WHEN WE WANTED to leave we were fingerprinted, and even then we could only go as far as Santa Fe. We were told, for the millionth time, secrecy was imperative. We were given pamphlets that said we were not to mention the topographical details that are essential to the Project. But because we did not know what the project was we did not know what was essential. Were the pine trees essential? The sunsets? The mud? When we traveled to Santa Fe we said as little as possible and felt painfully self-conscious.
THE JOURNEY WAS rickety and we hated it, or it was thankfully long and we loved flirting with the GI who drove the bus. We wanted to go to the Indian market in Santa Fe, but some of us were afraid of contracting polio, though it never came to Los Alamos. Or at least we mostly recollect that, though Alice reminds us that the high school science teaching schedule had to be revisited when Cecilia, the wife of a young chemist and science teacher, developed some kind of polio and died. It was a shocking event for everyone, and now, oh yes, we remember, that’s right, that was quite awful.
WE WERE TOLD to talk to no one, to instead just nod and smile. We came down from the hill with our scraggly children, and we were instructed to be only one thing: unfriendly. When asked where we were from we all gave the same address: Box 1663, Santa Fe. We told our children to lie. About what town they lived in, about what their name was. You are Donna, you are William, we would tell them. You are just passing through; you are visiting from Texas. When asked what was being built up there on the Hill we instructed our children to say, Windshield wipers for submarines. And when they did say this, the shopkeepers said, She’s a smart one! and smiled. The shop owners would see our children the next month, and the next, and each time our children would look down at the ground for their lies uncovered, or our children would tell other lies to cover the first ones.
AND OCCASIONALLY, ON the sidewalks in Santa Fe, we ran into friends from our college days and we panicked. When they asked us to have a Coke with them we said yes and when they asked, How are you doing? and, What are you doing here? we stiffened and looked around and fumbled. We saw young men in snap-brim hats study us from store windows, and we felt their eyes on us, but when we looked back to see them again, they were gone.