Read Online The Wives of Los Alamos by Tarashea Nesbit - Free Book Online
Authors: Tarashea Nesbit
Tags: Historical
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one person—another woman—had the key. We were scolded by the other women if we did not deliver all the mail immediately. We monitored each piece of outgoing mail and sometimes corrected the grammar, or let the writer know that though she said a check was enclosed, she had forgotten to include it.
W E WORKED IN rooms full of only women and we were called calculators. We sat six to a table at calculating machines and processed ten- to fourteen-digit numbers. We clanked and banged continuously. We solved differential equations without access to the physics behind them. We made plots of French curves. Eventually, IBM equipment replaced us. We thought our biggest accomplishment was not our calculations, but the survival of our families in this wild military camp.
A S PART OF a volunteer community protection team, we issued passes to new residents and listened for spies, though we had no idea what we were listening for. We were given a list of watchwords, words we had been hearing around town already. Uranium. Fission. The Gadget. We were told to look for nervousness, to listen for inflection, and we thought we would be brilliant at this kind of work: we had a lifetime of experience in paying attention. But we never caught a spy.
S OME OF US did things no one will ever know about because we did not discuss our jobs with anyone. There was a fracture: the tired wives who worked in the Lab and had security clearance and the tired wives who did not work in the Lab. We all worked, of course, cleaning, cooking, bathing, loving, but some of us fabricated lenses using molds that reminded us of cookie cutters. Louise went into labor while at work but monitored her contractions with a stopwatch and still finished her experiment before leaving the Tech Area.
W E WERE SCIENTIFIC librarians, personal secretaries, switchboard operators. The Director gave us fatherly advice about the pressures of wartime marriages. We sang Happy Birthday to senior scientists over the PA system .
A ND AFTER OUR shift Clara came by and asked us what we did all day and we shrugged, noting how we hated that shrug from our husbands, how we were doing the thing that annoyed us the most, but Susie was polite and knew we could not say and therefore did not ask us. At night we were exhausted and told our husbands, What I need is a good wife.
When the Ground Trembled
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T HOUGH WE NO longer kept our fingernails clean, many of us still measured our waist each morning. We wanted to accentuate broad, wide shoulders, which we rarely had. We wore trousers and wedges and boots because we were often on the side of the road with blown-out tires. We still had our fur coats, which lost tufts if we were not careful, but most of us were careful because we knew replacements were impossible. Because buttons were popping off our childrenâs clothes and getting lost in the mud, we switched to zippers.
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W E FORGAVE ONE another in public, quickly, even if we did not truly feel the forgiveness in our hearts. And even if we did not fully forgive, we still brought over soup and muffins when their children were sick, because we saw how Geraldine was cut off from afternoon cocktails at Katherineâs for, as Katherine said, flirting with her Charlie ; we saw how Grace was snubbed for not sending a written thank-you note after a dinner party Edna hosted. We knew these isolations would keep us out of knowing things. We did not want to be like Florence, pretending we had to weed in the yard all afternoon because no one invited us over.
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W E NEEDED MORE information, or we were concerned our children would not have any other children their age to play with, or we were bored but not lonely, or we were desperately lonely.
Â
W E WENT TO Lisa, one of our old friends from Chicago who happened to be sent here, too, and told her our grudges, one at a time. Katherine couldnât see why kindergarten would not take her child even though he was not
W E WORKED IN rooms full of only women and we were called calculators. We sat six to a table at calculating machines and processed ten- to fourteen-digit numbers. We clanked and banged continuously. We solved differential equations without access to the physics behind them. We made plots of French curves. Eventually, IBM equipment replaced us. We thought our biggest accomplishment was not our calculations, but the survival of our families in this wild military camp.
A S PART OF a volunteer community protection team, we issued passes to new residents and listened for spies, though we had no idea what we were listening for. We were given a list of watchwords, words we had been hearing around town already. Uranium. Fission. The Gadget. We were told to look for nervousness, to listen for inflection, and we thought we would be brilliant at this kind of work: we had a lifetime of experience in paying attention. But we never caught a spy.
S OME OF US did things no one will ever know about because we did not discuss our jobs with anyone. There was a fracture: the tired wives who worked in the Lab and had security clearance and the tired wives who did not work in the Lab. We all worked, of course, cleaning, cooking, bathing, loving, but some of us fabricated lenses using molds that reminded us of cookie cutters. Louise went into labor while at work but monitored her contractions with a stopwatch and still finished her experiment before leaving the Tech Area.
W E WERE SCIENTIFIC librarians, personal secretaries, switchboard operators. The Director gave us fatherly advice about the pressures of wartime marriages. We sang Happy Birthday to senior scientists over the PA system .
A ND AFTER OUR shift Clara came by and asked us what we did all day and we shrugged, noting how we hated that shrug from our husbands, how we were doing the thing that annoyed us the most, but Susie was polite and knew we could not say and therefore did not ask us. At night we were exhausted and told our husbands, What I need is a good wife.
When the Ground Trembled
Â
T HOUGH WE NO longer kept our fingernails clean, many of us still measured our waist each morning. We wanted to accentuate broad, wide shoulders, which we rarely had. We wore trousers and wedges and boots because we were often on the side of the road with blown-out tires. We still had our fur coats, which lost tufts if we were not careful, but most of us were careful because we knew replacements were impossible. Because buttons were popping off our childrenâs clothes and getting lost in the mud, we switched to zippers.
Â
W E FORGAVE ONE another in public, quickly, even if we did not truly feel the forgiveness in our hearts. And even if we did not fully forgive, we still brought over soup and muffins when their children were sick, because we saw how Geraldine was cut off from afternoon cocktails at Katherineâs for, as Katherine said, flirting with her Charlie ; we saw how Grace was snubbed for not sending a written thank-you note after a dinner party Edna hosted. We knew these isolations would keep us out of knowing things. We did not want to be like Florence, pretending we had to weed in the yard all afternoon because no one invited us over.
Â
W E NEEDED MORE information, or we were concerned our children would not have any other children their age to play with, or we were bored but not lonely, or we were desperately lonely.
Â
W E WENT TO Lisa, one of our old friends from Chicago who happened to be sent here, too, and told her our grudges, one at a time. Katherine couldnât see why kindergarten would not take her child even though he was not
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