Chapter 26
“Oh my heavens,” Maggie said softly. She crouched down next to the child, a little girl, judging by her long, silky braids, each one tied with a strip of hide.
Tlingit boys and men, Maggie knew, kept their hair long and loose; only women and girls wore braids.
She looked to be no more than two or three years old.
“Hello,” she said softly. “I’m Maggie. Who are you? ”
In response, the girl scuttled right under the bed, glaring at her mistrustfully. Maggie wondered how she’d managed to creep in without anyone noticing.
“All right,” she said equably, smiling as she straightened.
“We can talk later.” She would have to do something with the child, she knew, but it was clear right now she was terrified.
Maggie turned back to the woman. “Is this your little girl?” she asked, and the woman simply stared at her miserably.
Maggie wondered if she knew any English.
“It’s all right,” she tried again. “She can stay here for now. But we must try to lower your fever. That’s the important thing. ”
She patted the woman’s hand, wanting to offer some reassurance, before going to consult with Sister Mary Zeno.
“You can give her a small dose of quinine,” the nun advised, frowning, after she’d checked the woman’s fever for herself.
“Our supply is low, as it always is, but she does seem dangerously hot. Other than that, cool clothes changed every quarter of an hour. If it worsens, we could try an ice bath.” A smile creased the older woman’s face.
“That’s something we always have enough of, even in summer!
” She chuckled softly, ending on a sigh.
“She most likely has influenza. The natives often get it, thanks to their living conditions. They’re exposed to all manner of infections and humors in their village, and their houses are miserably cold, as well.
” She shook her head. “Once, their village would have been a sight to see, orderly and appealing. They lived in shared clan houses—beautifully carved, big enough to fit forty or fifty people, cozy and spacious.”
“What happened?” Maggie asked. She’d only seen the Indian village, huddled at the waterfront, from a distance, but the buildings all looked small, one or two rooms at most, and certainly not as large as the nun was describing.
Sister Mary Zeno smiled sadly. “What happened is the white man came and brought civilization. And while I cannot begrudge the good things we have brought with us—medicine and education and, of course, the good news of the Christian gospel—it has not always, alas, seemed to benefit the native. In the years after the Alaska Purchase, the military attacked Tlingit villages up and down the coast, wanting to keep them in their place. The government denied them citizenship unless they abandoned their native ways, and the result is what you see here…” She swept an arm out to encompass all of Juneau, and the Indian village huddled by the bay.
“An attempt to live as the white man, but without any of the resources we have. And even going back to the old ways is challenging—there are fewer salmon and halibut to fish, fewer seals to hunt, and they cannot build their big houses when they are not allowed to own any land, and must keep to the area they’ve been given, and that only on sufferance.
” She glanced back at the woman shivering on her bed. “See that she’s made comfortable.”
“And the child?” Maggie asked. The little girl had not moved from under her mother’s bed, crouched on her belly, eyeing everyone with silent watchfulness.
“The girl can stay with her, for now,” Sister Mary Zeno decided.
“But she will have to be taken back to the Indian village before nightfall. We cannot properly care for a child here, and she is surely better with her own people.” Her voice was firm, and while Maggie knew her superior was probably right, she still worried for the little girl.
She was so small, and she clearly wanted to be with her mother.
Maggie’s heart twisted at the sight of the little girl’s dark eyes, taking in everything from her place under the bed. Surely there had to be a way to take care of her.
By late afternoon, the Tlingit woman’s fever had lowered a little, thanks to the quinine and cold compresses, but she was still clearly very ill.
“You should take the child back now,” Sister Mary Zeno said as she stood by the woman’s bed.
“Someone there will take care of her. The Tlingit look after their own.” She turned away before Maggie could think to reply, trusting that she would see to the matter.
Yet how could she, when she couldn’t even get the girl from under her mother’s bed?
And, in truth, she didn’t want to. The little girl was clearly where she wanted to be, and separating her from her mother seemed needlessly cruel.
Reluctantly, Maggie knelt down, peering beneath the iron bedframe with a coaxing smile. The girl stared back, her braids brushing the floor, her dark, liquid eyes unblinking.
“Hello there,” Maggie said softly. “Won’t you come with me? I’m going to take you back home.”
She got no response, which didn’t surprise her. Most likely the girl spoke very little English, if any at all.
“You need to come out from there,” Maggie continued gently.
“You must be stiff and cold, from crouching there for so long.” Inspiration struck her, and she smiled.
“You must be hungry, too.” She thought she saw a spark of interest in the girl’s eyes, but she suspected she was being fanciful.
“I’m going to get you something,” Maggie told her, and she went to the hospital kitchen for a thick slice of bread slathered with the locally made fireweed honey.
Back at the bed, she proffered the slice of bread, keeping it just out of reach so the girl would have to crawl forward.
“Doesn’t this look delicious?” she coaxed while the girl watched her suspiciously.
“Bread and honey, mmm.” She pretended to nibble the bread while the girl’s eyes narrowed. She scooted a mere inch forward.
Maggie felt a pinprick of guilt for how she was tricking the child, but she didn’t know how else to get her out from under the bed. She proffered the bread again, and the girl moved forward. Another half a foot and Maggie would be able to grab her.
Five endless minutes of Maggie offering the bread, enthusing about how delicious it was, and pretending to eat it, finally had the girl leaning forward far enough to snatch the slice.
While she grabbed the bread, Maggie grabbed her, hauling her out by her armpits as an ear-curdling shriek pierced her ears and reverberated through the hospital.
The girl started to struggle, kicking her arms and legs, clawing at Maggie’s face and hair, screeching all the while. It took all of Maggie’s strength simply to hold onto her.
“Nurse O’Halloran, what is this commotion?” Sister Mary Victor came forward, looking annoyed. “This is a hospital. We cannot have this kind of disturbance.”
“I’m sorry, Sister Mary Victor,” Maggie replied breathlessly as she wrapped an arm around the girl to keep her from hitting or kicking. “I was just trying to get this child out from under her mother’s bed. Sister Mary Zeno wants me to take her back to the Indian village.”
The nun eyed the Tlingit girl critically, her lips pursed. Although the hospital treated any Tlingit who came to their doors, Maggie suspected Sister Mary Victor didn’t always approve of such generosity. “Very well,” she said curtly. “Then take her.”
Somehow Maggie managed to wrestle the girl outside, keeping hold of her all the while. For such a small child, she thought wryly, she certainly possessed a surprising amount of strength, as well as an incredibly loud voice. Maggie’s eardrums were thrumming.
“I promise, I’m not trying to hurt you,” she told the girl once she’d set her down, her hands on her shoulders. “I just need to take you home.”
The girl stood there silently, the fight seemingly drained out of her, but with her hands still on her shoulders, Maggie realized she was shaking, and her heart ached.
Unthinkingly, she drew the girl into a hug, wrapping her arms around her.
The girl stiffened and then pulled away.
Maggie let her go, but she kept her hand on her arm, in case she decided to make a run for it.
“All right,” she said quietly. “Shall we go?”
Maggie received plenty of surprised as well as censorious glances as she and the girl walked through town.
Some Tlingits went into certain stores in town, to trade their fish or furs, but many others had “No Natives” or “No Indians” signs in their windows.
And, Maggie knew, some Tlingit women had been forced from economic necessity into prostitution, although such things were rarely spoken of, even in the most raucous crowds.
A respectable white woman and a Tlingit child together was, Maggie suspected, an unusual—and, judging from the looks she was getting—unwelcome sight. She didn’t care. She just hoped Sister Mary Zeno was right, and the Tlingit really would take care of their own.
Maggie had never been to the Indian village by the waterfront, although it was near enough to Juneau’s downtown. There was no reason to go, and she suspected she would not be welcome. Now, as she approached the first house built up on stilts, nerves swirled through her stomach.
As she walked along with the girl, she glimpsed various people about—a woman with a baby standing in a doorway; an older woman stirring something in a pot hung over a fire. No one spoke or even looked at her. Maggie felt as if she were invisible, and the girl too, which was both odd and unsettling.
She kept walking along the bank of the channel, hoping someone might talk to her, or even simply look her way so she could start a conversation, but no one did.
Then, finally, a man strode toward her. He was dressed in traditional Tlingit leggings made of hide and a plaid flannel shirt the kind a miner might wear.
His hair was long and loose, the sharp lines of his nose and jaw making Maggie think his face might as well be carved from stone.
He stood right in front of her, close enough that she could not move past, and the look on his face was composed but unrelenting, unnerving her all the more. He did not speak.
“Hello,” Maggie ventured, feeling faintly ridiculous as well as scared. “This child, her mother is in the hospital. St. Ann’s. Do you know St. Ann’s…?”
The man’s lip curled contemptuously, and he gave a terse nod. Maggie had no idea how much he’d understood.
“The child came with her,” Maggie explained, “but there is no room at the hospital for her to stay. She must come back here.”
The man stared at her for a long moment before he slowly, definitively, shook his head.
“What?” Maggie stared at him in surprise.
She was quite sure, judging from his reactions, that he’d understood everything she’d said—and was now refusing it all.
“But… why ever not?” she asked. “She’s one of you.
” She winced a little at how that sounded, then persevered.
“She belongs here.” Somehow, that didn’t sound any better.
“Her mother is nitckakaku,” he told her, his voice low and gravelly. “Her father white. Mother live with him for many years. This child does not know our ways. She does not belong here.”
Maggie stared at him blankly. She had no idea what nitckakaku meant, but it seemed not to be a good thing. “But…” she began, unsure what to say. “Where else could she go?”
The man shook his head again, in that slow, certain back and forth. “Not here.”
Maggie knew instinctively there was absolutely no point in arguing with him. For whatever reason—and she couldn’t fathom one—he was refusing to let this little girl into the village.
Maggie swallowed hard, then nodded. “All right,” she said. “Thank you,” she added, although she wasn’t sure what she was thanking him for. He certainly hadn’t helped.
The man didn’t reply, and she turned around and started to walk away, holding the girl by the hand. At least she was docile now and didn’t fight her as they left the village.
Except now, Maggie wondered despairingly, where on earth were they going to go?