My sisters giggled and chattered, gesturing with their arms, and my mother tossed her head back and laughed. They were recalling other fishing trips, other fish they had caught together; I was not a part of any of it. I could not even join in their conversation. I wanted my family to be proud of a fish I had caught. I dropped my hook back into the water and prayed I would catch a fish even bigger than Mabel’s.
We caught more than enough fish that afternoon, though Mabel still outdid me.
Sik-sik is the Inuit name for the Arctic ground squirrel, which is also referred to as a gopher.
As we walked back toward our tent, I trailed behind with my mother while my sisters ran ahead after a small sik-sik that had bravely popped its head up out of the tundra. A pair of ducks scattered into the air before them, and Mabel and Elizabeth fell to their knees, searching for eggs in the grass. My mother prodded me gently, so I handed her my string of fish and ran to join my sisters. We found four eggs, one for each of us children to have for supper along with the fish. At least I wasn’t going to starve. Between bannock, fish, and eggs, I could survive.
My father was waiting for us at the site of our new home. His face was red and sweaty from work. He was carving logs he had found adrift in the ocean, so that they would fit together into walls.
“Igloo,” explained Elizabeth, using the Inuktitut word for house and pointing to my father.
My brother played on the ground with a heap of small pieces of driftwood, pretending to build his own little house.
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My father had been raised by his grandfather in a log home. I knew that he had always wanted to build us one, but our nomadic lives had not been suited to it. Now that we were staying in Tuk, he could finally build a log cabin for us. Everyone else was excited about the house, but to me it was just one more thing that meant we weren’t going back to Banks Island.
After the fish were cleaned and cooked, my father came in to wash up for supper. As everyone began to eat, I decided it was time I brought up something that was bothering me greatly.
“You didn’t say grace,” I said to Father.
“We don’t say grace in this house,” he replied, reaching for a piece of fish.
“But you have to. I think we should read from the Bible too. Don’t you want your soul to be saved?”
He glared at me and brought a fist down on the table. “I have read the Bible. It was the only book I had when I left residential school, and I read it twice during my first year back out on the trapline. Just stories. That’s all I found in it, so you can leave that God business at the school. I do not want to hear about it before I eat.”
Inuktitut: the name commonly used to refer collectively to the different dialects spoken by Inuit peoples across the far north of Canada and Alaska and one of the official languages of both Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.
“But the nuns and the priests said you are going to Hell. You are all going to Hell, because you don’t know God!” I cried. “I don’t want you to go to Hell!”
My father ignored my pleas. He grabbed the platter of fish from the center of the table and heaped some onto his plate. My sisters look relieved, but I felt ill. My father had read the Bible. How could he not know better? Why would he want his family to spend eternity in damnation? And what of my little sisters and my brother? I said grace silently in my head six times, once for each of them and once for Olemaun, because Margaret knew about kneeling and bowing and praying, but Olemaun did not. I felt like a bad Christian and a bad daughter for not trying harder to convert them. I decided I would read my sisters one of the stories from my children’s Bible before bed to make up for it.
Despite my misery over the fate of my family’s souls, I devoured an entire fish and my egg. My mother and father couldn’t believe how much I ate. The pancakes I had eaten earlier that day had been far from enough to tide me over.
Later I was sorry that I hadn’t eaten a second fish. For the next two days, I was not offered a thing that I could stomach. They were trying to force me to eat the foods I used to. It didn’t seem fair. Olemaun couldn’t eat cabbage soup and Margaret couldn’t eat pipsi. Over and over, I tucked my head into a book and let my imagination release my hunger pains.
ON MY FIFTH MORNING at home, I sat at the table where my father liked to read, engrossed in one of my books and trying not to think of the breakfast I had not touched. The book was called Gulliver’s Travels and told the story of a man who traveled to faraway lands. One of the lands was filled with strange little people called Lilliputians, who imprisoned Gulliver—to them, he was a giant. I wondered if the Du-bil-ak, as my mother called him, felt like Gulliver among us. I also wondered what the little people would have done to me, if I had been stranded on their shores.
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I jumped when my mother placed a cup of tea in front of me. She gestured to the door of our tent, meaning that I should take it out to my father. I stood up too quickly, and the world tightened into a narrow tunnel and went black. When I awoke, my mother was standing over me, staring down. I rose to my feet as quickly as I was able, still feeling light-headed. My mother grabbed me by the arm and marched me out the door. My father asked her where she was taking me, but she did not answer. She was not going to argue with him about it.
I was thankful when I realized that we were headed to the Hudson’s Bay Company, though I felt so weak I wasn’t sure I could make it. Her decision came just in time. I was almost ready to give in and eat the strong-smelling, salty food that my family somehow enjoyed.
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My mother took me with her because she could not read and did not trust the clerk at the store. We walked up the steps of the white-painted wooden cabin and through the door. As we made our way to the counter, my mother still had a firm grip on my arm to steady me. She looked to me to point out what I wanted. I shrugged my shoulders. I hated the outsiders’ food almost as much as our own. She let out an impatient breath and began pointing to tins and cans on the shelf behind the man at the counter, picking out things like corned beef and canned beans. They were not the sorts of things they had fed at us at the school, and I was not sure I would have more luck eating them, but I had to get something into my stomach. My mother was not about to make the rest of the family live on bannock and fish on my account. I understood that, though I knew the outsiders’ food was also not the answer.
Just as she was pointing to some tinned peaches, something I could definitely eat, a deep, throaty cough startled us. The store was not well lit and our eyes had not fully adjusted from the glaring sun; we had not noticed anyone else in the store, besides the clerk. We turned toward the sound, which came from the back of the store.
“Du-bil-ak,” whispered my mother, when she saw the large, dark-skinned man standing in front of the bookcase. I could not take my eyes off the dark stranger as he fingered the books in the case, even as my mother dragged me toward the door, keeping us as far away from him as possible.
My mother nearly ran down the stairs of the building, her breath short and quick with terror. Why was the grizzly-like outsider still here? He should have sold his pelts, gathered his supplies, and moved on days before. Now I would have to eat the same food as my family or starve. No peaches.
Defeated, I struggled to keep up with my mother, my feet sore from wearing my kamik. When we arrived home I went inside the tent and gorged myself on muktuk, until I could not stuff in another rubbery bite.
“See? I told you, when she was hungry enough, she would eat,” my father said to my mother in Inuvialuktun on his way out the door to find out what was going on with the dark stranger. Somehow, I understood every word.
Chapter FOUR
WHEN I WOKE THE NEXT morning, I resolved to visit my friend Agnes. Except for the previous summer, when she was with her mother, we had not spent a day apart in two years. Now, between her mother’s rejection of me and my own mother’s fear of the Du-bil-ak, it seemed as if we would never s
ee each other again. After breakfast, I followed my father outside and stood quietly while he prepared his tools to chisel the logs.
“What is on your mind?” he asked me, seeing the determination on my face.
“I would like to go play with Agnes today,” I told him.
“Your mother wants you close to home, with the stranger around.”
“Do you think he is the devil?” I asked.
“No,” my father laughed, “I don’t think he’s the devil.”
“Where did he come from?”
“I’m not sure. Some people say he traveled here with one of the Klinkenbergs who stole a boat from the States, and others say he was a whaler but was left behind. I don’t think anyone really knows.”
“Why is he still here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there was trouble back where he came from.”
“No, why is he still in Tuk?” I asked. “If he has his supplies, why doesn’t he leave town, now that he has what he needs?”
“Maybe loneliness. When you spend a lot of time out hunting and checking the traplines by yourself, it can be very lonely. I imagine he just wants to be around people for a while.”
“So he’s here to be around us, even though no one wants him here?” I said.
“Yeah,” my father replied, dropping his eyes to the ground. “Even though no one wants him here. I’m guessing he’ll be gone soon. Don’t worry, Olemaun.”
“What if he never leaves? Will I have to go back to the school to be able to play with Agnes?”
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“No, but aren’t you scared to walk in town with that man around?”
I shook my head. “Not really. I saw a picture of Lena Horne when I was at the outsiders’ school, and she is dark like that.”
My father had a collection of Lena Horne’s albums that he played on a hand-cranked record player. She was his favorite singer. He looked amused, and I could tell he hadn’t known that she had dark skin like the trapper.
“I promise to be very careful,” I assured him.
“Go on,” he told me. “I will tell your mother.”
I kissed my father and ran toward town. Agnes would be so excited. We could go hunting for eggs. She was probably having the same problems eating that I was.
I was almost out of breath by the time I reached her door. I pounded on it with my fist and waited for an answer. I couldn’t wait to see Agnes’s face when she saw me standing there. After what seemed like ages, the door opened. Her mother was on the other side, with a very stern look on her pale face. She had always been friendly to me on Banks Island, but today she seemed angry. She turned and gestured over her shoulder, and Agnes appeared at her side.
But when I stepped in to talk to my friend, she moved back timidly and turned to her mother. Then she turned back to me.
“Would you like to go hunting for eggs?” I asked.
She stared at the toes of her kamik. “I am not allowed.”
I stared at her, trying to determine why her mother would not allow her to come with me. “If it’s because of the dark stranger,” I said at last, “we can play here. We don’t have to go out.”
“It’s not because of the stranger,” she said. “It’s because of you.”
Her words took the breath out of me. I groped to say something, but my thoughts and emotions were fast runners that I could not tame with words.
“My mother and father say I am an outsider now,” she whispered, glancing over her shoulder at her mother as she spoke the English words. “They do not want me playing with children like you—children from the school. They don’t want me speaking English, or praying, or doing anything like a white person.”
Agnes had gone to the school for much longer than I had, because her mother hadn’t been able to care for her. Yet I remembered Agnes speaking Inuvialuktun on rare occasions at the school, though it was forbidden. Agnes once confessed to me that she secretly gave the objects around her their Inuvialuktun names and that sometimes she would practice conversations in her head in our native tongue. Because of this she had not forgotten how to speak the language. Whereas I had been so eager to learn the new ways, I had not thought to hold on to the old ones.
Her mother spoke to her in a stern tone and I strained to figure out the meaning of her words.
“I’m sorry,” Agnes said, giving me a half-smile and blinking back tears as she closed the door.
I walked down to the point. It was the closest I could get to Banks Island without a boat. I didn’t want to go back to the tent, where I only disappointed my mother and could barely speak with my sisters. I didn’t want to tell my father that his daughter was not good enough to play with her own best friend. My tears fell into the ocean, and I wished my spirit was in those tears, because then I could follow the current back to a place where I belonged.
Gradually I became aware that I was not alone. Standing twenty feet behind me was the Du-bil-ak. I wanted to turn and run, but what if he ran after me? I stood my ground, trying to decide what to do, and then realized that he hadn’t even noticed I was there. His eyes were fixed on the horizon, as mine had been. I knew I should try to sneak away, but curiosity held me to the spot. His massive shoulders were slumped forward and his entire body breathed longing. I wiped my tears on the sleeve of my parka and straightened. He didn’t look so much like a devil at this distance. Some of the nuns at the school in Aklavik looked far scarier than he did, and in his expression I saw something I recognized: homesickness.
In that moment, he turned to look at me. I sucked in a quick, startled breath and stood frozen in my kamik. He looked at me and the corners of his mouth flinched as though he wanted to smile, but had forgotten how to do it.
Then he turned away and set off toward the village.
Chapter FIVE
IHAD A FITFUL SLEEP that night. It was the same bad dream over and over again, every time I closed my eyes. I dreamed that I was back at the outsiders’ school, locked inside the skirt of one of the nuns’ habits. The nun told me that she would let me out if I could remember my name and if my mother could recognize me. My parents and the others from the village had become very small. They pointed through the bars and laughed. Agnes knew where the key was to free me, but in the distance I could see her aboard the North Star, sailing away to Banks Island without me.
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It was late when my mother finally woke me; my sisters had already run off to play with their friends. My mother was tired of hearing them complain about being cooped up and had finally decided that there was no harm in letting them run loose. Above me, my brother was playing with a ball on my parents’ bed. I kneeled and began to say my prayers. My mother pulled me to my feet. I backed away from her, fighting down fury. How could she stop me from doing something so important? How could she condemn me to damnation along with the rest of my family?
But she seemed oblivious to my anger. The look on her face was eager, childlike. In her hand she held the book I had been reading. She tugged me by the arm, nodding for me to come. My prayers would have to wait.
I joined her at the table, where a cold piece of bannock was waiting for me. I fell upon it, ravenous.
My mother set the book in front of us and pointed at it. “Read,” she said in Inuvialuktun.
I swallowed the bannock in my mouth. “Gulliver’s Travels,” I said out loud.
“No,” she said in English, shaking her head. And then she repeated the word “read.” I wasn’t sure what she wanted of me, so I opened the book and began reading aloud.
“No,” she said again and pointed from the page to herself. “Me.”
My mother wanted me to teach her to read, but it wasn’t as simple as opening the book and doing it. She didn’t even know how to speak English. How could she expect to read it?
I thought for a moment while I chewed and swallowed another bite. Maybe if I taught her to write her name she would be satisfied. I found a small scrap of paper and a pencil and printed h
er name, which happened to be the same as that of my father’s favorite singer: Lena. Then I handed the paper to her and pointed for her to write below it. She shook her head like a shy student. I handed her the pencil and smiled to reassure her.
The ulu, a knife with a rocker-like blade, is traditionally used by Inuit women for tasks such as scraping hides, cutting hair, or preparing food.
The pencil was awkward in her hand. First she held it in her palm as if it were a rocker-like ulu knife, but she soon realized she could not write like that. Then she tried holding it as she would a sewing needle. She was very skilled with both of those instruments, but no one had ever taught her how to hold a pencil. She fumbled with it, and it fell to the floor. I picked it up and gave it to her again. She took it reluctantly, grasping it in her palm. I pulled it out of her hand and slipped it between her pointer and middle fingers and helped her to draw the first letter. Her expression brightened. I let go of her hand so that she could do it herself. She pressed too hard. The lead broke and the pencil went flying. I rose to retrieve it, but she crumpled and tore the paper in her hands and threw it down. I was silent. Why couldn’t she ask my father to teach her? He could explain to her in Inuvialuktun what she needed to do.
I didn’t want my mother to think I didn’t believe she was smart enough to learn. But she tossed Rosie’s book at me angrily. I had no way to tell her why I wasn’t giving her the magic secret it would take to read the book. When I didn’t say anything, she yelled at me.
I shut my ears to her until the world was silent, then pulled my kamik onto my tender feet.
A Stranger at Home Page 3
