MANY OF US had no children when we arrived, or toddlers, but some of us were older, and when we arrived our children were nine and now they were eleven. Or we arrived and they were one of the few thirteen-year-olds and now they were fifteen. It was terrifying.
OUR NELLS PLAYED basketball in the gymnasium; our Timothys told the Army private who was also their Phys Ed teacher, when reprimanded for throwing stones, Do you know who my dad is? We hoped he said he didn’t care. Our Jims built tree houses and hid ham radios from the guards in the woods.
WE WANTED OUR children’s school to have everything: piano, horseback riding, French, physics, tennis. Or we thought they would be overindulged and we were relieved that they were learning side by side with children of carpenters, technicians, and truck drivers, and we were happy they were learning how to cut wood, make fires, and make do with one pair of boots.
OUR MICHAELS AND Lindas put Limburger cheese in the desk drawers of teachers they did not like. Our Janets refused to march as the WACs demanded. Our Betties and Jo Anns square-danced in gingham dresses across Fuller Lodge. On Friday nights they loved to go to the mess hall for steak dinners because on steak dinner nights our husbands, their fathers, who were less often coming home for dinner, would be there.
OUR TEENAGE DAUGHTERS had left behind their friends and their boyfriends, our teenage daughters smiled too long at the soldiers and we warned the officers to keep an eye on their men and we warned our daughters we were watching them. Our teenage daughters read magazines that taught them how to look from under their lashes. Our teenage daughters skipped classes to kiss the soldiers, who were more protective of them than we would have imagined, and our teenage daughters felt guilty in ways we hoped they would. Our daughters knew they could not bring these soldiers home. And though they necked with the young single scientists, too, the young scientists did not take them seriously the way the soldiers did. Our daughters with their bodies in the shapes ours once were, with their defiance, with their hunger, with their longing. We took away their passes off the Hill.
OUR CHILDREN WERE mad at their fathers for telling them nothing, for disappearing into the Tech Area, and they spoke unkindly to their fathers, saying, Hi, or, Nice to see ya, without looking up, and under their breath they added, finally. And sometimes our husbands slammed their fists hard on the table, which shook the mashed potatoes.
OUR TEENAGERS WERE better than us at outfoxing the guards. They bribed the military police with beer and stole Army jeeps and some boys rolled them off the steep edges of the canyons. And even though we thought we were smart, holding on to our daughters’ identification so they could not sneak off the Hill at night, we did not know that some of our teenage daughters just hid in the trunk of someone else’s car and quickly they were off to Santa Fe, to Española, to someplace in the desert where they could do exactly what they wanted until daybreak.