Geraldine has finished sewing the beads onto the toy boots. “Aren’t they nice?” she asks, waving the tiny boots in front of me.
“Sure they’re nice. They’re very”—it takes me a second to find the right word—“delicate. They’re very delicate… and they smell awesome.”
Geraldine giggles. “I sell them at the Co-op. People hang them over their rearview mirrors for good luck. Sometimes tourists buy them for souvenirs. They do smell awesome, don’t they?” Geraldine holds the boots up to her nose and inhales their scent. “My auntie smoked the caribou hide.”
“Can you two not talk so loud?” Jakopie says. “We’re trying to concentrate over here.”
“Hey,” Geraldine says, lowering her voice to a whisper, “I need to braid some wool to tie the boots together. I have to go to our tent to get it. Wanna come? I probably shouldn’t go outside alone.”
“Sure,” I say, reaching for my parka. I’ll take any excuse to get out of here. Plus, I can’t say I mind the idea of some time alone with Geraldine, even if it means facing the bad weather again.
“Be careful,” Jakopie says, shaking the pile of bones in his hand. “Stay close to each other.”
“Just don’t let him get too close,” Lenny tells Geraldine.
Geraldine kicks Lenny in the butt. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I won’t.”
“And don’t go letting in all that cold air,” Jakopie adds once our parkas and mitts are on and I’m following Geraldine out the tent.
The wind is coming at us from every direction now, smacking our faces hard. I’m so relieved to be out of the tent, I don’t even mind. Geraldine is a foot or so ahead, and it’s getting harder to see her with all the blowing snow.
“We’re supposed to keep close,” I shout. Snowflakes fly into my mouth.
Geraldine slows down.
“So are you ever gonna come see where I live?” I ask when I catch up with her.
“You mean come to Montreal?”
“Uh-huh. There’s lots to do. And lots to see.” I nearly say, Way more than here, but I stop myself. I don’t want to hurt her feelings.
“The only city I ever went to is Kuujjuaq—to see the doctor.” Geraldine’s voice drops a little.
“Kuujjuaq’s not a city.”
“Of course it is.”
“Not compared to Montreal, it isn’t. So do you think you’ll ever come? I could show you around.”
Geraldine looks around as if she doesn’t want the snow to hear what she’s about to say. “If I want to be a nurse, I’ll need to go to Montreal for nursing school. The guidance counselor at school thinks I’d make a good nurse.”
“I think you would too.”
“You do?”
“Uh-huh. You didn’t panic when Joseph cut off his thumb. And you didn’t mind the blood.”
Geraldine gnaws on the edge of her mitt. “I’m not sure about Montreal. A lot of us Inuit have a hard time in big cities. We don’t fit in. Not with so many people and all those tall buildings.”
I remember some of the street people I’ve seen on Ste. Catherine St., near the old forum in Montreal. Their straight black hair and dark glinting eyes. Some of them panhandle, some reek of booze and others look like they’re hooked on drugs. These are the people Geraldine means. But nothing like that could ever happen to Geraldine.
“You’d fit in. You’d fit in anywhere.”
“You really think so?” The fox fur around the collar of Geraldine’s parka is dyed bright red. Her cheeks are red too.
Geraldine is smiling at me from under her nassak. No matter how often I see Geraldine’s hair, I can never get over how black it is. Or how shiny.
I don’t plan what happens next. In fact, if I had tried to plan it, it would never have happened. I’d have been too nervous, too self-conscious.
My lips find Geraldine’s. Hers feel warm and soft against mine. The snow is coming down over us as if we are in one of those snow globes, the kind you shake up and down. I can feel Geraldine’s lips parting. I can’t believe how good kissing her feels.
“No…,” Geraldine says softly. She’s trying to say my name. No-ah. No-ah. Breaking it up into two long syllables, like a moan. I wish I could keep kissing her forever.
But that isn’t what happens. Instead Geraldine uses both hands to push me away. At first, I’m so confused, I nearly lose my footing. What’s going on? Geraldine’s not calling my name. She’s not moaning. Her forehead is lined in the same way it was when she was concentrating on her sewing. “No,” she says again. That’s when it dawns on me: Geraldine is telling me “No.” She doesn’t want to keep kissing me.
“No, Noah,” she whispers. Her voice sounds gruff. “It’s not right.”
I back away. My cheeks are burning. I feel even worse when Geraldine uses her mitt to wipe at her mouth. As if she wants to wipe away all traces of me.
“Because I’m a Qallunaaq?” I ask her. I’m surprised that, as upset as I am, the words still come out easily.
“No, it’s not that.” Geraldine purses her lips together. She’s not going to say any more. There are little tears—no bigger than the beads she sewed on those boots—in the outside corners of her eyes.
I don’t know if I’m supposed to apologize. She kissed me back at first. I’m sure she did. It wasn’t like I forced myself on her or anything. “What’s wrong?” I try asking her.
But Geraldine is walking up ahead of me again. She’s taking big strides that make it hard for me to keep up. Besides, I already know she isn’t going to tell me what’s wrong.
I don’t think it’s right to follow her into the tent. Not after what just happened. So I stand outside in the blowing snow, freezing my butt off and feeling like an idiot while Geraldine gets the wool.
I’m looking down at my feet, still trying to figure out what just happened—why Geraldine freaked out on me like that—and trying not to think what a mess I’ve made of things. My boots are big and clunky. They’re surrounded by snow, and more snow is falling on them as I wait for Geraldine. That’s when I notice the flakes aren’t exactly white—they’re gray-white—a very light gray-white, but definitely gray-white, like the edge of the sky before a summer shower. So that’s what Etua was talking about! Does this mean I’m going to start noticing blue-white and yellow-white and ocher-white now too?
I want to tell Geraldine, but I’m afraid it’ll sound too weird, and besides, I don’t know how to start.
When Geraldine pops her head out of the tent, she opens her mitts to show me two small skeins of wool: one red, one black. “Got it,” she announces. Nothing about her suggests anything at all is wrong. I can tell Geraldine doesn’t want to talk about what just happened—or didn’t happen.
And, for the first time since I got
off the plane in George River, I’m kind of glad the Inuit are such
quiet people. Because for right now, at least, I don’t want to talk
about it either.
“Not hungry?” Matthew says to Geraldine when she turns down the grilled ptarmigan we’re having for lunch.
“Nah.” Geraldine has finished braiding the wool and is sewing one end of the braid onto one of the small boots.
I can feel Matthew looking from Geraldine to me and then back to her again. I think he knows something’s wrong. And even though I haven’t done anything wrong, I feel bad. I’ve upset Geraldine.
“You’re usually always hungry,” Matthew says. “’Specially for fresh-shot ptarmigan. Look, I saved you the heart.”
I make a point of looking away.
Matthew isn’t giving up. “You need to eat,” he tells Geraldine.
Lenny adds the last two caribou
bones to his pile on the floor. Tom and Jakopie groan. Then Lenny
looks up at Matthew. “Maybe Geraldine’s just not hungry. Why don’t
you let me help you out with that ptarmigan heart?”
I offer to help clean up after lunch. It isn’t right that Geraldine always has to do it. Matthew has filled a pot with granular snow and he’s boiling it up for Labrador tea. “You gotta dig a hole to get snow that’s good for making tea. The stuff on top’s too thin. You gotta dig at least a foot down to get dense snow like this,” Matthew says, turning the pot toward me so I can see what he means.
I use some of the hot water for washing. There’s a small bottle of biodegradable soap that doesn’t lather up the way I’m used to. I try to think of the gray-white color of the snow and not the smears of ptarmigan blood on the plates I am rinsing. The wash water turns a murky brown. There are tiny specks of ptarmigan floating on top. “I guess I’d better go dump this water someplace away from the tent,” I tell the others when I’m done. The bloody water is just the sort of thing I think a polar bear might like for lunch, a little soup before his main course: us.
Matthew is squatting on the floor. “The city boy is getting smarter,” he says to no one in particular. It’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me since I came to the North.