Full Body Burden

by Kristen Iversen

  It’s been years since I’ve taken a typing test, and I’m suddenly as nervous as a cat. “You can have a few minutes to warm up,” the receptionist says. “And then I’ll turn on the timer.” She leaves me in front of a keyboard and a blank computer screen. For lack of a better idea, I type my name over and over again. Kristen Kristen Kristen Kristen Kristen.

  “Ready?” She smiles. Her makeup is flawless, eyes and lips outlined against a porcelain mask. “Here you go.” She sets a paper next to the screen. “You have ten minutes. Type as fast as you can. Each mistake counts.”

  I begin typing, a row of numbers and then the same sentence over and over. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

  The timer rings and she tallies up the result. “Oh, my dear,” she whispers, leaning close to my ear. “Would you like to try that again?”

  “Sure.” My cheeks burn.

  The second time around goes a little better. “I think you’ll be fine,” the receptionist purrs as she escorts me to the office of the employment consultant, a woman in corporate attire with a stack of applications on her desk. She looks over my file briefly and has only one question. “When can you start?”

  AFTER YEARS of allowing the marriage to drift and dissipate, my mother finally gets an envelope in the mail confirming that her divorce from my father is final. She seems surprised, disappointed, and relieved all at once. “In Bridledale we had a beautiful home,” she says when I stop by with Sean and Nathan to tell her I’ve found a good job. “Then your father went right down the tubes. As a matter of fact, the whole thing went down the tubes.”

  She pauses to take a drag from her cigarette. “I should quit,” she says. But she never will. She’s smoked since she was a kid on the farm in Iowa. She tries to hide it from Sean and Nathan, sneaking off to the bathroom or the back porch to light up.

  “Grandma,” Sean announces solemnly one day, “we know you smoke. You don’t have to hide it from us. You don’t have to hide anything from us.” Nathan nods in agreement.

  “Well, all right,” my mother says. She grins impishly, like a naughty schoolgirl. “But I want you to understand that it’s a very bad habit, and you must never start.”

  “Okay,” the boys chime.

  Now she smokes in front of Sean and Nathan with the same ceremony and savoir faire that I remember as a kid. The slim lighter, the long cigarette between her graceful fingers, the touch of the flame, the welcome drag. She guards her ashes with an upturned palm and never leaves a cigarette butt in plain view. “There are so few joys in life,” she sighs. “This is one of them.”

  In a wicker basket next to her coffee table are photo albums, big and small, worn and new. She saves every family photo, and has scrapbooks in the basement that contain pictures of our Norwegian ancestors and her own trip to Norway to trace the family tree. She’s a proud member of Sons of Norway, a club that promotes and preserves Norwegian culture, where she’s taking a class in the traditional Norwegian folk art of rosemaling, which involves painting traditional images of flowers.

  But she wants to talk about the more immediate past.

  “There were good times, too,” she says. She shows me a black-and-white photo of herself and my father in the kitchen of our first house in Arvada, not long after I was born. With a firm jaw and a white T-shirt on, he looks like a slim Marlon Brando with dark hair. Her hair is in a twisted scarf and she’s wearing dark eyeliner and pedal pushers. He’s leaning toward her with a smile as wide as Nebraska, and she’s nearly doubled over in laughter.

  “We were in love then,” my mother muses, and takes a drag.

  Sean and Nathan look a little embarrassed.

  She turns to me. “He’s driving a cab now, did you know that? The law practice is gone.”

  I shake my head. I didn’t know.

  “Life can be so strange,” she says. “You never know what’s going to happen.” She sighs and closes the photo album. “At least, Kris, you found a good job.”

  I’M NOT sure the job is worth the risk. Mark’s warnings about Rocky Flats float back into my thoughts and dreams.

  Still, after school the next day I strap the boys into their seats in the backseat of our tired little Toyota and we go for a drive. Highway 93 between Golden and Boulder is a thin, two-lane snake of road that dips and rises amid fields of low grass spotted with cattle and horses. A handful of crayons has melted into a puddle of hot magenta and forest green on the dashboard, and the passenger seat is covered with Heathcliff’s hair. With a jawline nearly as handsome as his namesake in Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff likes to ride in the front seat with his head lolling out the window, sporting a bright Hawaiian-style sun visor we bought for him in a drugstore.

  I roll down the window and look out at the foothills, rolling golden hills that rise abruptly into dark mounds and slabs of blue rock. A railroad track emerges from one of the canyons and curves out toward the highway into a long, low valley. I pull over to the side of the highway at the gravel road that leads up to the west side of the plant. I can hear meadowlarks. There’s no obvious sign of the plant. From here it all looks innocuous.

  Can I really do this? I ask myself. “Should I really do this?” I turn and ask the boys.

  Nathan waves his fingers in the air. Sean studies his graham cracker.

  The answer remains unclear.

  ON THE morning of September 14, 1994, I wake early to get the boys ready before I drive out to the plant. Sean and Nathan wear matching Thomas the Tank Engine sweaters—it will be another couple of years before they want to stop dressing alike—and I comb their hair and tie their shoelaces. They’ll have an hour at day care before Sean goes to kindergarten and Nathan goes to his preschool class.

  The morning is crisp and clear and the leaves have just begun to turn. I drive out to the foothills and enter the plant from the west gate, off Highway 93. I’ve been instructed to pick up a temporary badge at the guard shack, the first building on the right. The guard is an older guy, gray hair, with a belt a little too short for his belly. He cheerfully checks my driver’s license and crosses my name off a list. In addition to my temporary ID, he hands me a photocopied map of the plant—there are more than one hundred buildings, all numbered—and a sheet titled “Plant Visitor Information.” He points out the Special Nuclear Materials Area, a protected area surrounded on the map by double black lines. “You don’t want to go there,” he says. “You’d get in trouble. You need special clearance for that.”

  I mention the Rocky Flats Lounge I passed just across the road from the west gate, a tiny place with a big parking lot and plenty of blinking neon beer signs. “Is that an official Department of Energy building?” I joke.

  “No, no,” he says with a smile. “But that building does date back to the 1950s. It was the first payroll building. They’ve got cold Coors and great catfish. You can buy yourself a T-shirt that says ‘Get Nuclear Wasted at the Rocky Flats Lounge.’ Great place to watch football.”

  I nod. I don’t watch football, which is as close to a sin as a person can get in a city like Denver.

  “Good luck!” he adds. “You’ll like it here.”

  My heart thuds as I get behind the wheel of my car. At last I get to see the belly of the beast, the bull’s-eye target, the glowing light beyond my childhood bedroom window.

  It’s late morning as I drive through the gate. The plant spreads before me like a toy village, raw in the garish light of the sun. But there is nothing charming about this village. Cars and trucks fill the main street. There’s an air of busyness. But it has a strangely anonymous feel. The buildings are plain, gray, square, mostly concrete block. It reminds me of what little I’ve seen of East Germany.

  I disobey the guard’s instructions and drive around before reporting for work. I take the big loop around the plant, past a large empty lot partitioned off with yellow police tape, past rows of stacked wooden crates and cardboard cont
ainers, past endless nondescript buildings, and then down the hill past the area surrounded with chain-link fences and razor wire. I see the guard towers. I wonder if anyone will notice a beat-up red Toyota tooling aimlessly around the plant. I’ll say I’m lost, I think. I’m new. I am lost.

  I’m fascinated. And disappointed. It all seems terribly mundane.

  I drive to Building 117 to have my photo taken and get my permanent badge. My badge is number 26453. I am now one of 6,232 employees at the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site. I’m instructed to wear my badge above the waist and keep it in plain sight at all times.

  Official now, I get back in my car and go as instructed to Building 130, the administration building on the east side of the plant, where I’m to report to project management. The parking lot is small and graveled. I notice a number of bumper stickers: I TOXIC WASTE and I WILL BUILD NUCLEAR WEAPONS FOR FOOD. The wind is blowing so strongly I have to hold down my skirt.

  Compared to what I’ve seen in other areas of the plant, this isn’t so bad. There is a square, two-story gray office building, a warehouse, a cafeteria, and an engineering building with a small, bare-bones courtyard. Every door in the building has a punch-key lock.

  A secretary sitting behind a tall desk curtly asks my name, then checks it off a list and gives me a code for the punch combination lock that leads to the project management offices. “Don’t forget it,” she snaps.

  I notice a photo of a young girl on her desk—same dark curls and a similar, slightly indignant look. “Is that your daughter?”

  “Yes,” she says, and lets the question pass. “You’re scheduled to work out in the trailers.” She nods toward the door. I’ve noticed rows and rows of small construction trailers lined up next to the building, their corners set on concrete blocks. They’re similar to the trailers behind the junior high school, where I had my French class. “If you’re here long enough, you’ll get to work in the regular building,” she says. “But right now we’re on overflow and people who are just starting out have to work in the trailers. There are ten trailers, with letters from A to J. You’re in Trailer 130F. You can’t miss it.”

  I sling my purse on my shoulder and turn to leave. “Watch the purse!” she barks. “Keep it simple. Keys. Lipstick. You can be searched at any time. The guards will check your purse if and when they feel like it. No briefcases or anything like that.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  $12.92 an hour. I don’t think I could make that much waitressing, but I’m starting to wonder exactly what this job might involve.

  The interior of Trailer 130F is a maze of cubicles with gray fabric partitions. The carpet is worn, also gray with an intermittent pattern of coffee stains, and there is a scent of scalded coffee in the air. A woman sitting at a government-issue desk greets me with a smile and looks over my paperwork. “You’ll need to read this,” she says, and hands me a sheet with the words “Radiological Health and Safety” across the top.

  “The DOE has established guidelines regarding radiation exposure,” I read. “DOE Manual N 5480.6 and DOE Order 5480.11 expressly state requirements for radiation protection of occupational workers, unborn children, minors, students, and on-site members of the public. In addition to ‘maximum dose’ values, the DOE also requires that exposure to radiation be kept as far below limiting values as reasonably achievable.” There is an acronym for this: ALARA. As low as reasonably achievable.

  Everything at Rocky Flats has a number and an acronym.

  Before the secretary can speak again, a voice sputters over the loudspeaker. “Attention. Attention.” There is a brief pause. “The plant is currently experiencing winds of fifty-five miles per hour or more. Those in tents should secure the area and move into permanent buildings. Those in permanent buildings should remain inside and not leave the building. Thank you for your attention. Have a nice day.”

  The trailer shudders slightly as if to emphasize the situation.

  “Oh dear,” laughs the secretary, noting the expression on my face. “Don’t pay any attention to that. The wind is always blowing out here. Every once in a while a car windshield gets blown out. Watch it when you open your car door—be sure to hang on to the handle.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  I’m directed to a small cubicle with a tiny desk, a phone, and a computer screen. I sit directly across from a distraught-looking woman with long dark hair. Once the woman at the front desk is out of sight, she leans over and whispers conspiratorially. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll help you. It’s very confusing at first, but it gets better.” She tells me she’s worked at the plant for fifteen years. “I was here during the raid,” she whispers. “I had to empty my file cabinet at gunpoint!”

  “What raid?”

  “You don’t know about the raid?”

  “No.”

  “Shh!” she says. “We’re not supposed to talk. Have you had lunch?”

  I tell her I haven’t and she suggests we eat together when I get my break.

  But we don’t get breaks at the same time. A manager brings me a sheaf of documents. “You don’t need to worry about trying to understand any of this,” he says. “Just type it.” Three hours later I’m given permission to head down to the cafeteria, a small lunchroom with a crew of three Hispanic women making sandwiches and ground beef burritos. The tables are mostly empty. I order a burrito and walk out to the courtyard, which is sunny and provides a little shelter from the wind. I sit next to a much older man with a brown paper sack.

  “Afternoon,” he says. “You new?”

  “Yes.” I nod, and take a bite. “Today’s my first day.”

  “Eleven years, here. Name’s George.” He takes a sandwich out of the brown sack and unwraps it. “How’s the burrito?” There’s a slim ring of grease on my plate.

  “It’s all right.”

  “I never eat in the cafeteria.”

  “Really?”

  “Nope.” He pulls up the top piece of bread to show me. “Turkey, white bread, no mayo. Every day for eleven years.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. I like to know what I’m getting.” He laughs. “Besides, there’s plutonium in that cafeteria.”

  I blanch. “Seriously?”

  “No,” George says. “It’s a joke.” He smiles. “I’m just joking.”

  “Pretty funny.” I take another bite.

  He finishes his sandwich and stands. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I often see him after that, with his sandwich and brown paper bag, and sometimes we eat lunch together in a comfortable silence.

  After a while I start bringing a lunch, too.

  Later—much later—I hear through the grapevine that there actually had been a problem with plutonium in the cafeteria. I also hear that it wasn’t uncommon for plutonium to be carried in on people’s clothes, even though we weren’t near the hot areas of the plant.

  I QUICKLY learn where I can and can’t go on the plant site. Each morning I wait in a long line of cars at the east gate and watch the old shift drive out as the new shift drives in. I flash my badge at the guard who never returns my smile, drive over a gentle rise, and then into the low basin where Rocky Flats spreads out like a little metropolis. More than six thousand people work here. Buildings are numbered according to the type of work done there. Plutonium and other radioactive and dangerous materials are handled in the 300 and 700 buildings, machining in the 400 series, and administration is in the 100 area. Only those with a government Q clearance are allowed in the 300 and 700 buildings. There are several cafeterias, a medical center, and a firehouse.

  Once again Randy Sullivan and I pass within a stone’s throw of each other.

  Randy’s dad had been a captain for Continental Airlines, and like his dad, Randy enjoyed being around planes. After high school he moved around a bit and then returned to Denver to work as a mechanic for a small airline. He married and had kids, and began to think about a more ambitious, permanent career. So
meone mentioned to him that Rocky Flats had a fire department, and they were hiring. The pay was good.

  He’d always dreamed of being a firefighter. And Randy was familiar with Rocky Flats. One of his best friends growing up had a father who worked at the plant. No one knew what he did, and no one knew what Rocky Flats did, but it was a good way to support a family.

  Randy filled out an application. A few weeks later they asked him to come out to the plant for a physical agility test and an interview in which he was asked about why he wanted to work at Rocky Flats.

  Driving into the plant for the first time was a little intimidating. Finally, he thought to himself, I get to look into Pandora’s box. He stopped at the guard gate for his temporary clearance, and he was given a map of the facility. The plant was larger than he expected, and he got a little lost trying to find the fire station. He was acutely aware of the guards with guns. I hope I find it quick, he thought. If they see me just driving around, I might get into trouble.

  But he eventually found the fire station. He passed all the tests. He was tall, physically strong, and although he had been relieved to escape the Vietnam draft, he was pleased to serve his country at Rocky Flats. On July 1, 1991—the same year that Russia and the United States agreed to dismantle approximately thirty thousand nuclear warheads between them—Randy Sullivan officially became an EG&G employee. He was thirty-three years old. It would be his last job, he thought. It was a real career, and it would make his family proud.

  Randy wasn’t completely unaware that Rocky Flats was involved in nuclear activities. They’d told him he would be a nuclear firefighter rather than a regular firefighter. He thought that was kind of cool. Maybe, he thought, he would actually get to see some plutonium.

  By the time I go to work at Rocky Flats, Randy’s an old hand. He’s been there for years.

  SEPTEMBER AND October can be cold, windy months, and on bitter days we wear sweaters and knit gloves with the fingertips cut off in Trailer 130F. I endure a couple of weeks in the trailer before I’m promoted, thanks to my quick typing speed, to a more permanent position in the administrative building. The main building has heat and a little more status. I earn a few icy stares when I graduate from Trailer 130F.