Grasping Mysteries Read online

not just water but air, pushing out poisonous gas?

  Hertha rummages through a drawer crammed

  with clothespins, corks, stray lids, springs and gears

  from old watches. She takes out a leather glove—

  its mate lost—scraps of wire,

  and a pack of playing cards with some missing.

  She folds these to make models of air-flappers,

  cards hinged together

  with strips she cuts from the old glove,

  and waves them like small flags on short sticks.

  She sets brown paper on fire,

  funnels smoke into boxes wrapped in damp cloth

  so the smoke, like the poison gas, turns heavier than air.

  She tries out small variously shaped flappers and fans,

  shakes them so they gather smoke, then spin it back

  where it came from, pushing in a fresh stream of air

  over matchboxes she set up as trenches.

  A fan shaped like a snow shovel that’s wide

  where it scoops works best. It’s not impressive.

  It looks like a big flyswatter, but she makes some

  that will sweep out smoke without being

  too big or clumsy for soldiers to carry.

  Now she wants more made and brought to battlefields.

  History

  Hertha writes letters to politicians. She attends meetings,

  demands to see a general to show him her invention.

  If mustard gas can move into a trench full of soldiers,

  it can move out. This fan can quickly sweep out poison,

  and is collapsible so it can be easily carried.

  A fan? We’re fighting a war, not hosting a tea party.

  The military budget goes to weapons.

  The gas can ruin their lungs and minds.

  Men are dying.

  Some scientists are working on large machines

  with filters and motors to clear out the gas.

  Ma’am, your idea is too simple to work.

  By “scientists” she knows he means men

  who don’t work in a parlor

  equipped with soap dishes, battered pie plates, and kettles.

  She says, Simple fans can work as well and will be cheaper.

  The general waves a hand to dismiss her.

  But Hertha doesn’t leave. She thinks of the women

  building parts for ships and planes in factories:

  welding propellers, gluing fabric on airplane wings.

  Some women are code breakers, radio operators,

  electricians, and engineers

  who make ways to intercept messages.

  Marie and Irène Curie haul X-ray machines

  to the front lines.

  They tell doctors how to save lives by scanning for bullets

  or broken bones before aiming surgical knives.

  You must try my invention, Hertha insists.

  She keeps talking to this man and more. At last,

  one hundred thousand Ayrton fans are sent to battlefields.

  Waves

  The end of the war brings rejoicing,

  though some women working in factories and farms

  are distressed to lose their jobs.

  About eight million British women

  win the right to vote, granted as if in thanks

  for helping the country through a disaster.

  But women still have plenty of rights to fight for. Soon after

  Barbara and Gerald start a group supporting equality

  and world peace, Barbara gives birth to a son.

  Hertha kisses the baby’s toes, fingers, and nose,

  whispers, Michael Ayrton Gould, what is hidden in you?

  She listens to his heartbeat as she did with her own child,

  never guessing her daughter

  would run for a seat in Parliament.

  Barbara gives campaign speeches, saying, My mother

  is an excellent electrical engineer. She also taught me

  it’s important to give sandwiches and socks to the needy.

  But no one should have to knock on doors or beg.

  I want to change laws so that no one is cold or hungry.

  After Barbara loses the election, Hertha says,

  I don’t know much about politics, but I know

  it takes inventors many tries before they find success.

  I’m glad some other women won seats, Barbara says.

  Now men complain women’s hats get in their way.

  The new legislators must walk

  half a mile to a ladies’ room, but it’s a start.

  Two years later Hertha, who’s been working

  on a new kind of fan to help firefighters clear smoke

  and advising bridge builders about underwater forces,

  rents a house by the sea. She watches her grandson

  while Barbara runs again for a seat in Parliament.

  The shape of the shore has changed

  since Hertha was last here.

  She hikes up her skirt as the little boy runs

  across the rippled sand into the sea. A wave knocks

  him down. Michael shrieks and pushes himself back up.

  The tops of waves move faster than the bottoms.

  The unstable crest tumbles. Sand shifts underfoot.

  Gulls ride on the winds. Pebbles roll over one another,

  clatter and scrape back under waves.

  Beauty is what can’t be caught.

  Children fly kites to understand the wind,

  pick up rocks to tell the earth’s time.

  Hertha wades deeper, crouches, scoops up water,

  which turns invisible in her hands.

  MAPPING WHAT’S HIDDEN

  MARIE THARP

  (1920–2006)

  The Land

  BLACKFORD COUNTY, INDIANA, 1926

  As the green truck rattles over rutted roads,

  Marie Tharp sways and bumps beside her father.

  They hike through fields, where he digs up dirt

  he labels. One patch of soil may predict how tall

  a field of corn may grow. Papa also tests for signs

  of oil or water. Vast lakes lie under the hard ground,

  he says. Rock and water keep changing place.

  He puts down his shovel, then sets up a tripod.

  He measures angles between where they stand,

  the horizon, and a point overhead called the zenith.

  Much must be known to make a map,

  which he does for the US Department of Agriculture.

  Papa explains how math saves time.

  Instead of spending days hiking from one place

  to another, counting steps,

  he takes measurements and multiplies.

  I’m not the first to note cliffs or curves in rivers,

  Papa says as he picks up and pockets an arrowhead.

  People who lived here before anyone had paper

  found ways to make good maps.

  Marie tests which tree trunks best fit in her arms.

  They form circles like the middle of a globe,

  but instead of curving in at the top and bottom,

  the branches and roots spread out.

  Her rubber boots leave footprints in mud

  as she searches for abandoned bird nests,

  snake skins, fossils, and feathers.

  Earth is like a book the wise can read.

  Marie turns over a rock, sees a spider scuttle.

  Blue

  Back home, Mama shifts cloth

  under the sewing machine’s needle.

  Papa arranges layered, gritty, or smooth rocks

  that hint at what’s below. He draws maps

  at the kitchen table. Across from him,

  Marie spills colored pencils and sketches trees.

  Papa’s name won’t go in the corner

  where artists sign paintings.

  Instead, a small sca
le shows how to change

  the map’s inches to land’s miles.

  When he finishes a map, it’s time to move,

  which they do again and again. At ten, Marie packs

  a zippered case of pencils, a soft pink eraser,

  a worn wooden ruler, and a compass.

  She’s too old now for the connect-the-dot puzzles

  she once loved, her toy telescope that made the distance

  seem closer, but blurred it, too. The night before they leave,

  Mama spins a lock of her daughter’s red hair

  into a snail shape she pins in place.

  The curl never lasts long.

  Crowded among boxes on the back seat of the Model T,

  Marie bunches Papa’s blue flannel coat into a pillow,

  remembers leaving Michigan; New York; Washington, DC;

  and Alabama, where she stepped in the ocean.

  They never stayed anywhere long enough

  to make many friends, but she has all she needs.

  She leans on a carton of National Geographic magazines.

  Their spines shine like wet sunflower petals.

  Some bloom with maps. She unfolds one

  almost as wide as her arms can reach.

  Days

  BELLEFONTAINE, OHIO, 1935

  Marie is fifteen when her family settles on a farm.

  Papa’s pockets still sag with a tape measure,

  a jackknife, and a small worn notebook,

  but as he plants carrots, onions, and corn,

  he tosses rocks from the fields as if he’s forgotten

  each has a story about the age and history of Earth.

  Marie claims a wooden desk that was left behind.

  She drapes a tissue paper pattern over cloth,

  studies geometry as she turns straight lines to circles

  for a skirt. Her mother showed her how to line up

  stripes, match plaids so the seams are almost hidden.

  Now Mama spends much time in bed,

  medicine bottles circling the lamp,

  filling out requests for college catalogs

  from all over the country, printing Marie’s name.

  As if she can bear to think ahead.

  The Green Chair

  Marie lines up numbers on sand-colored sheets

  called math paper, almost as thin as tissues.

  Small numbers stand for big ideas, the way

  her father’s earth samples spoke of fields and forests.

  Math is as certain as stone, as efficient as language.

  One can say the word “sky” faster than one can see it all.

  She starts calculus, which can shadow

  changes in celestial bodies, electricity, or growing plants.

  Sometimes she murmurs over homework, I can’t do this.

  She never heard a boy say that, though enough

  are baffled. Maybe boys find it easier to keep on

  since they look more like the teacher, whose jokes

  seem meant to make them laugh, not blink or squirm.

  Marie fidgets on an armchair by an old china lamp

  that casts pale yellow light. She writes possible answers,

  groans, then backs up, hunting for the wrong turns.

  At last what seemed like a curtain turns out to be a mirror.

  She was here and capable all along.

  Seasons

  As the weather turns warmer, the chickens cluck

  more loudly, lay more eggs. Marie draws pear blossoms.

  Inside the house, the whir of the sewing machine

  and snap of scissors turn silent.

  Papa says the word “cancer” just once.

  The smell of hamburgers and onions Marie fried lingers,

  as she gathers homework in her arms.

  Before the apples turn red on the branches,

  Marie hears Papa cry behind a door.

  The earth makes room for her mother.

  Marie goes to the barn and shouts her name.

  The sound echoes in the hayloft.

  She stashes away her colored pencils and college catalogs.

  New wheat blows in the wind.

  She picks and snaps open beans, cooks for her father.

  In the chicken coop, she gathers eggs as warm as her hands.

  After petals dry and fall again from fruit trees,

  Papa says, Your mother wanted to settle

  on the farm, but you always liked to travel.

  The man who never went to college says,

  Nothing must stop you from learning.

  Unforgotten

  At the university in Ohio, Marie declares her major

  first as art, then switches to English, music, math,

  and finally geology, which her father taught her to love.

  She’s one of three women among seventy men.

  Geology reveals how land and sea

  shifted slowly and long ago.

  The earth’s crust might have broken under the forces

  of underground waves that made gaps in the land,

  tossed boulders that piled into mountains.

  Could hidden currents have moved continents?

  Most scientists say no. Such massive land couldn’t drift.

  As Marie picks up a fossil, she marvels at how a spider

  or snail may be forgotten, but millions

  of years later, traces and tracks remain in rocks.

  She splits open granite and quartz,

  but uses math more than hammers and picks.

  She studies volcanoes and earthquakes,

  which move in waves. The earth never stops changing.

  She loves its hidden stories, but she doesn’t believe

  she’ll find a job looking for those.

  Instead, practical people

  want underground fuel to run cars and warm homes.

  She’s hired by an oil company to keep accounts,

  figuring out answers fixed in place. She’s bored.

  At night, she takes advanced math classes to earn

  another degree and remember the pleasure of working

  on proofs, which show that what’s true once is true always.

  Shore

  NEW YORK, NEW YORK, 1948

  Marie unfolds a map, heads east toward blue borders.

  Sunlight spills into the sea, which shuffles and spins

  its energy along in waves that slow and bend on shore.

  Some children pick up rocks or seashells.

  A girl grips the string of a kite.

  Marie feels the sand and pebbles underfoot being tugged

  back to the sea. She slips off her shoes, wades in,

  surprised by the slant down. How steep is the slope?

  Maps of the world no longer feature pictures of mermaids,

  sea dragons, castles, or cottages for elves,

  but much stays mysterious. Marie supposes the seafloor

  isn’t as flat as its surface, but does anyone know?

  She wipes salt spray off her glasses, hooks a strand

  of her hair behind her ears, remembers her father

  swinging a shovel, wanting to know what was underneath.

  Shine

  Marie finds the Columbia University geology department

  in a basement crowded with broken or battered furniture.

  Metal tables are covered

  with split rocks, microscopes, and ashtrays.

  Dr. Maurice Ewing nods when Marie speaks

  of her classes in geology and math. Her gaze shifts

  from him to a table covered with photographs

  of coral, starfish, crabs, moss, snails, squid, and ripples

  left by currents. Trails and prints from sea creatures

  look blurred as if seen through her old toy telescope.

  And amazing. You have pictures from under the sea!

  Some of the other fellows and I designed the camera,

  Dr. Ewing say
s. We drop it down from the deck,

  setting a flash for light where it never shone before.

  How deep was this?

  Some of the sea is two or three miles deep.

  After she asks more questions, he puts down the papers

  about her background. You know a lot,

  but I’m more interested in your curiosity.

  Everyone calls me Doc. When can you start work?

  One

  People drift between desks. No one tells Marie

  where she should sit or what she should do,

  but men ask, Could you type this up, Miss Tharp?

  When she reminds them she’s not a secretary,

  some say, Just do me this one favor. We work as a team here.

  She catches her breath, annoyed that the team

  seems to have just one typist. But she says yes

  when Bruce Heezen, who’s taken research trips

  on navy ships with Doc and cowritten many papers,

  asks her to make graphs comparing the temperature

  and saltiness of water, check the calculations

  for underwater gravity and wave speeds.

  Her math briefly shrinks the world, and then,

  after pages of work, widens the view.

  Marie designs charts for the men’s presentations.

  She improves maps by dropping one over another

  on a table with a glass top. A light shining beneath

  lets her see through the layers

  and put the information together.

  She likes the work but wants to follow a theory,

  any not-so-wild guess, from beginning to end.

  She straightens her glasses, pushes her hair behind her ears,

  presumes she’s treated differently because she’s a woman.

  She tells Doc, I want a project of my own.

  He nods. A house was just donated to the university for us

  to use as a research center. How are you at packing?

  Waves

  Steel file cabinets, boxes of papers, and equipment

  soon fill a big house across the Hudson River.

  Marie gets her own drafting table in an old bedroom

  that she shares with two men.

  The only phone is hung by that door.

  In the former living room, she tacks up maps,

  tenderly smoothing out wrinkles.

  What’s all that blue? A place not yet known.