Between Two Worlds (12 page)

Mitti Peary stared at her and Sammy, who slept on his mother’s lap. She held back tears. Didn’t Ally realize she’d said too much?

Tooth Girl and her mother looked on, confused, not understanding our English. Mitti Peary knew this.

I filled in the silence. “Peary can walk and travel by sled, but it’s hard to go very far in winter.”

“But you know Pearyaksoah, the Great Peary, often accomplishes what other men cannot,” Ally said. “Perhaps he will surprise us.”

Mitti Peary turned toward a porthole and looked out. “Pearyaksoah, the G
reat
Peary,” she muttered. Something in her seemed about to break.

Quickly in our language, I said to Ally, “You’ve upset Mitti Peary. You shouldn’t be flaunting your relationship with her husband. How could you be so stupid? Are you upsetting her on purpose?”

“No. Not on purpose,” she replied, round eyes all innocence.

“I was glad for your company on this ship,” I said. “Now I’m not so sure.”

Her beautiful lips pursed together. I immediately regretted my words. But she honestly didn’t seem to realize how her behavior posed a danger for all of us. Still, I shouldn’t anger her; she might talk recklessly for spite.

“We’ve done enough sewing for today,” I announced. Looking first at Ally, then Mitti Peary, I said, “Ally and the others will need to return to shore while there’s still moonlight. I’ll be staying.”

Marie clapped her hands in happiness. But I noticed Mitti Peary’s jaw tighten. She asked, “You’ll be staying on the ship, Billy Bah? Are you sure this is what you want?”

“Yes.” Noticing her frown, I said, “My husband arranged it.”

Tooth Girl looked at me curiously. “But why?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll see each other tomorrow. You’re coming back here with you mother and Ally to sew.”

I turned to Mitti Peary. “I want to take a bath tonight. And from now on, may I use the toilet?”

“Yes, Billy Bah. Of course. I should have told you earlier,” Mitti Peary replied. “But wouldn’t it be best if you slept in the village? Would you like me to speak to the captain about it?”

“I’m staying.” I felt a small triumph. But though she liked me, and had come to rely on me, her concern seemed mixed with contempt. I’d been traded to Duncan, and she disapproved.

As for Mitti Peary’s attitude toward Ally, beneath her displays of generosity and goodwill, I sensed jealousy and even hate. Ally must have noticed, but she didn’t let on. She packed up her sewing things, humming to herself.

Marie smiled at her baby brother.

In my dream, my father and my mother stood on a lone ice floe. A channel of black water separated us. Across the water, firmly grasping his harpoon, Ataata bent over the edge of the ice and waited for a seal to surface. He brushed snow off his small mustache and beard. My tiny
anaana
bickered with him, as usual. “Choose another place to hunt.”

“Quiet, woman,”
he said.

“I’m here!”
I called to them.
“Stop arguing. Can’t you see me?”
At last, my father turned and his dark eyes met mine.

“I’ve missed you these past winters and summers,”
I said.

His wrinkled brown face lit up.
“Panik, my daughter, I’ve missed you, too.”

“Are you ready to return among the living?”
I asked.
“Who would like to come first? May I be the one to receive you?”

The spirits of my parents became hazy and disappeared. “Come back!” I called. I sat bolt upright and opened my eyes.

A crack of light slanted through the small porthole near Duncan’s bunk. He woke. “What’s the matter?”

“I had a dream.”

“A bad one?”

“No.” I reached for my birdskin shirt on the floor.

Much to my relief, he just kissed me on the forehead, then held me. His voice was low and gentle. “It’s good to have you here again. I missed you.”

“I missed you, too.”

It came to me how much my dream resembled the last time I’d seen my parents. I’d watched on shore as Peary’s ship the
Hope
sailed away. Mitti Peary and four-year-old Marie were on the ship, too, as well as three others from our village, and an enormous black stone that Peary was taking from our land. The stone had come from the sky, Peary said, and the museum in New York wanted it, so my father and others had helped him to dig it out of its resting place on an icy island far to the south of Itta.

My father looked at me from the deck, saying a silent good-bye, while my mother talked at him, waving her arms.

It wasn’t Peary who made my parents want to visit the world of the
qallunaat
. No, it was the stories I’d told them of trees with yellow and orange leaves dancing in the wind. They’d never seen a tree, or brilliantly colored birds. I’d collected fragrant pinecones and the beautiful red feather to show them. I’d never have boasted or shared my treasures if I’d known what would happen.

All that year I waited to see my parents come through the harbor toward me. Then, the following summer, the
Windward
entered the shallows. It was the rare warm day when no one wore furs. Many purple flowers had recently bloomed, as if to welcome my parents home. As sailors rowed boats to shore, I stood on the beach, eager, happy.

But as I watched the ship empty, my parents didn’t appear. Then I saw Peary.

I was fingering the soft auk feathers on the chest of my birdskin shirt as he strode up the beach toward me. Buttons on his white uniform gleamed in the sun. He wasn’t smiling. He fixed his blue-gray eyes on mine.

“Billy Bah.” He reached for my hands. “I am so sorry, so deeply sorry.” He paused. “Your parents have died. Two of the others in their group also. One was Aviaq, the girl your parents adopted.”

“Never say the names of the dead out loud!” I cried. It might confuse the spirits who were waiting to be reborn.

I covered my face, but I didn’t weep. In the igloo afterward, when I told Angulluk and his parents, I writhed and choked. But at that moment, I dropped my hands, held my face steady, and kept my bare feet firmly in the sand.

Over and over, Peary said, “I’m so sorry. My wife and I, we are so sorry.” I was relieved to see Mauripaulak, Matthew Henson, walking toward us. I’d known Mauripaulak
as long as I’d known Peary. He always accompanied the lieutenant.

Mauripaulak swept me up into his arms as Peary left us standing on the shore.

“I’m so sad for you, Billy Bah.” Mauripaulak gently put me down. “I will also miss your parents. They were good folks.” My father had taught Mauripaulak how to harpoon seals and walrus. My mother had sewn for him.

Of all Peary’s men, only Mauripaulak could speak our language. It was a comfort that I could ask him questions. Because of his dark skin, I felt he must be a distant relation. And Mauripaulak, it turned out, was living in New York during the time that my parents were there, while Peary was in distant Washington, DC.

Without saying the names of the dead aloud, we talked of the people who’d traveled to New York with my parents. There was Aviaq; Qisuk, a hunter who’d worked for Peary; and Qisuk’s son, Minik, who was about eight. When the sailors made a stop to trade along their route, a hunter from South Greenland, Uisaakassak, joined the group. He’d met Aviaq, Mauripaulak explained. “He hoped to marry her. That’s why he wanted to go to America.”

“My parents had several offers for her, but she was still too young to marry,” I said. How sad that this beautiful child with the blue-black hair had died.

“Soon after we came to New York, your mother, father, the other hunter, and the girl became ill,” Mauripaulak
said. “All of them were taken, except for Uisaakassak and the young boy.”

So bad spirits had entered their bodies.

“How long ago?” I asked.

“At different times. In the winter and spring.”

Qisuk had been the first in the group to die, in February, when there was snow on the street. My mother was next, in March. By then, Mauripaulak said, the trees had grown leaves. My father died in May. Ten days later Aviaq followed.

Just after the last big snowfall here, my parents visited me in a dream. I might have known then that they’d died. Yet I’d convinced myself otherwise.

Though dazed, I asked, “Where’s Minik?” Qisuk’s little son was a shaggy-haired troublemaker, Qaorlutoq’s friend.

“Minik was adopted by the family of a man named William Wallace who worked at the museum. They took him to a new home far away from the city.” Brushing his foot over the sand and squinting as if in pain, Mauripaulak told how my parents’ group lived in a dark underground room in an enormous building where there were many beautiful rocks, carvings, and other things on display. The group had coughs, sore throats, and chills. They were taken to a hospital. Qisuk died there. The others were moved outside the city. The place where Aviaq and my parents passed away was a farm: a small white house, among other buildings, surrounded by fields and trees.
Aviaq had enjoyed the animals there. My father had seen green leaves and colorful birds.

“Have you come to give me their bones?” I asked.

Mauripaulak hung his head. “No. I wanted to bring them back to you, but the folks at the museum buried your people outside the museum, in a spot with flowers and other plants.”

“Was my mother’s
ulu
with her? Did my father have his gun?”

Mauripaulak’s voice was low. “I think so, but I don’t know.”

He told me how Uisaakassak recovered from his illness. Lieutenant Peary had brought him home just days earlier, on the way to Itta.

I’ll never see my parents again
, I thought, and choked back tears. I thanked Mauripaulak for talking to me. Just over my shoulder, at the moment Mauripaulak walked away, I felt my father’s spirit. I spun around. In shadowy form, his presence appeared, then slipped away before I’d had a chance to get a good look at him or be frightened. He’d said:
“Build a grave for me, your mother, and Aviaq.”

“I will do as you ask, Ataata.”

That night, Angulluk, my sister, my brother, and I prepared the things that would go into the burial house near the other villagers’ graves: the rifle, the two women’s knives, lamps, harpoon, carving tools, furs, and other objects. These were mostly substitutes for the treasured belongings they’d left in America. Still, I felt that the goods
would give them comfort. My sister came up with an
ulu
that she’d planned to give to her own daughter. My brother found a hunting rifle that didn’t shoot straight, but it had once belonged to my father.

The next morning, as I gathered rocks for the burial house, and the four walls of the grave went up, I sensed that my parents and Aviaq had returned. I caught glimpses of them watching me. My father looked the same as he always did: like a powerful hunter. My tiny mother seemed tired; she’d lost weight. Aviaq wore a stiff blue dress with a starched white pinafore over it. Her hair was gathered behind her with a ribbon. She looked the way I did in America.

When we’d nearly completed the grave, my brother made a trip to the village to bring back my father’s large, pure-white lead sled dog. He had been one of the dogs my husband had traded to make me his wife. I turned away when my brother killed him, though I would always remember that gunshot. We laid the dog in the grave.

After we’d put the last boulder in place, we etched three horizontal lines into it with a knife. “Spirits of our loved ones,” my brother said, “these marks are to remind you not to roam beyond your grave. Stay here until the times when your names will be called. Then you will go into the bodies of newborns, and forget the lives you have lived.”

“Let me be the one to receive you, Anaana and Ataata!” I whispered. “One of you, come to me in pregnancy before
the Ancestors swing low in the sky and the stars of winter blaze.”

Several moons passed and the darkness came, along with its colorful companions, the Ancestors, and the bright stars. A young woman in the village had her first child, a girl, and named her Aviaq. The next child to be reborn was Qisuk, Minik’s father. Villagers who’d known him, and had placed tools and weapons for him in his late wife’s grave, had spoken his name.