Night Flying

Book by Murphy Rita

The Hansen women have always flown at night, even in bad weather. Aunt Eva actually prefers storms. She says she makes better time that way. Though often she ends up on the east end of town and has to walk back along the railroad bed if the wind isn't blowing in her favor.

Flying is something we do at night when everyone is asleep. Twice around the meadow or once over the ridge to clear our heads before settling in for the evening.

My aunt Suki stayed out all night once when she was sixteen. She went to the county line at Madison. She wanted to see how far she could go.

"That's the danger with young fliers," Mama says. "They don't know when to turn back." Suki was in bed for two days after with a fever and cramps.

It's not an easy thing to do. Flying. Not like you'd think. There are wind currents and air pockets, and birds. Don't ever underestimate birds. It can be difficult to see a swallow coming in at dusk. And even though owls have excellent night vision, there have been collisions, and they aren't pretty.

"It's best to stay close to home when you're starting," Mama says. "It's best not to take too many chances."

The first woman in our family to fly was Louisa Hansen, my great-great-great-grandmother. She came to America from Albania more than one hundred years ago. A dark, wiry woman full of Gypsy blood. They say it was her broken heart that propelled her to flight, her grief that sent her soaring out over the sea.

Louisa lost her husband and little boy in a shipwreck off the coast of Newfoundland in 1884. She survived along with seven others, rescued by a fishing schooner. She eventually married one of the fishermen aboard, Jonathan Hansen, and went to live with him in his house by the ocean. They say she started flying in her sleep out over the cliffs, searching for her lost loved ones, returning in the early hours of the morning drenched in sea spray.

Since that time, every Hansen woman has flown. Aunt Eva says it's like a family full of acrobats or mountain climbers. Once one generation believes they can fly, it makes it possible for the next to believe too. The only thing that's unique about our family is that we haven't forgotten. We still believe.

As far as I know, we are the only family of fliers in Hawthorne. There are perhaps hundreds, thousands of women in the world who fly, but it's hard to know who they are. You can never tell just by looking at someone. Most fliers lead rather ordinary lives.

Aunt Eva believes any woman can fly regardless of body shape or weight. It is only those who believe they can, who feel it with no doubt, who succeed. You can never let doubt creep in. Not even into the smallest corner of your mind, or you'll fall right out of the sky.

Like all the women in my family, I have been flying since the day I was born. My aunt Eva was the one chosen to take me up the first time. She is my godmother and the strongest flier. She has the arms of a swimmer. Arms that never give up. She's been known to fly for five or six hours without landing.

I know why Mama chose Eva to take me. She wanted me to feel Eva's confidence. When I was strapped to my aunt's chest, the feeling of flight went deep into my bones, and it has never gone away.

Three generations of Hansen women live in our house. We're out on the county road as far as you can go. It's a rambling old Victorian that belonged to my great-grandmother Isadora Cooney Hansen. She painted the entire house blue in 1928. Inside and out. It was her favorite color. The kitchen is teal blue and the third floor is sky meadow blue and the outside is periwinkle with navy trim. Over the years, my aunts have painted their own rooms rose and cream, and the pantry is no longer sea green but a mellow yellow. Everything else is still blue, though, including the insides of all the closets.

There are eight fireplaces and six bathrooms, four with claw-foot tubs so deep you can lose yourself in them, and one long, winding staircase reaching to the third floor. A ladder leads from the third-floor landing to the widow's walk on top of the house. I am the only person who goes up there anymore. Mama and my aunts used to smoke in the walk when they were my age, and there are still a few mementos left of their time there. A stack of old fashion magazines filled with pictures of skinny women in bell-bottom jeans and shag haircuts, a case of empty Coca-Cola bottles, a couple of ashtrays shaped like fish.

I go to the walk in the early morning when everyone is asleep except Mama, who gets up before dawn to cook or hang out laundry. My aunts stay up late flying, so they tend to sleep in. Often they don't come down for breakfast until noon. Grandmother never rises before ten.

I have two aunts who live with me. Suki and Eva. Suki is the youngest. She has fair skin, blond hair, and blue eyes with horn-rimmed glasses. Suki plays the clarinet and piano and most any other instrument she can get her hands on. A consistent flier with superior navigational abilities, Suki can find true north without a compass in the fog.

Eva is two years older than Suki. She is a painter and wears bright silk scarves, which hang haphazardly from her tall frame. Her curly auburn hair is cut close to her head and always looks messy, as if she just woke up. She wears silver earrings that stretch halfway down her neck. Eva can talk about anything to anyone. She is my prime source of information about family history.

My mother, Maeve, is five years older than Eva. Petite and pretty in a delicate way. She never soloed and hasn't flown since the day I was born. Even though Eva says Mama was the best flier in the family once, Grandmother will no longer allow it. In our family, Grandmother makes all the rules. She can't have anyone around who is better at something or more powerful than she is. Motherhood empowers a flier, and Grandmother could never live in the same house with a daughter who was both a mother and a talented flier.

Grandmother is not someone you want to cross. Even though she had many lovers when she was young, you'd never know it now. Her face is taut and severe and she is built exactly like a house. She wears practical shoes with thick waffle soles and prefers the color gray to all others. There is something about Grandmother that reminds me of a piece of granite. Cold, dusty, dry. The kind of surface you wouldn't want to land on hard or come up against if it was moving fast in your direction.