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

up, smiling as hard as a person can smile.

“I won’t,” I say.

“Yeah?” Joe winks, which makes his whole face wrinkle up like tissue and makes me notice, for the fi rst time, all those little wisps of gray hair around his ears.

All of a sudden I want to say no—no, don’t get gray hairs, no, don’t let us get on this plane, no, don’t let us leave with this gun of yours.

But before I know it, I’m sitting in the seat by the window, listening to the rising roar of the engine and watching everything get smaller—and smaller—and smaller.

CHICKIE

—

When we land in Fairbanks, all I can think about is the word home, the home where Aaka Mae is at—somewhere here in 73

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

Fairbanks. Where exactly is it and what’s it like? Th e home I

am imagining is a very lonely place. I look around and spot the little knot of Sacred Heart students congregating in the corner of the airport. Like orphans. Watching them, I have a sad thought: I’m halfway to being an orphan myself, Swede getting older and all.

How come I always have to think like this? I try to make my mind go somewhere else by imagining myself way up high, looking down at this fi dgeting little fi stful of kids, standing together at the Fairbanks airport, the boys making jokes and the girls ignoring them. Th

en I have another one of those

thoughts: Maybe someday all of us will be like Aaka Mae, sitting in homes that are not really homes. All alone and forgotten.

Suddenly, Evelyn hollers out my name, and I run to her like I’m running to meet a long-lost sister.

74

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PART II

The Day the Soldiers Came

1961–1962

We are living underground and we are many.

I can’t see the others but I can feel the warmth of their bodies and feel their hunger, too.

Th

eir hunger is my hunger.

Up on the surface, there is meat, frozen meat.

We know this.

“Is it warm enough to go up?” they ask.

“Too cold,” I say.

We all know the danger of cold and so we sleep, dreaming our collective dream.

Sleep until the time comes.

Sleep.

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Rose Hips and Chamomile

SEPTEMBER 1961

DONNA

—

We work in the garden, Sister Sarah and I, silent as stones. In the quiet between us, you can hear the things you can’t hear when people are talking and making noise. Like birds way up high, calling back and forth to each other, and the soft sound of wind tapping against the birch trees. Yellow leaves fl oat down around us like feathers.

Sister stands to move from one part of the garden to another. Her habit fl ickers in the light, casting shadows where she walks, and I think of myself, always living within the shadow and light of the nuns.

Th

e fi rst one was Sister Ann. I really didn’t understand that she wasn’t my real mother. It was winter, cold enough to freeze our blankets to the wall, and all anyone ever said was, her time to leave the Mission has come.

I thought I was going to leave with her, but I was

wrong.

I watched her dash out across the runway, her white habit 77

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

slapping in the wind, the wind that is always with us. Slapping back and forth across her legs, telling her to stay.

She pressed something cold and fl at into my hand, and I stood there clutching it for dear life, watching her leave without me. Because I knew right then, without anybody having to say it, that I couldn’t run after her, couldn’t even say how much I wanted to.

She had tears in her eyes, too. Th

is is what I saw. Tears

that made her eyes look shiny when she turned to look back at me—me, standing still and dumb on the edge of the tundra, unwilling to believe the truth of what my eyes were seeing.

I watched her step right up into the belly of that metal bird, watched the plane lift off toward Heaven, watched it fade into the roaring sky, my momma with it. Gone forever.

Because I knew, even then, it was forever.

And I didn’t make a single sound, either, because little as I was, I knew I was supposed to hide my feelings. I don’t remember ever not knowing this.

Th

e last thing Sister Ann told me was to have faith,

because everything happens for a reason. I didn’t understand what she meant then and I didn’t know anything at all about reasons, but I believed her. I have always believed her. And I still remember the words of the prayer she taught me: “Guard well Th

y inner door where we reveal our need of Th

ee.” I am

always guarding my inner door, keeping people away.

It was a Saint Christopher medal she’d given me and it had the year engraved across the back of it, like a secret message: 1953. I rub my thumb against those numbers now for 78

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R O S E H I P S A N D C H A M