Flygirl

by Sherri L. Smith

  I’m not sixteen anymore.

  In the end, it took Walt Jenkins telling me he couldn’t let me back in a plane without a psych evaluation that made me go see Doctor Monserud. He’s a medical doctor, but he also deals with head problems. I didn’t want Walt to worry about me or, worse, to think there was something wrong with me—so I went.

  “It’s natural,” he tells me. “It’s natural to feel angry. And scared, and sad.”

  I don’t say anything, but I nod and get through it. Doc Monserud’s a nice fella, but he doesn’t know a thing about me being sad. I can’t tell him how hard it is to deny my own brother so I look like I belong here, how scared I feel knowing Thomas is missing and maybe dead. What it was like to leave Mama, Grandy, Abel, and Jolene way behind, not just miles, but color lines away. Or what it’s like to lose Patsy. The only girl here who might have accepted me, no questions asked, if I’d had the guts to really tell her the truth.

  So, I sit there, and I nod, and I let enough of my sadness show that the doctor thinks I’m healing the right way. And I leave his office and go back to the barracks to take a shower so hot it’s like to peel my skin away. And after the hot water’s run cold, I get out, get dressed in my Santiago blues, and take a minute to tie a second knot in my handkerchief, hard and fast for Patsy. Time enough to grieve later. For now, I’ll travel light, because today is graduation day. I am going to be a full-fledged WASP.

  Even the death of a comrade can’t dampen the mood of most of the girls lined up here. Row upon row of cadets, in deep blue pantsuits, just waiting for silver wings to be attached to their crisp white blouses, over their hearts. We look like the airplanes do, lined up and waiting in the yards in Delaware to be picked up and flown across the land. Lily squeezes my hand quickly. It feels small and cold in mine.

  “Patsy’s smiling at us,” she says, nodding toward the perfect blue sky.

  “So is Jackie Cochran.”

  Lily blinks and drops my hand. “Where?”

  “Over at the grandstand.” Even I feel my spirits lifting a little. After Bessie Coleman and Amelia Earhart, Jackie Cochran is my hero. It was Jackie Cochran who convinced Uncle Sam to form the WASP in the first place.

  “Why, she’s so small,” Lily says. I laugh.

  “So are we.”

  “I know, but . . .” I know what she means. Jackie Cochran is a living legend, but she can’t be much taller than I am. She’s beautiful, of course. With a cosmetics company of her own, she should be. What you can’t tell from looking at her, though, is that she came from nothing and made more than something of herself. She’s the bee’s knees.

  Jackie Cochran was born to poor folks in Florida. She came from the dirt and grew up to run her own company. She also married a man smart enough to let her fly. Jackie holds more flying trophies than any woman alive today. And I’m going to shake her hand.

  Tears suddenly spring to my eyes. I don’t know who I miss more right now, Patsy or Daddy. They both have that same fiery spirit as Mrs. Cochran. If Patsy had known she’d be here . . .

  She’d what? Have checked her plane twice before the last leg of our flight? She would have somehow known that the fuel line had a leak? She did know. That’s what they’ve been saying. That’s why it took her so long to come in. She was low on fuel and flying safe, lower to the ground in case she needed to land. She should have flown the way she used to. Maybe she’d have made it. Maybe she could’ve wing-walked her way out of the plane before it burned.

  But I know it’s not true. When she landed, the spray of oil must have blinded her, made her bounce the landing, sparking the fuel line. Nothing can outmaneuver a fire that fast. Not even Patsy Kake.

  Lily clears her throat, and we all sing “Silver Wings and Santiago Blue.” Jackie Cochran tells us she is proud of all of us, all of “her girls,” as she puts it. She mentions Patsy, not by name, but as a “sacrifice,” one we are all willing to risk.

  I wish she had just said her name.

  One by one, we all file up to the stage, and Deatie Deaton hands our silver wings to Mrs. Cochran, who pins them on us. It’s an honor for her to be here at all. She’s been busy fighting for military status for the WASP back in Washington. If she wins, girls like Patsy will be sent home with military honors, on the military dime. Instead, Lily is paying for Patsy’s funeral. She wired her mother the day after the accident and made arrangements. Mrs. Emily Harper down in Florida was the closest thing Patsy had to a family. Lily and I will attend the funeral after graduation, and then we have a week at home before reporting to duty at our new assignments.

  “Congratulations, Miss Jones,” Jackie Cochran says to me. She shakes my hand, and hers is warm and firm, like Patsy’s. I can’t help but wonder if she’d shake it if she knew I was a Negro.

  “Thank you,” I say, cool as November. Inside, I’m all mixed up. I want to shout, I want to cry. I want to be happy, but it’s as bitter as it is sweet. I descend the steps from the stage, my silver wings glinting at my collar. I’ve done what I came to do. Abel won’t believe it. I know I hardly believe it myself.

  “That’s it, girls. Introducing class 44-W-3. Congratulations, ladies. You’re WASP now!” Mrs. Deaton announces. The place erupts in cheers, applause, and a few unladylike whistles.

  “All we need are mortarboards to toss in the air,” Lily says, reminding me of my high school graduation.

  “My mother wouldn’t let me throw my cap,” I tell her. “She was afraid it would get dirty, and she wanted to save it.”

  “Well, we’d better keep our hats on now, too, then,” Lily says. “Mother knows best.” Judging from the hats tossed into the air around us, not everyone would agree.

  That afternoon, we leave Avenger Field behind with a dusty kind of sorrow. I know the minute our bus passes through the gates that it will never be the same place for me again. Other WASP used to come through on ferrying missions now and again, and they always had the same sadly bemused look when they saw the place. I didn’t understand it until now. It’s like that saying “You can never go home again.” Only I am going home, as soon as we bury Patsy. And I hope it will be the way it was before I left.

  Florida is as green and lush as it is back home in Louisiana; the air is thick and slow here. You can even hear it in the drawls of the people at the bus station. Mrs. Emily Harper is no exception. She sounds like the Southern belles you hear in the movies, not in the real South. All the same, she is kindly. She greets Lily and me at the station. She’s dressed in an ocean green skirt suit. We shake hands and make pleasantries like we’re at a church social when all I want to do is hug this woman that Patsy thought of as a mother and a friend. But not now. There’s business to attend to.

  Two station workers, little colored boys that can hardly be called men, struggle with the box that now holds Patsy’s remains. I am reminded that all the able-bodied men are overseas. Or closed up in coffins, like Patsy. The thought makes me shiver, even though the day is hot. Please, God, don’t let there be a coffin for Thomas.

  The streaming sunlight makes everything feel like swimming in slow motion. The sounds of farewells, greetings, and baggage being hauled fade away and grow tinny as we follow Patsy’s casket from the station platform to the borrowed truck outside.

  “Undertaker couldn’t make it today. Too many funerals,” Mrs. Harper explains. She introduces us to the driver of the truck, a worn-looking little man with a too-large face and ruddy cheeks.

  “Mr. Evanston here is on his way through from Mississippi. He’s staying the weekend in town, offered the ride.”

  “Thank you kindly, Mr. Evanston,” I say, and shake his hand.

  “Miss.” He nods in that polite way you don’t get from Northern men.

  We pile in and ride straight to the funeral parlor. Evidently, the undertaker can spare just enough time to take Patsy inside. We give him her best dress and Mrs. Harper offers her own earrings for her to be buried in.

  “Please,” Mrs. Harper says, and hands the und
ertaker’s men a small cloth bag. “I wore these on my wedding day. Pearls. She always fancied them on me.”

  The undertaker clears his throat. “I’m sorry, ladies, but this is a closed casket funeral. Please, keep your jewelry.”

  Mrs. Harper hesitates until Lily rests a hand on her arm. “It’s all right, Mrs. Harper. Patsy wouldn’t want you to give them up.”

  The older woman nods, even though she doesn’t quite understand, but I do. Lily and I saw the flames that devoured Patsy’s plane. There’s nothing left of her to dress up. Still, the undertaker takes the dress we gave him to make us feel better. I close my eyes for a moment so I don’t cry in front of everyone, especially Mrs. Harper.

  Lily and I both fall silent for the rest of the ride to the boardinghouse. Some things just can’t be said.

  When we arrive, Mrs. Harper shows us upstairs to Patsy’s old room. “We had a fella staying in here, but he was more than glad to move when I told him you were on your way. Now, make yourselves at home. I’ve got supper to fix. We sit down at five thirty. I hope you’ll join us.”

  “Of course,” Lily says, the first words she’s spoken since we left the undertaker’s. Mrs. Harper shuts the door behind her just as softly as if we’d been sleeping babies. The room is comfortable and larger than I would have expected a boardinghouse room to be. The walls are papered in a powder blue with tiny pink rosebuds here and there. Two beds fill the room, one a full, the other a tiny single pressed up against the wall of the front of the house. A window over the single bed looks down to the street below. No one is out in the yard. Lily drops down onto the little bed as if the life’s gone plumb out of her. I know how she feels.

  “Ida?”

  “Yes, dear.” I sit across from her on the bigger bed. Every ounce of me feels tired, as if the heat and sorrow are more than a soul can bear.

  “I want my mother,” Lily says.

  I go sit next to her and put an arm around her. “So do I.”

  She rests her head against mine and quietly, I start to sing. “Amazing Grace.” Daddy’s funeral song. The song Mama was humming when I decided to join the WASP. I sing it softly, and then the words just turn to a hum. Lily sighs and I stop feeling so numb, a little at a time. And somehow we are able to make it through the sit-down dinner at five thirty, and through the rest of the night, and through watching our best friend lowered six feet into the ground the next afternoon, when the only place she ever wanted to be was in the sky.

  Chapter 19

  It takes two different railways to get from Florida to Louisiana. The trains look different in wartime from when we’re at peace. Most of the men at the stations and even here on the train are in uniform. Or old, or only boys. And the women, they travel in groups, some with children, eyes wide and eager for reunions or red with saying goodbye. After Patsy’s funeral, I kept on my dress blues; the pantsuit makes for easier traveling than a skirt. My silver graduation wings are still on the lapel. I’ll take it all off soon enough. Mama, Grandy, and Abel are waiting for me on the other end of this track. It’s been five months, and I’m finally going home.

  A smile tugs at my lips, but my stomach drops. Thomas is still missing in action. My daydream of a family reunion has an empty spot where my big brother should be. Mama will be angry with me. I promised I would find him, but those promises led nowhere.

  “First seating for lunch, ma’am.” The porter bows politely. I rouse myself and follow a handful of other passengers to the narrow whites-only dining car. Coloreds don’t get dining cars on most Southern trains.

  The porter gives me my own booth, with red velveteen upholstery and scratched china plates. I order a bowl of tomato soup, then rest my cheek on the cool glass of the window and close my eyes. How can I eat when Thomas is missing? And Patsy . . . I shake my head. I don’t want to think about Patsy.

  Three months Thomas has been missing, lost somewhere in the Pacific. I say a little prayer over my lunch. Please help my brother stay alive. After a few minutes, I give up on my soup and return to my seat two cars away.

  Through the window, Georgia gives way to Alabama in a haze of thick green trees. The air is heavy down here. Even with the windows open, I feel the humidity, like the sky is trying hard not to cry.

  Or maybe that’s just me.

  The woman across from me glances at my uniform. She has green eyes set in a face so pink, she looks like a baby doll. She sees me looking back at her and smiles, a pinched smile. Maybe I remind her of someone. Or, more likely, she’s thinking of the stories she’s heard about the kind of girl that would join a man’s army. I shrug. I’ll change out of uniform tomorrow and go back to being Ida Mae Jones. In the meantime, I’m proud of what I am, a Women Airforce Service Pilot. A WASP.

  I smile at the thought and stick my nose out the window. The wind rushes by and lifts my hair off my face. It feels good. Almost like flying. For a moment, I can forget the sore spot in my heart. I need every moment like this I can get.

  I sleep sitting up through Alabama. In the morning, as the train leaves Mississippi, I take my duffel and walk the length of the cars until I come to the door marked COLOREDS at the back end of the train. I find the ladies’ room between the two cars and slip inside. I’ll leave the train as a colored girl—Grandy will be waiting for me.

  The room is more of a broom closet, with a small sink, a short metal toilet, and a mirror on the wall. I straighten my blue uniform in the mirror, wipe away a bit of lint, and touch the cool silver metal of the wings on my lapel. It looks right on me, against my pale skin and soft brown hair. It makes me feel older than just twenty years. But only white women can wear them, and New Orleans is just an hour away. Time to turn back into a pumpkin.

  With a sigh, I open my bag and pull out my civilian clothes, a travel suit of soft brown-and-cream-flecked summer wool. The next time I look in the mirror, I’m no longer a WASP, young and white, able to fly. Same pale skin, same soft hair. But now I can pass for colored, just another light-skinned girl.

  Someone knocks at the door. I let them knock. I wait in the toilet until I feel the train come to a stop and the conductor announces we’ve arrived in New Orleans.

  Only when I hear other people moving from both cars do I close my bag and unlock the bathroom door. I exit the train in a crowd of both coloreds and whites. If anyone recognizes me, they won’t know me for the white woman I was when I boarded the train.

  Grandy is waiting for me outside the train station, away from the segregated platform. The old yellow pickup truck with its deep, rusting bed and slumped seats is a welcome sight. But not as welcome as my grandfather’s coffee brown face. I grin at him and walk over. He nods at me and grabs my bag.

  “Didn’t know what color you’d be when I saw you, so I thought it best to let you decide,” he says seriously.

  “Grandy!” I scold him with a swat on the arm. “Where’s Mama and Abel?” I ask. “I thought they’d be here.” I can’t hide my disappointment. Maybe Mama hasn’t made peace with my new life, the way I hoped she would.

  Grandy shakes his head. “Your mother’s back at the farm,” is all he says. It worries me.

  “Any news about Thomas?”

  Grandy shakes his head again and I can feel my heart sinking. It’s not a real homecoming without all of us there.

  The rest of the ride back to Slidell, Grandy tells me small news, stories of the folks about town, how the farm is doing, and the like. I tell him what fun training has been, what the graduation was like. I’m careful to say nothing about Patsy. As much as I want to talk about my friend, I know what happened to her will only scare Mama. And from the looks of it, that’s the last thing I can afford to do.

  We pull off the main highway, down our old dusty road, and my shoulders relax. It’ll be harvesttime in a couple of months. The strawberry fields are getting thick with fruit, and the shutters on our old yellow house still need painting. The porch is empty, but the windows have been thrown wide open to catch the breeze. I put my hand on Gr
andy’s arm as he shifts the truck into park.

  “Lord, it’s good to be home.”

  Grandy smiles at me, that strong, white-toothed smile. After a minute, I follow him out of the truck.

  “Leave it for later,” he tells me when I go to get my bag from the truck bed. It makes me hesitate.

  “What’s going on, Grandy?”

  “What do you mean, baby girl?”

  I stop, and my hands go to my hips, just like Mama’s do. “I mean, I have never in all my livelong days heard you say ‘leave’ anything for later. In fact, I’ve been switched for saying as much myself.”

  Grandy frowns at me, and I think I’ve gone too far. “Young lady, I am still your grandfather. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get inside.”

  He shakes his calloused hand at me, a sweeping motion that gets my feet moving again, even though my luggage is left behind. Up the front steps that echo hollow as a good mush melon, through the screen and wooden front doors, and into the foyer I go.

  “Mama? Abel? I’m home,” I call. I’m disappointed that they aren’t waiting for me, but I’m so glad to be home, I try to be patient.

  “I’m home,” I say again, more quietly.

  “About time, too,” says a voice. A man’s voice.

  “Thomas?” I run into the parlor. Plain as day, there is my big brother, laid up in Abel’s narrow little bed. It must’ve taken two men to bring it downstairs. Thomas grins at me, and his face, half Mama’s, half Daddy’s, is so beautiful, so perfect, I almost don’t see the wince of pain when he waves or the bandages on his arm and chest.