Yasmeen felt her cheeks flush. Resting her fingers in the hollow of her throat, she tried to be firm. “Girls! Taima! Cut that out, I said!” But she wasn’t very convincing. Somewhere deep down, she knew their behaviour was a sign they had accepted her into their world. Joanasi had handed her the key to the front door and now she was inside. In some ways she considered them her children.
“Are you gonna marry him?” Salatee asked, staring at the floor.
The boys groaned and pulled their baseball caps over their eyes.
“When are you gonna make a baby together?” said Elisapie, unaware she was opening up an old wound.
Yasmeen pasted a smile on her face and drifted into thought. For a minute she forgot where she was.
“Hey, teacher,” shouted a voice from the back of the room.
Their resounding laughter snapped her back to reality. “Pardon? What?”
Audlaluk’s hands were waving for attention. His eyes gleamed. “I solved the equation! Can you check it?”
Yasmeen walked toward him.
Overjoyed, he tilted backwards in his chair, balancing precariously on its hind legs—a habit she could never break him of.
“How many times have I told you never to do that?” Yasmeen snapped. “Someday, you’re going to fall and hurt yourself and then you won’t be laughing anymore.”
•
Every radio in the village was tuned in to the afternoon program. The general tone was bleak but unemotional, callers rehashing facts, stating opinions, repeating gossip. The new announcer, an older man with a droning voice, lacked Joanasi’s expertise on the controls, making for a crackly, uneven broadcast. Transitions between songs and the ongoing update of information produced intervals of dead air that were longer and more dragged-out than usual. During those breaks Yasmeen stood up, stretched her legs or shifted her position on the couch, a hint to Joanasi that she would appreciate a translation, however abridged. In the beginning he translated, begrudgingly, but the longer the program went, the fewer details he provided until eventually he gave up altogether, staring catatonically into space.
“I have a bad feeling,” he mumbled.
The phone rang.
Yasmeen almost tripped over her feet, running to answer it. “They think they found Paulussie,” she whispered breathlessly into the receiver.
Elliot sighed. “Where?”
“I didn’t get that part.”
“I should spread the word then.”
Yasmeen eased the phone back into the cradle. “It was Iris,” she said, though he hadn’t asked. The lie surprised her, the way it slipped so naturally out of her mouth, unprovoked. “Just something about school.” She swapped the full ashtray for a clean one and sat beside him, kneading his shoulders to loosen him up.
“I have to go,” he said, pulling away.
She fetched two slices of bread and a banana from the kitchen. “Take some food. You need your strength.”
He turned away from her, the door slamming behind him.
•
Paulussie’s body was discovered near an Inukshuk about sixty kilometres from town. He hadn’t shot himself, though he might have. He hadn’t been ravaged by a polar bear. There was no evidence of a great fight to survive. He had simply removed his clothes and lain down stark naked in the snow, waiting to be taken. Leaving the world the way he came into it. Alone. With nothing.
A small party of hunters from Kaivittuq found him buried under a snowdrift. One of them recognized him and sent for a qamutik to pick him up and take him back to Saqijuvik. Their solemn procession arrived in the failing light of dusk, Paulussie strapped onto the sled, covered with a tarpaulin.
The blue tinge of death settled over the village. Sarah finally accepted the bitter truth of what had happened. Putting aside her pain she became a mother figure to everyone in the community, her face like granite, grave and expressionless, as though all along, deep down, she had half expected it.
Preparations for a proper burial began. Joanasi and Pasha sponged his body down and displayed him in bed in his good suit, the one he wore for his baptism. Mourners came and went around the clock, paying their respects, reminiscing about Paulussie as a boy, as a hunter, as a dedicated father. A hardworking man with a respectable job, a pillar of the community. Pasha served them tea and bannock while Sarah graciously listened to their stories. For an entire day people crowded into the small bedroom to lay a hand on Paulussie’s cheek and murmur their goodbyes. Some wailed, some sat in a private corner in silence. Outside, the village looked as desolate as the moon.
The teachers gathered at Sam’s, no one leaving to go home except to shower or change their clothes.
“I can’t believe he’s really gone,” said Iris, dabbing her eyes with tissue.
Yasmeen shook her head, tears sliding down her face and chin. “How could he just give up like that?”
Iris passed her the box of Kleenex.
Elliot hooked his arm around Yasmeen and hugged her into him. “He sure was a man of extremes.” She let her head fall against his shoulder.
Sam nodded. “How’s Joanasi holding up?”
“He’s barely said a word to me. I don’t know how to help him.” Yasmeen blew her nose and went to pour herself a glass of water.
“So what happens now?” said Sam.
All eyes were on Jacqueline. “Time,” she said, pragmatically. “It happens. People deal with tragedy here all the time. And then they go on.”
•
It was an unlikely day for a funeral, the sun out in mesmerizing splendour, a potent, blinding swirl of incandescence. By the time the truck delivered Paulussie’s body, everyone was gathered at the cemetery, a hillock of lopsided graves on the shifting permafrost. Fenced off with a line of whale ribs, it was a modest resting place dotted with artificial flowers and cheap plastic wreaths, everything tattered and sun-bleached. Many of the dead were children or teenagers who had succumbed to accidents on the land or drowning or substance abuse.
A small front loader had already broken up the land in preparation for the interment. On the count of three, Joanasi and Tommy lifted out the simple coffin they had nailed together out of plywood. Together they lowered it into the hole.
“Ataata, my father! We will never forget you,” cried Jimmy, the eldest son. Joanasi knelt beside him and whispered something in his ear, probably the very thing Paulussie had said to him after the death of his own father. Yasmeen was pretty certain that’s what it was. That he had to be strong now that he was the new man of the house.
Silasie wailed as Sarah gathered them into her bosom for the closing prayer. Her voice was resplendent. “John 11, 25. I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”
Yasmeen stood away from the burial site with the other teachers, studying Joanasi from a distance. The funeral was an Inuit thing, he had said, and even though it hurt her, she respected his wishes. At least he had broken his silence and spoken to her. Sam leaned into Elliot, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. Iris stood slightly apart from them, next to Yasmeen. Together they mouthed the Lord’s Prayer.
Through the crowd Yasmeen spotted Adamie in sunglasses looking very solemn. She remembered the ptarmigan smell on his hands the time he handed her his cigarette, the time they went hunting and stopped at the old igloo to warm up. Her heart sped up a notch and she realized she still had a soft spot for him, the boy who had first introduced her to the land. He wore a brown tweed cap tipped slightly forward on his head. He and his grandfather were standing together, arms interlocked. A pretty young girl with a child on her back was standing on the other side of Adamie. Yasmeen squinted and saw that it was the same girl she had passed on her way home from the church the night of the fire, the girl who had scowled and rebuked her.
Yasmeen turned her attention back to Joanasi and the others. It w
as the most sadness she had seen in Saqijuvik since her arrival. She marvelled at the community, how they took it, stoically, gracefully, how resigned they were to the great will of the universe, how, faces lashed with sun and wind, they carried endurance on their backs and forged ahead into the next calamity, and the next, with dignity. She thought of her Syrian forebears, nomads who endured similar hardship in the arid desert, sometimes going days without a single drop of water. People who thrived against impossible odds, as these people did, in their interminable wasteland.
TWENTY-TWO
After the funeral Joanasi disappeared again. He didn’t touch base with Yasmeen, tell her where he was or what he was doing. He didn’t leave her small gifts or folded notes slipped under her door reassuring her that he was okay. Annie told her not to worry, he’d be back. Like all Inuk men, he just needed time to clear his head. Yasmeen missed him but knew Annie was right. He was suffering, she realized, and it didn’t seem she had any of what it took to lift his spirits. She understood that to give him up was to get him back. It was what the other women would have done.
Still, Yasmeen spent her time waiting for him. And worrying. She hardly ate. She was distracted at school and grumpy with the students. Nights before bed she scrolled through her memories of him, their initial awkwardness when Elliot introduced them that day on the airstrip, their first kiss, the time he confessed that he once almost killed a guy and how, rather than frighten her, it turned her on. She never mentioned it to Morgan out of fear of what she might say. Yasmeen closed her eyes and imagined his hands carving the soapstone mermaid for her, rubbing its natural grain to a fine polish. She tried to piece together what had gone wrong between them but kept coming up with nothing. Restless and exhausted, she got pills from Jacqueline to help her sleep through the night. Then, unpredictably, he turned up.
She was rinsing her supper dish when she heard the squeaking hinges of the front door. Before she knew it he was behind her, slipping his arms through hers. He rested his cheek against her head. For a long time, neither of them moved.
“Nalligivagit,” she whispered. “Tell me what I can do to help you.” She could hear the cries of children pattering through the spring slush outside. Though it was evening, the light was abundant.
He twirled her around until she was facing him. She stroked his hair with her wet, soapy hands. She could tell by his expression that he was stoned.
“Are you?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows, sluggish.
“It’s not going to help you feel better, you know.”
He held his hand over her mouth. “Aippaq,” he said. “Touch, not words.” The desire rushed out of him. He backed her against the cold fridge and cleaved open her jeans. She felt the earth about to fall out from underneath her—“Slow down,” she whispered, though she didn’t want him to—and his cock was already bristling into her as though it had been too long. He held her in a vise-like grip. Her head knocked against the refrigerator. The first time it hurt and afterwards she wouldn’t close her eyes, afraid they might never open again. She imagined a swallow flying into a barn door, missing the opening, flying into it again, and again. It wouldn’t stop. Her mind clouded over and floated away, far beyond anything she knew, where the air was thin and nothing grew and nothing was recognizable except for the monstrous disturbance quaking first through him and then her. The darkness lasted forever.
The air stilled. His eyes cracked open. They were both breathing as though their hearts would explode. She stared into his dead pupils. They made her think of the ragged holes in the ice where the seals push through.
•
Spring turned everything brown. What the pure snow had masked all winter was now rearing up through the muck, sodden, warped, corroded. Cigarette butts, gnarled antlers, dog shit, dirty diapers, scraps of corrugated siding, twisted nails and two-by-fours, desiccated, unrecognizable animal carcasses. Every shrieking Skidoo on the road belched black fumes of gasoline.
Even though Joanasi was back, something had changed between them. She no longer got the same thrill strolling through town with him, each like a trophy on the other’s arm, his cocky swagger making her feel like a well-loved possession. Now that spring had arrived, his addiction to her mutated into pathology. It was as though a permanent particle of death hung over them. Some nights he was inconsolable, conjuring up the worst scenarios of jealousy Yasmeen had ever heard. No one was above suspicion, friends, cousins, those on a brief stopover, usually construction workers or cops or government officials checking on the progress of a new social program. He smelled a lusty cocktail of testosterone in almost every updraft, a lurking man who wanted her between his legs no matter who she belonged to. He started to make unreasonable demands. She wasn’t, under any circumstances, to be left alone. He escorted her to and from work. Except for her sewing circle, no outside activities were permitted unless he was present. Each day Yasmeen was hopeful that his true nature would resurface, that eventually he would loosen up and she would gain his trust again.
“We’re going to the Co-op,” he said one afternoon. “Get dressed.” He ignored her suggestion that they wait until the plane arrived with a fresh shipment of food.
Outside the store a dozen trucks and Skidoos were idling noisily, their owners inside stocking up on the necessities of life, cigarettes or diapers or bingo tokens. A pack of surly teenagers in shirtsleeves stood at the door bumming money, pretending not to be cold, while the bully among them scratched “Fuck you shit” in red ballpoint on the facade. Joanasi pushed past them, strong-arming Yasmeen into the store. He ordered her to get a grocery cart and forced her to walk beside him as he wheeled up and down the aisles, mindlessly filling it with foods that caught his attention, frozen pizza, soda pop, chocolate pudding, an Oh Henry bar.
“How about some yogurt?” she said.
He scrunched his nose.
“Let me go grab some bread, then. We’ve run out.” She pried her fingers from his. Immediately he spun the cart around and followed her into the next aisle, where they saw Elliot whistling to himself, squeezing the different loaves of bread for freshness.
Joanasi almost crashed into her with the cart.
“Well hiya, you two,” Elliot chirped, a loaf in each hand. “So what do you think, raisin or whole wheat?”
Yasmeen shrugged her shoulders.
He dropped both into his cart, making a joke of it. “I have to watch my calories if I want to keep my girlish figure.” He modeled his hips for them.
Joanasi snorted.
Yasmeen stepped around Elliot in a wide arc, avoiding eye contact. “Why ask me, you’re the one who’ll be eating it.” She reached for the nearest loaf and dropped it into their cart, interlocking arms with Joanasi, helping him to steer past Elliot.
“Bye, Joanasi,” Elliot called after them.
Joanasi ignored him. He growled into Yasmeen’s ear. “I didn’t know he was going to be here. Did you tell him we were coming?”
“What, seriously?” She couldn’t believe his reaction. Hadn’t he noticed her absolute neutrality around Elliot? Her efforts to avoid stirring up trouble? She remembered how, right from the start of their relationship Joanasi held all the power, how she wanted it that way, how it turned her on. She thought of the night he smoked her up and zipped her inside his parka and took her outside under the velvet sky where a single star glowed above them. How deliriously happy she was. And now, this. His instability, his irrational extremes. Was he trying to goad her, force her into a false confession so that he could say he had been right all along?
“Did you?”
“And why would I do that?”
“You can’t fool me,” he said, steering the cart into the checkout line. He unloaded their groceries under the harsh glare of the fluorescent light.
The flirty cashier smiled at Joanasi as she entered his account number into her ledger. They exchanged pleasantrie
s while she bagged their items, ignoring Yasmeen altogether. Joanasi mumbled something to the girl and told Yasmeen to take the bags. He rushed her out of the store by her elbow and warned her they were going right home to straighten things out once and for all.
Outside they passed the same half-dressed teenagers. One of them begged Joanasi for a cigarette but he ignored him. He tightened his grip and picked up speed, his boots spraying slush everywhere. Yasmeen had to run to keep up with him.
Elliot passed them briskly on the road without looking back.
“Aippaq, it’s me who should be mad at you,” Joanasi said, as though he were having an epiphany. “You already fucked him, didn’t you?” His persistence reminded her of a spoiled child who won’t stop until it gets what it wants. “Yes, you did. You fucked him. While I was taking care of the funeral you fucked him, I can tell. You fucked him behind my back, didn’t you?” He snarled and spat in the snow.
She wrenched herself away from him, but he yanked her arm back with a fierceness she had never felt outside their bedroom. It was proprietary, the way she had seen village huskies rip into a carcass, asserting their ownership of it. “Just stop this now, Joanasi!”
“You did, didn’t you? You fucked him, you fucking bitch!”
She tried again to wrestle her arm loose but he clamped onto her wrist, cutting off her circulation. Villagers on the road looked away or stepped aside, knowing better than to meddle in a man’s business. She decided not to make a scene, mostly out of embarrassment.
For the longest time she had refused to admit, even to herself, that he was different, that their relationship wasn’t what it had been in the beginning. But his behaviour was becoming harder and harder to justify. Most of the time he was stoned, walking around the house with his sunglasses on, drinking some sugary drink and spilling his chip crumbs everywhere for her to pick up, in the bed, on the couch, in the bathroom. He blew his government cheques on bootleg alcohol whenever he could get it. Nights, he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. No kiss goodnight, nothing. Their talk was limited to a few mumbled words punctuating the prolonged silence. She began to understand that conversation hardly mattered to him at all. Out on the land, under cruel conditions, his instincts had served him well. For months she had praised his faculties, his acumen and skill at keeping them out of harm’s way. She had gladly left him the responsibility. She had surrendered. How could she change her mind now? How could she account for her sudden about-face? Would she not be sending him mixed messages? I love it when you protect me, but I will decide what dangers are real.
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