Evie Coos

My tattoos

Ever since Sophie and I decided to have another baby, I started to dream about getting two tattoos. One on each arm, mid-bicep, simply stating the name of each of my kids, in Inuktitut. In fact, I had had the idea to get Noah's name written in syllabics even before Evie became a twinkle in my eye.

I wanted to get Noah's name tattooed in Inuktitut on the back of my shoulder, thinking I would get our second baby's name on the other side. However, there was one small problem with that: my old tattoo. When I was eighteen, I went to Edmonton with a friend, determined to get a tattoo. Neither of us knew what we wanted, but we knew we wanted something. So, I sat down at "Raptors" tattoos shop, and flipped through a book. I didn't really see anything that was super inspiring. Clearly, the artists at the shop had talent, but their drawings meant very little to me. They didn't reflect who I was. Nevertheless, sitting in the shop, having told everyone I was going to get a a tattoo, I happened upon a simple sun which now situates itself in the middle of my back.

It hurt. A lot. I remember the tattoo artist saying, "If it hurts, wiggle your toes."

He touched me with his pen, and immediately, my toes started wiggling. Every time he crossed over my spine, the pain was almost intolerable. For the rest of the time, it was just interesting. 60 minutes later, I walked out in pain and $100 lighter. To add insult to injury, fifteen minutes after having been tattooed, I wondered,"now why the hell did I do that?" and "Well, at least it's on my back. I don't have to see it."

I spent years trying to explain why I got a tattoo. I made stuff up for a while. I began studying Latin American history, and tried out a story that it was a Mayan thing. That sounded pretty lame, so I ran through a few other possible significations, and settled eventually settled on the truth. When someone would ask, "What is that?" I would say, "my tattoo."

"Why did you get it?"

"I don't know."

"But what does it mean?"

"Nothing."

"Oh."

Awkward silence.

Thus, I couldn't put my new tattoos, the ones that mean so much to me, anywhere near my old one. I needed a clean break, and this time I wanted to enjoy them. So, when we found out Sophie was pregnant, I thought of getting them on my arms. For each and every baby name that we thought of, I almost immediately consulted my syllabary to see what kind of tattoo it would make.

After Evie was born, I went to Pointe St. Charles tattoo shop on Centre, and explained what I wanted to one of the tattoo artists, named William. He told me to bring him the symbols so he could draw them. We discussed the style. Sophie suggested that each symbol be composed of small dots, resembling traditional Inuit tattoos, and William said he could make them look like rocks. I mulled it over, for weeks, and finally decided to get simple, bold, black lines. I rang up William and asked him if he could still do it before we came back to Kangirsujuaq.

Unfortunately, he was going on holidays the next day, but found a compromise. He could get Tony to do my tattoo. I asked, "does Tony know what he's doing?"

"He's been doing it for more than 50 years."

So, I went into the shop and waited while William took the syllabary and drew the tattoo. Apparently, Tony wasn't into that part, and William said he was honored to tag team with Tony.
As he was drawing the tattoo he looked up at me and said, "Ce n'est pas juste n'importe qui qui te tattoo. Tu peut dire que il est un légend." (ie Tony is important).

So, I sat down and watched the old man tattoo me. He said almost nothing. I just watched as the knife/pen thing jabbed into my arm thousands and thousands of times. Tattoos are really violent, but the pain is moderate and somewhat enjoyable. I got up, and stood there awkwardly waiting for instructions on payment and care.

"Oh, you want to pay me." We discussed the price, and I walked out pleased.

I went home with William's words ringing in my head. I googled Tony, and found out that he is indeed a legend. He had a tattoo shop in New York in the '60s where he tattooed gangsters and the who's who. There are articles about Tony in tattoo magazines in which he laments the lack of traditional tattooing. Other artists emulate his work, and it appears that there was some truth to what William had said.



I love my tattoos. However, there's just one hitch. I was teaching last week and one of my students noticed my tattoo. He asked me to show it to him. "Ivi?" he said, confused. Another student got up, looked at me with disgust and shook her head, walked over to me, and drew a little circle over the first syllable. My mind drifted back to a conversation with Sophie which centred around this little circle, which would put the emphasis on the first syllable. I didn't think it was necessary.

I decided to write to Evie's saunik (namesake) to find out what I should do. She wrote back.

"You should change that soon. Otherwise, she'll be Ivi, which means "dirty hands and mouth." After you've eaten food, there is left over food on your face, usually blood, you say ivi. She is Iivi."

I'm debating what looks more ridiculous: a stupid qallunaat with "dirty hands" written on his arm, or a stupid qallunaat with a tattoo that says "dirty hands" and a little circle made with a black permanent marker above the first syllable.

I wonder what Tony will say when I tell him the story. Probably nothing. But at least this time I have a story.

My Writer's Block

I haven't written much in a year. I've been struggling with this story. I've been thinking, do I really have the right to write about this? What are people in the village going to say if they read it? Should I include his real name? How will I synthesize the roller coaster of emotions that I went through a year ago? Am I ready? Indeed, even for me it still seems almost too raw to share.

About a year ago, I returned to Montreal and bid goodbye to the four students and my colleague with whom I had visited Italy and Greece. They went back to Kangiqsujuaq, and I prepared myself and family for a month-long cycling trip to Cuba. Sophie and I had purchased folding bicycles and a trailer for Noah, and we were on our way.

What a place to go cycling. The roads are in decent shape, and there is very little traffic. It was amazing. We spent the third week of our trip at an all-inclusive resort near Holguin for our friends Chris and Erin's wedding. All inclusives aren't really our thing, but we were able to hang out with friends we normally would not see outside of the country and it was fantastic. We were also able to do things that we weren't able to do in the rest of Cuba, like check our email. For those of you who received spam from my yahoo account about a year ago, this is when it happened. Alas, the spam was not the worst thing that happened as I sat at the internet kiosk in the hotel lobby.

I opened a two-week-old email from my then pregnant colleague Sayard which read:

James,

We have some horrible news. It would not be appropriate to share it through email.

P.S. My baby and your dog are fine.

I immediately found Sophie and asked a friend to look after Noah for a few minutes. I said nothing, but he could read my face like a manual. "No problem James," he said, "Take your time."

What could be so horrible that it could not be written down? As we were walkind back to our room, we started to try and guess what could have happened. I thought that there had been an ATV accident, a disgruntled student came into the school armed, a murder in the village, all kinds of ridiculous things. Then Sophie stumbled across the magic word: "suicide". Even though there hadn't been any suicides in our community for over 20 years, our hearts started pounding as we realized that this had to be it.

We started naming names as we were cutting through the jungle to get to our room faster.
The most likely suspects immediately came to mind. They were all troubled teenagers who obviously had problems at school. We were terrified.

I rang up Sayard when we arrived at the room.

"Hello," she answered.

"Hi Sayard, it's James," I said.

"How are you?" she said with a shaky voice.

"We're having a wonderful time. But I was reading my email and..." I could tell she was already crying.

"Here, talk to Neil." she muttered.

"Hi James," he said. And then he immediately ripped off the band-aid, "Attasi killed himself."

Sophie could read the desperation on my face. "WHAT!?" she said.

"It's Attasi." I said. As she began to scream, I dropped the phone. I didn't hang it up, just dropped it, and let my friend and colleague hear us disintegrate.

This was unthinkable. He was the most polite and one of the strongest students in the school, a teachers' favourite. All kinds of disgusting thoughts raced through my head. I began by thinking "what happened to that poor boy?" as my mind raced through potential situations that he had gone through since we had left.

I turned to thoughts of what I could have done to prevent Attasi from doing what he had done. I searched and searched the inside of my mind and heart and came up empty-handed. This made me even more upset.

Then, more sinister thoughts began to bubble up from the depths of my subconscious. "Why couldn't it have been ...?" I became nauseous.

My nausea snapped me out of it. I realized that the phone was still off the hook. I picked it up, and Neil was still there, struggling himself. "Neil," I said, "let me call you back."

After we had gathered ourselves together, we called him back and got the details, which I cannot share here.

We wanted to do something. Call his mother, his brothers, his friends, and share our condolences, but we quickly realized that this would give them little solace. Their Attasi had been in the ground for over two weeks already.

We felt so far away, so helpless, so unable to do anything. There we were, in the lap of luxury, and there was a poor little northern town suffering without us. Not that we could have done anything to make it any easier for the people in the village. In fact, I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I had missed it. It was my own suffering and grief that was worsened by the fact that I couldn't mourn and get closure with the collective in Kangirsujuaq. When I realized that it was thoughts of myself and my suffering that were overwhelming me, a dark shroud of good old guilt settled in for the long haul.

When I again set eyes on the mountains of Kangirsujuaq, more than a month had passed since that tragic day. I didn't know what to do. The first time I saw each of his brothers, I hugged them and told them I was sorry for their loss. It was all I was capable of doing. I realize that it probably meant little to a family that was (and still is) hurting so deeply, but I couldn't just pretend that nothing had happened. I missed him, and I wanted them to know it.

The teachers themselves were still in the midst of the grieving process. Some were angry, some were brought to tears upon seeing us and realizing that they were about to revisit the pain that they had begun bottling up a couple of months before. I tried very hard to soothe my own grief, get some closure, and ease the guilt I felt. However, a few short weeks later, we would all revisit our frustration and desperation. But that's another story.

Noah holds Evie

For Grandparents' Eyes Only

The rest of you will be bored.