Flygirl (4 page)

We stare at each other in the afternoon light, the door to the market swinging open and shut as other women, clutching their ration books, go by.

“I'm just worried about Thomas,” I say finally.

“I know, sugar, but it doesn't do much good. You remember that Danny Taylor from school?”

“Of course.” I nod. “He still doing roadwork for the city?”

“No. I heard he shipped off last month. Headed to France.” A shadow crosses Jolene's face. “I think about the last time we saw him. I should have been nicer to him.”

We stand together a little longer in the thick heat filtering through the leaves of live oak above us.

“Missus is waiting,” Jolene finally says. We go into the store to stock up on sugar for the Wilsons' morning coffee.

 

The sorrowful mood from the afternoon is still sitting on me when I get home. It's too warm to cook inside the house. Mama and Grandy are keeping cool on the front porch. In the kitchen, I find the ham sandwich Mama has made for me from Sunday's supper and eat it quietly with a glass of milk. The newspaper is lying on the table. I haven't read the front pages in months. I don't want to read any more about the war. Instead, I hunt for the recipes page and learn thrifty new ideas for using Spam and an apple pie recipe that doesn't use apples.

“Abel's upstairs,” Mama calls to me from the front porch. “Why don't you see him to bed for me, Ida.”

“All right, Mama.” I fold up the newspaper and clean up the dishes before trudging up the stairs. The air is warmer at the top of the landing, but the windows are all open, and the slightest breeze is pulling through the upper rooms of the house. Abel is sitting on his bed, already in his pajamas, playing with a wooden horse the size of a small kitten.

“Hi, Abel. Mama says it's time for bed.”

“Hey, Ida Mae.” Abel's smile sparkles. He pulls his knees up to his chin and draws the covers up around him. “It's too hot for a quilt, but it makes me sleep.”

“Sleep makes you sleep,” I tell him, and sit on the edge of his bed. “The quilt is just a good reminder. How was class today?” School starts early in Slidell so kids can be home to help with the spring and summer harvests.

Abel shrugs. “It was all right. It's too hot for school, too. I got you something, though.”

“What is it?” I ask him, half afraid it'll be some frog or worm he found in the fields. But Abel surprises me by reaching beneath his pillow and pulling out the front section of today's newspaper.

“Mrs. Marvin read it to us. On the third page. She said it was all part of what we can do for the war effort.”

I turn up the lamp beside Abel's bed and search for the article. My eyes widen when I see it.
Free a Man to Fight,
the headline says.
Mrs. Jackie Cochran, the cosmetics mogul and celebrated pilot, has joined forces with the United States Army to train women as ferrying pilots, freeing men to fight in the war effort overseas. The program will be called the Women Airforce Service Pilots, an offshoot of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, begun by Nancy Love.

I squint at the fine print in the yellow glow of the lamp. I can't believe a word I've just read. I read it again. And a third time. My heart starts to thump a little louder in my chest.

“They're doing it, Ida,” Abel says excitedly. “Making women pilots, just like those Russian ladies you're always talking about. Only ours get to fly planes, not brooms.”

“Well, I'll be,” I say, but my mind is a thousand miles away, at Sweetwater, Texas, where the training is taking place. Sweetwater must be nothing but wide-open sky. I take a deep, calming breath. Don't get ahead of yourself, Ida Mae.

“You could do it, I bet,” Abel says, yawning. I look at the clock on the dresser. It's getting late.

“You need to sleep, little man.” I kiss Abel on his smooth brown forehead and again on each cheek. “You're something else,” I tell him. I kiss him again, until he starts to squirm. “Thank you,” I whisper into the shell of his ear. “Good night!”

I run down the stairs as fast as I can. On the front porch, I race by Mama and Grandy.

“I'm going to Jolene's, Mama,” I call out as I pass by. “I'll be back before ten.”

“Ten?” I hear Mama say. “Ida Mae . . .” But I don't hear any more. I've got to tell Jolene about this. It's what I've been looking for. It's a sign from heaven above.

I don't go to Jolene's, though. I'm halfway through the strawberries when I realize she won't even be awake by the time I get there. Instead, I head out into the fields where my daddy used to work so hard and lie down between the rows of sweet green leaves. I look up at the sky, the same sky my daddy loved.

Daddy had gotten it into his head one day back in 1934 that a crop duster plane was the way to go for farmers. It was the future. Sure, they'd only been around a few years, they were dangerous, and, quite frankly, only a handful of colored people knew how to fly. Yes, there was Bessie Coleman, she was one of the first, and a few people up north, but in Slidell, Louisiana, heck, in all of the South, not a single colored man or woman could fly.

So, Daddy went north. I was only eleven years old, Thomas was fourteen, and Abel was still a bump in Mama's belly. Mama was mad that Daddy was leaving her on some fool's errand, as she put it. That's the year Grandy came to live with us. He looked after us, and the farm, while Daddy was away. Even with her own daddy there, Mama was lonely. Airplanes were dangerous and she was scared. She dressed in black the whole time he was gone, practicing to be a widow, she said. But Daddy had his ideas and wouldn't let them go. He took the train up to Chicago and enrolled in the aeronautics school, a new flying school set up by two colored men who were also licensed engineers. Daddy worked his tail off, he told us in his letters. At the end of five hundred hours of hard work, he was licensed to fly.

Daddy came back in a whirl of dust and wind with a trailer carrying his “big surprise.” I remember that day like yesterday. Daddy was waving his hat like a circus ringmaster, looking tall and handsome. Mama was big as a watermelon with Abel and Thomas was scowling. He was still mad at Daddy for making Mama unhappy. I was so excited I shifted from foot to foot in my gingham dress. It was, Daddy told us with a wink, a solemn occasion.

Once we were all gathered around, he whipped off the tarp and—ta da! There she stood, in all her glory—Daddy's very own plane. Her name was Jenny, actually a Curtiss JN-4. It was the same kind of plane Bessie Coleman had flown in, Daddy told us proudly. It was also the plane she was flying in when it malfunctioned and she died, Mama added.

Daddy didn't mind, though; he was like a sunny day that could not be dimmed by clouds. After much fanfare and a thorough once-over of all of the moving parts, he took us up in that Jenny one by one. Grandy went up first, serious-faced and silent. When he landed, he declared that it would be a good way to spray the crops rather than have to worry away crickets and cicadas by hand. Thomas came back down smiling, and even Mama went up, though she swore that Abel was born early because of the fright that flying gave her.

Me, I went up last. And I never wanted to come down again. First the driveway, then the farm, then all the fields of cotton and alfalfa and all of Slidell dropped away until it looked like the quilt on my bed, big patches of green and brown, stained with shiny swampland here and there. For the first time in my eleven years, I felt like a giant, like I was tall as the sky.

So, whenever Daddy was willing, I flew with him. A few of the farmers in the area saw Daddy flying and, when they weren't asking for rides, they paid him to treat their crops, too. It was at my daddy's knee that I first learned to fly, naturally. As I got older, I read his school manuals and took the same tests he did, and I was good. He told me so. Good enough to get my own license and be a genuine pilot. After he died, I kept up the crop-dusting work. I felt close to Daddy every time I flew.

The war put an end to my flying days.

Until today.

The stars twinkle down like giant fireflies, and the fireflies in the field hover above me like tiny stars. Abel's newspaper story is still in my hands, the ink staining my fingertips. I take a deep breath and smile.

“Daddy, I'm gonna be a pilot in the U.S. Army,” I whisper. ”Your little girl is gonna fly again. She is gonna fly.”

“It's for white women,” Jolene says. Her words are like a club coming down on my head. We are alone at the LaRoche house, washing windows for a big war fund-raising party they are giving. It's a chance for the rich folks around here to feel useful. I have Abel's newspaper article inside my apron pocket, keeping it close to me the way some people keep rosaries. But Jolene is a cold cup of water on my excitement.

“It doesn't say that,” I protest.

“It doesn't have to,” she explains. “Just say ‘Sweetwater, Texas,' and I know it's whites only. Texas is as Jim Crow as it gets. Come to think of it, all you really needed to do was say ‘army,' and I could have told you how it would go. Sorry, Ida Mae. It's a pretty little dream, but it's only that.” Jolene sighs dramatically. “You should've just become a nurse.”

“Maybe,” I say. She's right, of course. Thomas is only allowed to treat other coloreds in the army. In fact, it's like Uncle Sam runs two armies at once—one all white and the other colored. Grandy says that's the way it's always been. They've finally decided to let women fly military planes. I don't know why I thought that meant colored women, too.

“Do you ever wish you were white, Jolene?”

Jolene raises an eyebrow and cuts me a sharp look. “There ain't enough wishes in the world to make me white,” she says. “Besides, the darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.”

I have to smile. “All right, Miss Juicy, but you know what I mean. Most days it doesn't matter. You go to work, you go home, you've got a family and the sun's still shining . . . you're happy. But then sometimes it's like when I tried to get my license. If you're colored, you get the short end of the stick. If you're a woman, you get the short end of the stick. So what do we get for being colored
and
women?”

Jolene sighs. “Beat hard with both ends of a short stick.” She smiles wryly. “Well, honey, like I've said before, I'm Negro for life, but you could always pass.”

My skin prickles at the thought. “You remember Stevia Johnson?”

“Hoo, boy, do I,” Jolene exclaims. “Stevia was white as milk and had light eyes to boot. Her mama's mama's mama made sure they all married up the light ladder.”

“And she married a white man, too,” I add. Stevia was a year ahead of us in class. She got married almost right out of high school. When other girls were learning to be teachers or cleaning houses, Stevia married her boss at the department store she worked in. She'd been passing for years. It wasn't unheard of, passing for a job or marrying white so your children could pass into a better life. Daddy's family had done the same, until he married Mama, that is.

“Stevia always was too uppity for me,” Jolene says.

“Do you remember Janice?”

Jolene's eyes narrow, and she gets real busy on a window streak.

Janice Johnson was not someone either of us were likely to forget. Two years ago, Stevia's parents threw a graduation party for her, and I was invited because she knew Thomas. Jolene and I showed up just as happy as could be, excited to be invited to a senior class party. But Stevia's cousin, Janice, was standing at the door with a paper bag. Janice was as fair-skinned as Stevia. She could have gone blond if she wanted to without anyone batting an eye.

“Just a moment,” she said when Jolene and I tried to walk through the door. She held up the paper bag to my cheek and said, “Go right in, honey,” in a sweet drawl that sounded more like a Georgia debutante than a New Orleans farm girl with a little bit of education. I went right on in and turned around to wait for Jolene.

Jolene never got past the front door.

“Uh-uh, sugah, you're black as molasses.” Janice held the paper bag up, pale as nutmeg against Jolene's chocolaty skin. “You're back-of-the-church black,” she said, referring to the way folks separate by skin tone in some churches. The blackest people sit in the last row, farthest away from God.

“You can't be serious!” I said. I'll never forget the look on Jolene's face, like she could've scratched Janice's eyes out.

“Let's go, Jolene. We don't need this.” I grabbed her hand.

She pulled free of me. “This is my business, Ida,” she said quietly, and stepped right up in that yellow girl's face and said, “Janice Johnson, everybody knows you got your skin from the milkman and not your mama's husband. He's as black as me. At least I know who my daddy is!”