A Stranger at Home

by Christy Jordan-Fenton

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  I was sad to see him go. He was the only one who nurtured Olemaun instead of chastising Margaret. I missed our trips to collect ice and how he would let me drive the dogs. I missed the way he would touch my cheek and smile when he was proud of me. I missed the smell of his pipe smoke. I had only my little brother to play with, because my sisters had quit asking me to join their games. They accepted me when I read aloud to them, but I grew tired of reading the same stories over and over again. I spent a great deal of my time playing string games with Ernest and helping my mother. My Inuvialuktun was improving, but I was still shy about speaking it, and I had already been labeled an outsider, so making friends was not any easier than before.

  Some nights I sat at the feet of the elders; others I spent in my new bed reading by lamplight and dreaming of Christmas, when my father would return. I hoped that he would buy me some new books with the money he earned. I had always wondered why Christmas was so important to my father when we weren’t Christians, but after going to the outsiders’ school I partly understood. There, it was the only day of the year you weren’t woken at an insane hour to do chores, and the outsiders actually gave you enough to eat. They even served it on fancy china dishes.

  MY FATHER WAS AWAY for three weeks, which seemed an eternity to me that winter. When he came home, I was in the store trying to decide which books I would like most. High on a shelf, something caught my eye: three lace-covered porcelain dolls unlike any I had ever seen before. They were pale like outsiders, but their wide glass eyes were full of innocence and kindness. Their lips were pursed into little red bows. I stared at them with wonder.

  Elizabeth threw open the door, letting in a cold gust of air. “Father has returned. Come!” she said in Inuvialuktun.

  I squealed with delight and followed her, running toward home. The icy air stung our lungs in the black afternoon, but we couldn’t wait for Father to hold us in his strong arms.

  He looked very thin but he wore a big, fat smile. I wrapped my arms around him as tightly as possible, until I felt as if we were one.

  After my father had settled in and had a good meal of smoked herring—which I now knew was called pouchiak—he took his dogs and sled down to the Hudson’s Bay store. I wanted to go too, to be near him and the dogs, but none of us was allowed to go. We all sat on pins and needles, even my mother, waiting to see what he would bring home. He returned with our presents hidden under the canvas on his sled. We would have to wait another three days.

  I could smell warm bannock baking when I woke on Christmas morning. I was still very sleepy, but hunger and curiosity drew me out from under my blankets. I helped my father wake my sisters and my brother. After we were all awake, my father gave my mother a beautiful wooden chest full of eating utensils. They sparkled in the lamplight and looked very expensive. My mother turned them over and over again in her tiny hands. My brother received a toy train made of tin, a train like the ones I had read about in books, the trains that outsiders used instead of dogsleds and boats to travel far distances. Mabel and Elizabeth received the best gifts of all. My father had bought them two of the dolls I had admired only a few days before, the dolls with the fancy dresses and leather shoes.

  I waited for him to give me a doll too, but he didn’t. He hadn’t even bought me a book. My sisters sometimes teased me because they were jealous of the time I spent with our father. They would tell me that I wasn’t really part of the family. I had learned to speak some of our language again and my hair had grown longer, but not getting a doll suggested that my sisters could be right. I had thought my father understood me. I cried.

  “What is wrong?” my father asked, his voice teasing.

  “I wanted a doll, too,” I answered through sobs.

  “Aren’t you too grown-up for dolls?”

  I shook my head. “No.” The dolls we had made out of scraps at the outsiders’ school were clumsy, with lopsided or missing faces, and seldom had hair. They were nothing like the dolls we saw in books, or like the ones my sisters held in their arms while they stared at me.

  My father pulled me against him and kissed my cheek. “Really?”

  “Really,” I said, leaning my head against his shoulder.

  He had a mischievous look in his eyes. “Does that mean you are too little for your own dogsled?”

  I wanted to say something, but I was frozen with shock. I had to wait a moment, to replay his words in my head before I could believe them. Then my tears turned to tears of joy. My father thought I was grown-up enough to handle my own team! I pulled on my kamik and parka and ran outside. It was true! I had my own dogsled, and hitched to it were six dogs. I scratched each one around its harness. Then I pulled up the anchor from the snow, tossed it on the sled, and raced around and around our cabin under the blue-green fronds of the northern lights. I never wanted to stop.

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  The next day Father and I took our sleds down through the village. He led me to the Hudson’s Bay Company, where he came to a stop. We went inside and he let me pick out two books. While I was scanning the titles, I wondered if the Du-bil-ak had taken books from this very shelf with him out to his traplines, as my father had taken the Bible. Reading had certainly helped me and Agnes with our loneliness. I made a mental note to bring more of the books I had already read to the next gathering for Agnes, now that I was getting new ones. I understood how exciting it was to have something fresh to read, though I doubted I would be doing as much reading now that I had my own dogs and sled.

  My father took the books to the counter and whispered so low to the clerk that I could not hear what he said. The clerk came out and walked over to the shelf, where I was now admiring the doll. He reached above my head, took it down, and handed it to me. It had to be the very best day of my life! I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt. While my father watched me, I fingered the dark brown curls and lace ruffles and remembered when I had thought the nuns all had such hair under their habits. That was before I had caught a glimpse of a shaved scalp. This doll was nothing like them. She was so beautiful.

  I slipped my doll inside my parka and carried her home. My sisters complained and were jealous, until my father gave them each a piece of rock candy. Later, we made little beds for our dolls and pretended they were three sisters who did everything together. We even let our little brother pull them around on his train to exotic, far-off places.

  Then my sisters wanted Ernest to pretend that his train was taking them to the outsiders’ school. I didn’t want to play with them anymore if they were silly enough to think that anything as beautiful as our dolls would ever be seen in a place like that. I didn’t tell Mabel and Elizabeth that the nuns would chop off their dolls’ pretty ringlets and make them wear shabby clothes that didn’t fit properly. I didn’t think anyone needed to know about that.

  Chapter EIGHT

  NEAR THE END OF February, when light began popping its head up from the darkness for a brief moment each day like a sik-sik, my father told us to pack for a hunting trip to the Husky Lakes. The Husky Lakes were more like one body of water sprawled out in a tangle. The trip there took two days by dogsled, and I used my own sled the entire time.

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  We made our camp and settled in for the week. My mother took my sisters to set nets for fishing, and my father took me and Ernest, who was bundled in my father’s sled, to hunt for caribou. My father always knew how to find the herd. He was an excellent hunter. He had learned from his grandfather, who was one of the greatest hunters our people had ever known.

  I was worried that the hunt might not be successful. My father had worn a pained and troubled look for the entire trip. Something was bothering him, and I thought that maybe the herds would be scarce. But my father always found the tuk-tu, as I now called them again. As we approached them, he motioned for me to pull my sled to a stop. I anchored mine in silence, as my father did his. He crept forward on foot and crouched behind a low rise. As my brother slept, I
crept up beside my father.

  Tuk-tu is the Inuvialuit name for caribou. Tuk-tu travel in herds across the North and are a food staple of the people who live there.

  A shot cracked through the air, and then another. My father had managed to drop two animals before the herd scattered across the tundra. He ran toward the downed caribou. Leaving my own sled where it was, I jumped onto my father’s sled, where my brother, still bundled tight in furs but startled from his sleep by the shots, was now crying. I shushed him as we flew after our father, and Ernest was asleep again before we reached him.

  I stopped the dogs and jumped off the sled, my ulu ready. We had two animals to skin before they froze solid. I had seen my father skin animals many times when I was a young girl, and I had listened intently when the elder women talked of the best way to do so. I was sure I knew exactly how it should be done. And I was right: I made no holes in the hide. My mother would be impressed.

  “You have done well, Olemaun. You are a strong child,” my father said.

  His words floated around inside me. I had made him proud!

  My father kept looking at me as we packed the meat onto the sleds. I stood tall, pleased with myself. Then I noticed that his eyes were glassy and wet. He went onto one knee and stroked my face inside the fur trim on my parka. I was confused. Something was wrong.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, Olemaun,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “But why?”

  He couldn’t speak for a long time. Finally he cleared his throat. “I am going to ask something very difficult of you. You will need to be brave.”

  “Sure, Father. What do you need?”

  He stared out across the tundra. His eyes could not meet mine. “The government is telling us to send our children to school,” he said. He rubbed his face with the palms of his hands, as if he were trying to erase some painful knowledge from his mind. “It was easier to avoid on Banks Island, but here... More of them will be coming. Without learning their language and how to read and write it, we won’t survive. The clerk has your mother sign for supplies we did not buy, and she doesn’t know the difference because she can’t read.”

  “But I can read and write,” I assured him. “I can help Mother.”

  My father closed his eyes and hung his head for a moment. “Yes, but your sisters can’t.” A tremor quaked all through his body. He shook so hard I thought maybe every bone in his body would break.

  My eyelashes became sticky with ice. I understood. He was asking me to go with my sisters, to go back to that horrible place. He needed me to protect them.

  My father crushed me against his chest, and we both cried until we had no more tears.

  I didn’t cry again after that. The Immaculata would not arrive until late June, but I needed to start preparing myself now to go back. I had to teach myself how not to cry anymore.

  MY SISTERS WERE EXCITED when they heard that they would be going to the school like their big sisters. They saw it as a sign of maturity, but I knew it would be better for them to be frozen forever as they were now than to grow up in a place like that. I wanted to tell him how badly I wanted to stay and how I never wanted to leave, but I had to be tough—for my father, who bore a great weight of guilt, for my mother, who was frightened of losing her children, and most of all for my sisters, who would need someone to protect them.

  I woke early the morning we were to return to school on the outsiders’ boat and packed my things before anyone else awoke. Later, while my sisters packed, Ernest cried. I could not stand to hear it. I went outside and said my good-byes to my dogs.

  WHEN WE REACHED the dock, Mabel squeezed my fingers tightly and called me Agun, an affectionate word meaning “big sister.” She and Elizabeth had not called me that since I had first left for the school three years earlier. I could feel her shaking. Elizabeth ran ahead of us up the gangway onto the Immaculata. She was excited to go to Aklavik. I had once been that excited to go to school. My father hugged me tightly and my mother kissed me. Ernest started to cry.

  Just before Mabel and I reached the gangway, my mother pressed a slip of paper into my hand. “Read it later,” she whispered.

  I tucked it into my kamik and looked to my father. His head hung low. I could not see his face inside the hood of his parka; he was ashamed for asking me to go back to the school.

  Both of my sisters wore short bob haircuts. My mother had cut their hair at home to spare them the humiliation of having it done at school. I was now old enough to keep my hair long and had been spared. My stomach felt tight; all of me felt tight.

  The girl who had taunted me months before tripped as she stepped onto the plank. I gave her my hand, helping her up from the mucky shore. She managed a slight smile and turned to make her way up the gangway.

  As the boat left the dock, I was the only child who did not cry; even Elizabeth burst into tears when the boat started moving. The excitement ran off her face and fell on the deck along with her tears.

  All of the children stared at their parents, waving and calling to them. I scanned the crowd for Agnes but saw no sign. She had taken off to hide again. I wished that my sisters and I could have joined her, but they were too eager to learn to read, as I had once been, and there was no convincing them that we would be better off to disappear for a while. I was happy that Agnes had once again gotten away, but I was sorry that I did not get the chance to say good-bye to her. My father later wrote me to tell me that she was again found safe.

  I turned away from the shore. I didn’t want to remember my mother’s face fading from view or my father’s bowed head. I didn’t want to lock that memory into my mind.

  AS WE LEFT THE SHORE, a flock of geese flew overhead, no question in their minds about where they belonged. I watched them with envy. No one would ask them to fly somewhere other than on their course. And next year, when they returned to their nesting grounds, the other birds who would meet them there would not care where it was they had been for the winter.

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  The geese disappeared and the mouth of the Mackenzie River Delta swallowed up us weeping children. My sisters clung to me as the Immaculata traveled down the intestinal tract of the mainland, far from the warmth of our parents’ cheeks and the soft fur of their parkas that we had felt only minutes before.

  We passed the supply barge as it approached from upriver. A new tugboat had replaced the paddle wheeler and it guided the barge toward Tuk. My father was right. Things were changing. This new, faster boat was another sign of that. Every child aboard the Immaculata wished they had the strength to jump over to that new tugboat and go back to their parents’ open arms. But none of us did, and after a time it was gone from our sight.

  I stared out at the river’s edge for a long time, trying to prepare myself for what waited at the end of our journey. Mostly I was thinking of how I would protect my sisters. And then I saw him, off in the distance, making his way toward Tuk to meet the supply barge, pelts slung in bales over his shoulders—the Du-bil-ak. Watching him walk in that grizzly-like manner of his reminded me of how strong a person could really be.

  I looked to my sisters. This time would be different. I would have them with me. I would not be alone, though my mother would now be without her daughters for a whole year. That’s when I remembered the piece of paper that she had handed me earlier. I pulled it from my kamik and unfolded it. On the paper was written LENA, my mother’s name, in her own hand. She had written her own name!

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  I held the paper to my heart. Our journey wasn’t going to be an easy one, but we would return, steeped in the outsiders’ knowledge and also with the wisdom of our own people. I would make sure my sisters retained that wisdom, and that living with the outsiders would not make them forget what home meant. Home was not only where you were safe but also where your family was, and there was strength in having each other. I was Olemaun now, and I would keep us together, safe and strong. I would teach my siste
rs how to ward off the outsiders’ spells, the spells that could bind you in something scratchy and thin and tight, like the uniforms they would make us wear, until we no longer knew where we fit in. I would teach my sisters to walk each day of their lives as though they were wearing a warm and beautiful parka, with their heads held high as if they always belonged, no matter where they were.

  After THE STORY

  IT WAS HARD FOR MY FATHER to ask me to go back to the school, but he knew he could rely on me to care for my sisters. Because I was one of the older girls by then, the nuns picked on me less, though they still seemed to ask a lot of me. I had learned a great deal about how the school worked and what to do to stay out of the nuns’ way, and I made sure that my sisters knew as well.

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  The long hours of hard work were difficult for them to adjust to, but it was the homesickness that was the most unbearable. Sometimes I would wake to find my sisters standing over my bed, crying. I would pull the blankets back and let them crawl in with me, even though it was forbidden (I was punished when I did get caught). I would whisper stories or sing them songs in Inuvialuktun until they fell asleep. It was all I could do to make them feel better. But, as awful as it was, my sisters remained true Pokiaks: strong-willed and determined. Mabel did so well in school that she went on to high school in Yellowknife and eventually trained as a nurse.