Eleanor Swanson

“We sat at long tables side by side in a bigdusty room where we laughed and carriedon until they told us to pipe down and paint.The running joke was how we glowed,the handkerchiefs we sneezed into lightingup our purses when we opened them at night,our lips and nails, painted for our boyfriendsas a lark, simmering white as ash in a dark room."Would you die for science?" the reporter asked us,Edna and me, the main ones in the papers.Science? We mixed up glue, water and radiumpowder into a glowing greenish white paintand painted watch dials with a littlebrush, one number after another, takingone dial after another, all day long,from the racks sitting next to our chairs.After a few strokes, the brush lost its shape,and our bosses told us to point it withour lips. Was that science?I quit the watch factory to work in a bankand thought I'd gotten class, more money,a better life, until I lost a tooth in backand two in front and my jaw filled up with sores.We sued: Edna, Katherine, Quinta, Larice and me,but when we got to court, not one of uscould raise our arms to take the oath.My teeth were gone by then. "Pretty GraceFryer," they called me in the papers.All of us were dying.We heard the scientist in France, MarieCurie, could not believe "the mannerin which we worked" and how we tastedthat pretty paint a hundred times a day.Now, even our crumbling boneswill glow forever in the black earth.”