The cold air takes her warmth. She holds what she can tightly against her chest. Her arms wrap around and she sees the white and life hiding, but still there in the winter. In a month the sun will set and not rise for thirty days. It is a hard time when this happens. The boys of the village drink and so do the girls. Their numbers here are dwindling. Most leave because there is no work, it is a hard life. Others are banished because they drink and do unspeakable evil. Others take their own lives because they cannot remember the sun. But she has never forgotten. Every year it comes back and life springs around her. The life that hides now. She will never forget.
She is old.
She cannot give to her people the way her sister did. Her sister gave her people four children and they are good. They bring her pride. She sees the youngest, a boy, growing to be a man. His father taught him well. He calls her aunt and splits wood for her. He, like his brothers before him, hunt for the seals to bring food to everyone. They hunt caribou when the time is right.
These things will change soon, and she knows it. The world is warming they say but it seems ever cold here. The ocean springs against the land and pulls it away. She watched as years of memories of the shore disappeared beyond the waves. The whitemen put a silver pipeline through where they hunt. They said it would be fine. But the pipeline leaked and the caribou didn’t come back. So now they must take the hunts farther and farther. Soon she thinks, they will not be able to travel to the caribou.
She wishes she could bring a boy for her people. But when she was in school the nurses and priests and the nuns forced her to forget much of her language. They called her a witch woman and told her that her ways were evil. They beat her until her rear was bloody. They rapped her knuckles until they cracked.
She cannot remember her old ways sometimes, but she never forgets John 3:16.
When she was twelve she began her time of the month and was very frightened that Satan had entered her. The nun took her to a doctor. The doctor gave her some pills and then told her they would have surgery to fix this unfortunate thing.
A week later she hurt and her stomach felt as though it had lost something. She has a small scar that doesn’t itch like it did at first but it is a brand.
She would never bleed as a woman again.
The US government had determined that because of the color of her skin, it would be a better matter entirely that she should never reproduce. The Catholics gladly obliged.
They took away her children and never told her.
Years later they gave her money as if this was a better thing than to have a child to give back to the land. But it wasn’t and she was never treated quite the same again. She longed for years for a baby to hold. To give the name of her father or her mother. To teach a child the ways that she sometimes can’t remember.
And now even if she could she cannot.
Because she is old.
She finds her joy in the laughing of the children. In the way they speak to her. They tell her stories and she knows that they will become great even if they do not leave and go to university, for to be alive is an achievement that is worthy of stories. And she listens to theirs.
She use to cry when she found out what happened. Why she could not have children. It would hit her as her sister nursed her own.
She would find herself outside and the tears would fall and her sobs were deep and the world could not take this grief she would raise her hands to the sky. Take me! She would cry and the wind would do nothing but sing a sad song about how we are to each other. She would be empty and still is.
But now she is old.
Her nephew offers her a ride into town and she lets him take her in the pickup truck. The village only has a small store now. It used to have two, but there is not enough people. She needs bread and he buys it for her. He holds her hand and she loves him but he will never be her son.
The whitemen now say that they may make the rest of the village move. To protect it from the waves and to make way for a new oil plant. She thinks of the millions who must have come before them. Would they have stayed if they knew that it would all die one day, like this? She doesn’t know but she thinks they might. All things must die, but to her…this time it feels like murder.
She wants to see the world like when she was young again and not think like this, but it is hard because of the pain they caused and they pretend it never happened. People like her tell their story and sometimes people listen but the terrible things are forgotten because we cannot admit how we are.
She asks her nephew if he can walk with her down town a little. He says yes. She wants to walk down her memories. The place where her mother taught her to skin and dry fish. The place down there where her father taught her how to harpoon. The place where she received her very first blanket from her grandmother. Where she stood for hours and maybe years when she found out her mother had died.
“Let us go to the grave yard.” She says to him he says nothing but they walk slowly together. She remembers when she used to be able to run forever. Her braids were bouncing in the wind and the world seemed so big and safe.
Now she knows better because she is old.
They stand for a while at her father’s grave. She touches a cross. The irony of a western symbol of hope in a village all but obliterated by it is not lost to her. But it brings her comfort and this is the way it is now.
Will you sing? She asks him
What would you have me sing?
Something sad.
And he pulls his head back. His song fills the earth as it leaves his body. She closes her eyes. His voice dives and flies, soars into the air. It wanders to the ends of the world and she can feel all of the old ones singing with him. He finishes.
Aunt, why do you cry? He asks. She opens her eyes and realizes tears have fallen upon her clothing.
Because I am old.
He hugs her and she pulls away. The winter steals her warmth.
Storied By Josh 