I Feel So Shamed

I waited till later that evening to go and see my friend. I wanted to take some flowers to her but the flowers there were too tiny to gather. I looked through all my things: I felt I had to take something to her as a token of my friendship. The only thing I had was an ornamental egg coddler. It seemed a ridiculous gift to give, but it was very pretty with delicate paintings of flowers and birds on it. I wrote a little note saying how very much I felt for her. I had not enough words in Eskimo to tell her what I really wanted to say. I wrapped the small parcel in tissue paper and put it in my pocket.
Inside Nauja's house the children were playing quietly. The usually tidy house was littered with clothes and unwashed dishes. A spilt cup still lay on its side on the table, the liquid splattered over the plastic cloth. Cigarette ends strewed the floor and a few empty bottles were sitting in a corner. the air smelt fetid.
I tiptoed into the bedroom. Nauja lay on the bed facing the door. Her jersey was stained with blood. Her eyes were open, but barely flickered when I approached. Her face was swollen and ugly. I could hardly recognize the attractive woman of whom I had grown so fond. I sat on the chair beside the bed and smoothed her brow. I had nothing to say, yet I wished to say so much. there was nothing I could do. I put down my poor offering and left. An impenetrable barrier separated me from my friend. She was the victim of the most dreadful violence and because of this she suddenly represented that violence. I felt utterly desolate. From: The Snow People; Marie Herbert

Her normally boisterous children became instantly deadly silent. Quiet pervaded the room. She tried not to look directly at the children, she focused in lock-grip, her eyes holding fast, captive with her husband's. His face the mask of drunken rage. His face suffused with dark, brooding red that broiled his blood and made hers run cold.

She heard the door click behind the children's backs as they silently fled. She had spent enough time in sober hours patiently repeating to them the necessity of leaving at the first sign of impending troubles.

He would be a good provider, her mother had tried to assure her, when she was informed of her father's bargain with the large, stolid hunter she and her girlfriends had giggled about, even in his presence. He seemed to take no notice of what silly young girls did, how they behaved.

So why had he eventually settled on her? Because, said her best friend, you are the prettiest among us. Because, said her mother proudly, you have been well schooled in domestic work. Because, said her father, I willed it to be so. What option had she but to submit?

Life was hard for everyone. Everyone suffered equally. And among them there was that social contract that meant no one interfered with someone else's business. Relief from the tedium and the hardship arrived once each month. And then, everyone - almost everyone - took refuge in that opportunity to briefly leave it all behind. In their insensibility they became other than what they were. Most, later, regretting that, but none willing to do anything about it.

In Thule, the 'disease' of civilization's evil liquor brought to the Eskimos is not so virulent as in other parts of Greenland. An otherwise-peaceful society becomes other once each month when authorities permit thirty points each month to each adult and there is a choice of a) 30 bottles of beer; b) one and a half bottles of hard liquor; or c) three large bottles of wine - or mix and match.

But that is the truth of our life here in Greenland. We worry for our children. We warn them of the dangers of the breaking sea ice. We tell them that our huskies are not playthings, even the pups; they are trained to be sled dogs, not house pets. Those dogs are supposed to be tied securely, tethered so they will not eat everything they come across; harness, leather mukluks. They are kept safely away from those places where children play, but even though they are warned, the older kids are so bored, not yet old enough to be independent; the girls with their own places, the boys out hunting with their fathers, they look for amusement. And they tease the dogs. How can you punish kids who have nothing else to do? We talk to them.

That makes no difference, they get bored, they begin teasing the dogs again, laugh at their antics, at the dogs' frantic efforts to free themselves. They think the dogs want to play with them, and it's true, some may want to, but not all. They've forgotten what happened to Taitsianguaraitsiak's oldest boy, just six. Older boys, it was rumoured, had let loose a pack of the dogs. They tore that boy apart, and by the time he was discovered, he was half eaten. No one had heard his cries, the wind had been howling so loud, we were in the midst of a storm.

After that, the children were quiet, confused, shaken. They woke at night often, screaming. But memories fade as children grow older. They had refused to speak about it, would not release any information if they had it, about how that pack had got loose. Children are resilient. Far less so their elders.

I don't know what I am going to do. Inugssuak gets worse all the time. I don't know why he has become so fierce. He tells me nothing.

The children, none of them, understand fully what happens the first of every month. It's always been like that, so why would they wonder about it? When the liquor quotas are released, people claim their share, and they don't stop until it's all gone. My friend Marie, the white woman staying her for awhile, tells me it's called bingeing. That it is not healthy to drink so much alcohol all at once. I can see that, I can understand what she means. It changes people so badly. Nice people get mean.

The children are careful, then. But once everyone is full of the drink and they sleep, the children get up to mischief. They enter houses where the elders live, to gape at the old men and women sleeping, snoring, in disarray, their clothing half gone, their wrinkled faces with their droopy, toothless mouths hanging open. The kids find it funny, they laugh, they poke at the drunken people, they pull their hair, pinch their noses, and laugh.

Sometimes they run, when one of the drunks wakes up. And roars with anger at the children and chases them out of their house, down the street, where the children scatter and race for the protection of their homes. I try to teach my kids it's wrong to do these things. But they say to me all the other kids do it, why shouldn't they too have fun?

The Thule tradition (which lasted from about A.D. 1 to A.D. 1600) includes the Old Bering Sea, Okvik, Punuk, Birnirk, and Thule cultures. It represented a new kind of adaptation to the Arctic environment, based on the hunting of large sea mammals in open water through the use of drag floats attached to the harpoon line. Large skin boats and the use of dogs to pull large sleds were other Thule innovations. Winters were spent in sometimes large communities of semisubterranean houses, subsisting on a stored surplus obtained most typically by hunting bowhead whales.

Last night, when he beat me so badly I couldn't even think straight. The kids were asleep. They were in their beds, maybe not asleep, maybe listening. I tried not to cry out, but maybe I did, I might have meant not to, but maybe I did scream. After, he passed out, his head on the table, and I left the house. I went away, I told myself I would run away, I would never come back. He would never, ever beat me again.

I hurt all over. He kicked my stomach, my chest is sore, and there is blood all over my clothing. I know I have some bad cuts around my face, my neck. It was hard to walk, but I did, I went away from the village. It was cold and it was foggy, and I wasn't wearing my parka, but I didn't feel cold, only hurt. I went to the meltstream, up in the hills. Then I made my way down to the marsh, near the shore.

I was hungry, and I felt faint, and I didn't know what to do. Where could I go? Where could I run to? I had no warm clothing, no food, no shelter. I stayed there, at the marsh, for a little while. I was crying, felt sorry for myself. But then I felt worse, thinking about the children. Who would look after them? I went back to the house. He was still sleeping there, sprawled on his big chair, head on the table.

When I awoke it was day, and the children were outside, I could hear their subdued voices. I could hear them speaking to someone; it was my friend Marie. I hoped they would tell her I was sleeping, that she should not waken me. Instead I heard them ask her to go into the house and to see me, because I was 'bad'. I wanted nothing other than to burrow myself out of sight. I hoped she would ignore what they said.

She did not. She came into the house. She pushed open the door of the bedroom. She spoke my name. She sat beside me. She stroked my forehead. She left a little package beside me. And then she left. I feel so shamed.