Radiant (or the Effects of Three Mile Island)

The glow starts at my hips where the shapewear compresses the dips into something smooth. The fabric is tight around my diaphragm. The longer I hold in my gut, the more the light obscures my body.

My bridesmaids do not notice or at least pretend not to. They admire my squeezed form.

“You’re going to look radiant.”

Three Mile Island melted down on March 28th, 1979. Radiation leaked into the dark morning while Pennsylvanians slept. Scientists scrambled.

My bridesmaids gather the wedding dress on the floor and open it up for me.

“Step in.”

The dress is what the woman at the store called a trumpet silhouette. It’s tight around the hips and waist and flares out at the bottom. I got it because it was my soon-to-be mother-in-law’s favorite; she paid since my fiancé and I are too young to have real money.

In the shop, my glow was faint, but she loved it and bought it—threatened to wear it to the wedding if I didn’t.

I balance my hands on the shoulders of my bridesmaids and step in. The glow tingles at my ankles where the dress sits in a bunch.

Grandma’s marriage melted down on March 28th, 1979. That morning, Grandma watched the news instead of making breakfast. Mom, just a toddler then, played dolls on the rug. The little family lived in Harrisburg, miles away from the disaster. Grandma always knew something bad would come of the power plant.

My grandfather yelled for Grandma when his eggs and toast and sausage and orange and coffee weren’t on the kitchen table. She said that Three Mile Island melted down. He said that that didn’t mean he should starve. They argued back and forth until his boss called him to tell him not to come in. He grumbled and went back to bed.

Together, my three bridesmaids, draped in their light blue dresses, look like a demented Greek chorus.

“Up! Up! Up!” They chant while they yank the dress up and over my hips. “Positively radiant, Radiant, RADIANT!”

When I slip my arms through the sleeves and the dress hangs loose, I can no longer see my hips in the mirror. The glow has cut through the lace, and my legs and torso are separated by an oval of light.

Soon after the meltdown, the governor recommended an evacuation of those closest to the sight—especially women and children.

Grandma wasted little time after the words left his mouth. She took the bag she’d packed months ago out from behind the washing machine and balanced Mom on her hip.

She took the money and the car and drove northwest to live in her sister’s back bedroom. My grandfather snoozed and woke up to a life that suited him better.

When Grandma spoke of her marriage and the flight from Three Mile Island, her mouth would light up white, and I’d lose sight of her lips.

“Let me zip her up!”

”I want to!”

“I’m the maid of honor!”

Eventually, one of the three wins the fight, and the zipper closes along my back. When I look over my shoulder, the glow has extended up my spine.

I try to think of my groom, my man, my love to dim it. This does not work, and the glow becomes so intense that I must face front.
My bridesmaids say nothing about my lack of hips and ankles and spine. Perhaps they can’t see it, or perhaps they know it was inevitable.

Decades removed from Three Mile Island, scientists declared that the radiation had minimal effects on the people nearest to the meltdown. In the groups they surveyed, there were no significant cases of radiation poisoning or cancer.

Harrisburg rejoiced, but far northwest of the Susquehanna River, Grandma, Mom, and I glowed.

Fully in the dress that may be a size too small, the glow spreads faster now. The light butterflies out of my spine onto my ribcage and thrusts down my thighs.

A floor above me, the doors to the chapel swing open, and I can hear the dense thuds of loafers and sharp snaps of heels on the floor. The organist strikes up a romantic tune.

“It’s almost time!”

“It’s almost time!”

“It’s almost time!”

I saw the glow for the first time in Mom when I was three. She and my father argued about something I couldn’t understand, in a tone I couldn’t hear. My father won. He gave her a smug look and a kiss on the cheek. The mark of his lips burned out of the side of her face.

I toddled to where Mom sat, resuming her laundry folding and crying silently, and reached out to touch her skin. When I felt nothing, I recoiled. I don’t know what I expected though, for even then, I must’ve known that you can’t touch light.

While my father lived with us, we didn’t talk about how every time he kissed her, she’d be left with a lip-shaped hole glowing in her cheek or where her mouth should be. Eventually, her skin would grow back, and things would be normal until they weren’t.

Only after he left us years later did I ask.

She said the stink of Three Mile Island would follow us for the rest of our lives.

My groom is either in his separate room in this little church or at the altar already. He’s never done much to upset me. My bridesmaids regard him as a perfect gentleman and want to know where they could snatch up a man like that. He’s the best, and we’re the best together.

Still, my dressing room gets brighter and brighter.

I met my grandfather in death because of a technicality. He and Grandma never divorced; they just never sought each other out after she and Mom fled. When he fell dead in the cereal aisle, someone identified Grandma as his wife and tracked her down. She had his body shipped to us. When I asked why, Grandma said it was complicated and patted my head.

At the graveside service, Mom and I wore black. Grandma glowed full white even though I’d seen her in a black sweater and black slacks that morning. I was still young enough to pull at Mom’s sleeve and question it, but I didn’t. The glow wasn’t something we three spoke of.

When Grandma died, she was laid to rest in the plot beside him. When they lowered her into the ground, I could see the residual light peeking out of the closed casket. Somedays when I visit her grave, if it’s overcast enough or darkening into evening, I can see that the grass above her skeleton glows.

My feet disappear into the glow when I put on shoes that are too high and too pointy and too painful. My three bridesmaids agree that my odd body shape is balanced out by the added inches, so at least there’s that.

There is a rumbling upstairs.

When Mom called my father to argue about child support, she would send me to my room. The distance didn’t do much because I could hear every yell about money for afterschool activities and Christmas presents and the SATs.

If my curtains were open, I’d have to draw them shut during these fights. Mom’s light blazed through the kitchen window, up the side of the house, and into my room overhead.  It was too brilliant and clear, even in the most blazing afternoon sun.

The more I think about it, the more everything he’s ever done upsets me.

Why am I the one who cooks and cleans and gardens? Why is he the one with the lawnmower and the toolbox?

Why doesn’t he do laundry? Why don’t I kill the spiders?

Why am I going to sign away my last name?

“What a glowing bride!”

Mom was almost successful in her quest to keep me away from all men. The prospect of losing myself even for a moment to their touch and manipulation kept me from dating and dances and clubs and parties.

Two years ago, my coworkers were successful in getting me to a happy hour. There, a stranger palmed my ass. His glowing handprint was left on my jeans all night.

The man behind the bar chewed him out and slid me a free drink and a napkin with his phone number. My groom still fancies himself as my knight in shining armor.

I am just a head now. There is a glowing oval where my body should stand in its expensive wedding dress. My bridesmaids hover the veil above my hair, and I imagine that once they cinch it into place, I’ll blow.

Someday, my groom and I will visit Three Mile Island, probably because he insisted on a field trip to better understand where my family came from. We’ll push the kids along on some guided tour, and he’ll nod along with everything our guide, who will be a man, says. Our kids, the two or three or seven or ten or twenty of them, will listen to their father translate the words into child speak.

“We’re all very lucky that no one ended up hurt,” he will say.

Even my little girls will nod, too young to understand their bright futures.

Maybe it is best if I just blow our town off the map.

The effects of radiation are hereditary, Like grandmother, like mother, like me.

There is no explosion when the glow crawls up my cheeks and rips down my forehead. My eyes burn up into the white light, and I can’t see.

There is a knock at the door, and Mom calls in that it’s time for the wedding party to assemble.

When someone opens the door, a wedding march leaks in, and Mom doesn’t say a thing even though I know she sees me.

Emmy Ritchey is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is an MFA student at Hollins University and resides in Roanoke, Virginia. Her work has appeared in Dead Skunk. You can follow Emmy on Twitter @emmy_ritchey.