Minuk: Ashes in the Pathway

Pockets

In the middle of summer, Panruk and Minuk are sent every day to the tundra to check on the berries. Some years there’s lots of berries, and some years there aren’t. Some years they’re big and sweet, and other years small and sour. They can never tell until they’re ripe.

First, the salmonberries are ripe, and Grandma uses them to make akutaq. Akutaq is rich and oily, and it melts on the tongue. Next, the blueberries are ripe, and then the bright glossy red cranberries, and then the high-bush cranberries. All the women in the village go to pick berries from early in the morning until late at night.

Sometimes it’s drizzling and foggy while they pick. They can hardly see each other over the wet tundra. But they don’t care—they want akutaq all winter long, so they keep picking.

Every night, Mamma sews berries into fish-skin bags to go into the cache. But they leave out just enough to bring to the men’s house, and the children set aside some extra for Mrs. Hoff. She’ll need lots of berries for the ten boys who are coming to the Hoffs’ school.

That summer, the Hoffs hire a lot of people from Bethel to work for them. Mr. Hoff sends boats up and down the river, and he buys rafts of firewood for their stove and spruce logs for lumber. He hires men to cut boards from the lumber using long saws. Mr. Hoff takes pictures of the workmen with something called a Kodak. It’s a box that makes a picture, just from him taking the film into another room and washing it with special water. He says he wants “before” and “after” pictures. He’s going to bring them back to his church in Maryland.

Mrs. Hoff hires women from the village to help her. She teaches them how to bake bread and clean her way, scrubbing wooden floors and washing dishes and steel pots. Everything the Hoffs wear must be washed in soap and water, boiled, and then scrubbed up and down the scrub board. The Hoffs must use as much water in one day as the village uses the whole summer.

After hanging the clothes to dry in the sun, Mrs. Hoff irons them. She heats the iron on the big stove and presses the cloth to make it smooth. She tries to teach the women from the village, but it’s no use. They don’t like the hot, heavy iron, and just don’t see the use of taking the wrinkles out of clothes.

Mrs. Hoff is busy getting the boys ready for school. No Yup’ik family would send their sons to school, so all the attendees will be orphan boys. Kasruq, the orphan who lives in the men’s house, will be going. Orphans in the village have a hard life because no women bring them food. They’re left to eat the scraps of the others. Their clothes are castoffs they mend themselves. And they have to take orders from everyone. Kasruq is a little older than Iraluq, and nobody really pays attention to him. But Mr. Hoff does because he wants Kasruq to come to his school. Minuk thinks it must feel good to Kasruq to have Mr. Hoff’s attention.

Mrs. Hoff orders cloth pants, shirts, and boots to be sent on the mission boat with the rest of the supplies for the orphan boys. She buys bundles of skins to make a parka for each boy, and she hires Cakayak’s grandma and Uliggaq’s grandma and Minuk’s grandma to sew the parkas. They’re the best sewers in the village. Mrs. Hoff asks Minuk and Panruk if they’d like to help as well.

Mrs. Hoff makes the girls take baths in the galvanized tubs and wash their hair with soap. She hates lice. She also hates the smells of the caribou skins, dried fish, and rotten fish heads. She says it gives her a headache. She gives them all cloth dresses because it gets so hot inside that their summer parkas are too heavy. The Hoffs always have a fire going, except in the hottest month. They’re provided long shirts to wear under their dresses, and short pants made of white cloth. The aprons on top all have tiny pockets, a little bag sewn onto the apron. They can put almost anything in their pocket to carry it around easily.

When the girls leave at the end of the day, they put back on their regular clothes. Although Minuk misses her parka throughout the day, she wishes she had the pocket. Minuk asks Grandma why they don’t have pockets on their clothes, but she doesn’t say anything.

Mrs. Hoff often has Minuk go back to wash her hands. She says dirty hands can cause sickness. But the Yup’ik always tell their children that the dirt makes a path for the diseases to leave them. Grandma says to keep their hands clean while at the Hoffs’, but to rub their hands in dirt when they come back home.