• Monday, August 22 •
School District Administration Building, Chukchi
Martha sat behind her desk, brow furrowed, and squinted at a sheet of paper on her blotter. Active stood in the office doorway, unobserved by the director of the Chukchi Borough School District’s teacher-aide program. She held the paper up to catch the light from a window behind her.
“Arii, why they print this so small? How they expect—”
“Aaka?”
Martha’s face lit up with that sunrise of a smile as she turned her dark, sparkling eyes on him. “Nathan, what a nice surprise! Nothing but bad news all day, the budget, staff cuts, but now my baby comes to see his mother!”
She stood and threw out her arms and he crossed the room for a hug.
“Well, I have some news that will—”
A polite knock sounded behind them.
“Martha?” A young Inupiat woman stood in the doorway with a manila folder. “I’m sorry to interrupt. Do you have time to sign this stuff before you go?”
Martha beckoned her in. “Arii, Jocelyn, I forget I’m leaving early today.”
Jocelyn laid the folder on the desk and eyed Active shyly while Martha signed the paperwork. Active nodded as the assistant gathered up the documents and left.
“You’re leaving early?” Active asked.
She raised her brows in the Inupiat yes. “I have an appointment with the eye doctor.” She grimaced. “Time for glasses, maybe. Your aaka’s not so young anymore.”
“Oh, you’re as beautiful as ever.”
She beamed again and gave him a dismissive wave, but it wasn’t false praise. She was in sight of fifty, but her skin still glowed, wrinkle-free except for the feathery lines around her mouth and eyes. Only a few strands of white streaked the shoulder-length black hair. And, of course, there was that dazzling smile, which seemed unmarked by the passage of time.
She grabbed a jacket from the back of her chair. Active helped her slip it on.
“You got a minute for my news before you go?” he asked. He was usually the one too busy to visit, while Martha was forever coaxing him to stay an extra hour or two at her house with the promise of moose stew or with a guilt-trip plea that his half brother, Sonny, was due home soon and would be crushed to miss him.
“I was going to walk to the clinic, so I have to go pretty soon, all right?”
“I could drive you.”
Her face lit up and she settled back into her chair. “Arigaa, we have a few minutes, then. What’s your news?”
Active perched on a corner of the desk. He had rehearsed the big announcement. He would play games with her a little, hint around until she almost guessed, then unwrap the package. But now, as he looked down at her unsuspecting expression, an uncontrollable grin spread across his face. The words burst from his mouth of their own accord.
“We’re having a baby.”
She leapt up and threw her arms around him, and he almost fell off the desk. He stood up to regain his balance as she held his hands and danced from side to side and sang, “I’m gonna be an aana! I’m gonna be an aana!”
The commotion drew a little crowd to the door. Applause and cries of “Yoi!” and “Arigaa!” broke out. Finally, she let him go and collapsed back into her chair. The cheering section waved and drifted away.
Martha, grinning and teary, shook a finger at him. “Your aaka is always right, ah? Didn’t I say, you should stay in Chukchi with Gracie, not move to Anchorage like you always talk about? Now you gonna be a daddy and I’m gonna be an aana! How soon? How is Gracie? No problems?”
“The ultrasound shows she’s about fourteen weeks along, so that would be, uh—” He couldn’t remember the due date that Grace had given him. Were only men so bad at details like this?
“And I was right about the quiyuk too, ah?” She caught his expression. “I’m sorry, I know you always tell me, don’t ask about if you and Gracie are—”
“And I’m still telling you.”
“How else was I gonna be an aana if you two weren’t—”
“Aaka.”
“Arii, sorry, sorry. At least everything’s good now. Not like when I had you and—”
“Aaka, we don’t have to go there every time.”
Martha’s face collapsed and she began to sob.
“Aaka, come on. It’s all good now, like you said.”
“Ah, my baby. Sometimes I always think this will never happen. You’ll never find someone good for you—maybe you’ll stay with that Lucy Generous. I know she’s nice girl, all right, but I never think she’s right one for you.”
Active realized with a spasm of terror that one more awkward conversation about the baby lay ahead. Lucy Generous Brophy was married now, with two kids of her own, but she made it no secret that her heart’s eye still gazed down the road they might have traveled together if Grace Palmer had not come along.
Now she was the office manager at Chukchi Public Safety, her office right next to his. The conversation could not be avoided. The question was, would he get there before the news did?
He wrenched himself back to Martha’s teary monologue.
“I think maybe I mess you up,” she was saying, “the way you start out. Maybe you’ll never have a family of your own.”
He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “But now I do. And you’re part of it. Every baby needs its aana.”
Martha pulled her hand free and stroked the back of his hand. “I see Gracie only couple days ago, she never say nothing.”
“She wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.”
“Oh, that poor girl, she have a hard time from all what she go through. You be careful with her, Nathan. Don’t stress her out, so that baby will come out right.”
“I’m trying, aaka. But sometimes it’s like tiptoeing across black ice. One wrong step and—crack!—you go through.”
“We’re like that when we’re having a baby,” she said. “Hormones, what they call it now. Early days ago, we Inupiat just call it, we’re having a baby.”
He sighed. “Didn’t the old-timers make pregnant women go off by themselves to have their babies? I’m thinking that still might not be a bad idea today. For everyone involved.”
She grinned. “Now you really talk like a man got no clue. But maybe Gracie should see that Nelda Qivits again, ah?”
Active nodded. “I think she’s leaning that way, all right.”
Martha folded her arms, and her face took on a glow of satisfaction. “Wait until I tell Leroy he’s gonna be an attata. He’ll be so happy, another kid he can teach to hunt and fish like Nita and Sonny.”
“What about me?” Active feigned a look of hurt. “You don’t think I could teach—”
“Naw, Leroy’s way better. Better than most Eskimos.”
They both laughed. Leroy Johnson, Martha’s husband and Sonny’s father, had not a single strand of Inupiat DNA in his genes. But turn him loose in the country, and nobody would bring home more meat.
“Have you told the Wilhites?” Martha’s voice was hesitant. The Wilhites were Active’s adoptive parents, another subject perpetually on the touchy list in their conversations.
“No, not yet,” he said, and added, “We wanted you to know first.”
She smiled with pleasure, but politely turned her head away to hide it.
“What about Sonny? You think he’ll be excited to be an uncle?”
“Yeah, I’ll tell him soon as he gets home from school.” She paused. “Unless you want—”
“No, you go ahead. I’ll catch him later.” Active had a hard time keeping up with his half brother. Sonny was a senior in high school now, a computer whiz, and already deep into basketball practice for the coming season. And, judging from what Active saw online, juggling a girl or two interested in being more than just Facebook friends.
“You better watch that Sonny,” Martha said. “He’ll have your little one dribbling a basketball soon as he’s walking.”
“Or ‘she,’” Active said. “I hear Grace was pretty good on the court back in the day.”
Martha raised her eyebrows in acknowledgment, then glanced at the clock on the wall behind Active. “I guess we better get going.”
“Need some help, grandma?” He offered his hand.
She slapped it away and stood up. “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll never be too old to spoil my grandbaby rotten.”
As they stepped outside, a gust of wind kicked up dust from the gravel parking lot. He opened the Tahoe’s passenger door and helped her in.
She touched his hand and looked at him. “I’m so proud of you, Nathan.”
“Thanks, aaka. I guess we’re all gonna make it, ah?”