Tainna by Norma Dunning

Author:Norma Dunning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: short fiction, Inuit
ISBN: 9781771622721
Publisher: Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.
Published: 2021-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

The following Sunday I am smiling out at my congregation. I am back on the quiet tundra. I am home, back where I belong. We sing our jumbled out “Amazing Grace,” but today it doesn’t sound like a mess. It sounds like something that would play in the Vatican. It sounds beautiful.

I walk Tupik to the door of the church and hold her elbow down the stairs. She leans into my ear and says, “I hear you went to the city.”

I nod and smile at her. “I learned many things that day, Tupik. Ittura was good to me.”

Her face crinkles up and her toothless smile stays frozen for a moment. “He can be a bugger, that man! But he always means well. We have to see the good in everything, you know.”

“I think I’m beginning to. When do you expect to see him again?”

“Oh, I don’t! He’s off in one of the Lands. One of my grands called her dog ‘Ittura’ so he’s not wandering around anymore. She’ll be forced to treat that dog well, but it was me, I wouldn’t let him go for all these years. Wouldn’t let the new ones be named after him. Selfish, eh?”

“Not at all, Tupik. Not at all. He taught me things. Things that I needed to know.”

Tupik hunches over her cane and begins her long walk home. I feel a sadness come over me. No more Ittura at church. As I turn to head back up the wooden steps, I feel a soft caress across my forehead.

I stop and smile and whisper, “Ma’na anirniq.”

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