Annie Muktuk and Other Stories Page 5

  Sighing, Blue Eyes turned towards her from the front seat. “Today it is all the dignitaries from Ottawa, and from the university and of course there will be students, but today is the biggest day of your life!” His cheeks turning pink, she put her eyes to the floor.

  As the car drove through the city, she put the silver ring onto her left hand. She could not stop herself. She lifted her hand into the air and towards The Kimono. Giving The Kimono her best smile, she winked at her and looked out the window. Her shoulders were shaking with laughter. Another bad word came out of The Kimono’s mouth. Her shoulders shook harder. Tears spilled from her cheeks. This was the best day of her life.

  Blue Eyes opened his front door while instructing the driver to continue around the block twice more. He nodded at her to get out of the car and told The Kimono to look for him inside. The snarl snaking its way across The Kimono’s lips. The Amauti smiled at his awkwardness. Now he might know how she felt at the beginning of every road show. The uneasiness. The big lie that it all was and the way white people thought they were real. Today he had made the mistake. He allowed The Kimono to ride with them. She tightened her left hand into a fist, feeling his wedding band slip to her knuckle. The ring was too big but for the next few hours, it was hers. She held her hand close to the passenger window, letting the sun send off a sparkle. She felt warm inside. This was a good day.

  All the politically correct smiling had begun. Shaking of hands. White people exclaiming how they didn’t know she was so small. Her exclaiming back that she wasn’t. This was the opening to every road show this Eskimo did. The staring, the looks of wonder across the white faces as she posed for selfies with students and in front of cameras mounted on tripods. She loved this part. Her own white carpet. The part where all she had to do was stand up and not say one word. The director of the show came along and moved her into a small room.

  “We managed to get you some land food!” the director exclaimed.

  “Ma’na” she said. The director looked at her with a confused look.

  “Oh, I forgot—that means ‘thank you’ in my language,” she said, a coy grin spreading across her lips. Might as well start the show right now, she thought. Might as well start to play the authenticity card. White tongues wag after each show and it was important to make sure they all thought she was real.

  “Well, we have some raw caribou for you!” said the director with a hint of pleasured pride in her voice. “Here, have some now. Enjoy!”

  “Tuktu,” she said.

  “What too?” asked the director.

  “In my language, this is tuktu,” she said. “It’s good for you!” she exclaimed, holding the dish out for the director. The director let out a nervous giggle and shook her head back and forth.

  “It won’t bite!” she exclaimed as she looked towards the director. She picked a piece of the raw, crimson flesh off the white platter. The director watching her intently, waiting to see if she would put it into her mouth. She did her old trick. The one she had learned in day school when the nuns would give her cod liver oil pills at recess. She put the piece of flesh under her tongue and pretended to swallow. Looking at the director, she opened her mouth wide, waiting for the nod of approval. The nod the nuns would give. Instead, the director gasped and fled the room. She bent over laughing, spitting the raw caribou onto the rug. She walked to her place near the back of the stage, still giggling over her tuktu. She told herself to settle down.

  She could hear it. All the shuffling of people into their seats as she stood behind the curtains. She could hear the white professors taking turns talking into the mic about the success of the re-publication of the book that was his with her name on it. She heard them introduce Blue Eyes and she peeked around the curtain to watch him struggle to get up. His silver cane thumping on the wooden floor, the sound of medium applause in the room. He stood. Half-turning, he waved to the audience. She thought he looked like a Jack Kennedy photo she had seen at the library. The Kimono seated next to him with a permanent pout drooping from her red lipsticked lips. “She’s no Jackie!” she thought and felt a laugh rumbling up from her tiny chest. This really was the best day, it really was.

  At last the auditorium dimmed. The one big light snapped up against the black backdrop and her name was said. She hesitated for a second, and then another. One of the white professors waved for her to come and as she walked to the centre of the stage, the professor told the audience that during her work with her, she had learned what a shy and humble person she was. Squinting into the light, she grinned the half-smile and turned towards the audience. She let the professors each hug her, making sure the audience could see her face.

  They were wearing perfume. She hated that smell. It would linger on her and when she got home she would have to put her amauti out on the balcony to air out. That heavy scent would crawl into her throat and she would be tasting Calvin Klein’s Endless Euphoria well into tomorrow. She felt the mucus worming its way up her throat. Stepping to the mic she looked to Blue Eyes who had his right index finger on his right cheek.

  “Ai!” she exclaimed. Blue Eyes tapped his index finger on his right cheek. That meant she needed more Inuktitut words.

  “Ai—again!” she said with a giggle. The audience giggled back.

  “Ai means ‘hello’ in my language,” she explained. Glancing at Blue Eyes whose head was starting to rotate side to side, while his right index finger slapped against his right cheek. She had to say more Eskimo words to make him stop. She thought hard for a second and said, “Aqagu ubluqhiut hunuaniaqpa?” (what day is it tomorrow?). The audience looked at her quizzically. Some smiled a reassuring smile. Some nodded their approval. Yes, she was setting down the snare. She was waiting for those white people to walk down the already-made path. She was getting ready. She was sure she heard a woman whisper that her orange lipstick was crooked. Poor Eskimo.

  Blue Eyes touched his left cheek. She turned her head towards the professors sitting behind her and looked back at everyone with a full smile.

  “I would like to thank these girls,” she said, pointing towards the back of the stage. “I would like to thank these girls for bringing the book back.” She put her hands together. The audience joined in. The lady professors bowed. The clapping became thunder. The snare was laid, just high enough above the ground. Now just wait for The Question.

  “Now, I could read to ya, but I like to think that everyone here has already read the book.” Audience laughs. “And I like to think that everyone here bought it too!” Audience laughs harder, claps again. White people like to clap, she thought. Look at them go. She glanced at Blue Eyes, who gave a slight nod of approval.

  “So do you have any questions then?” she asked, searching out into the audience. “Can I get the big light turned off? It hurts me.” The rustling of someone running up the auditorium stairs. Snap! Hum. Darkness hits the room. Hum again. Soft lights come up.

  A young man stood up. Moved his long curls away from his face as the director ran to him with a mic. “I have a question,” he said while adjusting his glasses.

  “First, I’d like to thank you for writing this book and I’d like to thank the team of professors who worked with you on the re-release of it. I want to know, what is the difference between this book and the original?” The young man wipes his curls from both cheeks again and looks at her with intent and meaning.

  She’s stuck, doesn’t know how to answer and finds Blue Eyes tapping his left cheek. She turns her head and eyes to the left and produces a full smile, her dentures reflecting yellow under the soft light. Blue Eyes is tapping his nose. He’s stuck. She blurts out a full cough into the microphone, making the walls rattle while begging for a glass of water. The audience is wanting to help. People are standing up from their seats. She continues to cough as Blue Eyes fumbles to the first pages of the re-released book. She sees him trying to find his glasses. His left hand fumbles inside his suit jacket. She can’t keep coughing. The professors are on either side of her
. She begins to chuckle as she sees a picture from one of her library books in her mind. The foot guards in front of a big palace and the Queen of England in the middle. She tells the audience, “I feel like the Queen of England!” The audience giggles.

  “Here I am coughing and everyone is worried!” Again the audience laughs. She looks at Blue Eyes who is pointing to his right eye while The Kimono sits next to him grinning.

  “To answer your question,” she says as she shakes off the professor’s grip on her hands, “I don’t know everything. I never went to university like the people in this room. I guess I can say the difference this time with the book is these two people, these professors who wanted it back out there. They are the difference.” The audience claps. Blue Eyes nods approval to her answer.

  “You know,” she continues, “this book has really been the thing that has bugged me most in my life. I would like to really talk about it.”

  Blue Eyes shakes his head in an emphatic “NO.” She looks at him and grins.

  “The book really belongs to him,” she said, pointing to Blue Eyes. “He’s the reason the book was ever written.” The audience thinks she is telling them her husband is a nice, sweet guy. There is a smattering of applause in the crowd. Blue Eyes looks around and gives several polite nods of his head. The Kimono sits up a little taller, a little prouder.

  “As a matter of fact, he wrote it!” she yells into the mic so loud that the speakers hanging from the walls vibrate a long electronic sigh. The audience wiggles. The only sound is of air sweeping into their lungs. The Kimono leans forward to stand.

  “There! After all these long years! I’m finally saying the truth!” she yells. “He wasn’t getting anywhere with his research and he hated teaching all you university kids so he sat down and wrote it! The truth is I can’t write a full sentence without making mistakes. He likes to talk about my mistakes,” she says. Her eyes feel damp. One of the soft lights is bugging her. The professors come in close to her again. She feels her foot guards on either side of her. She is tired. Tired of this game. Tired of this pretend life with Blue Eyes. Tired of The Kimono who ruined everything in every way.

  “I’m an old woman now,” she says as she clears her throat, “I want to tell my truth.”

  The audience squirms. Blue Eyes struggles to stand. She can hear the thump, squish of his cane coming towards her. The foot guards move in closer. One leans into the mic and asks, “What do you mean?”

  “I never wrote one word of it! The book is a big lie. He did it!”

  Blue Eyes is using all his strength to climb the side stairs of the podium. He is straining. His face is red. His anger is percolating and ready to explode. She sees it and snaps onto the hands of the professors next to her. Her tiny body trembling. She feels her heart tip-tapping inside of her. She’s got him. At last. She got him back.

  Today is the best day. Today is the day she will tell her truth.

  Blue Eyes comes close to the microphone. He can sense the confusion of the audience and he leans down into the mic and says, “Don’t mind her. She gets like this. It’s her age.” He says sympathetically into the mic.

  “I believe the medical term is something about ‘early onset’,” he says smoothly into the mic.

  The larger professor moves her head in front of Blue Eyes and tells the audience, “I think we need a break. There are refreshments out in the hall. Why don’t we all just take a moment away and reconvene in fifteen.” The audience hesitates, and begins to shuffle out of the auditorium, murmuring to one another and glancing back to the stage over their shoulders.

  “I have to take her home now,” Blue Eyes tells the professors. “She must not have taken her medication today.” He moves his arm around her shoulders.

  “We can’t leave the book launch like this!” exclaims one of professors. Her large glasses bob up and down her nose, “You owe us an explanation! We worked hard to get this book back out there—tell us the truth!”

  Thump-squish. She walks along behind Blue Eyes again. Her own eyes looking at the wooden floor. “Come back!” she hears one of the professors yell. She continues on behind Blue Eyes knowing that after today she will never see him again. Knowing she has made the biggest mess out of the best day. The Kimono stands at the bottom of the stairs and smiles. She has won. At last all of this is over and she can have her life with Blue Eyes. The Amauti has made the biggest mistake ever. As she steps off the last stair, she takes the real wedding ring off her left hand and puts it into The Kimono’s outstretched palm.

  “He’s all yours,” she says to The Kimono in a defeated whisper.

  She returns to her empty apartment. She returns to her empty life. No children. No grandchildren. No great grandchildren to greet her. She is completely alone. She feels some sadness, but in truth it feels like a big weight has been lifted from her. In her old age, her spirit is light. Tungasuttuq. She is at ease, pleased.

  She sits next to the phone waiting for it to ring. She knows one thing. Those professors will want to know her story.

  She looks at the big numbers on the phone Blue Eyes had given her and from memory dials his number. Today had been the best day.

  Kakoot

  THE FLUORESCENT LIGHTS BUZZED over his head like a swarm of black flies. They were everywhere. Kakoot reached up to swat a clear path out of them when a voice spoke.

  “Hey, hey now Mr. Tootoosis, just relax. Lie back down, champ. There you go, just have a little nap.” A needle pricked his arm and he faded into a blackness that only medication can give, a blackness that you can’t fight your way out of.

  It was shuffling day at the nursing home. Shuffling happened at the beginning of every month. The day when you were re-assigned to a new section if your number came up. He lay sprawled on his tiny stretcher, waiting to be taken to the yellow pod. Yellow meant you were on your way out. He was on his way there now and he knew it.

  This was a progressive place all right; a place where you were handled like a traffic light. The red pod when you first entered the home, if they considered you functional. Functional meant that you could get yourself to and from the bathroom. Functional meant you recognized your name when it was called. Red was a place where they wanted you to stay for as long as possible.

  Green meant that you were becoming dysfunctional. No longer the keeping of piss and shit to yourself. In the green pod, you started to share it with your inner thighs and your kneecaps. This was the first sign they looked for. No turning of your head when your name was called, staring straight forward was the only response. Green was the breaking point.

  Green, the place where the rest of you began to fall apart. Piss, shit, spit and sperm, all bodily fluids were released without rhyme and definitely without reason. Your body was a tap of fluids being turned on and sprayed at random. The response from the staff was a hose, beating back your self-made liquids and splatting your skin until it began to peel. Green was the place where you wanted to stay for as long as possible.

  Green led to yellow. Yellow was the door with the neon sign over it: Exit. The last door, the last hurrah, the last breath. It was where you were taken to die. Where you were taken to piss and shit your way into the next world.

  Lying on that gurney gave Kakoot a chance to remember. Those Kabloona, he thought, they took everything away. My name. My family. Especially my mom. In return I got their white name. Not one but two. Front and back. Everything in its perfect order for their perfect lists. They changed it all but none of that matters now. I am going home.

  The Old Ones taught me when I was young to not fear death. Welcome becoming one of the alliit, the Under Ones. In white time it would take over a year to get to The Land of the Dead. I know I have to crawl under that big skin carpet, getting squished until my body is flattened.

  Kakoot smiled at the thought of his entrance into the two worlds on the other side. The worlds beneath the oceans and rocks. He would eat his land food again and above his head blueberries would droop, waiting for his finge
rs. He would become an Under One. He would be beneath the earth but it would not be Hell. Hell, the Old Ones had told him, did not exist underneath the water and land. Hell was this yellow-walled room and he was leaving it.

  The spirits gathered rocks into a circle in the rocky bay. They placed the biggest rock in the middle for Sedna. Not a word was spoken among them. Not one whisper was carried on the wind. They could not have her ask, “Taima?” in that icy, slicing voice. The voice that only she had. They couldn’t leave Kakoot to wander alone on the tundra. He was preparing to become an Under One and come to them. His name had to live on within two days of his death. Sedna sat in the centre of the spirit circle. “Is anyone in your community expecting a baby?” she asked crisply.

  “No,” the others responded. She sighed. “Well, are any of their dogs pregnant?”

  Kakoot opened his eyes. He was still in the traffic light hell. He didn’t like this home, this home of colours and rules and lights that buzzed in your face and eyes and ears. He didn’t like the electric black flies that crowded over his nose, digging into his ears, living in his tears. He wanted only to get out of here. Go home. Die on his tundra. Buried under a pile of rocks. Not here. That’s what he wanted and he was going to get it.

  Sedna, her hair knotted and twisted into lumps of pain, demanded that the other Spirits begin to run their fingers through her hair. They obliged her immediately. The fingers and thumbs combing through her hair was the best way to soothe her. The Spirits knew this. She began to moan. Having no fingers or thumbs made life inconvenient in so many ways.

  We have been nothing but an inconvenience to them, Kakoot thought. He had places to be, but his arms and legs were useless. He thought that this must be how aggaituq must feel. A voice drifted into his head. “There now, Mr. Tootoosis, sit up now.” He felt a man’s grip on his lower back and heard the same female voice. “Good. That’s the way a champ is. Right, Mr. Tootoosis? Here you go, in your brand new room. Aren’t the soft yellow walls lovely?” As his body slumped onto a high-backed chair, he felt the thick belt wrap cruelly around his wasted waist.