by Lyn Cote
Chloe laughed and pulled on one of the hats, that fit so much better now. “Look at me. I’m modern.”
Feeling tired but satisfied, Chloe and Minnie, back in their own short-sleeved walking dresses, strolled out into the warm July evening. Yet, within a few paces they sobered. Minnie looked at Chloe. “Do we got the nerve?”
“You mean do we have the nerve?” Chloe corrected. “Well, do we?” Fifth Avenue bustled with fashionably dressed women and men, hustling with big-city rapid rhythm. Skyscrapers loomed around them. A few feet away an elegant woman wearing an ostrich feather boa, her maid behind her, was being ushered into a silver Rolls Royce by a liveried chauffeur. This sight definitely wasn’t anything like they’d ever seen around Ivy Manor.
Thoughtfully, Chloe touched the back of her head, which still felt oddly naked. She didn’t feel like herself at all. “We’re les modeles de Madame Blanche,” she declared. “Modern, twentieth-century women who are working and paying our own way. We have the nerve.”
By now, Chloe and Minnie had attended several NAACP meetings. Tonight’s meeting was at a big church in Harlem. Chloe had become at ease in Harlem, at ease being one of the few white faces among the black. It didn’t feel odd anymore. It was like being a child again with her mother and father always away and her left in the care of Minnie’s grandmother and the other Negro servants. Chloe still shared a room with Minnie. Mrs. Rascombe had worried over them this evening like a mother hen. “This war’s stirred things up. You two will be safer at home with me.”
Mrs. Rascombe had been right. Racial incidents near army training bases and defense plants were rampant in the North and lynchings rife in the South. Tonight Chloe felt her heart beating faster than usual. The church was crowded and buzzed with angry, urgent voices. Harlem was alarmed.
She followed Minnie up the wide aisle. Minnie was scanning the crowd. Then she halted. “There he is, Chloe. I mean, Lorraine.”
Today, Chloe and Minnie had taken “professional” names at Madame Blanche’s request. “Chloe” had sounded all right to the Frenchwoman for one of her models, but not “Minnie.” But Chloe had decided that working under another name would be a good idea, another way to evade her father. So she had taken her middle name, “Lorraine,” and Minnie had chosen “Mimi” for herself. Madame Blanche said that they hadn’t needed new surnames. Single names were the rage in fashion.
“Wait up, Mimi,” Chloe teased, hurrying after Minnie.
Frank Dawson, by now Minnie’s beau, and Kitty had saved space for Chloe and Minnie near the front of the large church sanctuary. Minnie let Frank take her hand and Chloe sat down beside Kitty. The meeting opened with a prayer by the pastor of the church and then the speaker, a professor from Columbia, took the pulpit. Chloe stared up at the man as he began speaking about the war.
“Even though segregated into separate divisions, African-American men have an unexpected opportunity through this war to show their patriotism and their abilities.”
Chloe thought about her husband. She’d written him daily, telling him everything that was taking place in her life. She’d finally mailed them to the military address he’d given her. But for a return address, she’d put general delivery at a nearby post office. And Mrs. Rascombe had agreed to pick up her mail. If the post office were watched, who would think Mrs. Rascombe was doing it for her? But Chloe still hadn’t received a letter in return from him. From newspapers, she knew only that he’d been in France for several weeks and she was certain he must have written to her. But how did the military deliver mail? And would her father be able to trace her to the general delivery address?
Everyone applauded and Chloe joined in, then played with the fringe on her beaded purse. Unfortunately, after all the years of listening to her father’s speeches, she couldn’t seem to make her mind focus on a speaker.
Chloe hadn’t written to her parents. After her father finding out Theran’s stateside address and making her leave that address, she’d decided they knew she had reached New York safely and had married Theran. They didn’t need to know anything else. Besides, if her father hadn’t interfered by finding her in New York, she wouldn’t have had to move and wouldn’t be afraid now that she wouldn’t be able to receive Theran’s letters.
“But,” the speaker was declaiming as he hit the pulpit, “the white segregationist does not want to let the black soldier think he is the equal of the white. Everywhere in the South and North, unrest is stirred by black men appearing in the US Army uniform, a new sign of equality, dignity.”
Chloe had written to Theran’s parents and had received an oddly restrained reply from his father. It had included no invitation to come to Buffalo to meet them or any stated intention of their visiting her. Minnie had agreed that was odd. Why wouldn’t they want to meet their son’s wife?
Chloe became aware of a sudden rustling in the crowd, and the sound of yelling.
“Riots! Race rioting in East St. Louis!” A black man was running forward up the center aisle, waving a newspaper extra sheet. “They’re killing people over jobs!”
The next morning, Chloe and Minnie peered out through a crack at the rear door into Madame’s showroom, which was elegantly decorated in bold art deco in shades of white and black. A chattering bevy of fashionable prospective clients and the press gathered in Madame’s showroom. Every seat had been filled. Three men stood in the rear with pen and notebook in hand. July wasn’t the usual season to be launching a fashion collection. But the war had affected many things. Madame had taken out a full-page ad in the New York Times, announcing her collection, and then had sent out a few gilt-edged cards to the press and some well-placed, well-heeled friends of Marshfield Crowe’s.
Watching the crowd, Chloe recalled the NAACP meeting the night before. In East St. Louis, a riot over jobs at a defense plant had killed nine whites and nearly forty Negroes. The NAACP reaction had been swift. The leaders were planning a show of sympathy for those who had been murdered. Did Chloe have the nerve or not to participate? Even Minnie had looked shaken last night, and even more so today. With good reason—this was the day of their debut as models. In this racially charged atmosphere, what would be the response when Minnie, the first black model on Fifth Avenue, stepped out front?
“Ladies,” Madame beckoned them away from the door. “We begin. Remember: you are so beautiful that you don’t care what the people think of you. You stun them with your beauty. This modeling bores you. You are rich, you are young, you are desirable, no?”
Chloe and Minnie assumed the half-reclining posture and the world-weary expression Madame had schooled them to.
“Bon.” Madame clapped her hands. “I go out and make the introduction.” Wearing a white linen dress, diamonds, and her scarlet lip rouge, she swept out the door.
Tingling with a mix of anxiety and excitement, Chloe looked at Minnie and Minnie looked back. “I scared, Miss Chloe.” The words came out in a dry gasp, and she shook with one sharp tremor. Minnie hadn’t called her Miss Chloe for weeks now. She must be very nervous. The race riot in East St. Louis couldn’t have helped Minnie’s confidence. But bringing up all that wouldn’t help either.
“You are rich, you are beautiful, you are bored,” Chloe parroted, gripping both of Minnie’s wrists in her hands, feeling Minnie’s speeding pulse under her fingers. “You can’t show any weakness.” Chloe squeezed tighter, trying to dredge up words that would make Minnie bold today. “You have to act like being a model is just everyday to you, like you were born to be here and do this. And you were, Minnie. When you walk out there, you aren’t Minnie, you’re Mimi, modele de Madame Blanche. You’ve got to feel it. You will be acting, just like you wanted to. This is your first part, your first play.”
Minnie nodded and inhaled, but shakily. Polite applause drifted back from the showroom. One of the seamstresses pushed wide the door.
Taking a deep breath, Chloe dropped her hands to her side and turned. She walked forward down the short aisle between the rows of chairs.
I am rich, I am beautiful, I am bored, she recited to herself. The faces before her ran together but she looked over them. Her nerves were jumping with something like St. Vita’s dance. Then she recalled the day she’d first seen Theran, the speech she’d made. It bolstered her. She imagined Theran standing at the rear, smiling at her. And he would. He’d love seeing her here, looking so good. His admiration swept through her like a caress, a whisper of a kiss.
Blushing, Chloe paused, posed. Suddenly the faces staring didn’t bother her. They weren’t interested in her, just Madame Blanche’s clothing. Her father always putting her on display had made her feel cheap, but that was different than this. She smiled and then hid it. Remember, these people bore you. She strutted back to the rear door. Just as she reached it, Minnie emerged from the rear.
A gasp shuddered through the room, gaining momentum, wild-firing through the gathering. Minnie didn’t falter. She sauntered past Chloe—without a glance to either side—paused and posed as rehearsed, and made her turn near the front door.
Chloe had reentered the partially open door. There she sheltered behind it while the seamstresses stripped off her dress. Chloe watched Minnie pause several times, pose as taught, and then walk on. Minnie’s head was held high and her eyes looked over the audience as though they were so far beneath her she was barely aware of their existence. The men at the back were scribbling frantically on their pads and the women in the audience looked shocked, stunned. Then their faces bent toward their neighbors. They whispered, shaking their heads.
The second dress had been fitted and buttoned onto Chloe. She waited—breathless, keyed up, ready to make her next appearance, ready to reenter the fray. Minnie passed her and Chloe took off without a word, her chin forward. She made a grand entrance, paused, swirled, sauntered. The buzz about Minnie blossomed fuller. Chloe ignored it.
Finally at the last possible moment before she and Minnie changed places once more, she looked down her nose at the faces, daring them to object to Minnie. Chloe held the pose until one by one the audience fell silent under her disdain. Then Chloe swirled and stalked back to the dressing room. At that moment Chloe knew what she must do on the morrow. If she had the nerve.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Chloe wondered if she had the courage today would demand. She and Minnie stole into Madame Blanche’s shop. Today the familiar shop, done in sharply contrasting white and black, struck Chloe as stark and daunting instead of vividly sophisticated as it had before.
Only yesterday Madame’s fashion debut had taken place in this shop. In carrying out their parts, Chloe and Minnie had broken many rules. It left them different, changed. All the weeks of planning leading up to the preview had not prepared Chloe for the moment she’d stepped out of the back room. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the feeling of liberation that had come to her as she advanced from the role of debutante to professional fashion model. Too, nothing had prepared her to watch Minnie step above herself, leave behind her role of obedient Negro maid. The fashion showing and the celebration afterward had been liberating. But today was the day of decision. Really a day of action.
Chloe tried to ignore the tremors sliding up and down her spine. Minnie looked haunted, her lovely, creamy-tan face drawn down into deep, tense lines. “I don’t want to lose this job.” The words squeezed out of her.
“I know.” Chloe patted Minnie’s arm, feeling her own stomach clench. She tried a smile and failed.
Minnie lowered her head. “I feel like a coward. And this is New York City, not East St. Louis.”
Just then Madame Blanche burst out of the back room. “I hear your voices. Why do you not rush back? See! See the papers!” With one of her customary flourishes, Madame displayed a section of the New York Times. The title of the full-page article read: “MADAME BLANCHE FASHIONS CROSS THE COLOR LINE.”
“It is about you two. Marshfield doubted. But Blanche knows how to turn heads, how to make the splash.”
Chloe took the paper and read aloud, “‘Yesterday, Madame Blanche, a refugee fresh from war-torn Paris, officially opened her shop. And the newest couturier on Fifth Avenue did so with panache. The Frenchwoman’s style indeed amazed, but more shocking was her choice of models. Heart-achingly beautiful blonde Lorraine modeled the Blanche designs with an airy grace. But her companion, the devastatingly beautiful Negro model Mimi, stole the show. The modeles de Madame made the summer collection dazzle and amaze the eye. The French have many colonies in Africa and this reporter wonders which one—perhaps Senegal—Mimi hails from. Surely no American Negress possesses the beauty and poise displayed by the divine Mimi.’”
Chloe looked up, wide mouthed. “‘The divine Mimi.’”
“What trash.” Minnie dismissed it with a slash of her hand. “‘No American Negress possesses the beauty.’ Trash. I’m gone call that man and give him what-for.”
“Non, non,” Madame objected, waving a ring-encrusted hand. “This is better. The mystery. You need to retain the mystery. Women, men—all will come to see, to learn the truth. We will not tell them.” Madame’s face lifted into a mischievous smile. “Does it matter, Mimi, if you are from Senegal or from America?”
Minnie glared at the newspaper as though the reporter were standing in front of her. “I’ll do whatever you want, Madame,” she agreed, one side of her mouth still twisted in anger. “You give—gave me this job and I’m thankful.”
Madame put an arm around Minnie. “Men are foolish. Every woman of intelligence knows this. But we women use this against them, no?”
Minnie gave a grudging smile.
Then Chloe decided the paper had another use. She inhaled deeply and flipped back to the front page. “Madame Blanche, did you see this article?” Chloe pointed to the main story: “RACE RIOTERS FIRE EAST ST. LOUIS AND SHOOT OR HANG MANY NEGROES; DEAD ESTIMATED FROM 20 TO 75: MANY BODIES IN THE RUINS, MOBS RAGE UNCHECKED.”
“I did not read that.” Madame turned toward the rear, brushing it aside. “It is sad, no?”
“Yes, it is,” Chloe replied, her stomach churning. “Madame, there’s to be a march right here on Fifth Avenue to show sympathy for those who’ve died in East St. Louis.”
Halting, Madame turned and then gave each of them a measuring look. “Yes?”
Chloe drew herself up. “Madame, Minnie and I want to join the march today.” And then she felt a little sick.
Minnie clasped and unclasped her hands. “I can’t thank you enough, Madame, for giving me this job—”
“A march on Fifth Avenue?” Madame looked from Chloe to Minnie and back again.
“Yes.” Chloe’s lungs were being crushed by some unseen force. Fear of losing her job, fear of Minnie losing her job, and overall the threat of a violent backlash that might greet a march by the NAACP terrified her. She inhaled deeply and forced out words, “Yesterday I heard them whispering about Minnie. Just because Minnie has dark skin—why does that make her less beautiful?” Chloe felt her panic rising, but she couldn’t stop the words. “Madame, you saw Minnie as she is. A beautiful woman, not a person who can’t do anything but serve white people.” Chloe tried to say more but could only force out, “Please.”
Minnie moved close to Chloe and slipped her arm into Chloe’s. “Please, Madame.”
The Frenchwoman studied them for a very long moment. Chloe heard her heart pounding in her ears. Would they be fired? If they marched, would they be pelted with stones as marchers had been in other cities?
“When does this march start?” Madame tapped one toe.
“Right now,” Minnie stammered. “They’re gathering a few blocks from here.”
“We go.” Madame tossed the paper aside. “We all go.”
“What?” Chloe asked. She felt hot, then cold.
“Madame Blanche and her two models—we march together!”
Minnie’s mouth dropped open.
“Are you serious?” Chloe asked, her pulse dancing.
“Oui! Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!” She swung around and c
alled to the seamstresses in the rear. “We will be back soon. Watch the shop!” Madame took Minnie and Chloe each by an arm. “Come. We march. Blanche and her modeles—blanc and noir.”
Speechless, Chloe let Madame hurry them out the door into the bright July sunshine and down Fifth Avenue. The march had already begun. Within a block, they saw the protesters advancing, thousands and thousands filling the street from side to side. Leaders of the NAACP led the marchers, carrying together in front of them a long banner reading: “In sympathy with the Negroes killed in E. St. Louis.”
Brushing through the bystanders along the street like a queen, Madame steered Chloe and Minnie into the ranks of marchers. “Liberte!” she shouted. “Egalite! Fraternite!” Several of the marchers joined her. Soon the motto of the French nation echoed off the fashionable storefronts. Chloe looked around at the sea of dark faces she and Madame Blanche had penetrated. How had she come to this? What if someone she knew from home saw her? What would her parents—and Roarke—think? What would Theran think if he knew?
Then Madame broke out into song. Chloe recognized it; she’d heard it played during newsreels about the war in France. It was the French national anthem. Again, more voices joined Madame Blanche. The brave song heartened Chloe. Deeply moved by the stirring melody, she felt tears clogging her throat. She glanced past the dark faces around her to the crush of white observers lining the street.
Suddenly her eye caught those of a well-dressed white matron on the curb. The woman stared at her, horrified recognition dawning on her face. Shocked, Chloe realized she’d met the woman at a party the year before. She was an acquaintance of her mother’s. Chloe’s knees nearly buckled. But before she could react further the crowd dragged her on and the woman was hidden from view. The joyful Madame beside her sang on loud and strong, and with the words Chloe gained strength. Come what may she wouldn’t let herself be cowed.
When the line, “Marche on, marche on,” came again, she joined in, not knowing the words but humming along with Madame. It didn’t matter if the woman had recognized her. Her parents couldn’t take her home. She was the wife of a soldier, a working woman who could support herself.