A Tyranny of Petticoats

by Jessica Spotswood

  “Other side of the street,” the policeman said, pointing.

  Darn it. I knew it, Tony thought. I should have planned a good argument —

  “You can stand over there with all the other niggers and get a view of the whole sky,” the man said blandly. “Nobody’s charging admission. It’s a free country.”

  Tony’s face grew hot at the hated word. What infuriated her most of all was the casual way people used it: Outta the way, nigger; I’m in a hurry. Hey, nigger, which way to the train station? Tony caught her breath, clenched her toes in her worn oxford school shoes, and thought hard. No point in bringing up the questions her senior high Physics Club had put together about the flight characteristics of Bessie Coleman’s new aircraft — or Bessie Coleman’s commitment to opening an aviation school for young Negroes of both sexes. And absolutely no point in mentioning Tony’s own interest in the Dutch aircraft designer she knew Bessie had met in Europe.

  Tony swallowed frustration and ambition and tried to play the part of a winning and innocent schoolgirl. Her cheeks were still aflame. She felt like she was being dishonest: hiding her interest in science, which always made men suspicious no matter what color they were, and trying to be pleasant to someone who’d insulted her without even realizing it. She tried a simpler tactic.

  “I was just hoping to get Bessie Coleman’s autograph when she gets here.” It was true enough she’d like to have that autograph, and maybe if she could speak to Miss Coleman herself, things would turn around.

  “You can do that tomorrow.” The policeman was growing impatient. “The air display tomorrow’s gonna be for a mixed audience — pay to get in like everyone else. I’ll be there myself.”

  “I’m looking forward to that!” Tony knew the flying show would be for a mixed audience — Bessie Coleman had fought for that privilege and won it. The whole Physics Club, and probably the rest of the school, were coming to watch. Thinking of Bessie’s persistence, Tony made one last attempt to win over the policeman.

  “Look!” Tony had two schoolbooks, a couple of ham-filled biscuits wrapped in paper for her dinner break, and her cardboard notebook with her newspaper clippings about Bessie Coleman and the questions for the Physics Club tied together with a piece of twine. Tony slid the notebook free; as luck would have it, it fell open to a photograph of Bessie posing beneath the wings of an aircraft with a white cameraman holding a huge Pathé moving-picture camera. The aviatrix and the filmmaker were both grinning conspiratorially, and the caption read, “Snapped in Berlin, Germany.”

  “Look,” Tony repeated. “She did a tour through Europe doing test flights for aircraft designers. She flew over the kaiser’s palace! She’s not just a circus performer —”

  The policeman bent over the page. The picture held him for a moment. Then he let out a grudging sigh.

  “Okay, you go wait across the road with the other niggers and when she gets here you can come and ask for her autograph. But if any of those little kids follow you over here, I’m gonna chase you all away. You got that?”

  It was a small victory made sour by the relentless casual insult. Stung and triumphant, Tony closed the notebook carefully. “Yes, sir,” she mumbled, lowering her eyes.

  “Get going, girl,” the policeman said, jerking his head in the direction of the fence on the other side of the road.

  Tony went, clutching the notebook under one arm and her schoolbooks under the other. It was unbelievable how polite you had to be when somebody cut you so low, so carelessly, that you wanted to spit at him. Would he call Bessie Coleman a nigger? He probably would. Some things never change.

  Knowing Bessie Coleman was a southern girl herself gave Tony a little comfort. She knew Miss Coleman’s story, and getting people to take her seriously must have been even harder than it was for Tony. Half a generation older than Tony, Bessie Coleman had been born and raised in Texan cotton fields. Already Tony had more schooling than Miss Coleman, who’d completed eighth grade and one term of college. But even as a schoolgirl, Brave Bess had been interested in flight — she’d written an essay about the Wright brothers and their history-making flying machine.

  She didn’t complete college because she ran out of money. She went home and earned her living doing people’s laundry, until the dead-end pointlessness of the work drove her north to Chicago. There she pestered and pestered people to teach her to fly. When no one would — because she was a woman or because she was black or both — she managed to get herself sponsored by a local newspaper, went to France, and learned to fly there.

  And now she was trying to raise money to establish a flying school for Negro boys and girls.

  Maybe some things do change, Tony told herself. She stayed on the edge of the small crowd, watching the road and considering how she was going to get Miss Coleman’s attention without a crowd of truant schoolboys following her like gnats.

  “Hey, here they come!” yelled one of the boys, pointing at a dust cloud rising in the near distance.

  The car pulled up in front of the new frame building, and the driver got out. Tony recognized the handsome young man in the dark business suit as Bessie’s chaperone, John Betsch, who’d invited Tony to come along today. A white man emerged from the backseat, wearing a leather flying jacket and carrying a satchel made out of a flour sack. He got to the front passenger door before Betsch and opened it, and out stepped the woman flyer herself — Brave Bess, Queen Bess, queen of the air, queen of the sky. Bessie Coleman was little and pretty and official-looking in her jodhpurs, every inch a modern woman.

  John Betsch took a moment to survey the crowd. Then he shouted, “Hey there, Tony!”

  He’d recognized her. Thank goodness Tony had been bold enough to go up to him and shake his hand after the school lecture! She’d told him about the Physics Club. She and Betsch had talked about Miss Coleman’s moving-picture projector, making guesses about how it worked while Miss Coleman rewound the reels.

  Tony’s mother always did say You make your own luck.

  “It is Tony, right?” Betsch called. “Short for Antonia?”

  “Yes. Hello!” Tony waved the cardboard notebook as a greeting, feeling her cheeks flushing again. Now the kids were gaping at her; she knew that if she crossed the street uninvited they’d be sure to follow, and then the cop would shoo her away with the rest of them. She held her breath. At least she’d gotten Betsch’s attention.

  “Come say hi,” Betsch invited. “Miss Coleman was sorry she didn’t get to meet you yesterday.” He turned to the white policeman, who stood barricading the famous woman from the other spectators. “Okay if Tony joins us, Officer?” he asked politely, tipping his hat.

  Antonia, miraculously, was allowed across the street.

  “Hi, Tony,” Bessie said to her warmly. “Great timing! Can you stick around after the test flight? Mr. Betsch said you have questions for me.” Bessie glanced at the notebook in Tony’s hand. “How about I give you an autograph now, in case you have to leave for school before I’m back on the ground?”

  “I — sure!” Tony flipped the notebook open against the warm hood of the car. Miss Coleman laughed when she saw the clippings.

  “It’s all about me!” she said with pleasure. With her round face and petite features radiating delight, she seemed almost younger than Tony.

  Tony laughed. “The questions I’ve got for you are about your plane’s flight characteristics,” she said. “Not about you.”

  “Well, I’ll know more about that after the flight! Stick around. This plane’s just come from Texas, and I’ve only flown it once before. It’s not new, but it is going to be the first of my fleet,” Bessie Coleman boasted. “I already put in an order for three more. Maybe you’ll come learn to fly with me when I get that flight school open!”

  She paused a moment, scanning the Physics Club list of questions about aerodynamics. Her youthful expression grew suddenly shrewder. “You and your friends have pretty good heads on your shoulders!” she said. Then she took Tony’s p
en and wrote in a firm, clear, confident script on the blank page right opposite the list. After a moment she lifted the pen and read aloud, as though she was pleased with what she’d written: “‘To My Dear Admirer Antonia. Only you can make your dreams come true. Always reach for the sky and soon it’ll be time for you to take flight. Your friend, Bessie Coleman.’”

  She handed the pen back and patted the notebook. “Hey, Bill, come take a look. These kids aren’t just autograph hunters — they’re serious about aerodynamics! Tony, meet my mechanic, William Wills.”

  The white man in the leather flying jacket put down his satchel and offered Tony his hand. She took it, surprised, and he shook hands with her very briefly. He didn’t smile, but he bent over the page of questions and scanned them briefly.

  “Bill Wills brought my new plane here from Love Field in Dallas a couple of days ago,” Bessie said.

  “And it wasn’t easy,” Wills said. “Wait till I give them a piece of my mind back at Love Field — they’re going to get a reputation for just being a junkyard for old army flying machines! I had so many mechanical problems on the way, I had to make two unscheduled landings. Took me a whole day to fly here.” He glanced up at Miss Coleman. “You want to treat this baby gently when you fly her. I feel like I’m just getting to know her tricks!”

  “Now, Bill, that’s why I’m letting you do the flying this weekend,” Miss Coleman answered cheerfully. “This morning we’re just going to take a look over the racetrack to make sure it’s safe for my parachute display tomorrow. And I expect you to treat my new baby gently, ’cause I’m going to leave my safety straps off so I can see over the side of the cockpit. I want to get the big picture.”

  “Well, the Jenny’s got dual controls,” Wills said. “We can take turns. You can give her a test run.”

  Bessie Coleman turned back to Tony. “If you’re staying to watch, you can come out on the field with Mr. Betsch while we take off. Maybe I can take you for a flight myself later this weekend!”

  “I’ll go check out the Jenny,” Wills said, and headed around the office building out to the landing field. Miss Coleman turned to the eager little crowd on the other side of the road and gave them a beaming smile and a sweeping wave, then followed Wills.

  A couple of boys tried to edge closer to Betsch’s car. The unpleasant policeman herded them back, truncheon in his hand, eyeing everyone menacingly.

  “Come on, Tony,” Betsch said.

  Tony realized that the distracted William Wills had left his flour-sack satchel sitting on the ground by the car. She had an excuse as well as an invitation now. She picked up the sack, slung it over her shoulder, and headed after Betsch to the airfield. Once again she felt triumphant, but she didn’t dare look back to see if the policeman noticed.

  Tony couldn’t make out the pilots’ faces as the little Jenny aircraft began to rattle across the grass field — their heads were covered by helmets and goggles, and the taxiing plane kicked up a cloud of dust. The morning haze hung still in the sky, and the sun was higher now. Suddenly the flying machine soared, lifting over the roof of the office and creating a wind that rattled the airfield fence.

  Tony’s heart soared too. Understanding the principles of flight didn’t make it any less amazing to watch. It seemed a perfect miracle that the flimsy machine could be lifting two human beings into the air — people Tony had spoken to, even touched, half an hour ago, and now they were flying. Tony watched the little Jenny turn, heading out over the racetrack in a steady, noisy ascent. It circled the track and Tony imagined the aviatrix giving directions to the pilot seated ahead of her: Go higher. I want to get the big picture.

  The flying machine climbed.

  Now it was nothing but a speck in the sky, three-quarters of a mile up, and Tony couldn’t make out any details. She strained to see, worried that if she took her eyes from the aircraft she’d lose sight of it and not be able to find it again.

  Then the aerobatics started.

  The machine plunged so fast that Tony imagined she could faintly hear the wires between the wings screaming with the speed of the descent.

  You can give her a test run, the mechanic William Wills had said. Tony wondered which of them was flying right now. Bessie must feel it was safe, since she’d said she wasn’t going to wear her straps.

  Tony had seen this trick before — over this very track she’d seen other pilots throw a machine into a dive, spin, then pull out and up at the last second and soar back into the sky. A dive like that was exactly what the little Jenny biplane did now, tearing a thousand feet down the sky and then suddenly dropping into a spin, corkscrewing around and around its own tail as it descended, like a winged sycamore seed. As it spiraled downward, lower and lower, Tony wondered with excitement if Miss Coleman had seen the question about the Jenny’s spin characteristics — if maybe she’d mentioned it to the pilot and now they were trying out the daring display.

  Tony held her breath, waiting with her heart in her mouth for the moment when the Jenny would stop spiraling and the wings would swoop steadily skyward.

  It never came.

  Five hundred feet above the ground, the spinning plane flipped over backward. A small, dark silhouette suddenly detached from the rest of the machine. The figure dropped like a tumbling stone through the sky. One moment it was part of the plummeting plane, and the next it was the living body of a brave and desperate pilot, and then it was gone.

  In the first seconds after a catastrophe, you can’t believe it really happened.

  Part of Tony’s brain insisted that both pilots were still in the aircraft she was watching, both still alive and fighting to stay in the sky. She stood rooted to the spot, straining to see the plane as it screamed back toward the airfield. She found her lips moving in a silent plea to the pilot: Straighten up, please straighten up — and then it became a prayer. Please, God, let them straighten up.

  And she didn’t even know who she was praying for.

  The pilot straightened up, but not in time. The Jenny was too low now — trees loomed ahead of it at the edge of the farm field across from the racetrack. For one more vain second, Tony hoped the plane would miss the treetops. But the landing gear hanging down from its belly got caught in the top of one of the tall slash pines, and the aircraft took the tree’s highest branches with it as the plane flailed and flipped itself over and hit the ground.

  Then everything was quiet.

  Tony had forgotten John Betsch, who’d been standing right beside her watching the whole thing too, until the moment when he tore across the airfield, running as fast as he could go. The policeman pelted after him. So did the boys who’d been watching from the road.

  Dazed, Tony ran a couple of steps after them, when suddenly she remembered the figure who had fallen out of the tumbling aircraft. It hadn’t happened directly above the airfield, but over a neighboring cross street. Tony ran away from the fallen plane, along Edgewood.

  There was a little crowd gathered ahead of her. Something about their sober silence made Tony stop in her tracks before she got close enough to see what they were gathered around. A knot of men knelt over the inert form in the middle of the crowd, talking to one another in hushed tones. Around the edges of the crowd, sobbing women stole agonized glances at the scene and quickly looked away again, holding one another by the hand and around the waist.

  There was something in their quiet reverence — the way the women were wiping one another’s tears, as though the broken body in the center of the crowd was family — that made Tony sure the body was that of the famed Bessie Coleman.

  After a moment a couple of people stepped back, but no one moved fast — no one went running for an ambulance or a doctor.

  Then suddenly the young policeman who’d tried to turn Tony away from the airfield was back on the scene.

  “Hey!” called the policeman. “Hey, you, nigger girl with the questions! Get over here!”

  Tony closed her eyes for a moment, reeling with the shock of what s
he’d just seen and the sheer horror of the law singling her out in a crowd of onlookers.

  “You!” He was advancing on her now. She thought about running and suddenly became aware that she was carrying her books on their string over one shoulder and William Wills’s satchel over the other. If she ran, it would look like she was trying to steal the satchel.

  Oh, Lord have mercy, maybe it already did look like she was trying to steal it?

  A sudden wave of anger drowned Tony’s unhappiness for a moment. She’d run to the fallen pilot because she’d been trying to help. One of America’s great heroes was tragically dead, and wasn’t that more important than tracking down an anonymous schoolgirl? Tony stood her ground as the policeman stomped toward her, his eyes narrowed in a suspicious frown.

  That was when they heard the rush of thunder as what was left of Bessie Coleman’s Curtiss Jenny flying machine, a quarter of a mile away, exploded into a tower of flame.

  The policeman escorted Tony back to the airfield office. He told her she was a witness; that’s all he’d tell her. For half an hour he drank coffee with the man who was handling the telephone, but they didn’t offer any to Tony. They didn’t offer her a seat, either, so she stood warily in a corner of the office, trying to be invisible. She didn’t dare set down the bag or her books. Her arms began to ache.

  But she couldn’t help overhearing what was going on, as the man on the telephone relayed information. The police and three technicians were already attempting to pick over the wreckage to find out what had gone wrong with the plane, newspapermen were out there ghoulishly taking pictures, and a pair of undertakers were on their way.

  “Can you beat that — having to call two different undertakers?” the telephone man exclaimed to the policeman. “One for the pilot, one for the nigger girl! Nobody having a good day except the undertakers.”

  At that moment, a man in overalls came slamming into the airfield office. He was so soot covered from head to toe that he looked like he was performing in a minstrel act. “God-damned loose wrench!” he swore, his mouth and lips garishly wet and red in his filthy, blackened face. He announced to no one in particular, “There was a God-damned wrench jammed in the works of that plane. That poor bastard Wills didn’t stand a chance. No pilot in the world could have straightened a machine in that kind of trouble. A God-damned loose wrench! I don’t blame the pilot. I blame the mechanics who left it there!”