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

at my freckles and trying to pretend he’s not. Measuring my freckles against Swede’s, probably. “Could see Swede in you all right,” he says.

I lift my chin and look right at him. “How’s Aaka Mae?”

He knows who Aaka Mae is—everybody knows Mae and

everyone calls her Aaka, too, like she is the whole world’s grandma, which she pretty much is.

“Aaka Mae? Th

ey take her to Fairbanks.”

Fairbanks? It gets hard to breathe all of a sudden. I watch wordlessly while he heaves my suitcase into the back of his truck. Clouds of dust rise up behind us as the truck bumps along the dirt road, taking us to Swede’s store. All I can think is: Aaka Mae, gone.

LUKE

—

Th

e door swings open, and there’s Uncle Joe, holding his gun and grinning. Th

e sun shining behind his head looks like a

halo or something.

“So they gonna let you hunt down there?” he says.

Me and Bunna are suddenly tongue-tied staring at that gun, the one that never ever misses a shot.

“Sure,” I manage fi nally. “One moose or three caribou—

that’s one semester’s worth.”

70

my name is n ot easy final text_.indd Sec1:70

18/07/2011 8:25 PM

T H E S I Z E O F T H I N G S B A C K H O M E / L u k e , S o n n y & C h i c k i e I don’t think Joe knows anything about semesters or tuition and I don’t think he cares, either. But I can tell by the way he looks down at his gun that he’s calculating moose and caribou to bullets.

Th

en he looks up—looks right at me, hard. “You take care of your brother, now, okay?”

I nod, looking at the gun, calculating the best way to angle the barrel, shooting through trees.

CHICKIE

—

Standing in the store, I suddenly realize that for some totally crazy reason, I actually missed the smell of Swede’s store, with its fox furs on the wall and cans of stove oil on the fl oor and its dusty shelves full of fl our and jam and coff ee and nails. Th ere’s

two ladies in the back of the store, one young and one old, debating about which fabric to buy, and this makes me realize, suddenly, that I missed hearing the sound of Iñupiaq, too.

And I especially missed the feel of Swede, crushing me up against his fl annel shirt without a word. We don’t need a lot of words, Swede and I, because that’s how we are. We always know what each other is going to say before we say it, so a lot of times we don’t even bother talking. Swede already knew about my fi rst question, for example. I can see it in his eyes when I pull away from his hug and look at his face.

He looks down, folding his arms across his chest like he’s trying to hug himself.

“Th

ey had to put her in a home.”

71

my name is n ot easy final text_.indd Sec1:71

18/07/2011 8:25 PM

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

Th

e way he says home makes it sound like it’s some new word, a word that has sharp, hissing edges and doesn’t have anything at all to do with family.

“Why?”

For a moment that word just sort of hangs there in the air between us like a hook.

“She needed to be there,” Swede says.

One of the ladies shopping plops a bolt of fabric on the counter and says, “Th

ree yards.” Th

en she turns back to

the older woman and asks, in Iñupiaq, if that’s going to be enough.

I stand there watching Swede measure the material,

thinking about how the English language makes me so mad sometimes. She needed to be there. How can a person use the word needed in a sentence that has nothing whatsoever to do with need?

LUKE

—

Bunna and I are standing by our duffl

es, all ready to go. It’s not

like the fi rst time we left, that’s for sure. I’m thinking about all the kids I’m going to see—Amiq and Donna and Junior.

I miss them all—even the Pete boys. Even Sonny, which surprises me. We are watching the plane land, and I’m already thinking about soaring back up into those summer clouds and landing in the middle of all those trees. I even miss the trees.

I’m holding Uncle Joe’s gun with Bunna right next to me like a sergeant at arms. Mom is standing off to the side, 72

my name is n ot easy final text_.indd Sec1:72

18/07/2011 8:25 PM

T H E S I Z E O F T H I N G S B A C K H O M E / L u k e , S o n n y & C h i c k i e looking lonely. Jack’s gone now, has been for months. No one’s sure where he went, and none of us miss him much, either, except for Mom. I put my arm around her, looking down at the gun, proud of myself. I want her to be proud, too, but Mom’s not looking at the gun; she’s looking fi rst at Bunna, then at me, then back to Bunna, like she’s trying to memorize our faces, trying to keep herself from crying by looking extra hard. And then Uncle Joe is here, striding cross the tarmac and smiling big as day.

“Hey!”

He nods at the gun one last time. “I’m only loaning her to you, remember. Don’t you forget to bring her back.”

I hold the gun