SPECIAL FEATURE: Memoir as Drama
Ungipamsuuka: My Story by Susie Silook
CHARACTERS
Susie: The narrator, a 50-year-old Native American (Yupik) sculptor from Alaska, offering her memoir. She is 5’5”, medium build, with short dark hair.
Private Silook: A young Native woman of 17, with medium-length dark hair. She is fit and trim. She has just come from a remote Alaskan Yupik village, straight into the military. Her influence was Captain Pierce of the show M.A.S.H. She is naive and quiet, but physically an able soldier.
#04: A girl in her early- and mid-teens, with long dark hair. She is Susie as a boarding school foster child in Nome and Anchorage, and is awkward and shy but tries to act tough. She discovers smoking “grass” and drinking with cousins and friends from the village. She carries emotional scars she doesn’t understand.
Lolly: Susie as a 12-year-old actor in Two Against the Arctic. It is 1972, and Lolly is a fairly happy kid having fun making a movie with all sorts of animals in it. She likes the attention, but is shy. Lolly is also Susie’s nickname in the village.
Older Susie: Susie at about 40, brutally sexually assaulted in an alcoholic black-out. This sets off a long, self-destructive, end-stage alcoholic rage, full of violence.
Sergeant: Leader of an Army detail that marches around Private Silook, who sings the lead cadence. This actor also plays the prison guard.
Three Soldiers: Soldiers in the U.S. Army detail that march around Private Silook, singing in cadence. The three soldiers also play the part of Private Silook’s fellow prisoners and guard at the dining room table.
Foster Dad: A white man of about 25, married to Foster Mom in #04’s Nome boarding school/foster home. He is bearded, with glasses, and is a sensitive and kind man.
Stan: A young white man, early 20s, who is friends with Foster Mom and Dad. He develops a fairly innocent crush on the young #04. He likes beer and “grass.”
Foster Mom: A young and pretty Native woman who is #04’s nice foster mom. She is Inupiaq and white.
Mean Drunk: He is 24, Native, and tall. He is Susie’s cousin, back from the Indian Relocation Program after years in California.
Young Norma: Susie’s mother as an abused foster child/slave. She is of sturdy build, and is of fair complexion with dark hair. She is 14ish, in the video and water hauling scenes, and in her early 20s in the scene with the Boy Child and Crazed Relative.
Older Norma: Susie’s mother, in her 40s and 50s. She wears her hair short and permed, and is a sturdy woman of Inupiaq and Irish descent.
Crazed Relative: Middle-aged person.
Boy Child: The mostly white brother of Susie, about 4 years old, who is terrorized by step aunts, especially Crazed Relative.
Robert Clouse: A Hollywood director of action and karate movies, who directs Two Against the Arctic. He is demanding but fair. He is frustrated over arctic filming conditions, and sees the movie as a step down from his glory days, directing Bruce Lee.
Joseph: A small Native boy of about 7, full of energy and enthusiasm. Defers to Lolly, his big sister in the movie.
Yulluk: (Translates as Bad Man.) A sexual predator who laughs at his victims. He is Native, short and stocky, late 30s.
Good Friend: A bubbly and fun 14-year-old Native girl from the village. She is loud and full of laughter, and is Susie’s best friend in the village.
Perp: A sexual predator who corners young village girls and fondles them and rubs his body over theirs. He is a Native man of about 24, who smells of old sweat.
Mean Girl: A pretty 15-year-old Native bully. She is tough and reckless.
Young Man: Mean Girl’s boyfriend, a short, half-Native and white teen. He is handsome.
Mean Woman: Mean Girl’s mother, aggressive and confrontational. She also has a soft side, as she used to give Young Norma clothes when they were young.
Middle-Aged Man: Mean Girl’s father, 40ish, who is a kind and gentle Native man.
Uncle John: A middle-aged Native man, short and trim, with a kind face and a great singing voice. He is also an excellent storyteller, and enthusiastic about Native ways. He is Susie’s great uncle, or apa (grandfather), according to custom.
Saavla: Susie’s father, a short Yupik man with a barrel chest and an infectious laugh. A boat captain, he is involved in Native and village politics, and is fiercely proud to be Yupik. He is 50ish.
Cop: A tall, strong cop who initially assesses Susie’s assault, making clear his disgust at her and her claim, even after an exam reveals injuries caused by a foreign object.
SETTING
At stage right is a low pedestal with a large contemporary Yupik mask. Beside the mask is a rose in a bottle of Corona, and a large ulu, a woman’s knife. There is a chair and a music stand, with a script on it. There is also a rifle stand, with a large basket of stones beside it. Suspended on stage rear is a large flat screen.
(At Rise: Music is contemporary Inuit throat singing. Susie enters, holding an M16 assault rifle. She sits in the chair, next to the basket of stones, and places the rifle on the rack. Music subsides.)
Susie: I’ve been thinking of my life, and how it must become a mask. You see, Yupik masks do not conceal, but rather, reveal spiritual truth. Even the songs of my life are embedded in my core, and every mask has its songs. Take this song: When I was 17 I joined the United States Army. I remember the masses of strong men marching by me in formation, singing.
(Susie picks up the M16 assault rifle, stands at attention and executes a left face maneuver; then marches to stage center and executes an about-face towards the audience.)
(Lights up on a U.S. Army detail of the Three Soldiers and the Sergeant as they enter stage right, marching. The Sergeant carries a walrus usuk, or penis bone, swinging it.)
(Video of an usuk with the caption: “Usuk, the penis bone of the walrus.” Fade in and then out, briefly.)
Sergeant: (Sings) I don’t know but I’ve been told. (Soldiers repeat.)
Eskimo pussies are mighty cold. (Soldiers repeat.)
Three Soldiers: I don’t know but I’ve been told. Eskimo pussies are mighty cold.
Sergeant: Sound off!
Three Soldiers: One, two!
Sergeant: Sound off!
Three Soldiers: Three, four.
Sergeant: Bring it on down now.
Three Soldiers: One two three four, one two, three four!
(The Three Soldiers and the Sergeant march around Susie, who remains at attention, as they sing the song again before marching off stage right. Susie marches back to her position. She places the rifle back on the stand and sits.)
Susie: (Laughs) That’s what everyone would do, laugh. I hear marching songs every time I walk, and that one, inevitably. My village ways collided with any officer I deemed a jerk. This attitude soon found me in a maximum security prison in Peyongtek, Korea.
(Lights up on a prison cafeteria. The Three Soldiers, the Sergeant, and Private Silook enter, stage left, single file, carrying food trays, and are seated. Sounds of whistles, banging on bars, and cat calls are heard. Prison bars line the walls. The Three Soldiers and Private Silook are seated.)
Sergeant: Do not look at each other. Do not talk to each other. Do not touch each other! Just eat and get out! (He shouts towards stages right and left. Sounds fade. He paces around the table impatiently.)
At ease! At ease!
Sergeant: You’re not eating fast enough, soldier! (He smacks the table in front of Private Silook.)
Private Silook: Sorry, Sergeant!
Sergeant: Who told you to talk?
Private Silook: Sorry!
Sergeant: Get up and assume the position!
(Susie steps away from the table, spreads her legs, and places her hands behind her head. He frisks her, and the sounds return.)
Sergeant: At ease! (Sounds subside.) Dismissed, Private Silook!
Private Silook: Yes, Sergeant. (She exits stage left. Sounds of metal doors locking are heard.)
(Lights up to Susie.)
Susie: Ironically, it was in the military that I was the safest from men in my life. Back in the village, my mother looked white but spoke with a thick Native accent. My father was all about civil rights, and Native pride. I’d inherited their legacy of not trusting the white man, the laluramka, and mother used him as the bogeyman to keep us in line. I also read Malcolm X before I joined the military, and in his words I heard echoes of my father, and his love of tribal politics. So, in the military I hung with the African Americans. I even affected an accent, which is a little hilarious to me now. A friend remarked that Eskimos, as we were called back then, were just like blacks. I wonder how many people I gave that misperception to. (Laughs)
(Susie picks up a wooden statue: it is a feathered arm with a clenched yellow and black striped fist. She attaches it to the mask.)
Susie: I was mistaken for everything but Native American, even by me at times. At 17, all I knew about Indians was from old anthropology books and Louis L’Amour. Everywhere I was stationed, word spread that I was an Eskimo, and that’s what they called me: Hey, Eskimo! Incredibly, this filled me with ethnic pride. I’ve found that to be an Inuit anywhere else in the world than home is to be a novelty. They wanted a nose rubbing, and thought eating a seal was gross and cruel. But the thing that fascinated people the most was the wife swapping. In reality it was a political and social alliance, and extended to sharing of food and responsibility, friendship. But in the imagination of the troops we were indulging in some funky hippy swinging. (Laughs)
Mostly I was bored, unless we were performing maneuvers, shooting our rifles, throwing grenades, rappelling, and all that fun stuff. The long-lasting impact was in seeing women as the equals of men, an illusion that I would entertain for many years. (Pause) The one absolute positive from that is that I came home with a beautiful son.
(On the video screen is a piece of artwork made by Susie’s son, Damian. It is a painting of a Rainbow Head.)
The military seemed like an extension of the boarding schools and foster homes during my high school years, where I was just a number. They called me # 04, the first two numbers on my Certificate of Indian Blood.
(Lights up on a small kitchen table. Susie’s foster family is sitting around drinking beer.)
Foster Dad: Yeah, Stan, #04 here is from Gambell, but she used to live here. She’s a star.
Stan: Cool! I’ve never been to Gambell.
#04: (Shyly) Oh.
Foster Mom: How many beers did you have, #04?
#04: Two.
Foster Mom: Okay. That’s enough though, okay?
#04: Okay.
Foster Dad: She’s doing real good in school, straight A’s most of the time.
Stan: Oh, wow, that’s cool, #04.
#04: Thanks.
Stan: You sure are a quiet girl.
Foster Mom: Oh, we get no trouble outta her. She cleans up all the time and spends all her time reading, most of the time. (Pause) Well, I’d better go to bed. Stan, so nice to see you again. Make sure you come over again real soon you hear? (Rises)
Foster Dad: I’ll be there in a minute, love.
(Foster Mom exits stage right.)
Foster Dad: You’d better go to bed too, #04. You’ve got school tomorrow.
#04: Okay. (Susie begins to exit stage left, but is stopped by Stan, who hands her a marijuana joint.)
Stan: Here, you can have this. It’s the same stuff we smoked earlier.
#04: Gee . . .
(Stan leans over and kisses #04 gently on the cheek. #04 quickly inhales.)
Stan: Oh, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to startle you. Uh, how old are you, anyway?
#04: 15
Stan: (Jumps backwards.) Whoa – hey! I swear I thought you were at least 17. You act really mature.
#04: Oh . . .
Stan: Well, ah, you’d better go to bed then. Off with you!
#04: Okay, good night. (Exits)
Stan: Good night.
Foster Father: (Laughs)
Stan: Why didn’t you tell me she was only 15?
Foster Father: I thought you knew! I was wondering what the hell you were doing, making goo goo eyes at her. You and I were gonna have to talk.
Stan: Damn! Okay, I’m going home. No more jail bait for me tonight. (They laugh as they exit.)
(Lights up on Susie, who picks up a rose and smells it.)
Susie: Ah, I can still smell his sweet breath. That was one of the good guys, and a better foster home. Trust me. Those guys were young and exercised some poor judgment, but they were loving people. (Pause) I knew Nome as a child, from 6 to 13 years of age, when our family lived there, but the school was huge to my born again village eyes. I felt I had to hang with only village kids with whom I identified, to ensure my fragile belonging. I actually liked both the town and the village kids, but I thought you had to choose. The two groups did not jibe, and I didn’t want to be accused of trying to be white. (Pause) My best friend killed herself about this time during summer break. Going back to Nome without her around was impossible, because she’d been the best friend ever, in my life, and so, I tried Anchorage, living with unfamiliar relatives who’d returned after a long stint at the government’s Indian Relocation Program, in California. (Pause) One night a male cousin got drunk.
(Lights up on center stage. Mean Drunk is seated and blocking the door with his legs. #04 is seated at the table. On the video screen appear the words: iyuqlliilleghqwaq = dirty Inupiaq.)
Mean Drunk: You think you’re so good, think you’re a star? You’re just fuckin’ stupid. Your mom is a whore, and all you kids are iyuqlliilleghqwaq/white bastards. We’re not related – you’re not my cousin, shiiit.
#04: (Gets up to leave.) I need to go.
Mean Drunk: You’re fuckin’ not going anywhere. Sit down! (#04 sits.) All you fuckin’ Roger’s kids . . . You’re nothing but you think you’re so good. You’re not leaving to whore around like your mom.
#04: I’m not gonna do that.
Mean Drunk: Shut up! (He takes a drink and sprawls back, head spinning, passes out. #04 gets up quietly and heads towards the door.)
Mean Drunk: (Jerks awake.) What are you doing, goddamn it! (#04 sits.) Shit. You better not try that again, bitch. (He glares at #04 before slowly slumping back again. Long pause. #04 gets up cautiously and slowly inches her way around him, exiting.)
(Lights up on Susie.)
Susie: That did Anchorage for me. I went back to Nome, but I drank along with my cousins, and in a black-out assaulted my nice foster mom and young cousin, and she was pregnant. I then took some pills that some strange roommate was handing me because I told her I wanted to die. Back home, I walked through the door and my mom kicked a hole through it, missing me. I remember her complete silence. She was so fuckin’ angry with me. (Pause) I didn’t know how bad it could get: how, if you ran away from one foster home to people you trusted, you might wake up with a grown man on top of you, rubbing himself on you. (Pause) My mom thought I was just a mixed up kid, and I guess she saw it as the cake walk it was in comparison to the child slavery she’d known in her first foster home. She’d been sent to the island a six-year-old orphan, her siblings and her, taken from her mother due to alcoholic neglect. Mom always says grandmother died from a broken heart shortly thereafter. I suspect it was tuberculosis.
(Lights fade from Susie onto central stage. Sounds of winter winds are heard. Young Norma enters stage right. There is snow on the ground. The sturdy girl enters hauling water in large, heavy jugs, suspended between a pole she carries behind her back and over her shoulders. She is barefoot in the winter wind. She slowly makes her way, shaking her feet off, across the stage, and exits stage left. Sounds and lights fade.)
Susie: A cousin told me that story, from when he first saw her. The territorial government sent a group of Native kids from other areas into foster homes there, as new blood, to our island.
(On the video screen Young Norma appears: naked, crouched in a dark corner of her first foster home. Music: Inuit throat singing.)
Susie: I asked if she’d ever been sexually assaulted. She said no, because they knew she’d fight. But they’d tear off her new dresses from her friend, and she’d be naked for days. (Video and music fades out.) She could be angry, as well as loving; moody. But I always understood why, because Dad was always explaining that she’d been abused, that her umyuugwaq, her conscious mind had been badly damaged. (Pause) My father was mom’s second husband, and she had three children she brought to the marriage. The first was an arranged marriage into a very gentle family, but you can’t arrange falling in love. She fell in love with a soldier but wouldn’t leave with him; told me she was scared she’d have to cook like the pictures she saw in the magazines. But she bore his child, my beautiful brother. (Pause) And then, according to mother, my father pursued her relentlessly, smitten. But when they married, some of his relatives lost their minds in rage.
(Lights fade from Susie. At center stage, a pregnant, clothed, and slightly older Norma and the Boy Child are seated eating a meal. Music: Inuit throat singing.)
(Crazed Relative rushes onto the stage holding a pair of scissors.)
Norma: (Jumps up and shields the Boy Child.) Kay! What’s –
Crazed Relative: Where’s that filthy white boy, you whoree!
(Crazed Relative tries to reach the Boy Child with the scissors, and a huge struggle ensues. Norma finally manages to force the Crazed Relative off. She comforts the crying child. Crazed Relative exits. Norma comforts the Boy Child, who is crying. Sounds and lights slowly fade.)
(Lights up on Susie.)
Susie: (Picks up an ulu and places it on the mask.) There are those who will say such things never happened, that I’m a liar. When my mother’s hair fell out from chemotherapy, two distinct hammer marks became visible on her scalp. Since I could not ignore the elephant in the room, I wrote her this piece and read it to her, before she died.
(Susie stands to read from a sheet of paper. On the video screen a carved ivory statue called The Old Battle Ax with the Heavy Heart is displayed. The piece is an old ivory ax, reworked into the sculpture of an elderly woman holding her huge turquoise heart. In her back is an ulu, a woman’s knife.)
Susie: Tainted love. I reach back through time and hold her, that small child thrust into the arms of the enemy – the girl in a man’s world; the blood running through her veins new and threatening to the cracked souls that received her. I smooth snow over her hand when they burned it on the stove when she was small and cold. I swaddle her in quilts as she sleeps in the arctic entryway as punishment, fashion a cast of soft cashmere on the toes broken with the shovel when she didn’t use it right. I adorn her frostbitten feet in warm bearded seal mukluks, the feet that hauled water without cover, without love. I reach back, clean the blood from her hair, wipe the tears from her horror, and feed her first rather than leftovers, which meant she would not eat, only drink the oil of the seal. I send her seals and ducks and potatoes.
(On the video screen another ivory sculpture appears: Yupik Angel.)
I send an angel with swift wings to transport her back to her wounded mother, her foreign father; the people who failed her but loved her. I send her back to the sky and the end of pain. (Pause)
Susie: (Quietly) Wow.
(On the screen is Lolly singing a Yupik lullaby to Joseph. She sings softly to the tune of Brahm’s Lullaby.)
Qavaghnaqii, melelghiq,
alingyugpenang avangituq.
Kiyaghneghem nayuqiinkung,
afllengeknnaghinkung.
Ingaghten, quneghten,
meghnalingwaghnaqi,
ingaghten, quneghten,
meghnalingwaghnaqi.
(Video ends.)
Susie: I love that song . . . even in my poor singing voice! The lyrics were created by my father Saavla for the 1973 Walt Disney movie Two Against the Arctic. I starred in that movie when I was 12, and my character, Lolly, sang that song.
(Movie clip of 12-year-old Susie and Marty, the young actor who plays her brother Joseph.)
Susie: (Sings) Try to sleep, little boy, don’t be frightened, there is nothing.
God is watching over us, he will take care of us.
Lie down, close your eyes, try to rest well.
Lie down, close your eyes, and try to rest well.
I know my father meant our god when he used the word Kiyaghneq. That’s just who he was. As a grown man, my movie brother died from a fall off the Government Hill Bridge in Anchorage. (Pause) No one knows how he fell. Rest in peace, Marty. (Lights fade.)
(Lights up on the movie set. The director, Robert Clouse, is giving direction to Lolly and Joseph.)
Robert Clouse: (Into megaphone.) Okay kids, now, you’re walking along, happily, until you run into a wolverine that smells the pouches of caribou you carry. Okay? Walk towards me, and then watch where my hand will be. That’s where we’ll put the wolverine during editing. Okay, people, let’s do it. And lights! (Lights brighten.) Camera! And . . . action!
(Lolly and Joseph begin slowly walking towards the director.)
Okay, now you see the wolverine, down here! (Robert Clouse extends his arm out and down. Lolly and Joseph freeze and try to look scared, but it’s clear they’re not.)
Robert Clouse: Cut! What the hell was that? You have to act like I’m a big, bad wolverine! You look like you saw a puddy cat. Let’s try this again. (The children giggle as they return to stage rear. Then once again Lolly and Joseph begin their walk.)
And, look down here. Grrrr . . . Look scared! (Lolly and Joseph once again feign fear unsuccessfully.) No, cut! That’s not acting, damn it. Now, this time, I want you to work real hard imagining that this thing has its teeth bared like a dog as he looks at you. He wants to eat you, you understand? Wolverines are strong and fierce. You should be scared. (Lolly and Joseph once again assume their starting positions, looking hesitant.)
Robert Clouse: All right, now, lights! Camera! And action! (Lolly and Joseph walk forward looking a little worried.) No, goddamn it! You’re not supposed to look worried. You’re just walking right now like there’s no monster. Get it right, Jesus. (Lolly and Joseph once again walk to the back the stage.)
Robert Clouse: Camera! Annnnd, action! (Lolly and Joseph walk.) Now, the big wolverine is right here, right here, trying to eat you! (Growls)
(Lolly and Joseph stop.)
Robert Clouse: (Throws megaphone.) Jesus Christ! Even that schmuck Bruce Lee could take better direction! Oh forget it. We’ll pick this up tomorrow. (Paces about the stage, then musses the children’s hair.) I’m sorry. Look, we’ll try it again tomorrow. (All three exit.)
(Lights up to Susie.)
Susie: Robert Clouse was best known for action/adventure, and the martial arts genre. He directed Bruce Lee’s film Enter the Dragon. So, to be stuck in Nome, Alaska making a heartwarming little Inuit movie for Walt Disney was a step down, in his opinion. In the script, fate forces the children to walk home alone from fish camp – a long arctic trek. So, I played a girl skilled in survival, but with a soft heart. I mean, in one scene we’re hungry but can’t kill a caribou calf that a wolf had orphaned, about the time he came to steal all my drying fish. I mean, our Hollywood luck sucked! Inuit would have had that calf butchered and hanging in a New York minute. Another time, we flew to location, a village fish camp, but the weather wasn’t cooperating. I was asleep in the camp owner’s house. I don’t know where the cast and crew were.
(Lights up stage rear. On location for the movie Lolly is asleep on the bed. Yulluk, a short, stocky, balding Native man enters holding a large walrus usuk and stands over Lolly. He then lifts her covers off, and stares . He runs the usuk over her slowly. He parts her legs with it, slowly. Lolly wakes up and kicks the usuk out of his hand.)
Lolly: What the hell are you doing?
(Yulluk laughs and exits. Lolly sits on the bed, crying. The usuk remains where it fell. Lights fade.)
(Lights up to Susie.)
Susie: He later bragged to the other village men that he had lusted after me, had touched me. (Pause) All they did was look at him in disgust and shake their heads. I told a member of the movie crew, but all he did was gasp in even more disgust. I quit telling. (Pause) In the process of filming, I’d become alienated from my friends, because all the attention made me shy. To complicate things, we moved back to the island not long after filming wrapped. Back at the village everyone knew who I was but I hardly remembered any of them, except for a close relative or two. The movie was all they wanted to talk about. (Pause) I began covering my fear by acting tough, and started drinking, and smoking pot and cigarettes. Those things gave me relief. In Nome I’d been the Girl Scout, the candy striper, the cheerleader. But the village was a different world. (Pause) Luckily, I learned to sing and dance in Yupik, and it was a favorite pastime.
(Lights fade to center stage. Lolly and Good Friend are singing Saavla’s carving song, dancing.)
Whanga tawaa, ulimayamaa
a ya hey ya nga hey ya nga ha ang I ya
Atuutem ukuum kayusighlinga
a ya hey ya ang a
Tukeghrallinga
hey ya ngi
Kilgulligu
kallagneghmikun
a ngi hey ngi ya.
(The girls laugh when finished.)
(Perp, a man in his mid-twenties, enters, picks up the usuk, and joins the girls.
Perp: Hi Lolly . . . movie staara.
Lolly: Hi.
Perp: What you guys doing?
Good Friend: Atuqing (Laughs loudly.)
Perp: (Grabs Lolly by her arm and leads her to the back of the stage, pinning her up against the wall, and rubbing the usuk on her body sensually. Lolly tries to get away.)
Lolly: Don’t!
Perp: Hay? Oh, you feel so good. You like it, don’t you?
Lolly: No, don’t!
(Perp lets her go and laughs as he exits stage front, staring defiantly at the audience as he walks by them with the usuk.)
Lolly: (Walks back to her friend.) Eek!
Good Friend: God!
(Lights up to Susie.)
Susie: That was one of the village perps, and I wasn’t his only victim. That happened more than once, and I found that he’d gone easy on me. In a small place like that there is no escape from the perpetrators but you still are supposed to avoid conflict. But sometimes conflict comes to you.
(Lights come up on Mean Girl and the Young Man embracing passionately. Lolly enters and walks past the couple.)
Lolly: Wow! (She keeps walking.)
Mean Girl: (Breaks away and approaches Lolly, pushing her to the ground and kicking her.) I’m not a fuckin’ whore, bitch.
Lolly: I never called you a whore. (Gets up.)
Mean Girl: Yes, you did!
(A short fight ensues with Lolly clearly at a disadvantage.)
Mean Girl: Better not call me names again, bitch.
(Mean Girl and Young Man exit stage.)
(Lights fade to stage front, left. Across the stage, Older Norma is sitting on the floor, legs stretched forward, sewing on seal skin. Lolly approaches the woman, crying.)
Older Norma: What happen?
Lolly: That Mean Girl beat me up!
Older Norma: How come?
Lolly: I was saying “wow” to them kissing. She thought I said whore.
(Older Norma rises.)
(Lights fade to stage rear, where the Mean Girl stands, with the Middle-Aged Man.)
Older Norma: Saghllugsin? How dare you beat up my daughter? Don’t ever, ever, do that again! (She slaps the Mean Girl. The girl grabs a rifle from off stage and begins pursuit. The girl’s mother and father rush to her rescue.)
Middle-Aged Man: Kii! (Chases her and grabs the rifle. They exit the stage, with the Middle-Aged Man holding onto Mean Girl.)
(Older Norma returns to Lolly and resumes sewing.)
Mean Woman: (Barges in.) How dare you slap my daughter? You whore!
Norma: She beat Susie up.
Mean Woman: I don’t care. Your daughter thinks she’s better than us just because she was in a movie. She’s gonna be a whore like you and be pregnant real soon. (Exits stage left.)
(They all exit.)
(Lights up to Susie.)
Susie: That was the same woman who gave my mom dresses when she was young, that her first foster family tore off. My mother was called a whore or “whoree” all her life because she dared to try to love on her own terms. I know it hurt her though, as it hurt to hear her called that. She was really strict with my older sisters, making one marry at the slightest hint of impropriety. The place had turned into a Victorian values hell with the arrival of the new ways. (Pause) But, the best part of our move back to the village was that my favorite storyteller, my great uncle John revived Yupik dance in the church where I finished off high school after Molly Hootch sued the state for our right to be educated in the village, and won. He was my favorite elder . . .
(Lights fade out on Susie and onto center stage. Uncle John is seated holding the drum as Lolly and Good Friend stand in front of him.)
Uncle John: Kii, what shall we do today? Oh, yeah, I have to tell you fellas that people are getting mad at me for teaching you to Yupik dance in the church. I told them there’s nothing wrong with our atuq, nothing! Jesus would not be mad about it, so we’re going to keep doing it. Let’s practice that dance you guys made up last time – the Iceberg Bump. (He begins singing, as the kids perform the hip and butt bumping dance.)
Ay ya ya ya a ngi ya . . .
(On the video screen are close ups of their smiling faces.)
Uncle John: Yes! That one is going to just kill people dead! (Pause) Okay, I gotta go to a meeting. You guys did real good today. I’ll be back in a couple of days.
(Lights up to Susie as Uncle John puts the drum down, and he exits along with Lolly and Good Friend. Susie picks up the drum and places it on the basket of stones. On the screen appears a photograph of the drum with the caption: Yupik drum, made of bentwood and walrus stomach.)
Susie: This same man, my great uncle, wouldn’t name me because I was a girl. My father’s mom gave me the name, Paallengetaq, which translates into something like a speck of brushed-off dust. I suspect it was a name given a long lost relative to hide them from illness-causing spirits. As far as those names go, it’s innocuous. There are people who have to walk around with names like “Bad Shit” and “Bad Vomit” and “Stinky,” and these names get passed down through the centuries to the next poorly timed clan baby. (Pause) The name Susie comes from my mother, and was her mother’s name. Susie was an Inupiaq from Kotzebue who was running away from an Oregon boarding school when my grandfather, Douglas, originally from Ireland, stopped to help her. They wound up married with two children before an argument put Susie on a ship back to Alaska, running to hide, and my mother was born at sea on the SS Derbly, her nickname. (Pause) My grandfather, Siluk, from whom we get our surname, was a devout Christian, but his father before him, Ugwitelen, merely pretended to be Christian briefly to fool illness-causing spirits. My father went back to his Native beliefs, insisting they were better. This led to many heated discussions in our home.
(Lights up to center stage. Older Norma, Saavla, and #04 are seated at the table drinking tea. Saavla is stirring his tea loudly.)
Older Norma: Quit stirring so loud! (Saavla stirs harder and laughs before putting the spoon down.)
Older Norma: Kii, you!
Saavla: Norma, you got no sense of humor.
(#04 laughs.)
Older Norma: There’s a fry bread.
#04: Mm, okay. (Eats bread, dipping it in syrup.)
Saavla: Jacque Cousteau is coming to make a movie of walrus.
#04: Wow, really?
Saavla: Aa a. (Nodding)
Older Norma: How you know?
Saavla: I’m the mayor, Norma!
Older Norma: (Waves him off.)
Saavla: No respect.
Older Norma: You guys just have meetings and sit and ungipamsuk about hunting.
Saavla: (Laughs) I am gonna go check the other side. Man, last time I was there a whole group of ravens were flying about me, screaming in my face. (Illustrates with his hand.)
#04: How come?
Saavla: I don’t know . . . I think they were trying to warn me of tughneghaqs: spirits.
#04: Wow . . .
Older Norma: I don’t believe that stuff, myself!
Saavla: Yeah, I know, you guys are different from us.
Older Norma: What guys?
Saavla: Laluramka, ayuqlliq.
(On the screen: the words white and Inupiaq are shown briefly.)
Older Norma: Those just my blood; I raised Yupik.
Saavla: But you don’t believe like us.
Older Norma: I’m not gonna believe that kinda stuff. It’s from tughneghaq – the devil.
Saavla: Tughneghaq just means spirit, not the devil. The missionaries just use that word to trick you guys. There are good and bad tughneghaqs, not just one bad one.
Older Norma: I’m not gonna go to hell. You go ahead, go!
Saavla: I’m not going to hell. I don’t believe in it. (Stirs furiously and laughs.) You know, though, that Jesus was a shaman.
Older Norma: Ugh! Unaghlluk!
#04: Really?
Saavla: Yeah, our shamans could do that kinda stuff. They even went to the moon. When we heard the United States went to the moon we laughed because we already go there.
Older Norma: They just trick people. Lie, your Alingnalghii’s.
Saavla: You could believe your way. Me, I’m a Yupik man.
Older Norma: You gonna go to hell, not me.
Saavla: Kii, Norma, una. When I die my ancestors gonna come get me. I’ll start dreaming about all of them before I die, and I don’t have long. My heart don’t feel good all the time.
Older Norma: Taaghta say there’s nothing wrong, your heart. Always dying, you.
(Saavla slumps over on table. #04 laughs.)
Older Norma: Always making a fun. You’ll see on Salvation Day.
(Saavla and #04 laugh as lights up to Susie.)
Susie: Believe me, it could get a lot more volatile than that in a minute. But, they had in me a captive audience for I loved storytelling, whether on the radio, or in person. The story of Jesus on the cross, that always made me cry. (Pause) The story of Sullpak, well . . .
(Lights up to stage right as Uncle John approaches.)
Uncle John: Sullpak was famously dim-witted. She lived with her poor grandmother and little brother. One day, grandma decides she has to go out, and advises Sullpak not to go visiting house to house. She also told Sullpak, “When your brother is hungry cook for him.” Then she left the house. Well, the children played for a while before the boy got hungry. Sullpak filled a huge caldron with water and sets it to boil. She then chases her brother about before catching him and putting him in the cauldron, cooking him. When the grandma came home and inquired about the boy, Sullpak told her he got hungry so she cooked him, just like grandma instructed. Sullpak was very dim-witted.
(Lights up to Susie.)
Susie: So, it’s become a term of endearment whenever anyone blunders. Mom used it a lot on us. (Laughs).
(On the video screen is a picture of a young Norma with Susie and her brother Daniel.)
Susie: I would follow my mother to church as a very young child and sing at the top of my lungs. The women singing Native hymns were so beautiful to me – I loved it. I also remember going with my father to a prohibited Yupik dance, at his sister’s. I sat on the floor on blankets with my cousins and watched the adults joyously sing, dance and laugh their hearts out. I loved that more. I felt the same way in both the house of the Lord and the so called house of the devil, which it wasn’t. Music is sacred to me, because of my parents.
(On the video screen is a picture of Saavla, drumming. The caption reads: Susie’s father, Saavla.)
(On stage, Susie picks up a large harpoon head and places it on the mask.)
(Video fades out.)
(Music: Inuit throat singing. Lights fade up on a jail cell. The usuk is on the floor outside the jail cell. Older Susie is sitting in the bright corner of a jail cell, with her arms inside her white t-shirt to keep warm. The crotch on her pants is red with blood, the blood running down the right side of her leg. A cop enters. He walks on stage slowly, footsteps echoing. He walks back to look at Susie, who remains curled up. He picks up the usuk and slowly runs it across the metal bars. Then he walks to stage front and addresses the audience.)
Cop: (Sneering) She says she’s been raped, but she was drunk and can’t remember. I could hardly stand to look at her. (He tosses the usuk onto the stage before exiting stage front.)
(On the screen appears the sculpture What Does It Take for You to See My Heart, an ivory woman holding up a heart, which is a bag made of walrus stomach, with beads inside. On one leg are imbedded ulus, and in her back are protruding small walrus penis bones. Her eyes are hollow, and she has no mouth.)
(Lights up to Susie while Older Susie stays in place in the cell.)
Susie: I’d been assaulted with a foreign object, resulting in cuts and bruises all the way to my cervix. Stemming from that, I later relapsed. (Pause)
(Music: Inuit throat singing.)
(On the screen: Susie’s drum, All the Rage. The drum handle is a carved and painted driftwood woman, holding an ulu in one hand and in the other hand her three fingers are seal claws, with a red cross on the palm. She has fangs, and human hair.)
(Lights up to center stage where four cardboard cutouts of human figures stand. The figures are of Saavla, Older Norma, Damian as a tall teenager in the Rainbow Head painting, and the cop.)
(Older Susie leaves her cell, picks up the usuk, and starts slowly swinging it, building up into a wild frenzy as she works her way to the cutouts and hits all but Saavla and destroys them all except her father’s cutout.)
Older Susie: (Screams at Saavla’s cutout.) Die! (She throws the usuk to stage front and exits, crying, staggering.)
(Screen image changes to Self Portrait – a whale bone sculpture of a misshapen woman.)
(Lights up to Susie who picks up the usuk and places it on the mask.)
Susie: I became a despicable person. I did two years on the installment plan in prison, mainly for assault. I drank at least a fifth of vodka a day. I’ve gone to detox fourteen times, and rehab at least six times. I counted how many times I’d been groped and grinded in my childhood: eleven times, by eight different men. One of them when I was about four. That man is now doing life for the murder and necrophilia of a young college co-ed in Anchorage. He was our neighbor. (Pause) Then I counted the times the consent was seriously questionable due to my extreme alcoholism. At least two were men I was friends with. (Pause) They say if these things happen to you, you give off a scent to what much of society considers the real rapist, the violent random psychopathic man next door. I don’t know about all that but I do know he got me, twice. (Pause) So, I wonder, now that I’ve looked at it all in a neat little column in numbers, how I ever made it at all.
(Video clip shows Susie’s mother talking about Saavla’s “Joyful Song” and singing it.)
(While the video plays, Susie walks into the audience and passes the basket of stones. She walks slowly back to the stage to give time for each audience member to get a stone. Susie picks up the drum.)
(Video begins with the ivory sculpture Identities, an ivory woman with a split head. Her hair on one side is braided, on the other side it is cut short. A woman emerges from the head, with raised arms holding ancestral doll forms. The image slowly changes into a montage of all previous sculptural images.)
Susie: (Addressing the audience.) I am a woman. I have been a chaste woman. A wanton woman. A loving woman. A cruel woman. (Pause) I trace my ancestry to the earth. And her brown roots are the vessels of my heart. (Pause) I have staggered past you. Swaggered past you. Marched in beauty past you. And slid past you in the blood. (Pause) I am a woman. And like Maya, I still rise. (Pause) As a daughter I stand loved. (Pause) As a mother I stand proud. And I heard tell, long ago, a gentle man once held me in his arms.
(Video ends. Susie stands still, holding the drum to her chest, looking at the audience.)
(Black out)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Gratitude to my parents, Norma and Roger Silook, my children Andrea and Damian, and my husband, Keith Hamilton, for all of it – all the unconditional love. I thank all the ancestors.
Quyana to the Ford Foundation and the Alaska Native Heritage Center for giving me this opportunity. I’d like to thank all the mentors and participants for their instruction and input. I thank especially my mentor, Terry Gomez, for her patient guidance.
Diane Benson inspired the original “I Am a Woman” poem. Igamsiqanaghaalek, thank you so much! And, last, but certainly not the least, Ronald Spatz, teacher, and editor of the Alaska Quarterly Review, for seeing in me important stories to tell and showing me how I can get there.
Susie Silook is a contemporary Inuit sculptor and writer, originally from Gambell, Alaska, who currently lives on Adak Island, on the Aleutian chain. She is the recipient of the Eiteljorg and United States Artists awards, the Alaska Governor’s Individual Artist award, and a civil rights award from the Alaska Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Silook’s sculptural themes are taken from her culture, life experiences, and women’s issues, and incorporate ancestral design in the mediums of walrus ivory, whale bone, and wood. Her sculptures are included in many private collections and museums, including the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, and the Pratt Museum. Images of her work have been published in a wide range of venues including the American Indian Art Magazine, Inuit Art Quarterly, Gifts from the Ancestors, Island Magazine, Changing Hands: Art Without Reservations, and in Susan Fair’s Alaska Native Art. Silook’s poetry and prose have appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Nimrod: International Journal of Art, and Spreading the Word: Editors on Poetry. Ungipamsuuka: My Story is her first published dramatic work.