Too Many Tiaras

A crown of sharpened aspirations to pierce the mind itself

         A tongue as forked as lightning lolled obscenely from the emcee’s mouth as he drooled her name into the microphone. The audience hissed with anticipation at the imminent calamity. On the far right-hand side of the stage, Miss Arizona bared a menacing grin of pointed, brightwhite teeth while blood poured from between her legs and she waved her benign pageant wave with only her middle finger held erect.

         Linnette screamed louder. She had been screaming for what seemed like an eternity, since the evil little gnome-like man had dragged her from her bed onto this cruel exposition stage-cum-altar. She had been bullied and harassed through dark smelly tunnels that echoed with threats and voices of people Linnette knew were dead: grandma wailing that Linnette was a whore, and grandpa laughing along; Pauline, who had died in her green mermaid prom gown, ironically chained to the burning car by her safety belt while her incredibly drunk boyfriend watched uncomprehendingly from the base of the pine tree where he had been thrown--Pauline growled that Linnette had promised to drive, false friend, failure-at-large; Mr. Dennesy, her ninth-grade photography teacher who took private pictures of her in the dark room after school, echoed in a crisp English accent that he had had better--much better.

         Now, the emcee on the stage cocked his misshapen head and waggled his clawed finger in a lewd “come-on” gesture, malignantly trying to lure her into the fiery ring in the center of the platform. The ochre sky overarching this hellish scene seemed to cast a yellowsick glow on objects, people...creatures. A man in the front row started to chant: “Get her out! Chain her up!...” He was wearing a t-shirt that read: “BLEED MORE: I Know You Can!”, and his hand was moving furiously inside the front of his trousers. Linnette continued to try to scream, but her throat was raw from the dry heat, the putrid stench of excrement and rotting meat that permeated this sadistic theater, from non-stop pleading to a savior she no longer understood for a salvation in which she no longer believed.

         Three weeks ago, Linnette’s mother had suffered a stroke on the drive from Ohio to South Carolina, where the State Ladies were to engage in a debate at Clemson University. Linnette had tended to her in the hospital (Daddy hadn’t been able to make the trip; he was a lineman with Appalachian Power, and his crew were involved in a two-week project replacing storm-damaged power poles in northern Wheeling). When she broke away to participate in the debate, Linnette was exhausted, and her responses were slow and stupid-sounding. Her mentor/ coach/ sponsor swore at her for the entire forty-minute drive back to the hospital. When they arrived, Linnette was informed that her mother had receded into a coma.

         “The girl with the golden tongue!” slurred the emcee sarcastically. “Come on out, Little Linnette Lymons, Miss O-so-fucking-hi-o! Come on out and...do a little dance! Remind mommy dearest why she sacrificed herself for you in vain!” He screamed the final words, and a pinpoint spotlight rimmed in red picked out Mrs. Lymons crudely tied to a lighting scaffold, stage left, arms outstretched to either side and feet bound one atop the other: crucified in reply to her daughters useless vanity.

         Linnette fell to her knees, croaking out chest-wrenching sobs. “Mamma!” she tried to scream; but only gasps escaped her parched mouth. Her tortured mother, the right side of her face disgustingly clear as it hung in a permanently judgmental grimace, wobbled toward Linnette. The left side stretched in a lurid sneer as her tongue flicked out and sprayed Miss Nevada and Miss Maine below with yellow bile. Miss Maine had no eyes, Linnette noticed as the edges of her vision began to blur.

         But the sweet release of the loss of consciousness Linnette anticipated was not to be hers, she realized. The edges of sight were dimming because she was dragged backward. She had escaped a foray into the footlights, but now someone was brutally hauling her off like garbage, taking her...somewhere… Darker and darker, the air became close, stagnant. The smell of rot and putrefaction was replaced by a fetid mustiness, like rags left to mildew in a basement drain. A door was shut, and finally there was light; but the light was dirtydim, and flickered fitfully, as though even it was reluctant to shine on the likes of Linnette for any period of time.

         She slowly recognized she was on a bed and tried desperately to stand, to run to the door, to escape this madness. But she was confined beneath an apparatus of ironwork and gears, needles eking thick, unhealthy-looking goo placed precariously near to her face, her legs, her breasts, in case she should dare to move.

         She lay there motionless and wept. She wept for her mother, damned to this hell with her; she wept for her father, damned to a lifetime of poverty and danger to finance his little beauty-school-dropout; wept for never having seen behind the charade before tonight. Linnette lay and wept...but did not sleep; sleep was denied her, and she understood that this would be her eternity, her perdition: to lay and weep for all that had been sacrificed to her...for nothing.

         But sometimes, after hours (or years?), the weeping would taper off for a brief time, and she seemed to hear voices talking about her--about her, but never to her. Talking about new devices they could try, different restraints, longer needles and new poisons with which to fill them. And she would force herself to think again of her mother hanging villainously from the corroded latticework of the lighting gantry, hissing venom at the whole cast, and Linnette would begin sobbing again, mercifully blotting out the voices.

@-----@-----@

         “Mr. Lymons, this is by far the worst case I’ve ever seen of this phenomenon. But it is not entirely unlike your wife’s episode.” Dr. Wyand Emmet Reynolds, at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee, watched painfully as the old man--old before his time--dried his eyes and dabbed at his nose. “The physical and emotional stress Mrs. Lymons had placed on her body contributed significantly to her stroke, as we have discussed. The same is true for Linnette’s breakdown.

         “Sadly, it’s not the first time I’ve seen this issue; it’s just the most extreme. Whatever sent her...over the edge, for lack of a better term… Whatever happened at the night of those Miss America finals was like a--a mental stroke for Linnette, a psychological stroke. The damage that has been done might be able to be partially reversed...but only partially. The key, the thing to note here, is that Linnette has been pushed toward that edge for a long time. These young women who have been in the pageant system--and I say it like that on purpose, because it is just as deleterious as the foster-care system!--are dehumanized, reprogrammed, laser-focussed from the time they can walk and talk. I know Linnette stepped onto this path relatively late--thirteen, I think. But--well, there it is; no need for me to preach at this point, I guess. I guess the diagnosis at this point is that she’s had one pageant too many, Mr. Lymons."

         Linnette’s father looked guiltily at the young doctor, wiped his silent tears, but offered no defense.

         Looking slightly embarrassed, Dr. Reynolds continued: “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about a couple of treatment options that are available to Linnette. There’s a new intravenous medication called Lucidite--I’m not fond of the name, but it is fairly self-explanatory--that might have some positive effects. There is also a very new--we’re actually one of only five hospitals in the country that have one--a new bed/restraint system that allows the patient more range of movement, but uses isometric resistance to counteract potential injurious spasms and flailings.

         “And then there’s always the standard pill-based medications…

@-----@-----@

         The voices again, muttering, muttering. Pills. Needles. Vanity. Pageantry. Linnette could remember back to the night of her mother’s stroke, but little else further back. One thing she did remember clearly was a quote from eleventh-grade literature class that seemed to her to hold a special and important message; when the voices beyond the door grew quiet, sometimes these words seemed to echo to her from everywhere and nowhere at all: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

         Good night, Miss America, wherever you are...

(Word Count: 1402)