Between Two Worlds (2 page)

The birds eyed us as we came closer. Their calls turned angry, frightened, and they fluttered restlessly. “
Qaa, qaa
, hurry, woman!” said Angulluk.

With clattering, shrieks, a great whir of wings, birds filled the sky. Wings swept against my face. “Oooh!” I teetered on the edge of the path.

“Eqariusaq! Quick! Take the eggs before the birds come back.”

Gathering eggs was women’s work. He sat on a flat boulder under an overhanging rock to protect himself from the sun and wind.

Pale blue eggs with brown spots lay wedged among the rocks. The eggs were pointed at one end, the better to stay on a ledge without rolling off. They’d make tasty dinners. I took as many as I could reach, placing them carefully in my birdskin bag. Then, my chest tight with fear, I hugged the cliff until I came to a wider path and climbed even higher to collect more. My long hair blew out of the knot at the top of my head and whipped against my face.

I rested at a wide spot, and I looked out at the ocean. The vast blue-black sheet of water below teemed with ice floes and icebergs gleaming in the sun. A dark speck far out in the bay caught my eye. I shielded my eyes with my hand to see; the speck seemed to move. I knew what it was; I was almost sure. Could it be?

Carrying the eggs in a sack over my shoulder, I climbed down to Angulluk. “Look!” I pointed.

He frowned. Above his thin lips, a few hairs formed a sparse mustache. “What?”

I said, “Surely I would not notice something important that you cannot see.”

“Be quiet!”

I knew that his sharp eyes had spotted what I saw and he’d want the honor of telling the news.

The speck in the distance grew larger. I remembered it well from other years. What gifts and excitement—and perhaps what trouble—were in store for our village?

Angulluk turned to me. “A ship with Peary’s men?”

“
Ai
, who else?” I said. Only men who had something to do with Lieutenant Robert Peary came to our village from America across the ocean. And when his ships arrived to drop off supplies for him, it was always now, during the short summer season, after the solid ice broke into pieces and opened a way in. Peary and his companion, the dark-skinned explorer Matthew Henson, whom we called Mauripaulak, were not in our village now but at their second camp in Musk Ox Land.

A stone rolled past us and fell toward the water far below.

We looked up. A boulder had loosened above us. It could fall with the rocks around it! I was frozen in place.

He yanked me into the niche and shoved me down. Rumbling filled the air, louder and louder, like spirits arguing in the sky.

All went dark. Fur pressed against my face: Angulluk’s coat. He was leaning hard against me. I could hardly breathe.

I waited for the boulder to smash down and kill us. I
silently called out to my mother and father in the world of the spirits:
Come to me, Anaana and Ataata!

In the darkness, I heard dirt and rocks tumbling as the cliff beneath us rocked violently and the boulder hurtled down in a deafening roar.

Then silence. Sunlight glared in my eyes as Angulluk rose, stepped out of the niche. Brown-red dirt covered his face. Blood ran down his cheek from a gash under his eye. The bag of eggs I’d dropped was flattened under rubble. I didn’t care. We were alive!

“Ai!”
Angulluk said with a smile. He acted as if it were nothing to be trapped under an avalanche. To save my life, he’d shielded me with his body.

How could I thank him without embarrassing him? “Someone thinks quickly. Someone is brave,” I said.

His eyes lit up his broad face and he smiled, looking out over the water.

I stood up and stretched my legs. “Let’s go back down,” I said, brushing the dirt from the long boots, the
kamiit
, I had made.

“Quiet! The birds are returning.”

A flock of the auks flew near us in a rush and whir. Angulluk thrust out his net and caught five at once. He yanked the auks out of the net by their necks and twisted them, killing them swiftly, then gave me the birds.

I smiled as I accepted them. My husband could climb down the cliffs with pride, having caught food, and feathers for a shirt.

I turned to the water; now I could see the ship’s two masts and white sails. “Look there,” I said softly.

Angulluk nodded.

When we reached the village, we’d say that he’d seen the ship first. But later I’d be the one to talk to the
qallunaat
, the white men. I could speak the
qallunaat
language better than any of my people. For I was the only one of us to cross the ocean to America in Peary’s ships and come back alive.

Carrying the auks by their necks, I walked behind Angulluk down the widening path. The ship was here! If the sailors stayed on for more than a few days, our hunters provided meat for them, traded for goods the village had come to depend upon: guns, axes, steel needles, and wood for harpoon handles and sled runners. White men could create a windstorm of activities and requests. What would the sailors want this time? Part of me couldn’t wait to meet the ship, and another part wanted to stay right here above the village.

Halfway down, we heard children chattering as they gathered feathers from empty nests on the lower shelves of the cliffs. They asked how Angulluk had been injured. He told them of the avalanche, but it wasn’t until we entered the village, in sight of women scraping hides, and men tossing walrus meat to their dogs, that he raised his arms and shouted: “A ship is coming!”

We crowded on the beach as the ship sailed toward us between the dangerous ice floes. Peary’s ship was called the
Windward
. Nearly every summer it dropped off supplies for him, or picked up Peary to go back to America and return a year or two later. These past two winters, he’d remained on our side of the vast ocean.

It was a warm day, so instead of our heavier fox or bear furs, we all wore parkas and trousers of gray sealskin. Angulluk stood beside me with his arms crossed, his eyebrows knit, probably planning how to win a new rifle from the white men. My chest fluttered inside to think of seeing the crewmembers. Most would be familiar. During the past two summers, Angulluk had traded my favors to a few sailors for a gun and ammunition. Others I’d known because I’d sewn and mended their clothes.

Apart from the crowd, eager as ever to see the
qallunaat
, Ally stood waiting. Sammy, her fat baby, rode on her back, naked and warm inside the soft sealskin of his carrier. His head was covered with thick, shaggy black hair. He had the blue eyes of his father, Peary.

How lucky Ally was to have a baby, especially a son!
And besides, Ally was plump and round, with a bright smile and neat, square teeth, petite hands and feet, and a tiny nose: she was Itta’s beauty, and would not let anyone forget it. Reluctantly, I stuck by Ally. In order to survive, our people shared all that we had: food, shelter, skills, tools, weapons. Now and then, a husband might lend his wife to another hunter for a few days, to help with his chores, or relieve his boredom during the long winter. Such trades were never made with outsiders. But Ally went to Peary so often, it almost seemed she had two husbands; the villagers always gossiped about her. The truth was, Ally needed my friendship even more than I needed hers.

The
Windward
, furling its great mainsail, eased its shiny black hull into the rocky shallows of our harbor. Crewmembers guided by Captain Bartlett, who was plump as a walrus (and just as whiskery), let down the ship’s heavy anchor. From this distance, he was the only man I recognized. Then, scanning the deck, I spotted a small, yellow-haired shape in a green cloak, and standing alongside was a giant of a woman in a long dark dress and wide-brimmed hat. It was Peary’s daughter, Marie, and her mother, Mitti Peary!

I waved. “I see you! There you are!” I called, even though they were too far away to hear me. I had spent a year with them in America.

“Why are you babbling, Eqariusaq?” said Angulluk. “Why are you smiling like that?”

“It’s Peary’s wife and daughter,” I said. “They’re here!”

Angulluk looked at me blankly.

“Don’t you remember them? They came with Peary three summers ago. It was the summer you married me. It was the summer when Peary took the—”

“Ah.
That
summer.”

I felt a catch in my throat when he said “
that
summer.” The last time I’d seen Peary’s wife and daughter was also the last time I’d seen my mother and father.

Now sailors lowered a dory from the ship, and the captain rowed himself to shore. When he reached the beach, our people surrounded him and talked at him in our language, which he couldn’t begin to understand. I pushed through the crowd. “Captain,” I said in English. “Hello. We are happy to see you.” Relief sprang into his eyes.

“It’s Billy Bah, is it?” he asked, running his hand over his thick beard.

“Yes. It’s me.” I smiled. People stopped talking and watched keenly.

“Is Lieutenant Peary here?”

I shook my head the way white people do. “Gone.”

“When did you last see him?”

“Not since the winter.”

He opened his hands. “Do you know where he is?”

I pointed across the dark water to the mountains of Musk Ox Land in the distance. I could tell by the deep lines on his forehead that the news was a shock. “Follow me,” I said, and led Captain Bartlett to Peary’s house.

On the bluff, the rock igloos of our village formed a half circle facing the water. Peary’s house stood out from all the rest, a red caboose. He’d brought it by ship and then pulled it up the hill on rails after the first house he built burned down.

I said, “Look, Captain. He left this.” I showed him a bag nailed to the door under the roof’s shelter.

Captain Bartlett thanked me, already opening the bag. He drew out a piece of paper, read, then folded it carefully. The letter seemed to satisfy him. Out on the water, two rowboats went back and forth to bring sailors from the ship.

At last, Mitti Peary and Marie arrived. Marie had her hair in two long yellow braids tied on the ends with pink ribbons. She wore a pink dress under her green cloak. How grown up she looked—she must have been seven or eight, nearly as tall as I. I waved at her but could not get her attention. Tears streamed down her face. What could I do to help her?

“Where is my dad?” she cried. She turned and looked, knocking her boot against a patch of snow.

Mitti Peary leaned down to talk to her in a low voice. She led Marie by the hand toward our village, whispering to her. I followed them with the crowd. By the time we reached Peary’s caboose, Marie had stopped crying and even smiled.

Mitti Peary helped Marie up the stairs of the caboose.
The girl stood on her toes and reached for the key that hung on a nail, put the key in the lock, and opened the door. I inched forward, hoping she would notice me.

“If Daddy keeps the door locked, then why doesn’t he take the key?” Marie asked her mother.

“He only locks the caboose to keep the wind from blowing in. He knows the Eskimos would never take anything.”

Eskimos—that was Mitti Peary’s name for us. We call ourselves
Inuit
, the people.

I was close enough to see inside and catch a whiff of Mitti Peary’s wonderful scent. She smelled like lavender—flowers that grow in her faraway home. She was so strong and handsome! Mitti Peary and Marie walked around looking at his desk, tools, and barrels for keeping his supplies. Marie rapped the fat iron stove in the middle of the floor. It made a hollow sound. She opened a barrel, took out a package of biscuits, and gnawed on one. “It’s so stale!”

Mitti Peary was staring at a framed photo of herself in a plumed hat that was larger and even more elegant than the dark red one she now wore. She seemed restless as she searched through the things in Peary’s desk, then slammed the desk drawer shut. “There’s no letter for us, Marie. Perhaps he didn’t receive word that we’d be coming on the supply boat. I’m going to talk to the captain. Do you want to stay here?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Remain here, then, and look around.”

When Mitti Peary left, I climbed up the steps and stood right in the doorway. I would have entered, except for the owl that Peary kept in the caboose. It was dead, but Peary had made it appear to be alive. Its yellow eyes gleamed in the light and seemed to follow me.

“Marie!” I said. “It’s me, Billy Bah!”

She looked at me curiously for a few long moments, then, at last, gave a little hint of a smile. She remembered me. “Billy Bah!”

I didn’t mind that she still called me Billy Bah. When Marie was a baby, she gave me that name. All the white people still used it.

I jumped from the caboose. Marie hesitated, and I lifted her down.

Soon our people surrounded us, talking and gesturing. Those closest to Marie reached for her braids.
“Tassa!”
I told them. I’d been scared when people in America touched me this way. Marie just laughed.

Qaorlutoq, the orphan boy, jumped in front of me and cried “Marie!” I called him Bag of Bones because his arms and legs were so thin. His patchy coat of furs and skins looked dirty.