Grasping Mysteries Read online

  wonders whether she’ll have a girl or a boy.

  Life

  Hertha holds the baby over her heart, listening.

  She kisses each finger, the back of her neck and her bottom,

  like a silent prayer that one day this child will love

  every bit of herself as much as her mother does.

  The happy parents name the baby Barbara Bodichon Ayrton

  and bring her to meet the woman who gave Hertha so much.

  I wish she’d been born when women could vote,

  but we did what we could. Madame Barbara Bodichon’s

  words wobble because she’s suffered some strokes.

  Hertha sings old Hebrew songs to the baby.

  Later she listens as the small child tastes words

  with consideration, then spits some, often scrambled,

  from her soft mouth. Hertha coaxes her to crawl.

  By the time Barbara masters balancing on tender feet,

  the neighborhood’s gas streetlamps

  have been replaced by brighter electric lights.

  Soon enough the little girl runs down pebbled paths

  in the park, feeds the birds.

  Hertha teaches her to climb trees.

  Gleeful on a branch, Barbara cries, Mumma, come!

  Hertha glances at stern governesses pushing carriages

  or eyeing boys dressed like impeccable sailors.

  Hertha joins her daughter, peering down through leaves.

  Seasons

  Crisp leaves fall. Soft snow drifts on branches,

  then buds curl open to more unfurling green.

  By the time electrical wires are run through the walls

  of Hertha’s home, her child is learning

  to read and do sums, though Barbara prefers gymnastics.

  These are happy years, but for Madame Bodichon’s funeral,

  where Hertha prays with full love and fractured faith.

  Barbara becomes more of a mystery as she grows up

  into an independent girl, precious as what’s invisible:

  electricity, gravity, whatever lies beyond darkness.

  Flickering

  The chatter of people gathered to watch

  moving pictures for the first time seems electric.

  Hertha, Will, and Barbara grow quiet as the lights dim.

  A curtain is pulled to reveal flickering images

  of a locomotive hurtling down a track.

  Some spectators scream, duck,

  then laugh as they remember

  that what they see can disappear, like shadows.

  Hertha swivels in her seat to look back at a box

  that holds a ribbon of film shot through with light.

  As it unwinds, pictures blink past heads to skim a white wall.

  The reel of film clicks as it’s grabbed at punctured edges,

  then, in split seconds, rolls on. Even over the piano music,

  Hertha hears the machine’s clatter and a hiss from the light.

  After everyone leaves the theater, Barbara fidgets

  with a necklace Ottilie gave her for her thirteenth birthday,

  says she wants to shop with Ottilie’s daughter.

  They dash past a few automobiles that chug and rattle

  among the horses and carriages.

  Hertha slips an arm through Will’s with affection,

  but also because he’s ill, his eyes and feet undependable.

  She says, I loved the moving pictures,

  but it’s a shame the light made such a racket.

  Arc lights are good for streetlights, lighthouses,

  and searchlights, but they’re too noisy

  and glaring to use indoors. Will looks from his boots

  to Hertha. We have a few at work you could study.

  Bright

  Hertha steps around buckets of water and sand

  at the laboratory, where wires are looped over hooks

  on walls. She takes apart an arc light to examine

  two rods made of carbon, a good conductor.

  Each rod has a different charge so heat and light

  shift between them, building into a spark that stretches

  into a blue-white light that arcs through warming air.

  Hertha ties on a cotton apron, slips on goggles.

  She smells the metals she grinds, tastes the dust.

  As she moves the tips of two carbon rods

  closer or farther apart, she watches how the flame’s

  width and height change the heat and sound.

  She writes equations to explore the ways voltage,

  current, and the length of the leaping electricity interact.

  Her experiments are long equations, too,

  though instead of numbers or symbols,

  variables can be heard, smelled, or touched.

  The technical college professors and students

  drop by to ask questions, discuss their own

  projects, make suggestions, or lend a hand.

  But Will stops coming around. He says, I’ll leave this

  in your good hands, B.G. When a man and woman work

  together, some fools claim the chap did the important parts.

  Sounds and Silence

  LONDON, ENGLAND, 1899

  Hertha discovers the arc light’s hiss comes from air

  filling a crater where carbon burned away.

  She softens the sound by changing the shape and size

  of the rods and the space between them.

  Ottilie and her family come to celebrate

  the vastly improved light Hertha designed. The evening

  is happy, though Barbara leaves before the cake is cut.

  Will looks exhausted: some nights he can’t sleep,

  while other evenings he struggles to stay awake.

  Hertha is invited to become the first woman

  to join the Institution of Electrical Engineers

  and to present a paper on electric arc lights.

  She’s the only woman in a hall of 359 men.

  Speakers greet the crowd, saying,

  My lords, gentlemen, and lady.

  Hertha’s reports on electricity, which she’s developing

  into a book, are also praised by the Royal Society,

  but a man is asked to read her paper to the members.

  Women can’t join this society or speak from the podium.

  Together

  Hertha publishes a thick book,

  bristling with equations, about the arc light

  before returning to the Royal Society hall.

  She sits among scientists and listens

  to a slight, bearded man. Monsieur Curie describes

  the hidden energy of radioactivity, explains

  how he and his wife worked to find what’s inside atoms.

  He repeats the word “we,” but most listeners see the person

  at the podium, not the woman banished to the audience.

  After the applause, gentlemen crowd around the speaker.

  Hertha introduces herself to Marie Curie, looking down

  at fingertips scarred by the element she discovered.

  They talk in French about radium and their daughters.

  A stranger joins them. He congratulates Marie,

  then glances at Hertha, says, I notice

  all successful women scientists work with a man.

  So do men scientists, Hertha says. Few people work alone.

  Pliers

  Hertha crawls out from under the sink when she hears

  Barbara come into the kitchen. I tightened a valve

  so the faucet won’t drip. Hertha holds up a tool.

  Isn’t it beautiful how pliers open and shut

  like hands, but can pinch and pull more?

  No. Other mothers host tea parties.

  They don’t work with dynamos or keep socks

  in a drawer to give to beggars. Mum, those men smell.
/>   Some folks are down on their luck. It can happen to anyone.

  Hertha puts back the pliers that can hold tight and bend.

  Ripples in the Sand

  Hertha makes chicken soup, sets a geranium

  near Will’s bed, cracks open a window for fresh air,

  as Florence Nightingale advised in her book on nursing.

  Hoping brisk, salty air may improve Will’s health,

  Hertha books a room at a quiet inn on the seashore.

  In the cozy room, she shakes a clean sheet over the bed.

  Energy ripples from her grip to the rising and falling waves

  of linen. The sheet snaps and billows down.

  While Will naps, she walks along damp, packed sand.

  The sea mirrors the gray sky. She shields her cold face

  with her hands against the strong wind

  that whisks foam off the tops of waves.

  She crouches to get a closer look

  at lines curving through sand.

  While waves vary in size, these ripple marks look even.

  How were they made? Questions hover

  like the crest of a wave before it crashes.

  She listens not for an answer, but a way there.

  Hidden

  Hertha hurries back to the inn. She tells a maid

  carrying in well water that she’ll skip a bath,

  but takes a bucket to pour into soap dishes

  and pudding basins she finds in the pantry.

  As water slips over her hands, she hears its splash.

  Her senses shape, too subtly to measure,

  her knowledge of invisible forces within.

  She continues experiments back home in London.

  She sets glass troughs of water on rollers,

  sprinkling in black pepper to track how the waves

  she creates move up and down more than ahead,

  spin fast near the center, then slow down.

  She measures their speed, height, and width

  and the distance between the ripples they leave.

  Repetition and boredom instruct.

  Her equations take account of the forces

  of wind and gravity. She pares

  numbers and symbols to only what’s needed:

  no one puts spare parts in a watch

  just because they gleam. What’s essential is as hidden

  as the spring that sets the dial of a watch in motion.

  She learns sand ripples aren’t made by waves

  pounding the shore, but take shape under water

  flowing back and forth. The force of the spin

  can make an irregular sand ridge, then more ridges

  form along the sides, as regular as rhyme.

  Tea and Cake

  Hertha’s discoveries about wave motion are praised,

  but she longs for a practical use, such as she found

  with arc lights. For those discoveries in electricity,

  Hertha is the first woman awarded

  a Hughes Medal from the Royal Society,

  which still won’t let women become members.

  Ottilie hosts a party, but Will is too sick to come.

  Soon Barbara escapes with Ottilie’s daughter,

  both fashionably dressed. After Hertha talks

  about their daughters’ plans for college and Will’s illness,

  she asks, Have you been writing any poems?

  Ottilie shakes her head. What I read

  is so much finer than what I write.

  But none of those poems are yours.

  Hertha pours cold milk into hot tea.

  The light and dark liquids spin

  around each other before swirling into one.

  Socks

  When Will’s illness worsens, Barbara comes home

  from college. After a few days, Hertha says, I appreciate

  your help, but don’t you need to get back to your classes?

  Mum, how can you spend time in the laboratory

  when Daddy is… Barbara pauses. Sick.

  Work gives me some peace.

  I’m not like that. Barbara looks straight across

  the parlor. You’ll be disappointed by my grades.

  Other things are more important.

  Barbara stands, opens a drawer, looks at the socks

  Hertha stashed to give to unshaven men who knock

  at the back door wearing torn jackets and worn boots.

  Barbara opens her mouth as if about to again advise

  against giving to strangers, but just silently shuts the drawer.

  Dusk

  Late one afternoon the house grows dark.

  The clock someone forgot to wind is silent.

  Hertha drapes black cloth over the mirrors.

  Weeks after Will’s funeral, Hertha finds it hard

  to get out of bed, brush her hair, buy groceries.

  Barbara comes over to fold her father’s clothes

  to give away. A few months later

  they pack more of Will’s things.

  Barbara says, Mum, you need to get back to work.

  My studies on waves and sand ripples are of no use

  to anyone. And I was sent some of your father’s things

  from the laboratory. Hertha points to a crate.

  That’s their way of saying that while a wife can work

  at the college, there’s no place for a widow.

  You always worked here, too, Barbara says.

  The lighting in the attic is poor. It’s cold in winter.

  Then let’s bring everything down to the parlor.

  You like to experiment more than host tea parties.

  In the attic, mother and daughter

  put coils, gears, carbon rods, magnets,

  troughs, and beakers in boxes to bring downstairs.

  Barbara picks up the bronze medal from the Royal Society.

  I’m proud of you. Has another woman won this yet?

  When Hertha shakes her head, Barbara says, That’s absurd.

  Mum, come to a rally with me. I want you to meet someone.

  Votes for Women

  LONDON, ENGLAND, 1910

  The streets are almost as crowded as they were earlier

  that year for Florence Nightingale’s funeral.

  Two women just a little older than Barbara

  stand on a platform

  decorated with purple, white, and green banners.

  A woman shouts through a megaphone, Deeds not words!

  Another speaks of starting work

  in a cotton mill when she was ten.

  Annie Kenny holds up a hand with a missing finger,

  says, Women care. Our votes will lessen the danger

  in mills and factories. We’ll vote

  to improve the bad pay and long hours.

  After the speeches, Barbara introduces Hertha

  to a poet she met at the university. Gerald Gould

  and Barbara talk about how they interrupt

  meetings in Parliament

  and their work on a census boycott.

  Barbara says, Until women count, we won’t be numbered.

  Hertha believes the census collects useful information.

  By refusing to share a few facts of their lives,

  women might be punishing science and themselves.

  As Barbara and Gerald cheer for women

  who wrestle out of the grip of policemen

  or duck under their swinging sticks,

  Hertha shouts, Deeds not words!

  Two Women Walk by the Sea

  HIGHCLIFFE, ENGLAND, 1912

  Marie Curie is also a widow when Hertha invites

  her and her daughters to a rented cottage by the coast.

  They ride bicycles, walk by the water, and swim.

  Hertha loves the turn of the waves, the force

  between coming and going. She picks up a stone

  stamped with coils, once a shellfish or snail. />
  Back in the cottage, Marie chops and melts chocolate

  she brought from Paris, whisks in sugar,

  slowly stirs in fresh cream. Sipping hot chocolate,

  Hertha coaches the two girls on their English.

  She makes up math problems that delight Irène.

  After the girls go to bed,

  Hertha talks about Barbara’s wedding to Gerald,

  and how they’ve been heckling members of Parliament,

  demanding votes and breaking shop windows.

  Barbara says women have been asking politely for the vote

  for decades and nobody listened. So it’s worth going to jail.

  When I left Poland as a young woman, the prisons

  were filled with good people fighting for freedom.

  I’m proud of her, Hertha says. So is her husband.

  A poet, but Gerald also writes for newspapers.

  Maybe he’ll run for Parliament and turn things around.

  I’ve been writing letters to newspapers and politicians.

  I have a petition to free the suffragists that I hoped you’d sign.

  Of course. Marie nods, scraping up a last taste of chocolate

  with a fingertip, its skin cracked. But I believe I help most

  by keeping up my research, showing what women can do.

  Through the open window,

  Hertha hears waves hurtle onto sand.

  Air

  1915

  As soldiers leave England to fight in the Great War,

  suffragists are let out of prisons. Women are now needed

  to work on farms, in factories, hospitals, and shops.

  Hertha meets chemists who make medicines and explosives,

  a Girton College graduate who taught high school math

  and now designs airplanes.

  Two of her former students run a military hospital.

  Women who live on the coast and wove fishing nets

  now weave metal nets to trap submarines.

  Some women do calculations for weapons.

  Others drive trucks.

  Hertha reads a report on the pale green gas

  wafting into trenches where soldiers hunker with rifles.

  The newspaper ripples as she turns back a page.

  Could the force of a wave’s hidden spin turn