by Tanya Tagaq
Naja grows deeper than I could have imagined. I watch the molecules grow in my children, and it is a perfect extension of them being inside my belly. They are still inside me, but outside. We are our ancestors. The spiritual umbilicus is apparent to all. The dead look upon us with the pure love of a mother’s gaze. But the dead love us even more because of our flawed flesh and eternal confusion. The removal from form allows for total and complete unconditional love. We carry our dead with us like helium balloons. There is no breaking the umbilicus. I have seen this before. I have known my children before. They have always been with me. They are me. Loneliness does not exist.
Best Boy comes to his grandmother’s house often. He loves my children. Everyone thinks he is their father but both of us know that we have never had sex. It seems the town, my parents, and everyone else has been placated with the idea of Best Boy being the father. If they want to think that, I certainly don’t mind. My heart knows I will never truly belong to another after being with the Northern Lights. There was no corner of me unexplored, unsalvaged, or unused. The Northern Lights will know me always. Best Boy asks me how the children could possibly look so much like him. I say he and I look alike anyways. He breathes out as I breathe in and our hearts beat at the same time. The babies call to him. We laugh like children should laugh and he helps me remember that I am still a child. Sometimes I ask him why he is so interested in my babies and me. He says we are magic. He says that he was bored before. He likes the laughter.
Uncle sinks further and further into sickness after spending time with Savik. He is my favourite uncle and it pains me to see him weaken. He holds Savik for comfort but it is the root of his demise, much like an addiction. Naja and I watch Savik travel into Uncle’s body to help the sickness grow. I want him to stop but we all know that controlling the foundation of our children’s nature is an act of futility.
I remember in fondness the time my uncle pulled me from a crack in the ice after a dangerous misstep. He saved me. I remember the times he gave me the best pieces of meat. I remember the time he was drinking with my parents and told my dad to be fair when disciplining me. He is soft. He has heavy eye bags and a resonant voice. The pitch of his voice demands that others quieten when he speaks. When he tells stories people’s shoulders relax with calmness or tense with anticipation. He wears old clothing, mostly outdoor gear. Bespectacled and mostly quiet, he becomes loud and dangerous if drunk. I saw him take down three men in a fight over a woman. His humour can disarm anyone. The divide between gentle and malevolent is wide.
My heart hurts for him and Savik knows it. Savik doesn’t care about my feelings, and for the first time I experience a removal from him. He acts on his own accord and it frightens me. Uncle’s frequent trips to the nursing station get him medevaced out for testing. There is no hospital here. We have to leave town by plane to be treated. The tests reveal that he has a liver tumour that cannot be operated on; it has grown and attached to a main artery. He chooses to come home to die. I watch Savik suck his entire life out of him with a carnivorous glee. He grows stronger as Uncle grows weaker, like death milk. Savik no longer suckles my milk, and my breast does not produce more. He is living off of death.
Savik needs to kill Uncle, and he keeps pieces of him after he passes away. My uncle is forever in the makeup of Savik, trapped in his DNA. I hear Uncle’s voice in Savik and see Uncle’s expressions on his face. It’s a small comfort knowing that he is still alive somehow, but it is also a Small Murder.
Father is falling ill. Now that Uncle is gone Savik has moved in for Father; my wonderful father, my steadfast father. His lungs fill with phlegm. His denim coveralls begin to become loose. His eyes betray fear and vulnerability. His palms beg forgiveness for his transgressions. He has always been good to me. He has always tried his best even when wrestling his own demons. He is a pillar. He has guided us children with a firm hand and hearty guffaws. He has supported and provided, gutting animals and scaring off predators. I cannot let this happen. There is no way I will stand by and knowingly let my father die.
In total despair I watch him getting worse. Savik is stronger now and does not even need to be in my father’s arms for the sickness take hold. I watch Savik send the sickness to him from across the room. My father can be negative, so I am unsurprised that Savik has targeted him. My uncle was already ill so he was easy prey. Savik was still weak and learning his ways, so my uncle was perfect for the first kill. When creatures are hunting, they take what they can get: the old, the sick, the young, the vulnerable. Nature has no mercy. Savik senses that my father does not love himself and carries negativity; this is a perfect doorway for illness.
I try my best to shield my father by having him hold Naja, but Savik unravels the healing Naja weaves. It’s time to leave this house before more of my family gets harmed.
After a Greatly Contrived Emotional Outburst Resulting In A Family Argument, I show up at Helen’s on a Thursday. It’s better to break my parents’ hearts than live with them and watch Father grow ill. I needed the argument to be believable, so I asked the babies to give me Tears. Helen allows me to move in even though she can smell the lie. Best Boy moves in on Friday. Helen makes tea and bannock. She sings a song that silences the turmoil. There is a deck of cards on the table. We play. I sleep well for the first time since never.
The dream tonight is that a large salivating spider is on my chest. I throw it off in desperation only to discover that I had thrown Savik in the waking world. At the last second before he is launched off the bed I catch him and cradle him to my chest. My Small Murderer, I love him so. He is everything that is flawed. He cannot help himself. We all give ourselves to people that cannot help themselves. How can we not?
Life holds hands with itself
Because it is familial
Death can hold hands with life
But we recoil
The dead can speak
We try not to listen
Matter congregates
And creates density
Pressure is time
The more dense matter is
The more time it possesses
Owns more time
Takes more time
Life is breath Life is death
Time carries Life
But Life carries Time
We want to be linear
Entrapped in our vulgar forms
Desperate to comprehend what
Cannot be grasped
Because our marrow told us so
The dead love us
The dead laugh
We try not to hear
They do not need time
So we fear them
The dead hold the answers
But we do not ask them
For soon we will all Know
Watching Best Boy sleep is wondrous to me, and he has begun to glow again. He leaves and comes as he pleases. He likes that I don’t mind. He is so brown, so smooth. He has a quarter-sized mole on his left shoulder blade. He wears threadbare T-shirts and scuffed shoes. He is always in a ball cap. There is a slight rusty pitch in his voice. His feet hang off the bottom of the bed. He twitches periodically. He is dreaming of sulphur and pitch. I go and inhale his exhalations just to see what will happen and the warmth stirs in my belly. His mouth is slightly agape. He licks his lips in his sleep. No one is immune to tenderness.
I place my hands on his kneecaps and absorb the knee pain that has been bothering him since he fell playing basketball. I throw the pain away and accidentally send it to a girl I dislike from school. School must resume sometime. I might as well pave my way. I may as well be powerful.
Back in my room Naja is awake and aware. She knows I am impure. It hurts her to see my pettiness. Everything breaks her. She eyes me with suspicion. I want her to be older and more controlled just as I wish that Savik were not a murderer. We cannot always be what we wish to be. I cannot be perfect for my children. These twins have lived many times, intertwining in echoes over and over. Isn’t it time to
heal the cycle?
Over the next few blissful weeks, Best Boy begins to become ill while my father has recovered. It’s a very slow illness, almost imperceptible. Best Boy is young and healthy, so it is a greater challenge for Savik to bring him down. I notice the smallest hunch in his back, tiny sadnesses entering his mind. His hair is falling out more than it normally does. His nails are brittle. Naja and I have grown to love him. Savik accepts him, Savik even cares for him, but his death is still inevitable.
I want to stay with Best Boy. I want him to feel warmth instead of fear. I want to be loved instead of forcefully taken, to feel clean instead of invaded. I am feeling the urge to give my body to Best Boy, to join with him in unison. The Northern Lights filled me but I need to know tenderness.
Best Boy puts his hands on me and it relaxes my muscles and slows my breathing. I must protect him. Savik knows my side-eyed glances. Savik senses I have let the divide grow between us but he cannot deny his predatory nature. My abandonment only feeds his ire.
Consequently, Naja develops sadness inside her heart, and it dims her brightness. This sadness affects her healing power. Good thing we have Helen. Naja is very satisfied healing Helen. Helen is old and has many ailments and generous love. Both are in their glory. Helen with her long flower-patterned muumuus and Naja with her sunny onesies, cuddling and cooing from day to night. They shine. Savik preys on men, so Helen is safe for now, although I feel she would become the next target if Best Boy perished. My heart grows weak and dark with desperation to protect Best Boy and torn with motherly love for Savik. If only I could help Savik, guide him. If only healing would become the way of the world.
Human nature is undeniable and kindness cannot be contrived, mimicked convincingly, or bought. We are what we are, and within all the facets of Being it is through the acceptance of our monumental flaws that salvation lies. Unfortunately flaws can exacerbate themselves in some people; the darkness multiplies and overturns the balance and all is lost. Once you have killed someone, the pull to the spirit world can be strong, the path paved with power and fanatical compulsion. We have lost the ritual of cleansing your spirit after taking a life. I know that once you have eaten human flesh, you must live on the unforgiving tundra alone for a year to purge the urge for more. Savik’s power exists because he has been born of my own evil, my own hunger, and our ancestors’ hunger. Nature is not merciful. Neither is he. He just is. He exists in true form and is unapologetically all-consuming. I am cursed to watch all my loved ones pass away, eaten by my son. Eaten by his need for power. Eaten by his hunger for life. He is on a diet of souls.
Savik bit my breast this Thursday. He looked me in the eyes while breastfeeding and began to clamp down. I screamed and told him to stop but he kept going and he bit off the end of my nipple. The nurses said they have never seen anything like it. I knew then and there that there was no room for him on this earth. I knew he would only grow stronger and his prey would not only be restricted to the old or sick, to the malevolent or weak. I knew his prey would become Love.
When there is a cancer it must be cut out. It must be removed in order to maintain the well-being of the body as a whole. It is time. I realize that darkening his light will kick a leg out from the tripod that is our little family, but his power is not mine to control. It takes forty-eight hours to steel myself for the task. I let everyone love him. I held him while he slept. I begged forgiveness. Naja melted her flesh to him, sensing the stress. She released once she fell asleep. I wrap them in two fleece blankets, one with bears, one with wolves. I brush their hair with fifty strokes. I clip all their nails but the right thumb. I fill their bellybuttons, one with salt, one with ire. I kiss their eyelids twice each and lick the backs of their necks eight times. I rub the bottoms of their feet counter-clockwise thirty-three times. It is done.
Eat your morals
Your thoughts
Your sinew
Your pith
Peel off your skin
Your indignities
Your strengths
Your sheath
I am in you
then
You are in me
You are now me
We absorb your strength
We embrace your warmth
Eat your eyes
Your visions
Your goals
Your hunger
Drink your blood
Your breadth
Your mettle
Your fate
I am you now
My marrow
Your heart
My brain
Your meat
My meat
You’re meat
I’m meat
It’s a dark and cold night. The stars stare and the wind has gone home. I take the children out onto the sea ice, near a wide crack. These cracks usually occur around strong currents; it’s the only way to keep the sea ice open, the only force that can scare away the freeze. The ocean: mother of movement, monumentally submersive. The currents: conduit for inevitability, keeper of secrets. The salt: coagulator of ideas, agent of impregnable stoicism.
It is so cold outside. The cold is slapping my exposed cheeks and hardening my resolve. Naja is in the back of my amoutik and Savik is cozy in a down bag suit.
I take Savik out of the bag and place him onto the frozen ice. He is afraid and confused. He cries out for my love. He cries out in agony. My heart is dying.
I put my hands around his little neck and begin to squeeze.
Die, my darling.
His neck is so frail, so thin. His face grows red and his mewling conveys his utter heartbreak.
Then his eyes change. He is no longer confused. He is angry. I feel the warmth and pulse in him begin to strengthen. He is not soft anymore. His neck hardens into a solid, boneless mass and he can now breathe through his bellybutton. He builds a wall of protection around his heart and decides to retaliate.
His flesh starts to grow around my hands. My hands are burning, the bones in my hands are burning and there are a thousand boiling blisters where I am holding him. I let go of his neck out of desperation and see that he is mutating. He becomes a small seal and flops into the crack in the ice.
In our shared agony, I had not been paying attention to Naja. Naja has become cold in my amouti. Her heart stopped beating because she could not tolerate the pain of the conflict and the shock of the Arctic water transferred from her brother’s body to hers. Little sweet baby is gone.
I take her out of my amoutik and slip her dead Self into the crack in the ice. She floats down into the water and I see Brother swim up to her. He absorbs her flesh and they are one. She is he and he is she. Finally they are whole and the longing for them is an emptiness that will never be filled. The seal looks up at me with love and hatred, death and life. It looks at me with the Knowing. Then the seal swims away. I have lost my children.
* * *
—
It’s time for me to die now. There is no point living through this grief. There is no way to tolerate life now that I have forsaken my own flesh and blood.
The Northern Lights have been watching. They know. They knew. They have always known. I lie on the ice naked and beg to be taken. Please take me. Take me to the place where my body no longer owns me. Take me to the promises that were left in my flesh when you took me. Take me to the place where I will never be cold again, where I will never feel pain. Take me to where the vulgarity of my fluid and flesh will no longer disgrace my soul. I beg in song, beg in scream.
I beg through love, but I beg in vain.
The Northern Lights come down and observe me. They see with no eyes and I realize that I am not going with them. They look me in the soul with cold indifference.
Fear. Fear encompasses me. I cannot move. The weight of their gaze pins me to the ice. I cannot lift my arms. My breath grows shallow and I feel the cold making its way into my body. What is going to happen to me? The Northern Lights are watching. My ancestors have forsaken me. Why? They see the bo
ttle of pills in my hand.
From a long dream ago, I realized that I took them myself, and that suicide blocks one’s journey into the spirit world. The spirit must leave flesh at its own volition. To interrupt means that one has forsaken Time. Time is God. God is Dark Matter. Time is the driver of flesh. I realize only once my spirit is leaving that all those nights my bedroom door got opened taught me how to be numb, to shut off, to go to the Lonely Place. I was forced out of my body. I was forced to pretend I was a shadow. Those nights gave me the pain that has guided me to death.
What keeps you alive in crisis can kill you once you are free. One must not choose to die, though one must die anyway. My soul is separating from my body now. That sick prison of flesh I was previously stuck in now seeming like the most beautiful warm and sweet palace. I am being ripped out of my body by the cold. Hands and feet go first. Breech death. Extremities gone. I am being peeled out of my body. Layer by layer I leave, clinging desperately to what remains. The reverse birth causing the last agony. It is the most pain. It is a horror. I am cold and alone. WHERE ARE MY BABIES?
I don’t want to leave. I want my life back. There is no help and there is no light as the reality of what I have given up sinks in. The pain is not gone. The regret is forever. I leave my body to search for Savik and Naja. I leave my body and hitch a ride with the wind. I am not a human now; I am only Lament. The wind is the only song. This is why the Arctic wind screams.
