by Cathleen With
EXCERPT
ON A GOOD DAY , when the snow is just so flaking soft down, I’m inside my small room, watching it flutter onto the scrub trees, some kids passing by on skidoos, their cheeks red and chafed, mouths open and laughing. Me and Faith inside, warm, and Faith at my breast, sucking proper, I think on her all normal future, running to her new mom. Her hair in pigtails, her feet have on the seal slippers Nanuk sent her, and me watching her on the webcam here. Lord knows how long they’re keeping me inside. I forget all the good I keep trying to remember, how we’re calling our grandmothers Nanuk, and trying to get some old spirits talking to me in here, like Nanuk says to me, “Trista, remember your Snow Nanuks, we all who are loving you. Remember what the good they learned in you.” Who is going to save me and Faith but those northern spirits long gone? Who is going to look at me, quarter ‘sko, three-quarters rig pig and who knows what else, and my little fucked-up baby?
Faithy starts to gurgle a bit, this hum she gets when she’s done feeding. I swear she’s looking at me, she’s got these dreamy eyes on me, lips pushed together with her tiny mouth humming and I put her up to my shoulder, pat her little bum. Her hand brushes against my ulu necklace, the one Mom gave me when I was little. Then the red light goes on, and the bell goes off. My door snicks open, free from its electric lock.
* * * * * *
BUT SOME OF THESE MEN , they’re not like Kublualuk. The party, that time that I remember the old men from, they were a little younger then. This man, he’s Freddy’s Daduk, and he’s talking at me, and his breath stinks. I can see me and Keely at that party, we’re playing cards under the table, crazy eights, and Keely is sneaking their beer glasses under the table, and we drank a couple and already laughing. We were about maybe seven or eight then. The party is all around us, there’s music on loud, and someone’s got the door open and it’s hot from the woodstove, but I can feel the cold from the door, hear Freddy’s Daduk yell, “You can close the door, don’t got wood for hours.” Keely’s got hiccups, and she puts down her cards, I look up and she’s crawling out from under the table because Freddy’s Daduk’s got a five in his hand, just letting it drop in Keely’s hand. I can see the blue of that five dollar bill. “Be back,” Keely says. I don’t say nothing, I know what she’s going to do. We been doing it for so long, doesn’t seem real. Only time them men pay attention to us, and fuck it, it doesn’t feel that bad. But you got to get the money for it. My auntie’s Paul, the guy she goes out with now, and he’s in the AA, too, he never did nothing like that, though. Back then, we thought all them men were just after under our jumpers. But later, I got it, that it wasn’t all of them.
And then when we’re older, that time seems like long ago when we thirteen, me and Keely, the dirty old pigs from Barclose go away but not before Keely’s muttering some crazies under her parky hood, and the wild in her black eyes drives them off some, swaying down Tullinqit Road, away from us. Keely about done with them and their fingers, pushing at her to touch them just a bit longer. Maybe they go home to some other little girls. Maybe we’re too old for them at thirteen, we wasn’t feeling too little. It’s funny that, now I’m living in the jail, how I feel so old, and only fifteen, Linda says. “You’re only fifteen. You got a world ahead of you.” What I got though is a court case ahead of me, placement for Faith, maybe never see her again.