Between Two Worlds (5 page)

I visited Marie every day, and watched Mitti Peary give her a bath. Mitti Peary would lay her to dry on the soft caribou skins. Once, Peary wrapped her in the red, white, and blue material he called the stars and stripes and took her outside to photograph her. In the spring, my mother made Marie her first outdoor clothes: caribou skin trousers with little fur boots attached to them, and a fox skin
kapatak
.

Now, on the ship, Marie often kept me company in the forward saloon, a large room at the front where our people slept on furs on the floor. Or Marie sat with us outside on deck where we ate seal meat, and Angulluk entertained her with his string games. Mitti Peary offered me kind smiles and thanked me for watching over Marie. Oddly, though, she never invited me to their cabin.

But on the fourth day of our voyage, Marie crawled out of the ice house and said, “Let me show you where I live, Billy Bah.” She tugged my hand.

“Don’t pull me.” But I could hardly keep from grinning.

We crept through a narrow hallway past glossy wooden doors with bright metal doorknobs. The rooms behind the doors, Marie said, belonged to the captain and his officers. She took me into the place where they ate their meals, and I ran my hands across the smooth wood of the table. Wood—so foreign, such a luxury! It was hard to believe that the whole ship was made of it. Marie guided me to a tiny room where she lifted up a board. “This is where Mother and I go to the toilet,” she said, “and here is toilet paper.” She paused. “I’ve seen the Eskimos squatting over buckets. Why don’t you use the sailors’ toilet?”

“I don’t know.” I remembered the bathroom at Mitti Peary’s home.

“Come on.” Marie took my hand again, yanking me into the officers’ saloon. It was brightly lit with small lanterns and warmed by a stove. Men sat in chairs, smoking, talking, and reading. One wrote at a desk. As soon as they saw us, they stopped talking. One frowned and seemed about to say something, but Marie pulled me out of the room.

Marie opened another door. The room, all in wood, was as dimly lit as an igloo and nearly as large. It had two chairs, a table, a trunk, and two beds, one on top of the other along a wall.

Marie climbed a ladder beside the beds and sat near a small window. “Come on up to my bunk.” I joined her, ducking my head to keep from hitting the ceiling. I looked
through the glass of the window to see ice masses glistening in the sunlight. Marie pulled back her blankets, and for a moment my heart stopped. I’d forgotten how realistic the white people’s dolls could be. In America, I’d been so startled by the sight of one that I’d burst into tears—I’d thought it was a tiny child.

Now Marie gently handed me the beautiful doll, so realistic, so rosy, it seemed like it had just taken a breath. “Her name’s Clara.”

I stroked Clara’s hair. It was bright yellow, like Marie’s. I felt the smooth silk of her dress and marveled at its deep pink color, like a sunset, and opened Clara’s blue eyes, remembering how I’d opened and closed that other doll’s eyes, long ago.

Marie asked, “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she is pretty.” But the word didn’t feel strong enough. The doll was almost alive.

I listened to Marie talk about how her mother would not let her bring her other dolls on the voyage. “Are you still collecting things?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, “the box your mother gave me is nearly full now.”

Marie cradled her doll as I remembered the happy night when Mitti Peary gave me the wooden chest. She wrapped it to surprise me and she put it under a tree that glowed with many tiny candles. I spent hours admiring and rearranging my special keepsakes and taking them in and out of their glossy container. Each tiny thing, soft
feather, fragrant leaf, had power, and each told a story about a faraway land.

My box of treasures was my reward for completing my year in America: for the pain of missing my family, getting used to a new language, the sweltering heat of their summer, a winter that was too mild, and a way of life that was so different from my own. People were always looking at me and touching me. They asked me questions and my face would grow warm when I couldn’t answer. Marie’s grandmother, “Grossy” or “Grossmutter,” who was from a land called Germany, spoke with an accent; I couldn’t understand a word she said. Still, I’d enjoyed many afternoons with these strange women, sewing dolls’ dresses and real dresses with shiny buttons and soft, glittering materials.

“We still have the dresses you made me,” Marie said, “and that little fox fur coat. Mother says someday we may give it to a museum.”

Museum
. My whole body stiffened. I could never hear that word without thinking about my parents and Aviaq. But then Mitti Peary swept in and frowned when she saw me.

“Marie,” she said, “please go somewhere else with Billy Bah.” I looked at her, stunned.

“Why?”

“You know why. We talked about this.”

“Billy Bah did
not
put her head on my pillow. I’m
not
going to get lice,” Marie said.

I gulped. In another minute, the tears came.

I climbed down from the bunk to run out the door, but Mitti Peary said, “Billy Bah! I’m sorry.” She held me gently by the arm. “Why don’t you let me bathe you? You’ll soon feel better.”

“Yes, Mitti Peary,” I said slowly. As always, I wanted to make her happy. I wiped my tears. In America, every morning after Mitti Peary had bathed me and dressed me in a dark green dress with a pinafore, she’d present me to her family; how they smiled at me! Harsher memories came back. She had pulled my hair when she combed it. Forced a prickly brush into my mouth against my teeth. My new clothes kept me from lifting my arms. I’d yearned for my own soft furs and sealskin, hungered for seal and narwhal meat, to pick up food with my hands without being scolded. In winter, I missed the cozy days of darkness that my family shared in our igloo. In summer, I wanted to roam free on the windy hills and clifftops with my brother and sister.

Most of all, I’d yearned for my own mother.

Now Mitti Peary led me down into the lower level of the ship to the boiler room. There she ran warm water into a shiny copper tub and bathed me behind a red and white curtain. White people are so silly, using precious fuel to heat water, and washing away the oil that keeps our skin from becoming dry and chapped. Even so, I enjoyed the warm water. I liked the smell of the soap, made from lavender flowers. And when she was finished, my
skin glowed. I was cold after stepping out of the tub, but I almost didn’t want to put on my sealskin. It felt so good to be naked, just as we are—warmly—inside our igloos.

Mitti Peary combed out the tangles in my hair. “Stop!” I ordered. “Please.” I took the comb to finish.

Mitti Peary held up a mirror. “Look at yourself, Billy Bah. You’ve grown into a lovely young woman.”

I held the mirror, seeing not only myself, washed of grease, but Marie beside me, beaming.

Marie stroked my hair. Then she took a dark pink ribbon from one of her braids and gathered my hair behind me. She tied it. “Mother, see how beautiful she looks.”

“I’m glad to see you smiling again, Billy Bah,” said Mitti Peary.

Angulluk would have laughed to see me with my skin rubbed so bare. Possibly it would mean trouble, or even danger, for me—I’d likely attract attention among the sailors. It’s not always safe to act like a
qallunaaq
.

But at that moment, I could only think about being praised, and finding my place among Marie’s family again. My heart felt full.

A few hours after my bath, I found Angulluk on deck shaping the fitting for the point on a harpoon with a new knife. He carved it from a large piece of dark wood.

“Hainang.”
He greeted me with unusual courtesy. He had traded well to have the new knife and the even more valuable wood. It didn’t break, as bone did, so we liked to make our tools, weapons, and sled runners out of it. He looked me over. “You should wear that silly
qallunaat
trifle in your hair more often. Can you believe it, Eqariusaq? I had three different offers for you tonight.”

“Who did you choose?” I felt my heart rush, but I looked at him boldly.

“Duncan.”

“Good,” I said. “I could use some time away from you.” I remembered the young smiling sailor with a head of curly red hair, and the nervous fluttering in my stomach eased. Duncan Gaylor was tall and thin, with large protruding ears. He seemed harmless. At least, I hoped so.

“It’s almost
too easy
to trade with those sailors,” Angulluk said. “They have no women to keep them company.”

“You’re as heartless as a stone,” I said. “Let me see your knife.”

I took the block of wood. It smelled fresh and sweet as I practiced shaving off a curl with the sharp blade.
Generous gifts
. It was because of me he had such good things.

Late that evening, I joined Duncan in the sailors’ quarters, where the men slept behind musty-smelling brown curtains. Loud snores came from several bunks; the men would not wake, because they’d collapsed into sleep after drinking.

He drew the curtain closed behind us and hung his small lantern on a hook at one corner. I removed my
kapatak
and spread it across the bed. At least I’d have the familiar feel and scent of my own furs, some comfort. I folded my
kamiit
in a corner and lay on my back, watchful; Duncan might pounce on me like a bear as other sailors had. Instead, he leaned against the wall, his head nearly touching the bunk above us.

“Billy Bah, tell me about yourself.”

Was this some joke? Only Marie would say such a thing.

I sat up. “There is nothing to say.”

“Of course there is!” he said. “You speak English so well. I’ve never met an Eskimo who could do that. And you went to America. What was that like for you?”

Shy, I pulled my comforting
kapatak
up around me. “America is very crowded. The food has no flavor! Winters are not nearly so cold. Your pee never freezes in midair! Ha!”

I’d added this last detail because it was the sort of tidbit that my father, a wonderful storyteller, would have included.

Duncan laughed. How was it that I could be myself around this white stranger, who’d soon take his pleasure from me?

“Tell me,” I said. “What do
you
think of
my
land?”

He grinned. “The glaciers are beautiful. The stars … and yes, it’s strange! In this cold, like you say, pee freezes! The hair on my face stops growing.”

“Why did you come here?”

He leaned toward me, eyes shining, as if he’d just returned from a hunt. “An Arctic voyage—ah. I love danger. I feel sharp and alive when I risk my life every single day.”

“But living here is
not
dangerous.”

His eyebrows lifted. “No?”

I said what my father had once told me, “It’s mostly fools or the young who die in accidents. We know how to gauge the snow, and to wait until the right time to travel. Things happen very slowly here. In fact, not much happens at all.”

Duncan was disappointed. I’d taken something from him. “But the Arctic ice can rip apart ships,” Duncan said.
“Ships vanish. Great leaders prove themselves, or make mistakes, on a grand scale. Then a lot of people die.”

“If your leaders were really great, they’d know when it’s best to stay home.” I eyed him. “
Never
speak of tragedy. If you forecast terrible events, say them out loud, they might happen.”

Duncan pressed his back further against the wall. “So what do you think of Peary?” he asked. “He’s a great leader?”

“He might be, if he didn’t take so many risks. Peary likes danger. Like you.”

“Yes,” Duncan said, “but we’re different. Peary craves fame.”

“What is that?”

He tried to explain how Peary wanted to claim new territory, go farther north than any man. To show he’d been somewhere, he was always building triangular piles of stones and planting flags.

These markings were a silly reason to undertake long, dangerous journeys, but I nodded. “Ally says that when Peary sets out, he wears his flag under his clothes, so he never loses it.”