Cosmo (2 page)

Days of discipline, she remembered, of uncertainty and promise. A strong dose of the Bible, Crystle riding in the back seat of their
SUV
every Sunday and Wednesday to the Emmanuel Pentecostal Church near Murphy Road and Avenue E, standing tall, shoulders thrust back, as the choir unrolled its hymns of judgment and redemption and the oak rafters shook with the sound. Sitting alone on her bed in the quiet hours after the sermon, planners and pens before her, silently reviewing her six steps to achieving goals, the words of advice from her interview and locution coaches who championed the need for preparation and lists – organizational tools that were like bread crumbs lining paths through strange woods. Woods filled with wolves she and her team dubbed
biters
, old friends and colleagues who suddenly weren't so enthused when her name was flashed across the front pages of newspapers across Texas or the nation, or when churches and schools congratulated CRYSTLE STEWART! on their billboards, proud of their hero who would take the crown in Nha Trang. Biters: people who hated her success out of envy, the fact that she could be rich soon and leave them to obscurity forever, because that's how things happened – it was bad enough to leave Missouri City for Houston proper, but she had left the entire South behind for downtown Manhattan, which might as well be another country.

It will all go in the book
, Crystle thought, as more smocked hospital workers and photographers filtered into the
OR
. She'd already thought of a title:
Waiting to Win
. It was perfect.

Kubis had moved on. She snapped back to attention. ‘Before we were a floating hospital, the
Mercy
was an oil tanker. In those days, the ship was called the
SS
Worth
. But since 1984, we've been entirely dedicated to military support or humanitarian efforts. And with our nine-hundred-person staff, including three hundred health experts, we can do almost everything that a standard, on-land emergency room can.'

Kubis glanced up, nodding at someone over the heads of the women. Turning on her heels, Crystle caught the eye of a younger man standing behind them, sporting the same brush cut, his hands clasped over his belt buckle. He wore pressed khakis and a dark-ribbed naval sweater, embroidered gold bars at his shoulders, no smock. He was clean-shaven and blond and obviously quite relaxed.

‘I'd like to introduce you to Lieutenant Coby Croft,' Kubis said. ‘He's the head
OR
nurse on board. He'll be explaining how Operation Smile is making the difference for so many children in the region.'

The girls turned. Miss Canada raised her hand and wiggled her fingers.

‘If any of you've heard of
Nurse
TV
,' Kubis added warmly, now speaking to their backs, ‘you may recognize Lieutenant Croft. He did a great job of showing off the ship during their tour.'

‘You can find me on YouTube,' Croft said, chuckling and rocking back on his heels, instigating some general tittering and exhaling among the crowd.

Crystle held up her chin, maintained eye contact and tried to look attentive. But inside – inside something trembled. The word
YouTube
rang like black magic, a sinister
open sesame
to some sealed chamber inside her. The very mention made her face tingle, her lips sting, and while Croft unclasped his hands and began rehashing a summary of medical supplies, surgical preparation, the extent of the
Mercy
's health care capabilities,
YouTube
rumbled down into her intestines, causing a barely audible gurgle and pop. She brushed her hands against her midsection, quelling the sudden surge of discomfort.

Not here
, she thought.
 Pay attention and forget it.

‘If I can have you all follow me,' Croft said, passing his left hand toward a set of double doors and striding across the room. Crystle kept her eyes locked on his polished heels, letting the other girls fall into a makeshift line behind him. Taking the rear, she rubbed her exposed forearms, already feeling cold.

 

The video was uploaded to YouTube almost immediately after the incident. Within hours, the Video Response function was disabled; comments were so nasty, so stridently political, that deleting all racist or sexist posts would have been a tremendous undertaking. Disabling the comments, however, did nothing to halt the clip's skyrocketing popularity. By the time Crystle was aboard the
USNS
Mercy
, the video had surpassed its two millionth viewing.

The scene begins in long shot. The floor, the backdrop, the lights – everything is blue, overwhelmingly so, shades wavering between sapphire and denim, giving the impression that the auditorium is resting at the bottom of the sea, that viewers are being given a glimpse of some deep Atlantic twilight. Stage lights pulse in time with the beat of an extended edition of Sean Paul's ‘Give It Up to Me' (ft. Keyshia Cole), the serpentine, dance-hall rhythms of the track assuming the shudder and thud of chain-mine detonation, shipwrecks. The stage floor is glossy and dark, reflecting the glitter of plastic sequins hung as immense curtains, while a massive grid-like structure, divided into equal-sized compartments (reminiscent of
Hollywood Squares
, dominates the backdrop. A short flight of mirrored steps connects the structure and the stage floor. In each square (or cell) is the silhouette of a woman dressed in evening wear, as if posing in a display case or red-light brothel window.

The camera sweeps toward the stage, panning to the right. Closer, it's evident that only the ground level of the anterior display case contains real women; the upper squares are stocked with evening-gowned mannequins. The focal point of the shot, though, is a solitary woman standing centre stage: an incredibly slender, olive-skinned girl with wavy, treated brown hair that reaches down between her shoulder blades. She is incredibly pretty, glowing like some phosphorescent anemone. Like the women behind her, she wears a glamorous evening gown: something slinky and black, form-fitting, blooming in a bell shape around her ankles. It's also sparkly and reflective, much like the dark blue floor and pulsating backdrop.

As viewers get a clear view of her face, her dark eyes and white teeth and the shimmer of her earrings, a caption appears at the bottom of the screen beside the
NBC
peacock:
U.S.A., Rachel Smith
. Rachel begins to walk toward the camera, her arms loose, her hands brushing the sides of her hips. A woman's voice, enthused and emphatic, calls out the country –
U.S.A.!
– triggering a swell of cheers and applause from the unseen audience.

It happens between her sixth and seventh step. It takes roughly three seconds: first, the shudder of her thighs, the slight pivot of her waist. Her upper body buckles, her right ankle tilts sharply and her heels lose their grip on the glossy floor. Then:
kerplunk
, Rachel goes down, hard on her ass, palms at her sides to soften the blow. But she's up again in astonishing time, climbing on her heels with practiced dexterity, turning on cue with her right hand on her hip and smiling big for the camera. Three seconds of a forty-three-second film clip, featuring close-ups and multiple poses, a consistent smile. So practised is Rachel's poise, so polished is her resolve to continue, that the show goes on as if there had been no error, no failure at all.

By the time Crystle was aboard the
Mercy
, she had watched the video ninety-four times. On one evening in early May, while Crystle was home for a visit, her mother snapped a photograph of her watching the clip. The camera caught Crystle in profile, chin resting heavily in her upturned palm. Her fingernails were manicured and white, her lips pursed, free of lipstick, puckered in a fake kiss. When Crystle found the
JPEG
on her parents' computer, she immediately deleted it: the image of herself, bent over at the desk in the dark, her eyes wide and watchful – it made her sick to see it, sick to see how far things had come.

It began at a Missouri City roadhouse, back in the blurry nether-time before her move to Manhattan; Crystle drank two daiquiris and two glasses of water and waited for the ‘celebratory' night to end, her flight to New York scheduled for the day after the next. She and her friends bumped into an acquaintance – an ex–Elkins Knight football player, bloated with confidence from four years of throwing balls and the night's several Budweisers. And only passing by, hitting on one of her friends, giving her the expected congratulations before trying to be funny and reminding her of the obvious, of what she already knew:
Hey, don't fall now, that last girl fell on 'er ass!
Crystle rolled her eyes and turned away, got caught up in another conversation about what Donny and Marie Osmond had been like in person (
amazing
, she'd said). Of course, like anyone even remotely associated with the competition, she'd already studied, scanned and memorized Rachel Smith's fall; it was
the
great tragedy of last year's pageant. Miss U.S.A. falling down? Old news. But there was something weird about hearing the warning in such a non-industry, non-threatening environment, coming from the last person she expected would remember. Hearing it there hammered home just how notorious the event had been. Made her realize, coldly, and for the first time, just how many people were watching – even beer-bloated footballers, it would seem. Before bed she found the clip on YouTube and watched with her fingers laced together over her eyes, rigid, as if she were a scared little girl watching a late-night thriller on
TV
.

Soon, watching the clip became part of her nightly ritual, before the laborious process of removing her makeup, scrubbing her face, applying revitalizing creams unavailable in North America, sent in small white boxes from Northern Europe or the Middle East. Before donning her ice mask or applying tea bags or even Preparation H to tired, dark-circled eyes. Before her
Focus on Success!
meditation tapes and the extra crunches she'd added to her routine, even though she was at her breaking point in terms of weight training and cardio. It was what she watched before bed, before her stomach calmed and her thoughts could drift. Sometimes she'd take a Gravol, sometimes two; sometimes it was Alka-Seltzer, sometimes Pepto-Bismol. As the months slipped by – those gloriously cool months in Manhattan spent jogging through Central Park, days slinking toward July and her booked flight to Vietnam – she switched to sleeping aids: Nytol, Sominex, sometimes Unisom (always over-the-counter, never prescription – she wasn't about to gamble with her reputation). The video invariably upset her stomach, made her anxious and on edge. Or it set her thoughts turning, locking her into winding circles of insomnia: fears of potential repeat performances in Nha Trang. The thought of slipping, hitting the hard stage floor. Having to hold a smile throughout the rest of the botched walk, only to collapse in the wings, knowing everything was finally, chillingly over. Or having to endure the remainder of the competition, knowing any recovery was futile, that victory was stolen away with the petty twist of an ankle.

Anxiety, butterflies in the stomach, stage fright: these were nothing new. She'd slogged through six years of semi-finals, four years being first runner-up (or best loser, she thought) to some evidently ‘superior' (i.e., Caucasian) competitor. It was plain fun and excitement the first time around, way back in 2002, when she strutted out as Miss Fort Bend County, winking at her friends and feeling like she was simply testing the waters and playing a role – no long-term investment, no deep ­attachment to some paltry win. When she'd made the semi-finals, though, things got serious, and fast. As soon as she figured she actually had a chance, giddy excitement gave way to deep, bowel-churning anxiety. In the intervening years of intensity, she thought she'd conquered disquiet and despair, being first runner-up to Lauren Lanning two painful years in a row, 2005 and 2006, only to repeat the double set of losses to a different girl, Magen Ellis, in 2006 and 2007. And she thought she knew anxiety's secret name, its trembling guts, its icy sweat and stink of fear, as she clasped hands with Brooke Daniels at last year's Miss U.S.A. competition, final round, and Donny and Marie Osmond cruelly cut to commercial after an agonizing stretch of silence just before the awful judgment came down. Posing in her bikini before the intimidating celebrity panel, hoping the extra panty tape was keeping her swimsuit in place. Yes, she thought she'd faced fear, chased it off cowering and defeated. But the video struck like a rattler in the Texas grass, a black widow in the unshaken shoe. And it was unspeakable, where all the other challenges could be talked away, shared with Team Crystle, or worked out of her system with huge, heaving sobs.

Some nights Crystle would slow down the footage, pausing the screen at the precise moment Rachel loses her balance. By pausing and scrolling, she managed to isolate and expand the aching split second of film when everything turned to shit – Rachel's beautiful smile suddenly transforming into a wide, O-shaped distortion. Crystle stared into the pixilated void of Rachel's gaping mouth, seeing an automatic muscular reflex, seeing supreme shock and disappointment, seeing it all as dark fortune: it could happen to anyone, the stage floors were glossy, the cameras were bright and the flash of bulbs could disorient or even blind, and some of those high heels were absolutely treacherous. Who's to say it wouldn't happen again? Who's to say it wouldn't happen to
her
?

Later in the evening – the Miss Universe Competition 2007, held in Mexico City in May – Rachel Smith (miraculously) managed to clear the hurdles of the general competition and was selected to compete in the semi-finals. Despite her fall, the judges were suitably impressed by her overall talent, her petite figure and flawless skin, her unique ethnic composition and her obvious intelligence. But the live audience thought differently. When Rachel was called upon in the question round, the auditorium erupted in boos, hisses, profanity. Crystle knew this was more political than personal – the Mexican audience probably believed the show was rigged in the American's favour (it was Trump's project, after all, conducted in English, and Miss Mexico – who calmly cleared the evening-gown competition without incident – tellingly didn't make the semi-finals). But, politics aside, it disturbed Crystle to the core: the look of humiliation on Rachel's face, the shame of having to slog through her answer before such a withering, high-decibel chorus of disapproval. Crystle could read the defeat, the clear signs of surrender. Had Rachel expected mercy, sportsmanship, support from the crowd? What a twist of the blade, Crystle sympathized, to realize that she wasn't encouraged, wasn't liked, wasn't even tolerated, but
hated
.