Summary

The narrator laments the cold as she goes to school. By this point, she is in the eighth grade. As the year goes on, she starts to use solvents and other substances to get high. One night, she watches as an older man come into her room and sexually assault a young woman in the same room as the narrator.

The narrator reflects on her Innuinaktun (the Inuktitut language) class, where she is repulsed by the teacher, a residential school survivor. The teacher’s past trauma and complex relationship with authority is obvious to her, leading her to feel disgusted by both the teacher and his class. Despite the fact that she is in a language learning class, she feels her ancestral language slipping away from her. As the class goes on, the narrator reflects on her nightmares and on the trauma and...