Between Two Worlds (7 page)

I sighed. “Marie. Go and find your mother.” Silently, I added,
Be grateful your father may still be alive
.

The door blew open again and a snowy figure came in, cap pulled down. “Billy Bah and Angulluk,” Duncan said. “A dory’s ready to take you. But are you sure you want to go now? It’s snowing pretty hard.”

“We will go,” Angulluk said in English.

“All right, I’ll row you,” Duncan said. “Come quickly.”

I wished another sailor had offered. But he’d sought me out. Seeing Duncan and the Fat One together felt so strange, and I couldn’t talk to Duncan. Would I see him again before he returned to America? Right now, leaving quickly to find shelter from the storm was all that mattered.

Marie hugged me. “Good-bye.” We rubbed noses, then I slung my bag over my shoulders and picked up my chest of keepsakes.

Laden down with our packs, Angulluk and I heaved ourselves out on the deck.

A howling wind whirled gusts of snow against us. We pulled our hoods tight. Had our dogs been rowed to shore yet? I would let Angulluk worry about them.

Angulluk climbed down into the dory, then turned toward me. “Get in, woman!”

“I can’t see where we’re going.” I could barely make out the shape of the dory. One wrong step, and I’d fall over the side and into the icy water.

“Go on!”

I took a breath and jumped down toward the boat. Angulluk grasped my hand and guided me to the bench. Duncan handed down our gear. The boat, overcrowded with people and belongings, lurched as Duncan climbed in. The ship’s pulleys screeched against the chains until finally the boat hit the water with a thud and a splash.

The wind screamed around us as Duncan heaved into the slow rowing. Snow clung to my eyebrows and eyelashes until I thought my eyes would freeze shut.

All was cold, blinding whiteness.

The shock of arriving in Musk Ox Land during the snowstorm was nothing compared to the shock I’d experienced when my first sea voyage ended, six summers earlier in the city of New York. Huge beams and stout ropes lifted crates off the ship to the dock, where I stood with Mitti Peary and Marie in a great crowd. I looked about in wonder. So
many
people! Giants talked all at once, pushed, walked with quick movements. What bright, pretty colors they wore! Beyond the dock, buildings rose, larger than I could have imagined, even blocking the sky.

I did not know that the world was so big.

And the overwhelming heat! The air was hot though no fires burned.

Somewhere in the crowd Mitti Peary found a dark-skinned boy to carry her suitcase. Inside it was my own birdskin bag, which held my
ulu
, a sharpening stone, some small ivory figures my father had made, and my fur clothes that Mitti Peary had taken from me.

I grabbed her sleeve and followed her through the crowd to a wide street where strange creatures, like sleek musk oxen, pulled carriages. Mitti Peary had told me
about horses and carriages, but seeing them was a wonderment. Unlike our sleds, they rolled on large wheels, and the animals were far stronger than our dogs, tossing their huge heads and long tails, stamping their iron feet. Mitti Peary called out to a carriage driver and told me to climb in.

Mitti Peary said, “The carriage will take us to the train station.” We were in a great city called New York and we were going to another grand place called Washington, DC, where she lived. With a snap of the straps in the driver’s hands, the horses trotted off and we rode high above the street at a steady, fast clip—such a strange way to travel. The smell of the animals was sickening. I covered my ears from the loud sounds.

After we’d passed endless rows of buildings, Mitti Peary took Marie and me into the darkness of the train station, which was so large I drew in my breath. We waited on the edge of a chasm, like the long cracks that can be found near cliffs or on sea ice. Mitti Peary had told me about trains. But when one came into the station with terrifying noise and belching smoke, it looked like a huge monster, its eye shining, racing toward us with terrifying speed and wailing like Lieutenant Peary’s whistle, only much louder. My chest pounded, and as the train screeched to a halt, I screamed and buried my head in Mitti Peary’s dress. “It’s all right, Billy Bah,” she said tenderly, and pulled me close. I felt better when the monster stopped bellowing and puffing.

Trembling, I let her push me into the train. Mitti Peary guided me to a seat and put Marie in my arms. I looked out the window at the people standing outside. The monstrous train began to shake. In a few minutes, all was darkness. The people outside the window disappeared, and then a sunlit and fast-moving landscape emerged. Buildings and green shapes streamed by; we were going faster than I imagined anything could move. It made me dizzy to watch. I held on to Marie and to the seat.

Everything in this new life seemed impossible, but there were more surprises to come.

Mitti Peary’s house had lots of rooms, all hot and stuffy. There was a kitchen with a coal stove so enormous that for weeks I felt certain it would swallow me if I got too close. The bathroom faucets let out either cold water or hot water, and if I turned the handles too far, the spouts drenched me. I slept alone for the first time in my life, missing my family and our snug igloo, in which we all shared one platform.

I clung to the things I knew: the comfort of holding Marie and playing simple games with her; the taste of meat (though it was not seal); the feel of furs. I loved to stroke Mitti Peary’s sealskin coat that hung in a wardrobe in one of the rooms. And sometimes I’d lie on the great white, shaggy bearskin rug in her parlor, though I avoided looking at the beast’s angry, gaping, fang-filled mouth and its black glassy eyes. The white people saved the heads
of animals, which scared me. Even so, I was glad for the company of the bear.

Ours was a household of females: Mitti Peary (who was also called Jo); her mother, Mitti Diebitsch, a short woman with a wrinkled, kind face; Mitti Peary’s sister, Mayde, who wore her yellow hair in long braids gathered at the back of her head; two older girls who cooked and cleaned; and Marie and myself. The old woman, Mitti Diebitsch, sometimes talked to her daughters in German. Usually, they spoke English. Out of shyness, I didn’t join in their conversations, but I began to understand what they were saying.

One day, entertaining Marie with her dolls on the bearskin, I heard Mayde say to Mitti Diebitsch: “Once again, Jo has gone out and left us with the Eskimo girl.”

“She’s no trouble.”

“But, Mother. She’s slow-witted. She doesn’t seem to understand anything I try to teach her. What are we supposed to
do
with her all day?”

“What we always do, Mayde. Sew, embroider, bake. She can watch us. Play the piano for her; she likes that.”

Mayde was calling me
slow
? I felt ashamed.

A short time later, while Mayde played the piano, which I
had
come to like if the sounds felt cheerful, Mitti Diebitsch brought out a piece of thin cloth, blue as the summer sky. She spread it on the dining table. With a pencil she drew designs, then cut the shapes with scissors.
It wasn’t long before she was stitching two pieces together, making a tiny dress.

I stood beside her. “I can … sew. Give … give me needle!”

The old woman gazed at me intently as I threaded a needle. Making my finest, smallest stitches, I joined two of the pieces of fabric. What joy! It seemed forever since I’d helped my mother make clothes.

“Why, Billy Bah!” Mitti Diebitsch said. “You sew beautifully.” Her smile felt like the sun.

By the time Mitti Peary joined us, we’d finished the dress and slipped it on Marie’s doll. Marie babbled happily.

“Not only can the girl speak English, she can sew better than I,” the old woman told her daughters. I felt a flood of pride as they examined my stitches.

“She’s full of pure enthusiasm for her work,” Mitti Diebitsch went on. “I believe she could make a lady’s gown in a single day.”

Mitti Peary looked at me. “Billy Bah, would you like to do more sewing?”

I beamed. “Yes.”

My morning grew even happier. Mitti Peary took me upstairs to her room and opened a chest. Inside, in boxes with pictures on them, were needles, thread, buttons, laces, ribbons, and materials of every color. She smiled and put a gold button in my hand.

The shiny, patterned button and scraps of the blue material I gathered from the table became the start of my
collection of treasures. One day, I’d describe the white man’s world to my family. With my treasures, my proof, I’d show them the beauty and the strangeness of the place. Without these things, no one would truly believe I had seen such wonders.

Now, in Musk Ox Land, snug and warm between layers of thick seal furs, I awoke to sounds of children all talking at once. Then a woman said: “They don’t think they can save the ship.”
Save the ship?
What was happening? I sat up and rubbed my eyes. A small boy and girl crouched around a cooking pot, taking turns sipping soup from it. As the previous night came back to me, I recognized the shapeless woman with long white hair sitting next to them.

After Duncan put us ashore, Angulluk and I had struggled against the wind to set up our tent. As we fought the snowstorm to find a temporary shelter, we were lucky, and came across the old woman’s igloo. She and her son and daughter-in-law had welcomed us and given us warm musk ox broth. We’d feasted on musk ox meat and fallen asleep.

Now my eyes met hers. The white-haired woman said, “You look better today. My name is Navarana. Tell me yours again.”

“Eqariusaq.” Then I added, “The
qallunaat
call me Billy Bah.”

“What does it matter what the
qallunaat
say?” She
scowled. “Eqariusaq is a good name. I don’t like this other one—Bill-eee baah.”

“I like it.”

She eyed the ribbon in my hair as I studied the deep, wavy lines on her forehead. Her teeth were ground down to tiny stubs from chewing hides. I had rarely seen a person so old. She must have been more than sixty winters; most of our people died by the time they’d seen forty.

She looked at me with sympathy. Her shrewd eyes told me that she already knew and understood everything about me. “You were exhausted. You must have slept well.”

“Ii,”
I said. “Very well, Aana.” Grandmother, our greeting for an elder woman. I stretched out my cramped legs. The fierce storm had forced snow inside the fur cuffs of my
kapatak
, leaving me wet and stiff all the way to my bones.

“The wind was very strong most of the night. You slept through all that howling.”

“It was the best rest I’ve had in many nights,” I said. “I’m grateful to you for taking care of my husband and me. Is he looking for our tent?”

She nodded kindly. “Tending to that and to your dogs. My son and his wife are down on the beach. Come, have some broth.”

What did she mean about saving the ship?
I was keen to know. But it would be rude to ask too many questions before we’d been properly acquainted. I joined Navarana and the children at the center of the igloo. A pretty girl
about Marie’s age handed me the cooking pot. She had laughing eyes and a space between her two large front teeth. I silently named her Tooth Girl.

The delicious broth warmed me.

After the meal, I ventured, “Did I hear you say something about the ship?”

“That big ship is lying on its side over the rocks.”

A shipwreck! Duncan—hurt, or dead? Marie? Mitti Peary?
I stood up.

“Let the men do their work. Now you should rest.”

“Aana.” I spoke more sharply than I intended. “I must see what is happening.”

“As you like.”

I pulled on my
kamiit
and furs, crawled out the entranceway, and started into the freezing air. Tooth Girl followed me out and dashed off toward the shore.

Though the blizzard was over, flakes of snow swirled around me. I relieved my bladder in a hole some distance from the igloo—how good it was not to have to use a bucket. From the top of the gentle rise where the people of this village had built their igloos, I looked at the harbor.