Annie Muktuk and Other Stories

by Norma Dunning

  “Tea!” I say one more time.

  The white lady sighs and goes into a long list, ending with a guy named “Earl Grey.”

  I can’t remember everything the lady has said and all I want is for Elipsee to have some tea.

  “We would each like some black tea. Is there really any other kind?” I grin up into those sea green eyes and understand why Elipsee thought she was Sedna.

  “Freakin’ Indians,” mutters the waitress. Elipsee and I grin at each other and I squeeze her hand under the table.

  “I don’t understand why ‘Sedna-Edna’ has that stuff on her nails,” whispers Elipsee. “Why do white women do that? What’s it for?”

  I was working so hard at trying to be a city guy, I was working so hard at impressing my girl from the settlement. I leaned back, looked at Elipsee and said, “Your anaanatsiaq has the blue beauty lines on her face—right? ‘Sedna-Edna’ puts it on her hands.”

  “Oohh,” nods Elipsee. “I think it looks stupid.” We both giggle, bringing our noses close to each other.

  The waitress brings us back little silver teapots with thick white china cups.

  “Here. Black tea because there isn’t any other kind.”

  She sounds tired and cranky. I smile and thank her knowing I now have to order our food. I am prepared this time. I am ready. I loudly order two plates of “Moons over my Hammy”—it sounded outdoorsy. Something that would impress Elipsee. We may be in the city but I know it is important to always remember your roots and to honour them.

  It’s the first time either of us has seen streetlights and roads that are black and smooth. Houses that look nice with giant trees in front of them, and beside them. We think we are in a faraway fairyland filled with palaces. Kings and Queens with gold crowns live in each house. We are foreigners in this cityscape.

  “Sedna-Edna” walks past us with a plate stacked with pancakes. Elipsee stares and turns her head to the man getting the plate put down in front of his face.

  “Why do white men eat Indian bannock, piled up on each other?” Elipsee looks at me.

  “They don’t know any better, Elipsee. We can’t try to figure everything out. Let’s enjoy our time here in this fancy place, alright?”

  Elipsee raises her eyebrows—a definite yes. I have impressed her. Taking her into this building called a restaurant. White people cook our food for us. A white waitress is our servant. This is one of our high times.

  Two plates are slid under our noses. “Moons over my Hammy” looks like dog barf between two slices of thick bread. Elipsee looks at the plate and her eyes ask a million questions.

  As I take my fork into my hand I say with as much gusto as possible, “Aqqaqpuq!” Thinking if we eat it really fast it won’t be as bad. We managed every morning to eat the stuff the Government School gave us—this should be easy.

  Elipsee explores the food on her plate with her fork. Lifting the bread, sifting through the hash browns, bringing everything to her nose. In the end her plate is not touched. “Sedna-Edna” shakes her head in disgust as she gathers one empty plate and one still full. She slaps a bill onto our table.

  As we leave the restaurant I feel angry with Elipsee. She didn’t enjoy this field trip detour. My special outing I had set up for us both. I wanted her to see the life of a city person and “Moons over my Hammy” just didn’t cut it for her.

  “Sorry, Jo.” Elipsee whispers into my right ear as we start to walk towards more castles with soft roads. “That food and that ‘Sedna-Edna’ woman—it was just all wrong. The spirits would be angry with us—we can’t do that ever again.”

  “Elipsee,” I moan. “I’m trying to show you a good time here in the big city. Look what you do. You act bad.”

  We are sixteen years old. We are having our first disagreement. We are in a foreign land and Elipsee won’t eat the food because some spirit might get mad at her.

  “I wanted you to try something different, somewhere different—the spirits aren’t here!”

  Elipsee Jonas turns to me with a look in her eye. Her dark pupils glitter like clear night stars.

  “Something different, somewhere different? I’ll give you “Moons over my Hammy” Josephee Smithers!”

  She takes my hand and marches me into the alley of the Denny’s Restaurant. In broad daylight she goes down onto her knees and undoes the belt to my grey woollen Government School uniform pants. She looks up into my eyes and she says, “Come on, Jo. Let’s go. Oldtime!”

  It is the first time those words become our personal mating call.

  We’ve set up our tent. A pop-open and up thing. Blue and brown with a zipper wrapping itself around the oval shape. My momma has given us dried caribou and biscuits for our first supper. We are like two kids playing house on the tundra. Elipsee is happy and we laugh easier than usual. It is as if we have travelled back in time and our spirits have shed the years of work and pain that is normal to any Northern life. We are the two Government School kids who have been sent home for the summer. We are a pair of lucky ones, we had a bit of a break—others did not.

  We went together to gather some rocks and have made our tiny fire pit. A stick with a pot of water is boiling over the embers. We have brought a container of our favourite tea—Red Rose.

  “Hey Elipsee, did I ever tell you I met Earl Grey?”

  “Hmph, Jo. What did he look like?”

  “Elipsee,” I giggle as I take out a packet of rolling papers, “He was a big man. Big white guy with yellow hair and green eyes. They say he came to Canada to work at a Denny’s restaurant.”

  Elipsee begins her big smile. The big smile that draws you to her. The smile that makes you fall in love with her and you don’t even know why. Her smile is the one that makes people talk with her, telling her their stories without being asked. She is a warm woman. I am proud to be her man.

  “Oh, yeah—Earl Grey. He was a king from another country, came here and started a restaurant empire. Right, Jo?” Laughter shakes her belly.

  “That’s him, Elipsee. That’s him. Did you ever meet him?” I’m crumpling green, dried hemp heads onto the paper. I am good at this. A skill I never thought I would have to acquire.

  As I take a quick lick at the glue, Elipsee tells me, “I never met that guy but I ran into his wife Edna once.” I choke from the harsh smoke and the joke. I hand off the joint to Elipsee.

  “Yeah, what was she like?”

  “Oh now, she was this big-boned blonde bitch. Liked to brush up her nails with house paint. Always the colour red.”

  Our laughter fades as we smoke and chew on caribou. It’s a good chew and gets softer and juicier as you chew along. The smoke keeps the bugs away and we sit in silence for a few minutes.

  When you have a good partner you can sit in silence for long stretches of time. You are after all each other’s shadow. No words are required.

  “Jo,” Elipsee whispers. I move over and take her hand.

  “Jo, I’m sorry I got sick. Sometimes I wonder why it happened. What I did wrong. Who I hurt.”

  “Ah, now my settlement girl. Don’t talk like this. We are here for a time of healing. You never hurt a soul in your life, we both know it.”

  “But Jo, maybe I hurt one of the spirits. Maybe I didn’t even realize it.”

  Our bums are touching on this little log we are sitting on. Our hands are wrapped around each other. I put my nose close to hers and remind her, “Elipsee, you didn’t hurt anything in your lifetime. Come on now. Let’s crawl into that tent and let the tundra hear the slapping of pee-pees being pushed together.”

  Her small hand reaches up to my cheek. “That’s my Jo. Solves everything with sex.”

  I laugh and help her up. As I take her arm, we rub our noses together and I wonder if maybe it was me who has done something wrong.

  “Oma, oma, oma, kaja ja kaja ja.” Low and rhythmic. Repeat. “Oma, oma, oma kaja ja kaja ja.” Again, it’s so soft to my ears. I awake to the twilight that is the Arctic at this time of year. Not
hing gets dark, only hints of grey.

  I sit up and look around our tiny pop-up tent. Shadows are against the one side. Someone is outside of the tent. I can see their form.

  “What the fuck?” I mutter to myself—who would ever show up? We’re about thirty kilos from home. Not far but too far to yell out for help. I pick up my shotgun. Staying on my belly as I wiggle my way out of the zipper. I have no idea what I am going to say. The only fighting words I ever heard were in western movies—not much help up here.

  I slink along on my stomach. Taking baby steps with my belly button. Somewhere in the back of my foggy head is a typical soapstone carving. “Inuit hunting Seal” pops into my head. Some Inuit guy with thick, broad bangs drooping over slits for eyes and an angry mouth. I nervously giggle as I think of how that carving would sell in the south. Southerners will buy anything.

  I can see their backs—looks like two men. They are sitting on the log by the ring rock fire pit. They are chanting a little louder now, “Kaja ja, kaja ja.”

  My finger wraps itself around the trigger. A tiny chill from the metal runs up my right hand. Heartbeat picks up, take in long slow breaths. I squint my slanting eyes and line up the site. This gun belonged to my father and it always has given me food. I’m gonna blast these ja ja fuckers to bits. Splatter the tundra with their trespassing arms, legs and guts. I grit my teeth and feel my finger instinctively wrap a centimetre around the tiny letter “C” on the rifle. I close my eyes for half a second longer than normal and as I purposely tense up my right shoulder one of the men turns his head towards me.

  “Josephee!” he shouts in gladness. “You are a hard sleeper!”

  “Ataatatsiaq?” I am stunned, shocked. I must have smoked way too much last night. I’ve read where weed can give you these delusions. This must be one of them. This has to be a dream or some sort of far-out relapse—how long does THC sit in your system?

  I crawl out of the tent and jump to my feet all in one motion. Grandpa laughs as he walks towards me.

  “Put down that gun, boy. Get over here and give your gramps a smooch!” The words he said to me every time he walked into our house. The last words he said to me as he lay dying on his bed in his tiny cabin.

  “You remember Elipsee’s ataatatsiaq? Ayaranee.”

  I extend my hand. We grasp wrists and give one hard good shake. I can’t put a smile on my face though. This is all too much. Here I am hanging around with our dead grandfathers and they seem to be enjoying themselves.

  “Hey, you look like you’ve seen a ghost!” Ayaranee laughs and my ataatatsiaq joins in. They start to howl. I feel a tiny bud of the giggles coming up my throat. I wrap my arms around them both and together we form a circle of hysterics. Laughing so hard I think my bladder is going to rip open.

  “You guys. You scared the shit outta me. What are you doing out here? I mean, well, you’re dead and everything.”

  The grandpas laugh again. They are bent over now, happy tears pouring out of their faces like faucets running full blast from a kitchen tap. They can’t stop. Ayaranee starts to dance and my grandpa joins in. I stand there watching and then step in with them. Wondering if the Pentecostals would consider this to be “Dancing with the Spirits.”

  We dance, we laugh and eventually they begin to sing their “ja ja” song again. I sing with them and as the singing slows, we each, one by one sit down on the little log by the fire. Silence wraps itself around our shoulders as I put some moss and sticks onto the embers.

  “Really though, ataatatsiaq, what are you doing here?”

  “Inuuhuktuq, we’ve come to help.”

  “Help? How? You’re dead.”

  “Our spirits have travelled over this tundra a thousand times since we each left our little cabins. Haven’t they, Ayaranee? We’ve been watching over you and Elipsee for so long now. Helping when we could. We’ve come now to help again.”

  “Arloo, we best tell the boy what we need done.” Elipsee’s grandpa looks serious.

  “There’s a few things. Josephee—now that’s not even your real name, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Tell us your real name.”

  “You know it, Gramps.”

  “Say it.”

  “Adgekart.”

  “Where is Adgekart?” asked Arloo to Ayaranee.

  Ayaranee shrugs, looks towards the morning sky, shrugs again.

  “I don’t get you guys,” I say. “None of this makes any sense. I’m going to go back to bed.”

  “Adgekart,” says my grandpa, “for now, you do only one thing—you stop smoking that white man’s green shit. Both of you. You hear me?”

  I turn back and nod.

  “We’ll see you later today,” says Grandpa.

  I can’t get back to sleep. Watch says 4 AM. Tick, tick, tick. The noise of it is deafening out here. Tick, tick, tick. Should I wake her up and tell her what happened? Tick, tick, tick. Will she even believe me? I can’t believe it just happened, how can I convince her? Tick, tick, tick. I roll around in our sleeping bag built for two. Uncomfortable, sleeping on the ground was never my thing. She likes it more than I do. This is awful.

  I hear her stirring next to me. “Jo,” she murmurs in her sleepiness. I wrap my arm under her head.

  “Elipsee, guess what, I just sang and danced with our dead grandpas! They, by the way, look terrific, haven’t aged a day since we piled all those rocks up on top of their dead bodies. You remember how they each wanted a traditional burial? Well, somehow they managed to crawl out from under all that weight and ‘wa-la’ here they are hanging out with me by the fire. We sang a ja ja song, had a dance and sat by the fire!”

  Fuck, I can’t say that out loud. Only can let it pound through my head over and over again. How can you make sense of nonsense? It was all just a dream. Let it ride. I slumber back into a troubled rest.

  “Jo! Quit that laughing in your sleep! Jo!”

  Elipsee is shaking my shoulder. My eyes flash open to see the best smile in the world.

  “What are you dreaming? Tell me. It makes you so happy!”

  I smile and stretch hard. Sitting up beside her I only grin and shrug.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Dreams are so important Jo. Tell me.”

  I figure this is my opportunity. It’s my chance to tell her what happened earlier this morning but somehow I just can’t do it right now, here in this pop-up tent that smells of our morning breath and sweat.

  “Come on. I’ll make us some tea and we can talk.”

  Women, they never let go of anything. They always want to “talk.” Talk over tea. Talk over breakfast. Talk before sex. Talk after sex. Talk, talk, talk. Elipsee is a social worker on top of it all. You’d think she’d be all talked out at the end of every day. Not her. Never.

  When I move outside of the tent I see her placing some twigs into the fire pit. It is a stunning image. She is dressed in a something both our moms used to wear, with red, white and yellow beaded string earrings floating in the soft morning breeze. Her hair is braided into loose twins of one another. Dangling over the smoke of the fireplace, her face is absolutely serene. Water beginning to boil, she is putting the tea bags into the hot water.

  I shake my eyes. This isn’t real. Maybe nothing outside of this tent is real. Maybe someone put LSD into that pot. Life has become one long, fucking hallucination! My heart throbs and I am terrified of the beauty standing in front of me.

  I back up into the tent. It is my only hiding place.

  “Jo—come on! We gotta talk. Come back out here!”

  I realize that I have nowhere to hide. I take a deep breath, snatch my rifle and jump out of our tent.

  “What are you wearing?” I ask Elipsee. I want to know if she knows what she is wearing.

  “A Levi’s jean jacket,” she says with a grin as she points to her shoulders. “A T-shirt that belongs to my dad and blue jeans.” She wiggles her hips and points towards me. “And what are you wearing, husband?”

 
; She doesn’t see it. She doesn’t get it. She thinks she’s normal. I look around. No grandpas.

  “Remember those coats our moms used to wear? The white ones with all the beads?”

  “Attigi?”

  “Yeah. Those things. That’s what I see you wearing right now.”

  “You are trippin’, husband! Woot! Woot! What a grand idea. Let’s smoke some together!”

  “No! We can’t! Not anymore!”

  “What the hell, Jo? We leave town and look what happens to you. Now I know that you’ve felt the stress of it all. My sickness and everything but still man, really? I’ll get it, you just sit down.”

  “No!” I grab tight to her wrist “We have to stop! Right now! We have to stop all that smoking weed stuff.”

  “Jo, what’s the matter with you?”

  I motion for her to sit on the little log. The log where our dead grandpas sat. I pour hot tea into tin cups and blow on the steam. I look at her and still I see the most beautiful, traditional woman. Immaaluk. She’s immaculate, she’s so very perfect. She makes me think of a statue of Mary at Holy Rosary Catholic Church. I reach out my hand and stroke her cheek.

  “No more, Elipsee. No more.” I whisper. I smile. “All this weed we’ve been smoking since the babies came—it stops today. We are here for healing. Not to get high.”

  “I can’t believe this! You! Of all people! Talking about healing like you give one shit! Come on, Jo. Attigi—like you even know what that is—really! What’s up, what’s really up with you?”

  “Elipsee, I’ve spent my life running away from it. It’s time to find it and understand it.”

  “Understand what? How our moms made inner coats? What the fuck, Jo?”

  “Don’t swear, Elipsee. It looks ugly on your lips.”

  “Oh my God!” she moans, pulling on those beautiful braids.

  “What is really happening right now? Are you having a Pentecostal setback?”

  Elipsee does this. She throws the years I spent in seminary at me when we fight. We’ve rarely raised our voices in the last three decades together, but when we do…

  “No. It’s not about a failed religious career. It’s about now. About healing. About you following through with what the angakkug told us to do. We won’t travel today. We’ll stay here.”