I gaze out the window at our family: a little knot on a fringe of tundra, waving in the wind. When she sees me, Mom opens her mouth and hollers. I can’t hear her voice, but I can read my name on the shape of her lips, my real name.
Th
e name I’m leaving behind.
“How come we don’t get to go BIA schools?” Bunna asks.
“Guess we’re special,” I say, and the kid sprawled out on the seat across the aisle grins big.
“You going to Sacred Heart?” he asks.
Bunna fl ops his head up and down.
“Hey. Put her there,” the kid says, extending his hand.
“Me, too.”
And right then and there you know he owns Bunna.
“You ever been to Sacred Heart before?” Bunna asks.
“Sure,” the kid says. “Sure have.” Like he’s been everywhere and back again.
“So what’s it like?”
“Well, it’s not like home, all right, but you get used to it.
8
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y / L u k e Know what I mean?”
We nod our heads, even Isaac, like we really do know.
Th
en I turn to watch out the window as the plane noses up into the sky. All the families get smaller and smaller, slipping away from us like peas off a plate.
“How far is it to Sacred Heart School?” Bunna asks.
“’Bout as far as the moon,” the kid says.
Bunna looks out the window quick, his eyes big.
“I jokes,” the kid says.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
He leans over onto his elbow, like a cowboy in front of a campfi re.
“Amiq,” he says. He says it slow and sure, like he’s daring the world to get it right.
Th
en the plane levels out and sweeps across the tundra, rising slowly up toward the sliver of moon that still hangs in the morning sky.
For a fraction of a second it feels like the earth below us has split wide open and swallowed up everything I ever knew.
Like the earth itself is fl ipping over and falling away like it did a long time ago. Like there’s a big scar down there on the tundra, a jagged place where the edges will never ever line up smooth again.
Not ever.
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Looking for a Tree
SEPTEMBER 6, 1960
CHICKIE
—
I was fi ve years old before I fi gured out I wasn’t really Eskimo. It’s weird it took me so long since I have hair as blond as snow, freckles like crazy, and a dad named Swede.
I mean, who ever heard of an Eskimo with freckles, for Heaven’s sake? But I never thought about this when I was a little girl in Kotzebue, Alaska, because Swede didn’t have any use for mirrors, so our house never had one. Th ey say
I look like my momma, but I wouldn’t know about that, either. Swede never had pictures. Now here I am at Sacred Heart School in a room with four beds, one huge mirror, and a picture of Mother Mary, big as life.
Th
e one thing Swede told me about Sacred Heart was that I’d see a lot of trees here, and he was right about that—Sacred Heart School is in a valley that’s full to the brim with trees.
In the late afternoon sun, the ones outside my window shake their yellow leaves and wave their papery white trunks like dancers. Farther off in the distance are great big ones, dark as 10
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L O O K I N G F O R A T R E E / C h i c k i e priests, poking holes in the sky with their prickly tops. Th is
is all brand new to me because in Kotzebue, Alaska, there are no trees—not real ones anyhow.
Swede says the fi st time he ever saw my momma, that’s where she was—high up in a tree. She was so far up, he didn’t even see her at fi rst, didn’t even think to look up until he took his suspenders off to make a slingshot, and a couple of birds started laughing at him. Th
at’s what it sounded like, anyhow,
because at the exact same moment my mother started laughing, two jays started screeching. When Swede fi nally looked up, there was my momma, sitting up in that tree like a big blond bird, laughing.
So all I ever wanted to do, just once, was to see what it would feel like to sit up in a tall tree, looking down, because my momma died before she could teach me about trees. I fi gure if you look hard enough in a place like this, you’ll fi nd a tree tall enough to reach the clouds—tall enough to reach Heaven, maybe, which is where my momma is, though Swede never says it. Aaka Mae—she’s the one who helped raise me after Momma died—she says Heaven’s a place way up in the sky where everyone is always happy and no one is ever sick and they eat pie every single day. Only you have to die to get there, which I, personally, have questions about. Someday I’ll get answers, too, because I’m stubborn. When stubborn people have questions, they don’t give up until they get answers. Stubborn people can probably fi gure out how to climb trees without anybody’s help just fi ne, too.
At least that’s what I fi gure, sneaking out the back door of 11
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
the school when no one’s looking. I’m going to fi nd a tree to climb. A really tall one.
But right away I discover two really important things about the trees here at Sacred Heart School: most of them are either too skinny or too prickly to climb, and none of them have branches in the right places. If I want to climb a tree, I’m going to have to fi nd one of those really big ones I saw from the window.
I think I’m heading in the right direction, but it’s hard to tell because trees keep getting in the way, so I have to walk around them. Sometimes I fi nd little trails to follow, but then the trails disappear, just like that, and it’s nothing but trees again. Th
e air has a sharp tang to it, too, like it’s fi xing to snow. And I’m getting cold.
When you see trees out a window, they seem sort of
like people, each one with its own look, but when you’re in the middle of them, they all look the same—an army of scabby trunks joined together with prickly arms, never ending. I can’t even tell which way I came from now because no matter where I look, it’s all the same. No way in, no way out.
I’m freezing.
All of a sudden I have a bad thought. A person could freeze to death out here and no one would ever fi nd them.
I stop walking and look around, trying hard to fi gure things out. Th
at’s when I realize that the sky fi ltering down through the trees is getting darker by the second.
I’m scared.
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L O O K I N G F O R A T R E E / C h i c k i e It feels like the trees are starting to close in on me. Pressing in so tight it gets hard to breathe. What am I going to do?
What am I going to do?
I’m lost.
I start to run, desperate to get away, but the branches reach out and scratch my face, and the roots and rocks keep trying to trip me. When I stop to catch my breath, my heart is pounding against my chest so hard it hurts.
I want Swede!
I close my eyes tight and try to make him come. I know it’s dumb, but it’s all I can think to do. My feet are frozen to the ground, and I’m too scared to move.
Th
at’s when I remember something Swede said to Aaka
Mae once: a person can always fi nd a way out of a tight spot so long as they don’t panic.
I take a deep breath, trying to ignore my stomach, which seems determined to panic.
Don’t panic, Chickie Snow. Th
&
nbsp; ink.
I say this over and over and over until my body starts to relax.
Th
en I have an idea: If there’s no way anyone’s going to see me or even know where to look, I’m going to have to make noise. A lot of noise.
“Help!” I holler it as loud as I possibly can, but my voice comes out soft and squeaky.
“Help!” I try to make my voice hard and tough, but
the cold wind gulps up the sound before it even leaves my mouth, and the dark swallows it. I start walking again, 13
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
anyhow, hollering weak little noises into the bristly black shadows, feeling more hopeless every step I take.
I’m done for. Mother Mary, help!
Suddenly I see something familiar: a fi fty-fi ve-gallon oil drum lying on its side. I look around real good because it goes to fi gure that where there’s oil drums, there’s people.
So now I’m standing here looking at that drum real hard, like it has to have the answer to my problem locked up inside it.
“Which way?” I whisper. “Which way?”
Everywhere I look seems full of black shadows. Th
en I get
another idea. I pick up a piece of dead wood and start banging on the side of that drum, yelling like crazy.
“Help!” Bang! Bang! “Help!”
I keep at it, hollering and banging with such a passion, I don’t hear anything else and don’t even realize there’s someone there until I see a fl uttering of white emerge from the black trees like a ghost. And believe me, this is a sight that scares the sound right out of me.
Th
en I realize it’s one of the nuns.
“Sister!” I bellow, running at her.
“My goodness,” she says. “What in the world is going on here?”
She’s really tall, tall as a tree, but something in her voice sounds more like a mother than like a nun.
“I . . . I got lost.” My voice feels small, and there’s a big, stinging lump of tears in my throat.
“What on earth are you doing out here?”
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L O O K I N G F O R A T R E E / C h i c k i e
“Looking,” I say, tears starting to roll down my checks.
“Looking for a tree.”
Sister sits down next to me, and before I know it, I’m crying for real.
“Looking for a tree,” she says with a little laugh. “Well, it looks like you found one.”
And all of a sudden, I start laughing, too, laughing and crying at the same time. Me sitting in the middle of an endless forest looking for a tree!
“You’re not used to this kind of woods, are you?”
I shake my head.
“Me neither,” she says. “We have bigger trees where I come from, but not so many. It’s a bit intimidating, isn’t it?”
I nod because even though I never heard that word before, I can tell what it means by the way she says it. Intimidating is the way these trees close in around a person, like they might try and choke you.
“It feels like this wilderness goes on forever,” she says. I don’t say anything because it seems like she’s talking more to herself than to me. And anyhow, it feels good sitting right next to her, feeling warm and not having to worry about intimidating things.
“Th
e garden is right over there,” she says softly, pointing back the way she came. “See? You weren’t really lost.”
Off in the distance, I can hear the sound of a door banging shut and a hint of kids’ voices.
“We just made a batch of cookies. Would you like one?”
I nod.
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
“What’s your name, dear?”
I sure like the way she says that word— dear.
“Cecilia Snow,” I tell her. “But people that know me always call me Chickie.”
“Well, I’m Sister Mary Kate,” she says, standing up, “and it’s almost time for dinner, Chickie, so you and I had better hurry up inside.”
And so we do.
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Never Cry
SEPTEMBER 6, 1960
LUKE
—
Sacred Heart School is gray and shadowy, crouching in the trees like a big, blocky animal. I don’t like the look of those trees, either, especially not in the dark. Th
ey’re black and
grasping, and they make strange fl apping noises, like something mean’s leaning over you, trying to suck the wind right out of you.
How could a person even breathe here? Back home, it doesn’t get dark so early in the day this time of year, either, which make this place seem really wrong. Me and Bunna and Isaac are just standing here in front of the school, staring.
Th
is place doesn’t look anything at all like those schools in Life magazine.
I can feel Mom’s voice, whispering deep down inside—
Take care of your brothers—and right now all I want to do is grab my brothers and run. Bunna is staring into the tree-fi lled darkness with wide eyes.
“You think there’s evil spirits in there?” Bunna whispers, 17
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
watching the branches swing back and forth in the wind and ducking his head like he’s afraid one might reach out and try grab him.
“Naw,” I say. “Th
ere ain’t.” But I duck my head, too, for
just a second.
When we look up, we both see him at the same time: a skinny, old priest. With his black clothes and clawlike hands, he looks like a big, bald-headed raven.
“Bet that’s where them preachers live,” I whisper, nodding at those trees.
And suddenly that old guy looks really funny—both me and Bunna see it at the same time. Like he’s pretending to be the kind of thing that would actually live in the middle of all those big black trees. Th
e kind of thing that is scary and funny,
both at the same time. Like at puuqtaluk, the costume contest back home, where old people dress up goofy to try and scare us and make us laugh, putting their parkas on inside out and dragging their arms across the fl oor like monsters learning to dance.
Th
e priest’s nose is mashed up weird against his cheek, too, like he’s got a nylon stocking on his face, and now I see he’s wearing a black dress. I look at Bunna and he looks at me, and we both start giggling. And every time we look at each other, we laugh harder. Just like at puuqtaluk. Even Isaac’s laughing now, peeking out from under Bunna’s arm.
I don’t think Isaac even knows what’s so funny. All he knows is we’re laughing and sometimes, especially when you’re scared, it’s just good to laugh.
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N E V E R C R Y / L u k e
Th
en that old priest speaks. “How old is your brother?”
he asks, looking right at Isaac, Isaac who isn’t even seven yet.
It feels like everyone and everything has stopped breathing, even the trees.
“Six,” Bunna squeaks before I can stop him.
“I see,” says the priest.
I don’t like the sound of those words, because the way he says it means that whatever it is he sees, it’s something bad, something that makes him herd us into the school, away from the other kids, like we’re sick or something.
“Sit over there,” the priest says, waving at a bench
by the wall. We sit, like rocks in the river, watching kids moving past us, staring. Th
e priest swoops off into a room across the
hall, and a door shuts behind him with a snap. We sit on a hard bench, waiting. It feels like we wait forever. Finally, an old lady in a long white dress opens the door, and the priest sweeps past her without a word, throwing shadows up and down the hall.
“Your little brother is too young for Sacred Heart School,”
the lady tells us. “Th
ey shouldn’t have sent him.” Her voice
sounds soft and weak, like a scrawny seagull way up high. But her hand reaching for Isaac’s shoulder is hard as a steel trap.
“Th
ere’s a family in town where he can stay for a while, until we get things sorted out.”
Th
ey’re stealing Isaac.
My heart starts to beat so fast, I’m sure I’m gonna choke.
“It’s only temporary,” she says.
19
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
Th
ey’re taking Isaac away. Forever. Th
at’s what she’s really
saying. I can feel it. But I don’t speak. My throat is frozen.
Another lady bursts out of the offi
ce, waving a piece of
paper. Th
is lady is big and solid and wears a skirt and sweater the color of ashes.
Th
e old lady looks at her. “Father’s gone to get the station wagon,” she says.
Father’s gone to get the trap. Th
at’s what she really means.
“Here’s the affi
davit, Sister,” the lady in gray says, handing
the paper to the old lady.
I watch the way Sister holds that paper, reading it slowly, and I think about that word, affi
davit. It’s a word I never heard
My Name Is Not Easy Page 2