Minuk: Ashes in the Pathway

Panruk

One day, Panruk says she isn’t feeling well, so Minuk goes to the Hoffs’ without her. When Minuk comes back, Grandma has lowered a grass mat that hangs over the bench against the back wall. Panruk is behind it. Panruk has become a woman.

Of course, Minuk knew it would happen eventually to Panruk, just as someday it will happen to Minuk. But having it actually happen is different. There’ll now be so many things they cannot do together. Minuk sits beside Panruk and holds her hand. Panruk looks content, not afraid or sad. She has always accepted everything and questioned nothing.

When a young girl first menstruates, there’s rules so strict that no one would dare break them. For ten days, Panruk cannot sit down or walk around. She can lie down when she’s tired, but she cannot sit. Then, she can sit in a dark corner of the house dressed in an old parka. She can only drink water once in the morning and once in the evening, but she must suck it from a feather. After another ten days, Panruk can stand up.

Grandma goes to the passageway and gets a handful of ashes, which are thrown behind Panruk. Grandma says the ashes fall on Panruk’s pathway and cut off her past. She cannot become a child again.

Panruk bathes and dresses in a new qaspeq with a hood and belt, which she must wear always. She must now be completely covered with special fish-skin mittens without thumbs and boots, even in the summer. Panruk must also give away her doll and everything else she owned as a girl, even her lovely earrings which Grandpa made her, as well as her sewing kit. Grandma and the aunts have gifts of needles and needle cases ready to give to the girls to celebrate the end of their childhood.

Panruk gives her doll to Minuk, but it makes Minuk very sad to think that Panruk and her would never play together again. Minuk has played sometimes with Cakayak and Uliggaq, but neither of them are very good at pretending.

Last of all, Panruk is tattooed. Most tattoos are three lines fanning out under the bottom lip down to the bottom of the chin. Grandpa says women at the mouth of the river have different tattoos, and Minuk wishes she could see them.

Grandma prepares a long string coated with soot and makes a hole in the skin under Panruk’s lip, and then she draws the string through the top layer of skin to make a dark line. Panruk says it doesn’t hurt much, but it takes a long time.

Minuk doesn’t think she’ll be as brave as Panruk is. Why don’t boys have to endure traditions like this? But then, they are not unclean, like women.

When Panruk is allowed outside again, she can’t look off into the distance. She can only take short glances so she doesn’t go blind in old age. She cannot drink while stooping over, cannot eat birds that fly south in the winter, and cannot handle the soil.

For a year, she’ll have restrictions on hunting eggs, picking berries, going in a boat, or cooking or preparing skins. If there’s bad weather or poor hunting and fishing, she’ll be blamed for not following the rules. For the rest of her life, men must not breathe in her bad air or have direct eye contact with her. She’ll have to be careful with men’s clothing and not leave her own clothing lying around.

When Panruk can walk again, they visit the Hoffs. Mrs. Hoff hems quietly as Panruk tells her the Yup’ik way of becoming a woman. Mrs. Hoff says their ways are superstitions and that she doesn’t approve of them. She says when she became a woman, she simply had her hair put on top of her head for the first time. And she had to put away her short skirts and put on long skirts and the corset. Then she smiles and says her head ached for weeks from the pins. And she kept tripping on the long skirts. And she hated the corsets. But she got used to it. Girls must endure so much.

Qanrilaq’s family speaks to Grandpa about Panruk. They ask Panruk if she has objection to Qanrilaq as a husband, and Panruk lowers and shakes her head. Minuk also has an objection to Qanrilaq. He was mean to them when they were little girls. He threw rocks at them and bothered them. His mean, little eyes tormented them. As a grown-up, he doesn’t laugh or smile or joke with the other boys and men.

Eventually, Panruk agrees to Qanrilaq as a husband. The women in his family start making new clothes for Panruk, who puts them on and brings a meal to Qanrilaq in the qasgiq so he becomes her husband. When Minuk tells Grandpa that he was mean to them, Grandpa says he remembers. If he’s still mean, Panruk can throw him away. Panruk doesn’t need to stay with someone she’s not suited to. What Minuk worries about is if Panruk will ever think to complain. Perhaps she’ll be so good and sweet that she won’t hold herself valuable.