before.
“It’s a permission form, Mildred, not an affi
davit,” Sister
says sharply, reading it slowly, like she’s looking for something.
Something bad. “In loco parentis,” she says. “Good.”
“Father will need to have it notarized,” Mildred says, looking up. “Oh look, he’s already got the car.”
Sister looks out the window, and I do, too, still chewing on that stringy word: notarized. It sounds like something that might hurt. Outside a long, square car pulls up in front of the school.
“Come along then, Isaac,” Sister says, pulling Isaac by the shoulder. Me and Bunna start to follow, but she turns to look back at us, still clutching Isaac. “You two, go with the other students,” she says.
We look back, but the others are gone. Th
e hallway is
empty and dark and full of nothing but whispery echoes and 20
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dark shadows. Sister looks back, too, then nods. “All right then, gentlemen. You two may follow. I’ll get you settled after.”
After feels like a big black hole, and Sister is perched on the edge of it, clutching Isaac. Isaac’s eyes are spots of bright black terror.
What am I going to do?
We follow Sister outside, where the one she calls Father—
the one with the squashed face—is sitting in that car, waiting.
And before I even get a chance to move or call out, “NO!”
Father reaches out, pulls Isaac inside the car, and Sister slams the door, stepping back, her white dress fl apping in the night.
He’s got our baby brother; that priest has Isaac.
Isaac is trying to pull away from him, all right, but he’s too little. And I’m trying to run after him, but that old nun is clutching me now, her skinny fi ngers sharp as steel.
“Th
at’s enough,” she says. “He’ll be fi ne.”
Her voice sounds just like a seagull, a seagull circling above someone’s meat rack, getting ready to steal.
We watch as the car drives off , Isaac’s face pressed up against the window, his eyes pleading, me standing there.
Helpless.
What am I going to tell Mom? What the heck am I ever going to tell our mom? I was supposed to take care of my brothers.
Bunna and I follow Sister, like she says, the two of us pressed together tight—a broken fi st of brothers. She takes us to the place where there’s food and leaves us, still clinging together, at the tail end of the food line. We’re too scared to eat right now but too hungry not to.
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I can still see Isaac’s tear-streaked face pressed against the window of that car. Like it’s happening over and over, like time’s folded in on itself, and part of me is always going to be trapped on this side of things, watching that car disappear into the dark woods with my little brother trapped inside.
Gone.
I’m starving, all right, but all I know right now is that hunger feels the same as fear, sitting in my stomach, hard.
Th
ey call the place where us kids are supposed to eat a cafeteria. It’s big and square with long tables and steaming food and it’s got two sides: the Indian side and the Eskimo side.
“What about Isaac?” Bunna whispers. “Where’s Isaac
gonna eat?”
“He’s okay,” I lie. “Th
ey gonna feed him better food where
he’s at.”
Like I know.
Th
e nun with the meat is tall enough to be one of the iñukpasuks, one of big people, but I don’t say this to Bunna.
“Don’t touch the meat,” I whisper.
Bunna is really hungry, but he’s scared enough to pull his tray back quick when I whisper it. I’m not sure what made me say it—I just don’t trust this place, not even the meat. Especially not the meat. Who knows where it comes from?
“No meat?” the iñukpasuk says. Her face looks confused, and even though she’s very big, I see right away that her face is more of a girl’s face, the kind of girl who is someone’s friend.
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“Are you boys sick? Maybe I ought to take you to the infi rmary? Have you caught the fl u?”
“We never,” I say.
Bunna nods quick. “We never.”
I don’t know that word infi rmary and I don’t like the sound of it, either. Infi rmary. Like someplace where you get put into, maybe. Like a cage or a net or a long, square trap.
Th
e giant nun looks at the other nun—the old one with the seagull voice—and it seems like she’s waiting to be told what to do. Th
at’s when Amiq steps up behind us, grinning. I
don’t guess that kid ever quits grinning.
“Sister Mary Kate, these boys are members of the Whale Clan. Th
ey can’t eat this kinda meat right here.” His voice is smooth as water.
Whale Clan? I don’t know what the heck a Whale Clan is, and by the look on her face, I’m guessing Sister doesn’t know either. But Amiq just smiles right up at her like she’s his favor-ite aunt or something.
“Th
ey can’t eat this kind.” He leans up real close to the nuns. “You know. Taboo.” He whispers that word like he’s telling her a secret.
“Oh. Well. I see,” Sister says quickly. And blushes. Th en
she looks at Bunna’s tray.
“Why, you didn’t even get any milk!” she says. “Milk’s good for you, boys. You will drink some, won’t you?”
Sister sounds so worried about it that I raise my eyebrows quick to say “yes.” I don’t tell her we don’t like milk, especially 23
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not Bunna. Milk always makes our stomachs hurt, sometimes.
Especially Bunna’s.
“Yes?” she says anxiously.
“Sure, Sister,” Amiq says. “Lots of milk.”
When I catch Amiq’s eye, I have to look away quick because all of a sudden I don’t have any control over my feelings. I might start crying or I might start laughing, and I can’t tell which. Everything feels weird and scary and funny, all mixed up together: us not eating meat and that old nun piling my plate sky high with string beans and carrots, and the way she watches Amiq out of the side of her eye like he’s a dog about to make a mess.
When she hands him his plate, Amiq looks at his food and says, “Why thank you, Sister!” smiling from ear to ear like string beans and greasy carrots is the best kind of present a kid could ever get. And all of a sudden I have to stare really hard at all those beans to keep from laughing, because if I start laughing now, it’s going to hurt. If I start laughing now, I’m probably gonna die laughing. Sometimes laughing is the worst kind of crying there is.
“Now you know how to take care of them nuns,” Amiq
whispers as we walk away. He nods back at the tall nun and winks at the old one, his grin as sweet as cake.
Winks!
And for half a second it looks like that old bird might even be trying to smile back.
Th
at Amiq, he’s something else.
“What’s a Whale Can?” Bunna asks.
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N E V E R C R Y / L u k e
“Clan,” says Amiq. “Th
at’s Indian talk.” He nods over
at the table where the Indian kids sit, staring at
us. “Th is is
Indian country, so we gotta talk that way sometimes. It’s what them nuns understand.”
“But how come you said we can’t eat meat?” Bunna asks, switching into Iñupiaq. He looks fi rst at Amiq and then at me. “Th
at’s a lie. We could eat meat anytime we want.”
Amiq looks at me for a second and says, “It’s not a lie,”
smiling.
You can tell Bunna’s trying to fi gure this out. Amiq looks like he’s trying to fi gure it out, too. “You know how they have to keep ocean foods separate from land foods, right?” he says suddenly.
Bunna nods. Everybody knows how in the ice cellar you have to store whale meat and caribou meat in separate rooms.
Th
at’s true.
“You know what happens if you don’t keep them sepa-
rate?”
Bunna frowns. He doesn’t know.
“You die,” Amiq says.
Bunna snorts, like he thinks it’s a joke, but you can tell by his eyes that he isn’t quite sure. “Yeah, so how we gonna know how they store their meat?” he says.
“Th
at’s right,” Amiq says, quick as anything. “How we
gonna know?”
I fi ll up my glass with milk, watching the nuns out of the side of my eye. Bunna fi lls his glass real slow. He’s watching the nuns, too, especially that big one, the iñukpasuk.
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
“Th
ey gonna make us drink all of it?” he asks.
Th
e milk looks lumpy.
“Atchuu,” I say, shrugging. “It won’t hurt you.”
“Why can’t we just get meat instead?” he asks. “Th
em guys
know how to keep meat, I bet.”
“Don’t matter how they keep their meat, okay? We still don’t eat it.”
Bunna scowls.
“Horse meat! ” I hiss. “Th
ey’re trying to make us eat horse
meat. Okay?”
I’m talking in Iñupiaq and saying it hard, but as soon as the word leaves my mouth, I wish I never said it, because Bunna’s mouth gets real small, like a little zero, and you could tell he’s thinking about Roy Rogers and his horse, Trigger, who is someone a person would never want to eat. I know I should tell him it’s just a joke, but for some reason I just don’t want him touching that meat.
“I want to go home,” Bunna whispers.
“Me, too,” I say, loud and sharp. “And we will. Soon.”
“Is it horse milk, too?”
“Of course not,” I say. As if I know.
We sit down at the table, still talking, and I can feel them Indians watching, which is why I’m talking louder than usual and talking in Iñupiaq, too. I want them to wonder about what I’m saying and I want them to know by the sound of my voice not to mess with me. I’m concentrating so hard I don’t even notice that old priest, the one that took Isaac, hovering over top of us, tapping a ruler against the side of his hand like 26
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N E V E R C R Y / L u k e
he’s keeping count of something. Tapping the whole room quiet until pretty soon it feels like everybody is holding their breath, watching us.
“And what was your name again, young man?” the priest says. Th
e way he says it is like he’s saying something else.
Something bad.
“Luke,” I say.
Amiq, behind him, mouths the word “FATHER,” then
looks down quick.
“Father,” I add quickly.
“Put your hands on the table, Luke,” Father says.
I do what he says, and he slaps the backs of my fi ngers with his ruler, slaps them hard enough to make the sting run up and down the sides of my arm like lightning.
“Here we speak English,” he says.
I stare off into the cafeteria, my face blank . I will not cry . . .
I will not cry.
“Yes, Father,” I say, looking down like I’m supposed to.
I will never cry.
Th
en, before Father can say another word, Bunna grabs his milk and drinks the whole glass fast, lumps and all, gasping for air like his life depends on it.
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Indian Country
SEPTEMBER 6, 1960
SONNY AND CHICKIE
—
—
Sonny was here last year and so was Amiq. Th ey both knew
the rules. Th
is side of the cafeteria is Indian Country and
that one over there is for Eskimos. Two sides, just like a board game—just like that chess game one of the volunteers had taught them how to play last year. Th
e fl oor even
looked like a chessboard, with big black and white squares.
On this side of the board, Sonny was king. Th
e other side
was Amiq’s.
Everyone else knew the rules, too, everyone except those two girls, sitting at their own table in their own fi eld of squares: one black-haired and one blond. Th
ose two were out
of the game altogether. Or maybe they’d already been cap-tured, Sonny thought, watching the way the dark one’s long hair rippled across the side of her face. Her name was Donna and she’d been here last year, too. She never said a word to anyone about anything.
Skittish as a wolf.
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I N D I A N C O U N T R Y / S o n n y a n d C h i c k i e Last year she always did the same thing: held her cafeteria tray in front of her chest like it might protect her, trying to fi nd the safest spot to sit. Sometimes she found a spot off in the corner, away from everyone, where she would sit real quiet.
Sometimes she wouldn’t even eat. Sonny paid attention to these kinds of things because he was used to looking after kids.
Th
at’s how it is when you’re the oldest kid in a big family.
Th
e freckled white girl with her was new and younger and, unlike Donna, she was so full of words she didn’t seem to have any control over when they came out or what they said. And you could tell that it didn’t make a bit of diff erence to her where she sat. Her name was Chickie, and she and Donna were roommates. Sonny’d heard her talking to Sister Mary Kate.
Sonny hadn’t seen that other kid until just now—he was small and unnoticeable, wearing huge black-framed Alaska Native Health Service glasses and sitting at the far end of the girls’ table, all alone—a little Eskimo with bad eyes. Sonny hadn’t noticed him until he shoved those glasses up onto the bridge of his nose, shifting himself into Sonny’s fi eld of vision with that one little movement.
Suddenly two more new girls were steering their trays across the room toward Sonny, sliding down onto the bench next to him like they’d known him forever, which they hadn’t.
Sonny, in fact, had never before seen either one of them. But even though they weren’t from his village, they were Athabascan, just like him, and they’d fi gured out the lay of the land in one shot. He moved over to make room for them.
Th
e one girl was named Rose and the other was Evelyn.
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
Evelyn reminded Sonny of old Anna Sam back home. Tough as a wolverine, with the kind of eyes that never missed a thing.
And right now she had her eyes trained on Amiq, who was marching across the cafeteria with his little string of Eskimo pawns. Evelyn didn’t like the
looks of Amiq, you could tell, but she’d already fi gured out how things worked here at Sacred Heart School, and she knew that Amiq was the one Eskimo you had to deal with if you were going to deal with Eskimos.
“Somebody oughtta teach that kid a thing or two , ” she muttered, looking straight at Sonny, like she fi gured Sonny’d be the one to do the teaching. Sonny nodded.
Th
e nuns had given them plates full of stringy meat,
mushy vegetables, and perfectly rounded scoops of potatoes with brown gravy poured on top, which made them look like ice cream sundaes, the kind you could buy at Dairy Queen in Fairbanks if you were rich. Th
e meat was okay, but the pota-
toes had no taste at all. Th
e gravy didn’t taste right, either. Like
someone had drained all the fat off .
“Swede never lets us eat fake potatoes,” Chickie announced loud enough for the whole place to hear. She wrinkled her nose for emphasis.
Donna didn’t say anything and neither did any of the others. Rose and Evelyn watched Chickie suspiciously from the sides of their eyes, and the Eskimos gave each other looks.
Chickie put her chin up high, looked right at Sonny, then grinned at all the Eskimos, even at the little one sitting off by himself.
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I N D I A N C O U N T R Y / S o n n y a n d C h i c k i e Fearless, Sonny thought. Dumb, but fearless. Where the heck did she come from?
“Hey, Junior. Come sit by us,” she called out, and the little kid with the big glasses picked up his tray, obediently, and moved over, shoving his glasses onto the bridge of his nose again and glancing around, like he was embarrassed to be singled out, embarrassed to move and embarrassed not to. All the Eskimo kids nodded at him and smiled like they all shared some private joke.
Th
is made Sonny nervous.
You don’t quiet down, them Eskimos gonna catch you when you go outside to pee and chop your head right off . Play kickball with it. Th
at’s what Sonny’s mom used to tell them when they
got too wild back home. And when you’re a little kid needing to pee and it’s dark outside, talk like that can scare the pee right out of you.
My Name Is Not Easy Page 3