Chloe by Lyn Cote Page A

fine. And so are you. Now, let’s go find you a job.” And with that, they were running down the steps of the subway station and buying tickets at the booth.
    At the first agency, the woman looked at them forbiddingly and asked Minnie to fill out a card. Chloe also sat down and wrote a letter of reference to be put on file. When Minnie gave her filled-out card to the woman, she surprised Chloe by saying, “Ma’am, I only wants a position with someone in the theater or music. An actress or someone like that.”
    The agency woman looked up at her. “We don’t get too many of
that
type of client.”
    “Well, that’s what I want,” Minnie said with a decided nod.
    “You won’t take a position in a family unless it’s connected to the theater?” The woman studied Minnie with her face drawn into a frown.
    “Or music, vaudeville, movies,” Minnie explained. “Anythin’ like that.”
    “Very well.” The woman’s lips pinched together like the end of a lemon. “Good day.”
    Minnie and Chloe walked out together and got into the small, brass-trimmed elevator. Chloe waited till they reached the pavement, where cars and taxis in an unbroken line blared their horns. “Minnie, I never! What are you thinking?”
    “I got plans, Miss Chloe.” Minnie walked with her chin held high and her back straight as a pine.
    “I see you do.” Chloe hurried to keep up with Minnie’s snappy pace. The discordant car horns made her wince. “What are they?”
    Minnie didn’t reply until they turned a corner and left the noisy cars behind. “I don’t want to be a maid all my life,” the girl said at last.
    “You don’t?” The idea of a person of color being anything but a servant or sharecropper came as a novel idea to Chloe. “What do you want to do?”
    “I think . . .” Minnie walked a bit farther in silence. “I think I kin be an actress in the movies.”
    Chloe couldn’t stop herself. She laughed out loud. Minnie might have just as well said, “I want to be elected president.” She gazed at her companion with rising curiosity. “But, Minnie, there aren’t any Negroes in motion pictures.”
    “I don’t know ’bout that, and I think that gone change. They can’t do black-face forever; it don’t look real.” Minnie looked determined, her jaw firm and her voice strong. “And anyway, they do hire black actors and actresses for the theater and sometimes a colored person can do a vaudeville act. I’ll find somethin’ to suit me.”
    “But how will being the maid of an actress help you?” This conversation held a distinct quality of unreality. Were they really talking about Minnie being an actress?
    “I figure I work for people who in show business, I can learn how to get to be an actress.”
    Minnie’s incredible ambition exploded in Chloe’s mind like shimmering fireworks, stunning her to silence. Minnie, her maid, wanted to be in moving pictures like Lillian Gish. She watched Minnie from the corner of her eye as they continued down the busy sidewalk. Then, looking around at the towering buildings and the hurrying city people and all that made this place a different world from the one she knew, Chloe realized,
Why not?
“Minnie, that’s about the most exciting thing I’ve ever heard.”
    Looking suspicious, Minnie glanced at her. “You think I’m crazy.”
    “No, I don’t.” Chloe shook her head with emphasis. “This past Christmas I would never have believed that by spring, I’d be married and living free in New York City. If I can get away from Ivy Manor and marry the man I love, you can have your plans, too. And what’s more, I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
    Minnie stopped and made eye contact with her then as if checking Chloe’s true opinion one more time. Then she grinned. “We gone have new lives, Miss Chloe. You wait and see.”
    “I’m a believer today.” Chloe laughed again. “Let’s see that agency address again.” Even if Minnie never got to be an actress, surely