The Cold War

Sometimes we hid under our desks. Today our teacher took us fifth graders out into the hall and lined us up. We had to sit with our backs against the wall. I’d figured out how to fit in beside the others the best I could. I was good at fitting in because I’d been doing it all my life, ever since I had polio when I was a little baby. I released the springs on my leg braces, dropped to my knees, and fell sideways onto my hip while making sure my crutches didn’t flip out and hit the kid next to me and made sure my dress didn’t flip up and show my panties. That had happened when we first started practicing for the bomb. The snickering had traveled up and down the rows until the teacher told everyone to stop being lookie-loos.

The teacher patrolled like a drill sergeant. My father had been a drill sergeant, so I knew. She told one kid to tuck his legs closer and another to put her head down and clasp hands over the back of her head. My hands were pushed flat against the tiles to keep from leaning sideways. I did have my head down, so I could only see the squared-off heels of her shoes and the ankle wrinkles in her nylons when she paused at my legs. They stuck out into the hall. I heard her sigh as she stepped over them. Did this mean she’d decided I wasn’t worth saving from the nuclear explosion? Was I putting everyone else in more danger? Is this why no one ever invited me to their parties?

It was a mostly civilian school, but us military brats were scattered through the classes. We recognized each other. Even I got recognized despite me not liking to be noticed. I was good at not being noticed. It helped with the sneaking. I would get to class early and look on the teacher’s desk for the answers to test questions. Sometimes I went through my father’s briefcase while I could hear him mowing the lawn. He worked at the Pentagon, which the news said was a level one target for the Russians. Sometimes the television said for the Cubans. My mother had told me that, how she and I behaved went on my father’s evaluations which were like my report cards. I worried that news of my legs sticking out would get back to him. I worried it would keep him from being promoted. I worried that they would argue more because of me. Unless we all died. Then it wouldn’t matter.

The only time I didn’t worry about dying, and lots of other stuff, was when my friend and I visited. Her name was Ria. She lived in a place that was all hallways—long metal tunnels she said were underground. Her legs ended at her knees. She said it was because of the radiation that leaked in from topside where no one went anymore. But she could show me her home since most times no one else was there. Her father was in the military like mine and her mother and her older brother too, and they were often at their duty assignments or on a mission. I understood about that.

Their home was a tiny place with the same metal walls as the hallways, but friendly and warm feeling what with the little notes hung all around. They said things like how she should remember that the trash got compacted by second shift or that they loved her. ‘Stay out of my personal stuff container’ was signed ‘your brother’ and had many exclamation points and a drawing of a skull. Ria showed me the stack of meal packets left for her when they were gone. She said each one had a note from her family attached, but she read all of them first thing and put them up around her. For company.

Other than us both having legs that were different in different ways, we looked like twins, except she didn’t have what my mother called my baby fat and was so pale she looked green sometimes. And she didn’t use crutches. She had rods sticking down the rest of the way from her knees, with shiny curved metal at the ends. She said as soon as she was old enough to have her eggs harvested, she would be deployed. That’s when she would get her armor. I didn’t understand about the eggs, but didn’t ask since it seemed to have something to do with babies and maybe sex stuff, and you were always supposed to already know everything about that.

But I liked the idea of armor. For a few years I’d had to wear a corset for the curves in my back. It pulled tight and had a metal band that crossed under my ribs. I told Ria that it made me strong and protected. Ria said she wanted that, but her first set, since she was still little, would be about being quick. She could already run fast, but she’d get legs with more lift. She was pestering her father for elbow guns and slashers on her wrists. He’d said no, but Ria still hoped. Ria looked me up and down. She said my crutches would look great with slashers. I figured she meant something like knives and was imagining them hidden inside a crutch and how I’d have a release button right where my thumb could reach over without me even having to slow down, when Ria asked me if my mother had big breasts like her mother did. I stuttered about how I guessed so. The bras she hung from the shower rod looked huge. Ria said that meant we would both probably have big breasts. Ria said she wasn’t sure if she wanted them. I told her about comic books and how sometimes there were women heroes or evil doers and they all had big breasts and got to wear shiny armor over them. We decided that might be worth it.

We’d also been showing each other our favorite places. She had what she called an atmosphere vent opening where she’d loosened the bolts. She had lifted the grill and invited me in. The machinery noise was huge. But no one could find her there. We understood each other about needing to be alone. I showed her the place in my yard that was up against the fence and out-of-sight of my mother. At first, her metal feet slid all over the grass. And the way her eyes skittered around and her neck hunched, I could tell the sky made her afraid but she pretended it didn’t, and I didn’t tease her or anything. I wanted to pat her arm, but she wouldn’t have liked me noticing. Besides, I never touched my friend because if she wasn’t real, I didn’t want to know.

Instead, I led Ria to a corner of the yard where only a narrow strip of blue showed between the edge of the roof and the fence. She dropped to the ground with her back against the side of the house. I stood beside her and talked about the military bases we’d lived on, like the one in Japan when I was little and just before here, the one in Germany. Ria liked hearing about other places. She’d never been anywhere but her hallways. I talked about sneaking what I thought was guacamole but it wasn’t, even though it was green and how bad I burnt my throat and how I had liked veal until I found out it was a baby cow and did her parents have alcohol and did they drink it like mine did. I kept talking until she could breathe okay again. Then she was gone. It must have been someone interrupting from her world, because my mother had still been up in her bedroom having one of her lie downs. As far as we could tell, Ria and I always disappeared from each other if someone was about to notice we were gone.

The principal’s voice was screechy over the intercom. We could go back to our classes. Once again, the explosion hadn’t happened. I waited as long as I could without getting in trouble. It was easier to get up if no one was watching. Still, the loud boy in the class ran out to get a book he’d forgotten and yelled to everyone about seeing under my slip. He was lying. But I didn’t say anything. I kept my head down and followed him into the classroom. It was time for geography class, and there was a map of the world pulled down from the roller. Last night the television had talked about radiation and showed a map of Washington DC with bigger and bigger circles around it. Our house was in the third circle.

When I got home from school, my mother said I needed to rest and to go take a nap. I was ten. I didn’t need a nap, but I didn’t argue about it anymore. Whenever I was alone, if Ria was alone, when I imagined my friend’s face which was my face, we would have a visit. This time I went to Ria’s world. I trailed behind her while she changed carbon dioxide filters. She showed me how to help, but I put one in backward. She snatched it out and said if I didn’t do it the way she said, people would get sick. She was ten like me and had a really important job. I wasn’t even asked to do the dishes. I told her about the loud boy while we worked.

Ria stopped drilling out a screw and glared. She asked what I was going to do about it. She pointed at my crutches. Ria always wanted me to beat up the people who hurt my feelings. I explained to her again about getting my father in trouble. She nodded like she understood, which was nice since that wasn’t the only reason, and I knew she knew that. She said that what I needed was a strategy. I didn’t know what that meant, but she explained. I had to have a goal. I said my goal was for him to stop. She said how about also ruining him. I smiled in a way that was new to me, but I liked it. Ria smiled back in a matching way. We were doing that more often. She started talking about tactics which it turned out meant making a plan.

We settled on me tripping loud boy with my crutch. She told me if I lifted the crutch under his knee and jerked at the right moment, I might be able to break something. She could show me how. I said just him falling was enough. And how about, as a tactic, I’d apologize and say it was an accident. No one would know different. Ria said no, I should just keep moving and pretend I hadn’t done anything. She figured I had a reputation as non-combative, so I should use that to get away with things. I said, like I’m undercover as a scaredy-cat, but actually I’m an international spy? Ria didn’t really answer me, and I knew I’d disappointed her. So I told her about how I’d get slashers for my crutches and how, pow, they’d snap out one after another and how I’d threaten the loud boy but no one would believe him because I’d press the button again and they’d disappear.

We were laughing about loud boy sprawled on the ground and yelling, when a wailing noise bounced against the metal walls. My friend flinched, but didn’t look up until she’d loosened the last screw. I twisted between my crutches to look around. She hissed at me to hand her the replacement filter and then grabbed it out from under my arm when I wasn’t quick enough. She slammed the filter in place, snapped the cover back, and drilled screws in until they screeched. Then she told me to follow her. Her metal feet let her spring forward like one of those antelopes they showed on television running from lions, and in one leap she was far ahead of me. Ria disappeared into smoke. I stretched my crutches way in front and threw my body between them but not so far forward that I fell backward. I couldn’t keep up. Ria yelled at me to go back to my world. This one was under attack. Right then a shudder rippled the ceiling and sparks fell down over me.

Some of the sparks landed on my hand and the pain made me let go. The crutch fell away from me. Before it hit the ground, my friend was back beside me and caught it. When Ria gasped at the same time I did, I knew both of us hadn’t been sure the other was real until now. She threw the crutch back into my armpit and slapped all the places on my clothes that were lighting up in small flames like on birthday candles. The pinprick pains over my shoulders were more proof to both of us. On her overalls, the sparks just fell off. Ria yelled at me to go home. I dropped a crutch down onto my elbow and grabbed her arm. She had muscles like I did. I said she had to come with me. She’d be safe there. Maybe. The walls bulged around us. Right now, a maybe nuclear bomb exploding in my world seemed like a stupid nothing.

Ria yelled that she’d never abandon her post and ripped my fingers off her arm. She said I had to go. I was too weak. Too whiny. A baby. A whiny baby. Ria hit my shoulders over and over. Go, go, go, she said. You’re real. You could die for real. I can’t take care of you. She left me and disappeared into the smoke. I pretended I heard my mother calling me to dinner. I imagined my father getting mad about having to come fetch me from my room. I pinched my arms. When I was little, in Japan, I had a fluffy comforter that was like sleeping in a cave. A cave would be safe. I closed my eyes and remembered the quiet and loneliness of my bedroom.

The sound of ripping made me open them again. The far tunnel of the hallway had fallen down, and the smoke was black. Clouds of it came at me. Ria popped out in front of them. She yelled at me to run and I did, and when Ria came alongside me, she stayed close until she pushed me sideways down another hallway. That’s when she ran past and left me behind, but I didn’t know what else to do but keep moving.

The smoke got less, and I could see a blob on the floor. I kept moving. The blob was Ria and she lifted the way into her secret place just as I reached her. I threw myself into it without caring about my skirt or panties, and she followed, pulling my crutches in along with her. She dropped the panel and wrapped her fingers in the grill to pull it tight. Neither of us could stop coughing for a long time, but the smoke didn’t get any worse. Then the machine noise stopped. We could hear thumping.

Ria whispered that we had to be quiet. No more coughing. No moving. The thumping came closer and became the sound of many people running in big boots. I thought hard about my secret place by the fence. I kept a hand on Ria’s arm. Maybe I could take her with me. It didn’t work. The boots stopped in front of our grill. I could see the boots. They were grey from ash.

The way the soldiers spoke was choppier than Ria, but I could understand them the same way I understood my friend. They wanted the General’s daughter. Ria whispered in my ear that the General was her mother, she was the daughter. One of them said he knew what she looked like. He’d seen her go this way. And remember, her legs were messed up in some way, so she couldn’t have gotten far. We heard something bounce against the grill. My friend squeezed my arm really hard, like with her nails pushing in. I saw big fingers reach down to the ground and pick up something small. It was one of the bolts. All the soldiers stopped talking. They stopped moving. One of them laughed.

That’s when the grill was ripped up and an arm reached in. I didn’t think anything but that my world was going to blow up anyway. Maybe it had already. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t get home because no one was there to miss me. I’d seen what would happen. On my last sneaking, while my father was cutting the grass, I’d found a file labelled ‘Japan’ in his briefcase. I thought it might have photographs of me when I was littler. I remembered the trees with huge, waving leaves, the sounds of the ocean, and the way sand felt when it got under the straps on my braces. There were photos in the file. They weren’t of the ocean. They weren’t of my family. There were photos of families, but they all, even the kids, had bandages around their heads and skin covered in black splotches. One photo showed shadow people on brick walls. Another was a sort-of person but like made out of leather, lying on the ground with his arms bent up like he was going to fight someone. This was the photo I’d seen in a magazine a few days ago. The person died in an atomic bomb. He was burnt all over. Also in the folder was a sheet of paper with lines of big numbers with lots of commas. At the top it said ‘Projected Casualties’. The sound of the lawnmower had stopped before I could read more.

The arm moved deeper and swept from side to side. Maybe all the people on my world had become leather. Or maybe my world still existed, but my parents were arguing and didn’t notice I was gone. I thought about how Ria was my only friend. That I could never be as brave as Ria. But I could be a little brave. This could be my important job. And Ria would remember me. I shoved her behind me and grabbed the huge arm.

The arm pulled me through the opening and a boot kicked the grill shut behind me. The last thing, before I was lifted into the air, I saw Ria’s face smashed up against it. The soldiers were ugly from rubbery masks. One of them took a picture of my face. While they waited, they said things about how my braces were crude. That resources must be scarcer in this place than anyone knew. They were starting in on the weirdness of my clothes, when a voice came out of the camera and told them they had the right girl.

There was happy hollering, and I was thrown over a shoulder and fingers fastened themselves around the metal calf band of my braces to hold me in place. I bounced harder and harder as the boots stomped louder and faster. The soldiers shifted and I could see through them and back down the hall. They didn’t see the grill pop open. They didn’t see Ria stand up. They wouldn’t have been able to hear her yell even if she had. But I don’t think she did. Ria knew this was the best strategy and the best tactic all in one. She understood about duty. She turned and ran the other way.

© 2023 Sandra Gail Lambert

About the Author

Sandra Gail Lambert is an ‘old polio’ who writes about disability, queerness, desire, and kayaking. Her collection My Withered Legs and Other Essays is upcoming from the University of Georgia Press. Links to her work are available at https://sandragaillambert.com