My Name Is Not Easy by Edwardson, Dahl (the reading list TXT) 📗

tall nun is the one who does the baking,”

she said. In fact she was pretty sure that the tall one, Sister Mary Kate, was the pie baker, but she fi gured she ought to be polite, her being new and all. Aaka Mae said she had a tendency to be bossy, and she wanted to be sure not to be too bossy with her new roommate, her fi rst friend at Sacred Heart School.

Th

e nuns were starting to put the food away now, and

Donna had turned to watch them. Chickie turned, too. An old priest was standing next to the wall by the door, all draped 33

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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

in black. He looked like a black cat, that’s what Chickie thought. Like a big black cat waiting to catch something live in his skinny old claws. Donna looked at him, too, but only for a second. Th

en she looked away quick like she already

knew that priest, already knew all about him.

Chickie looked back at the nuns, but she could still feel that priest watching them. It made her skin prickle. She quickly took another bite of pie, studying the way the nuns were putting away the food.

“Th

e tall one is Sister Mary Kate,” Chickie told Donna, helping herself to more pie. “I wonder if she’s going to teach us how to cook. She’s a good cook, don’t you think?”

“Maybe it’s the other one who makes the pies,” Donna said.

Chickie almost laughed out loud. She didn’t want to be rude or anything, but that skinny old nun disappearing into the kitchen with stringy beans looked way too mean to make a pie this sweet.

Chickie looked back at the priest, but he wasn’t looking at her and Donna, she realized suddenly. He was watching the boys. Boys take a lot more watching than girls do. Th at’s what

Chickie fi gured.

“Did your mom teach you how to cook?” Chickie asked Donna.

She tried to say it real easy like a normal kid would say it, a kid with a mom. But Donna gave her a funny look anyhow, like she knew.

“I never learned to cook,” Donna said quietly.

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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 It’s true that a person can tell things about another person without anybody saying it. For instance, you can almost always tell by their hair which girls have mothers and which don’t.

Chickie’s hair was wild as a snowstorm, whereas Donna’s was tame as black syrup. Chickie teased a piece of pie crust back and forth across her plate, suddenly self-conscious.

“I don’t have a mother,” Donna said.

Chickie looked up, surprised. Donna took a bite of her own pie and didn’t say another word.

Two of the Eskimo kids were talking to each other in Eskimo, and Chickie could see right away that the priest did not like this. Not at all.

It’s true that some people get mad when they can’t understand what other people are saying, and Chickie could tell that this priest was one of those kinds of people. She looked back at Donna, but Donna wasn’t looking at the priest and she wasn’t looking at Chickie, either. She was looking straight out the window, her eyes empty, like she’d gone someplace else, someplace where priests couldn’t go.

Chickie looked out the window, too. Th

e moonlight was

shining on the yellow-leaved birch trees outside, making them twinkle and dance in the wind. For a fraction of a second, it got so quiet, Chickie swore she could even hear the sound those leaves were making.

Sonny felt a sudden chill in the air and looked around. Most of the other kids were still busy shoveling their mouths full of food, hungry after a long day of missing home. Th ose two

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Eskimo brothers were talking together in their own language.

Sonny watched them closely, trying to fi gure out what they were talking about.

“Horse meat!” the bigger one muttered, unaccountably.

Horse meat. An English word nobody ever used, laced into an Iñupiaq sentence. Weird.

Before Sonny even had a chance to fi gure it out, the whole room went dead quiet, and everyone looked up, as if by instinct. Th

at old priest was striding toward the Eskimo table, black as a storm cloud, shaking the whole place into an electric silence. He stopped right next to those two brothers and towered over them, tapping his hand with a ruler.

Some of the other kids might have wondered why he

needed a ruler at dinnertime, but Sonny already knew, and so did Amiq. Th

e two of them eyed each other without meaning

to.

Checkmate, Sonny thought, watching Father and ducking his head. Even without looking he could feel Father, standing there like a big black bishop in a game of his own—a bigger, meaner game.

And then the only sound in the whole room was the sound that ruler made, smacking that kid’s hand. Hard.

Sonny still didn’t look. No one looked. Th

ey all sat there

leaning into each other, one body of kids with a whole lot of dark, averted eyes.

Th

at Amiq should have warned his kids about Father, Sonny thought, glancing sideways at Amiq. He should have told them.

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