Annie Muktuk and Other Stories

by Norma Dunning

  What is hardest is that I can’t talk to my sisters unless I speak in French or English. If the long robes hear me speak to them the way I always did, they beat me with a strip of hide. Papa did that to the dogs when they were bad. Hitting them with tigaut, the hardest part of any whip. Sometimes they will reach into our mouths and pull hard on our tongues. It is their way of telling us not to talk our language.

  That hurts. Everything here hurts. We have to live our days the way they want us to. We don’t go outside. I watch the world from inside at my school desk and remember what it was like to live with my mothers and father. I remember the smell of air that was a part of my every breath. I remember eating when I was hungry not when a clock told me to. I remember playing the string game with my sisters whenever I wanted to. No one ever told me that a round, black dial was my avasirngulik. My elder would not act like that thing.

  That’s a new word for me, “time.” In this place everyone is on time. At home the sky told us what to do and when. I nod and try to do what they say. Sometimes they smile but most times they frown. I talk with my eyes. They talk with their lips.

  I am not allowed to sleep by my sisters. We have to stay off the ground on separate wooden frames. None of this makes sense in my head. I look forward to each night to dream of what I miss. Dreaming of what I knew best, of what was only mine. I smell the caribou and feel its soft skin around my shoulders. I see my mothers smiling at me at night. I long for them. Their crinkling eyes. Their fingertips tenderly tickling on my shoulders. I even long for him. My father. The man who sent us to this place.

  Suzanne whispers to me often that if we are good we will leave. We will go home. Every day she tells me these same words, “Be good. Nod your head. We will go home. Upaluajaqpuq, obey well.” Every day it doesn’t happen but I do what Suzanne says. She’s the oldest. She knows best. Margarite is different. She doesn’t nod her head. She sticks out her tongue when the long robes aren’t watching. She makes her eyes wide and points her finger pretending to be like them. She folds her hands together and looks to the ground while she walks behind them. Wiggling her behind in wide, long circles.

  I am the one who gets caught. I am the one who gets the strip of hard hide across my hands when I laugh at what my sister is doing. I get put into a bare room. It’s cold and dark and smells like rotten willows. I have to stay there for a long time some days. I can hear the food people when I am there. I can hear the banging of pots and pans. I tap my fingers to their beat and whisper a throat song, “Aii, Aii, Aii, yah, yah, yah…” It brings me to home for a short time. Margarite has been put into this dark room too, she likes it though. She says she sees home. She talks like Igjugarjuk, the angakkug who sees visions. When we can sneak our time together she tells me she saw what our mothers and father were doing. She tells me their conversations and how they miss us too.

  One day Margarite and I hide under some stairs at the back of the school and she tells me everything she sees. She makes me remember what we were and tells me what we will be. She says that soon we will fly home. She says that we are like the sisters of Kadlu, the three of us. We will get home. Our parents really didn’t lock us out like Kadlu’s parents did. Margarite is like Tootega for me. She is wisest and I believe she can walk on the water. I am in the middle of the sisters. I have to listen to both of them. I try my best to be what the robes want us to be too. It’s hard. Very hard.

  There are many robes here. Some are men and some are women. We never see the hair of the women. I would like to know what is underneath their coverings. They each wear long beads with a cross on their necks. Their leader wears the biggest cross. Some of them have round see-through circles in front of their eyes. Their eyes make me think of Issitoq, the flying giant eye who has the right to punish me. I fear those man robes more than the others. They are the ones who will punish me most. The men in robes all have beards. They talk in quiet, deep voices and ask about us three. It is as if we are too different from the rest. We are never supposed to be together. We are never supposed to sit together for meals or sleep near each other. The robes say this is for the best. This is the way we will learn to be something that will make us better than what we started out being. They tell us about this God and how he is watching over us. They tell us if we don’t behave we will be covered in fire. Their stories make me tremble. Suzanne tells me that we have to respect their stories. We have to listen to what they tell us. She is oldest and wisest. I try to obey her.

  Margarite laughs at their stories. She thinks they are funny and tells me that they are only trying to make us do what the clock wants. She tells me that the clock is really their God. She makes funny sounds, mixing tick-tock noises with the songs our mothers taught us. It makes me giggle and Margarite even makes this clock song when we are in the classroom.

  Then the robes pull her hair tightly and she kicks and laughs as they lift her from her desk with one fist full of the hair from the top of her head. Margarite calls them names we would never speak out loud at home. Holding her up above the floor they spin her around. Her hair twists and twists but she never screams. Her red face sings our throat songs from home while they curse her for breaking their white taboo. They tell her that she is going to go to the place of fire. They take her from the classroom and put her into the room stinking of dead willows. I get jealous. She is going home again for today. I have to stay in this room and learn to write with a wooden twig. I have to learn about numbers and small words. I want to go home with Margarite. She will fly away from the stinky room. She will see and hear what I can’t. I wish I was with her just for today.

  Suzanne is the opposite. She sits straight. She learns how to move the twig across the yellow empty paper. The robes like her best. They tell her that she is going to go far in this place. But where is there to go? There are three floors. There is nowhere else to go to. Suzanne doesn’t understand. She says if we do as we are told we will get to go home. I keep my head down, my eyes to the floor and I remember the day of Margarite and I hearing the geese fly to us. It makes me feel good. I never look at the robes unless they pull my chin up towards them. I don’t want to see them with their clear round glass shaped eyes. I don’t want to know about them.

  3

  One night Margarite comes to me. She had spent all day in the willow room. She sneaks to my wooden frame one night and tells me that she has a plan. We are going to run away! Far away from this place. In the moonlit room I can see her puffy eyes. Her mouth is cracked open and there is blood on her forehead. I put my finger into my mouth to wet it like our mothers used to do. I reach out in silence, nodding. I place my finger on her face. I nod once more and I see the tears spill from her eyes. I whisper only “ii” because yes, I can feel the excitement of leaving this place. I softly rub my finger around her eyes and across her swollen lips, “ii,” I whisper again. We briefly touch noses before Margarite crawls back to her wooden frame. Now I have a plan. Now I have a purpose.

  I cannot sleep for the rest of the night. I am too excited. I trust Margarite to get us out of here. The next day dawns as always. There is the clanging of a loud metal ball inside a piece of steel that has an igloo-shape. It shouts to us before the sun is awake. It is our boss too. It tells us to get up, get dressed and to make our wooden frames look flat. We gather into one line like we are one half of a flock of geese. We go to the place where the water is in white bowls. One bowl for our faces. One bowl for everything else. We line up again and go to the chair place. We stand behind our chairs. The oldest long robe tells us to put our hands together. We look at the floor and wait for her to finish the words. Then we say “Amen,” and sit in our hard chairs. We wait until everyone has the grey, thick slop put into their dish and pick up our metal sticks. We chew and swallow at the same time. The old robe claps her hands. We stand behind our chairs. Again we bend our heads and she says words and ends with a song about, “Our Father.” We walk like stick geese to the classroom and sit again in hard chairs for the rest of the day.

/>   Today Margarite is behind me in our walk to the classroom. The old robe and one young robe stop in the hallway to whisper to each other. They turn their backs to us and it is then that Margarite tugs on my cloth dress, puts her other hand around my mouth and pushes me in the room of rotten willows. I blink at her in the darkness and she has her finger by her lips. “Shh, shh,” she hisses. I stand still, starting to tremble. I will wait for her to tell me what to do. We hear the sound of hard shoes getting smaller and once there is silence Margarite nods.

  I run behind her not making one sound. It is like when we are out gathering eggs on our tundra. I pretend I am there and I try to tiptoe as I run. We are sneaking up on the ptarmigan. We are going to swoop our hands under their behinds and lift them. We will snatch the egg before the bird knows what has happened.

  I tell myself to be swift and stay closer to Margarite. Before I know it we have run out of the rotten room and down the stairs. We are nearing the back door. The sunlight feels warm through the window. It is now that I can sense it. It is now that I feel the giddiness of freedom pump out of my heart and into my head. Freedom is everywhere inside of me. It is in my eyes. It makes my fingers tingle and I can feel laughter spewing up my throat. I am going to be free!

  Together we push the door open. We are outside! We are free from the robes. The rotten room. The hard chairs. The wooden frames. We are together clasping our hands, we break into our own laughter and spin around and around and around. For that very small amount of time I know that I am who I was born to be. I am Angavidiak. I am free!

  I hear the sound of geese off in the distance as a bearded black robe snatches me up into the air.

  I twist and twist myself in small half circles trying to see Hikwa. The beard has his waxy hand over my flattened lips. I chomp down hard on his skinny, wormy fingers. I hear him gasp as he lifts his hand from my mouth and slaps it hard against my right ear. I don’t care.

  “Ajujuq Hikwa!” I scream from deep inside. The wormy hand hits my left ear. Ringing wind swirls around me, it’s all I can hear.

  Sister Mary Rose is chasing Hikwa. Hikwa is laughing and laughing. She is darting around like a rabbit. No circles, only jagged rabbit prints. Hikwa is good at this. She is fast. It’s a game we played at home. The white whip hand slams hard into the back of my head. I feel my body thudding to the cold earth.

  4

  My eyes try to adjust to the willow room.

  “Hikwa?” I ask. “Hikwa?” I see the small streams of dust-filled light coming from the bottom of the heavy wooden door. I try to stand but my head and hips hurt. My fingertips can’t feel anything from the cold in this room. I run the palms of my hands over my head hoping they will show me if I have any bumps. My eyes are puffy. My ears are swollen. My lips have ballooned into one giant lump. My nose is the smallest point on my head.

  I hear the heavy key clanging against the big door. I scrape my body along the floor trying to get as far away from it as I can. The outline of Father LePage stands in front of me. Today he is my giant.

  “Therese,” he states, “Sister Mary Rose and I are here to help you. Now stand up!”

  I can only stare at them. I can’t stand up. My legs won’t let me.

  “Therese, stand!” Sister Mary Rose straddles herself over me and lifts me up. I wobble the way newborn caribou do. I feel dizzy. The willow room spins in large circles around me. Sister Mary Rose scoops her elbows under my armpits. I take a big breath of air.

  “Hikwa?”

  “Your sister? This is what you ask for—your sister! You should be asking for forgiveness, young lady,” Father LePage sighs. He turns to the robe. “These animals, these so-called children, they will never get it correct.”

  Father LePage places his long nose in front of mine. “Your Hikwa, your sister is doing penance as will you!”

  Spinning his head towards Sister Mary Rose he demands, “Clean her up a bit and bring her to my office.” Father LePage leaves the willow room, his keys clanging with his fading footsteps. My body slumps against Sister Mary Rose.

  Sister Mary Rose whispers things to me as she washes my face. I don’t know her words. I know they are soft. I don’t have to be scared. I know she will not hurt me. The coarse cloth runs rings of warmth gently over my cheeks and ears. Sister Mary Rose says over and over, “Don’t be afraid.” Words I will tell myself for the rest of my life.

  We walk down the dim hallway together but we don’t touch. I don’t want to touch Sister Mary Rose. Instead, I want to hold tight to her and ask her to take me home. I want to hide under her long black skirts and wrap my body around her knees. I tell myself her words. I whisper to myself, “Don’t be afraid.”

  We enter a room with more chairs and a big table. Father LePage is sitting in a tall chair. I see Hikwa in a small chair. I try to run to her but Sister Mary Rose pinches my shoulder. Hikwa turns her face to me. Her tongue is clamped between two pieces of wood. She cannot speak. Her hands are lying on her lap wrapped in a brown rope that snakes its way around her ankles.

  “Your sister, Margarite, is learning the power of silence. Would you like to learn this as well?” Father LePage asks.

  I glance at Hikwa. She signals the word “No” to me with her eyes. A slight turn of her head showing me the pain she is feeling.

  I feel the tears dripping from my eyes. All I want is to touch Hikwa. I want to feel her hand in mine. I want to know that she is there under all the bruises and black spots on her face. I lower my eyes to the floor.

  “I said, Therese, do you want to learn the power of silence?”

  Father LePage is standing in front of me. I feel his hand slice into the roots of my hair, my head snapping up, his nose close to mine. I can smell the breath of a white man. It smells like nothing I know.

  His lips are tight, drawing a thin line over his yellow teeth. I reach my own tongue into the back of my throat and shoot a bullet of spit onto them. I hear Hikwa’s high-pitched happy moan.

  The power of silence has entered the room. Father LePage is choking. He spits onto the floor and walks towards his table.

  “Bring her here!” he shouts.

  He slams me into his tall chair and reaches into my mouth. His long white fingers search for my tongue. I make my tongue dance in my mouth. Hikwa is gasping giggles across from me.

  Father LePage stops bobbing for my tongue. He takes one quick step towards Hikwa and slaps her head hard with his big, black book. Her body rattles and shakes in the chair. Her head rests on her chest. Sister Mary Rose steps towards her but Father LePage screams, “Back! Back!”

  He reaches into his table drawer and brings out two small pieces of wood. “Like skinning a cat!” he screams as his hand darts into my mouth.

  The pain from the wooden clamp. A clothes peg on my tongue is the most pain I have felt since being here. Father LePage wraps my hands in the same brown rope as Hikwa’s. I look to Sister Mary Rose and see fear covering her face. He binds the rope around my feet and takes one step back.

  “Look, Sister,” he exclaims, “I’ve created twins. My own Helen and Clytemnestra! Twin animals learning the power of silence! They’ll not dare to speak again—their language or ours!”

  The pain is starting to turn the room black as Father LePage slides Hikwa’s chair against mine.

  “They’ll not run again,” he reassures Sister Mary Rose. “They’ll not run and they’ll not speak. This is a good lesson for them. We’ve been sent to teach right from wrong. You can only teach an animal through force. Leave them this way until I tell you otherwise. I am going to take a bath and wash their filth from me.”

  Sister Mary Rose pats my head. I feel myself glide into darkness.

  5

  I sit at my oak wooden desk, in my office lined with books. Books I brought from home. Books filled with the stories of Greeks and Romans. Books telling the stories of the people who came before me. Theological books that tell me of the real people. The first real people.

  I sigh and try to
remember what brought me to this place. I was always an eager student and wanted to only do well by my family. I want to succeed in my calling. My calling to the church and all the holiness within it. Instead, I am here in the rough western flat land. This place with dirty, dark Natives. This was an insult not only to my person but to my true calling to lead. I know that I am a natural leader, a natural speaker of God’s word, but to place me in these rough wooden walls in this godforsaken place…this is offensive to my intellect and abilities.

  Today my superior, Bishop LaFlamme, is visiting. It is part of the Bishop’s duties to check up on the residential schools outside of Winnipeg. I straighten my back and fold my hands in prayer. I ask God for his direction and guidance during this day. This full day with the Bishop here to observe the school and the children. I thumb the pages of the written report on the successes of the school and my eyes fall on a short excerpt:

  The children are learning the proper way to speak, to read and to write. The children have every moment of their day occupied. They are up at six in the morning and breakfast is over by seven. They attend mass from seven to eight and are in their desks by a quarter past eight. Classes are until half past eleven and lunch extends to half past twelve. Thirty minutes of playtime in the small fenced yard is allowed and the children are in class again by one o’clock. School ends at half past three and each student is assigned various chores. The boys help in the chopping and stacking of wood. The girls are in the kitchen washing dishes and helping the cook.

  Every day the children are taught about the importance of cleanliness. Yes, cleanliness is as close to Godliness as they can become. I have taught them the rigours of hand washing and hair washing and will ensure the Bishop that each child is bathed once a week. That’s one more time a week than any of them ever received at home.