The Animal Wife

Title Page

Table of Contents

Map

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Characters

Kinship Chart

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

Sources and Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright © 1990 by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

 

All rights reserved

 

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

 

www.hmhbooks.com

 

e
ISBN
978-0-544-12960-3
v1.1112

TO STEVE
LORNA
ROBERT AND STEPHANIE
JOSS AND RAMSAY
INGRID, DAVID, ZOË, MARGARET, AND ARIEL

He heard the tock-tock sound of a caribou walking, and he saw, through the trees, a woman dressed in fur. Her hair was brown and her eyes were almost yellow. When she saw him, she startled. So he stood up very slowly and greeted her gently. Already he had fallen in love with her.

 

—"The Caribou Woman," northern U.S.A.

 

She then remained with him, and when they had lived together a number of days, the man detected a musty odor about the lodge and asked what it might be. She replied that the odor was hers and that if he was going to find fault with her because of it, she would leave. Throwing off her clothing, she resumed her fox-skin, slipped quietly away, and has never served any man since.

 

—"The Fox Wife," Ungava District, Labrador

 

It was the children who first saw him coming. They ran and told their mother, who was incredulous, for they had flown, she thought, much too far for him ever to reach them. She refused to come out to see him, and when he walked into her tent, she feigned death. He took her out, buried her, covered the grave with stones, went back into the tent, and pulled down his hood in mourning. However, his wife, alive, broke out of the grave, strode into the tent, and began pacing about, when he took up his spear and killed her. A great many geese came down around him, and he killed them. But his two boys, meanwhile, had fled.

 

—"The Wild Goose Wife," Smith Sound, Greenland

 

Yin grieved when he heard the sad news and asked what had brought about her death. "She was killed by some dogs," Cheng answered. "But how could dogs, however fierce they may be, kill a human being?" Yin asked. "But she was not human," came the answer. "Then what was she?" Yin asked in astonishment. Then Cheng told him the story from beginning to end, much to the amazement of his friend. Later when they indulged in reminiscences of Jenshih the only thing they could recall about her that marked her from other women was that she never made her own clothes.

 

—"Jenshih, or the Fox Lady," China,
A.D.
750

Group from Woman Lake summering at the Fire River:

 

B
ALA
, headman of the group at the Fire River
A
AL
, Bala's sister
E
IDER
, Pinesinger's mother
P
INESINGER
, kinswoman and co-wife of Yoi

 

Mammoth hunters from Narrow Lake summering at the Hair River:

 

The owners of the hunting lands:

S
WIFT
, the headman
M
ARAL
, Swift's half-brother
K
IDA
, Swift's younger brother
A
NDRIKI
, Maral's younger brother
K
ORI
, Swift's son
A
KO
, Maral's son by Lilan

 

Their in-laws:

M
ARTEN
, Waxwing's husband
W
HITE
F
OX
, Kida's brother-in-law

 

The women:

R
IN
, a widow, Swift's half-sister
W
AXWINC
, Rin's daughter
A
NKHI
, Rin's niece
E
THIS
, Ankhi's sister
Y
OI
, Swift's elder wife
T
RUHT
, Maral's elder wife
L
ILAN
, Maral's younger wife
J
UNCO
, Kida's wife
H
IND
, Andriki's wife
P
IRIT
, Andriki's young daughter
F
ROGGA
, Maral's infant daughter by Lilan

 

Group from the Char River summering with the mammoth hunters:

 

G
RAYLAG
, the headman
T
IMU
, Gray lag's son
T
EAL
, Graylag's wife, Yoi's aunt, daughter of Sali Shaman
M
ERI
, Yoi's niece, White Fox's wife
R
AVEN
, Graylag's nephew, White Fox's father
B
ISTI
, Raven's wife
T
HE
S
TICK
, Grayiag's stepson

 

Some others named herein:

 

T
HE
L
ILY
, a large male tiger
M
USKRAT
, a captive woman
S
ALI
S
HAMAN
, a famous female shaman from the Fire River, dead many years
K
AKIM
, an orphan from the Fire River, dead a few years

M
Y FATHER
had four wives, but still he looked at women. He said they looked best in the fall, after eating well all summer. By fall their ribs no longer showed, their skins were smooth, their hair was glossy, and their arms and legs were round. And in the fall, before the river froze, they bathed in groups in the shallow water by day, when people could see them. "Do as I did," Father once told me. "Marry as many as you can."

At the time, his advice surprised me. I thought of all the mammoth ivory and other presents he had given to his four groups of in-laws, and of the trouble the four women had caused him.

Father was a shaman and a headman. He owned the hunting on both sides of the Hair River from the southeast where it leaves the Black River all the way northwest to the range of hills called the Breasts of Ohun, where on Narrow Lake he had his winter lodge. Father was a strong and famous hunter who killed more meat than his people could use. He was a feeder of foxes!

So he was important, which made his wives important. With the meat and gifts he gave their kin, they should have been satisfied. But they were never satisfied. His first wife died, and my mother, his second wife, divorced him. His third wife was quarrelsome, and his fourth wife deceived and disappointed him. He had no peace because of women, so when I heard his advice about marrying many of them I thought he was teasing.

Not so. He meant it. Father didn't seem to mind the troubles. He liked women, and he knew I would too.

When I was very young, I lived as all children do, always with women. Whatever my mother did, I also did. I almost thought I was a woman. I knew my body was different, but that didn't worry me.

One of the earliest things I remember is a summer evening by the Fire River, where the women were bathing. The sun, round and red, was lowering itself into the grass on the horizon, and the frogs in the river had begun their pulsing song. They reminded my mother to sing too, and she got me to join her. The song was low and rhythmic, like the frogs'. We sang:

 

Tell my mother he is coming,
My husband, the heron, is coming.
Tell my sister he is coming,
My husband, the heron, is coming.
Tell my children he is coming,
My husband, the heron, is coming.

 

On and on, for all the kinfolk. The name of the song is "The Frog Woman's Song." The other women joined and we all sang, my mother's voice high above the rest. Sitting on the bank in a frog's position, I sang gladly, with all my heart, not noticing that the song was a warning.

Ah, my mother. Her name was Aal, and in those days she was a big, strong woman. I remember sitting between her knees at night beside the women's fire, leaning against her body, listening to her voice through her chest. In the company of other women she spoke very freely about my father and even about my uncle, her brother. Often what she said made the other women laugh at the men. As I grew older, too old to nurse or to lean against her, I realized that the songs she sang and the things she said about my father and uncle showed bitter feelings, and I saw that she held much against these men.

By the time I could reach my right hand over my head and grasp my left ear, something about women worried me. I could feel their hidden anger and their secrecy. The men I knew were open like daylight, proud and public. What they thought they said frankly; what belonged to their bodies was there in front, complete; and the things they owned could all be seen—the meat, the hunting lands, the camps and lodges, and the firesides at the camps and in the lodges.

But women were closed, like darkness, quiet and private like shame or night. Their thoughts were unspoken and their bodies held mysteries—they could bleed in secret without harm to themselves, and no one knew whose children they carried. On their rumps they wore rows of raised scars, the marks of Ohun, reminding the world that what they owned was of their bodies or could not be seen—the unborn children, the lineages, and the firesides at the Camps of the Dead, the Camps of the Spirits, where our spirits join our lineages, where the elders of our lineages give our spirits to birds, who return us to our kinswomen, who give birth to us again. All this belongs to women.

When I grew up, I wanted them. That is Ohun's plan. I forgot my mother's anger and her secret songs, and found I liked and trusted women. Also, some of them liked me. One, a girl my own age named Pinesinger, was willing to meet me in a willow thicket by the river when my uncle's people came together with her father's people on our summergrounds. After that, the kind of things that happened to Father began happening to me. So my story is the story of women, of my father's and of mine—they who made a trail I couldn't help but follow, like deer in fresh snow.