Helen bounced on her toes, face splitting into a grin that looked like it must hurt. “I get to take the tests!”
“Us too!” Ida clinked her glass against Imogene’s and Helen’s. All three of the women looked as giddy as kids starting summer vacation.
Betty grinned at me. “I’m going to walk them through the physical tests.”
“And I’ll keep up the math coaching while you’re in space.” Helen punched me in the shoulder. “I never get tired of saying that.”
Nathaniel came up behind me and draped an arm over my shoulder. “I can tell these are your friends, because they’re excited about taking tests.” He kissed my cheek and raised his glass. “Congratulations, ladies. Here’s to the stars.”
Laughing, I clinked my glass against my friends’. “Better yet: Here’s to the Lady Astronaut Club.”
THIRTY-NINE
TWO ASTRONAUTS AND AN ASTRONETTE PREPARE FOR THE MOON
KANSAS CITY, KS, July 20, 1958—The two men who will be the first to tread the moon early on Monday may find that walking is not the best way to get around. The answer may be a “kangaroo hop.” While they are exploring the surface, lady astronaut Dr. Elma York will be keeping the home fires burning in the capsule orbiting the moon, waiting for their return.
Today, I am going into space.
Everything about today is vivid in ways that nothing else in life can equal. My wedding to Nathaniel has been reduced by time to a series of snapshots and captured moments packed in a haze of joy.
But today, the light gleaming atop the egg yolk in my breakfast contains the most vibrant yellow-orange. This is the last meal I will eat before going into space. Lebourgeois and Terrazas are sitting across from me and we are talking through the last details before the flight. There is a photographer in the room—screened for health by the IAC—but he does not matter.
We are going into space today.
This is Terrazas’s fifth flight and Lebourgeois’s seventh. I am the only rookie here. I am the only woman.
A tall, broad-shouldered man with gray hair and jowls comes into the room, and for a moment, I don’t recognize him as Clemons. He does not have his cigar. The smell of it still lingers, though, in a heavy musk.
“All packed?”
I nod, pushing my chair back from the table. “My post-flight things are in my room. There’s … there’s a note.”
“I’ll hold on to it.” Clemons nods and shoves his hands into his pockets, as if he can’t figure out what to do with them without the cigar.
We walk down the hall—it might be the last time I walk down this hall—to the dressing rooms. The photographer follows us, but splits off to go with the men. I am grateful, for the first time, that I am the only woman on the flight.
That changes when I enter the dressing room, because the other two astronauts have each other for company while they are getting suited. I know the team here, of course—part of my training included dry runs of this moment—but I find that I have no words in me but the single phrase I am going to space today.
In relative silence, I strip and pull on the long underwear that will be next to my skin for most of the flight. I will wear this into space today.
They’ve dressed other astronauts, so they don’t force me to talk. Thank God for professionals. It takes all three of us to wrestle me into the pressure suit. It is designed to be snug and protect me from the elements—or the lack thereof—in space. Where I am going today.
Settling into the chair, I stare straight ahead at the concrete wall as they lower the helmet over my head. These are the last breaths of the Earth’s atmosphere that I will take for the next eight days. Someone is wearing White Shoulders bath powder. I recognize the fragrance because Grandma used it.
The helmet clicks into place, changing the sound of the room. It does not muffle the way a jet flight helmet does. It reflects the sounds of my own body back and the metallic stink of canned oxygen hisses around me. I inhale, slowly and carefully. Then I lift both stiff arms of the suit to give them a thumbs up. All good. They nod and give me the okay sign.
The outside world sits at a distance. I won’t be able to hear it until I am patched into the ship’s system. Now I have to wait for the nitrogen to work its way out of my bloodstream. If I didn’t, I could wind up with the bends when we went into space. The Earth’s atmosphere is 14.7 psi, but the capsule is only pressurized to 5.5 psi.
There is a cluster of imperfections on the cinder-block wall that looks like a dragon’s head. I wonder what the psychologists at our initial tests would have made of that. Awkward in the suit, I turn and wave to catch one of the dressers’ attention. When she looks at me, I mime opening a book.
She smiles and reaches into the cabinet for the reading material that I selected for this wait. It is the gift my brother gave me at my going-to-space party.
Superman #11. The prize of his comic book collection.
Weeping would be an unfortunate choice. I am an astronaut. I am inside a space suit. And I am going into space today.
The elevator down from the astronaut’s isolation suite is only three stories, but it is slow. The portable oxygen unit I’m carrying is heavy, but when someone offered to carry it for me, I declined. If the men can do this, so can I. Still, I am beginning to regret the choice by the time the elevator finally reaches the bottom.
Two elevator repairmen ride down with us, just in case. It would be an inauspicious start if we all got stuck in an elevator on the way to the moon. Lebourgeois is shifting from foot to foot. I have never seen him nervous before.
The doors open, and a crowd of reporters is waiting for us. They told us to expect that, so when we get outside, the three of us pause for a minute to let them take pictures. I take a deep breath of the canned oxygen and smile.
My heart has been trotting along, faster than usual, but my space suit protects me from their questions. What will people think, seeing these photos, of three astronauts in their tinfoil suits?
Inside the building, my brother, his family, and Aunt Esther are waiting for the launch. They will be in the observation room looking over Mission Control right now. Nathaniel will be on the floor, standing at his desk instead of sitting like a normal human being.
We walk away from the reporters and get into the van that will drive us to the rocket. It stands like a vast monolith, a testament to the persistence of mankind. That. I am going to ride that.
There is, of course, the possibility that we won’t go today. Launches get scrubbed all the time. A faulty wire. The weather. A man with a bomb … We might have to go through all of this again tomorrow. I’d been in Mission Control often enough when we had to scrub.
When we get out of the van, there are technicians waiting for us by the bottom of the elevator leading up the gantry. Terrazas stops me with a hand on my arm and points up.
I lean back, the only way to look up in the suit. The sound of my gasp echoes against the sides of my helmet. The Artemis 9 steams in the morning sun like a living beast. Intellectually, I know it’s because of the super-chilled oxygen, but … my God, she is beautiful.
When I look back down, Terrazas is still looking up, and so is Lebourgeois. Both men are grinning when we finally finish gawking like tourists, and walk into the elevator. It rattles and shakes as we ride up, and the vast prairies of Kansas spread out at our feet.
Without being told, I stop on the gantry before I climb into the capsule. We all do. Inside, the windows face straight up. This will be my last view of Earth until I am in space.