Flygirl (17 page)

Not a single WASP moves.

“One for the road, buddy?” Patsy asks.

The poor man looks about to say no. It's been a long night. I imagine he's got a home and a family to get back to. But then, with the same expression of dutiful patriotism with which Jolene and I used to collect bacon grease and silk stockings, he plugs the vending machine back in. “It's just soda, ladies. You still have to get back to base.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Patsy says. We pass out one last round of fizzing colas and sit together for a moment in silence. I look at the faces around me, every last girl from my flight and a few from other barracks. We all look so different, short, tall, dark, light. But the expression on every face is the same.

Lily raises her Coke. “To Melanie.”

“To Melanie.” We toast with a click of our glasses.

In the small hours of the morning, I sit in the bathroom between our sleeping bays and add a page to my mother's letter. I tell her nothing about Instructor Jenkins, how the weight of his arm feels like a brand around my waist, or my fear, or anything that would give away my secret. Instead, I tell her about Melanie, how her failure clings to me like unwanted perfume, how hard training can be sometimes. Then I tell my mother that I will not fail. And I find myself wishing she were here to convince me that I am right.

Flight Two lost a few more girls on our first solo tests. I think Melanie Michaels's departure screwed my flight's courage to the sticking place. All of us passed and began our intermediate training with little fanfare and a lot of hard work. Instructor Jenkins is a complete professional in the classroom. Since that night at the Avengerette, no one has mentioned our slow dance, not even him.

“Ladies, when you leave these fine flying fields, you will be stationed from California to Delaware. Some of you will be towing targets for artillery practice. Some of you will fly test planes or weather-checking missions. Many of you will ferry airplanes from the factory to the coast. All of you will need to trust your instruments to fly.”

I bounce my pen on my notebook, waiting for him to tell me something I'll need to remember. Up to now, most of our classes have been about theory. Today, we try our hand at the Link trainer.

We follow Jenkins to the training room and stand nervously while he shows us the equipment. The room itself looks just like the beginner classroom, except the student desks are on a platform and the lower third of the floor is taken up by the Link.

The Link trainer is a simulator. It looks like an airplane cockpit, black metal and bullet-shaped, but unlike a plane, the top of the cockpit is dark. Once inside, you're “flying” blind, with only the dials and gauges on the control panel to tell you which way is up. I'm so anxious to get started, I volunteer to go first. The cockpit closes over me with a sharp click. Climbing into the Link is a little like going underwater. Shut inside that warm darkness, suddenly I'm drowning in Lake Pontchartrain all over again.

“Miss Jones, can you hear me?” Jenkins's voice comes over a radio speaker, loud and clear. It's hard to believe that just a few feet away, Lily and Patsy are standing with the rest of my class. Jenkins himself sits at a control panel that mirrors my own. He'll know every move I make.

I take a deep breath. “Affirmative,” I say. My voice is strained. I'm sweating, even though the box isn't hot. It's just like a cockpit, same size and shape, but it feels smaller, like my knees are tucked into my chest.

Breathe, Ida Mae. Breathe.

“Okay,” Jenkins‘s voice says. “I want you to start your taxi and take off. Cruise at one thousand feet. I'll tell you what to do next.”

“Yes, sir. Flight check.” I go over the flight check in my head. The routine helps to calm my breathing. Check. Check. Check.

“Taxiing,” I say. The Link doesn't move. Nothing moves but the speedometer and altimeter. This is not like flying to me. The Link box just sits there. There's no wind in my hair, no sun on my skin. Not even stars or the wet feel of cloud spray. This is just mechanics.

My throat gets tight. My vision starts to dim. Suddenly, this little box is too small for me to have ever even gotten inside of it.

“Jones, are you all right?” Jenkins's voice sounds far away.

I don't know how long he has been calling my name. I try to respond, but I can't. I'm drowning. I start to bang on the hatch. The tiniest part of me, the part that says not to panic or I'll wash out, is suffocated by the screaming animal inside of me that says I am going to die if I don't leave this box.

“Jones!”

The hatch whooshes open with a burst of sweet, cool air. I throw back my head and grab the sides of the opened cockpit, gasping for breath. I can't draw it in fast enough.

A hand takes mine. I hold on to it the way I held on to my daddy's hand beneath the lake, feeling it pull me up into the light.

“Slow down, Ida. Take a deep breath and open your eyes.” Walt Jenkins is there, his hand clutching mine, a look of worry in his eyes. I cling to his hand and fight to do as I'm told.

With each slow breath, my panic slides away. Embarrassment takes its place. The whole class is watching us. It feels worse than our dance at the Avengerette. Jenkins lets go of my hand, his eyes no longer worried, and squeezes my shoulder.

“Thank you, Miss Jones. That will be all.”

My stomach hits the floor. I leave it and all of my big dreams behind in the Link.
That will be all.
I'm going to be sent back home. My legs tremble slightly. I go stand between Patsy and Lily, who give me worried looks but otherwise leave me be. I wonder if failure can rub off onto other people, the way Melanie Michaels must have rubbed off on me.

But that's ridiculous. In the end, I failed because I'm lying. I'm only pretending to be white. White kids never tangled in the undertow of Lake Pontchartrain. As light as I am, no matter what I do, I'm still that little colored child who almost drowned.

“And that, ladies, was a classic example of what can happen while flying under the hood,” Instructor Jenkins says, using the more common term for flying instruments only under a covered hatch. “It's called a panic attack, in this case brought on by claustrophobia.” Jenkins smiles at me, and I want to slap the smile off his face. How did I not hear the sarcasm in that friendly voice before? Melanie did. Now I do, too. Like the instructor at Tuskegee. It hurts to hear.

Maybe he sees the look on my face, but Jenkins stops smiling. “Don't worry, Miss Jones, it happens to the best of us.” He takes a step toward me and his voice softens. “It happens to most of us. You get inside that box or a plane at night, and you don't know up from down.” I feel myself flush. Fortunately, he turns back to face the rest of the class. Why does this man make me feel so flustered?

“We're creatures of the daylight, ladies,” Jenkins continues. “We like the sky above us and the earth below. But under the hood, all of your natural instincts go out the window. Sometimes the stars can look like city lights and you fly too high. Sometimes tailwinds send you faster or slower than you thought and you miss your landing mark.

“But that is why you have Link training. And that is why you have me.” He puts his hand fondly on the Link. “Contrary to what you've seen today, the Link is our friend. You will all get a chance to try it. You will all have your own moment of panic. And then you will listen to me. We will retrain your instincts. And every last one of you will fly out of here, day or night, as if they are one and the same.”

My stomach slowly rises back to its usual spot. I am not a failure. I am like everyone else. But I need to see it to believe it. Jenkins steps back from the trainer and offers the door. “Next?”

Patsy edges forward to give it a shot. Of all of us, she ends up being the one that lasts the longest that first day. Ten whole minutes. Hardly long enough to fly halfway to Baker's Pond. But I'm not alone. I haven't failed, not really, not yet. I watch each girl's face as they climb out of the Link like they are rising out of a coffin. Then I grit my teeth and prepare to do it again.

 

“Ida! Ida, come up!” Lily's voice carries through the water like an old gramophone recording. Stretched, thin, and bubbly, it sounds more like she's the one underwater instead of me.

I give her a thumbs-up, then hold up all ten fingers. Ten seconds more. I've been sitting at the bottom of the town swimming pool for twenty seconds. Ten more and I'll have reached my goal. My lungs ache. I want to open my mouth and exhale. At the mere thought, bubbles escape my nose. I try to stay calm, but I'm already shoving off the rough pool bottom toward the surface. I break through the top with a gasp.

“Ida, thank goodness. You know you scare me when you stay down so long.” Lily rushes toward me with a white towel. “I'm not sure I'll be able to tell if you ever get in trouble down there.”

I accept the towel gratefully and dry my face before wrapping the towel around my shoulders. “Oh, believe me, you'll know, from all the thrashing and churning I'll do. I don't think anybody ever drowns peacefully.”

Lily frowns. “Ophelia did, in
Hamlet.
”

“No, you only hear about it afterward. They always candy-coat that stuff.”

I shiver beneath the little towel. Lily frowns.

“Goodness, you must be cold. It's getting too chilly to keep doing this before spring, Ida. Maybe we should give it a rest.”

I hate to admit it, but she's right. “It is only warm in the sun these days.” Even in New Orleans, December was usually cause for a cold snap. And no one wants to believe how cold it can get in the South in the wintertime, even without snow.

“It'll be warm at the Beach. Let's go.”

The Beach is actually the strip of sand that runs between the rows of barracks. Thanks to the metal siding of the buildings and the lack of trees, the Beach gets hot enough to suntan in year-round, according to the upperclassmen. I've avoided it until now, because, quite frankly, getting a tan is the last thing I should be doing here, and not just because of the workload. The minute I get a shade darker than I am, I'm convinced a group of MPs will descend on me and throw me into the hoosegow.

“I think I'll just take a shower,” I tell Lily as we reach the barracks. She shrugs.

“I'll only be out for a little while. I burn like crazy in the sun,” she says. She grabs the chair from the foot of her bed and drags it behind her into the yard. I wait for her to leave before I carefully undo my hair from its swim cap. It's become a ritual, pulling it straight and tight, braiding the ends so they tuck up neatly beneath the two swimming caps I wear, with a little towel sandwiched underneath the rim. Whatever it takes to keep my hair from getting too wet, too kinky. It's harder now that I can sit underwater for so long. Sometimes you can see the air bubbles squeeze past your ears and let the water in. That's when I came up with the towel. At least it keeps the water from the crown of my head. Now, a lot of girls wear swim and shower caps during the week—there's just not enough time in the morning to deal with shampoo. But my little getup is just strange enough that I try not to let anyone see it.

Once my hair is safely unbraided, I comb setting lotion through with my fingers and look out the door while I massage it into the damp ends. Colored or white, setting lotion is a girl's best friend. It can help a style hold all day or, in my case, keep my hair from frizzing up. The smell of the lotion reminds me of Jolene and how we'd sit together at the beauty parlor on our days off, laughing and gossiping under the big hair dryers. My stomach feels hollow from missing her. With all the studying and flying, I'm usually too busy to feel home-sick. But not today. Today is a lazy day. It's hard not to think of home.

Outside the door, Lily and about seven other girls are out there, stretched out in swimsuits and nighties on the strand, their desk chairs tilted seat down on the ground so they can use the backs like lounge chairs. It's down to a fine science, the art of sunbathing at Avenger Field. Patsy waves at me from her lounge chair. I smile and turn to take my shower.

The hot water feels good running over my shoulders. I've tucked my hair into a shower cap to help the lotion soak in, and the water bounces off of it in a rapid pitter-pat. I sing little bits of “Zoot Suits and Parachutes” in my off-key voice. Halfway through, I switch to that ditty Jolene and I used to listen to while we cleaned the Wilson place. “T'aint whatcha do, it's the place that you do it! T'aint whatcha do, it's the time that you do it!”

By the time I'm out of the shower, the other girls have come in from the beach. “Almost ready, Ida?” Patsy calls. I quickly pull on a sweater and skirt. Christmas is coming to Avenger Field. We're going into town to shop for the holidays.