A Stranger at Home

by Christy Jordan-Fenton

I ran toward town, cut down the bank at the Hudson’s Bay Company, and ran along the shore, faster and faster. I had strong legs and loved to run, especially there, where I could feel the salt in my lungs. I was in full stride when a stone dropped me, and I fell, skinning my knees. I rolled over and pulled the kamik off my throbbing foot. The pad near my big toe was already bruised and swollen. I had spent two years cursing the outsiders’ shoes and longing for the footwear of my people. Now that I had them, every pebble pierced the soft skin of my feet.

  The pain made me angry, and that gave me energy, so I stood up and ran again, ignoring the stinging in my knees and foot. I didn’t stop until I reached a large tide pool. I found a place to sit and I sank my throbbing, swollen foot into the cold water. Soon it felt numb.

  When I had caught my breath again, I realized I couldn’t run anymore, so I hobbled back toward the Hudson’s Bay store, moving no faster than the wisp of cloud above me. I was in no hurry to go home.

  Children played in front of one of the houses, but I pretended not to see them. A woman came out of her cabin and stopped me. She was friendly and chattered away. I knew her from Banks Island. She had wintered there, like my family, until her husband died. She was very old, an elder, and I didn’t want to show her disrespect. She waited for my answers, at first with anticipation, and then with annoyance, but I had no idea what she was saying. All I could reply was, “Sorry.”

  Disgusted by my rudeness, she threw her hands into the air and walked back to her cabin, shaking her head and muttering to herself. My mother was already angry enough. When she heard about this, I was sure to be in trouble. Not only had I disrespected an elder, but I had also made it public that I was like an outsider now.

  I was afraid of everyone I passed the rest of the way. I was fearful that my own people would try to talk to me and be angry when I couldn’t answer, and I was even more fearful of the two English-speaking missionaries I saw standing outside the small log-cabin church. I was scared that they would take me into that dark church and make me kneel and pray to make up for being a bad daughter—for doing something to embarrass my parents, and more importantly for not convincing them to say grace. I never wanted to see or speak to another person again.

  I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I caught sight of our tent. I greeted my mother and father stoically, holding back the sadness that filled my heart, and disappeared inside. I pulled off my kamik and rubbed my raw and bruised feet between my hands. Then I did something I never could have predicted. I took my school stockings out from under my parents’ bed where I had stowed them. I put on the thick gray wool tights and slipped my feet into my canvas runners. The first time I had put my feet in outsiders’ shoes they had pinched and felt hard and awkward. Now they were a barrier, protection against the hard earth.

  I left the tent more comfortably than I had entered it, though even in the runners my feet ached. I did not say a word to my parents. Once again, I didn’t have the Inuvialuktun words to explain myself to them. I stood beside my father and waited for him to give me a job to do.

  Chapter SIX

  IHUNG MY HEAD AT SUPPER and prayed for God to save the souls of my parents and my siblings. Elizabeth said something. I looked up from my prayers to find everyone at the table staring at me. My sister’s face said that I was alien and weird. Mabel wore the same expression. Then my father pounded his work-worn hand on the tabletop and we all jumped. No one spoke during dinner and I had trouble finishing mine. After an hour, my mother excused me from the table and sent me out to feed the rest of my meal to the sled dogs.

  I dumped the food in front of them and they lunged at it. The meal that I could not finish in an hour was consumed by the dogs in seconds.

  I passed by my father on my way back into the tent. He looked up at me but did not speak, returning instead to marking the logs with a rock to show where he wanted to notch each one to fit with the others. His actions gave me an idea.

  THE NEXT DAY I WALKED with my mother to the store to help her bring home some supplies. The same group of children I had seen the day before was playing a game with a caribou-hide ball outside. My mother indicated that I should stay and play with them. I stood on the step and crossed my arms. I didn’t know how to ask to join them, and I was pretty sure they wouldn’t welcome me.

  The girl who was holding the ball stopped and walked my way. She was at least three years younger than I was, as were the rest of the children, who followed. She leaned in close to me and asked me a question. I wasn’t sure what she was saying. All I could say was, “Sorry.” She gave me a hard but curious look.

  A boy stepped in closer and said something to me. Again I responded with, “Sorry,” shaking my head in apology.

  Soon all the children were chattering around me like a flock of crows. My chest felt tight. I shook my head faster, repeating the only thing I knew to say.

  They repeated it back to me in a taunt: “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” From my place on the steps, I looked down my nose at them like Gulliver staring down a crowd of Lilliputians, and stomped my good foot. They had some nerve to be so rude to me. I was much older than they were, after all.

  The children pointed at my shoes and laughed. I turned from them and darted into the refuge of the store. My mother was at the counter, arguing with the clerk about a price. My mother was a small woman, but when she saw that I was behind her, she heaved up a large bag of flour and shoved it into my chest. I propped it over my shoulder. Her steps were heavy as she made her way across the room.

  As we emerged into the blinding glare of the sun, the children began taunting me again. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” they sang, pointing at my shoes.

  My mother looked to my feet, then back to the children. She clutched me by the arm with a hiss, which sent the children scurrying. I had embarrassed her, I knew it, but her free hand clung tight to me and she held her head high the whole way through town. As we passed one of the buildings, I saw the Du-bil-ak watching us from the shadows. Aside from my shoes, I may have looked like a normal Inuvialuit girl, but I was almost as strange to the people as he was. All of us who had been to the school were regarded as strange creatures, changed by our time away. Maybe my mother secretly thought that the outsiders had turned me into a du-bil-ak too.

  When we got home, she took the bag of flour from me, threw it down, and began arguing with my father. I wasn’t sure if it was about the clerk at the store or about me. I guessed it was probably me. Unnoticed, I walked away, straight toward the bay. I wasn’t going anywhere near town ever again, and thankfully I didn’t need to in order to carry out my secret plan to help my mother.

  I selected a couple of large, flat stones and found a comfortable place to sit. With a chalk stone I wrote my mother’s name on the first, with dotted lines that she could trace over and over without wasting paper. Paper was expensive and not always easy to get. On the second I drew the letters of the alphabet in the same way, just as the nuns had shown us. I knew my mother could learn this way. Now I had to make her believe it, too.

  I gathered the stones, searched for a feather, and headed back to our tent. My mother was inside, putting my brother down for a nap.

  “Here,” I said, laying the stones on the table.

  She came over to see. I showed her where I had written her name in dots. I took the feather and held it in my hand, tracing the letters to show her how she could use the dots to learn. I thought she would be very pleased, but she tossed the stones into a corner and began setting the table for supper. When we sat to eat, I did not see them in the corner anymore.

  AFTER DOING THE DISHES, I went out to the dogs. When I first returned from school, I smelled foreign and they bared their teeth at me anytime I neared them. But now that I had been home more than a week and had regained the scent of my family, they greeted me with lapping kisses. All nine of my father’s dogs vied to tumble and rub against me. I sank my fingers deep into their warm fur and felt for their soft skin. Their fur was tickly, which made me laugh, as d
id their expressive eyes. I rolled around on the ground and giggled until I could no longer breathe. When I looked up, I saw that my father was watching me with joy spread across his face. He joined me on the ground and wrapped his arms around me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “for sending you to the school.”

  I was sorry, too. I should have listened to him when he told me not to go.

  I THOUGHT MANY HOURS about the dark stranger no one spoke to. I wondered if he stayed near Tuk because it was easier to be rejected here than at home. Maybe he knew that if he returned to where he was from, he would be like an animal that carried a foreign scent, like I had when I came back from school. Maybe he didn’t want his pack to reject him. It would have to be a strong fear like that to keep him away. He was completely alone here, apart from the Hudson’s Bay clerk, who was rumored to play chess with him out of sight in the back of the store.

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  I passed the weeks that followed in solitude or playing with the dogs. Often I would read, working my way through the whole stack of books that had been so kindly left for me. Books were friends that held my hand through entire journeys. I read Gulliver’s Travels twice, each time understanding more how Gulliver felt upon his return home.

  It occurred to me that the Du-bil-ak was like Gulliver, and after my second reading of his travels I decided that the dark stranger needed the book more than I did. I walked down to the store to leave it with the clerk for him.

  I entered the store, and standing at the counter was Agnes, who was fetching some supplies. When I came up beside her, she looked around to make sure that none of the elders were present, then threw her arms around me and hugged me tightly. “I missed you,” she said in English.

  As much as I had missed her too, I didn’t say so. I knew it was not Agnes’s fault that she couldn’t see me, but I felt betrayed by her—abandoned.

  “How is your mother?” I asked.

  Agnes frowned. “She’s getting worse.”

  “Oh. I am sorry to hear that.”

  “How are things with your family?” she asked me.

  I shrugged my shoulders. I wanted to say that my family had missed me so much and they were so happy to have me back home. I wanted to say that it was just like I had never gone away. But that wasn’t true, and Agnes would know it.

  “At least we are home,” she said in a quiet voice, and hugged me again. But we weren’t home. Banks Island was home. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

  When we pulled apart, she noticed the book I had in my hand. “What do you have there?” she said.

  I tried to hold back the burning in my cheeks, but I was caught. “Oh,” I replied, “it’s just a book I finished.”

  The sadness lifted from her eyes. “Which one?”

  “Gulliver’s Travels.”

  She pulled it from my hand. “I’ve never read that one. I miss reading. We don’t have any books. Do you think I could borrow it?” I watched, unsure what to do as she thumbed through the pages with so much enthusiasm. “I don’t think my mother minds if I read in English. She doesn’t like to hear me speak it, but she can’t hear me read, can she? Do you mind?”

  How could I object? “No, not at all,” I said.

  “Well, I better get back. My mother probably needs me.” She signed for her goods and left the store, calling “Quyannanini”—thank you—over her shoulder.

  “Well, what do you want?” the clerk grumbled at me.

  I gave him my best mean face and left the store myself. Agnes was walking ahead of me. I was glad I had shared the book with her, but I still wished I could give it to the Du-bil-ak. I should have just told her why I had brought the book to the Hudson’s Bay store. I had other books I could have lent to her.

  I was angry with myself the whole way home. We were both much better off than he was. We were at least Inuvialuit, and we had our families. It was not easy for Agnes to care for her mother, but she enjoyed being home from the school. And I had only to remember how to be Olemaun Pokiak, an Inuvialuit girl. Whereas the Du-bil-ak was not one of us at all. He was not even like the outsiders we were used to. Nothing he did would bring him family or friends.

  IN LATE AUGUST, the Du-bil-ak walked away from town and did not return. Wherever he had gone, I hoped he would be able to find some peace. I was sad that he left before Agnes returned the book, but I was glad she was enjoying it so much. It would give us something to talk about as soon as her mother was feeling well again and I could prove that my Inuvialuktun was good enough for me to play with her.

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  ON THE DAY THE OUTSIDERS’ boat came back to gather up children, I hid under my parents’ bed. My father had promised not to let them take me back to the school, but I was taking no chances. Agnes wasn’t taking any chances either. Because her mother had taken a steep turn for the worse, it had been decided that Agnes should go back to the school and her mother back to the hospital. But when the boat came, no one could find her.

  For two days the men from Tuk searched for Agnes. When she couldn’t be found, speculation spread about what had happened to her. Some people thought that maybe she’d been eaten by a polar bear, while others said that the Du-bil-ak had come for her in the night and carried her away. I didn’t believe either of those stories, but I was scared for her and hoped she was all right. On the third day she came back. The outsiders’ boat was gone and it was safe. She later told me that she had run flat out for an entire day before stopping. It then took her two days to walk back to town.

  Soon after that, fall crept in swiftly, as it does in in the North, with me very grateful to still be with my family. I watched the slow return of night without speaking very often to anyone except my father—not only because he was the only one who could speak English, but also because he was the only one who understood what I had been through.

  Chapter SEVEN

  MY FATHER TRIED to keep me busy helping him build our cabin. I had to comb the beach every day to find the logs we needed for each layer of the walls. Then we had to carve the logs precisely to fit them together. Father knew that I was like him and that hard work eased my loneliness and pain.

  When I started helping my father, he instructed me mostly in English with some Inuvialuktun mixed in. By the time we began chinking our cabin in the early fall, filling the gaps between the logs, he used our native tongue with bits of English. And by the time our cabin was finished, just after the snows came in September, he asked me to do many of the tasks in straight Inuvialuktun.

  I was unsure how I would keep myself busy after our work was done. My mother suggested I make friends, but I didn’t fit in and had no idea where to begin. I did see Agnes on occasion and her mother did allow us to speak to one another, now that I had rediscovered my own tongue. But even though she was out of the hospital again, her mother was so ill that Agnes had little time for anything apart from caring for her.

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  “COME,” MY FATHER SAID to me one day in Inuvialuktun, when the sky was still mostly dark. One of his jobs in the winter was to cut chunks of ice from a local lake, to supply drinking water for the missionaries. I loved helping him gather the ice. My canvas shoes had long since become impractical in the harsh Arctic climate, so I pulled on my kamik, put on my parka, and joined him outside by the dogsled.

  As we neared the lake where we collected the ice, it was late morning and the sun was just beginning to rise. A shimmer of pale light illuminated the snowy hill between us and the lake. Descending it always scared me, despite my father’s ability with the sled, but on this day he stopped when he reached the top and said, “I think I am going to walk from here.”

  “But what about the sled?” I asked.

  He laughed and hopped off. “You’ll manage fine,” he said over his shoulder.

  The dogs moved forward.

  “I can’t,” I cried out. “Help!”

  “Just use the brake,” he called back.

  “I c
an’t,” I cried again, trying to move my shaking foot between the runners to press on the brake.

  “You can do it. Stop being chicken,” he said. It was his favorite English phrase, and while I did not know exactly what it meant, I knew that I had to be brave.

  As soon as I reached the bottom, my father ran up to meet me. He grabbed me and kissed my cheek. He smiled. “You handled that like a true Inuk.”

  When we returned home, he told my mother and siblings all about it, as if I was a great Inuvialuit hero. They were all proud, and I felt Olemaun grow large inside of me.

  IN THE WINTER, WE SELDOM went outside, except to visit our neighbors. We spent many hours in our new cabin, which was roomier than the tent. When we did gather with others, I was still nervous about speaking our language with anyone other than my father, so I learned to listen. The elders talked constantly at these gatherings, and I sat at their feet practicing my beading and doing needlepoint while their words played like music in my head. Day after day I listened, and over time meaning emerged, rocking me back to remembrance as night settled on us with its darkness and cold.

  Agnes came too, when her mother was well enough to leave her home. I cherished just sitting next to her, even if we didn’t talk, because as much as we loved each other’s company, we did not want to miss a word of the elders’ stories.

  I still worried for my parents’ souls, but as hard as I tried I could not convince them to bring prayer into our home. I understood from the elders that they had their own stories to give them guidance, stories that were handed down instead of being written. But the stories were not about Jesus, and the nuns had taught us that no one could go to Heaven without stories about Jesus.

  ONE DAY IN EARLY DECEMBER, my father loaded his sled, hooked up the dogs, and said good-bye to us. He was going to check on people who lived in remote locations, trappers and others. The RCMP hired men like my father, men who knew the land well and were skilled at surviving the dark days and the harsh climate, as special constables.