031 Nyman E - Elizabeth Nyman Tells Her Life Story - Translation.txt

{Number = 031}
{Type = Translation}
{Title = Seidayaa Du Ḵusteeyí Daat Shkalneek / Elizabeth Nyman Tells Her Life Story}
{Author = Seidayaa / Elizabeth Nyman}
{Clan = Yanyeidí; Ḵaach.ádi yádi}
{Source = Nyman & Leer 1993: 100–160}
{Translator =  Weihá / Jeff Leer}
{Page = 101}
1	My father was from Telegraph Creek.
2	He was a Khàch.adi,
3	so I am a Child of the Ḵaach.ádi.
4	My mother was a Yanyeidí woman,
5	the daughter of X̱ʼagóokʼ (Dr. Jackson);
6	her name was Kudagáan.
7	While she was pregnant with me,
8	something was wrong with her back—
9	maybe she was born that way—
10	it was broken.
11	So I was born when I was seven months old;
12	I was premature.
13	Then
14	when I was one month old my mother died.
15	After she died
16	my uncle Billie Williams and the others
17	all got together with the chief.
18	Then
19	they were asking one another, “What are we to do with the baby?”
20	For lack of anything else to do, my future father-in-law,
21	Yax̱góosʼ (Billie Williams) said,
22	“Let her be smothered under her mother’s breast
23	and buried with her mother.”
24	Then my true grandmother (Ḵinx̱.ashee, Anna) spoke up,
25	“It will not be so.
26	Whenever she begins to starve on me
27	I will chew up something for her to eat.”
28	“Can you raise her on that?
29	She’ll die of hardship,” [said Billie Williams.]
30	The others did not say a word;
31	it was Yax̱góos’ alone who was speaking.
32	“That’s all right; I don’t care;
33	if she starves on me, then she’ll starve,” she said.
34	So they conceded to her, and she saved me.
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35	So she adopted me; whoever had children
36	she would pay
37	to nurse me for a day [at a time], they say.
38	People who perhaps had a lot of children,
39	she would pay one or another of them.
40	I wonder how my grandmother figured out how to do all that.
41	She would boil rice
42	until it was just liquid
43	and pour it through cheesecloth.
44	After she had carefully, very carefully,
45	gotten out the rice husks
46	she would spoon in some oil and boil it with it.
47	Then too
48	the type of milk called condensed milk—
49	it tastes really sweet, like sugar—
50	she would spoon in a little bit of that
51	and stir it in.
52	My mother had little spoon, so big,
53	with a twisted handle;
54	this is what she would feed me with
55	when the families with children had gone to the trapping grounds.
56	One time my father went to town.
57	Then
58	Mrs. Pillman asked him, “What are they doing with the baby?”
59	“Her grandmother has adopted her, her true grandmother.”
60	So
61	they showed my father a baby bottle.
62	They fixed it up for him,
63	“Here’s how you do it, like this and this; here’s the equipment,”
64	they told him.
65	So [he got] two apiece, the bottle and the [rest of it];
66	my father bought the whole works.
67	Maybe I was big by then.
68	So he brought them to my grandmother,
69	“Here’s how you do it, like this; here’s the measuring cup,”
70	they told my grandmother.
71	She must have been overjoyed.
72	After they did that they didn’t have to pay anyone else
73	to breast-feed me.
74	Eventually I was weaned
75	and ate [solid] food.
{Page = 105}
76	Finally
77	I was now able to speak and
78	my grandmother rejoiced.
79	So
80	when I was four, they say, my grandmother died.
81	This is as much as I know of her, nothing more.
82	Now
83	was married to the son of Yax̱góosʼ (Billy Williams)
84	When I was married to him I had my first baby;
85	he gave him his elder brother’s name Jigéi,
86	Xóots (Brown Bear),
87	and in English as well he called him Jackie.
88	I had my second one, my daughter Sʼigax̱sháak’w (Mary)
89	at the trapping grounds, at Kax̱noowk’u Tuḵká,
90	at a place called Héen Tlein (Inklen River).
91	At that time, once we were all through eating,
92	my father-in-law brought up the subject [of my birth].
93	His tears were just rolling clown.
94	“You see how foolish I was;
95	if my mother had not insisted [otherwise],
96	they would have done what I said
97	and smothered her under her mother.
98	Who would have taken on my elder brother’s name, so dear to me
99	Jigéi,
100	Xóots,
101	Jackie—
102	who would have brought him back down to us?
103	When I think about it now it makes me feel lonely
104	and I feel like weeping.
105	My sister’s namesake, S’igax̱sháak’w—
106	who would have brought her back down to us?
107	I am so sorry,
108	this is what I am trying to express.
109	Truly
{Page = 107}
110	it was on my mind;
111	this is why I am confessing to you
112	what I might have done to you.
{Comment = Line 113 is two lines but numbering skips a line so we unify them.}
113	And now I am encouraged [because of] my elder brother’s namesake and my sister’s namesake.
114	‘Thank you so much,’ I say to my mother.
115	I have missed my elder brother and sister so much,
116	and now they have corne back down.
117	I am truly happy,”
118	he said.
119	I guess in English you would say he “confessed.”
120	To this day I don’t blame him;
121	it’s just the way our culture used to be,
122	what he told them to do with me.
123	Now I always think,
124	“I wish you could see all your grandchildren’s children,”
125	They are all grown up, including Mary’s children;
126	so many of them have children.
127	And those of his mother’s namesake, Ḵinx̱.ashee (Anna Kirby),
128	are as numerous as sand
129	and still having more children in Terrace,
130	my grandchildren.
131	And Jackie’s [children] in Vancouver,
132	I don’t know how many there are,
133	and they are still having more children.
134	I alone
135	am their only living forebear.
136	It is true what my father-in-law said;
137	if they had done what he told them to do
138	we would have been left barren now.
139	Perhaps it is by the power of God
140	that my true grandmother saved me.
141	So now her namesake’s family
142	is growing by leaps and bounds in Terrace.
143	She has I don’t know how many grandchildren.
144	Sometimes
145	I am suspicious of what people say,
146	white women or white men.
147	When my grandmother passed on,
148	at that time
149	I had only one grandfather left.
{Page = 109}
150	I kept searching for my grandmother everywhere, they say;
151	I only know this little bit about her.
152	My father’s sister,
153	Aantsíx̱t (Mary Anderson)
154	and her younger sister Sḵux̱.ooteen (Martha Johnson)
155	I know that they were crying with me.
156	They said to me, “Don’t ask about your grandmother.
157	She was taken from us and put into the earth.
158	You will see her no more.”
159	That’s what they would tell me.
160	Now
161	I had a grandmother, Lḵòox̱ee (Mary)
162	and my true mother’s sister, Ḵaashawdahaa (Mrs. Paddy Ward)—
163	she and my mother had the same father—
164	and
165	our grandfather’s name was X̱ʼagóokʼ (Doctor Jackson).
166	He wanted me to stay with him.
167	But my father
168	and my mother’s family didn’t want
169	me to go stay with them;
170	they didn’t get along together.
171	And they are still the same to this day,
172	those who are descended from them.
173	Therefore my grandmother Lḵòox̱ee adopted me;
174	my [adoption] papers came from Victoria.
175	After that
176	I just lived with my mother [Lḵòox̱ee].
177	Eventually I got to be ten or so—
178	I didn’t even know my age;
179	the whole time I was married I didn’t know it.
180	At this time
181	they were sending children out to school.
182	I [wanted to go] too
183	but couldn’t;
184	even if I wanted to go I couldn’t say so.
185	“I can’t let you go to school,”
186	my mother said,
187	and my brother [said] the same thing.
188	Now Neilyeewdashéetʼ (Antonia) and her younger sister
189	were sent to school.
{Page = 111}
190	At least they could write; her younger sister is dead though.
191	So then
192	I finally turned twelve
193	and so
194	whatever she told me to do I did;
195	I tried to do it.
196	There were just two of us, my brother and I.
197	When I was fourteen
198	my husband-to-be traveled back up from school.
199	My! on the first of July people were in an uproar;
200	they were circulating all kinds of alcohol
201	and drinking it on the sly.
202	My mother and the others were in on it too, I guess;
203	people were getting drunk.
204	I had an aunt, my future mother-in-law,
205	named Laanaatk (Anna) from the coast.
206	She couldn’t walk, so I wheeled her around as I was told.
207	“Let’s go over to that end of town, over that way.”
208	So I wheeled her over there;
209	actually they had a bottle of booze stowed behind her back.
210	I wheeled her up to [the spring called] Éilʼ Héen (salt water).
211	“Go get us some water,” they said.
212	So I grabbed the bottle,
213	the empty bottle.
214	I quickly went to the edge of the lake
215	and brought some water back up.
216	And here
217	they were drinking booze!
218	Then
219	they went to watch the celebration.
220	My, everything was in an uproar.
221	On the way home, toward evening,
222	they said, “Let’s hire a car and have a picnic.”
223	So they took a load of peopJe
224	over to the end of Koosawu Áa (Surprise Lake).
225	The one I got married to was named Ḵusʼeix̱ (Steve Williams);
226	he was then a young man,
227	about three or four years older than I was.
228	“You go down along the river with him,
229	and then you’ll get onto the road.”
230	He was raised in Catholic school,
231	so they were trying to hide their drinking from him.
232	So we started off.
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233	I was constantly on guard with him,
234	the way my mother was always telling me to be around men; that’s why
235	I was on my guard with Ḵusʼeix̱.
236	We were throwing stones in the water.
237	Oh my, he did something to me;
238	he kept putting his arms around my neck.
239	It was as if—
240	as if someone kept thrusting fire at your throat:
241	perhaps that is how I felt.
242	I was crying.
243	“Leave me alone; I’ll clobber you over the head!
244	I don’t like it;
245	I don’t know what you’re doing tome;
246	maybe you’ll kill me.”
247	My goodness!
248	I was fighting.
249	After a while we heard the car;
250	I was walking faster than a person chasing an animal;
251	I walked away from him.
252	I ran quickly to the road.
253	After that
254	we got back into the car.
255	My!
256	they brought in bottles of booze, my father and the others.
257	They were secretly selling it to him.
258	My! the Tlingit village was topsy-turvy on that first of July;
259	I don’t suppose there was even one man sober.
260	My brother
261	Chʼityádi (Albert Johnson)’s daughter
262	was perhaps seven years old;
263	he brought her over to me.
264	“Let her sleep in your arms.
265	We’re drinking, so take good care of her,” he said.
266	I took the little girl into my arms.
267	They must have been getting drunk,
268	my mother and the others.
269	I don’t know how he got there,
270	the one I was to be married to;
271	He came into their house, and there they gave him some booze,
272	after they had just been trying to hide their drinking from him—
273	I myself fell asleep—
274	he was drinking what they gave him to drink.
275	Then they said to him, “Go upstairs and lie down.
276	My son’s room—
277	his sister has already made the bed—
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278	sleep there,” they told him, they say.
279	So he went there.
280	He was a young man, you know, and had drunk booze;
281	I didn’t know what condition he was in.
282	When they had all passed out
283	he came down from there.
284	Ali of a sudden someone’s roughing me up.
285	What happened? Was it perhaps
286	a bear that had appeared before me?
287	Where had it corne from?
288	I started crying again.
289	“Get away!” I said to him,
290	“my mother and the others will get up.”
291	Now, I want to explain it carefully.
292	Everyone thinks
293	that I experienced a man under age.
294	No
295	I didn’t even know—
296	I didn’t know anything about men.
297	I didn’t even know how to fall in love; I was too young.
298	But everyone asks me,
299	all the young people growing up in Atlin,
300	“Is it true that you were living with a man under age?”
301	“Yes,” I say to them.
302	They wouldn’t understand it if I were to tell them.
303	Some of them
304	laugh while they are asking me.
305	They don’t know
306	what a hard time I had.
307	So then
308	I guess my father got up
309	because I was fighting with him and saying “Get away!”
310	Besides that, [I had] a blanket
311	that had been folded over and sewed together;
312	I was holding the girl in my arms inside it.
313	He couldn’t get at me through it.
314	He apparently woke my mother up and
315	when he saw that they were up
316	he ran up into the attic.
317	Oh my goodness, my mother got up and grabbed me.
318	He ran down downstairs and outside.
319	“You can’t stay here,” [she said].
320	[She acted] as if she had seen with her own eyes
321	that I was with him.
322	Right there
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323	on the floor
324	she was fighting with me.
325	I was too scared to do anything for myself.
326	She was tearing up all my clothes.
327	“Go after him, then.
328	Apparently you like that man, so go to him!”
329	she said to me.
330	She wouldn’t leave me alone;
331	she was cuffing me,
332	so I went to his mother’s house
333	My mother-in-law was my aunt.
334	She would just sit around; she was crippled.
335	Her name was Laanaatk (Anna);
336	her father’s name was Lg̱een (Jimmie Henderson)
337	from the coast.
338	I came in there; it was daylight
339	and the sun was well on its way up.
340	I came in there; I must still have been crying.
341	I walked into their bedroom, and
342	his mother asked me,
343	“What happened to you?”
344	I couldn’t even speak;
345	it was as if I had been throttled.
346	“Come here, go into the back room.”
347	They had a big bed.
348	I took off my jacket.
349	My mother had torn up all my clothes.
350	I went and lay my head on her chest;
351	after I had calmed down I told her what
352	had happened to me.
353	“It’s all right; just stay here;
354	after you have stayed here a night or two
355	we’ll take you [back home],”
356	she said to me.
357	I fell asleep.
358	Before long I guess I fell asleep and then I got up again.
359	I did some kind of work together with my aunt.
360	We ate breakfast.
361	She didn’t say tome,
362	“I want you to go to my son.”
363	They just
364	called their son over.
365	“Go make his bed,” they told me,
366	“in his room.”
367	Actually, they were having a talk with him.
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368	“She has been sent to live with you for good.
369	Do you want that, or not?” they asked him.
370	[They suggested as potential matches] for him all
371	my mother’s sister Ḵaashawdahaa’s children—
372	their father
373	was still alive;
374	their father’s name was Ḵʼanax̱g̱as.áa (Paddy Ward),
375	and their mother was Ḵaashawdahaa—
376	[they suggested] Skaaydu.oo (Jessie), and Kudagáan (Mabel).
377	My mother-in-law was my father’s niece,
378	Laanaatk (Anna).
379	So Ḵusʼeix̱ (Steve) was like a grandchild to [Paddy Ward].
380	I was beneath his station.
381	I grew up without my mother—
382	this is what [Paddy Ward] said.
383	So they were asking my husband-to-be,
384	Ḵusʼeix̱,
385	“Your grandfather’s daughters
386	Skaaydu.oo and Kudagáan
387	each live alone.
388	Which one would you like, or that one?”
389	Then he told his mother,
390	“If I had not liked her
391	I wouldn’t have bothered her.
392	I went to her because I liked her;
393	I didn’t know I’d be making trouble for her.
394	I won’t abandon her.
395	I don’t like those two other ones.
396	I want to live with her;
397	I want you to take her in for me,”
398	he said.
399	“Well, now, are you sure? She’s an orphan, you know.”
400	I didn’t know what was going on.
401	After I straightened up the spare room, I swept it.
402	Then he went outside.
403	My aunt and the others called me over
404	and had a talk with me.
405	Maybe it will be like walking into a burning fire,
406	this is what I imagined to myself.
407	I had never even gone near men,
408	nothing.
409	“How would it be to sleep with that man?”
410	I wondered.
411	I didn’t even feel the tears running down my face,
412	I was so frightened.
413	“We’re going with you to your mother,” she said.
414	Her husband Yax̱góosʼ (Billy Williams) wheeled her there with me.
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415	I was still afraid of my mother.
416	They took me inside,
417	and my mother said—
418	my grandmother was my mother—
419	“I don’t want you to bring her back here again.
420	She wants to keep on doing
421	just what she herself wishes to do,”
422	she said.
423	She just threw all my clothes at me.
424	Well, what else could I do?
425	Then my future mother-in-law said,
426	“Pack up your clothes; you’re coming with us for good;
427	you’ll never come back here; she doesn’t want you to.”
428	I packed up my clothing.
429	My father
430	was gone to Teslin then,
431	as well as my brother.
432	They took me home.
433	“You are going to live with him,” they told
434	For some reason
435	I said “No,
436	I don’t want to.
437	Let me sleep with you;
438	I want to get a good night’s sleep.”
439	“Yes,” she said,
440	Oh, I could have shouted for joy.
441	“You can sleep with me for two nights,” she said.
442	After one night
443	they were counting money;
444	“What is that for anyway?” I wondered.
445	I was always suspecting something.
446	My! then they were folding button blankets.
447	They were piling up valuable things.
448	As it turned out, that was what they were going to pay as my dowry,
449	but I didn’t know that [at the time].
450	They gave it to my mother,
451	as well as the money;
452	they counted out a lot of money.
453	I slept with her two nights; I must have slept really well.
454	Then they told me,
455	“[From now on] you are to sleep with him; he’s your husband.”
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456	There was nowhere I could go for consolation;
457	there was nothing that could help me—
458	nothing.
459	My! there were a lot of
460	boys then,
461	and he was always running off somewhere with them, my husband-to-be.
462	Gee,
463	I was just happy when he was gone.
464	Sometimes he would stay overnight,
465	and I would be able to get a good night’s sleep.
466	Then one day,
467	outside, I guess,
468	here he was drinking again,
469	the one they had been hiding their drinking from.
470	My, they were outside walking down to the shore
471	with their arms draped over on another’s shoulders,
472	Henry and
473	Ishḵúx̱ (Johnny Jack)
474	and
475	Johnny Jack
476	and Edward and Leo and my older sister here;
477	there were six of them.
478	Then his father ran outside
479	and dragged him inside; it was daylight.
480	He dragged him inside and
481	on the bed where we slept
482	he kept shoving his head down onto the pillow,
483	“This is your room.
484	That is your wife.
485	You must sleep by her side,” they told him.
486	My goodness! I woke up
487	and quickly got up
488	and dressed.
489	My future mother-in-law
490	was also sitting on the floor.
491	I came out to where she was and lit the stove.
492	We cooked and ate, but [Ḵusʼeix̱] was sleeping.
493	It was perhaps late afternoon when he got up;
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494	I cooked for him
495	and fed him.
496	We fixed up the net and so on.
497	I didn’t get any sleep for a month.
498	I would wind the sheet around myself
499	and clutch the corner of it like this.
500	After a while I was getting very sleepy;
501	I wasn’t sleeping all night long.
502	When he would start to reach for me
503	I would surreptitiously fight him off
504	Then one day,
505	maybe on the fifteenth of that month
506	I kept nodding off right where I sat.
507	“I should steal away into the attic,” I thought.
508	A ladder was built there;
509	I went up it.
510	Then
511	they had stuff stored there
512	and I cleared out a place for myself
513	and went there.
514	It was in summer, when it was hot,
515	and even as I was laying down my head
516	I fell asleep.
517	Nobody knew that I was sleeping in the attic.
518	Well, they searched for me.
519	“She's lost.”
520	That evening I awoke
521	alone
522	and carefully smoothed my hair down.
523	Nobody saw me coming back down.
524	They were searching; I don’t know where they searched.
525	I came in where my mother-in-law was.
526	“Well, where did you corne from?” she said.
527	“I was asleep,” I said.
528	She didn't say anything to me.
529	Oho, again that night—
530	I guess the sleep I had gotten that day helped me;
531	I was all right.
532	But the third night, toward dawn, the same thing happened,
533	and I couldn’t get completely to sleep with him.
534	“What is going to become of me
535	if I am like this all winter?”
536	I kept thinking.
537	Again I would start crying for some reason.
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538	I still blamed my mother for what happened.
{Comment = Line 539 is two lines in the original but the second is unnumbered.}
539	I wished she could see me now; [at the time] she wouldn't even believe me.
540	From the beginning
541	it has always been like this,
542	nephew,
543	for children whose mother or father are not alive.
544	People simply cannot take care of them the way they do their own.
545	So now, for my part,
546	whoever is an orphan,
547	or has something the matter and needs help,
548	I open up my heart to him;
549	It afflicts my heart.
550	I do my very best to help him out.
551	I am not like [Lḵoox̱ee was].
552	She had one son
553	named Ḵeedudáa (Willie Jack)
554	and then me,
555	and my elder sister, named X̱aasteen (Lucy)—
556	she too died long ago.
557	Oh, my, my elder sister was just like their own heart to them;
558	she was a mature woman.
559	And she was feeling alone—
560	she had lived alone too long,
561	unmarried,
562	[even though] she was over twenty years old—
563	she was feeling alone.
564	Then we went to the trapping grounds.
565	Gee! she got lost.
566	She came back in the evening.
567	My! they were taking her shoes off (to get the snow out).
568	I was playing with a cat; I was small, [you know].
569	And suddenly they snatched the cat from me and put it down.
570	As it happened, my father, Néix̱ʼw, saw them do that.
571	He said to me,
572	“Get your shoes on; corne to the fishing hole with me.”
573	I put my shoes on quickly,
574	got into my coat, a comfortable one,
575	and put my snowshoes on [to go] with him.
576	The place where he had set his hooks was far away.
577	I often think it's nice to live like that.
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