WE ADDED TO the nicknames for this place Lost Almost and Margaret called Los Alamos Alas instead. Some of us thought we saved half a million lives. Some of us thought we, or our husbands, were murderers, that we had helped light a fuse that would destroy the world.
Lifted
A KNIFE SALESMAN appeared at our door and we thought, How did you get past the guard? A man selling silk stockings got a temporary pass. We were free to subscribe to the New York Times and have it delivered directly to our lawns each morning.
THE OFFICE OF Price Administration terminated Los Alamos’s set pricing. Fruits and vegetables were still limp, milk was still nearly sour when we got it, except now everything was nearly double the price.
A LETTER WAS sent out to us, addressed, To all the women of Los Alamos, and it requested we attend a meeting to help spread the facts about atomic bombs and dispel rumors. The meeting was led by Joan Hinton, the female scientist many of us disapproved of. We heard she had become increasingly critical of the bomb. In the gymnasium she held up what looked like a thin piece of flat glass and said, Do you know what this is? And we called out, Glass! And she said, No, it is not glass. This is what an atom bomb does to the ground. She said, We need to do something about this, and she said, We must send this glass to the mayors of every single major city in the United States, and she said, This could be all that is left of your hometown. And we nodded as expected even if we did not like Joan and we politely declined to participate in anything she wanted. Or we volunteered and wrote letters to several mayors and asked them, Do you want this to happen to your city?
ON THE New York Times Sunday front page was an image of the city grid overlaid with an illustration of what might happen if a bomb were dropped in the middle of Manhattan: the rubble of music halls, hotels, art museums, galleries, all of that cultural history. Like Hiroshima, perhaps all that would be left of Manhattan Island would be one sturdy bank made from marble and reinforced for earthquakes. It would be as flat as Kansas, an urban prairie with views of the water. We had thought the Gadget would bring relief, but as soon as the bomb was used there was a new fear: if we could detonate it, so, too, could any enemy.
ONE NIGHT WE found our husbands, or someone else’s husband, sitting in the middle of the children’s sandbox, still wearing work boots, and holding a rifle. Bill? we asked him from where we stood on the other side of the yard, but he disregarded our call or did not hear us. The sun was low behind the mountains and his back was to us—a blue-checkered shirt, we remember. Bill, we called again. He pointed the rifle to the sky. He pulled the trigger. The sound echoed, scattered a few starlings from the trees, and we shrieked. When we regained our wits we queried, What on earth were you doing? To which he replied, I just needed to do something, and got up from the sandbox. We turned and went back into the house.
MIGRAINE MEDICINE WAS still out of stock. A husband was injured at the Tech Area. His arms blistered, it spread up his body, the tissue died, and twenty-four days later he was dead. We asked, How did this happen? but we were not told.
ONE MORNING A husband from across the street called our name. We were out watering the flowers before anyone could see us using up water on such a luxury as a potted plant. With his arm he motioned for us to come over, and so we did, and once we got inside his house he raised his arm to our faces and we saw a welt across his forearm about four inches long. Did he smell like whiskey? We had never seen this man unreasonably distraught, or emotional much at all.
HE WENT TO his bedroom and pulled the covers up above his head. We asked, What happened? but he did not answer us. Around the room was a black burn mark up the wall from the oil heater, and it appeared as if it had malfunctioned, and burned his arm. What was a woman to do in this situation? Though we wanted to comfort him, we certainly did not want to find ourselves in another woman’s bed. We assured him everything would be okay, and then we said that we would be right back, and hurried home, and sent our son or daughter to the commissary to find his wife, and to notify a doctor.
WE SAW OUR men sob into their pillows. But when we went by the military service club we saw GIs dancing and singing When Johnny Comes Marching Home.
SINCE THE CENSORSHIP was lifted, we could see our families for the first time in years, and we begged our parents to visit: We think it would be tons of fun! Please think seriously about coming. But we did not sound positive enough, and our fathers said they could not get away from the department store, the bank, the lab, or the university, but our mothers wrote and said they would come by train or bus as quickly as they could.
OUR MOTHERS CAME and though the altitude left them short of breath they were delighted that our children could speak since they had last seen them, or that there were more of them than before. They were surprised that the commissary carried mayonnaise and Kleenex, and they were pleased to see that we were not starving, and they were thrilled that our friends began calling them Mom, too.
WE SAID IT was like going to a funeral, watching everyone leave. The construction workers and machinists left first, gathering up their families and departing in a procession of trailers. For three years we had not ironed the good tablecloths, brought out the fine china, or asked, Do you prefer white or red? about the wine. Soon we would be away from one another and in other towns we would befriend the university president’s wife by inviting her over for tea, and we would not be wearing blue jeans in her company. But we felt middle-aged at twenty-seven, and we would be thrilled to return to academic life afterward, if only because we would no longer be one of the oldest women in the room.
BEFORE WE LEFT we went to the Army office and when it was our turn we gave our claim tickets to a man in order to retrieve our cameras from the Army vault. Instead we were told they could not be found. We were called Lady then, as in Look, Lady, I have no way of finding them, and he told us to pick out any camera we preferred.
WE FOUND A better camera for ourselves. Or we felt bad about taking someone else’s things, and we could not find our own, and we returned home empty-handed. We brought back from those years very few pictures of that time, if any, and had no images of our children at three, at five, at seven, aside from those in our memories.
WE WENT TO Albuquerque or Santa Fe to celebrate our nearing and permanent departure as well as to buy university-appropriate attire to get our husbands ready for interviewing again. Our husbands said they could take academic jobs and we would starve or they could take industry jobs and we would eat well. Some of us encouraged our husbands to give up academia, saying, I’m tired of rationing, and some of us encouraged our husbands to give up physics entirely, saying, You do not want to spend your entire life figuring out how to kill people, do you? And some of us said, You’ll make the right choice.
WHILE WE HAD spent three years in Los Alamos, our husbands had been promoted to full professors and the dean of the university wrote to say our husbands would now have their own research lab. Or while we were away many more schools were hiring—they anticipated GIs returning home and entering college—and our husbands had accomplished something, and on the Hill they had made friends with scientists from several universities, and they were offered better-paying jobs, with higher ranks, at more prestigious places, in larger cities. Though the Director was stepping down to return to his lab at Berkeley, the General invited himself to dinner at our place and suggested our husbands seriously consider the financial rewards a position at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory could offer our family. Think of the stability. Some of our husbands did just that and signed up for another year at Los Alamos despite our protests.
OUR HUSBANDS WENT to cities to interview for jobs, and when they returned we discussed the options: an assistant professorship in New York or a job here at Los Alamos. Many of us had a bit of negotiating power since we’d been here so long and we protested, That’s three thousand miles away from Portland! Or, That’s two thousand miles away from Kansas City!
FOR A WHILE many of us were ravenous for news and thought
that the more information we had, the better chance there was of making a smart decision. But that faded for some of us, and we finally said, Oh, to hell with it, and moved to the city, or the coast. Besides, we could have a heart attack, get hit by a car, choke on a ham bone. What we learned was this: there were no ways to control unknown threats.
OUR HUSBANDS CONSIDERED staying. We thought the town would remain a military post, or that our husbands would be forced to leave their academic positions to conduct war research whenever the military so desired. Many of our husbands said they did not want to sell their souls and many of our husbands said, I have to help see this thing through. Some husbands could not make up their mind if it was right or wrong for science to serve war. Some said they preferred to teach and do research without the restrictions of secrecy.
ONE HUSBAND WHO deliberated about that question went on to build something bigger than the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb. We were slightly relieved to learn the Lab would no longer be under military control but transferred to a civilian agency, what became the Atomic Energy Commission. To stop the use of atomic bombs, some of our husbands worked on international agreements to outlaw the future development of atomic bombs. Or our husbands signed letters in support of military governance over atomic labs. They were our husbands and we thought what they thought, and we thought the opposite, and we tried to keep quiet, or we tried to be loud and have our voices heard.
BEFORE WE LEFT we gave our old washing machine to Juanita, remembering when we did how scared she was the first time she used it; we sold our desk and thought of the nights we spent writing letters to our parents without saying anything specific; we sold our children’s beds; we took our typewriters. That last week men came and installed a phone in our home for the new residents. We used it once to telephone the plumber.
Going Back
WE WERE GOING back to Berkeley, New York, or Madison. We were going to Hiroshima. We were going to Oak Ridge. Three years in the desert and we were near thirty or past it. Our pants were thin, our shirts needed to be mended, and we had little idea what women wore these days. If we began as foreigners we became naturalized during these years and so we were not going back to France, Germany, or Italy. Some of us were staying, even after our husbands had promised this move was only temporary, and we were going back to a real city only in our imagination. Saying good-bye to our friends was not just saying good-bye to them, we were saying good-bye to a part of ourselves.
FOR THOSE OF us who were leaving, we thought for the first time we might miss Los Alamos. The piñons, the snowy vistas, the thin fresh air, the hard rain falling. On our last ride on the horses, Genevieve, who was returning to Britain, stopped, closed her eyes, and said, All my life I will remember this sunshine. We loved the hush the snow placed on the landscape, and we thought of the hand of God, or we thought of light, and we thought of the stillness of snow, how it quieted even our children. It was the earth winning a small battle.
NEAR THE END we began to pull away from one another, we stopped by unannounced less frequently and started looking for the next thing. But we still threw parties. We hosted good-bye dinners that ended with Auld Lang Syne and tears. Some children ran around gathering autographs.
BY THE END of our time at Los Alamos we had two or ten black-on-black pieces of pottery and we wanted more. We wore weighty belts of silver. We bought high-topped deerskin moccasins. We spread Navajo rugs on our floor and draped Chimayo blankets over our couch. We decided we would like to live without gas and the daily newspaper. We decided we wanted to buy land like the Spanish and the Indians had, or we offered to buy what they owned.
WE SAID SO long with fruitcake, with lingering hugs, with quick pats on the back, with picnics at Frijoles Canyon. We took last rides on the horses. Katherine fell down a canyon wall and broke her neck and left Los Alamos in an off-white brace that constricted our ability to hold tightly to her. It was in the departure that we learned our true feelings: we would miss one another terribly.
THE PEOPLE OF the San Ildefonso pueblo threw us a party. They fed us things they knew we liked—Jell-O and Coke. We called it a fiesta hoedown and brought hotdogs. The pueblo wives were encouraged by Po, the one Indian we had invited to our square dance group, to make authentic recipes. We ate prune pies that tasted like pemmican cakes; we ate tamales, tiny chicken rolls, tortillas, and squash mixtures. We ate things we could never figure out, but it all was delicious, and our hosts seemed to be enjoying the food as much as we were. There were pitchers of fruit juice and plenty of coffee. We begged for recipes.
WE DANCED WITH the men we haggled with over bowls the week before. Or we attended out of obligation. Or we did not attend at all. Initially only the dance group members were invited, with a few exceptions made for the other women Louise liked: Dorothy, Edith, and Helen. But every woman had to promise they wouldn’t tell anyone about the event. They promised, though everyone found out about it. Maria insisted on no alcohol, and Louise assured her, but given the rowdiness of the crowds, we thought that would be difficult.
THE FESTIVITIES OPENED with drums and a chanting chorus of men led by Montoya, our janitor from the Lodge. Po called us in for a square dance demonstration; we formed squares and designated Starla as the caller—we had long ago concluded that Starla’s secret was that there was no secret. Our brief demonstration was followed by a group of Indian men with Cokes in their hands, shaking their bodies in motions we were nervous that we could not reproduce. Po called out in Tewa, and the group moved serpent-like. The governor of the pueblo, wearing a blue-and-white-checkered blanket over his shoulders, made gyrations we tried to follow. He put both hands on his head, as if they were antlers, and grinned. Some of us chuckled to see his missing two front teeth—but his feet kept perfect time. The intricate steps changed to another quite sophisticated move, and we followed as best we could. The drummers went faster and faster: it was a test of endurance we were sure to fail; we dared not stop. Montoya stood on a chair and shouted, above the fast drumbeat and shuffles: This is the Atomic Age—This is the Atomic Age!
By the End
A CEREMONY WAS to be held in Fuller Lodge to, as the announcement said, acknowledge the scientific achievements of Los Alamos. A stage was constructed and behind it a long banner of red, white, and blue. The President of the University of California came because the University of California partially ran Los Alamos, someone said, or since the Director taught there, perhaps, another person added, but the reason was unclear. The President stood in the middle of the stage wearing a double-breasted pinstriped suit and to his left the General wore his customary khaki, customarily wrinkled. To the right was the Director, who somehow seemed alone—he stared out into the crowd rather than speaking with the others on the stage and though he looked out at us, it was as if he looked out at nothing—his face was expressionless, which, given that it was an occasion of celebration, was in itself memorable. There were folding chairs for us to sit on, real chairs with backs instead of the hay bales we sat on to watch movies, and one wife in the crowd said, Real chairs in the Lodge! We’ve made it now, and those around her chuckled.
THOUGH THERE WAS a military band at every event, there wasn’t this time, but four band members marched to the front of the stage, saluted the President, marched to the back of the Lodge, and sat down. The President walked to the microphone. He spoke about the great achievements accomplished and some of us noticed the Director’s lack of attention. After polite claps for the President, the Director walked to the podium. It was his turn to thank the President, on behalf of all at Los Alamos, for the honor of this recognition. We leaned forward.
HE THANKED THE President. He thanked us. He repeated his previous words of caution. He sat down.
WHEN IT WAS the General’s turn to speak he did not contradict the Director but gave further cautions: We are at a crossroads between annihilation and peace. My hope is that the world leaders will work together to ensure safety for us all. And with that he was not the frumpy man who
loved his chocolate and controlled our whereabouts, but a reasonable person who expressed the gravity of the circumstances. He was our General then, just as the Director had always been our Director. Here we were, together, on the brink of a future we could not predict—more unknowns were yet to come—but we were very aware of it. We clapped, we stood and clapped, we hooted, we cried, we hugged. And with that, our war and our duty here at Los Alamos were, for many of us, officially, over.
Our Last
OUR HUSBANDS CAME home from the Tech Area for the last time and invited us to be their guests at Chez Mess Hall. We said, What a fancy place! Are you sure we can afford it? Or, I’ll have to curl my hair first. We stepped into the warm crowd of the mess hall, stood behind GIs and other families, and picked up a thin metal tray dented around the edges from use. It was our last dinner. Down the line we walked, greeting San Ildefonso men and women or WACs who scooped hot meat, green beans, rehydrated potatoes, and ash-colored gravy into each of the four compartments on our metal tray. The narrow compartments made our more soupy items swim into other things: a slight tilt of the tray or our hand and we were soon eating ice cream topped with pork gravy. And to think some people—the GIs, the single men—put up with this meal three times a day for three years.
The Wives of Los Alamos Page 13