Flygirl

by Sherri L. Smith

  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.”

  Chapter 11

  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.

  “One lap, ladies, one lap fully clothed in your flight suits,” Doc
Monserud shouts across the pool to our flight. “Something you should get used to. In case of a water landing.”

  “Right, water landing,” Patsy says, two girls ahead of me. “In case the plane decides to float.”

  “Don’t jinx it,” someone else says. Patsy looks over her shoulder at me and winks. I don’t wink back. I can barely take my eyes off the pool.

  “It doesn’t look too bad,” Lily says. “Why, the pool in my apartment building is twice this size. A real Olympic regulation swimming pool.”

  “Fancy,” Patsy drawls. She turns to me. “What’s a matter, honey?”

  I grit my teeth. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  “Like heck. What is it?”

  I stare at my feet. I can’t believe I’m going to wash out before basic training has even really begun. I can feel Patsy looking at me. I return the look with watery eyes.

  “I can’t swim.”

  The girls near us start to cluck their tongues and shake their heads. “Poor kid.” “That’s a shame.”

  “Stop your gobbling,” Patsy says to them. “Look, Jonesy. You handle yourself pretty well in the sky. We’ll figure something out.”

  “I could swim for her,” Lily whispers.

  “What? How?” I stare at her, hating to hope there is a way.

  “Sorry, sister, but you two don’t look a thing alike, aside from height, that is.”

  “Not with my hair down,” Lily says. “But look at them in there.” She points with her chin to the first of the swimmers. They struggle through the water in their overgrown man suits, hair wrapped up in Urban’s ugly old turbans. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they just want to drown us all.

  “She’s right,” Patsy says. “Bundled up in that mess, you couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, let alone which woman.”

  “You’d do this for me?” I take Lily by the arm. If she’s caught, we’ll both get thrown out. Lily’s eyes waver, but only for a second. She sets her jaw and nods at me.

  “For the woman that taught me how to make a bed, I’d do anything.”

  We’re at the front of the line now. I hang back and let the other women pass me. Lily jumps in, alongside Patsy.

  They sink a little, then float back up to the top of the pool. Their clothes are another matter. The zoot suits are like anchors. My heart flutters in my throat just watching them, and I know that I could never do what Lily is doing for me. There are a lot of things I can handle, but water isn’t one of them.

  After what seems like a dog’s age, Lily makes it to the other side of the pool. Doc Monserud is so busy with the other girls, I break free from the group and meet up with Lily and a towel. Patsy climbs out of the pool, grabs another towel, and holds it up as a curtain for both of us. The other girls are too busy with their zoot suits and turbans and pure exhaustion to even notice Lily and me changing suits.

  “Are you sure you can do this?” I whisper.

  Lily gasps. “Don’t ask me again, Ida. I don’t have the breath to say yes.”

  She dresses more quickly than I do, thanks to my dry suit. But a wet zoot suit is a horse of a different color. I struggle halfway into it before Patsy stops me.

  “Hey, kiddo, look around,” she says softly. Every girl that’s finished the swim is half out of her suit and half into a towel. Patsy smiles. “As far as they know, you’re done. Just wrap up in a towel now and watch Johnny Weissmuller over there strut her stuff.”

  I have to laugh at that. Buster Crabbe may be a matinee idol now, but once upon a time he was an Olympic swim champion. I pull the towel around me gratefully and turn to watch Lily catch up with the end of the line. When the doc blows the whistle, she jumps right in without looking at him.

  “She sure can swim,” Patsy says.

  “She’s a regular Tarzan,” I say, referring to Johnny Weissmuller’s most famous role.

  “Heck, no,” Patsy says. “Tarzan never had to wear a zoot suit. Our Lily is a Jane all the way.”

  Lily climbs out of the pool for the second time. She looks tiny in the waterlogged suit but elated.

  “I think we did it,” she says, waving her hands excitedly.

  “Keep it down,” Patsy tells her, and tosses a dry towel over her head.

  “Thank you, Lily. You saved my skin.”

  Lily grins back happily. “If it weren’t for all this deadweight, it would’ve almost been fun.”

  After the swim test is complete, we’re bussed back to the base where Doc Monserud dismisses us. Not all of Flight One has passed. Two girls, Anderson and Shaw, are told to report to Deatie Deaton’s office after they shower. The girls head to the showers, chattering about the difficulty of swimming in clothes or, worse, what a wet turban feels like in the Texas heat. It’s hot enough to make our clothes steam, but not to dry them.

  “Aren’t you going to clean up?” Patsy asks me. “We’re due at the mess hall in fifteen minutes.”

  I’m slumped against the wall outside the showers in Lily’s wet zoot suit. I feel ashamed. Two of us have already washed out. I’m still here only because I cheated. I’ve already lied about my license and my race. What else will I do before this training is done?

  “I’m fine,” I finally say. “But I guess I should report to Mrs. Deaton as a washout.”

  Patsy stops toweling her hair and gives me a look. “Now, Jonesy, don’t let this eat at you. You think those kids overseas get along all by their lonesome in this war? Of course not. We’re a team. We shoulder each other. Anderson and Shaw should’ve been half as clever as you to figure that out.”

  I give her a weak smile, but I still feel wrong.

  “Ida Mae, hurry up,” Lily calls out from the dormitory. She’s already back in her khakis, lacing up her shoes. “I’ll save you two a seat at the mess.”

  “Thanks, Lily,” Patsy says for both of us. After Lily leaves, Patsy takes me by the wrist. “Listen, Jones. Lily went out on a limb for you. The least you could do is be grateful. Happy, even.”

  I don’t meet her eyes. “The thing is, I’m more grateful than I can say.”

  Patsy smiles and lets go of my wrist. “Then don’t say anything. And repay the favor when you can.”

  At last I smile. Lily and Patsy aren’t just my classmates, they are real friends. Maybe it’s not the same as it is with me and Jolene—they don’t know everything about Ida Mae Jones. But they know Jonesy, and that’s who I really am. For the first time since leaving home, I’ve got friends, and that tells me I belong.

  Dinner is a somber affair as everyone says goodbye to Anderson and Shaw. We’ve been together only a short while, but seeing two of our own wash out brings everyone down. I hang back, feeling guilty that I’m not leaving, too, but more desperate than ever to stay. After the two girls say their goodbyes, the mood changes and the pressure of training takes over. We linger after dinner comparing class notes, especially in navigation. Reading maps is second nature for some but not all of the WASP. I chatter along with the rest of the girls, and we stay up until lights-out studying flight maps and practicing plotting courses. But afterward, when the lights go off, I lie awake and think of Lake Pontchartrain and how fear, any fear, can be my enemy.

  “Shoo, fly, don’t bother me. Shoo, fly, don’t bother me,” I tell myself. I’ll get over my fear one day. I have to. Anything else and I’d be less than a WASP.

  “Lily.” I am across the room and standing by her bed before I can stop myself. “Lily, are you awake?”

  Lily moans. Her head is completely under the covers.

  “Yes, Mother. I’ll be right there,” she says sleepily.

  “Lily.”

  Her head pops out of the blankets, red hair wrapped in a sleeping turban, like the high-society version of Urban’s finest.

  “Ida, what is it? Is everything okay?” Her brown eyes are wide.

  “Sorry to wake you. It’s just . . .” I sit on the edge of her bed and reach for the right words. “Well, it’s like making a bed. I mean, I’m really grateful and
all. It was a huge, gorgeous thing you did for me. But I want to be able to do it myself.”

  “What do you mean?” Lily asks. She’s wide awake now, sitting up in her bed. Our whispers add a sense of urgency that shakes away all fogginess.

  “I mean, I want to learn how to swim. We come to Avenger Field all big and brave, like we can do anything. And I know that’s impossible. We’re not superheroes or anything. But I’d at least like to try. To say I gave it a try . . . Will you teach me?”

  Lily smiles at me, a kind, happy smile. She puts her hand on mine. “I’d love to. Although we’d best be careful, since everyone thinks you can swim already.” Her eyes grow distant. When she looks at me again, they sparkle.

  “Oh, this will be fun! It’ll be our little secret.” She grabs the covers in a gleefully conspiratorial way.

  “Mine, too, if you don’t keep it down,” Patsy grumbles from her bed. Patsy sleeps with a satin mask covering her eyes. She has earplugs, too, from her days working air shows, but she says she doesn’t like to sleep with them in because she might miss reveille.

  “Sorry,” Lily and I whisper simultaneously, and then grin.

  “Tell you what, I’ll sleep on it,” Lily says. “And I’ll let you know what I come up with in the morning.”

  I glance at the clock in the dark, but it’s too dark to read. I know it must be late. “Of course. Go back to sleep. I’m sorry to wake you. And thanks, Lily. I owe you one.”

  “That’s two, Jonesy.” She smiles and is asleep again almost before she can get the blanket over her head. Poor kid. All that swimming really took its toll. Somehow, I’ll find a way to repay her for the test and for the lessons, too.

  It only takes me a moment longer to crawl back into bed and fall asleep. This time, I sleep without tossing. I sleep without dreams.

  Chapter 12

  “Just hold on to the edge,” Lily tells me. It’s Sunday afternoon and Lily and I are clinging to the edge of the town swimming pool like two shipwreck victims on a piece of flotsam. Well, at least I am. Lily looks as happy as a mermaid in the water. She bobs beside me, legs kicking in a soft froglike movement while she uses both hands to slide my death grip of forearms and elbows off the rim of the pool. If anyone asks, we’re just swimming for fun and a little exercise. Never mind the fact that I’m fighting it every step of the way.