Flygirl (12 page)

All of the girls, even the ones in the ready room, line up on the tarmac to watch Lily's first flight. The plane banks and turns. It's a beautiful sight to see in the clear blue Texas sky. Then, suddenly, the plane does a loop in the air, and something awful happens. Lily falls out of the plane! A tiny figure, still visible in her oversized zoot suit, slips from the backseat and plummets toward the earth.

We all cry out. My legs start moving before I can think. Patsy, the entire class starts to run, our eyes on the sky. A second later, the parachute balloons out behind her, and we all heave a sigh of relief.

“Thank you, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Patsy mutters.

“Amen,” I add. Silently, I say thank you to Jolene, too. We jog the rest of the way across the fields to the spot where Lily has drifted gently to earth. When we get there, she is crying.

“Honey, are you hurt?” Patsy kneels beside her.

“No,” she sobs.

“Are you sure? Can you stand?” I give her a hand and we help pull her to her feet.

“Is she all right?” the other girls ask, running toward us, breathless.

Lily's face, already red from crying, turns an even deeper red. “Oh, no, I'm fine. I'm okay.” She gives them a weak thumbs-up. A cheer goes up. But Lily turns away.

“I'm so embarrassed, I could die.” She begins to pace in little circles.

I put my arm around her shoulders. Patsy begins to gather her parachute. “Well, what happened?”

Lily stops her pacing and gives me an anguished look. “Oh, Ida, I swear I fastened my seat belt, but this darn suit is so big, it got in the way and I guess the belt didn't lock properly. I should've double-checked it, but it felt right, and we took off so fast, and he was saying, ‘Look at this,' and, ‘Don't forget that,' and then he says, “Do a loop,” like he doesn't think I can, and next thing I know, I'm pulling my rip cord. And I'd been so careful, too!”

“It's all right, Lily. It's just the first day. And that's one mistake you'll never make again.”

“Aw, honey, it's a rite of passage,” Patsy says. “You've joined the Caterpillar Club!”

“Caterpillar Club?” Lily asks.

“That's what they call it when you use your parachute. It opens like a silk cocoon. You've just spread your wings, little butterfly.”

We sent the warning to all the girls in Flight One. Don't forget to double-check your seat belt. No one else wants to be a member of the club today.

By the time we get back to the flight line, Instructor Martin has landed. “Any broken limbs?” he calls out to Lily.

“No, sir.” Lily blushes three shades of pink and I feel just awful for her, but at least he's not giving her a demerit.

“Fortunately, Miss Lowenstein remembered her parachute, if not her seat belt,” he says to the class. Lily starts to protest, but I put a hand on her arm to stop her. Falling out of your plane doesn't earn you a demerit today, but arguing with the instructor just might.

Martin clasps his little hands together with a smug look and says, “The kitchen is safer than the sky, ladies. Let that be a lesson to you. Next?”

Lily bristles, but I have no time to commiserate. I'm up.

My hands start to sweat. This is the first time I've done more than sit in a plane since Tuskegee, three years ago, and it looks like Instructor Martin is determined to make it hard. Then again, this is what I've come here for.

I give the plane a once-over and climb on board. This plane is not too different from my daddy's plane. The same sort of open cockpit, tandem seats for pilot and co-pilot. It's just like going up on a dusting run with Grandy sitting ahead of me. With that thought, all of the butterflies fade away. It's like a cool wind is blowing through my mind. I smile. Settling into the frontseat, I make doubly sure I fasten my seat belt before I look over the instruments and put my hand on the throttle.

“Hands off until we're in the air,” Martin shouts at me. His voice comes through the gosport, a speaking tube that runs from his dashboard to my helmet like a one-way telephone. I nod. “I'll tell you what to do and when.” I nod again and sit back. Martin can do what he will; I aim to enjoy myself.

“This is Flight One PT-19A signaling for takeoff,” Martin says into the radio.

After a brief moment, the radio crackles to life. “This is the tower,” a man's voice says. “PT-19A, you are cleared for takeoff.”

“Miss Jones, note the clearance light on the tower and the pattern of the flight and to your left, the wind sock on the hangar. Note the direction of the wind.” And the sun and the moon and the cows in the fields, I think. I will not be distracted. I checked the wind and the clouds the minute we got into the plane. Nothing to get in our way. With a hum of engine and tires, we roll up the runway and leap into flight.

The wind snaps around my ears, tugging at my turban and my goggles, burning my face with its speed. I want to laugh. I want to spread my arms into the clear blue sky and soar toward the sun. We climb higher and higher, and suddenly, the plane dips.

“You have the controls, Miss Jones.”

My hand falls onto the stick easily, and I pull us level. The instructor told the truth: this plane does not respond as easily as my father's JN-4. But it does respond. We ride the air and I think of Daddy. This is exactly where I want to be.

“Let's begin with an easy turn. Bank right.”

I follow his orders and guide the plane into a smooth turn, first right, then left, up and down as he commands. The wind flows over her wings like ice cream, smooth and sweet.

“Release,” he says through the tube, and I reluctantly let go of the stick. I can feel him take over and realize a second before he does it that he is throwing us into a loop. I can't help myself, I throw my hands into the air with complete and utter glee. Upside down, I can see Avenger and the other auxiliary fields dotting the flat, sandy landscape like raisins in a piece of bread.

“Parachute!” Instructor Martin yells at me. He thinks I'm falling out of the plane. And then it sinks in—the old codger is trying to dump me! Lily didn't have an accident after all. “The kitchen is safer than the sky,” my foot. I snort and bring my hands back in. Martin pulls the plane level and brings us in for a landing.

“That's not proper decorum for a military pilot, Miss Jones,” he warns me. I can hear the disappointment in his voice. “Or for a young lady,” he adds.

Or for an instructor, I think. Regardless, when we come in for a landing, part of me is still flying high.

 

“How many girls is he going to try to dump before he realizes we've learned our lesson?” I ask Patsy as she steps up the flight line. “He should be court-martialed for this. Trying to scare us into quitting. It's practically attempted murder!”

She shakes her head. “Like any of the girls here would turn him in on the first day of flight school. Nobody'd take the word of a brand new trainee over an instructor's, and don't think he doesn't know it.” She scowls at Martin, who stands smugly beside the plane, waiting for his next victim. “But don't you worry, I've got a fix for Mr. Happy,” she says, “and he'll swallow it, or I'll turn him in myself.” She throws me a wink and strides toward the plane with a smirk to match the instructor's.

“Lily, come watch this.” I call her away from her parachute, which she has been worrying over ever since her awkward landing. Of the bunch, she's the only one Martin managed to actually dump, especially since she was the one doing the flying. Sure, he tried to surprise the rest of us by taking the controls over himself, but you've only got to see a girl fall out of a plane once to make sure it doesn't happen to you. Poor Lily. I hope Patsy pays Martin back a hundredfold. She is the last one to go up today, and everyone comes out to watch her.

Happy sends her into the usual banks and turns, but on the loop, something remarkable happens. At the top of the loop, upside down, Patsy drops out of the plane—but she does not fall. She holds on to the plane with both hands, doing what looks like a handstand, only she's standing right-side up with the plane over her. My heart skips a beat.

“She'll be killed!” Lily screams.

“No, she's a wing walker, remember? Cakewalk Kake?”

“But she doesn't even have a . . . rope or anything!”

One of the other girls steps forward, shielding her eyes for a better view. “Way I hear it, they didn't even wear parachutes until '38.” She grins. “Hotdog. She's just out there. Look at her go.”

Lily falls silent, but she doesn't relax until Patsy flips herself back into the plane just as it comes level again. When Patsy pays somebody back, she sure does it with style.

“Can't you just hear him screaming at her?” I ask, a broad grin spreading across my face. “Miss Kake, that is not proper decorum for a lady!” I mimic the instructor's prim voice.

The other girls laugh, even Lily, reluctantly. “I suppose, though, I'll have to give her a demerit for that.” She looks suddenly crestfallen. “What if she washes out for this?” Everyone else sobers up fast.

“Oh no, she won't,” I tell her quickly. “He deserved a scare for what he did to you. And he won't dare punish her—she'll turn him in if he does, even if it's a trainee's word against his. I'll back her up if it comes to that. But for now, we didn't see anything. Let's get back to the ready room. I doubt he'll even mention it. He'll be too embarrassed.”

We bustle back to the ready room as quickly as we can. No one stays outside to see Patsy's triumphant return to earth.

She walks into the room a few minutes later, eyes shining. She gives us a curious look. I wink at her. She smiles. “The old buzzard gave me two demerits, but it was worth it,” she announces. “He'll never pull that stunt again.”

“Oh, Patsy, that's terrible!” Lily exclaims. “Maybe we should report him.”

Patsy shrugs. “Do you want to go to court, or do you want to fly?”

The rest of us remain silent. We're pilots and we want to stay, no matter what. I squeeze Patsy's hand. A second later, a very flustered Instructor Martin enters the room.

“Well, ladies, that will be all for today. This afternoon you have physical instruction back at the base. And I'll see you in the morning.” He doesn't so much as look at us once. We all stare daggers at him, except for Patsy, who demurely lowers her eyes, trying not to smile.

Instructor Martin clears his throat and busies himself with his papers.

“Dismissed.”

When I was seven, my father took me to Lake Pontchartrain to go swimming with my brother Thomas and his friends. The lake was a dangerous place to be, with an undertow that grabbed on tight and pulled you down. More than a few children have drowned there. Grown-ups, too. But it's where colored people go to swim. The safer beaches are “whites only.” Of the five of us there, only Daddy really knew how to handle the water. He knew to stay near the shore, away from the worst of the currents. Me, I had never been in anything deeper than a bathtub, and that not even full to the top. I stared at that dark blue water so long that it wasn't blue anymore, but black. And cold. It must've been August for us to want to go swimming, but I wasn't having any of it. While the boys ran toward the water, I hung back, hugging myself with skinny, goose-pimpled arms.

Thomas was the one to push me in, or one of his friends. Afterward, none of them would say who'd done it. Who had shoved me screaming to cut through the black skin of the lake like a knife. I didn't float, didn't paddle. I simply sank, dragged down by the undercurrent. Daddy pulled me free with one hand and smacked my back until I coughed up half a cup of water, and that was it. I never wanted to swim again.

“Old Clayfoot, sunk like a ton of bricks,” Daddy said. But he hugged me close. “Don't worry, Little Bit. You're all right. When you're ready, we'll go in again. This time, without help from those rascals.” He scowled at Thomas and his two buddies. All three looked about ready to cry.

I pressed into my daddy's chest and shook my head. “Uh-uh,” was all I said. And that was that. Daddy didn't push me. Later, he'd say it was the look on my face that told him not to. Said I looked like I'd seen the devil under the water, waving at me. Maybe I had. All I know is I didn't go back to Pontchartrain until high school, and from then on, I stayed on the shore. That was fine. All the girls did. It was more about swimsuits than swimming, anyway.

Not like today. Today, we're having a swim test. We're lined up, two by two, like Noah's Ark at the Sweetwater Municipal pool. It's closed to looky-loos, thank goodness, and I'm at the back of the line. I made sure of that. My hair is braided tight against frizzing, but that's the least of my worries.