The Secrets of Flight

by Maggie Leffler

  “That’s not true. I’d forgive you,” she said.

  Somehow, I managed to swallow. And then I did reach over and squeeze her hand.

  ONCE ELYSE WAS GONE, I CONTINUED TO MULL OVER THE EVENTS of the evening, as I paced around trying not to vomit. After polishing off the kugel I’d suddenly felt ill, with niggling abdominal pain, cold sweats, and intractable swallowing. But I still didn’t expect to vomit, considering I’d nearly conditioned myself to suppress the reflex, the way I’d trained my inner ear to keep me upright even when I was spinning through the air. And yet, as I staggered to the toilet and flipped up the lid, it occurred to me that only a few weeks before my bed had shaken and my building had swayed because of an earthquake in Pittsburgh, which hadn’t seemed likely then, either. Woozy, I leaned over and waited for the earthquake inside me to pass.

  Here was what I would’ve liked to explain to Elyse over tea: that while I never set out to change religions, something curious happened to me once I had. When your family has decided that they never want to speak to you again, suddenly the idea that someone could love you no matter what you’ve done, no matter how you’ve let them down . . . Well, it moved me. And later, when you wonder if you’re being punished for not honoring your parents, since your own babies won’t honor you with the gift of survival, you think, Is this God smiting me with what I deserved? But no, it’s not a punishment, you decide, it’s life, and the only way to get through it, the only way to hold on, is to believe, and believe, and believe again.

  Once the war was over, while other Jews were working hard to preserve our heritage here in the States, I still wasn’t brave enough to claim my own history. I wish I’d been braver. I wish I hadn’t let my sister down. I wish I never let that little girl go.

  A sudden spasm gripped my belly, before I retched again and again, until at last the pain was gone. After mopping my face on a cold rag, I flushed the toilet and then made my way back to my bed. That’s better, I thought with a sigh. Not quite as awful as I remembered.

  PART 2

  CHAPTER 12

  The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

  April 1944

  It’s astonishing how quickly life has fallen into a routine: up with the sun and out into the wind, line up for breakfast by the flag, then lecture all morning. After ground school and lunch, we report to the flight line, and I don’t see my bed again until after dinner, sometimes not until eight in the evening. By then I’m almost too tired to shower, but my back is aching from carrying around a thirty-pound parachute all day so the hot water—when there is hot water—feels divine. The weekends are for recovery, for walking instead of marching, for Ping-Pong in the mess tent. This particular Saturday, I’m playing as if the war—or maybe just my sister’s life—depends on it.

  Just two weeks after I’d gotten here, a letter arrived from home:

  Dear Miri,

  They are sending me away for a little while, just until I am well enough to come back home. I’ve lost a bit of weight, which makes Mama say, Eat, eat, eat, all the more. I am trying to eat, when I can catch my breath. The doctor and nurses at the TB sanatorium are very nice, and at the very least, I’ll be able to rest between the treatments. Still, I can’t bear leaving Rita, my clinging koala-bear, my remora-fish, who can grab hold of me and never let go. Mother thinks she’s my other half. Why do I love her so much? Because she’s my flesh and blood, or because she could be a better me? Oh, I could cry for a while. But it’s not just Rita; it’s this place, so desolate that it lends itself to tears. Is this really my home for the next however many months? I’m so lonely. Have I ever been lonely before? I’m beginning to associate it with the heat. Each morning that I wake up the room is filled with this sultry fog, and it makes me feel like I’ll never get to the other side of the day. Crazy that there was a time when we were all crammed into the little house, you and me and Papa and Mama and Aunt Rebekah and Uncle Hyman and Bubbe, and I read A Room of One’s Own and wanted nothing more than the chance to be lonely. Now it’s painfully clear that loneliness and being alone are completely different.

  Oh, Rita. You never knew that when you were born, you would walk around with my heart inside you. You couldn’t feel it the first day when I left you off at school, as I watched you tottering up the stairs, praying like crazy that G-d would keep us safe—you, and the part of me inside you. And you can’t feel it now either, when I’m so far away.

  Keep sending me your stories, Miri. I love to think of you in the air, flying high for both of us.

  Oceans of Love,

  Sarah

  The same day the letter arrived, I ate lunch in the mess hall across from Grace from Iowa—or “Corn,” as Murphee likes to call her—and told her I may have to leave. She set down her forkful of powdered eggs and stared at me, eating my biscuit. It was so hard to swallow the mixture of carbohydrate and grief lodged somewhere between my mouth and stomach.

  “Even if you were at home, there’s nothing you could do,” Grace said, which wasn’t quite true, when Rita needed to be tended to.

  “What if Teddy were in the hospital?” I asked, meaning Grace’s fiancé, who’d shipped off with the army four months ago. “Wouldn’t you leave?”

  “Teddy wouldn’t want me to. He’d tell me to stay.”

  I thought of Sarah. Now is not the time to doubt. If I quit the program, she’d be the one feeling guilty—or worse, furious with me. “So, I’m not a horrible person?” I asked, my voice meek.

  “Well, let’s not go that far. You did want to kill off your uncle,” Grace said.

  I broke off a piece of my biscuit and threw it at her.

  SINCE THEN, I’VE BEEN TRYING TO WORK EVEN HARDER THAN before. I skipped a night out at the Blue Bonnet with the girls from the bunk, and a dance in a neighboring town, which Murphee guaranteed would have loads of “handsome cadets.” I’m not sure if I’m trying to turn myself into a supreme pilot or merely punish myself for being a bad daughter for not being there.

  Grace, at least, is content to stay in with me—even if it means playing Ping-Pong on a Saturday night.

  The ball hits the table inbounds and whooshes by Grace’s shoulder. “Yes! Ha!” I scream and watch the confusion settling onto her face, watch as she lowers her paddle and salutes with the opposite hand. I glance back and realize there’s a uniformed cadet standing next to me and that—darn!—this may mean a do-over.

  “Miriam Lichtenstein?” the cadet says, after I quickly salute. “Jackie Cochran wants to see you in her office.”

  My heart revs up like a propeller starting, and my ears start to ring. Sarah, I think.

  I swallow and nod, even manage to smile for Grace, who looks utterly worried, as if the cadet just handed me a pink slip. No one gets a private meeting with Jackie Cochran when they wash out, I tell her with my eyes, but she knows this, too; she knows it’s a telegram from home.

  I’VE BEEN IN SWEETWATER, TEXAS, FOR FIVE WEEKS, AND EVEN though the reason I am here in the first place—flying as a civilian under the auspices of the military—is almost entirely this exceptional woman’s vision, I’ve never actually seen Jackie Cochran up close. As soon as we’re face-to-face in her office—she, red-lipsticked and blond-bobbed; me, hair-matted and ragtagged—I can understand why she’s known as the “blond bombshell,” and why I’ve never had a man so much as look in my direction—Tzadok not withstanding.

  “Miriam Lichtenstein? Oh, good,” she says, dismissing the cadet and gesturing for me to take the seat across from her desk.

  “Is everything all right?” I ask, my heart banging away in my chest. It’s highly possible that I will actually pass out on the floor in front of my aviator idol.

  “Everything’s fine. Relax, relax. I was just reviewing your file. Mr. Hendricks writes that you’re an exceptional pilot . . .” Ms. Cochran says, referring to my flight instructor, who told me not to salute when we met. “Put your hand down, Miss Lichtenstein, I’m a civilian like you.”

  “And Captain Digb
y says you passed your first check ride,” she adds, referring to that first harrowing military test required after logging twenty hours in the air—where, after grading my takeoff, my spins and stalls, loops and chandelle, Captain Digby reached under the instrument panel and turned off the gas six times during the flight just to see how I would react. It was a test of alertness, I later learned, to see if I’d panic when the engine quit. Six times in a row, I simply turned the gas back on.

  “They must’ve taught you well back in Pittsburgh.” Ms. Cochran folds her hands on her desk and leans forward as if conspiratorially. “Tell me, Miss Lichtenstein, are you happy here?”

  My eyebrows are knit together, as if I’m standing in front of a blackboard filled with differential equations. “I—of course. I’m always happy when I’m flying.” When is she going to show me the telegram?

  “Many of the women like to go off the base on the weekend. Go to church or to a dance or to dinner,” Ms. Cochran says.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say, wondering if she thinks I was part of Murphee Sutherland’s group who didn’t make curfew last Saturday night. Does she expect me to rat them out? Is there even a telegram?

  “But not you,” she says. “You’re Jewish.” I cock my head to the side, even more confused. “Miss Lichtenstein, it’s been brought to my attention that there isn’t much of a Jewish community in Sweetwater. In fact, there isn’t even a synagogue.”

  “Oh?” I ask, shifting in my seat. Did Mama find out about my Friday night flights and make some calls?

  “We may be in the Bible Belt of America, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to worship as you please,” says Jackie Cochran. “Your flight instructor, Mr. Hendricks, has a family friend in Abilene who has offered to take you to services next Friday.”

  I blink, bewildered and even a bit guilty. I’ve been too exhausted to pray lately, just these pitiful little petitions whenever I toss a coin into the wishing well and kiss my Star of David on my way to the airfield. Please don’t let me wash out. Please let Sarah be okay. I haven’t let myself think about Shabbat or the synagogue, because it’ll only remind me of everything else I’m missing, too. “Abilene?” I say instead.

  “It’s forty miles away. They’ll be expecting you for dinner and evening services.”

  The phone on her desk rings and she quickly picks it up. “Jackie Cochran.”

  I sit there, uncertain, until she catches my eye and waves at me to go. “Just a minute,” I hear her say when I’m at the door. When I glance back she is covering the mouthpiece of the phone. “And Miss Lichtenstein, don’t forget—you’ll be representing your country when you go. Make an effort.” By this I assume she means, Wear some lipstick.

  A WEEK LATER MY FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR PICKS ME UP ON BASE IN his old Ford for the ride across the prairie. Mr. Hendricks has blondish hair and a boyish-shaped face for someone so old—thirty, I think. With his combination of flight skills and congeniality, it would be easy to fall under the spell of romance, if I were silly enough to be prone to crushes. When I apologize for taking him so far out of his way, Mr. Hendricks tells me he’s a local boy, born and raised in Abilene. “The army training site at Camp Barkley is the best thing that ever happened to the economy in this town,” he says, and I stifle a yawn, thinking that Mr. Hendricks—like most aspects of my life—is more fascinating up in the air. “They even built a new synagogue to accommodate everyone. Probably see a bunch of cadets there,” he adds, and I glance over, a tiny bit interested.

  EVENTUALLY WE PULL OFF THE HIGHWAY AND STOP NEXT TO A shop on the main drag of town: Rubinowicz’s Pharmacy. There’s a SORRY WE’RE CLOSED sign in the window. Outside, a dark-haired man in a suit and yarmulke stands smoking a pipe in a patch of grass that needs to be mowed. The sight of him looking like the elders of my childhood temple suddenly makes me miss everything I’ve left behind: Pittsburgh, my family, even my religion. I think of my father, who held my hand in the backyard when we stood in a cloud, and a tear—so unexpected that I think it’s been caused by West Texas dust—pricks the corner of my eyes. But no: it’s him, this man. I can imagine Papa sharing a smoke with him and asking for his advice.

  When we first got to Pittsburgh, Papa sought quite a bit of counsel from the rabbi, about which I could only guess. He never liked the city, or being beholden to his stepbrother, but he did grow to love the rituals of our new community. “Your mother was right, Miriush,” he told me one day, as we walked hand in hand down Murray Avenue toward Beth Shalom.

  “Right about what?” I asked, quickening my stride to keep up: two of my small steps equaled one of my father’s.

  “About everything. She’s right about everything. Remember that,” he added with a wink.

  And maybe Mama is right, I think now: maybe I do need a community beyond the women in my bunk. Maybe the only way to practice my faith is to be surrounded by others doing the same. I climb out of the passenger side and smile at the man, who squints with each puff. When he notices me, he lowers the pipe and waves.

  “Mr. Rubinowicz, this is Miriam Lichtenstein, the pilot I was telling you about,” my instructor says to the man.

  “I see, I see—welcome,” he says with an accent—Eastern European rather than Texan. I watch as the two men shake hands. “How is your father, Stephen?” Before Mr. Hendricks can answer, Mr. Rubinowicz says, “Go inside, my dear. Sol’s in there.” I must look confused because he adds, “My son, Solomon—he’s just finishing up. Then we’ll walk to services.” I hesitate but he says, “Go on, go on.”

  I enter the shop with a jangle of bells. The place reminds me of the pharmacy on Murray Avenue back home, only smaller. There are bins of candy at the front, swivel stools, an ice cream counter, a soda fountain, aisles of canned foods, and, of course, medicines. Just as I’m gingerly stepping toward the one, lit aisle, I see him: a blond, bespectacled young man in a yarmulke inspecting each bottle of medicine before displaying it on the shelf. Then he glances up, and our eyes meet, and he smiles—a huge, broad grin that makes me look behind and check that it’s actually for me. It must be the uniform, I decide: air force–issued, Neiman Marcus–designed, wool gabardine with a little black tie and matching beret. It would make anyone who wanted to win the war smile. But then he takes a step toward me, crashing into a couple of boxes on the floor, and I think, No, it’s the lipstick.

  “You must be the pilot,” he says, hand outstretched.

  “Miriam,” I say, moving toward him before he trips again.

  “Sol,” he says. We shake and smile and let go.

  “Ah, look,” Mr. Rubinowicz says, entering the store. “You found each other.”

  A few minutes later when we file out, Sol holds open the door for me; I look up to thank him and notice he’s still blushing.

  WE HEAD TO SERVICES AT TEMPLE MITZPAH, WHERE I SPEND AN hour wedged between Sol’s mother, a big-bosomed woman in a belted housedress, and his little sister Hannah, who is all of about twelve. I can actually see Sol across the synagogue but don’t even glance in his direction for fear the cantor will see that I am only intermittently paying attention. I should be praying for Sarah, but all I can think about is him, and how we walked here together, side by side, behind his father, as the cirrus clouds painted the sky in ribbons of darkness. Every now and then the backs of our hands would accidentally touch, which was both thrilling and terrifying.

  Afterward, the Shabbos meal is served at their house, a tiny ranch with a front porch shrouded by mesquite trees. There’s gefelte fish and grilled salmon and rice, all prepared by Sol’s mother. Next to Hannah sits “Uncle Leo” a recent émigré of my grandparents’ generation, I decide, noticing his white hair and the brown spots on his wrinkled hand when he waves. When they seat me next to Sol at the table, I can’t help wishing there were a mechitza hanging between us. It’s hard to concentrate when my heart is so full of questions: How old is he? What does he like to read? What are his dreams? How on earth did he end up in Texas?

  “Amain,” I
say belatedly, when Mr. Rubinowicz has finished the blessing over the wine, and everyone has begun eating.

  “Where are you from, my dear?” Uncle Leo asks from across the table. His spectacles have a line etched into the glass right across horizon, cutting his view of the world in two.

  When I tell him Pittsburgh, his eyebrows furrow and he holds a hand up to his ear until I repeat myself, louder. “Steel,” he says, triumphant, and I smile, thinking of Murphee’s nickname for me. With Sol to my right, I am anything but Pittsburgh steel; I am palpitating and flushing, liquid and limp.

  “And you?” I ask him and in the same moment imagine my mother scolding me: We don’t ask people with accents where they’ve come from, Miriam. Especially when they most certainly have escaped.

  “Odessa,” he says, the corners of his mouth drawing down, and as I’m trying to dazzle the old man by recalling the primary export of Odessa, all at once I remember something about the massacre of Jews in the overtaken Ukrainian city just a few years back—Sarah had read me disturbing excerpts from the article in the Jewish paper, and I’d begged her not to go on. Now I can’t help wondering if he made it out beforehand, or if he lost loved ones.

  “So, this ‘women’s air force,’” Mr. Rubinowicz suddenly says, gesturing with his fork, and I wonder if he’s deliberately changing the subject. “What exactly are they training you for?”

  “Moving airplanes and ships to different bases—”

  “How do you move a ship?” Sol asks, his voice incredulous.

  “It’s attached by a cable to the bottom of the plane,” I say, and his eyes widen. “Or we’ll be trailing targets for the cadets to fire at for practice . . .”

  “Holy moly,” Sol says, impressed, and I flush.

  “We read about the crashes in the paper,” Mr. Rubinowicz says, as his wife spoons more kugel onto Hannah’s plate. “Don’t these girls know what they’re doing up there?” he adds.

  “They’re guinea pigs!” Mrs. Rubinowicz erupts. “They fly planes the men are too afraid to try.”