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A ring-billed gull flies over us, then another. I sit up and carefully take out a pouch from my pocket, untying the leather thong that has kept the delicate contents safe. Brooke

THE CLAN OF sits up and leans forward. I shake petals into his hands then into my own. Together we sprinkle marigold petals into Great Salt Lake.

ONE-BREASTED ~y basin of tears. WOMEN

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E p i l o g u e

I belong to a Clan of One-Breasted Women. My mother, my grandmothers, and six aunts have all had mastectomies. Seven are dead. The two who survive have just completed rounds of chemotherapy and radiation.

I've had my own problems: two biopsies for breast cancer and a small tumor between my ribs diagnosed as a "border- line malignancy."

This is my family history. Most statistics tell us breast cancer is genetic, hereditary,

with rising percentages attached to fatty diets, childlessness, or becoming pregnant after thirty. What they don't say is living in Utah may be the greatest hazard of dl.

We are a Mormon family with roots in Utah since 1847. The "word of wisdom" in my family aligned us with good foods-no coffee, no tea, tobacco, or alcohol. For the most part, our women were finished having their babies by the

- - - - - - -- - - -

time they were thirty. And only one faced breast cancer had w permeated my being that I could not venture south prior to 1960. Traditionally, ri a group of people, Mormons without seeing it again, on the horizon, illuminating buttes have a low rate of cancer.

Is Our a cultural anomaly? The truth is, we didnYt "you did see it," he said. think about it- Those who did, usually the men, simply said, "Saw what?" ''bad genes." The women's attitude was stoic. cancer was "The bomb. The cloud. We were driving home from P" of life. On F e b r u q 16, 1971, the eve of my motherss Riverside, California. You were sitting on Diane's lap. She

9 I accidently picked UP the telephone a d overheard was pregnant. In fact, I remember the day, September 7, her ask my grandmother what she could expect. 1957. W e had just gotten out of the Service. We were

Dime, it is one of the most spiritual experiences you will driving north, part Las Vegas. It WS an hour or so before ever encounter." dawn, when this explosion went off. We not only heard it,

I quietly put down the receiver. but felt it. I thought the oil tanker in front of us had b b w n Two days later, my father took my brothers me to up. We pulled over and suddenly, rising from the desert

the hospital to visit her. She met us in the lobby in a floor, we saw it, clearly, this golden-stemmed cloud, the wheelchair. No bandages were visible. I'll never forget her radiance, the way she held herself in a purple velvet robe, and how she gathered us around her.

1 am fine. I want you to know I felt the arms I stared at my father. of God around me." "1 thought you knew that," he said. "It was a ~Ommon

We believed her. My father cried. Our mother, his wife, occurrence in the fifties." was thirty-eight years old. lt was at this moment that I realized the deceit I had been

A little over a year after Mother's death, ~~d I were living under. children growing UP in the American South- having dinner together. He had just returned from st. west, drinking contaminated milk from contaminated Cows, George, where the Tempest Company was completing the even from the contaminated breasts of their mothers, my gas lines that would service southern Utah. He spoke of his mother-members, years later, of the Clan of One-Breasted love for the COunQ, the sandstoned landscape, bare-boned and beautiful. He had just finished hiking the ~ ~ l ~ b trail in ~t is a well-known story in the Desert West, "The Day Zion National Park- We got caught up in reminiscing, we Bombed utah," or more accurately, the Years we re~dling with fondness our walk up Angel's Landing on his bombed ut&: above gound atomic testing in Nevada took fiftieth birthday and the years our family had vacationed place from January 27,1951 through July 11,1962 Not Only

were the winds blowing north covering "low-use segments Over dessert, 1 shared a recurring dream of mine. 1 told of the population" with fallout and leaving sheep dead in father that for years, long I could remember, 1 saw their tracks, but the climate was right. The United States Of

this flash of light in the night in the desert-&at this image the 1g.p was red, white, and blue. The Korean War was

raging- McCarthyism rampant. Ike was it, and the cold in any way so this wouldn't happen again to m y of the war was hot- If you were against nuclear testing, you were generations coming up after us . . I am happy to be here for a communist regime. &is day to bear testimony of this."

Much h a been written about this "American nuclear God-fearing people. This is just one stor)' in an mtho log~ agedy." Public health secondary to national security. of thousands. The Atomic Energy Commissioner, Thomas Murray, mid, O n May 10, 1984, Judge Bruce S. Jenkins handed down Gentlemen, we must not let anything interfere this his opinion. Ten of the plaintiffs were awarded d a g e s . It

series of tests, nothing." was the first time a federal court had determined that ~~uclear Again and again, the American public was told by its tests had been the cause of cancers. For the remaining four-

government, in spite of burns, blisters, and nausea, has teen test cases, the proof of causation was not sufficient. In been found that the tests may be conducted with adequate spite of the split decision, it was considered a k d m a r k assurance of safety under conditions prevailing at the bomb- ruling. It was not to remain so for long- ing mervations." Assuaging public fears was simply a mat- In April 1987, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals over- ter of public relations. "Your best action," an Atomic turned Judge Jenkins's ruling on the ground that the United Energy Commission booklet read, "is not to be worried states was protected from suit by the legal doctrine of about fallout-" A news release typical of the times stated, sovereign immunity, a centuries-old idea from Englmd in "We fmd no b As for concluding that h- to my individ- the days of absolute monarchs.

has resulted from radioactive fallout." In January 1988, the Supreme Court refused to review On August 30, 1979, during Jimmy Carter's presidency, the Appeals Court decision. To our court System it does not

a suit was filed, Irene Allen V. The United srotes ofAmerica- matter whether the United States government was irrespon- Mrs. Allen's Case was the first on an alphabetical list of sible, whether it lied to its citizens, or even that citizens died m e n ~ - f ~ u r test representative of nearly melve bun- from the fallout of nuclear testing. What matters is that our dred P1intifh seeking compensation from the United states gove-ent is immune: "The King can do no wrong-" government for cancers caused by nuclear testing in Nevada. I~ Mormon culmre, authority is respected, obedience is

Irene Allen lived in Hurricane, Utah. She was the mother revered, independent thinking is not. I was taught as a of five children and had been widowed mice. Her fint young girl not to "make waves" or "rock the boat-" husband, with their oldest boys, had watched the tests ~~~t let it go," Mother would say. yo^.^ know how You from the roof of the local high school. He died of leukemia feel, that's what counts." in 1956- Her second husband died of pancreatic cancer in For many years, I have done just that-listened, obsemed,

and quietly formed my own opinions, in a culture that In a town meeting conducted by ~ t & senator omin rUely asks questions because it has 111 the answers. But one

Hatch, shortly before the suit was filed, Mrs. Allen "1 by one, I have watched the women in my fmily die corn- - not blaming the government, I want you to know that, man, heroic diaths. W e sat in waiting rooms hoping for Senator Hatch. But 1 thought if my testimony could help good news, but always receiving the bad. I cared for them,

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$ I rally- And each *time there was another nuclear test, ravens The residents finally awoke to these strange apparitions. i, f

): ' watched the desert heave. Stretch marks appeared. The land some simply stared. Others called authorities, and in time,

I was losing its muscle. the women arere apprehended by wary soldiers dressed in 0 1 The women couldn't bear it any longer. They were desert fatigues. They were taken to a white, square building p i t mothers. They had suffered labor pains but always under the on the other edge of Mercury. When asked who they were

, su promix of birth. The red hot pains beneath the desert and why they were there, the women replied, "We are promised death only, as each bomb became a stillborn. A mothers and we have come to reclaim the desert for our

:i contract had been made and broken between human beings children." li, g 1 and the land. A new contract was being drawn by the The soldiers arrested them. AS the ten women were blind-

women, who understood the fate of the earth as their own. folded and handcuffed, they began singing: LJnder the cover of darkness, ten women slipped under

a barbed-wire fence and entered the cnnt>minat~A rnl ln-~ YOU can 't forbid us everything . .

- / - YOU can t jorora us ro r n l n ~ - They ere trespassing. They walked toward the town of

YOU can'tforbid our tears t o j o w Mercury, in moonlight, taking their cues from coyote, kit A n d can't stop the songs that w e sing. fox, antelope squirrel, and quail. They moved quietly deliberately through the maze of Joshua trees. When a hint The women continued to sing louder and louder, until they

of daylight appeared they rested, drinking tea and sharing heard the voices of their sisters moving across the mesa: ., their rations of food. The women closed thiir eyes. The time ~h ne nah, nah had come to protest with the heart, that to deny one's nin nah nah-

1 genealogy with the earth was to commit treason against ~h ne nah, nah

1 one's soul. nin nah nah-

At dawn, the women draped themselves in mylar, wrap- Nyaga mutz i

ping long streamers of silver plastic around their arms to oh ne nay-

blow in the breeze. They wore clear masks, that became the Nyaga mutz i oh ne nay- faces of humanity. And when they arrived at the edge of

Mercury, they carried a11 the butterflies of a summer day in "call for one soldier said. I 6 L

their wombs. They paused to allow their courage to settle. "we have," interrupted one woman, we have-md You i

The town that forbids pregnant women and children to have no idea of our numbers." enter because of radiation risks was asleep. The women

moved through the streets as winged messengers, twirling 1 i

around each other in slow motion, peeking inside homes and j 1 crossed the line at the Nevada Test Site and was watching the easy sleep of men and women. They were I arrested with nine other ~ t a h n s for trespassing on military

i astonished by such stillness and periodically would utter a 1 lands. They are still conducting nuclear tests in the desert- shrill note or low cry just to verify life.

, ours was an act of civil disobedience. But as I walked

Q; R e f u g e

toward the town of Mercurv. it wm mnrp than 3 oprt~lre nf

As one officer cinched the handcuffs around my wrists, another frisked my body. She found a pen and a pad of paper tucked inside my left boot.

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ACICNOW LEDGEMENTS "And these?" she asked sternly. 4 4

Weapons," I replied. Our eyes met. I smiled. She pulled the leg of my trousers

back over my boot. 6 4 Step forward, please," she said as she took my arm. We were booked under an afternoon sun and bused to

f f f f f f f f f Tonopah, Nevada. It was a two-hour ride. This was familiar

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like white flames in the Moiave. And I recalled a full moon

V J - - - -- stranded in the desert with no way to get home. What they didn't realize was that we were home. soul-centered and I

First and foremost, I must honor my father, John Henry Tempest, 111. He is a proud and private man. I thank him for understanding and respecting my desire to tell this story. He read each draft, edited and discussed the scaffolding of ideas built around a tender, and often-times painful, chronology. I have relied on his courage and vulnerability in trying to tell the truth. Refirge has been a collabora- tive project including my brothers and sister-in-law: Stephen Dixon Tempest, Daniel Dixon Tempest, and William Henry Tempest, each one for different reasons; Steve for his gravity, Dan for his percep- tions, and Hank for feeling it all; my sister-in-law, Ann Peterson Tempest, invited me to be at the birth of their third daughter, Diane Kathryn Tempest, on January 27. 1990. Her gift was my healing. She intuitively knew I needed to see life coming in.

I thank my nieces, Callie and Sara, for their sweet companionship. My grandfathers, Jack Tempest and Sanky Dixon quietly hold

our family together. Both men in their mid-eighties continue to teach us about adaptability. For their wisdom, for their joy, I am indebted.