Flygirl (2 page)

“Jolene, you are nothing but trouble.” I reach over her head and turn on the radio we have stashed on the laundry room shelf. There's a ball game on, so I fiddle with the knobs.

“Put some music on.
Sammy Kaye's Sunday Serenade
should be on.”

“You've already got the record going, and every radio station's starting up with Christmas carols. Besides, I just want to hear the news.”

I twist the dial until the news comes in good and strong. The news is much the same as it was last night. The Germans and Russians are fighting in subzero temperatures, and Japan's moving troops in the Far East despite our peace talks. Jolene sighs and goes back to scrubbing the laundry. I turn the volume down so we can talk over the news and the phonograph playing upstairs.

“Did you know the Russians let their women fly military planes?” I say. “In England, too. Ferrying planes for the air force. Isn't that a kick?”

“Loony's more like it. What girl in her right mind wants to be flying around in a war zone?” Jolene rolls her eyes at me and my face goes hot. “Baby, you're not only fly crazy, you're war crazy, too. That's a bad combination.”

I cut off the radio to keep the peace, and Jolene starts singing along with the record. It's nearly four o'clock by the time we're finished with the Wilsons'. We yank off our head scarves and shake out our hair on the back steps of the house. We button up our sweaters against the slight December chill. Jolene pulls her copy of the house key from her pocket and locks the place up tight.

“I sure hope Mr. Wilson is grateful for the Sunday cleaning,” Jolene says, dropping the key into her bag. “I need a new pair of stockings.”

“Why do you waste your money, Jolene? Silk is for show-girls and debutantes.”

“And young ladies who hope to catch a man someday. You'd do well to get yourself a pair, or you'll end up an old maid.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Speak for yourself,” she says. I turn to see her smiling her prettiest little smile at some city road worker across the street. The boy can't be much older than we are, and he sure looks all right in his overalls and cap. It takes me a minute to recognize him as Danny Taylor from our elementary school.

“Danny Taylor, is that you?” I call out.

Jolene frowns and drops the able-Grable sexy act. “Aw, heck, Dan. What you doing, looking all grown up like that?”

We wait for a break in the traffic and jog across the cobblestones. Poydras Street is a leafy place, sheltered by live oaks with crepe myrtle trees growing in between. Danny Taylor smiles at us when we get closer. He's got a nice smile, broad with teeth as white as milk in a strong brown face.

“Ida Mae Jones, I thought you was a white woman walking over there with that fine light skin and pretty brown hair.”

My hand goes instantly to my curls, loose and smooth, like my daddy's. The kind of curls Jolene calls “good hair.” Not tight and hard to handle, like hers.

“What about my hair?” Jolene asks, eyebrows arched. “And my fine
brown
skin?”

Danny grins, unaware he's offended her or me, for that matter. I'm shy of my fair looks, and Jolene's more than a little jealous. “Well, that's how I knew she wasn't white. You're dressed the same, and Jolene, you're as black as a good cup of coffee.”

“Best coffee you'll never have,” she says, and turns her nose up in the air.

“Well, it was good to see you, Danny,” I say, anxious to leave.

“What's your rush? I haven't seen either of you two since the eighth grade.”

“Well, some of us stuck around and graduated,” Jolene snaps. She's decided not to like Danny Taylor.

“Well, some of us had to work,” Danny says right back. At school, I had known Danny mostly through my brother. I remember when Thomas came home one day and told us his friend had to quit school to help his family pay the bills. Jolene knows it, too.

“How's your mama?” I ask.

“Fine, fine. Doctor says she has a sugar problem, but she's doing all right.”

“Glad to hear it,” I say.

Jolene's folded up her arms now. She looks at me and frowns.

“Well, Danny, like I said, it was nice seeing you, but we've got to get the trolley and all before the buses shut down. Sundays are always awful tight.”

“Say hi to your brother for me.”

“I will.” Jolene is dragging me away now. I stumble on the pavement, catch myself, and wave goodbye.

“You just keep waving goodbye to Joe Corn over there,” she says in a clipped voice. “Girl, you can do better than smiling up in his face like that.”

“Jolene, I was being polite. You could take a lesson or two. What's wrong with you?”

Jolene stops in her tracks and screws up her face so tight, I think she's going to cry. “I don't know,” she says unhappily. “It's just . . . am I pretty at all? He didn't even look at me. Just Little Miss Pretty Hair and Her Creamy White Skin. I love you, Ida, but he just made me so mad.”

“Me, too.” I put an arm around her. We stand there, half hugging, with nothing left to say. Daddy once told me color didn't matter as much to folks up north. Light-skinned like me and him or dark like Mama and Jolene, up there he said they'd treat all colored folks the same, like we were all white. I'd sure like to see that, 'cause down here, color seems to be the only place it's at.

The trolley down St. Charles Avenue is empty of colored folks. Jolene and I sit to the back and watch the big houses roll by. St. Charles Avenue is the prettiest place on earth, a green tunnel of live oak trees arching across two paved roads, the trolley running down the middle on its cables. Only the richest, whitest folks live up here. We trundle past Audubon Park and the university, same as always, but inside this trolley car something is different. Jolene nudges me with her foot.

“It's like a funeral in here,” she says. It's true. Usually, the trolley is buzzing with laughter, chatter, and just plain noise. But now, it's like a storm is coming. The few people on board are deadly quiet.

“Sooner we get home, the better,” I tell her. The trip up Carrollton Avenue is just as slow. At the last stop, we hop off and run across the wide street to catch the bus back to Slidell.

There's more folks sitting in the back of the bus. One of them, a dignified-looking, coffee-colored gentleman in a neatly pressed suit, has a newspaper.

“Excuse me, sir. What's the news?” I ask him.

He looks up at me, startled, and starts to stand. There are plenty of seats, though. Jolene has saved me one.

“Ma'am, I'm sorry,” he says, rising.

“Oh, no, no. I just noticed you had the paper. Does it say what's going on? Everyone seems so . . .”

He looks at me a moment longer and settles back into his seat, seeing that I'm colored, too.

“Ah, sorry, baby girl. You haven't heard? We've been attacked by the Japanese.”

My mother is standing on the front porch, waiting for me.

“Ida Mae, Ida Mae, get in here, quickly!” As if the war had already reached our front door. I run, my shoulder bag swinging against my ribs, and climb the stairs, into her arms.

“What happened, Mama? What's happened?”

“Come inside, it's on the radio. They'll play it again.”

The radio sits on the sideboard in the kitchen, where Mama listens to music while she cooks the family meals, humming and singing the whole day through. Mama's daddy, Grandy, is at the table now, and his big head with its close-cropped white hair is bowed over his clasped farmer's hands, like he's praying. My little brother, Abel, is sitting at the table like it was Sunday school, his seven-year-old face solemn and unsure. He watches me with round eyes as I sit next to him. Mama pulls up a fourth chair. Music is playing, just like any other day. We sit there, hands clasped like Grandy's, until a news bulletin breaks in.

“This is an NBC news bulletin. The Japanese have bombed our naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, this morning. In an unexpected attack, a squadron of Japanese planes came out of the sky, dropping bombs on the naval base and the island of Oahu. The president is expected to speak tomorrow morning. This can only be taken as an act of war. We now return to our regularly scheduled program.”

Grandy sighs, long and low, and raises his head. “They'll be wanting Thomas,” he says.

I stare at him. “What do you mean?”

Mama shakes her head. “But there are so many others who will
want
to go. He's not meant to be a soldier. He's going to be a surgeon. Will they really . . .” She trails off, tears settling in the worry lines around her eyes.

“Don't worry, Mama,” I say quickly. “Thomas knows we need him here. Besides, Hawaii is a long way off from Louisiana. Europe is, too. They can't touch us here.” I stand up and put my arms around her. She holds on to me tight, the way I used to hold on to her when I was little. It scares me, but it's all right. We'll be okay.

Grandy cuts off the radio. “President don't speak until tomorrow.”

“Supper's almost ready,” Mama says, pulling away from me. She straightens her apron, wipes her eyes on a corner, and smiles at me.

“Ida Mae Jones, what have you done to your hair?”

I feel the thick wave of it and realize I forgot to comb it out after taking my head scarf off. “Oh, we were cleaning. I'll brush it. Does it look bad?”

“Girl, you'd leave your head in the dishwater, if you weren't paying attention,” Mama says. She's okay now. “Good thing you got your daddy's hair, else you'd be looking like a feather bed. Now go wash up and help me finish the potatoes. You've got to have an appetite after all the running you must've done to get home today.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I say. And we move about the house like we have a thousand times before, Grandy in the living room shuffling cards to play Old Maid with Abel, Mama and I side by side at the kitchen sink. Sailors are dying in Hawaii, women are flying overseas. But everything is the same for the Joneses of Slidell, Louisiana.

That night, after dinner, I go into the barn and pull the cover off of my father's airplane. Even in the dark, she's beautiful, with her stacked yellow wings, blue-and-white-striped tail, and red propeller. She shines like new. You take care of a plane, Daddy used to say, and it will take care of you. It's dark in the barn, but I know the Jenny like the back of my hand. I climb into her open cockpit and settle myself inside. The leather seat cups my back and I rest my head, looking at the rafters up above. The war is here, flown in by Japanese fighter planes. I close my eyes and wonder if it will ever be safe for me to fly again.

 

Monday morning dawns clear and blue. It was probably just as blue over Hawaii when the Japanese bombs started to fall. Mama keeps us busy while we wait for my big brother to come home. Thomas is a medical student at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. But he's taking a leave of absence after what happened yesterday. At a time like this, everyone should be home. I clear away the breakfast dishes, wash them, dry them, put them in the cupboard, and try not to think.

Grandy disappears into the barn and comes back with a piece from his tractor. He turns on the radio, then sits at the kitchen table and begins to dismantle the greasy bits of metal over a piece of newspaper. Abel sits on the living room floor with one of the barn cats and some of Mama's yarn. Mama never lets the cats inside. But today, she doesn't seem to mind. She's knitting a scarf for Thomas. “Christmas is almost here,” she says, and I can hear the choke in her voice. All of us fiddle with our hands and listen to the president speak.

I think of those warplanes, flying over American houses, American families. I listen to the sky over our kitchen and pray. On the radio, Mr. Roosevelt's speech ends. A thousand miles away in Washington, the Congress erupts in applause. For me, there is nothing to clap for.

Thomas reaches the house, dusty and tired. He runs up the stairs and throws the door open as the radio ovation fades. Yesterday, we were a nation at peace. And now we are at war.

Thomas sweeps Mama into a hug.

“Oh, baby, I'm so glad you're home,” Mama says, holding him tight. She wrings her hands as my big brother takes off his jacket and hangs up his hat on one of the hooks by the door. “How could all of this have happened on a Sunday?”

“It doesn't seem right,” Thomas agrees. We have no answers. None at all.

“Right or wrong, we'll make it through,” Grandy says. “Good to see you, son.” He and Thomas grip hands. Seeing the two of them together makes me wish my daddy was here.