I’m sitting in another doctor’s office. This time I’m on one of the top floors of the Herlev Hospital in Copenhagen. The room I await in is cold and clinical with eggshell walls, white flecked tile flooring, and a singular frosted, disk shaped light suspended from the center of the ceiling. Arranged on the floor beneath the light are three upholstered gray desk chairs. The way they are situated gives me the impression that somebody’s about to be ambushed. A brown metal and laminate desk butts up against the far wall with a recording device, a pad of paper, two pencils and a prescription pad lying meticulously undisturbed on top. A matching five-shelf bookcase stands alone on the adjacent wall. Out of date medical texts and journals, along with an old copy of the DSM handbook stand at attention on the third shelf down. The other shelves are empty. I wonder when the last time this room was used.
As I take a seat in the lone desk chair facing the other two, I notice a large rectangular two-way mirror on the opposing wall. It makes me nervous to sit there, alone, across from that mirror. I fantasize that there is a room full of people standing just on the other side watching me, documenting my entrance and making note of everything about me from my choice in clothing to the way I sat down.
“Hmmm…”one observer might say. “Did you notice the pants he’s got on?”
“How about those shoes?” remarks another as they all dutifully make notes in their yellow, college-ruled notebooks. “Does it look to you like he’s showered? Or shaved?”
“Did you notice the peculiar way in which he entered the room and sat down?” asks another.
I envision those people in long white coats and fancy polished leather shoes. Half are men and half are women, yet faceless. It’s hard for me to conjure up images of their faces and hands, though I imagine them all to have expressions of shame and judgment.
I spin this story for as long as I can inside my head before I feel dizzy and then begin to talk myself out of it. Boldly I get up and walk across the room towards the mirror, pressing my forehead against the glass and cupping my hands around my eyes to shade them. I look through the smoky glass and see no one, just a video camera poised to record.
Standing there, nose and chin pressed firmly against the cool glass, my eyes darting around the room on the other side of the mirror as if I’m looking through a portal to another dimension, the doctors I am to see today walk in. Childlike, I giggle apologetically, walk quickly back across the room and slump down in my chair. There are two doctors, a man and a woman, and both have fancy leather shoes. I figure I got part of the story right.
“Good morning Mr. Kjeldsen. I am Dr. Peder Thygesen and this is my associate Dr. Tine Hedegaard. I am a cognitive psychotherapist and Dr. Hedegaard is an addiction specialist. We represent Danish Dynamite and other football teams within Federation Internationale Football Association (FIFA.) Your coaches have asked us to talk to you today.”
I rise up from my chair again and shake both doctors’ hands. Immediately my eyes find the floor and I begin to sweat, which I find curious because I know exactly why I am there.
“Mr. Kjeldsen,” began Dr. Thygesen again as he flipped through a manila folder with my name MAKAALI KJELDSEN printed clearly in the tab, “We have contacted your previous residence in Greenland, a, uh, Children’s Home in Uummannaq. We have received all of your medical records and mental evaluations from them but would like to take a social and family history from you today.”
Dr. Thygesen stumbles over the pronunciation of Uummannaq and appears to disbelieve that I came from a Children’s Home. I nod reassuringly to convey that the information they have is correct.
“Wow! You’re quite the success story! Congratulations on making the team,“ Dr. Thygesen says smiling as he leans back in his chair. His associate, Dr. Hedegaard, uncrosses and then crosses her legs again. “It’s quite an accomplishment to be picked up by the Danish National Football League. That’s not an easy thing for a young man, such as yourself, to do.”
I nod understandingly and realize that what Dr. Thygesen is telling me is quite true. It is very difficult to be drafted at age 16 to the National Team, the Danish Dynamite, especially for a troubled Inuit Greenlander, such as myself. I am a good footballer, one of the best in Greenland. Getting the opportunity to play with other footballers, professional footballers, and be led by coach Morten Olsen, is a dream come true. In that moment, I worry that I have blown my chance with the team and that Coach Olsen may send me back home.
“Coach Olsen is concerned about some of your behaviors here in Copenhagen, and while on the road. He wants to do what’s best for his team as a whole and be reassured that your head is in the game. The drinking binges, fights and missed practices will not be tolerated, and are tarnishing the professionalism and reputation of Danish Dynamite. Coach Olsen is concerned, rightfully so, that you’re going down the wrong path and that perhaps the instant celebrity you’ve garnered here in Denmark has done more to hinder your success than help it. You’re a young man, Makaali. Your future is in your hands. What you chose to do with it is up to you but Coach Olsen will not let you bring the “Olsen Gang” down with you.”
I unclasp my hands from my lap and stretch them up over my head in an attempt to shrug Dr. Thygesen’s heavy words from my shoulders. His words are unshakable and I place my hands back on my lap, staring at them intently as though I’m looking directly into my future. The landscape looks barren and bleak and it penetrates my soul and sends shivers through my body.
Goose bumps rise up from my flesh and press into the underside of my slacks and shirt. Shrouded in fog and dazed in desperation, I resist the urge to beg for another chance. I am weak with regret and make a personal vow to clean up my act and prove to Coach Olsen that I am the footballer he sees in me. I realize I must recreate myself, a future free of depression and alcoholism. Any chance I have to break that cycle lies on the pitch.
Dr. Thygesen speaks again and pulls me from a trance of self-loathing.
“Coach Olsen is willing to give you another chance, Makaali. He believes in you and wants you to succeed. You’re good for the team. However, there are some stipulations they have asked us to go over with you. Stipulations you must agree to.”
Minutes have gone by since the start of this meeting yet it feels like an eternity. I’ve been accused, found guilty, sentenced and given a reprieve, all without saying a word. I’m exhausted and ready to move on and agree to anything.
Handing me a pre-composed copy with the Danish Dynamite logo embossed on top, Dr. Thygesen reads, glancing up occasionally to ensure I’m following along.
“You must comply with the Club’s rules and policies. You will be fit and ready to play at every game and every practice. You will also need to complete a series of cognitive psychoanalytic sessions and undergo addiction counseling, beginning today. To secure your future with the Danish Dynamite, you must stop drinking. Are you in agreement with these stipulations, Makaali?”
Grateful for another chance to prove myself, and hoping for a reprieve to a life I was uncomfortably acquainted with, I immediately reply “Yes, doctor.” However relieved, I am also resigned to reliving the pain of my past in order to pave the way towards a new future.
Dr. Thygesen walks over to the desk, presses record on the recording device, retrieves the pad of paper and pulls two pens from his inside jacket pocket, passing one to me. I sign my name in backwards slanted, small and choppy letters and hand the document back to him. Putting pen to paper, Dr. Thygesen says, “Let us begin.”
My father’s name is Magnus Kjeldsen and he is a fair-haired, blue-eyed Dane. He came to Greenland when he was 21 to fish for shrimp. He lives in a large fishing village called Qaqortoq where the Norwegian influence of brightly painted blue, red, green and yellow houses appear randomly strewn across the denticulate cliffs of southern Greenland. I remember fishing with my dad when I was a boy of four or five. From the safety of my father’s boat, miles away from shore, those houses look like miniature game pieces dotting the high steep faces of rock that encircle the entire island of Greenland. That would be the last time we fished together.
My dad would leave my mom and I for weeks to months at a time to fish. He would take his crew up the west coast to Nuuk, fishing for shrimp. In the summer months, he’d continue north to Savissivik and hunt for seal and dovekies using long handled nets perched off the bow of my father’s boat. My dad would be gone nearly the entire summer but he would earn enough money and bring back enough fish and fowl to last us through the dark and unforgiving winter.
One late summer afternoon, shortly before my fifth birthday, my dad came back unexpectedly from a fishing trip. The sun shone all day but hung low in the sky just out of reach from the barbed and broken cliffs that surrounded our village. Fish and brine permeated every fiber of his clothing and the smell wafted through my room and tiptoed past my nose.
As he gently roused me from my sleep and plucked me from my dreams, he asked me where my mama was. I hadn’t seen her since she put me to bed. Concerned, he searched our tiny house for her, each room emptier than the next. His curiosity turned to worry. When she stumbled through the door a short time later and drifted across the room, feet dragging behind her, his worry turned to anger. An intoxicated Inuit woman was a dangerous thing. My father knew that. His anger choked by fear and sadness, he looked helpless as he carried her to their bedroom. My father and I both knew that night was the beginning of their end.
I awoke early the next morning, or perhaps it was later that evening. I watched the sun rise fully into the heavens and catch the clouds on fire. Brilliant shades of pink, yellow and orange streaked across the late summer sky. The events of the previous day eluded my budding and naive memory until I heard my parents arguing in their bedroom. I hid outside their door, silent and undetected. I listened intently with my young ears. With each threat and accusation, my family’s story was revealed for me in layers, like multi-colored veils strategically stripped from a midriff bearing dancer in time set to music. I imagined my mother and father both naked, standing in their room, staring at one another. Pieces of themselves lying between them, scattered on the floor.
I learned the details of my past, present and future, which were painted in desolate and unpromising colors on an unalterable canvas. That’s the day I learned my father wasn’t meant to be a fisherman, my mother wasn’t meant to be a mother and there was a baby on the way, unlikely to be my father’s child.
My mother, Sissiilia, was an Inuit. She was just 15 when she met my father. My mother was a resident at the Children’s Home in Uummannaq while my father made monthly deliveries there of seal skin and mattak. As with the nature of history, it’s no surprise I ended up there myself some 12 years later.
My mother was tall for a native Greenlander, standing a full four inches taller than her mother. Other than the height discrepancy, I have been told my mother was the spitting image of her mother, and so on. She had a round face, dark hair, brooding wide eyes and a pleasant smile. Her skin was smooth, soft and supple when she met my father, not yet burned by the piercing Greenlandic winters.
My mother and father met in winter when mystical green and purple curtains danced across the sky. The electric light show is intoxicating to all who have the privilege to view it and we Greenlanders have front row tickets to every show of the season. As with summer, there is no discernable day or night. The night bleeds black into day and back again. It’s no wonder many Inuits pass the sharp, biting and indistinguishable days with drink in hand. My mother was no different.
Two seasons later, I was born to my unwed parents. My father bought a house in Qaqortoq. Reluctantly, my mother moved there with him. The only tie that bound my parents together was a child they unwittingly conceived together. My father regarded me, and his potential new life with my mother, as an exciting and surprising detour. This new road was refreshing and alive with possibility and hope that he happily inhaled with vigor. He was several years older than my mother and though having a newborn was not in his plan, he loved and cherished me just the same. My mother treated my father like he was nothing more than a knotted noose tied tightly around her neck. Somebody who beguiled her and snatched her up real quick then suffocated the life out of her slowly only to watch her dangle in the wind as he sailed off on that shrimp boat month after month. As for me, I was the weight that kept her tethered to a house she did not want to make a home and to a life she did not want to live. My dad knew this about my mother and he felt responsible for her hatred and addictions. He spent the first year of their life together in a futile attempt to make it up to her and make her happy.
The first few years my parents lived with the ebb and flow of a watered down version of relationship. If their life had a theme song, it would be, Not Meant to Be by the band Theory of a Deadman. I bounced along myself, playing football with my friends on a compact rock field beneath melted ice. I returned home every evening to the brilliant beckoning light on our front porch. Its amber glow illuminated the raw darkness that enveloped our home, bringing it out of isolation and providing me with a false sense of warmth and comfort. I knew this light was what kept my dad returning as well, so I made sure it never burned out.
I never really understood where my mother disappeared to that night my father came home looking for her. I suspect it had something to do with a man. He lived just a short distance away from us. He was also a heavy drinking Inuit. When my little brother, Umik, was born six months later with a full head of thick, dark Inuit hair, anthracite eyes powdered with kohl and sun-kissed skin, my suspicions was confirmed.
My dad’s head hung low with embarrassment and despair the day Umik was born. Watching him weep into his thick and calloused tanned hands branded my heart with hopeless torment. My instincts told me that he felt helpless and alone for I’ve never seen a man cry the way my father cried that day. I tried to pretend his tears were filled with happiness, hope and pride but they welled with anguish and betrayal. His tears were relentless and nipped at his cheeks like tiny, frenzied leeches, grappling for the taste of blood. My father was forever wounded, like a reindeer shot in the hip, limping along, while my mother continued on with the life she was destined for, bottle in hand.
With my father away at sea, most nights my mother would disappear into the cimmerian shade of the Greenlandic tundra. She would leave me with my baby brother and walk away down a path hidden beneath layers upon layers of ice. I would watch her body made bulging beneath a down and seal fur parka and irradiated by the porch light, fade into the vast dessert of darkness. Long after my mother’s form slipped through the grasp of light’s illuminating hand, I could hear the crunching of crystallized snow beneath her feet and the mournful howls of our sled dogs off in the distance.
My maternal uncle would come to us in the night spewing twisted tales about my mother and crediting himself with the wherewithal to check in on us. The smell of alcohol seeped from his skin and evaporated into vapor forming an imaginary cloud above his head as he walked through our house making sure no one else was home. With baby Umik fast asleep, my uncle would walk over to our couch and plunk himself down heavily on one side. Some evenings he’d drift off in a drunken stupor awakening the next morning with a dribble of spittle down his chin and pangs of hunger and headache. Other evenings, he’d forcefully call out to me to join him on the couch. When I got there, his hands were already down the front of his pants, gliding over himself in a rhythmic motion. If I were lucky, he’d finish off by himself with me powerless and watching then leave me alone to whimper pitifully under my bed sheets, longing for the motherly love and security Umik and I so desperately wanted and needed. On nights when luck turned unsympathetic, he’d stroke me with the same robotic motion I’d seen him to do himself all the while asking me if I enjoyed it. If my response was anything but “yes” he would bloody my lip crimson and turn my eyes shades like that of the Aurora Borealis with his fists. The same pattern of pulsating abuse would continue orally and I’d be obliged to do the same.
A few days later, with spectators and scouts scattered about the flat edges of the craggy rocks flanking our football field, turning them into make shift bleachers, one of my friends and our team goalie, Kajistiaat (Kaj), walked gingerly up to the home side of the flat, crusted rock field we always played on. He was not fit to play but could not sit down all at the same time. I asked him why he walked with such trepidation and he disclosed to me in graphic detail the horrors of the previous night’s events involving his inebriated step-dad. I realized I wasn’t the only one left unprotected during the sparse nights. We were the lost boys of Greenland, forgotten and forced to fend for ourselves. Greenland became my frozen wasteland, congealed by suffering, indifference and hostility. I began plotting my way out, one way or another.
If enduring the constant shame and abuse at the hands of my uncle, the lifelong neglect from my mother and recent abandonment of my father didn’t transform me into a man by the age of nine, then losing my baby brother Umik when he was just three undoubtedly did. When we found him, he was unblemished and cradled in a tomb of powdery snow then swaddled securely in ice right outside our front door. His chestnut eyes were open, longingly transfixed on the brilliance of the porch light. He looked small and peaceful and beautiful. My scarred heart, torn apart and shattered by sorrow found solace from grief in knowing that my baby brother would never know the agony and torture that plagued me. God was merciful to us all. He took Umik when he did and preserved his perfection in an iced splendor for us all to remember.
I can only speculate what led my baby brother outside that night. He walked into the desperate and infertile cold with merely a thin layer of pajama separating his tiny body from the icebox that lie just beyond the protection of our front door’s warm threshold. Startled awake, he likely called out to our mother in the night. When his cries fell on deaf ears, he went searching for her, outside into the frozen abyss.
Racked by resentment and riddled with remorse, I would spend years replaying in my mind the details and events leading up to when my brother must have crawled from his bed, walked through the living room and out the front door, all with me laying just feet away in the next room. When images of my bright-eyed, chubby-cheeked and precious baby brother fail to elude my dreams, I see myself as an omnipresence hovering above him protectively as he searches for our mother. I float above him as he teeters down the hallway between the kitchen and front room and places his tiny hand on the doorknob. In a fleeting attempt to alter fate, I press the <PAUSE> button and capture him in that moment forever, before I awaken.
Alcohol consoled my mother after Greenland’s revengeful winter took her youngest son. It took less than a week before she’d return to the ritual of her nightly pilgrimages. Out into the ominous night, she’d march intently into the outstretched arms of her greedy Inuit man and the comfort of drink. I no longer go to the window, wiping condensation away with my sleeve, and watch her vanish into the night. I no longer romanticize about the mother I wish I had, preferring instead to focus my attention on football, fleeing Greenland and the sweet, melodious memories of my darling brother Umik.
It took my mother three attempts to shut the door behind her because snow and ice have collected in the jam. Impatient, she slammed the door with such force it rattled the house. Thoughts again return to my brother and that door. My mother will never know the adoration and love she’s squandered away by her neglect and drinking, nor does she care. She doesn’t realize we were born to love her unconditionally and forever. With a shred of love, care and kindness, she could have painted for us a contented and picturesque view of our family, no matter how deprived and depressed it truly was. Furthermore, she does not know years of handmade cards, gifts and pictures lovingly made for her, sit in an old boot box under my bed, untouched.
I knelt next to my bed and flipped up the white dust ruffle turned gray by dust and the absence of cleaning. I pulled that boot box carefully out from underneath my bed and removed the lid. Resting on top was its latest addition, a picture Umik made from a whittled down collection of broken and peeling crayons. I’ve only seen that picture once before, the day I woefully placed it in that box on top of all the others. That was the day before we found him outside the front door, beneath the porch light, frozen in time. I smiled as I gazed at that picture, the last piece of proof Umik was ever here. It depicts a tall, dark-haired stick person, adorned by two smaller stick-like figures. A bright orange sun glows in the top right corner of the page above the trio of figures holding hands. “Not bad for a three year old.” I say aloud and place that picture next to a framed photograph of a gleeful Umik wearing a handmade cardboard birthday hat and holding a balloon I had given him for his third birthday.
In an attempt to relive that moment, I pick up the photograph and whisper, “Goodnight little man,” kissing the top of the frame gently before replacing it next to Umik’s art work on my nightstand. Hoping to carry the memory of Umik’s infectious laugh and smile with me forever, a laugh and smile unbeknownst to his own mother, I roll over and turn out the light.
The following night, I heard the low rumble of our lead sled dog’s foreboding growl coming from her heated kennel outside. The resonance of her snarl traveled through the frozen earth, into my house, warning me that my uncle had just stumbled past the pack. The sensation tingled the back of my legs and made the hair on my neck stand straight as I envisioned it had on the dogs. Frozen in fear, I resisted the urge to sit and wait for the evening’s ill-fated culmination of acts. I jumped up quickly from my chair and ran towards the front door, turning off the porch light. All in one motion, I grabbed my boots, parka, gloves and hat and ran towards the barn that housed the sled and kenneled the murmuring pack. Off into the darkness, the cold clawing at my tear stunned cheeks, we traveled north towards Uummannaq. From the back of the pack, I cried out “Hike!” and the lead snarled to her followers and lunged forward, moving us along as one lone unit. We glided along, swift and smooth, atop firmly compacted ice covered in slush. The sled jolted to the left and then back to the right, knocking me from my feet. Regaining my balance, I pursed my lips together to make a loud kissing sound signaling to the lead to speed up. I would not command the dogs to slow down, “Easy,“ until I was sure the horrors of my past were behind me. Nor would I give the command to halt, “Whoa,” until I had the glowing warmth of the Children’s Home windows firmly transfixed in my view. We traveled this way, the pack and I, for three days and nights. Little did I know my abhorrent past life would soon catch up to me there.
Drained of every ounce of strength and energy, the worn pack delivered my broken body to the front door of the Children’s Home, back to where it all started. The light of the glowing embers ignited within the concrete blocks of the fireplace spilled out through the windows onto snowy mounds surrounding the home. The exuded warmth caused droplets of water to take turns dripping off conical icicles hanging from the eaves. The smoke from the fireplace smelled musky and sweet and it tickled my nose. Joyous sounds of laughter and the every day chitter-chatter of Greenland’s forgotten children were carried around the house on the backs of tiny angels and dispersed by the fluttering of their delicate wings. I am one of them, and they are one of me.
During my stay at the Children’s Home, I concentrated my efforts on forgiveness, forgetting and football. In time, my teammates became my family. I no longer jounced along in life like a punished football, kicked and passed along from person to person. My teammates protected and supported me and I learned to ask for help and accept it. Like my father on his shrimp boat, I stayed a steady course, perfecting my game.
During a football tournament against our rivaling team from the Faroe Islands, The Danish National Football Team, the Danish Dynamite, was sent to scout our teams. Several of us were invited to return to Denmark and tryout. My hopes and dreams came to fruition as I boarded that plane. Climbing higher and higher, I looked out the window at the white vastness of Greenland with all its luster and vitality. The jagged terrain of the coastal mountains glistened with the refracted light from billions of miniscule, polished diamonds. Its peaks gently forced upwards by the weight of the glowing, cyan birdbath glacier in the center of the island. I took a deep breath of air and let it out slowly, disintegrating years of disappointment. The air turned fresh and clean. The landscape, immense and opalescent, looked cool, crisp and new.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” commented one of my teammates on the view below.
“Yes,” I said retrospectively. “She really is.”