Mom was putting on her parka, the kind without a zipper. She pulled it over her head and her arms slid into her sleeves. Her hands sort of popped out at the end as she pulled it down. The color of her kuspak was purple, the ruff on her parka was wolverine. Mom always had wolverine ruff. She smiled at me as she pushed back her hood.

"Pa-yug-ci-yar-tur-naur-tu-kuk" ("Let us both go and give food"), she said as she helped me put on my coat. She already had something inside a stainless steel bowl. Right away, I knew what the food was. The pungent odor of poke fish seemed to drift around me and kind of lingered in my nose. Without looking in the bowl, I pictured the poke fish. Dried up pieces of fish in rendered seal oil. The fish was sliced into pieces and each piece had two or three slabs, reminding me of gnarled up little stairs. They were brown and kind of hard. I know because mom always chewed them up for me. (A-qi-li-teq - to chew food for one.)

Mom and I seemed to be the only ones in the house. I did not know where my dad was, and I did not know who we were bringing the food to. With the bowl of poke fish resting in the crook of her left arm, mom clasped my hand and we proceeded on down town.

Downtown for our village was down the hill from the highest elevation, where the teachers' complex stood. As you go down the hill, you passed a few wooden houses and the Tomaganuks' store to the right. To your left was the community hall which also served as the Head Start Center. The hall was in a low marshy area. Once some kids were playing, sort of jumping around on a certain area. Pretty soon that particular area started to move in a wavy motion.

We passed the town's jail, which always scared me. It was made of logs. If you looked closer, it was speckled with tiny black dots, aged from years of exposure. Its roof was colored red. It had a window without any glass, just big round bars of cold looking steel running up and down. It was always dark inside and the door always had a padlock. To me, the jail always looked like a tall, dark hungry monster. The kind that could grab you with its steel bars and eat you alive and hold you against your will, making you scream at anybody that was passing by. Maybe, it was because someone drunk had been in there before, grasping onto the steel cold metal bars as if he wanted to tear them apart, screaming with his face wedged as far as the bars would let him. Sometimes I could hear them from our house. As we neared the jail, I was hesitant to walk by it. Mom, sort of pulled me along, hurrying to get to where we were suppose to bring the food. If it wasn't for mom being there, I probably would have walked as far away from it as possible, touching the walls of the house next door, as if it would keep me safe. I was scared.

The sun was setting behind us as we made our way downtown, passing the Native store and the old Catholic church with their rippled walls of aluminum colored steel. The kind that always made me want to reach my hand out and walk fast as my fingers thumped along the walls of the store. Every now and then mom said "kii-kii" ("hurry up!") and with seeming urgency she walked through that part of town towing me along to where I never was before. We followed the trail, passing the Smiths' pool hall and a mean-looking dog in heavy chains barking ferociously at us as we walked on by, amidst wooden houses all cluttered about closly.

We finally reached our destination. It was the Qaygiq (men's community house), a big sod house. It looked like a big igloo, except it was made of logs, and grass was growing on the top of it. The Qaygiq was sitting on top of the hill overlooking the silty slough that sort of snaked its way on by. As mom and I reached the entrance, someone was coming out. He spoke a while to my mom and warned us about the hole inside.

As we made our way in, mom told me to walk near the wall. I walked sideways step by step leaning against the wall. All the while thinking about bony skeletons that might be lurking in the darkest of places. It was pitch black. It smelled like aged, old burnt smoke. The kind that clung to everything in a sort of sooty way.

All of a sudden there was light. Except it was a dimly illuminated light coming from the farthest wall from the Coleman lamp. The light stretched into the darkness, as if it were trying to get away, dimming as it reached into the darkness of the night. As we entered the qaygiq, we stood near the door until someone told mom to come in. Mom looked at me and said, "Wani ui-tau-rra." ("Stay right here.")

I saw men, some were old - one was wearing a parka with a brown kuspak - sitting and talking amongst themselves, perhaps telling stories while they worked on something. Mom walked towards them and placed her bowl of poke fish on the floor near them. There was another bowl on the floor, perhaps filled with food from some of the town's other women. The qaygiq was so very big and seemed to have an aura of ancient life of long ago. The walls were made of logs, long and wide. It looked like it was coated with a thin layer of soot. Except you couldn't rub it off. The center of the qaygiq had a big hole, except it was square. I think it had some old burned out wood with gray and black ashes.

High above in the center was a window, or something that looked like a window. After a while someone took down a drum and slowly tapped on it with a long thin stick. After a while, with the slow droning sound of the drumbeat, a man started singing in a sort of monotonous tone. Someone seated on the floor started to dance, moving his arms this way and that way, following the beat of the drum. I don't remember, but I thought I saw many people standing around me, watching the dancers and the drummer. Maybe. Perhaps it was in a different time.