Blue Milk

"That girl leans into fear like it’s the wind,” said Marie’s grandpa, gazing up through the branches to the top of the blue spruce in the back yard. Grandpa drove the few blocks to her house when he heard about her fall that morning, and now he waited until she was ready to come down.
The blue spruce was Marie’s favorite tree. She loved to look over the roof of their house and see all the way to the edge of town. She could pick out Grandpa’s red roof just beyond her elementary school. The sugar maples that ringed the schoolyard were the dusty green of early autumn, with hems that flamed orange, red, yellow.
School started a week ago. Third grade.
Marie was almost to the top of the tree earlier that morning when a branch snapped in her hand and she went down, her body threading through spruce
boughs like a breeze, arms still reaching up. She landed on her feet, but her body kept going down while her knee came up and split her chin, knocking a new front tooth sideways. She still clutched the broken branch as thick as her thumb. Doc Severson closed the gash in her chin with eight stitches, “one for each year,” he said, tying the last knot. He pushed the tooth back into position, but it would never again be straight.
“ You’re lucky to be alive,” the nurse said, taping a gauze over Marie’s stitches.
“ You’re lucky you didn’t break your damn fool neck,” her father said, driving her home from the hospital. “Ain’t got the sense god gave a crowbar,” he mumbled to himself.
“ You’d of thought she learnt her lesson,” Marie’s mom said, standing next to Grandpa in the spruce’s shade, following her father’s gaze upward. She spotted her daughter’s red sneakers, saw her arms and legs coiled around a section of trunk skinny as the girl’s forearm.
“ Nope. That girl leans into fear. Something scares her, she does it more. I never saw the beat of it, a girl going up a tree like that.” Marie released one arm from the trunk and fingered the bandage on her chin. She wondered why Mom had white-lied to her that morning about the food in the cellar.
Last summer Mom had explained, “ You tell a white lie to not hurt someone’s feelings.” This was after Mom had told lady next door that the homemade rhubarb jam she’d delivered the day before was “delicious, just delicious!” Marie thought that the neighbor might have forgotten to add sugar.
“ But why is it a white lie?” Marie asked.

“Because white means good,” her mother had answered, folding her lips between her teeth.
Before she fell out of the tree that morning Marie had asked, “Why are we taking all this food to the cellar?”
“ Just to keep a little extra on hand,” Mom said, her lips taut.
Marie helped carry cans of Spam, gallon Root Beer jugs filled with water, boxes of soap, towels, flashlights, batteries, and candles to the shelves that lined the limestone walls of the cellar. A Coleman lantern and army blankets were moved from attic to cellar. Jars of peaches Mom canned last summer were already on the top shelf in front of Dad’s shotgun. Marie wasn’t supposed to know it was there.
Skippy jars were filled with sugar. Jam jars were for navy beans. Sanilac went into the honey jars. Sanilac was powdered milk. Marie called it blue milk. It was the same color as the spot on her wrists where she could see her veins. Marie told her best friend K.J. that blue milk tasted like baby spit-up. They drank it all summer that year.
K.J. drank real milk. This worried Marie. Something called strontium-90 was falling out of the sky. Marie knew the strontium-90 got into the sky because of A-Bombs. Then it got on the grass. Then it got into the cows who ate the grass. Then it got in the milk. Then it got in people who drank real milk and made them sick. Even so, she liked watching A-bombs on TV, their clouds so white then black as they rose like geniis into the sky.
“ Mom, what is ‘stockpiling?’” she’d asked that morning, trying to sound casual as her mother filled another honey jar with Sanilac and handed it to Marie to screw on the lid. In Minnesota, kids knew not to ask about the things grownups didn’t want to tell them. Marie hoped her mother wouldn’t get mad.
“ Where on earth did you learn a word like ‘stockpiling?’”
“ Current Events,” Marie said, “When they talk about Russia and Cuba on the news, they say, stockpiling. And K.J.’s dad says they’re stockpiling their bomb shelter in case of the real thing,” Marie added, pushing the words out as fast as she could before she lost the courage to find out what was going on.
Marie wasn’t sure what the real thing was, but a few nights ago during the news Dad said, “this could be the real thing,” and Mom said, “little pitchers,” to make Dad stop talking in front of Marie.
Whatever it was, Marie knew the real thing was bad.
“Stockpiling means saving things to use them later,” Mom said. “We just have some extra food, and the cellar is the best place to store it,” she finished, pressing her mouth into a flat line that told Marie the conversation was over. And that Mom was white lying to her.

Marie followed her mother down the steps carrying a jar of Sanilac. She strummed the soft, round ridges of the honey jar’s oval shoulders with her thumb, and as her feet landed on the cellar’s cement floor, the jar slid from her hands. Glass and white powder exploded at her feet.
She bent to pick up the broken glass, but Mom cupped Marie’s chin and stood her up. “You shouldn’t have to do this,” she said. “Go outside.” Mom’s voice sounded funny to Marie, but she knew not to ask any more questions.
Her feet felt like bricks as she went up the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door. She didn’t like the cellar.
Sacks of forgotten toys and stacks of National Geographics sat on the laps of broken chairs that leaned against boxes of mismatched dishes. Parts and pieces of old appliances moldered in corners gathering cobwebs and shadows. Things that went to the cellar never came back out.
Marie wandered to the end of the yard and began to climb her tree. Its branches were as familiar to her as her mother’s arms. The higher she climbed, the lighter she felt. Near the top a branch broke, and she dropped to the ground.
M-I-SS-I-SS-I-PP-I, Marie and K.J. chanted as they skipped hand-in-hand to school, their identical Buster Brown saddle shoes tapping the sidewalk. In Geography they were studying the Mississippi River, how it started right here in Minnesota and how you could jump over it up at Lake Itaska. Marie liked how her tongue and lips bounced on the I’s, and S’s and P’s. M-I-SS-I-SS-IPP- I.
The girls stopped at the corner of the school-yard and clambered onto their lucky stump, the remains of an ancient oak that five 8-year old girls could play jacks on. Every day K.J. and Marie stopped here before they parted for their different classrooms, promising to meet at the end of day, “cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye.”
“ Don’t forget, there’s that Civil test today so we can’t meet,” K.J. said, turning Marie around to retie the sash on her green plaid dress.
“ Uh-huh,” Marie said, thumbing the pink knurl at the base of her chin. This was her best scar yet. Doc Severson took the stitches out yesterday after school, and she was composing her story for show and tell. She’d forgotten about the test.
Tests made Marie’s tummy feel like it was full of swallowed gum, even spelling tests, which she always got a hundred on, except with points off for poor penmanship. Marie hoped it wasn’t the kind
of test that had little dots to fill in with a number two lead pencil. It was hard to make sure that the dots you filled in were on the same line as the question, and she worried when her pencil went outside the circles.
The tardy bell rang and K.J. ran to her door. She didn’t hear Marie ask, “Why does the test meant we can’t meet after school?”
After they recited the Pledge of Allegiance, Marie’s teacher Miss Rademacher said, “Pupils, because of Civil Defense test, we don’t have time for show and tell. We’ll go right to Current Events. Now, who knows the name of the Black Cloud hanging over America?”
Marie looked out the window. The October sky was clear, not a black cloud in sight. Stevie Olsen blurted, “ Communism!” His desk was in front of Marie’s. He never waited to be called on.
“ Yes, Communism,” said Miss Rademacher, spitting out the word as if it were a spider. Pressing her pudgy hands into her desk, she leaned toward the class and continued, “The Godless Russians want to ruin Our American Way Of Life. They want to Control Our Minds, and Take Away Our Liberty.”
Miss Rademacher spoke in capital letters to make sure her third graders remained Loyal and Patriotic Americans. Marie was impressed by the tears pooling in her teacher’s lower eyelids. The only grown-up she’d ever seen cry was I Love Lucy. Miss Rademacher wasn’t trying to be funny, though.
Marie returned her gaze outside to watch a jet’s foamy stream inch across the window. She was disappointed that they didn’t get to have show and tell. If they had show and tell, she could tell Mrs. Rademacher that they didn’t have to be worried about the goddamn Ruskies, which is what Dad called them when Mom wasn’t around.
He’d taken Marie to visit the Nike missile silo south of town the day after she broke the honey jar and fell out of the tree. “Don’t tell your mother,” he said, winking. “She’s worried enough as it is. Just say we went for a Sunday drive.”
Marie didn’t ask why Mom was worried. And she didn’t tell.
The missile silo was a concrete blister surrounded by a chain-link fence in the middle of a cornfield. It was guarded by a kid in an army uniform. The corn had been picked, but the stalks wouldn’t be plowed under until after pheasant season. They were taller than her dad.
“ See, kiddo, you don’t have to worry about them A-Bombs. We’ve got protection right here,” Dad said.
The soldier said, “That looks like a bad boo-boo on your chin.”
Marie ignored the baby talk and asked, “How many cornfields have A-bombs in them?”
“ Not many. That’s why we’re lucky to have this here one,” the boy said. “But it’s not a A-bomb, it’s a anti-missile-missile. This Nike’ll shoot down a Ruskie A-bomb before it gets anywheres near > Minneapolis.”
Marie was disappointed that they didn’t have an A-bomb, but she liked saying anti-missile-missile. All the way home in the back seat of Dad’s green Studebaker she chanted, “anti-missile-missile, antimissile- missile-missile, anti-missile-missile- > missile-missile,” trying to keep track on her fingers which would blow up the Russian bomb, and which would blow itself up.
“ Pipe down,” her father barked. Marie switched to “M-I-S-S-I-L-E!” but just inside her head.
Marie was watching the jet trail fade when the red dinner-plate sized fire alarm in front of the classroom clanged to life. Marie felt her tummy jump like it did in the back seat of the Studebaker when it dipped down a hill she didn’t see.
Miss Rademacher took a deep breath and yelled over the noise, “Get ready for the Civil Defense Test!”
How can there be a test in a fire drill, Marie wondered, but she didn’t ask. The class lined up two-by-two, alphabetical order just like they did for every fire drill. Marie was glad she wasn’t an A. Valerie Aldrich had to hold the door until everyone filed out. Val might burn up if it was a real fire.
Timmy Jancowitz was next to Marie, matching her steps as they marched down the hall and out the door. He lived on a farm, and she liked his milky sweet smell. She hoped Timmy didn’t get strontium-90 on him when he milked the cows.
The bell rang and rang as teachers waved their arms and shouted instructions. Children moved in waves toward the corners of the school yard, where they broke ranks. The farm kids ran to the buses, and the town kids ran home.
What about the test, Marie wanted to demand, but Miss Rademacher was on her way to the teacher’s parking lot. Marie ran to the corner and scrambled onto the stump. There was no sign of K.J.
What was she supposed to do? Shame inch-wormed into her throat as she spun around trying to think. The fire bell’s jangle crashed into a new sound, the wail of the town siren. The town siren sounded for two reasons, a fire, or a tornado. Even in October you didn’t wait to see if there was a tornado ready to dance out of the yellow-gray clouds, you just “got yourself the hell into the cellar,” according to Marie’s Dad.
Marie leapt off the stump and ran.
She ran across the street, didn’t look right, didn’t look left. She ran on the sidewalk toward home, step on a crack, break your mother’s back, she didn’t care. She ran so hard that the sash of her dress untied itself, and her socks
bunched into her shoes. She ran chanting, “M-I-S-S-I-L-E,” a letter for each time a saddle shoe smacked the ground. She ran up the steps and banged through the front door, sirens following her into the empty kitchen. Maybe Mom and Dad are already in the cellar, she thought, knowing that they wouldn’t be.
She hadn’t been down there since the day she fell out of the tree. Her feet were heavy and slow on the steps. When she reached the bottom, she stopped on the spot where she’d dropped the jar of Sanilac. She was alone.
Marie wandered around the dim cellar, running her finger along the oak shelves, their edges rubbed round from generations of homegrown canned foods sliding on in August and off in February. Dust dulled the lids of the Skippy jars. Marie wrote her name, one letter per lid. “ M-a-r-i-e,” she said out loud, her voice pinched with the ache of not crying. She stood on her tiptoes and reached behind the peach jars to touch the cool velvet barrels of the shotgun.
Sirens trickled down the stairs. Maybe it’s the real thing, Marie thought, understanding at last that the real thing was the A-bomb, and that the A-bomb was a hundred times worse than a hundred tornados. Last week during morning milk break she’d wondered what it would be like ride up the mushroom cloud like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.
“ You’d burn up, stupid,” Stevie Olsen scoffed.
“ Prove it,” she demanded. The next day he did. He showed her a book with pictures of a burned up Japanese city.
“ See,” he gloated, “that person burned up so fast that his shadow is still on the wall.”
It was true. A running person’s shadow remained in the brick. Like Peter Pan, she’d thought.
Marie studied the shadows glued in the cellar’s corners. It was just stuff - old stuff, and dust, and fingers of light from the window well where salamanders lived. She counted thirty-seven jars of Sanilac lined up like soldiers under the peaches, next to the beans. They were drinking real milk again. The TV still showed pictures of bombs going off, but the governor said that milk was safe.
The sirens stopped. Marie waited and waited. Finally she crept up the stairs, through the sunlit kitchen, and out the back door.
“ I knew right where to look when she didn’t come over,” Grandpa said to Marie’s mom, who stood with him under the tree.
Marie felt dumb. She remembered that Mom and Dad had to take the Civil test at their work. At breakfast Mom had said that Marie was supposed to go to Grandpa’s house after school. But it wasn’t after school, it was still morning when the alarms rang, and there was still the test to take, but everyone left school before the test.
That was the test, Marie understood. Grandpa picked up the socks and saddle shoes she’d kicked off before she swung herself onto the bottom limb of her tree. He gazed up through the branches, and waited.
Marie wasn’t at the top of the tree. She was too big for the soft green branches that could break in her hand. She remembered how the lower boughs slowed her fall. Mom had put Merthiolate on the long scrapes that striped her legs and arms, blowing the sting away as Marie explained how the tree tried to help her.
Now she straddled a broad limb halfway up. On her lower branch, she could not see the school yard where a few brown leaves still clung to the sugar maples. She couldn’t see Grandpa’s red roof, nor the edge of town where cornfields hid missile silos.
It was almost pheasant season. Dad would take the shotgun and go hunting, and they would eat pheasant, careful not to bite down on buckshot. Then it would be Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then New Year’s, then her birthday.

In the spring Mom would return the lantern and blankets to the attic and take the stockpiled food to the pantry. Dad would fry the Spam on Saturday mornings and Marie would help him eat it. They would pour the saved water down the drain, and Mom would dump the Sanilac into the garden to fertilize her tomatoes. Later, Marie would find her mother in the cellar standing over a box of broken glass smashing the root beer jugs, Skippy and honey jars with a ballpeen hammer.
But Marie wasn’t thinking about what might happen next. She leaned into the trunk, tipped her face to the sun and stretched her arms wide. The loose sash of her dress streamed as a sudden gust curled through the branches, but she was safe. She gazed down at her grandfather who would catch her waist when she swung off the bottom limb. She was glad she was not in the cellar with its shelves and shadows. She was glad she was not drinking blue milk, but wishing for honey.