Daughters of the Night Sky

It didn’t soften the unforgiving floor but made me far more tolerant of it.

We were called to assembly to begin our training just after dawn the morning after we arrived. The icy hangar where we gathered did little more than shield us from the bitterly cold wind.

When we returned, we found our scant belongings waiting on the feet of our new bunks, our uniforms folded in piles so neat they appeared to have been placed on the thin mattresses by machine. I discarded my flight-school uniform and took the drab-green jacket and trousers from the pile, lamenting that I could never replicate the precise folds.

The jacket fit well enough, though somewhat tight across the bust and hips, but loose at the waist. The trousers were a disaster; they were so large at the waist that I had to cinch my belt to the smallest notch to keep them from falling in a green woolen puddle around my ankles. Only the thinnest women with few curves were able to wear the uniforms properly. Oksana’s and Polina’s uniforms fit passably well, but neither fit as well as Major Orlova’s, who clearly had a uniform that was made to her size.

“Who tailored these things?” I wondered aloud, looking down at my figure in disgust.

“Men,” Taisiya said without humor. Her uniform was as ill fitting as mine, and she looked just as happy about it. She held up a pair of standard-issue underpants with the telltale flap in front. “Tailored by men, and for men to do a man’s job.”

“They know how to make us feel wanted, don’t they?” My underpants were just the same, and my boots a size 42—so large they rattled loose on my feet like those on a boy sporting his father’s shoes.

“Let’s go see the quartermaster,” Taisiya suggested, tossing her uniform aside and changing back into her cadet garb.

“Do you want to come with us, Oksana?” I asked, thinking as I donned proper-fitting clothes that to include her would be a kind gesture.

“To what end?” she asked, cinching her belt tighter around her waist.

“New uniforms?”

“Good luck with that,” Oksana said, bitterness dripping from her every syllable.

Taisiya and I rolled our eyes in unison as we turned away and started off. Oksana’s skills had to be enviable if she’d advanced this far with such a foul attitude.

The quartermaster sat in a massive room next to the hangars, where endless racks housed everything from helmets and ammunition to canned food and boots. When we knocked at the door, he did not bother looking up from the smudgy-gray pages of his ledger.

“What is it?” he croaked, taking a drag off a stubby cigarette.

“Our uniforms,” Taisiya said, her voice lowering an octave as she spoke to the wizened old man. “It seems you sent men’s uniforms to the women’s regiment.”

“What did you expect?” He finally looked up from his tattered volume. “The army doesn’t make women’s uniforms.”

“What are we to do about it?” I asked, my tone sharper than I intended. “They don’t fit properly, and we’ve got to stand for inspection this evening. The boots are all enormous.”

With a dramatic sigh, he pushed back his chair and rose, hobbling over to a large cabinet with a stiff gait that betrayed the fact that he probably hadn’t risen to his feet in hours. He returned to his desk with four spools of green thread, the same dismal shade of green as our uniforms, and two packets of needles.

“If you want uniforms that fit, I suggest you ladies call upon your proper skills and get to work.”

I bit back an insult and could tell Taisiya was swallowing her words as well. I wanted to hurl the spools back at his shriveled face and tell him to do the sewing himself and let us pilots do our jobs, but quartermasters were always senior officers. Anything remotely that insulting would have seen me on the next train back to the Urals and stripped of my wings.

As we returned to the barracks, armed with our thread and needles, I silently thanked my mother for the late-night sewing lessons she forced on me. By the time we started our lessons, after the dinner plates were cleared away, she was so tired she would fall asleep when I was midseam, and I would have to wake her to get her instructions on how to continue. I loathed disturbing her, but now I was glad she insisted.

Back in the barracks Taisiya flung herself on her bunk and held up the underpants once again. “Well, at least we have a place to keep our lipstick,” she said, sticking her fingers through the flap.

I laughed despite the absurd task before me and smiled appreciatively at Taisiya.

“They didn’t completely forget that we’re women,” Renata lamented, strapping herself in the shining, white, army-issue brassiere. It held her breasts in like a girdle, making her wince uncomfortably as she hooked it closed. “Damned torture device.”

“A joy,” I agreed. I’d been wearing a similar brassiere since I started at the academy. Anything to make my femininity less apparent.