Between Two Worlds (4 page)

“Relying on the
qallunaat
’s weapons. That’s no good,”
Ataata said, frowning.

“Many hunters are helped by the white man’s guns, but Angulluk won’t even try to use a harpoon,”
I said.

“But that Fat One is smart,”
Anaana pointed out.
“He’s managed to provide well for you, hasn’t he?”

“Not at all!”
I replied. True, Angulluk was a fine hunter
when hunger or pride or his sense of adventure moved him to it. My mother always came to Angulluk’s defense. He’d charmed her from the day he’d appeared at my parents’ igloo and said he wanted to trade six dogs for me. She liked his smile. “He’s as buoyant as a seal,” she’d said. At first, my father wouldn’t agree to the marriage because Angulluk was lazy. He kept numerous caches of auks because he rarely brought in larger game. Still, Angulluk had passed his father’s test of becoming a man: he’d killed a seal, a walrus, and a narwhal. His father and brothers were known as the best hunters in our community. So my parents felt that the Fat One must have potential. One day the marriage trade was made, and the Fat One, like all new husbands, yanked me off to his igloo and made me his wife.

Young couples often separate and remarry, and at first, and sometimes even now, I thought about finding a new husband who wasn’t so lazy. But I discovered that the Fat One, with his easy laugh and lighthearted disposition, was good company. As rude and bossy as he was, he never hit me; I could have done worse. And I needed him more than I could ever know. That summer, Peary took my parents to America because he said he wanted to teach the
qallunaat
about the “Polar Eskimos.”

Until recently, the
qallunaat
assumed that no one lived at the icy top of the world, Peary explained, and here we were, a few hundred of us, so cut off by ice and snow that we rarely saw our neighboring communities. Peary wanted
to show the white people how strong and skillful the Polar Eskimos were, he said, for surviving in a treeless, frozen place where there was no sunshine for half of the year. We were strong in our land, but in America, my parents and others who’d never been sick for a day in their lives quickly caught illnesses and died.

I told my mother and father,
“Angulluk’s parents and brothers have gone south to hunt for caribou. We’d have accompanied them if the Fat One could tolerate their teasing. You know how his brothers always call him a good-for-nothing!”

My mother’s spirit laughed and when she opened her mouth, I could see the place where she’d lost two of her bottom teeth.

We talked of my brother, who was about Angulluk’s age, eighteen or nineteen.
“Inunteq has gone hunting for caribou,”
I said.
“He met a woman last summer whom he arranged to marry and will stay in her village
.”

“He told us,”
my father said.
“It’s good that he’s found both a wife and a place where he can better support a family
.”

“I think so, too, but I’ll miss him.”

Now I had only my sister, Nuljalik. But I was used to our villagers dispersing for moons or even a year at a time, depending on the weather and the success of their hunts; and I wished my brother well in a land bountiful with big game. Itta was known for its auks and eider ducks, which came to our red cliffs in noisy clouds, blackening the sky. But all too soon the birds departed. Wintering in Itta
meant starvation if our hunters could not put large caches of meat aside.

I told my parents about seeing Mitti Peary and Marie. Then, finally, I worked up the courage to let them know what was pressing on me.
“Let me be the one to receive you into life again, Anaana and Ataata!”
I said.
“Let it be soon!”

Like the other times when I’d made this request, their spirits and the ghost dog dissolved into the air like mist.
“Don’t go!”
I shouted.
“Will you never answer me?”

Spirits could be reborn when babies were given their names. For the orphan girl Aviaq the matter had been easy because she belonged to no one in particular and, because of her beauty, was beloved to everyone. After the villagers learned of her death, her spirit had gone into the first girl baby born to our community.

As for my parents, it was understood that either my sister or I would bear a child and take on that special responsibility. Until that time, no one must ever say the names of my parents out loud. My sister already had a child. It was my turn.

“Anaana and Ataata. Send me a sign, if you cannot tell me now,”
I implored.
“Come to me in my dreams.”

The wind whistled through the spaces in the rock graves and seemed to say,
It is not permitted for spirits to speak of the future
.

Later that day, my sister Nuljalik stood with me on the beach, holding the hand of her five-year-old daughter while the confusion of people boarded the ship. Nuljalik and her husband were among the villagers who had no interest in dealing with white men and had not tried for a chance to go to Musk Ox Land. Even so, she wanted to see what the
qallunaat
would do next. We watched Ally, her husband, Piugaattoq, and son, Sammy, crowd into a rowboat full of tents, guns, harpoons, and yelping dogs.

“I wish you’d change your mind,” Nuljalik said. She looked at me intently with her dark, wide-spaced eyes. “You’re better off here, away from the
qallunaat
.”

“You may be right. Do you think they’re going to eat me?” It was an old joke of my father’s. My sister and I both knew that she couldn’t persuade me to stay.

“When do you suppose you’ll return?” she asked.

“I hope we come back in one moon with a ship full of meat! Otherwise, we’ll wait until the sound freezes.”

I thought again about the deep water separating Musk Ox Land from Itta. My father and other hunters had
crossed the sound in three days when it was solidly frozen. Though winter ice made sled travel possible, it was also the time of darkness and frequent snowstorms. So crossings could be made only during the full moon on clear days.

Nuljalik frowned. “The white men could return to America in their ship and leave you stranded at Musk Ox Land for a very long time. We don’t know what the ice will do.”

She’d guessed my worry. Crossing sea ice was very dangerous in the best of conditions. As the ice moved and shifted, gaps of water opened that could easily swallow a sled team. Perhaps the Fat One’s plan for us to go to Musk Ox Land wasn’t so good after all.

“Peary will arrange for Captain Bartlett’s ship to take us back to Itta,” I said, though I wasn’t so sure.

“If you’re not able to come home this winter and one of us has a baby, what will we do?” Nuljalik asked.

“Then the naming of the baby must wait until we’re together.”

“Good, we agree,” she said.

What if we both had babies? I smiled at her.

Behind me I heard whispering and turned to see two young women who used to be my friends. They stared at me and stopped talking. Ever since Angulluk had started trading me to white men, some of the villagers seemed afraid of me. I wasn’t loaned nearly as much as Ally was to Peary, but I’d gone several times, to different sailors.

I stared back. Silently, I told them,
Sooner or later, one of you will be traded to a white man. Then let’s see how smug you are
.

Now sailors were throwing biscuits on the ground for villagers who had not been chosen. Our people quickly picked them up. Peary’s ships had been coming to our land for as long as I could remember, so we’d grown accustomed to the white men. But most villagers didn’t realize when the
qallunaat
were making fun of us.

My little niece, Konala, tried to run toward the biscuits. I yanked her back.

“Do
not
eat food like a dog.” Konala broke into tears, and Nuljalik also looked like she was about to cry.

I pushed my way into the group of sailors. “
Tassa!
Stop throwing the biscuits on the ground!”

One sailor began handing the biscuits to the villagers, but another continued to throw the food.

“This is why you shouldn’t go, Eqariusaq,” Nuljalik said. “You’re wrong to admire the
qallunaat
. They don’t respect you as much as you think.” The words stung. We rubbed noses before she offered me a sad smile and walked up the winding path toward the village with her daughter.

Angulluk called, “Help me push the dogs into the boat!”

By sitting in the boat and gripping the harness, I managed to keep the dogs from jumping out. A sailor rowed the dogs and me, while Angulluk paddled our kayak. I kept my box of keepsakes between my legs. One dog bit
another, the rowboat rocked and nearly turned over, but I hung on.

Marie twirled about excitedly as I climbed up the ship’s ladder.

Angulluk climbed up after me. Two sailors I recognized used ropes to haul the rowboat and dogs up the side; one sailor smiled at me. Already the ship smelled strongly of dog and blubber. At the center of the deck, the dogs barked and fought as Angulluk pushed our team toward the snarling group.

We stacked our belongings against the pilothouse near the front. At the rail, Angulluk and I watched as his kayak was hoisted, and Marie came skipping up to me.

Our men were unusually quiet; they feared the ship, so large and brimming with strange objects. With its heavy wood and iron and tall sail masts, it seemed too massive to float or be steered. Most of our hunters had never traveled on a ship before. Even I could imagine it sinking in the middle of the deep sound, far from either shore.

I jumped as the
Windward
began to rumble and shake.
“Ua!”
I’d forgotten the sounds and vibrations of a ship.

Marie giggled, and I gave her a smile. A bracing wind made my face tingle, and Marie’s cheeks were already red.

Just a few days before, I’d never have thought that I’d be seeing Marie again, and going on a journey with her. Should I take her hand the way I used to do? Three summers had passed since her last voyage to Itta, and she was
shy with me. Mitti Peary came strolling up. I waited for her to greet me, but she just stared.

“Mother,” Marie cried. “It’s Billy Bah!”

Mitti Peary held me by the arms and looked me in the eyes. “Billy Bah! I
didn’t
recognize you. How you’ve grown up!”

I returned her smile. How good it was to see her again.

Smoke poured out of the
Windward
’s two smokestacks. The captain sounded the horn, and the ship began to move, steaming out through the floes of ice. Angulluk and I couldn’t return to shore now, even if we wanted to. We were on our way, our lives moving in unforeseen directions.

Captain Bartlett said our journey on the
Windward
to Musk Ox Land would only take a day and a night, but we’d hardly traveled any distance at all and three days had gone by. Gigantic ice floes towered over the ship and crowded the sound, and our perilous path between them was winding and slow. Marie and I watched the sailors climb high into the rigging and chop off points of blue ice that hung over the deck. She collected the fallen chunks that clinked together with the tiny songs ice can make. Qaorlutoq, that Bag of Bones, built play igloos with the slabs of ice.

“I build igloo, give Marie,” Qaorlutoq said. Marie crawled into it.

Marie smiled at me through a space in the flat roof. “Come on in, Billy Bah!”

“No. You play.” I was too old for children’s games.

I remembered the tar-papered house with the flat roof where Marie’s parents had lived when she was born. I’d hide behind rocks along with the other children in our village and watch Mitti Peary, big with child, walk in and
out. She was the only white woman we’d ever known. We wanted to see what kind of a baby would come out of her.

The morning after Marie was born, a big crowd of villagers gathered around the house with gifts of furs and carved ivory animals. Everyone loved this tiny, fair-haired child. I called her the snow baby. My mother used to sing nonsense songs for her, like
“Ah-nee-gee-ta-ta-ee.”
Everyone started calling her Ah-neeg-he-toe.