Lighting Up in the Bomb Shelter by Celia Lawren

Lighting Up in the Bomb Shelter

by Celia Lawren

We didn’t care that missiles in Cuba were aimed at our homes.  We were

twelve-year-old girls running barefoot through wet summer grass in the dark,

headed for a slumber party in the bomb shelter.

Cinder block cavern carved into basement corner, walls lit up in buttercup yellow―

a curious Cold War feng shui conceived for a home economics project by my sister,

It was packed with Free World amenities:  

central air and heat, running water and a full-service bathroom.

Cans of pineapple, peas and tuna gleamed under fluorescent lights

next to gauze bandages, water jugs, stacks of dusty army blankets.

Perched atop bunk beds, we painted our toes Red Hot Red 

curled each other’s hair around pink sponge rollers,

licking catsup and potato chip salt from our fingers.  

We giggled nervously as I lit one of Mama’s menthol cigarettes stolen from the pantry.

Sucking ferociously on each stick, we mimicked women in magazines and movies.

It wasn’t until daylight that we noticed

the singed sheets and hastily rubbed catsup into the burns.  

When the girls left, Mama told me she smelled smoke the night before.  

I remembered the floor vents above us – one next to her La-Z-Boy.

I dreaded what was coming—could see Mama’s jaw tense,

feel the air brush my skin before the smack sounded, before the capillaries

exploded in my cheek.  That thin bony hand holding

more terror than any warhead from Cuba.  But she didn’t hit me.  

Gathering sheets to the laundry room, we stood

side by side, scrubbing red stains in silence.

There are poems for every occasion, every breaking news report, every world event, every personal, life-changing moment. This poem is apropos for all of these. This poem was published in Issue 48.1 of The Journal, in 2012, and can be found in their archives.

You may not be old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis or the rush to have a bomb shelter. Maybe you never attended a slumber party or snuck menthol cigarettes. But you most likely had a moment that happened in silence, the moment when a parent (or both) realized you were at an age (it is a different age for all of us) when you had autonymy and had become a person out of their control. For some parents, it is a proud moment--their kid is growing up! For others, it's heartbreaking, the end of being needed. For most, there is probably a mix of emotions, especially if the occasion is marked not with a Bat Mitzvah, a Confirmation, a Quinciñera, a first menstrual period or a voice change, but with something a bit less joyous. Smoking. Drinking. Truancy. Shoplifting. You get the point.

I love all of the details in this poem, from running barefoot to menthol cigarettes, from the shelter's contents to the La-Z-Boy in the main floor of the house. But stanzas 2 and 4 are my favorites, the descriptions piled on top of one another into a visual that makes us feel as if we are there. They are also so of their time: cinder blocks painted buttercup yellow, a Home Ec project, Free World Amenities, Red Hot Red nail polish, and pink sponge rollers.

The story takes a turn from the whimsical as we find out the girls used catsup to contain burns in the sheets, something that seems in keeping with 12-year-olds and their ability to not always think things through clearly. The poem gets even darker when the speaker tells us

I dreaded what was coming—could see Mama’s jaw tense,

feel the air brush my skin before the smack sounded, before the capillaries

exploded in my cheek.

Although the speaker is not slapped by her mother, we know from the above that she has been hit by her before. So what has changed?

I believe it is that moment of realization in the mother--her daughter is now beyond her control. Maybe her mother realized the irony of using violence for something that happened in a bomb shelter, since a shelter signifies the world is ending. Maybe a bit of both. I like that the speaker does not tell us (how would she know?) so the poem does not either. We are left with a small mystery and all of those vivid representations of like in the 1960s (Oh, those curlers!).

I am almost done creating my new site, and will be switching over before the end of the month. My blog will transfer in its entirety. I hope to see you there!