If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name Read online

  The rest was easier, because Nedra had written most of it down herself. There was her ride on the first steamship into Seward after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, how she met and married Wes Waterman, the years at the gold mine, the babies, leaving Alaska for California and coming back again, the hotel she ran in Anchorage, and the volunteer work she did in Haines for the Emblem Club. Nedra had even included the date and place of her high school graduation, and the middle names of her parents. All seventy-eight years in two letter-sized, handwritten pages.

  When the obituary was finished, Kathy turned her attention to Joanne and the casket. “It’s now ten A.M. on Tuesday and the funeral is six P.M. on Thursday,” she announced, taking a long pull on her cigarette. She was still in her pink bathrobe. “Mom better be buried in something sturdier than an old bedspread.” She didn’t say it in a mean way, and succeeded in making Joanne laugh for the first time all morning. Joanne has a great laugh, a deep-throated belly chuckle that makes anyone who hears it smile.

  The casket had to be finished in time to put Nedra into the dress she wanted to be buried in, the one she wore to her fiftieth high school reunion.

  Karl Johnson walked over from next door to see if Joanne needed any help with the casket. He’d heard at the lumberyard that she’d bought the wood and planned to build it herself. Kathy, who can’t tell a mitered joint from a dovetail, said yes, but Joanne, the carpenter, shook her head and answered, “No, thanks.” She said there was plenty of time.

  We all went into the shop and looked at the pine one-by-twelves, one-by-sixes, and two-by-twos that Joanne still needed to cut, screw, and glue into a casket. Kathy said that if Joanne didn’t get to work soon she’d miss the family dinner planned for that evening. Which I think is exactly what Joanne had in mind. Building the casket gave her an excuse to leave the crowded kitchen, filled with women and babies—Nedra’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The work helped Joanne sort it out, alone.

  Joanne finished the casket about five hours before the funeral. She coated it in Danish oil instead of varnish, so it would dry on time. Julie and the motor home pulled into the driveway the night before, carrying a bolt of blue satin to line the coffin. Kathy tucked some quilt batting underneath it.

  NEDRA WAS LYING comfortably inside the casket in plenty of time for the move in the old ambulance, which doubles as a hearse, to the Elks Lodge for the funeral. Even Kathy said that once the casket was done, time seemed to slow way down. The final hours before the funeral were empty. Getting everyone showered and dressed took less time than anticipated, especially with the motor home’s extra bathroom. It was a warm, sunny April day. The very best kind of day. We sat outside in Nedra’s garden, trying to keep the children clean and Joanne’s energetic spaniel away from our good clothes.

  Nedra’s favorite hymn was the one about walking in the garden with Jesus. “And he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own.” At the funeral, Debra played it on the piano while everyone sang. I pictured a healthy Nedra alone with Jesus. What would Nedra say to him? My guess is she’d suggest a shave and a haircut, and then she’d question him about why he hadn’t intervened in the more difficult days of her life. “Where were you,” she might ask, “when all I had to feed the girls was mustard sandwiches?”

  The ladies of the Emblem Club, dressed in black from gloves to stockings, conducted the service, taking turns at the wobbly podium overlooking the closed casket. Each woman carried a dark purple silk rose.

  At the graveside, Reverend Jan Hotze said the final blessing, and the Emblem Club ladies each dropped a handful of dirt and a flower onto the coffin. Maisie Jones, who has buried a husband and several close friends, says it’s good for the living: “When you throw flowers on the grave and say the Twenty-third Psalm, it does help. It helps us come to terms with the absence. Everybody feels serene about it afterward.”

  The Episcopal burial service includes a verse from John’s gospel: “in my house are many mansions.” In the obituary letter Nedra left for her daughters, she wrote proudly that her first home in Alaska was a fourteen-by-fourteen-foot shack on a mining claim in Talkeetna.

  Nedra spent most of her life in the biggest state in the union in small, handmade houses. She wouldn’t be comfortable for eternity in a mansion. Which is why her simple cabin of a casket, built with love and skill by her youngest daughter, ought to make her feel right at home in her new neighborhood.

  DULY NOTED

  On Monday about thirty Klukwan residents turned out at the Alaska Native Sisterhood Hall for an Elizabeth Peratrovich Day luncheon program honoring the legendary Alaska civil rights leader. A video of Elizabeth Peratrovich, a play performed at Hoonah High School a few years ago, was shown. The Klukwan School children read essays they’d written about Mrs. Peratrovich. Elsie Spud said, “It was hard for us to hold back tears because of the good job the kids did, both in the writing and the reading.” She added, “We all left with important knowledge about why we celebrate the holiday.” Elizabeth Peratrovich is credited with convincing the territorial legislature to change laws that once banned Native people from many public places, including movie theaters, restaurants, and stores.

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  The last weeks of the school year mean trips and special events for elementary school classes. Kelly Pape’s third graders went to Whitehorse on a two-day camping trip at the hot springs. Jansy Hansen’s fourth graders took the water taxi to Skagway for a ride on the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad and visited the Klondike Gold Dredge. Tim McDonough’s fifth graders loaded up a school van with gear and left for two nights at Rainbow Glacier Camp.

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  Local carvers John Hagen, Clifford Thomas, and Greg Horner have started work on a new totem pole commissioned for actor James Earl Jones. Alaska Indian Arts president Lee Heinmiller said the twenty-two-foot pole will take about a year to complete. “It’s basically still just a log right now.”

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  A snowboard signed by members of the Teton Gravity Research pro ski team was Lucas Dawson’s big present at his eleventh birthday party Saturday. The team of elite skiers and snowboarders from around the world stayed at the Dawson family lodge while they filmed extreme spring skiing adventures. “Lucas got to know the guys while they were here—and they got together and gave him the board,” Lucas’s dad, Jon Dawson, said.

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  Everyone Knew Her as Susie

  DUANE WILSON SLIDES open the glass door to his parents’ house, adjusts his eyes to the darker inside light, and takes a deep breath of the warm, smoky air, scented with fish and fresh cedar. “Smells like an Indian house,” he says, and we all laugh. On the table, a foot-square pile of dried smoked eulachon (pronounced “hooligan”) rests on newspaper. Next to it is the remains of a sugary sheet cake. “Hmm. Cake and fish,” Duane says, helping himself to both. The cake is left over from the potluck supper after the Alaska Native Sisterhood funeral of Susie Brouillette, a Tlingit elder who died earlier in the week.

  I’m at the kitchen table, carefully chewing my own little dried fish and wondering if I should eat the fins and tail. It’s actually better than it sounds. Much better than a similar dish my dad eats for breakfast—steamed kippered herring, or “kippers,” which smells bad enough to drive a daughter to move to, say, Alaska when she grows up. Anyway, the reason I’m crunching the tougher parts of a eulachon and watching Duane snap off the shriveled eyeless heads into a neat pile is because I need Susie Brouillette’s Tlingit name and the proper phrasing of her tribal lineage for the obituary.

  This house is the home of the Alaska Native Sisterhood secretary, Marilyn Wilson, a happy woman with a round face and big glasses. She keeps good notes on her computer and has a fax machine in the back bedroom that she always offers to use when I call with a question. “What’s your fax number?” she’ll say, and I’ll tell her I don’t have one. I’d rather talk with Marilyn and her husband, Paul, in person. I like being in their ho
use. There are usually puppies underfoot, grandchildren playing, and a nephew or cousin asleep on the couch. Marilyn and Paul’s projects are everywhere. Today the television is on but no one is watching it.

  While Marilyn and Duane, who is the president of the Alaska Native Brotherhood Haines Camp No. 5 and knows Tlingit better than his mother does, translate into English the Native words I’ve asked about, Paul carves a design on a yellow cedar canoe paddle and keeps me company. Paul doesn’t greet me with any of the usual talk about when it will stop raining or if this summer will be warmer than last. Instead, the first thing he says is “I have missed many years of my culture.”

  Paul tells me he’s learning the Tlingit language so he can believe the stories of his people, not just know the plots. When he was young, missionaries and the government prohibited Alaskan Natives from speaking their language and living traditionally. They often took Tlingit children from their homes and families, placing them in boarding schools as far away as Washington and Oregon. Now Paul is a grandfather and is committed to relearning a way of living that he says is not lost but rather hiding, just below the skin. He is proud of Duane and watches for a moment as his son helps his wife. “When I sing the old songs,” Paul says, “it’s like my chest is opened up and my heart is showing.” Paul’s words are poetry. I know because there is nothing I can say afterward. I just watch him resume his carving and try not to look too closely at the eye sockets of those dried fish. I recognize the movie on the television: On Golden Pond.

  Meanwhile, at the other end of the table, Duane and Marilyn have quietly sounded out the deceased’s name, but they’re not completely satisfied with the result. “I’ll write Taac, but it’s really Taak’d,” my hostess says softly, emphasizing the throat-clearing ending sound. Tlingit names are based on the moiety, or reciprocal group, to which they belong. The term moiety is taken from a Greek word meaning half, and there are two moieties: Ravens and Eagles. In the old days, Ravens could only marry Eagles. Now Tlingits don’t always observe that rule, and in fact often marry non-Natives. However, Ravens and Eagles still take care of each other. When a Raven dies, it is the Eagles who plan the funeral. Eagles sing songs to Ravens at potlatches. When a raven and an eagle are depicted together on silver jewelry or wood, the design is called “love birds” and is often circular, like the Eastern yin and yang symbol. They are different, but always complementary. The two halves make a whole.

  The denotations don’t stop with Ravens and Eagles. There are also what we call clans, although there isn’t a matching word in Tlingit. Clans are more political and specific to an area than the Raven and Eagle identifications, which cover all Tlingits everywhere. Clans are what determine design, story, song, and property ownership. Unlike moieties, clans do have designated leaders.

  Another grouping—are you still with me?—determines lineage. Houses are named for the place where the family initially lived, and link blood relatives. What makes it confusing is that, traditionally, newlyweds moved to the bride’s mother’s village and often lived in an uncle’s house there. (The mother determines the children’s moiety affiliation.) And sons were raised by their mother’s brothers, not their fathers. Much of this has never been written down, and over time some of the finer points have been lost or changed. Often, so-called experts disagree.

  Still more factors that make Tlingit families hard to track are adoption and the way names are used. Tlingits are generous with their culture and have adopted many non-Natives, giving them equal footing with birth relatives. They don’t usually adopt them as babies and raise them as their own; instead, they adopt adults they like and who agree to honor Tlingit customs. Also, when an elder dies, his or her name is given to another relative (adopted or blood). This ensures that the family will have everyone they have loved with them throughout all time.

  So you see, deciphering a Tlingit family tree, filled with the same names for many generations, gets confusing, even if you are Tlingit. I use the Tlingit names in obituaries because they tell who the person was and where they came from. But in the “survived by” category I stick with blood family lines. There isn’t enough space in our little newspaper to write more.

  Now Marilyn says that her friend Susie was a Raven. She thinks she was also in the sockeye, or Lukaax Adi, clan. “But don’t put that in the paper,” she tells me. “I’m just not sure.” She does know that Susie was from Taac Dein Caan, or the Snail House, and that her name was Naa Goolth Claa. Marilyn watches me carefully spelling everything correctly. I repeat the way the words sound until she nods her approval. She suspects the truth—that I am trying to make up for past wrongs by people who look like me, who are part of my broad Christian-European-American heritage, by honoring her culture and her wisdom and her husband’s open-heart poetry. After I get it all right, she smiles and says, “Everyone knew her as Susie.”

  All I can think of is the Beatles’ song “Rocky Raccoon,” where Magil was called Lil, “but everyone knew her as Nancy.” I have a feeling Marilyn may have shared that thought.

  Besides all the Tlingit stuff, I learn from Marilyn that Susie raised five children and two stepchildren. Her husband, a fisherman, was killed loading a log ship in 1965. Their youngest daughter drowned. One of Susie’s friends from the Catholic church where she worshipped had already told me that, despite personal tragedy, “Susie had a gift for making whoever she was with feel special.”

  Before I leave the Wilsons’, Duane hands me a pint jar of smoked eulachon. His father likes his dried, but Duane prefers to can them after smoking because the moisture comes back in the pressure cooker, plumping them up. They look like sardines. These first spring fish arrive sometime between March and May. The rendered oil is especially valued by Natives for both taste and health benefits.

  This year the eulachon run has been strong. Beaches are noisy with hungry shorebirds. Sea lions cruise the shoreline with their mouths wide open. In the first few hours of the run, before the birds arrive to eat them, spawned-out dead eulachon litter the tide lines. As soon as word gets out that the eulachon are here, families such as the Wilsons reopen their fish camps along the Chilkat River. There are blue tarps strung between cottonwood trees for shelter and a shack or trailer to sleep in. Often there’s an old couch or the bench seat from a pickup on the bank for elders to sit on. Some fresh eulachon are roasted over open fires, some are smoked, but most are buried in lined pits and left to rot for about three weeks. They smell so strong that when I’m riding my bike nearby I have to hold my breath. After the fish decompose, they are boiled outside in big pots until the oil can be skimmed off the top. When it cools, it’s solid and white, like bacon grease.

  Paul is eating some now, licking it off the spoon. He keeps it in a jar in the freezer and has it once or twice a day. “It’s good for the heart,” he says, offering me a spoonful. I try not to make a face. Paul laughs. He knows that eulachon, and especially the fat, is an acquired taste. I have a Native friend who won’t touch the slimy little fish—not “boiled, roasted, or smoked,” he says. He does help harvest them, though, because for him it’s an annual reminder of the past, and an affirmation of the Tlingit culture’s future.

  The perfectly sealed jar of fish Duane gave me took the better part of a week to make—from netting on incoming tides to smoking for three days, and finally to sterilizing jars, checking lids, cutting and packing the fish, and staying close to the stove and watching the pressure cookers seal them for one hundred minutes at ten pounds of pressure. It is a generous and unexpected gift.

  I COULDN’T CALL Susie Brouillette’s daughter Della and tell her I was coming over because she didn’t have a telephone. I’d seen the red Trans Am she drives, but I hadn’t been successful in flagging her down; she didn’t pay any attention to my frantic waving. I had thought I was finished with Susie Brouillette’s obituary when Marilyn gently insisted that I couldn’t put anything in the paper without the immediate family’s blessing. That would be Della. When I couldn’t make contact with Della,
I asked Marilyn where she lived. She told me, and said I could tell Della she had sent me. Marilyn also mentioned that Della was a private person and might not take kindly to a stranger. Then she added, “You’ll do fine.”

  Cold rain blew as I knocked at the trailer door. When Della appeared, she was in her pajamas. It was almost noon. Marilyn had told me she was between jobs. Even surprised and rumpled, she was extraordinarily beautiful. I tried not to stare. I said Marilyn Wilson had sent me. She looked at me sternly and shut the door before I could tell her who I was or why I was there.

  A long minute later, she reopened the door enough for me to finish my introduction and explain that the paper wanted to borrow a recent photograph for her mother’s obituary. I also asked, quickly, if I could run the content by her, to be sure it was all correct. Silently, she took in my eager fair face, Patagonia jacket, and pressed khakis. For a second I thought she might throw me off the porch. Instead, she shut the door again and left me standing in the rain with a wet cat rubbing my ankles. I knew that her mother had been gracious, and that she was her mother’s dutiful daughter, and that Marilyn had said I had to do this, so I waited, hopeful, under the wide eave of the firewood shed attached to the trailer.

  When she reemerged it was to show me a photograph. I leaned inside the doorway to look. Actually, there were two: one was recent, her mother’s long white hair instantly recognizable; the other showed a young black-haired Tlingit beauty, much like herself. She wouldn’t give the pictures to me until she heard what I’d written. She was prepared to dislike it. Sometimes you just have to do things, like eat a eulachon, that you think you can’t do. I read carefully.