My Name Is Not Easy (20 page)

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
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comfort. Comfort is round and cold and hidden, pressed hard against my chest out here in the chill of Sacred Heart garden, where Sister Sarah and I are working, side by side, without a word.

I don’t know why Sister Sarah picked me to help in the garden. Every single girl but me raised her hand. I really wanted to work in the garden, but I knew she wouldn’t pick me. Th e

others raised their hands because they were afraid not to. Sister Sarah has a ruler, just like Father Mullen, and I’ve seen her slap kids’ hands, too, just like Father. But she isn’t mean like he is. She doesn’t have any anger crouched up inside her like Father does, only sternness. And she treats everyone sternly, even herself. I like this about her.

It’s time to dig up the last of the potatoes. Th

at’s what Sis-

ter says, showing me how to follow the plant stem to its roots and the roots to the potatoes. She doesn’t talk and I don’t, either. She digs, and I watch how her fi ngers read the roots.

Th

en I do it, too.

Sister looks almost like she’s praying, kneeling in the garden, digging potatoes. And when I think about it, it does seem like a way of praying, pressing our knees against the cold, black earth.

“See how the plant hides its potato?” Sister says, and I nod.

Guard well Th

y inner door where we reveal our need of

Th

ee.

Sister told the others she picked me because I know how to sit quietly. But out here on the edge of the woods, where you
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can see snow-covered mountains above the dark trees, she says something diff erent: she picked me because she knows I have a green thumb. She doesn’t explain what a green thumb is or how she knows I have one, but I think I already know. Having a green thumb means you can feel the whisper of green things, deep down inside you, like a special kind of prayer.

Tiny fl ecks of snow are falling from the sky. Th

ey fl icker

against the trees like little chips of light, and you can tell it’s going to snow hard some day soon. But right now it’s more like play, like the snow and the sky are teasing each other.

Part of me wishes we could stay out here forever, but the other part knows this won’t happen, of course, and that part isn’t even surprised when Sister Mary Kate bursts into the garden, squawking like a giant bird and swirling the falling snow into nervous fl urries.

“Sister! Sister! Th

ey’ve found a moose. Dead. On the high-

way.”

Sister Sarah brushes every last bit of dirt from the potato she’s just picked, moving very slowly, like she never even heard Sister Mary Kate.

“I imagine these things happen,” she says at last.

For some reason this makes me smile. I am not quite sure why Sister saying it’s normal for a moose to die on the highway should make me smile, but it does. I dig deeper into the cold ground, following the spidery roots, looking for another potato, trying to pretend I’m not really listening. But I can’t help thinking about that moose on the highway, the highway that threads up the sides of the mountain and disappears into
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the clouds. I am wishing as hard as I can that I could run right up into those cloud-wrapped mountains, where I’ve never been before.

Salvaging meat sounds like a frightening thing, the way Sister explains it. She looks at me helplessly, like she wants me to dig something out of the ground that will excuse her from salvaging, but all I can think of is how badly I want to go up onto that highway and see that moose.

“Well, surely it’s an act of Providence,” Sister Sarah says calmly. “We need the meat now.”

Sister Mary Kate tilts her head sideways, thinking. “Why, yes,” she says slowly. “It
is
an act of Providence, isn’t it?”

Sister Sarah lays a potato in her basket and then carefully reaches down to run her fi ngers over the tops of the tiny yellow fl owers that grow on the edges of the potato garden.

“Chamomile,” she says. “Makes a tea that calms the spirit.

Did you know that, Donna?”

I shake my head.

“It’s a useful thing to remember,” she says, and I nod.

Sister Mary Kate remains standing above us, one hand worrying the other, waiting for Sister Sarah to say something else, but Sister is too busy to notice. She’s laying stems of chamomile into her basket in neat rows of tiny, fl uff y yellow heads.

“Oh, Sister!” Mary Kate cries suddenly, “I’ve never in my life butchered an animal! I mean I wouldn’t even hurt a fl y, I just hate to see them suff er, don’t you know? But Father
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Mullen has put me in charge of this poor beast and . . . oh, dear! What am I going to do?”