“When did she eat last?”
“Yesterday morning, and it wasn’t much. Maybe she’s on a food strike to get what she wants, whatever that is. She likes fish and beef, especially raw hamburger.” He went to a low refrigerator along one wall of the kitchen, opened it. “Pitak got us a whole shipment for her. Plus some seal.” He unwrapped a package of ground meat, spooned some into a cereal bowl, and gave it to me. “She uses her hands.”
I took the bowl and a glass of water to her door, knocked softly. “Hello,” I said in Danish. “Hello, girl, I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help you.”
The creak of a mattress, the thud of a bed shoved against the door.
“I have food,” I said in West Greenlandic, a language I didn’t know as well by a long shot. The word for meat escaped me. “Some beef. Not cooked. You are hungry?” I grabbed the doorknob and turned. The thump of her small body against the hollow door. “Be calm, young girl. Here is beef, and a glass of water, right here, here for you.” I rolled my eyes at my pitiful command of the language as I set down the food and water.
Silence.
Wyatt lingered at the other end of the hall, a heavy, watchful presence. “Is that her language?”
“No idea. Does she use the toilet?”
“She’s terrified of it. She shits in a coffee can I gave her. Makes sure to leave that out for me every morning.”
“What about her clothes? What was she wearing when you found her?”
“Caribou skin coat, polar bear pants, and one sealskin boot. The usual outfit for indigenous folks around here in super-remote settlements, as far as I know. Don’t know why only the one boot.”
“Where are they, the clothes?”
“We had to cut them off of her. I threw them away. But I asked Pitak to send me some girls’ clothes with the supplies we got in yesterday. They’re over there.” He gestured at a cardboard box near the door.
“What’s with the Christmas sweater?”
“It’s the only thing she’ll wear. We gave her a pile of our clothes, and she grabbed that. Hasn’t taken it off since she laid eyes on it.”
I walked by him to sort through the box. Felt his eyes on me in a way I couldn’t translate. Not sexual, exactly. More an estimation of some kind. A shot of cold shivered up my neck as I sorted through Hello Kitty pajamas, a hot-pink parka, down overalls, underwear, socks, and a pair of deerskin boots decorated with fringe and beads. Still, his eyes on me.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he said, finally, wandering off toward the kitchen in his odd shuffle walk.
I exhaled.
* * *
FOR TWO HOURS, all I did was talk to her through her door, occasionally nudging it open a crack, but she wasn’t having it. Still, I could feel her just behind it, breathing, listening. Wyatt paced, observing my every move, until something seemed to snap in him. He thumped his way over to the door and rapped hard, his shadow monstrous under the hall light.
“Hey, girl,” he said. “You know, we’re trying to help you.”
“Please watch your tone of voice,” I said from my seat on the floor.
So he poured on the honey. “Come on, sweetie pie, you gotta be starving by now. How come all the sudden you don’t like old Wyatt?”
I got to my feet, faced him. He towered over me; I took a step back, said, “Could be she’s overwhelmed by all these new faces. Maybe you could leave us alone for a while?”
“I didn’t do anything to her, you know. Never once raised my voice. She smashed some of my slides and half my test tubes, and I was cool as a cuke.”
“I’m sure you were.”
He gave me a look I couldn’t parse, but there was no warmth in it. “Enjoy your girl talk. See you in a couple hours.” He threw on his parka, pulled his hat down over his ears, and left.
When I turned back to the girl’s door, the bowl of hamburger and glass of water were gone. In its place was a coffee can half filled with urine. I carried it to the bathroom and flushed the contents.
As I passed Jeanne’s room, I detoured to her bed, grabbed a doll, and returned to the girl’s room. An empty bowl and water glass had been set outside the door. I didn’t know the Greenlandic or even the Danish word for doll. I knocked softly and said, “I have little baby.” Slid down to my usual position and said again, “I have little baby for you. Want to see it?” I leaned into the door, put my shoulder into it. Suddenly it gave a few inches, enough for me to slide the doll in. The door slammed shut.