I was taking too long to respond. “He’s been very supportive. In fact, he was backstage waiting with us before we came out.”
Clemons pointed to another reporter in the ubiquitous gray suit. “Why do you all want to beat a man to the moon?”
Nicole leaned into the microphone. “I don’t want to beat a man to the moon. I want to go to the moon for the same reason men want to go. Women can do a useful job in space. We aren’t in a contest to beat men in anything.”
Thank God for her. That was a great answer. Granted, there was one man I would happily beat to the moon, but mostly, I just wanted us to get there.
“What are you going to cook in space?”
“Science.” The word popped out of my mouth before I thought about it, and the room rewarded me with a laugh. “Followed by a nice healthy dinner of kerosene and liquid oxygen.”
Betty leaned into the microphone. “And without gravity, I’m looking forward to soufflés that won’t fall.”
That line got a bigger laugh than mine, and pencils scribbled across notepads. Clemons pointed to another reporter. I stopped trying to identify them in the crowd, because their questions were all just the same inanity, and none of them had questions for the men.
“What about your beauty regimen in space? Will you be able to use hairspray?”
Sabiha shook her head. “We will be in a pure oxygen environment. Hairspray would be foolish.”
That list of questions that they had prepared for us? We got none of them. They’d have been better off giving us a coach for beauty contestants. The only thing they were missing was asking us how we would bring about world peace.
Behind me, the men shifted weight and I heard one of them mutter, “What about bra size?”
“Does the IAC have any plans to include men or women of color in the space program?” The man who asked the question looked white, with close-cropped dark curls. His suit was not rumpled, and he held himself with exquisite posture.
I swiveled in my seat to watch Clemons. He kept his smile fixed in place and raised a hand, as if he had a cigar in it. Changing the gesture into a wave of dismissal, he said, “The astronaut program is open to anyone who qualifies, but due to the nature of the mission, our standards are very high. These ladies are the best pilots on the planet. Best lady pilots. Naturally, our new male candidates are also outstanding, and our focus today should be on these fine men and women. I don’t want to hog their spotlight.”
“Then I’ll ask the ladies a question.” The man turned to stare at the stage, finding each of us with his clear hazel gaze. “Would any of you object to serving with a black woman in space?”
Everyone froze a little. It felt like a trick question. I leaned toward the mic. “I would be delighted, and know several black women who are brilliant pilots.”
Betty recovered next. “I wouldn’t object, of course, so long as the standards aren’t lowered.”
Being angry always helps control my anxiety. Ida could outfly Betty. Imogene was a better pilot than me. And goodness knows Violette shouldn’t even be on the stage. “We wouldn’t have to lower the standards.”
“Now, ladies…” Clemons stepped toward us, dragging his microphone with him. “Let’s move on to the question that people keep writing in to ask. Which of you will be the first one in space?”
As we’d been coached, all of us raised our hands. Nicole raised both, just like Parker had. Me? I didn’t really care who was first, so long as I got to go.
THIRTY-THREE
TWO WHO MAY LAND ON THE MOON SELECTED
IAC Names Men Who May Land on the Moon
KANSAS CITY, KS, July 2, 1957—Today the International Aerospace Coalition named the two astronauts who may become the first humans to set foot on the moon. They are Col. Stetson Parker of the United States, and Capt. Jean-Paul Lebourgeois of France, both veterans of the space program. Today, they and Lt. Estevan Terrazas of Spain were named as the crew of Artemis 9, which may go to the moon and back in April of next year.
They separated the astronaut candidates into two classes. The men were together for one, and the women for the other. I will admit that the first class they put us into made me a little complacent. Orbital mechanics. That was most of what I had done in the computer department.
The other women responded with varying degrees of success. Violette picked it up faster than I had expected. Nicole struggled with basic math and kept forgetting to take the square root or where the decimal place was supposed to be on the slide rule. I helped her where I could, but since I’ve never struggled with math, it was hard to figure out what to tell her. I just … I just did it.
Betty went through the motions, but I think she knew she wasn’t going to actually get into space. Maybe she didn’t even want to.
Sabiha worked her way through the orbital mechanics lessons with uneven progress, but iron determination. Jacira got it, but also hated it. She frequently muttered under her breath in Portuguese. I didn’t speak the language, but I can recognize cursing.
When we turned in our first homework assignment, it was like flashing back to being in fourth grade again. The instructor looked mine over and shook his head. “Elma … did Dr. York help you with this?”
The room went red and then seemed to cool to freezing. I half-expected my breath to steam white. “No. He didn’t.”
“It’s just … you only have the answers listed here.” He smiled, and his spectacles flashed white in a beam of sunlight. “It’s okay to get help, but I still need you to do all the work.”
It really was just like fourth grade. Only this time, I wasn’t going to have to wait, sobbing in the office, for my father to come and rescue me. I’d been too young then to know that there was a simple way to prove that I hadn’t cheated on a test.
“I understand your concern, so please, ask me any question that you’d like, and I’ll answer it. Right now.”
He tapped the papers together on the desk with a sharp rap. “We don’t have time for you to work through an equation. Next time, just do the work.”
I ground my teeth together. He wanted me to write out all the in-between steps instead of just solving the equation? Fine. I could take the time to do that, and he could take the time to grade it. I knew how this conversation went. It had happened too many times for me not to know, and I had been an idiot to think that my time at the IAC would count for anything. “Yes, sir.”
At that, Nicole stared at me, then raised her hand, smiling. “Excuse me, sir?”
“Yes, Nicole?”
“Elma wrote most of those equations.”
He sighed. “Thank you, Nicole. I know she wrote the answers. But I needed her to do the work to find them.”
She put her hand on her chest and widened her eyes. “Oh, goodness me. I’m so silly. I just—”
I cleared my throat before Nicole could go full debutante on him. “What she means, sir, is that in my work at the computer department at the IAC, I originated a good portion of the equations in last night’s homework, and the ones that I didn’t write, I’ve used on a daily basis for the past four years.”
He blinked. “Oh.” He set the pages down and smoothed them. “I see. That would have been useful information to know earlier.”
Between dozing through the orbital mechanics classes, we also had advanced pilot training. We were often broken into groups of three and sent to different facilities to use simulators or specialized equipment. Some of it was old hat, like the “Dilbert Dunker,” which I’d done for flight school as part of the WASPs.