by Tanya Tagaq
Off-colour jokes and overcompensation do not mask my lack of actual tits. I get ignored. At least I am menstruating; that means it is only a matter of time. The cute boy laughs at one of my Pee-wee Herman impersonations, resulting in a withering glare from pretty girl. Lately the glances from him have become more frequent. Noticing him notice me animates me with pride. I can draw giggles from him. Laughter IS the best medicine. Even for humiliation. He shares a smoke with me at recess and I go home feeling like Jessica Rabbit. Our family is having ground caribou shepherd’s pie for dinner. There is no loud music or unexpected visitors today. There are many thanks to be given.
The sun slowly returns. Lunch Time Sunshine! Nothing feels better than the return of the sun. The sun peeks over the horizon and tells you to endure. “I am coming to save you from yourselves,” says the Sun. “I am coming to save you from Moon, who has bullied you into submission and stolen your will to survive.” Moon uses the violence of the cold. Sun grows more powerful to shoo away the freeze. Sun grows strong as Earth turns to face her. She gives you life, and hope. North is in love with Sun. North is in love with the Life she brings. Open your legs and she will give you a birth. Open your mouth and she will pour flowing light down your throat. The famine will subside. She grabs her drums and sings.
Ice will crack
Blood will flow
Sun in Ice
Ice in lung
Eater of tongue
Speaker of tongue
Speaking in tongues
My mother is a quiet woman, a stoic woman. My mother is a strong woman. She grew up on the land. Sod houses in the summer and igloos in the winter. I can only imagine the power that was blown around the land by the massive wind, unhindered by Christianity. What logic was maintained while at the mercy of such elements? There is no logic when molecules slow from the cold. What governs the Force of the cold? Sometimes I can feel a tickle at the very base of my coccyx: the Old Knowing. My mother was a child of transition; government relocation, the shift into capitalism, and the moulting of the Shaman Skin led to the generation of Christian Rules, Blind Faith, and Shame. Christians seem to love Shame: shame on your body, your soul, your actions and inactions. Put a cork in all of your holes and choke on the light of God. We have no power over a universe that we can barely comprehend. We are truly armed with nothing. Our ideologies impoverish us. They give us a reason to destroy Earth and ourselves along with it. How can Christians shame the process of welcoming spirit into flesh? How can Christians say we are born in sin?
The Earth calls us back into her
Just as the Earth is being pulled
Back into her origin
The one giant breath
The universe exhaled
All of us out
Therefore the universe
Will inhale
All back in again
Upon our deaths
The Earth welcomes us into
her bosom
Turns us into plants and oil and wind
Churns us into more life
I would call my parents and say I was sleeping over at your house. You would call your parents and say you were sleeping over at my house.
I don’t know how we fit so many children in the old nursing station porch. There was nowhere else to go for shelter, because we had all told our parents that we were at each other’s houses. There was no other shelter from the screaming winds. We shivered, nervously laughing in our tight denim and big hair so meticulously sprayed into blooming fountains. The snow had blown into our hair, and now it was melting. Our magnificent towers were becoming flaccid mockeries of themselves. Our mascara ran down our faces, beauty problems at minus forty.
The porch was about ten feet by ten. There were seven kids in it. We lit up all the butts we had picked off the ground. I had a big cold sore on my chin. I thought I could distract from it by putting on a lot of shimmery blue eyeshadow. I don’t think it worked very well. Our breath slowly stopped showing as our body heat warmed up the small room. What should we do in this little porch? Someone touched my ass. I slapped his grubby little hand away. Let’s play a dare game!
We simply went around in a circle, taking turns, collectively agreeing on a dare for whoever’s turn it was. If you failed to do your dare, you were banished from the shelter. This system immediately went awry when a girl started to cry because she had to kiss the ugly boy. Fuck this. We left the shelter and went our separate ways.
Your uncle was out partying. We crashed at his place. After raiding the fridge we put a movie on, I think it was The Dark Crystal.
We were coaxed out of our slumber by a thick smacking sound. You uncle was a gentle man, slight and benign. He had been dating a very aggressive woman. I never understood how he put up with the abuse. We heard a woman weeping softly through the walls. We could hear him quietly asking her, “There, are you happy now?” and another thick, wet thud would come. Tears, snot, blood. Wet noises. She just took it. There was no struggle. I knew what a fight sounds like. This was quieter, more intimate.
I understood. She hated herself so much that she would berate him and beat him over and over until she got what she wanted, the proof that she deserved to be beaten. Their love for each other was indistinguishable from the hate they felt for themselves. Sometimes children see more clearly than adults. They loved the cycle of self-hatred and forgiveness. They perpetuated a perfect, violent machine. “You must like it.” Smack. “You make me do this.” Smack.
We plug our ears. Fall back asleep, not daring to move lest we alert them to our presence. “Let’s go,” you whisper, nudging me. It’s quiet in the house now. We tiptoe out of the bedroom. The sun is up. I adjust my eyes, looking for my jean jacket. I can smell the blood. There are pools of it on the floor. The cat had tracked it all over the living room. There are red paw prints everywhere.
I peek in the room. The couple is sleeping together, embracing. Forgiven. Bruised. Bloodied.
We walk home. We part ways at the stop sign. We never speak of this night again.
Competition ignites itself
Like that time the glint off the midnight sun
turned the razor blade blind
for a moment and I accidentally sliced
You way too deep
Who can handle the biggest wound?
Who does not yield to pain or blood?
Poker face birth face rape face
Pain is not forever
But it is the doorway into the next realm
So we practise pain
When there is none around
We create it and rehearse it
Hoping to prove our strength
Hoping to distract from fear
Hoping to survive
Survival is competition and also ignites itself
Like that time you just had to go
To get the box of salt to rub in
To all of our wounds
Screaming, crying, laughing
None of us were strong enough
None of us could hang on
To the straight face, the toughness
We are children
Needing nurture not razor blades
1982
I was seventeen. Sent back home from residential school after a suicide attempt. Not a bad place all in all, Cambridge Bay. Curfews and duties seemed confining but comforting after the chaos of high school. The wind blew high and we were freezing. My friend and I were hot for a party and dressed for it, though the temperature dipped down past minus forty. Seventeen is an age of freedom.
“There’s a party at my aunt’s house,” she said. We weighed the pros and cons. Her aunt was not one to be fucked with. When she was drinking she was volatile. She was the self-appointed party police. But the buzz would make it worth our while if we could finagle a few beers to start the hunt off.
We walk in, the all-too-familiar smell of the clan, the blaring country music. The cigarette smoke saturates my clothing on impact. Ashtrays scattered around the ro
om. Conflict lurking under smiles, waiting to pounce after a few more drinks. Silent Sam is lurking.
My glasses fog up. I am almost blind without them. I feel a presence before I feel his touch. A hand slides up my leg. I can hardly feel it because the cold has almost frozen me through the tight denim, a shaky and thin hand, and a familiar hand. I know who it is before I can see him. His touch is like a bony finger that penetrates me and fuses with the bones in my spine. For years, this man would touch me during his class. Under tables, sneaking his hand in my pants. Touching my little-girl parts. After a while I got used to it, even felt envious when he touched other kids.
I smile down at him. Ask him if he would like to join me for a smoke outside. I’m not six years old anymore. I get him outside. He’s pretty drunk and I smile as I hit him as hard as I can. He starts to lose his balance and I nudge him the rest of the way as he tumbles down the stairs. They are metal stairs, serrated to prevent slippage. I watch in glee as he lands at the bottom. He is drunk enough that he’s flaccid, and doesn’t break anything.
“Someone fell down the stairs!” I exclaim to the party. My friend puts her boots on to investigate. People pile out the door to see what happened. He is unconscious but breathing as he is dragged up the stairs and back into the party. My friend’s aunt starts yelling about how he must have been pushed. We take turns yelling back and forth, and the huge woman nearly lifts me off the ground by my lapels before we escape, tears, laughter, and adrenaline coursing through the night. We are free.
Sedna the Sea Goddess came before Christianity. She came from the time when the land was our Lord, and we were her servants. Sedna had lost her mother at a young age, and approached puberty without the comfort and guidance that can only come from a mother. She and her father lived alone on a small island. Tormented by their grief for years, they finally settled into a happy existence. They grew lonely for more family and Atata longed for grandchildren. Sedna was nearing the time of Blooming. She could hunt as well as she could sew, and often left with her dog team for days at a time. She was capable and strong, intelligent and beautiful.
Once Sedna came of age her father ventured out in the kayak to find her a worthy husband. He wanted to respect his long-deceased wife by naming a child after her. Like a stitch that is continued, a naming could bring back the quirks and knowledge of the deceased. One can love the deceased through the namesake.
Father came back with many suitors, for Sedna was coveted for her endowments. She sternly rejected every single one, insisting she was not ready to be married. Though her father was disappointed, he relented. “She will want to marry in the future,” he thought.
This idea was thwarted the day she tearfully approached him and confessed that she was pregnant. Blind rage overtook him and he asked who the father was. It seems there was a shapeshifter among them. Sedna’s loneliness and longing had called forth the shapeshifter in her lead dog. They spent weeks at a time hunting and fornicating together as he transformed into a human. He would return to dog form when they got home. She confessed to consummating with him even while he was in canine form.
Her father decided this was punishable by death and grabbed her thick braids and tossed her over his kayak. He paddled out to sea as quickly as possible and threw her into the freezing water. “Atata, NO!” she begged as she clutched on to the side of the kayak, almost capsizing it.
He brought out his hunting knife and chopped off her fingers. He wanted nothing more than to serve her death. Sedna sank. The blood her fingers released clotted and formed into ocean beings, and they were her pets. They allowed her to breathe and live under the water. She became the master of all sea creatures. Her love for her pets grew as strong as her distain for Humanity.
Sedna began to enjoy keeping all the sea creatures away from the humans by tucking them into her now miles-long hair. She liked to watch the humans starve. The only way to placate her was to send a shaman down to the bottom of the ocean to sing her lullabies and comb her hair in the hopes that she would release some of the creatures for human consumption and alleviate the famine.
Wait. I need to talk to Sedna and tell her to keep her treasures. Humans have damned themselves and it has nothing to do with Satan, it has only to do with greed. What will Sedna do when she hears the seismic testing?
Another day, another dollar. I even have a job stocking shelves at the Northern Store now. The clicking of the tills and the pricing gun makes me think of insect colonies desperately constructing a Trojan Caribou to sneak me out of the store. I smell a thousand hands, toss a thousand sighs into empty boxes for disposal. Wipe off dusty fingerprints from expired cans of whole chickens. We sold out of Klik. Move the older produce up to the front so people hastily grab them first. We listen to the couples argue over what to have for dinner. We listen to the parents say no and the parents say yes to children. We smoke in the back room and go through litres of drip coffee. The apron keeps slipping off my waist.
A black eye on Saturday. Maybe six. Maybe she deserved it. Turn your head the other way if the shoplifter is too thin. Many hugs. Heartfelt greetings. Whispered secrets. We are the walls. We shuffle down the aisles and take stock of the community.
We congregate. I make out with the butcher in the freezer during breaks. I’m growing breasts and I’m proud of them. The town is small but it is warm. Everyone knows one another. Death and Life walk together. Someone is found frozen by Cape Cockburn. Someone committed suicide. Someone is pregnant. Merry Christmas. Happy Halloween. Stock the seasons watch the deaths. See the new babies. Stock the formula. The vanilla and Listerine have to be sold from behind the till because kids buy it and drink it. I steal a Playboy magazine and feel inadequate, then give it to Best Boy in offering. I lie awake at night thinking about the butcher and his boner.
Walking to school on a Thursday, and a fox is staring at me. He is under the hamlet-office stairs. We are alone. It is the Morning Darkness. He holds my gaze for too long. Brazen, fearless. The snow is the dry crystalline kind, like small diamonds everywhere that are easily blown around. Not the hard crust and crunch snow but the kind that absorbs sound rather than making it. Eddies of snowflakes swirl around my legs. What would happen if I did what Fox’s eyes beckon me to do?
I take a step towards him. After gathering all of my Peace into a small ball inside my chest, I send it to him. His shoulders relax and he comes out from under the steps. My fingertips and lower back feel strange, they are throbbing and uncomfortable. I’m tingling all over. Some children yell from not too far away and Fox spooks. Darn it. Next time I’ll see what he wants. Curiosity killed the fox.
In love with ripe gaze
I show you my teeth
Through a mouth barely open
Glint tooth
Wet tooth
Shy tooth
Engorged by vast grips
I show you my teeth
Through a mouth mostly open
Molars lost in whimpers
Tongue smooth
Sharp tooth
Giant tooth
Numbed by lost fists
I show you my teeth
Picked up off the floor
Split tooth
Growl tooth
Dead tooth
The storm has caused a whiteout. Thick flakes of snow coupling with ferocious wind. The snowflakes turn tiny and reveal seven sundogs on the horizon. The light is blazing. It’s the New Sun. The flakes turn fat again and take the visions away. The snow begins to oscillate between thick and thin flakes in a breath like rhythm, causing chaos. I am a witness. I am naked but not cold. We are in spirit flesh form. We walk towards the sun. Wandering on the land, I slice some meat off my own bones to eat. It is the only flesh available and my spirit is starving. It doesn’t hurt. I am hungry, hungry for justice, hungry for truth. My flesh keeps growing back but the scars are bad. The scars are too tough to eat so I keep cutting off pieces in new zones of fresh flesh. We reach bone on both calves. My spine is elastic. I am grey and numb, h
ungry. It’s getting colder. I feel nothing.
The wind picks me up off my feet and places me near the shore. The wind wants to help feed my belly. What great fortune that Wind is in a good mood, for she can kill on a whim. The ocean is inexplicably open. There is never open water this time of year. I need to feed. We find some arctic tern eggs near the shore and suck them up; life sprouts new hope in my core. Golden fluid, so hot, travels and shines out of my throat like the sun.
The sun talks to my throat in recognition. I strengthen. I grow, spine straightening and gold spreading. My arms turn into tentacles and I whip the water, pulling eggs out of arctic chars’ bellies with an alarming precision. The gold spreads to my eyes and down my fingers. My spine clicks together like Lego pieces and we grow ten feet. I am deadly. I am ravenous. The fish eggs tickle my throat and make my eyes slant and ears twitch. More gold. The horizon presents an electrical storm. Grey black blue rushing towards us. The sun grows afraid and throws some stars into the sky to distract the storm. The electricity absorbs the stars and grows stronger. The sun surrenders, taking her dogs with her into the ocean. I must leave. The only vessel available is a large ice floe. The wind shifts, and I am being swept out to sea.
Cast adrift, I am fat and windburnt. Then comes fear. The floe starts to break up. The ocean is eating the ice, licking and chewing on it. Large cracks form in the floe and the water is calling my name. I will die in the frozen ocean. Humans cannot survive in the frigid water, even in spirit form (most times). The ice breaks into small pieces and I am plunged into the water. It is so cold that it burns. Treading water and feeling the life leave my body, I accept.
I succumb. The pieces of ice have quadrupled in number and have become too small to grasp. These small pieces morph into miniature polar bears, dozens of them. They make mewling noises while they swim alongside my flank. It’s an indecipherable language but I am aware they are attempting to comfort me. One bear grows large and swims beside me, his sphere of reality warming the ocean for me. He has given me his corporality. The ocean is like a warm bath.