Between Two Worlds Read Online Free PDF

sailors’ toilet?”
    “I don’t know.” I remembered the bathroom at Mitti Peary’s home.
    “Come on.” Marie took my hand again, yanking me into the officers’ saloon. It was brightly lit with small lanterns and warmed by a stove. Men sat in chairs, smoking, talking, and reading. One wrote at a desk. As soon as they saw us, they stopped talking. One frowned and seemed about to say something, but Marie pulled me out of the room.
    Marie opened another door. The room, all in wood, was as dimly lit as an igloo and nearly as large. It had two chairs, a table, a trunk, and two beds, one on top of the other along a wall.
    Marie climbed a ladder beside the beds and sat near a small window. “Come on up to my bunk.” I joined her, ducking my head to keep from hitting the ceiling. I lookedthrough the glass of the window to see ice masses glistening in the sunlight. Marie pulled back her blankets, and for a moment my heart stopped. I’d forgotten how realistic the white people’s dolls could be. In America, I’d been so startled by the sight of one that I’d burst into tears—I’d thought it was a tiny child.
    Now Marie gently handed me the beautiful doll, so realistic, so rosy, it seemed like it had just taken a breath. “Her name’s Clara.”
    I stroked Clara’s hair. It was bright yellow, like Marie’s. I felt the smooth silk of her dress and marveled at its deep pink color, like a sunset, and opened Clara’s blue eyes, remembering how I’d opened and closed that other doll’s eyes, long ago.
    Marie asked, “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”
    “Yes, she is pretty.” But the word didn’t feel strong enough. The doll was almost alive.
    I listened to Marie talk about how her mother would not let her bring her other dolls on the voyage. “Are you still collecting things?” she asked.
    “Yes,” I said, “the box your mother gave me is nearly full now.”
    Marie cradled her doll as I remembered the happy night when Mitti Peary gave me the wooden chest. She wrapped it to surprise me and she put it under a tree that glowed with many tiny candles. I spent hours admiring and rearranging my special keepsakes and taking them in and out of their glossy container. Each tiny thing, softfeather, fragrant leaf, had power, and each told a story about a faraway land.
    My box of treasures was my reward for completing my year in America: for the pain of missing my family, getting used to a new language, the sweltering heat of their summer, a winter that was too mild, and a way of life that was so different from my own. People were always looking at me and touching me. They asked me questions and my face would grow warm when I couldn’t answer. Marie’s grandmother, “Grossy” or “Grossmutter,” who was from a land called Germany, spoke with an accent; I couldn’t understand a word she said. Still, I’d enjoyed many afternoons with these strange women, sewing dolls’ dresses and real dresses with shiny buttons and soft, glittering materials.
    “We still have the dresses you made me,” Marie said, “and that little fox fur coat. Mother says someday we may give it to a museum.”
    Museum
. My whole body stiffened. I could never hear that word without thinking about my parents and Aviaq. But then Mitti Peary swept in and frowned when she saw me.
    “Marie,” she said, “please go somewhere else with Billy Bah.” I looked at her, stunned.
    “Why?”
    “You know why. We talked about this.”
    “Billy Bah did
not
put her head on my pillow. I’m
not
going to get lice,” Marie said.
    I gulped. In another minute, the tears came.
    I climbed down from the bunk to run out the door, but Mitti Peary said, “Billy Bah! I’m sorry.” She held me gently by the arm. “Why don’t you let me bathe you? You’ll soon feel better.”
    “Yes, Mitti Peary,” I said slowly. As always, I wanted to make her happy. I wiped my tears. In America, every morning after Mitti Peary had bathed me and dressed me in a dark green