Akiko began to choke on her egg cream. Mae and I turned our heads to see who was speaking.
It was Mrs. B! She looked sharp in a red linen jacket and a red pillbox hat with a net veil draped over the top part of her face. Her expression was deadly serious, but her eyes held a certain twinkle that gave me the impression she was teasing us.
“May I join you?” she asked after a few moments of our stunned silence. “We have a great deal to discuss.”
Since Akiko and I were seated together on one side of the table, Mae quickly slid closer to the window and made room. Mrs. B draped her jacket over an empty chair at the table beside us, then pushed the netting up on her hat. With an awkward limp from her bad leg, she slid into the booth. And after glancing at the newspaper headlines for a moment or two, she stacked the papers in a tidy pile and folded her hands on top of them.
“Where to begin?” she said, looking hard into first Mae’s face, then Akiko’s, and then into mine. “A lot has happened to you in a short time. I commend your work last night protecting Project PX and overpowering the spy ring. As you can imagine, we feel there’s no turning back now.”
My fork dropped with a noisy clatter. I pushed my plate away and wrapped my hands around the base of my milkshake, trying to settle my nerves.
“I guess you could, of course, choose not to join our league of secret heroes,” she continued, ignoring my clumsiness. “But from what I have seen of the three of you together, and from what I observed before you stepped through our door a few days ago, each of you feels a very personal calling to fight injustice.
“I am grateful that you answered that call so passionately. Your efforts to stop the notorious international villain Hank Hissler, also known by his more infamous title, the Hisser, were superb. We at Room Twelve thank you.”
My jaw hung open in surprise, and I felt a swift kick under the table from Mae, who gestured for me to close it. She gave a little ahem and sat up straighter in her seat, while Akiko pushed ahead with questions.
“What happened to all the bad guys he was working with?” she asked. “Have they been found? And will they go to prison? Because they’re not anybody I’d like to run into again, even if I’m wearing a cape, a mask, and boots.”
Mrs. B gave an encouraging nod. “First, Hank Hissler has already arrived at a high-security prison, where he will spend the rest of his life locked away in a cold, dark cell. They know how to keep reptiles in line. So you may rest assured that you will not encounter him or any of his dastardly henchmen—the Duke and the other spies—ever again.”
Akiko let out a sigh of relief, and Mae wiped her brow. It was comforting to know the Hisser was no more.
“And what about Emmett and the puzzlers?” I asked. “What about all the people the Hisser grabbed to do the Nazis’ dirty work?”
Mrs. B sat perfectly still. It was as if a cloud passed behind her eyes. Sadness had a way of doing that to people. I saw it with Mam’s eyes now, especially when things reminded her of my dad—when we saw families out together or little kids riding on their fathers’ shoulders. I could tell Mrs. B was missing someone.
“The puzzlers whom you girls know about—the children such as your friend Emmett Shea and the other kidnapped boys,” she began. “They have been interviewed by Room Twelve and returned to their homes, safe and sound. The remarkable women known as the ENIAC Six as well.”
And now she sighed, pausing just long enough for Gerda to fill her coffee cup and say a few pleasantries. Once Gerda was out of earshot, she went on.
“There have been others taken by villains. Many others,” Mrs. B said. Her eyes were pained as she looked at the three of us. “And this is where you come in.”
“What does all this have to do with us?” asked Akiko. “Why do you want some goofy kids like us on your side?”
“Not goofy,” corrected Mae. “More like well-meaning.”
“You’re plenty goofy,” argued Akiko, “the way you’re always talking to animals like they’re human beings and going on about those books you’ve read at your granny’s library.”
“That’s called being compassionate. And smart,” Mae argued back, her voice quiet but sharp. “It’s not goofy.”
I kicked them both under the table.
“As you’ve seen with Josie’s cousin Kay McNulty and the rest of the ENIAC Six,” Mrs. B explained, “not all superheroes wear capes. And their superpowers might not be so easy to detect at first. But what they do is nonetheless extraordinary.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of Kay, Jean, Marlyn, Ruth, Betty, and Fran. Their math minds were their superpowers. The realization left me a little stunned:
Superheroes exist all around us, every day. Only, their costuming might not look so obvious.
“Hauntima,” I began, still puzzling over how she fit in. “How did she know to help us?”
“And why was it only her ghost,” added Mae, “and not the real superhero?”
Mrs. B lowered her hands to her lap, and her expression was serious—almost dark. Akiko, Mae, and I shot looks back and forth in the heavy silence.
“This is the task at hand,” she said, her quick eyes meeting ours again. I sat up straighter, on the edge of my seat now. “Let me make it clear that Room Twelve believes you possess great promise in our fight for good. So if you feel up to the challenge, I’d like to ask you to join us on our next mission.”
“Of course!” shouted Akiko, drawing a few stares from the other tables. Then whispering, “Are you kidding?”
“She means yes,” Mae offered politely. “We’d be honored, ma’am.”
“Where and when? We need details, what’s expected of us,” I began, making a list in my head of what we would have to do to get prepared. “Should we come with you now? Tell our families we’ll be gone? Do we pack a suitcase?”
Mrs. B patted my hand, radiating a sense of calm.
“When the world needs a hero, that’s what we become. It’s as easy as that, no?” she said, getting to her feet with a little wince. Her leg must have been bothering her. “It’s not until we’re tested that we realize what powers we possess.”
Mrs. B stood at the edge of our table and unfolded the newspapers, lining up the front pages next to each other. “In the meantime, enjoy the news accounts of the Orange Inferno, the Violet Vortex, and the Emerald Shield. It’s been many years since Zenobia and the Palomino watched over the innocent. With your Infinity Trinity, the newspapers appear to be thrilled to once again have heroes to write about.”
All three of us piped up with more questions, but Mrs. B just collected her things.
“Room Twelve has uncovered plots—in San Francisco, Chicago, Texas, even France—that might require extra attention,” she said, slipping the netting lower on her hat so it concealed her eyes. “I will be in touch again, most likely quite soon.”
With a slight bow she turned and walked away.
I stared after her, watching as she draped the red linen jacket over her shoulders. The way it hung to the floor as she passed Gerda and Bill at the counter—nearly touching the ankles of her trim black boots—reminded me of a cape. And that hat with the stylish flourish, the veil down so it covered her eyes. It was almost like a mask.
Mask?
My eyes darted to her feet again. Boots?
And that jacket! Cape?
And suddenly it hit me. I turned back toward the table and clutched my glass. So much of what had happened over the past few days had tumbled by in a blur. But now time slowed down. I could almost hear the thoughts in my mind finally clicking together like puzzle pieces.
“Hold on,” I said, practically climbing over the booth seat as I pointed out the window. Mrs. B was there on the sidewalk, untying Astra’s leash from a light pole. Mae and Akiko watched her too. “How did Mrs. B know to warn us about the Hisser’s gaze? She said it could mesmerize. That he’d strike the moment those horrible yellow eyes flashed to red. And she was right!”
Akiko�
�s breathing became louder.
“Think about it,” she said, trying to whisper. “The only way you’d know something like that—”
“—is if you battled the Hisser yourself,” said Mae, interrupting Akiko for the first time.
“And she’s got that limp,” I added. “Can you think of a superhero who had a devastating injury . . . ?”
“The Palomino did!” croaked Akiko. “It nearly killed her.”
“And the Palomino had a sidekick!” said Mae, gazing out the window again at the retreating figures of Mrs. B and Astra. “A brilliant dog named Star.”
My skin began to tingle from the crown of my head all the way to my feet. Mae’s jaw dropped open so wide, she could have caught a pigeon. And Akiko began a coughing fit that prompted us to pass her our water glasses.
“Hauntima’s ghost!” she sputtered in her gravelly whisper. “Is it really possible that Mrs. B could be the Palomino? And Astra could be Star?”
We turned from the window and scooted together in the booth, leaning in close to unravel the past days’ mysteries. I stared at my blueberry pie, my head dizzy. Mrs. B’s words echoed in my mind.
There have been others taken by villains. Many others.
And this is where you come in.
“That’s it,” I whispered, finally connecting the dots. The superheroes hadn’t quit. They’d been kidnapped! I imagined Mrs. B’s bright eyes and that cloud of sadness that sometimes passed behind them. “She’s definitely the Palomino. Which means her sister is—”
“Zenobia!” interrupted Akiko.
“Zenobia, the greatest superhero of all time,” agreed Mae, her voice reverent.
“Zenobia,” I said, grabbing each of their hands. “And it’s up to us to save her.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
STORIES ARE OFTEN WRITTEN TO answer a question. In the case of Cape, I was asking a simple one: Who came before Wonder Woman? She arrived in December 1941. Was she the first superheroine? I wondered whether there had been others.
There had. Fantomah, who made her debut in Jungle Comics No. 2 in February 1940, nearly two years before Wonder Woman, is considered the first female comic book superhero. My character Hauntima is meant to honor Fantomah’s strange, skull-faced powers.
And as I researched about other early superheroines, I was equally thrilled to read the accounts of real-life women heroes of the war: the original computer programmers, brilliant code crackers, daring airplane pilots, and even danger-loving spies, all of whom were doing groundbreaking, breathtaking things too.
In weaving these stories together, I wanted to spark the idea that superheroes are all around us—they just might not be wearing capes.
The Golden Age of Comic Books spanned the World War II years. And as women joined the workforce in record numbers—six and a half million filling jobs in factories and even the military—they became a bigger presence in comic books too. At its peak, Wonder Woman’s comic book sold a staggering two and a half million copies each month, according to Trina Robbins in The Great Women Superheroes. With Cape, I tried to merge the spirit of powerful female comic book figures with the real-life women of the same era who stepped forward to do their part to fight evil and injustice in the world.
What follows is an explanation of some of the facts and historical figures who inspired the fiction in Cape. I hope you’ll take a moment to explore more about these remarkable women and men and their bold, adventurous, even super feats. Visit my website, KateHannigan.com, for a curriculum guide and source material, and the history of Fantomah and other early comic book heroines who inspired the ones in my book.
The ENIAC Six
Who were the ENIAC Six? As Jean Jennings Bartik wrote in her autobiography, Pioneer Programmer: Jean Jennings Bartik and the Computer that Changed the World, they were “six women who had the guts to pursue their dreams and in doing so made a small, but important mark in the pages of history.”
The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, or ENIAC, marked the start of the modern computer age. When I first heard about the ENIAC, I was intrigued, both as a milestone for human development but also on a more personal level: because my grandfather Bill Nolan was one of many workers who helped construct it by moonlighting for the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. The ENIAC was so top secret, he didn’t talk to his family about the work, and he didn’t even know what function the machine would have—only that it was meant to help in the war effort.
As I read more about the key players involved with the ENIAC, I became fascinated by the ENIAC Six and one woman in particular: Kathleen “Kay” McNulty. Like my grandparents on my father’s side, Kay was born in County Donegal, Ireland, into a household of Irish or “Gaelic” speakers—meaning they did not speak English at home. Kay’s father immigrated to Philadelphia in 1923, the year my grandparents left County Donegal and did the same.
I found it intriguing that Kay, an immigrant who spoke no English when she arrived, went on to contribute so tremendously to one of America’s greatest accomplishments: the first electronic computer, the one to which all other computers today can trace their DNA. Kay’s story of hard work and success echoes those of millions of other immigrants.
Kay McNulty around 1941, just before America joined the fighting in World War II.
Photo provided by her family.
“We spoke only Gaelic in our house in Ireland and the United States,” Kay said in “The Kathleen McNulty Mauchly Antonelli Story,” published by her family in 2004. However, when her older brothers started going to school, she eagerly listened in on their studies. After attending schools in Philadelphia and earning good grades, Kay enrolled in Chestnut Hill College and took all sorts of math classes. “I loved it and found it fun and easy to do,” she said. “I didn’t want to teach. I just wanted to do the math puzzles.”
Kay graduated in 1942 with a degree in mathematics. America’s involvement with the war had begun just a few months earlier, pulling men out of the workforce and into battle in Europe and the Pacific. This opened up a world of employment possibilities for women like Kay. About two weeks after graduating, Kay saw an ad in a Philadelphia paper looking for female math majors. The job they were asked to do? Serve as “computers.”
Kay wasn’t the only woman to answer the advertisement—hundreds of women did. But six special mathematicians—Kay and her friend from math class Fran Bilas, along with Jean Jennings, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Snyder, and Marlyn Wescoff—were asked to use their remarkable math skills in service to a top secret, massive new calculator called the ENIAC.
“We knew this calculator was being built at the Moore School,” wrote Kay about her work on what came to be known as Project PX, “but nobody talked to us about it, and we really had no idea what it looked like. I never went into the PX room because it was classified ‘confidential,’ with signs saying that no one without clearance was allowed in the room.”
The result of Project PX was the ENIAC, which is considered the world’s first electronic, digital, general-purpose computer. It was created by physics professor John W. Mauchly (whom Kay later married) and electrical engineer J. Presper Eckert to speed up the time it took to solve complicated math problems. It could work a thousand times faster than human computers. Through cables, switches, and vacuum tubes set in specific sequences, the ENIAC could calculate a bullet’s trajectory faster than it took the bullet to travel. But the trick was arranging it all just right.
With no instructions or manual to guide them, the ENIAC Six had to figure out on their own how to get the machine to do what they wanted. And so with every pattern they set up, they wrote down the precise steps, then unplugged the cables and moved them to another spot. Soon they were doing something that had never been done before: programming!
On February 15, 1946, when the ENIAC was unveiled to the world, newspapers trumpeted it as a “huge mechanical Einstein,” with headlines reading DOES 100 YEARS’ WORK IN TWO HOURS AND OPENS WAY TO
BETTER LIFE. To many, this date is considered the start of the modern Information Age we live in today.
That evening, the men involved in the ENIAC project went out to a celebratory dinner. However, the women of the ENIAC were not invited. Their roles as the machine’s programmers were immediately forgotten. Some photographs of the unveiling edited the women out of the pictures; others ignored their intellectual contributions and identified them simply as “models.”
“It felt as if history had been made that day,” Jean wrote, “and then it had run over us and left us flat in its tracks.”
Jean Jennings in 1946, after the ENIAC was introduced to the world.
Photo provided by her family.
World War II had opened the door for women to enter exciting fields of work. But society’s stubborn lack of imagination meant many women’s accomplishments were overlooked: People just could not believe or accept what women could achieve.
It took more than fifty years for Kay, Jean, Fran, Marlyn, Betty, and Ruth to receive the honors they were due. In 1997, all six of them were inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame for the part they played in programming the ENIAC. And since then, more has been done to recognize their roles. Even Grace Hopper, another barrier-breaking computer scientist, once said she considered Betty Snyder to be the best computer programmer she’d ever known.
Jean Jennings (left) and Fran Bilas adjust settings on the ENIAC, whose panels stood eight feet high and length stretched ninety-eight feet. The size of an apartment, ENIAC was the world’s first electronic, digital computer and the ENIAC Six the first programmers.
Photo courtesy of the United States Army, via Wikimedia Commons.
“If my life has proven anything, it is that women should never be afraid to take risks and try new things,” Jean wrote in her autobiography. “Women should pursue their dreams no matter where those dreams may lead them and push into frontiers where women aren’t necessarily welcome to shape their own destinies.”
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