My Sisters and I NORMA DUNNING
From Annie Muktuk and Other Stories. Published by the University of Alberta Press. Norma Dunning is an Inuit writer, scholar and researcher. She lives in Edmonton.
I
never get to see the rest of that day. It happened. I remember it still as I sit here in this place. This place filled with rules. The white people call it a school. My father said we had to come here. All three of us. Why? That’s the part I never understand, why he sent us away from him. This place is different. We sleep off the ground. We have all been given strange names. Names that make no sense. Names that make me feel different. I don’t know who I am anymore. They speak French and English here. I don’t know what French is. I only nod when I am asked something. Puhuliak is now called Suzanne. Hikwa is Margarite. I am Therese. Once we were, Puhuliak, Hikwa and Angavidiak. Now we are these other girls. The women here wear long robes
Ritz Crackers, 2004
made of light cloth. Qallunaaqtaq. They make us wear the same thing, only our robes are short. They put cold, hard coverings on our feet and tell us they are “shoes.” We drink water from under the ground, filled in a brown wooden circle. We sit at a table, in chairs that hurt my back. The food is white like these people. It’s like filling your mouth with clouds. Swallowing quickly means I can leave the table sooner. What is hardest is that I can’t talk to my sisters unless I speak in French or English. If the long robes hear me speak to them the way I always did, they beat me with a strip of hide. Papa did that to the dogs when they were bad. Hitting them with tigaut, the hardest part of any whip. Sometimes they will reach into our mouths
and pull hard on our tongues. It is their way of telling us not to talk our language. That hurts. Everything here hurts. We have to live our days the way they want us to. We don’t go outside. I watch the world from inside at my school desk and remember what it was like to live with my mothers and father. I remember the smell of air that was a part of my every breath. I remember eating when I was hungry not when a clock told me to. I remember playing the string game with my sisters whenever I wanted to. No one ever told me that a round, black dial was my avasirngulik. My elder would not act like that thing. That’s a new word for me, “time.” In this place everyone is on time. At home the sky told us what to do and when. I nod and try to do what they say. Sometimes they smile but most times they frown. I talk with my eyes. They talk with their lips. I am not allowed to sleep by my sisters. We have to stay off the ground on separate wooden frames. None of this makes sense in my head. I look forward to each night to dream of what I miss. Dreaming of what I knew best, of what was only mine. I smell the caribou and feel its soft skin around my shoulders. I see my mothers smiling at me at night. I long for them. Their crinkling eyes. Their fingertips tenderly tickling on my shoulders. I even long for him. My father. The man who sent us to this place. Suzanne whispers to me often that if we are good we will leave. We will go home. Every day she tells me these same words, “Be good. Nod your head. We will go home. Upaluajaqpuq, obey well.” Every day it doesn’t happen but I do what Suzanne says. She’s the oldest. She knows best. Margarite is different. She doesn’t nod her head. She sticks out her tongue when the long robes aren’t watching. She makes her eyes wide and points her finger pretending
Gold has been a very controversial project from day one. THE PROBLEMATIC DELI AND ‘HIDDEN’ BAR OF SEATTLE’S NEW BY THE POUND: Capitol Hill’s new By the Pound is a deli that’s also getting in on the very long tail end (if it’s even still there) of the “speakeasy” trend. THE RETURN OF DR. DISRESPECT IS JOYOUS FOR SOME BUT
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