Chloe

by Lyn Cote

“I . . .” Chloe faltered and then opened her bag and took out the ivory card the man had given her. “The man who spoke to me was Marshfield Crowe,” she read from the card and then handed it to Kitty. “He said he was helping a new couturier from Paris set up shop here.”

  “He said he needed,” Minnie added, “one blonde and one brunette model. He pick Miss Chloe right out of a room full a pretty ladies.” Minnie looked pleased as anything.

  Chloe couldn’t stop her face from warming.

  “Well,” Kitty handed back the card, “you’re gorgeous—according to your husband. And so tall and willowy. I wish I had your inches. Oh, I’d love to see the expression on your mama’s face if she knew you were working.”

  “I’m not modeling.” After all the years she’d been put on display, she hated people looking at her. “Besides I’m a married woman.”

  Kitty smiled, almost gleaming with impish amusement at Chloe. “I almost forgot! Roarke called me and described the fit your daddy threw in our dining room yesterday morning.”

  “Your dining room?” Chloe put Mr. Crowe’s card carefully away in her small purse.

  “Yes, I guess your daddy came over Saturday very late and then Sunday morning to find out if you’d come back with Roarke. He thought you and Roarke had run off and eloped. ’Course my daddy didn’t know what had happened, but knowing you were with Roarke, he thought that, too. Anyway, Roarke told him you’d married Theran and that he’d acted as Theran’s best man.”

  Before Chloe could voice a word, Minnie cut in, “What did Old Puff’n’guts say to that?” Then, realizing her faux pas, she checked herself. “Sorry, Miss Chloe.” Her voice flattened. “I forgot my place.”

  Chloe stared at Minnie. “Is that . . . Is that what people call Daddy?”

  “Among other things.” Kitty chuckled and rolled her eyes. Minnie only nodded, her eyes still downcast.

  That her father was generally disliked burst over Chloe like a blinding revelation. Her mouth opened and shut. “Well—Well—” she stammered. “It does describe him.” She patted Minnie’s arm reassuringly. Old Puff’n’guts? What do people say about Mother?

  For some unknown reason, this gave her a lift of confidence about communicating with her parents. Today, her life was like a book and she’d turned the page into a whole new section. Everything was different and she was, too. “What did Roarke say Daddy did then?”

  “He blew like an oil well,” Kitty whooped. “But he couldn’t do a thing ’bout it.” Her expression sobered. “Say, Roarke told me to tell you to watch yourself. Your daddy says he’s going to find you and bring you home.”

  A shiver of dread slithered through Chloe.

  “How he do that?” Minnie snapped.

  “I don’t know.” Kitty lifted both palms. “I know Theran switched rooming houses before he left for training and didn’t leave a forwarding address. And I switched places, too, and didn’t leave a forwarding either. Theran and I figured your daddy might try to find you through us.”

  Chloe looked at her friend in wonder. “You two did all that for me?”

  “No trouble ’t-all.” Kitty squeezed Chloe’s hand. “You see, the only two ways we figured that your daddy could trace you was from our addresses and through the university records. So don’t worry. You should be safe in this big city.”

  A woman near them slapped the face of the man she was with and stormed out. Chloe stared at her as the man ran after her, calling, “Lucie! Wait!”

  “Oh, I just remembered. I’m going to a NAACP meeting tonight. Minnie, do you want to come with me?” Kitty asked, sitting forward.

  “What’s that?” Minnie asked.

  “It’s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.”

  Chloe and Minnie exchanged puzzled glances. “And what is that?” Chloe ventured.

  “It was started a few years ago by W. E. B. DuBois and some others.” Kitty took a sip of her coffee and glanced around at the next table, where everyone was laughing. “It holds meetings here in New York City. You two should go to one with me.”

  “I don’t know,” Minnie muttered, her eyes looking from under her thick lashes at a nearby table that had a mix of white and black customers. “I don’t want no trouble.”

  “Spoken like an oppressed worker of the world.” A tall black man in a dark suit and white shirt had come up to them, his footsteps masked by the din of voices. “Kitty, pray introduce me to your charming companions.” He swung a free chair over to their tiny table and sat down facing the chair back.

  “I didn’t see you come in, Frank. I don’t know if I should introduce you.” Kitty pouted, amusement lighting her eyes. “Your shocking reputation with the ladies . . .” She raised her brows and grinned at him.

  He chuckled. “Then I’ll introduce myself.” He turned to Minnie and offered her his hand. “I’m Frank Lawson.”

  Chloe had never heard a black man speak like an educated man. This man sounded white to her. Was that how black people in New York City talked?

  “I’m Minnie Carlyle.” Minnie shook Frank’s hand though she turned her profile to him and looked as if she were starting to blush.

  Chloe didn’t know the etiquette of this situation, but she didn’t want to be impolite. “I’m Mrs. Theran Black,” she murmured.

  “Mrs. Black.” Frank acknowledged her with a scant nod and turned his attention to her friend again. “So, Minnie, you’ve never heard of the NAACP?”

  “No, sir, I ain’t . . . haven’t.” Minnie was blushing.

  Chloe watched her former maid turn a dusky rose at this man’s attention.

  “Now you have.” Frank leaned forward, resting his folded arms on the top of the chair back. “We’re trying to do something to stop lynchings in the South.” His tone sharpened. “Now those you’ve heard of, haven’t you?”

  Minnie nodded, her eyes meeting Frank’s for the first time. “Sorry to say I have.”

  Chloe thought she’d never heard such an odd conversation. One didn’t talk about lynchings like this right out in the open and in front of ladies.

  “And we’re working to bring about equal rights for all Americans,” Frank continued, lifting his jaw. “In the future, we’ll take on Jim Crow.”

  Chloe felt uneasy. Should he be talking like this? Should she be listening? Daddy had always said Negroes were happy as they were because they were unable to discipline themselves. They needed white people to tell them what to do. But even as she thought this, she recalled Minnie’s secret ambition and how Minnie’s Uncle Haines handled the running of Ivy Manor without much, if any, help from her parents. New York City was filled with the strangest people and the most revolutionary of ideas.

  Chloe sighed with relief as they exited the café into the balmy afternoon. They’d passed an entertaining few hours, but she was ready to rest back in her room. Kitty quickly said good-bye and left for another appointment. But Frank lingered, accompanying Chloe and Minnie to their subway station. He chatted to Minnie and took down Minnie’s address in Harlem before he left them.

  “What you think of that man?” Minnie asked as they headed down the crowded subway station steps.

  Chloe shrugged. “I’m a married woman. It’s you he was eyeing up and down. What do you think of him?”

  “He sure a handsome man, all right. And the way he talk, so educated.”

  The comment made Chloe remember Theran. Suddenly she didn’t want to go back to her room. A pain like a shaft of ice sliced through her. Theran wouldn’t be there.

  Subdued, she followed Minnie past the ticket window and onto a subway. Sitting there as it sped through the tunnels, Chloe let herself think over all she had seen and heard that afternoon. Advancement of Colored People? What did that—what would that—mean? Maybe it could work in a place like New York City, but back in Maryland? Her brain felt as if an egg beater had slipped in through her ear and scrambled her thoughts, making her doubt what she’d always taken for granted. As she sat next to Minnie
, she wanted to ask her . . . what? What she thought of Chloe? What she thought of Chloe’s father and how he’d treated Minnie? What she thought of how, on their way north, she’d had to use the black preacher’s outhouse while Chloe had used the gas station bathroom?

  Minnie must have been just as preoccupied as Chloe because they rode side by side in silence. They got off and were halfway up Chloe’s block before Chloe halted. “Minnie, what are we thinking? I’ll walk you back to—”

  “Hush, Miss Chloe,” Minnie shushed her and dragged her into the cover of a flight of steps in front of another house.

  “What is it?” Chloe whispered.

  “You hang back in the alley.” Minnie shoved her toward the alley opening, only a few feet behind them. “Somethin’ don’t look right ’bout your place. I go take a look and then come back to you.”

  Chloe obeyed, her heart thudding with fear. But of what? She’d been afraid of her father finding her, but Theran and Kitty had left no trail to her. So he couldn’t have found her. Surely not yet.

  Minnie strolled away, then back and returned to the alley. “Miss Chloe, you got trouble. When we were walkin’, I see a man, official-looking, talkin’ to your landlady out on the stoop. Then I walk by and I hear him say your name. The landlady tellin’ him ’bout you bein’ married to a soldier.”

  Chloe felt her heart jerk. “What do you think he wants?” Nothing could have happened to Theran already, could it? He was just on a ship. But ships did get torpedoed by German U-boats. That was what had brought them into the war against Germany. How far did a ship travel in a day? “You don’t think something happened to Theran, do you?”

  “No, I do not. I think your daddy has found out you is livin’ here.”

  Chloe gasped. “But how could he find me so fast?”

  “I don’t know. But you can’t go back there till that man leave.”

  Chloe and Minnie stood with their backs against the alley wall and waited. Finally Minnie looked down the street again and said the man was gone.

  Chloe looked at Minnie, uncertain. “Do you think he just went inside and is still talking with the landlady?”

  “I think we go up the alley and see if we notice anythin’ from that angle.”

  Chloe could think of nothing else to propose, so she nodded. They walked down the alley with wary footsteps and cautious over-the-shoulder glances. When they reached the black-metal fire escape at the back of the house, Minnie sized it up. “Let’s go up and see if we can hear anythin’.”

  Chloe nodded and the two of them tiptoed up the metal ladder to Chloe’s window. She’d left it open a crack. She leaned down to see if she could hear anything. “I hear a man’s voice but I can’t hear what he’s saying.”

  Minnie nodded and then she tested the window. It moved easily with only the slightest whisper of sound. She shoved it up high. Chloe caught her arm. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m gone get your things and we are gettin’ you out a here.” Minnie slid over the window sill. She went quickly around the room silently gathering Chloe’s clothing and toiletries. Then she found the leather valise and started shoving things into it.

  Chloe climbed in herself and found the bank book in the nightstand and slipped it into her purse. While Minnie repacked the valise she’d packed for Chloe at Ivy Manor, Chloe pressed her ear to the door and listened to the conversation. She heard a man’s faint voice ask, “You’re sure the girl left this morning to see her husband off and hasn’t been back today?”

  Her landlady replied, “That’s what I’ve said over and over. Why don’t you believe me? And why are you looking for Mrs. Black? She seems a respectable girl and her husband’s left for France.”

  “She ran away to marry and her parents just want to persuade her to come home.” The man’s voice was oily.

  “Why did she have to run away? I would think anyone would be proud to have a well-educated and patriotic young man like Mr. Black as a son-in-law.”

  “I’m just their agent, ma’am. Here’s my card. If she comes back, I’d appreciate it if you’d give me a call. Her parents just want to know that she’s safe.”

  I’ll bet. Hot rage spurted inside Chloe. How had her father done it so quickly? You’re not getting your hands on me again.

  The voices of the man and landlady became fainter as evidently they moved to the front of the house. “He’s leaving,” Chloe whispered. She heard the front door close and then footsteps.

  “We best be goin’,” Minnie said.

  Chloe looked around, suddenly terrified of losing this, the place she was to call home. “But how . . . what?”

  The door behind them opened. The landlady stood with her hands on her wide hips. “I thought I heard that rear window being pushed up.”

  Chloe couldn’t form a word.

  “Don’t worry.” The woman stepped in and shut the door behind her. “I won’t give you away. I think if you were forced to run away to marry such a fine young man, you must have had a good reason.”

  Chloe couldn’t help it. She began to weep, large tears splashing down. The large woman, in an outmoded black dress, came over and wrapped her thick, flabby arms around Chloe. “Don’t cry. You’ll have to leave here, but I won’t tell them where you’ve gone. Now, here.” She pulled a small cloth purse from her pocket and dished out six dollar bills. “Here’s the rest of your month’s rent.”

  “How they find out Miss Chloe here?” Minnie asked, staring at the landlady.

  “From the war department. Mr. Black had given them this address for his army pay.” The landlady gave Chloe the once-over. “Your pa must have some real political pull to get that information, and this fast.”

  Chloe nodded.

  “Now you go out the back. I’m afraid they may hold up your husband’s army pay. But if it still comes, give me a call and I’ll forward it to you—without letting anyone else know. A soldier’s wife has enough to suffer without the government making it harder on her.”

  Chloe hugged the landlady. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  Minnie moved to the window. “You come on now, Miss Chloe. We best light out a here ’fore they start watchin’ this place close.”

  Chloe waved at the landlady and hurried through the window behind Minnie. They were safely in another subway train before Chloe asked with tingling dread, “Where do I go from here?”

  “I think I take you home with me tonight. We find you a new place tomorrow.”

  Chloe stared out at the gray concrete tunnel flashing outside their window. “I could go to a hotel.”

  “No, not by yourself. That don’t look right. It cost a lot a money and you gotta give a name on the register, don’t you?”

  Chloe nodded, sucking in the tears that still wanted to fall. Theran gone and her father hot on her heels. Everything was moving too fast. She felt miserable. The only thing that kept her going at the moment was Minnie.

  Within minutes Chloe was walking at Minnie’s side into the boarding house. The house smelled of good food and lemon oil polish. Minnie led Chloe off the main hall into the small dining room where a very dark-skinned landlady was presiding at the head of a long dinner table with a red-checked cloth on it. An assortment of folk crowded around it. At their entrance, every black face turned to survey Chloe. She was reminded of how she felt when she was on display for her father. Blushing, she lowered her head.

  Minnie set down Chloe’s valise. “Mrs. Rascombe, I done brought my friend Miss Chloe home with me. She had trouble at her rooming house. Can she bunk with me tonight?”

  “What’s wrong at her place?” Mrs. Rascombe asked in a commanding, slightly suspicious, tone.

  “Her daddy done sent somebody to take her back home. Her daddy a nasty piece of work. Her husband just ship out for France today and her daddy pulled strings in the government to find out where Miss Chloe is livin’ here in the city. He want to take her home and probably annul her marriage, and she don’t deserve such treatment. She got a job, goin’ to
be a model on Fifth Avenue, startin’ tomorrow. And then we find her ’nother place to live.”

  “She sure pretty ’nough to model on Fifth Avenue,” one of the white-haired men at the table murmured.

  Flushing hotly, Chloe couldn’t raise her eyes from studying the scrubbed wooden floor. But then she thought about what her father would say if he found out he was responsible for sending her to sleep at a colored boarding house. It gave her a jolt of satisfaction. If he knew where she’d fled, he’d be chewing nails.

  “You say her man gone off to France?” Mrs. Rascombe asked, tapping her index finger to her lips as if deliberating a vexing problem.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Minnie said. “Enlisted right off.”

  “Then she can stay,” the landlady approved regally. “Show her up to the room and I’ll let you take her up a tray of supper.”

  Minnie confronted the table of interested faces and noted their suspicious glances. “Miss Chloe ain’t like that.” She turned to Chloe. “You don’t mind black and white sittin’ together for a meal, do you?”

  Chloe thought about the afternoon at the café, of Frank Dawson’s smooth English and her father being called Old Puff’n’guts. A barrier inside her crumbled. “Please. If I’m welcome . . . I don’t want to be alone right now.”

  “You welcome, miss.” Mrs. Rascombe’s voice was as rough as a dry corncob, but kind. “Jasper, you push over a bit and we slide another chair in here at the end.”

  Within minutes, Chloe was perched at the long table, being served fragrant beef stew. “Thank you.” She drew a deep, satisfying breath. “It smells delicious.” Then, as the events of the day finally caught up to her, no longer to be denied, tears once again began to flow down her face.

  “There, there,” Mrs. Rascombe soothed, patting Chloe’s shoulder with a slender black hand. “You eat your supper and you’ll feel better.”

  Chloe wiped her face with her handkerchief and then took a bite of stew. All eyes were upon her and when she swallowed and smiled, everyone grinned and began eating.

  Much later, in Minnie’s small room upstairs, Chloe slipped out of her dress and Minnie undid the troublesome corset laces for her. “Remind me”—Chloe pulled off and shook the offending garment—“to get rid of this disgusting, old-fashioned corset tomorrow and buy the new style.”