Like You'd Understand, Anyway

“The slightest push sends you in the opposite direction,” he reported, adding that he'd now been unstrapped for nearly ninety minutes.

“Do you have nausea?” he asked.

“Do I have nausea?” I said.

“Where are you?” I said.

There was a series of clicks in my ear. “I'm performing one of my procedures,” he said.

When I was a small girl, one of my evening chores was retrieving the goat that strayed to browse the garden between two tumbledown houses that frightened me. Each night, my father would say, “Oh, I'll go with you.” And then, when I waited: “Go! I'm not going.” And every single time, I'd say to myself as I went, Stupid: you took the bait. But next time you'll be smarter.

“I'm doing my stretching exercises,” Bykovsky informed me, and then his responsibilities absorbed his attention for the rest of the time we were in shadow, and I made no further attempt to distract him.

Our code phrases for communicating our condition, given that the Americans were listening, were as follows: a report of “feeling excellent” signified all was well; “feeling good” conveyed there was some concern; and “feeling satisfactory” meant that the mission might need to be terminated.

“How are you, Seagull?” Korolyov said once radio contact was reestablished. The sun broke around the bottom of the world like the arc from a welder's torch.

“I'm feeling satisfactory,” I reported.

“You're what?” he said. “Say again, Seagull?”

But I chose not to answer. There were frantic attempts to reestablish contact.

“Hawk, Hawk, please contact Seagull,” Korolyov urged, spinning toward me so far below.

“Seagull, this is Hawk,” Bykovsky said after a moment. “Is everything excellent?”

“How are your experiments?” I answered. My gloves seemed steady on the switches before me.

“I think something may be wrong with her receiver, or she may have selected the wrong channel,” he told Korolyov.

He also reported periodically that he was continuing to pay close attention to his physical regimen. In that same period of time I failed to activate my biological experiments, failed to participate in my medical experiments, and failed to keep an official log, writing for myself instead. Solovyova tried to raise me, and when she did I reached for my radio but then eased my hand back. My helmet chafed my shoulders. I wished I had toothpaste. I was supposed to photograph the solar corona but the film cassette stuck in the camera and I cracked the inner window with the lens attempting to remove the cartridge.

“Seagull, are you there?” Korolyov pleaded.

“I think she's asleep,” Bykovsky finally told him.

18 June 1963 Night

The second-day crisis was that I failed to perform a major goal of the mission: manual control of the spacecraft. Korolyov was frightened that I would be lost should the automatic reentry system fail. Nikolayev and then Gagarin himself were brought in to instruct me from the ground. Gagarin was a gentleman about it. There are two guidance systems for establishing orientation for retrofire: one uses an automatic solar bearing, and the other is manual and visual. My task was to hold the Yzor orientation viewport level with the Earth's horizon for fifteen minutes, but it refused to stop bouncing and slipped out of my crosshairs. “There it goes again,” I'd say with equanimity, while below they tried to keep the exasperation out of their responses. My eyes filled with tears and just like that the tears went away.

I had meat mixed with sorrel or oats, and prunes and processed cheese for dinner. The bread was too dry.

19 June 1963 Night

A few minutes ago I passed the lights of Rio within the blackness of Brazil. This morning I was successfully talked through the manual control by Nikolayev. I remember him as a smug and unpleasant person with jowls and the darkest razor stubble I've ever seen. Everyone is much relieved below. They're bringing me back early.

I've often considered what kind of first impression I make. I assume that I initially evoke a measure of intrigue before people get to understand me and become repulsed.

In my most recent exchanges with Bykovsky, I feel as though I've been able to detect with great precision brutality and remorse tinged with diffidence and pity. Some I haven't had the heart to report, even here. None of this should surprise me. Only my loneliness now generates fear. Otherwise I'm an uninteresting and aching surface.

During that first party for the cosmonaut finalists, I found Bykovsky and Ponomaryova holding hands as they touched an exposed wire in her portable radio set. “Come on, you try it,” they said.

1 August 1964