last page                                                                            next page

                                                                                table of contents

An Eskimo

      Clare from MorYork Gallery emailed me after he had seen my crochet work at Frannie’s studio. I went over late Sunday afternoon to meet with him.

     He offered me a show in his secondary gallery space. He already had incorporated some of my work into some of his work. (A couple years later he had a show at The Craft and Folk Art Museum. During his walk-through, he gave me high praise.)

    Sarah had needed the car that Sunday afternoon so I walked to MorYork, only two miles away. I was walking on air in the evening going back home.  

I wanted to tell my news to Sarah.

        I noticed there was a guy walking behind me, a big guy who slowed when I slowed, but walked faster when I did. It was dark, and it was uncomfortable. I stopped under a streetlight to let him get ahead of me. 

He said to me, I was afraid of you, too. Let’s walk together. 

        He was going to a bar past Figueroa. We started trading stories. He asked about guilt, I told a story of shame, he told me this one.

        He was an Eskimo, born and raised at the top of Alaska. He told me he preferred, and his people preferred, the word Eskimo over all the other euphemisms that have been suggested. 

They called themselves Eskimo.                   

       He told me how the tradition in his family, and most of the people around him, was to join the US military as a way of getting an education and to be exposed to white people.

        The first winter freeze arrived. He was leaving for the military. His girlfriend and her father went out hunting, but they didn’t come back. He assumed she just wanted to avoid saying goodbye.

    Much later, when the spring thaw began, some guys were out hunting by a frozen lake, and the hunters saw a frozen hand sticking out of the ice, holding onto a branch. They called the town and everyone came and cut the ice to take the body out. They found the dad. But when they pulled him up, his other hand was still holding the hand of the highly decomposed and chewed up body of the daughter.

    My Eskimo companion said he walks with the guilt that he had doubted her. 

      We walked together until Figueroa. He invited me to continue the conversation over a couple of beers down the street.  

         I wanted to go home to tell my news to Sarah.

                                        next page