom seemed to come from a great distance. Traffic noises drifted from the street below.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “Stupid,” Rowena said. “Stupid and ugly.”

  “You don’t look ugly,” Crystal said.

  “Yes, I do.” Rowena’s voice cracked as she spoke. “I’ve been ugly a long time. I know that. I know that.”

  “That’s not true,” Crystal said. She put out her hand to touch Rowena’s, then moved it away quickly from the bandages.

  “You look at the pictures, and they say that they’re okay, but you know they’re ugly.”

  “Hey, Rowena, don’t talk like that. You’re going to be okay,” Crystal said. She could feel the tears stinging her eyes. “Honest.”

  “Crystal, I feel so bad.”

  “Oh, baby.” Crystal put her hand against Rowena’s cheek. “Please get all right.”

  “Could you tell my mom I’m in the hospital?” Rowena asked. “Don’t tell her what happened or anything, just tell her…tell her I’m sick. Okay?”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  “The phone probably isn’t working. We always used to have a joke, me and Mom. We’d try to figure out what worked most, Dad or the phone.”

  “I’ll go see her,” Crystal said.

  “The name is Maria DeLea,” Rowena said. “I always used to say she married my father just so her name would rhyme. But it makes it easy to remember. She lives on Bank Street in Jersey City. You can get the bus at the Port Authority. The fare’s only two seventy-five. Something like that. Anyway, she’s always home. She don’t go out or anything.”

  “I’ll do it,” Crystal said.

  “Just tell her that Rosa is sick, and see if it’s all right if I can come home.”

  “You’re Rosa?”

  “Yeah. Don’t tell anybody you’re seeing my mom, okay?”

  “How come?”

  “Where I come from, my folks and all, it’s not the greatest place, you know? That’s why anything that happens to me in New York, in modeling, it really isn’t so bad.”

  “I won’t tell anybody,” Crystal said.

  “Is my face clean?” Rowena asked. “I don’t have any makeup or anything on?”

  “There’s a little liner around your eyes,” Crystal said. “You want me to make you up so you look like Rowena again?”

  “No.” Rowena spoke softly. “Clean it all off, so I’m Rosa again.”

  There were tissues near the side of the bed, and Crystal started cleaning Rowena’s face. She had cream in her purse and put it on first, then wiped it carefully off.

  “When you get out of here we’re going to have a great time,” Crystal said. “We’re going to go down to Banana Republic on Forty-ninth Street and buy them out. You have a little lipstick on, too. You’d better leave it, because your lips look so dry.”

  “I want all of it off.” Rowena’s eyes were closed.

  “Okay, buddy,” Crystal said.

  “I knew you’d come,” Rowena said when Crystal had finished taking the lipstick off. “Before…when I was just laying in Jerry’s place on the floor, I kept thinking about you. I kept thinking that I had you for my friend.”

  “I am your friend,” Crystal said. “Now you tell me what we’re going to do together when you get well again.”

  “I don’t know,” Rowena said. “Maybe just hang out?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  There was a footstep behind
Crystal, and she turned to see Loretta come in with a short, dapper man. Crystal patted Rowena’s shoulder as Loretta and the man went to the other side of the bed.

  “How you doing, young lady?” Loretta asked.

  “Okay,” Rowena said. “I’m feeling a lot better now.”

  “This is Dr. Barber.” Loretta touched the man’s sleeve lightly. “He’s an old friend and he’s going to look out for you for a while.”

  “I’m pleased to meet such a lovely young lady,” Dr. Barber said. He spoke with a slight accent. “I’m sure you are going to be just fine.”

  “Jerry got a call from Miller Belts,” Loretta said. “They want you to do their new spring line. He told them you were busy and you’d talk to them in two weeks. You know what they did?”

  “What?”

  “They offered more money right away.” Loretta smiled. “Jerry told them you’d definitely be in touch.”

  “What did they offer?” Rowena asked.

  “They offered the same money for print as they did for the spots last year,” Loretta said, nodding in obvious satisfaction. “He asked me to handle the paperwork, if that’s all right with you.”

  “That’s real good.” Rowena tried to force a smile. “I don’t know if I’ll be…ready in two weeks.”

  “You’ll be ready.” Loretta leaned over the bed and pushed Rowena’s hair out of her eyes. “You’re going to have to get out of here and control Jerry. He was talking to another account about you on the phone today. You know the Nine West account?”

  “Shoes,” Rowena said. “I did that last year.”

  “Looks like they want you back,” Loretta said.

  “Are you getting a lot of rest?” Dr. Barber asked. “A lot of sleep?”

  “I don’t sleep much,” Rowena said.

  “You have to get your sleep. I’m going to have a talk with the resident in half an hour,” Dr. Barber said. “We’ll have you back and working very shortly. Do you know that work is an excellent medicine?”

  Rowena smiled.

  “Look, we’d better get out of here,” Loretta said. “I’ve got a lot of good things planned for you, a lot of hard work, so we’d better let you get your rest.”

  “Loretta?”

  “He’s got stomach problems again,” Loretta said. “You know how Jerry’s stomach is.”

  “Was he eating Chinese food?” Rowena asked. “I told him to stay away from Chinese food.”

  “I’ll remind him.” Loretta leaned over the bed and kissed Rowena. “Meanwhile, young lady, you get some rest.”

  “And I’ll be by in the morning to see you again,” Dr. Barber said. “Loretta insists that I take personal care of you.”

  Loretta started toward the door. Dr. Barber moved around toward the end of the bed, looked at Rowena’s chart, nodded, and left.

  “Take care of yourself, baby,” Crystal said.

  “Okay, and don’t forget to do that favor for me,” Rowena said. She moved her arm and winced. Crystal kissed her on the cheek and left.

  As soon as they were away from the room, Loretta took Crystal’s arm and moved her quickly down the hallway, away from Rowena’s room. “You’ve got the part!” Loretta turned Crystal around in the hall. “Joe Sidney called and said it’s yours. All you have to do is show up!”

  “The movie?”

  “The movie,” Loretta said. “And you’re going to be the movie star!”

  “Oh my goodness!”

  “He’s sending over letters of commitment in the morning. The financing is in two parts, so he needs signatures for two six-month periods. He said he saw the photos and he thinks they were great!”

  “He saw the photos?”

  “Jerry must have sent him a set,” Loretta said. “Anyway, I want you to get everything out of your mind except this role. The movie people want to see you sometime this week to discuss a publicity strategy with you. I think he just wants to see how excited you are.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t sound very enthusiastic. Is there something wrong?”

  “No, I guess not,” Crystal said.

  “This thing with Rowena?”

  “That a little,” Crystal said.

  “Look, Crystal, Dr. Barber is a psychiatrist,” Loretta said. “He’s going to have a go at Rowena. I think she has mental problems, and I’m going to do my best to help her out of what Dr. Barber thinks is a state of temporary depression. Then, frankly, I’m going to suggest to her that she try another business. This is a tough business to start in, and I think it’s even tougher to stay in. What Rowena needs is to marry a postal worker and have lots of adorable babies.”

  “What happened?”

  “She’d been working with one of the agencies, Sue Charney or somebody, and then she left them and Jerry’s been handling her. Jerry told her she lost an account, but what really happened is he decided to drop her. That’s what happens when you let a photographer represent you. He has to balance your career with his own.”

  “It’s not fair,” Crystal said.

  “It’s hard, Crystal. But it’s fair. People have too much money tied up in these accounts to worry about everyone’s problems.”

  “But I think Jerry and Rowena…you know, mean more to each other than just accounts,” Crystal said. “Sometimes when she talked about him, she just seemed to light up. It’s as if she’s not really alive unless he’s around.”

  “Dr. Barber, would you excuse us for a minute?” Loretta put her hand on the arm of the white-haired man. Dr. Barber nodded and walked down the hall toward the nurse’s station.

  “Crystal, sometimes we confuse interest and attention with love,” Loretta said. “I think that Jerry was interested in Rowena, but I don’t think he ever loved her.”

  “Does she know that?”

  “Sometimes we don’t want to know that we’re not loved,” Loretta said.

  Crystal felt the tears stinging her eyes as she turned away from Loretta. She felt the older woman’s arm around her waist as they walked toward where Dr. Barber waited, talking to one of the nurses.

  “Do you want a lift to your hotel?” Dr. Barber asked Loretta.

  “At least to Manhattan,” Loretta said. “Crystal, don’t get too upset over this. Rowena’s very emotional, but she’ll get over this. Trust me, you go home now and get some rest. Call Sue in the morning, and she’ll talk to you about registering with the Screen Actors Guild.”

  They were in the lobby of the hospital. “By the way, what favor did Rowena want you to do for her?”

  “Favor?” Crystal looked at Loretta. “Oh, to bring her some makeup.”

  “Don’t bother,” Loretta said. “I’ll send some over by messenger. You know what I believe? I believe you can get sick just by visiting hospitals. Something to do with staph infections, I think. I read a study about that a few years ago.”

  The bus rocked and jolted its way through the tunnel to Jersey City. Crystal stared through the dirty windows at the busy, narrow streets and tried to imagine Rowena walking along them. She couldn’t. It was such a distant life from modeling. She and Rowena worked in the sweaty business of making glamour, and here were the people they made it for. The bus squealed to a stop, sending an elderly man against her shoulder.

  Crystal continued looking out of the window, ignoring the man’s apology. A young girl—one hand gently rubbing her belly swollen from pregnancy, her large, dark eyes directed upward toward the overcast sky—sat on a graffiti-covered stoop. Two young men passed and one of them spoke to her. The girl turned away from them.

  The bus driver told Crystal where to get off for the Bank Street address she had looked up in the telephone directory. It took another fifteen minutes of looking before Crystal found herself standing on a sagging porch next to an old refrigerator. It was yellow, and the bottom of the side that faced Crystal was badly rusted. A small child, his pants so low he had to keep pulling them up with one hand, played in the corner of the porch. He wore a dirty T-shirt that said
SUPER on the front and HERO on the back.

  Crystal knocked on the frame of the open door. The paint on the frame itself was chipped and covered with soot. Crystal thought that she might have gotten the wrong address.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. DeLea?”

  “I’m Mrs. DeLea.” The woman in the doorway was very fair, with dark slits for eyes. “You from St. Al’s? Father Murphy said he’d send somebody around to see me.”

  “No, I’m a friend of Rosa, your daughter.”

  “Oh.” The face softened. “She’s not here right now.”

  “I know,” Crystal said. “She asked me to come here. She’s a little sick, and she asked me to let you know. She wants to know if she can…”

  The words were coming slower and slower. The face of the woman in front of her was concerned, anxious. But the eyes—the eyes misted and looked away. Crystal didn’t want to say anything more to her, didn’t want to share this hurt with her.

  “You can’t come in right now,” Mrs. DeLea said, softly. “My husband’s home and he doesn’t like visitors. He’s asleep, so we can talk for a while. Is she bad sick?”

  “Kind of,” Crystal said.

  The misting gave way to tears. Crystal could see the woman trying to pull herself together, trying to summon up strength. “I don’t have much money. I think I’ve got twenty dollars….”

  “She doesn’t need any money,” Crystal said. “She’s got money.”

  “She still doing the modeling?” Mrs. DeLea asked.

  “Yes.” Crystal felt uncomfortable standing on the porch. The child came over to them and stood against Mrs. DeLea’s legs. “I think she’s going to be working again soon.”

  “You tell her that I hope she’s okay,” Mrs. DeLea said. “I would come and see her, but I really can’t get away with the baby and all.”

  “She wants to know if she can come home,” Crystal said.

  Mrs. DeLea didn’t speak. She just shook her head “no” very quickly.

  “I think she needs to,” Crystal said softly.