Grasping Mysteries

by Jeannine Atkins

  have changed. This time she won’t stay on shore.

  The Darkness under the Sea

  Small waves hit the hull of the research ship.

  On the deck of the Discovery, Marie makes her way

  around big spools of wire, cables, toolboxes,

  and crates of spare parts.

  She catches her balance as the ship skims

  over the world’s longest mountain range.

  She and other scientists drop a cage of instruments

  to check the water temperature, the strength of the salt,

  measure currents and magnetic forces.

  Marie is watching a whale break the sea’s surface

  when a message comes over the ship’s radio.

  She learns that Bruce’s heart stopped

  while he was deep underwater. No!

  Was he lying on the floor before a porthole, marveling

  at the seafloor and what lives just above it?

  On the Discovery, coworkers approach Marie,

  their arms rising and lowering,

  like seagulls not sure where to land.

  All the scientists here knew Bruce.

  The sounding machine clicks and pings.

  Rustling paper unwinds with new soundings

  recorded by a spark that burns dots on paper.

  The ship filled with mourners turns around.

  The deck rocks as the ship pushes through its own wake.

  Then the sea returns to wrinkles.

  Below, the sea’s vast darkness

  is like a night that never ends.

  Back Home

  Marie tucks her head against her dog’s soft black ears.

  Then she walks over to Bruce’s house,

  rummages through his closet, fills her arms

  with bright shirts and two pairs of trousers.

  She plugs in her mother’s sewing machine,

  patches together a skirt the way she did

  when her father’s coat became torn beyond repair.

  The World Ocean Floor Panorama arrives in the mail.

  The names Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen

  are printed in the corner.

  Hey, Bruce, Marie calls softly. There’s no echo.

  But she imagines his grin as magazines

  as bright as sunflowers are opened in offices.

  In a living room, a girl unfolds the map,

  holds it between outstretched arms.

  Creating Paths Through Space

  Katherine Johnson

  (1918–2020)

  Prophecy

  WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, WEST VIRGINIA, 1924

  Katherine counts eggs she gathers in the chicken coop.

  She counts peaches gently placed in a basket,

  counts not just spoons but the beat of their clatter.

  She crouches to listen to a cricket.

  She loves best what she can’t count:

  raindrops, leaves rustling into a chorus,

  stars blinking in and out of sight over the hills.

  In church, Katherine counts girls with braids,

  women wearing hats, and men with shut eyes

  who may be dozing. At school, her hand splits

  the air as she asks what no one else wonders.

  She’s sent straight from second grade to fifth.

  Her teacher’s look lasts long, as if she sees

  not just the girl but who she might become.

  Beyond

  Katherine’s father works on their farm, does carpentry

  for some white families, sweeps the floor of the library,

  where his children aren’t allowed to check out books.

  As they walk home, Katherine takes two steps

  for each one of his. He can look at a patch of pine

  and guess how many trees fill a forest.

  A single branch of pink blossoms tells him

  how many apples may ripen on the whole tree.

  I went to a school that stopped in sixth grade,

  he says. White folks still claim the high school

  is just for them, but I learned of two schools

  in West Virginia where you’ll be welcomed.

  Katherine, the world is bigger than this town.

  The Curving Road

  Crowded in the back with her sister and brothers,

  Katherine hears the engine’s sputter and grind

  as their father turns the key to a friend’s truck. Let’s go!

  We’ve got a right to drive down any road,

  but if we need to stop, it can’t be just anywhere.

  Daddy sings, keeping his eyes straight ahead.

  Katherine looks at the road as if memorizing an equation.

  Her father often tells them:

  You are as good as anybody around, but no better.

  The words move through her like a hymn.

  Neighbors

  INSTITUTE, WEST VIRGINIA

  The family rents a house near the Kanawha River

  and a library. At last Katherine can check out a book

  from shelves as straight as the lines calling for division,

  with dots above and below that say: Go!

  She borrows more books from neighbors whose parents

  teach in the town’s all-Black school or the college beside it.

  New friends invite Katherine to play double dutch.

  They turn their wrists slightly so two clotheslines

  twirl in wide circles. All in together, girls.

  How do you like the weather, girls?

  Katherine skips over ropes, almost safe within semicircles.

  A Girl’s Education

  Katherine folds her hands on a wooden desk.

  She likes math, full of equal signs and question marks,

  English, French, every class but history,

  which seems bent on making girls like her invisible

  or in need of rescue. She’d rather look ahead than back.

  Katherine loves the swoop of her math teacher’s arm

  before the board black as the night sky.

  Miss Turner introduces the sign for infinity,

  like the numeral eight lying on its side.

  Katherine is fourteen when her teacher asks her

  to join her for supper, talks about going north

  in the summer to earn an advanced degree

  in math at Cornell University.

  On the porch, sitting on green wicker chairs,

  Miss Turner names the constellations.

  They both love what can’t be counted or divided.

  Probability

  Katherine’s family spends summers back

  in White Sulphur Springs. Daddy works at a grand hotel,

  carrying luggage for white travelers.

  He’s thankful for each and every job, especially

  during the Depression, when many have no work,

  and saves so all his children can go to college.

  Katherine pours crystal pitchers of lemonade,

  polishes a table in the lobby, as her father greets

  returning guests. He says, Welcome back, Mrs. Lodge.

  Good afternoon, Mr. Taylor. Her father’s nod is deep.

  As he picks up suitcases,

  Mr. Taylor says, Thank you, Joshua.

  Katherine holds both ends of her dustcloth over the table.

  It droops in the middle, like a broken equation.

  Her father addresses white people with respect,

  but they call him by his first name, as if he’s a boy.

  They can’t see the gentle man

  who’s kind to all, an untrained mathematician

  who can look over a golf course

  and calculate, from the arc of an arm,

  how high a ball will soar and where it will land.

  Another guest asks for the bellman.

  The manager snaps his fingers, calls to her father,

  Uncle Joshua, you’re needed here. />
  Katherine shakes out her dustcloth, considers weights,

  variables, and probability: What would happen if

  those who used a first name heard theirs in return?

  What’s polite enough speech for one person

  shouldn’t twist to defiance in another,

  but bend like a Möbius strip with only one side.

  But they’re in a hotel where she, her father, or others

  with brown skin may not dine at the tables they set,

  sleep in the beds they make up,

  or play croquet on the wide lawns they mow.

  Katherine looks at her father, who raises his eyebrows,

  which means: Don’t say anything. Then lifts

  one corner of his mouth, as if to add, Not yet.

  The Chalkboard

  WEST VIRGINIA STATE COLLEGE

  At fifteen, Katherine starts college. Her favorite class

  is with elegantly dressed Professor Claytor,

  who doesn’t bother with greetings

  as he strides into the classroom,

  plucks chalk from his pocket, turns to the blackboard,

  and continues an equation where he left off the day before.

  He writes with one hand, erasing

  numbers with the other to make room for more.

  Katherine finishes all the college math classes in two years.

  Professor Claytor creates courses just for her,

  lecturing loudly and clearly as if every seat

  in the classroom was full. He introduces Euler’s formula,

  which includes an astonishing e that grapples with infinity.

  Katherine no longer looks for right answers

  but learns to keep afloat in a sea of questions.

  She learns to refine the skill of guessing,

  making estimates that might lead

  to what no one knew before.

  Just before she graduates, Dr. Claytor says,

  You could go on to do research, maybe teach in a college.

  He is the third African American

  to earn a PhD in mathematics,

  writing a thesis on the geometry of space

  at the University of Pennsylvania.

  But while he could take graduate classes

  in the North, no college there would hire him to teach.

  She asks, Where could I find a job?

  That will be your problem, Miss Coleman. Mine

  is to make sure you’re more than ready for whatever comes next.

  She looks past him to the blackboard. The chalk

  was erased, but traces suggest ways through the unseen.

  The Teacher

  MARION, VIRGINIA

  Katherine finds a job teaching math and French

  in a school that’s segregated, like all those she attended.

  After classes, she plays piano and instructs the chorus,

  corrects papers in her classroom rather than walking

  back to the room she rents at the principal’s house.

  Sometimes she watches the chemistry teacher

  coach football, basketball, or baseball.

  After a game, they walk together.

  Jimmie laughs as he describes a student struggling

  with a test who got up from his seat to sharpen a pencil.

  He spun the handle like a fishing reel,

  pretended to hold on to a rod and pull in a fish.

  Katherine thinks she would have sent the boy

  straight back to his chair, but Jimmie laughs

  at bumbled experiments in the lab, enjoys mistaken

  explosions, thinks small fires liven up equations.

  She tells Jimmie about the rigor with which Miss Turner

  taught math, but how she made it seem transcendent.

  When she complains of young people bent on trouble,

  he teases, I suppose you were a perfect student.

  She lifts an eyebrow the way her father did

  to remind her of the use of silence, then lifts a corner

  of her mouth to show she’s ready for strong words.

  Jimmie nods. I hope I’m around when

  you find what seems worth fighting for.

  Promises

  Jimmie Goble and the other men who teach earn

  more than the women, but only about half the salaries

  of white teachers in Virginia. Jimmie paints houses

  on weekends and vacations. He shyly tells her

  he’s putting away money for when he has a family.

  Late one evening they walk in the hills,

  where few lights swallow the Milky Way’s pale splash.

  The round moon has never seemed so close and golden.

  She says, Looking up, you can forget the world’s problems.

  Jimmie sings, then opens his arm for them to dance

  on the grass. I’d give you the moon, he whispers.

  But if you wanted it, I know you’d just reach.

  Love and History

  The wedding is short and small. Katherine and Jimmie

  want to keep the marriage quiet, since some schools

  won’t hire a wife they think should be content at home.

  Katherine needs the salary and likes teaching,

  though she’s impatient when students ask,

  Why should we study math?

  Because it’s amazing. Hearing the students laugh

  as if she were joking, she tells them about jobs

  in shops, offices, clinics. The equations she writes

  on the blackboard aren’t short, but there’s never a need

  to erase what’s behind her to make room.

  One day at the end of school she’s surprised

  to find the president of her old college waiting for her.

  Dr. Davis explains that since new laws demand fair chances

  for people of all races, he was asked to choose three people

  likely to thrive in graduate school. Dr. Claytor, Miss Turner,

  and others boasted of you. Will you become one of the first

  to integrate West Virginia University?

  Katherine tells Jimmie about the offer and scholarship,

  then says, Of course I can’t go. We just got married.

  You took a chance on me. Jimmie wraps his arms

  around her. Why not take another one?

  What would I do with that degree? she asks him,

  then her parents. Mama, I thought I’d be like you:

  teaching school, then raising children.

  But you’re not just like me, Mama says.

  I’ll come help you settle in. West Virginia is quiet,

  but there’s trouble farther south.

  Hope

  WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY, 1940

  Striding past white pillars into redbrick buildings,

  Katherine stops at the classroom door,

  gripping one of the math books given to her

  by the principal of the school where she taught,

  in case she’s not allowed in the library.

  She thinks of her mother waiting in a rented room

  where she set up her sewing machine.

  Then, for the first time in her life,

  for one of the first times anywhere,

  a woman enters an advanced math class

  where every face but hers is white.

  Unfinished Equations

  As days pass, Katherine’s grip on her books

  loosens as she finds most people are friendly.

  Professor Claytor prepared her well in calculus,

  which lets her gracefully trace movements

  between shifting points. She’s at the top of the class,

  where math means staying steady in the scatter and fog

  of not knowing, where new ideas can be born.

  Near the end of the semester, the scent of coffee

  makes her queasy. Mama pours orange juice,

  eyes th
e belt on Katherine’s dress,

  which she just let out a notch. It looks like I’ll need

  to sew you some new dresses. And baby clothes.

  After Katherine finishes her classes, she tells

  the principal at the school where she taught

  that she won’t come back or finish graduate school.

  Keep the math books, he says.

  You never know what will happen.

  Three Daughters

  As World War II begins, Katherine gives birth to a girl,

  then another the next year, and a third as the war ends.

  By the time Joylette, named after Katherine’s mother,

  can toddle across a room, little Constance

  pulls herself up in the crib. By the time

  Constance speaks short sentences,

  the youngest girl, baby Katherine, can crawl.

  Caring for small children is an experiment in time:

  Days stretch. Months, then years,

  collapse behind Katherine.

  Every day is marked by discovery.

  On Saturday mornings the girls play with dolls,

  spin hula hoops in the backyard, look for lizards.

  Jimmie makes paper kites and toy gliders

  with balsa wood and rubber bands.

  He shows their daughters how to angle their arms

  and wrists when throwing and catching balls.

  Katherine teaches school again, arranges violin lessons,

  checks homework and Bible passages the girls memorize.

  As the girls get older, she’ll explain

  Virginia’s segregation laws, but for now,

  she steers them to places where they’ll be safe. Or almost.

  When Joylette falls from a horse and crushes her mouth,

  she learns which hospital will turn away

  a girl with blood on her face because her skin is brown.

  Again and again, Katherine tells her girls,

  Look out for one another.

  A single number isn’t much. Math puts together many.

  She brushes, divides, and braids their beautiful hair.

  She wants them to know:

  You’re as good as anybody, but no better.

  Frosting

  Katherine and her sister stand among family