Pearl had asked, “What’s a fancy word for dresses?”
“Frocks.”
“I’m smiling,” his mother said. “You’re so smart. Thank you, that’s good.”
“Pearl’s Custom Frocks,” Son said. “Smart dresses of distinction, tailored to the particular dimensions of her special clientele.”
When Pearl started out the dresses she sewed were still kind of country, but it wasn’t too long, what with seeing women on the street, in moving pictures at the King, and in magazines at the beauty parlor, before she caught on to the way it was done in Chilton and elsewhere. She reckoned who the colored women thought they were, what their place was, and who they wanted to be or appear to be. She made dresses that reflected her vision or what she thought their vision of themselves was. To show they were free to be themselves and stylish as white women without copying them, and so their men would see them anew. Her time at Mr. Fong’s was at the base of much of what she was able to bring to her process.
Her range of creations, made with or without a pattern, could be flirty or formal. For dancing or church. Social or business—such business as they had. She had a knack of somehow putting some extra material in the back across the hips so the dress tails of her colored customers did not rise up in the back the way they did when they wore store-bought dresses, and their behinds, when walking or standing, engirdled or not, did not look like a pair of pumpkins rolling around in the rear of Mr. Amalfi’s wagon. Pretty soon, what with Vienna and Potluck getting the girls in the shop to talk Pearl up, and with a couple of her samples hung on display in the shop, as well as down at the dry cleaners, Pearl was doing okay to fair, just fine.
She charged $2.50 to $3.00 a dress, fifty cents to a dollar more to white women. For coloreds they were over the price of store-bought, off-the-rack ones of the same quality, but worth it for the service, the fit, and having a custom-made garment.
Pretty soon women all over ‘lo’ Dunbar were ordering dresses for themselves, at half more than the off-the-rack price, but worth it, and Pearl Moon was in business full time for herself.
Then, slowly, Pearl picked up a client or two from the wealthy matrons above Dunbar, from when the domestics wore one of her garments to work to show off before changing in the bathroom into their work uniforms. For the wealthy Lewis Heights women, Pearl did both copies of her own designs and copies of pictures brought to her.
She went at first dressed as a maid, to do private fittings to camouflage that extra girth through the white women’s middles, or across the hips, to add or subtract through the bosom. Then after she had reached favored seamstress status with a couple of the Lewis Heights white women, to save time, she went to being picked up by the chauffer, or the lady herself, considering it an adventure to drive to ‘lo’ Dunbar and park in front of Pearl’s Custom Frocks, opposite the King Colored Theater, motor running, windows up, to pick Pearl up and drive her to Lewis Heights. The more adventurous were fitted in the rear of the little shop Pearl had set up in a space rented to her by Chap.
Son was telling her of the news humming in over the wires of the world news.
From as far back as ’36, Hitler, greedy baby, his fist balled up and screaming, demanding other people’s stuff, first the Jews, then nearby Europe, collecting pieces of property like he had the dice and a stay-out-of-jail-free card in a game of Monopoly.
Mussolini ran Salassie out of Ethiopia, the Spanish went to war with themselves, and Edward VIII wanted Mrs. Simpson more than he wanted to be king. The Olympics switched from Japan to Helsinki after the Japanese declared war on China.
A third shift, with some women included, was added at Glass and Metal to fill the government orders for war-related materials.
Joe Louis showed Schmeling, Hitler’s boy, the canvas in the first round of the rematch, avenging the first fight mishap that had sucked the life of colored and white America.
Son listened, his eyes squeezed shut, as Martians invaded Earth in the “War of the Worlds” on the night before Halloween.
Jazz news came from Peck’s letters: “From Spiritual to Swing” at Carnegie Hall with a mixed lineup of musicians and Bennie Goodman with Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson, both colored; everybody singing Chick Webb’s tune “A Tisket A Tasket” with young Ella Fitzgerald, skipping through the nonsense lyrics, and Count Basie making everybody feel better about everything.