A Banner of Love

By JOSEPHINE GARNER

Set in New York City, in 1950’s this novel tells the story of a bold passion between two newly married people as they change their ways for the sake of love. Taylor and Esther Payne begin their lives as a married couple in the haven of Haverly Street in Greenwich Village, New York. Here they can have their love and their license, and thoug

• Language: English
• Publisher: TOPLINK PUBLISHING, LLC
• Release date: Mar 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781948779494

JOSEPHINE GARNER

Josephine Garner is from a small, working class, African American community near Dallas, Texas, known as Bear Creek. Although now living near Atlanta, Georgia her roots remain deeply grounded in East Texas history and culture. As a social worker Garner has a successful career in public service, working to promote health and social justice. She focuses her writing on the exploration and celebration of all the fascinating complexities of life. A Banner of Love is her second novel.

Book preview

One

On a Wednesday afternoon Paulette’s Beauty Parlor was a crowded battlefield where Nature mostly lost, unless you counted the natural tendency of women to preen themselves presumably to please husbands and boyfriends or at the least catch some man’s eye. That was pretty natural, the desire to have a man whose name you could proudly wear, whose home you could happily keep, and whose children you could lovingly raise. Generally speaking, a woman’s beauty was her best bait, and pity the one too plain to entice, unless a miracle happ ened.

Product advertisements displayed on the tacky walls around us featured light-skinned women with long shiny hair, almond-shaped eyes, and ideally proportioned, ruby-red lips, every single one of them immaculate Negro versions of American beauty. They were meant to inspire the rest of us, but they must intimidate us too, despite their promises that if we used the right pomade, the right relaxer, we could also be worthy of envy, admiration, and ultimately matrimony. But by a miracle I was married anyway: proudly, happily, and just waiting for the babies to come. Me. Merely the handsome one. My attempts to be glamorous notwithstanding.

Paulette’s was busy today like it was most days, filled with women, and this afternoon one very restless toddler who kept wandering between his mother and anybody else who offered him a piece of candy or some other temporarily appealing diversion. On this January day, the two big brown ceiling fans, their blades thickly coated with dust, slowly stirred through the smoke from cigarettes and frying hair pomade that hung in the air and veiled the mirrors at every beautician’s station. A cacophony of sounds: high-pitched voices and laughter, the roar of electric hair dryers, the near-rhythmic clang of metal straightening combs and curling irons striking their metal heating elements, all competing for attention, made up a steady hum that testified to commerce, ingenuity, and yes, vanity. After a while you didn’t really hear it all anymore. You learned to let your mind wander as you were being transformed.

Mis’ Paulette was the owner-operator of the parlor and the leader of the cadre of highly skilled professional heirs to Madame C.J. Walker. The other beauticians were themselves entrepreneurs who paid rent to Mis’ Paulette for their stations in her shop with a percentage of what each of them earned.

According to Aunt Grace, Mis’ Paulette actually owned the building where her shop was housed, and she rented out the apartment above the shop where she had once lived. Mis’ Paulette now owned a very fine townhouse and bought herself a new car every year just because she could, so that every time she went down-home to Athens, Georgia Mis’ Paulette did so in gleaming, leather-upholstered, white-wall style. War or peace, boom or bust, rain or shine, women would always see to their hair.

Each of the ten beautician stations was occupied, and other women sat under the whirring hair dryers reading copies of Ebony and Look magazines. Still others had their heads hanging inside porcelain wash bowls as shampoo girls washed away whatever it was that the beauticians would likely reapply to make the women chic again.

My own process was well underway as I sat impatiently holding a copy of Jet magazine that I wasn’t reading, since I was nervously studying Belle, Mis’ Paulette’s assistant manager, as she pressed my nappy hair into glossy straightness. The coming together of hot iron teeth and Royal Crown hairdressing made my hair sizzle where it was damp around the edges from perspiration. It was cold outside but in the shop it was hot and stuffy. Belle’s face shone with sweat as she popped her chewing gum and cooked my taut black strands into a properly submissive mane.

Now and again I’d steal a quick glance at my wrist watch that Aunt Betty and Uncle Perry had given to me for my birthday. It was the middle of the afternoon and I was anxious. It probably would have been easier if I had just straightened my own hair myself at the kitchen stove, as I usually did, except tonight was a special occasion and I wanted to look my best, getting as close as Ernestine’s granddaughter could to the picture-perfect models hanging on the walls. The trip uptown to Harlem to the beauty shop was worth every hour spent for the press-and-curl, manicure, and pedicure, not that anyone would be seeing my feet tonight since they would be pinched inside stylish shoes.

Paulette’s was one of the premier hair-care establishments in Harlem, and as such was frequented by many of New York’s Negro well-to-do, including Aunt Grace. Mis’ Paulette no longer accepted new clients herself, but Aunt Grace was one of Mis’ Paulette’s long-time customers, and my aunt had used her influence to get Belle to take me on as a regular. I really wasn’t as faithful a customer as Belle would have liked. For most of my life the upkeep of my hair had primarily been a kitchen affair, and old habits died hard. Aunt Grace had taken it upon herself to persuade Belle to work me in today, no small feat and entirely necessary because Taylor, my dear husband, apparently had no understanding of what it took to get me ready for dinner with the senior partners of his law firm.

Before I forget, he had casually announced during breakfast this morning, the Ruebens invited us to dinner tonight.

Oh? Judith didn’t mention it, I had replied. Is this something you and Zach cooked up?

Zach Rueben and Taylor had been friends since law school. Judith was Zach’s wife. In the most unlikely way I supposed I had made Zach’s dream come true, since for years he had been after Taylor to join the law practice, Rueben, Fellows, & Goldman that Zach’s father, Samuel, had founded. Zach had helped us make the move to New York, and now Taylor was working at the family firm. Zach and Judith had attended our wedding. Zach had been Taylor’s best man.

Not Zach, said Taylor, getting up from the table. Samuel. Preparing to leave for the day, he had kissed me on the cheek. My guess is they want to look us over before the big partner decision.

"They? I had cried. You mean the partners?"

A tribunal image had popped into my head, complete with black robes and grave reviews. Although truth be told, Taylor was ambivalent about the promotion for which he was being considered. Rueben, Fellows, & Goldman was a fine firm. He liked working there, and the senior partners were delighted to have someone with Taylor’s talents, but my husband was a little restless. Most of the time he won his cases, and in two short years he had burnished the firm’s reputation and grown its coffers. It was just that Taylor saw himself doing more than winning divorce settlements and executing business contracts. In McConnell County Taylor had been a prosecutor. He missed the kind of work that made him feel like a legal missionary. Nevertheless a promotion was a promotion.

Oh, Taylor, I had groaned this morning. How am I supposed to get ready for that?

Just wear a pretty dress, had been his oblivious reply.

The minute he was out the front door, I had called Aunt Grace, panicked.

What am I gonna do? I had whined.

Well it ain’t like they don’t know ‘bout you, she had said. They have seen you before.

That was true. Although he hadn’t introduced me to any of his family yet, Taylor did present me to everybody else as if he were the luckiest man in the world.

Yes, but this is different, I had said. It’s a sit-down dinner in the Ruebens’ apartment. It’ll be up close. I have to be perfect. You know how it is. If I mess up it could ruin Taylor’s chances.

Is that what he told you?

No, of course not. He doesn’t think like that. He might not even care.

Then why do you?

I don’t want to be the reason he doesn’t get his promotion.

Alright. We can get your hair fixed but you know that ain’t gon’ make you white.

Meaning perfect, at least by the usual standards, was out of the question.

A demure little bell above the shop’s door tinkled discordantly against the din of the shop and the bustling street sounds outside. Aunt Grace swept in. Typical for her, she was wearing what would be for many a Sunday-best suit but for her every-day at least when she went out. Today the outfit was a peach-colored wool. Her shoes and pocketbook matched. Still a good-looking woman, Aunt Grace could have easily been the proud mother of one of the women pictured in the poster advertisements on the parlor’s walls, coming much closer to perfect than her niece, who had taken after Aunt Grace’s mother, Ernestine, more so than after her father, Grampa. Most Negro families were a tapestry of colors, often from fair to dark when genes appeared from all over their histories.

Aunt Grace paid her respects to Mis’ Paulette, who worked at the first station, then proceeded to the second station where I was sitting, hot, bothered, and ready to go.

Hi, Aunt Grace, I said. I didn’t know you had an appointment too.

I don’t, she replied scrutinizing Belle’s work. I came to see how you comin’ along. You doin’ alright today, Belle?

Belle, bothered too I guessed, grunted a greeting and used Aunt Grace’s interruption to take a quick break. Putting down the straightening comb, she picked up her lit cigarette, and took a deep drag of it, blowing the blue smoke up into the warm teeming air.

I’m cutting it close, I said looking at my asymmetrical reflection in the mirror. Hope I can make it home before Taylor does.

All around me women were works-in-progress, buildings under construction, caterpillars yet to become butterflies.

Take a taxi, said Aunt Grace.

But given the likely time of day the subway would surely be faster. Harlem and Greenwich Village were worlds apart.

Did you get a manicure like I told you? Aunt Grace wanted to know.

Yes ma’am, I answered, leaving the Jet in my lap for a moment to hold up my hands for her to see.

Where’s the polish? asked Aunt Grace.

I had declined the nail enamel but the manicurist had filed my nails evenly and carefully buffed them. We were both pleased with their pale tips and pink beds.

Couldn’t get her to wear none, Belle informed Aunt Grace, still puffing her cigarette and occasionally waving her hand to disperse the tobacco smoke, an effort no more useful than the turning of the ceiling fans.

Exasperated, Aunt Grace commenced to lecture me on the essentials of properly enameled finger nails. I fanned myself with the Jet. I hated cigarette smoke. Only pipe smoke was pleasing to me, and that was because it conjured up warm memories and happy thoughts. Grampa smoked a pipe. Taylor did too. Grampa didn’t approve of nail polish, and Taylor loved my hands just as they were, so much so that he had placed his mother’s ring on my finger.

Finally Belle put out her cigarette and took up her straightening comb again.

I don’t like to fuss with the upkeep, I muttered about the polish.

Nail polish inevitably chipped at the most inopportune times. I didn’t have a maid to do my housework for me like Aunt Grace had. Taylor could afford it, I just didn’t want one. It wouldn’t make sense anyway. Our Village apartment was not as big as my aunt and uncle’s brownstone.

Bend your ear over, instructed Belle, waving the hot comb in the air creating the illusion of cooling it a little.

Hastily I reached for my left ear.

Lord have mercy, carped Aunt Grace. Your hands just as plain as a washwoman’s.

In McConnell County Mama had taken in laundry to make ends meet, because going on Relief had been out of the question; and I had helped her. That made me a washwoman’s daughter at least, if not one myself. And yet here was Jessica Payne’s gold wedding band on my plain left hand because it was mine. Taylor, who wore his father’s wedding ring, had had both rings inscribed with the letters TP and EP entwined, along with our wedding date: Feb 14, 1952.

The wedding ring and the pearl necklace were the most precious pieces of jewelry I owned. Aunt Grace, on the other hand, was usually resplendent with some gold or silver ornamental thing, rings, necklaces, bracelets. Diamonds were said to be a girl’s best friend, and Uncle Eddie made sure that she had plenty of shiny company. My aunt had definitely risen above the washtub and the washboard. However, as Ernestine Green’s youngest child, like her sister, Eva, my mother, Aunt Grace had done a good bit of washing other people’s clothes herself. In the bleak days gone by, there had been times when no work had been beneath any member of my family.

Aunt Grace didn’t seem to remember that as much as I did, now that she and Uncle Eddie were living so well in a smart section of Harlem. These days my aunt enjoyed the luxury of sending her laundry out, or assigning the task to Nettie, their maid, who lived in the basement apartment of their brownstone.

The old life left behind in McConnell County was a long time ago for Aunt Grace and Uncle Eddie. They didn’t go down-home as often as Mis’ Paulette did but they could and with similar flair. Grampa grumbled about what he called their uppity ways. Don’t you get like them, Esther Fay, he had admonished me. Don’t never forget yo’self. I didn’t. But still, as treasured as the past might be, it wasn’t necessarily wrong to let go of it sometimes in order to grab on to the present. Time didn’t stand still, why should we?

Grampa still kept Mama’s wedding ring in my old hope chest back home. I had forgotten to bury her with it, and Jimmy had been killed in the war, denying him any chance to use it. It was a family keepsake now. I often wondered what Felicia, Taylor’s sister, thought about me wearing her dead mother’s ring—if she even knew that I did. The reasons weren’t entirely clear to me, and mainly I was left to guess at them because Taylor could be vague about the topic, but he would not talk very much about his family. It was hard for me to be sure what they knew. I suspected, however, that Felicia would be appalled to see her mother’s ring on a wash-woman’s finger.

Since coming to New York I sent Taylor’s shirts to the laundry, in spite of missing doing that for him myself. It was silly to romanticize housework, as if I were in a television commercial selling washing powder, but I did. Maybe it was because I was a washwoman’s daughter, and my memories were fresh. Maybe it was just being in love.

******

Two

With my new French roll elegantly in place and covered securely with a blue silk scarf, I took the subway downtown to the Village and home on Haverly Street. It was a lovely two-bedroom apartment, with a living room large enough to give us space for a dining area. There was a smaller room that we had set up as Taylor’s study, filling it with Taylor’s enormous oak desk and three large bookcases crammed with our favorite books. The space was about equal in size to Grampa’s house, Ernestine’s Taj Mahal, as I liked to call the little frame house with the red shutters that love had b uilt.

Taylor and I had been expecting a smaller apartment on the third floor of the building, but Leonid Brodsky, our courtly Russian-immigrant landlord had offered us the bigger unit on the second floor right over his. Mr. Brodsky had been friends with Taylor’s mother, Jessica, whom he fondly referred to as Emilia, Jessica’s stage name.

I suspected that Mr. Brodsky had been in love with Emilia, which, judging from her wedding portrait with Andrew, Taylor’s father, would have made sense. As a young man Taylor had come to the Village, perhaps in search of his mother’s bohemian experience. He had met Mr. Brodsky and they had become friends. It was that friendship, and maybe Emilia’s memory, that had led Mr. Brodsky to welcome Taylor and his colored wife.

Greenwich Village or not, it had been hard for me to believe that our new neighbors would accept a Negro dwelling in their midst, but they had, at least that was how it appeared, and we had no trouble. Our fellow tenants were polite and cordial, often friendly. We chatted in the lobby, accepted packages for each other when the intended recipient was out, and did all the things that neighbors did. This may have had more to do with the limited availability of decent housing than it had to do with progressive thinking, but whatever the reason, our neighbors didn’t comment on the peculiarity of our situation, not to us anyway. We were just another married couple if not exactly matched. In the post-war world, new brides could come from anywhere; and Taylor’s former limp could have been from a combat injury. Mr. Brodsky owned the building and who lived in it was his choice alone to make. Greenwich Village was a haven to all kinds of eccentrics.

By the time Taylor got home, I had bathed taking care to protect Belle’s handiwork. There was always some kind of threat to traditionally pressed hair: perspiration, steamy bathrooms, rain. It was as if everything conspired to make the hard-won beauty-shop victories short-lived. Nappy would always survive to be tamed another day, Mis’ Paulette and her beauticians counted on that.

Aunt Grace was probably right about me needing to get a permanent relaxer but I didn’t like them. The process took forever. The chemicals burned you and smelled terrible. Unlike Mama and Aunt Grace, I hadn’t been lucky enough to inherit Grampa’s hair texture. The last one in the family line to get that blood-borne gift had been my brother, Jimmy. Grampa’s other two grandchildren, me and my cousin, Nathaniel, had Ernestine’s hair, and much of her color too.

Taylor approved of Belle’s results, complimenting me while we took some time to relax together on the sofa before getting dressed for the Rueben dinner party. He had taken off his coat and tie, and I had made him a cocktail. I was still a little too Baptist for anything stronger than wine or champagne. Snuggling next to Taylor, wearing nothing but a loosely- tied chenille bathrobe, I enjoyed the touch of his fingers playing underneath the robe’s pink fabric. He enjoyed it too. Married two years and we were still under a honey moon.

I’ve been thinking I should get a permanent, I said. Aunt Grace says I should. What do you think?

I think you should do what you want, Taylor said. Though I’ll never understand why women—and I do mean all women, Esther—go to so much trouble.

For men, I informed him, briefly breathless when he brushed lightly across the naked nipple of my right breast and caused a little ripple between my legs.

We don’t ask you to, he replied petting the breast as if it were a cuddly brown kitten, deliberately taking things in a dangerous direction.

Belle’s French roll probably wouldn’t survive our affections, in spite of the hundreds of pins I was convinced she had used. I caught Taylor’s hand in mine and moved it away from my breast, holding onto it. Herman, our dog, lay on his bed by the fireplace looking up at us, his tail thumping the floor expectantly. I had already given him his supper, but he needed at least a short walk, and that was Taylor’s job.

You don’t see men putting themselves through all of that, said Taylor, accepting my restraint.

Not white men anyway, I was able to reply, Uncle Eddie’s shiny black conk coming to mind.

Well-- he hesitated at the validity of my argument.

Well what? I pressed chuckling softly, purring really.

It’s not necessary, was all he could say.

That’s one man’s opinion anyway, I returned and kissed him.

The fragrance of the scotch warmed his breath. He immediately took over, kissing me back, pushing his tongue into my mouth, and murmuring a faint groan of satisfaction to which I responded contentedly.

Taylor deserved to be partner. Andrew Payne, who had also been a lawyer, would have been proud of his son regardless. He had been an advocate himself, a country lawyer with more pro bono clients than well-paying ones. Andrew had used his own Harvard training to be a poor man’s lawyer, for white and for colored. That was why he had returned to McConnell County, Texas, when he could have worked anywhere, to serve the pursuit of justice. Taylor had come back to Texas for the same reasons and also to honor his father’s legacy. It was because he wanted to be my husband that he had moved back to New York, where we could have our love and our license. But McConnell County could not have its brilliant assistant district attorney.

Rueben, Fellows, & Goldman did allow Taylor to take on needy cases for free, but he was considering taking a leave of absence to work for the NAACP, to which we both belonged. If he became a partner he wouldn’t feel right asking for that kind of time away.

When I first went to work for Taylor I had tried to hide my NAACP membership. Now we were both members, enthusiastic admirers of Ella Baker in particular, who, despite being a woman, had risen very high in the ranks of the organization. Taylor had a penchant for strong women who knew their own minds and acted accordingly. Jessica, the brave Emilia, had been like that, running away from home to find herself. I was determined too, although Ella Baker’s passionate leadership and organizing skills made me feel a little guilty that I wasn’t using my own talents for more than homemaking. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.

I often thought about the Cordelia Colliers of the world, colored and white, who deserved a champion with Taylor’s abilities, and I knew that if it hadn’t been for me he might have remained in McConnell County, where he was sorely needed, doing the work he cared about most. But we were happy. The Ruebens were happy. It could not be wrong to be happy.

When we were just cuddling again, Taylor said, Maybe I should go with you sometimes when you get your hair done. I’d like to know what goes on there.

Uh-uh, I replied instantly.

Maybe they weren’t close, but had Felicia taught him nothing? Or Sylvia even, the woman he might have married? Surely Taylor knew that a beauty parlor was not a place for men, and I was horrified by the prospect. I usually waited until he was out of the house before I pressed my hair. On Webster Road there had been times when I had had no choice but to do it when he was around, because of his initial confinement, but then during those times I had been so busy with his care that I hadn’t had much time to fret about my hair. It was bad enough that some nights before going to bed I resorted to tying up my head in a scarf to protect my hairdo. In the movies none of the women ever did this, and all of them arose alluringly mussed in the morning regardless. Taylor sitting in Mis’ Paulette’s beauty parlor studying colored women striving to be more white-like was beyond the pale.

What’s the matter? asked Taylor. I wouldn’t be welcomed?

He would not. It was enough that chatty Aunt Grace had caused him to be a topic of discussion at the parlor. It was what women did I supposed; talking about our men and our children with each other, especially when we were proud and often when we were not.

At times the questions to me, the discussions they generated were awkward. I didn’t mind it when a woman would ask me for free legal advice, or if Taylor could help her cousin get a job. I was less comfortable with questions about what his mother thought of me, since she was dead and there was no way to know. And almost inevitably someone would want to know if Taylor’s hair smelled funny when it was wet; if being with him was the same as being with a colored man. It was like I was some kind of a double-agent, stuck in the middle, going back and forth, and playing both sides. And besides, Grampa liked to say, A man ain’t nothin’ but a man. That was undoubtedly true, but if that man was white and married to a Negro woman, it was a novelty, and maybe a shame even in Harlem.

I hear tell of folks that do it, Belle had said the very first time I had sat at her station, it being engaging in relations across the color line. But you don’t see too many of ‘em gettin’ married. That’s somethin’, I tell you. Yes, it was.

The North, New York City, even Greenwich Village, might be the Promise Land true enough, but it wasn’t paradise, and