The Tale of the One Hundred and One Dolls

To get you into the Christmas spirit, here's a tale of childhood self-discovery.

RACHEL ATTITUQ QITSUALIK
Special to Nunatsiaq News

OTTAWA — The angakuq woman was doing it again – making strange noises in her igluvigaq. We dared each other to come near enough to hear what she was doing.

"No, you go closer..."

We nudged each other, then ran when we thought we heard a sound like a seagull cry. She seemed to be making tea, from the sound of her gas stove, and to be either singing in a low croon, or moaning.

"I hated her."

I hated her. She always did something weird in the middle of the night, got stuck in one of her trances, and my father would have to go to her and snap her out of it. It was always very distressing to me.

"What has she done now?" I would complain, and could never get my father to explain what exactly it was that he had to do in these late night emergencies.

Rumour had it that she would slip into a trance and become unable to awaken from it. Some said that her eyeballs would roll up in her head, or that she would pass out.

I didn't care. "Let her get out of it herself and stop making my father work at night," I thought ungraciously. Someone would come running in, asking my father to go help her, and I would think to myself, "Her again. If she's such a great angakuq, why does she always get 'stuck' wherever she is? Obviously, she doesn't know very much does she?"

Besides, she couldn't be a real angakuq, since everybody knew that angakuit have the power to appear wherever and whenever they wanted, appearing in a foggy mist followed by music.

She didn't like me, either. She was always telling me that she would make me pee my bed. And I would. But, of course, it did not occur to me that nearly every kid my age – cursed or not – was peeing their bed as a matter of biology.

One hundred mysterious dolls

Another thing that made the angakuq creepy was the rumour that she possessed one hundred dolls. She had bought them while in the south, during repeated trips to the hospital.

In time, my little sister and I decided to check out the story of these one hundred dolls for ourselves. It was said that the dolls were her familiars, her tuurngait, her enslaved helper spirits. It was told that every night she would arrange them about her igluvigaq, and therein do "something" to them.

We stood at the foot of her winter igluvigaq. It was brand new, as someone had freshly built it for her. On the bed platform was a burlap sack stuffed with toys.

"Do you want to see the dolls?" she asked.

We were transfixed. Before our eyes, she gently let them tumble out onto the ground, lovingly picking them up one by one and placing them around her dimly lit home. She would introduce each one as she did so, saying, "This one has blue eyes, and this one can move its arms and legs..."

Isumairutisimajuq

"She's a looney," I thought. "She's isumairutisimajuq, crazy, lost her grip on her mind." So it was this nutcase that my poor father had to deal with.

While I balked in horror, my younger sister stood entranced. She was nodding and taking the dolls as they were handed to her. "Maybe the plastic will freeze in the cold," I thought, "and they'll break." I tried to send unfriendly vibes.

Later that night, as we were falling asleep, my little sister asked: "Do you think she'll make the dolls do something to us?"

"Of course not," I replied. "Besides," I added, "She's not really an angakuq. If she were, Ataata would tell us. She's just crazy, that's all. Everybody knows that dolls are not alive."

I paused for a moment, before adding: "Even if she does, Kusik will kill them."

Besides being my favourite dog, Kusik had the extra task of protecting us from the supernatural. Strangely, that night, I dreamt that Kusik had come into our house.

When I woke up, she was curled up at the front, having given birth to some new pups that we – as kids – hadn't even known she had been expecting. In my half-sleep, I heard some sort of mewling. When I lifted up my head from the pillow, there was Kusik, nursing a number of fu y newborns, looking rather pleased with herself.

Kusik must have somehow known that it was Christmas soon. "What a clever dog," I thought, "giving us puppies for Christmas." By spring, they would be large enough to travel with us to our spring camp. I had expectations of playing ball and other games as we had done with her last litter.

Somehow, I interpreted the new litter as a good sign, countering the negative influence of the angakuq woman and her nightmarish legion of dolls. My fears eventually faded, my young mind distracted by living and growing.

Will Ataata come back?

One night, a bad snow storm came up. My father was out hunting with a couple of other men for the coming Christmas feasts. In the dark, we listened to the wind howl. We had spent the entire day stranded indoors, drawing frozen shapes on the crystals formed on the lone window of our cabin.

"Do you think Ataata will come back?" my little sister asked.

"Of course, you silly thing," I answered, not as sure inside as I affected to feel on the outside. "Ataata always comes back."

It was now a few days before Christmas. We thought we heard something bump against our cabin, on the roof.

"Maybe that's Father Christmas...?"

"Could be... Maybe those are the sounds of his reindeer."

We listened some more. But the closer I listened, the more I thought that those bumps and scrapings did not quite sound like reindeer hooves. They were more like the patterings of little feet. I suddenly thought of dolls...

"Does Father Christmas know where we live?"

"Sure he does – he knows everything."

Even though I was older, and knew differently, I could not dash my sister's hopes. I knew that there was no Santa. I had seen my father once eating the cookies when he thought we were asleep, and commenting on how cute we were in believing that there was a Santa. But I still told my sister:

"He'll know its our home when he sees the cookies and milk you left out for him," as I continued to listen to those sounds on the roof.

"Okay..." she said sleepily.

I did not want to frighten my sister by telling her what I really thought those sounds on the roof might be. And my fear was compounded by the fact that – unlike what I told my sister – I truly suspected that my father's return from a hunt was not always guaranteed.

Fear

One day, I feared, he would not show up. (It did happen once, but that is another story.)

For the time being, there was nothing I could do, and I too began to drift into an uneasy sleep, wherein reindeer sleds landed on our cabin to bring us toys, candy and other treats – alternating with images of tiny forms that pattered through the shadows, while one hundred pairs of blue eyes watched me through the storm.

As it was, my father did come back. No, I don't believe Santa had arrived; but yes, someone had eaten the Christmas cookies and left the empty plate and cup behind.

My sister got a rock in her stocking and had a fit like she always did when a joke was played on her. We had hung up our duffel socks, and our real treats eventually came out.

Father Christmas arrives

Among my presents was a large Raggedy Anne doll.

After my father's return from that hunt, no one ever came to our cabin with an angakuq emergency again. As far as I know, my sister always continued to put cookies and milk out for Santa on Christmas Eve. Me, I just go to the midnight mass with my family, and hope not to get a rock in my stocking.

Ever since that day, I've loved dolls. Suddenly having one of my own somehow dissipated my hostility toward the angakuq woman. In fact, today, I have several dolls of my own, and I can better appreciate the nostalgia or simple wonder that drove an eccentric old sorceress to treasure her toys.

Perhaps the only black magic at work was jealousy.

Pijariiqpunga.