My Name Is Not Easy (4 page)

at’s what it sounded like, anyhow,

because at the exact same moment my mother started laughing, two jays started screeching. When Swede fi nally looked up, there was my momma, sitting up in that tree like a big blond bird, laughing.

So all I ever wanted to do, just once, was to see what it would feel like to sit up in a tall tree, looking down, because my momma died before she could teach me about trees. I fi gure if you look hard enough in a place like this, you’ll fi nd a tree tall enough to reach the clouds—tall enough to reach Heaven, maybe, which is where my momma is, though Swede never says it. Aaka Mae—she’s the one who helped raise me after Momma died—she says Heaven’s a place way up in the sky where everyone is always happy and no one is ever sick and they eat pie every single day. Only you have to die to get there, which I, personally, have questions about. Someday I’ll get answers, too, because I’m stubborn. When stubborn people have questions, they don’t give up until they get answers. Stubborn people can probably fi gure out how to climb trees without anybody’s help just fi ne, too.

At least that’s what I fi gure, sneaking out the back door of
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

the school when no one’s looking. I’m going to fi nd a tree to climb. A really tall one.

But right away I discover two really important things about the trees here at Sacred Heart School: most of them are either too skinny or too prickly to climb, and none of them have branches in the right places. If I want to climb a tree, I’m going to have to fi nd one of those really big ones I saw from the window.

I think I’m heading in the right direction, but it’s hard to tell because trees keep getting in the way, so I have to walk around them. Sometimes I fi nd little trails to follow, but then the trails disappear, just like that, and it’s nothing but trees again. Th

e air has a sharp tang to it, too, like it’s fi xing to snow. And I’m getting cold.

When you see trees out a window, they seem sort of

like people, each one with its own look, but when you’re in the middle of them, they all look the same—an army of scabby trunks joined together with prickly arms, never ending. I can’t even tell which way I came from now because no matter where I look, it’s all the same. No way in, no way out.

I’m freezing.

All of a sudden I have a bad thought. A person could freeze to death out here and no one would ever fi nd them.

I stop walking and look around, trying hard to fi gure things out. Th

at’s when I realize that the sky fi ltering down through the trees is getting darker by the second.

I’m scared.

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L O O K I N G F O R A T R E E / C h i c k i e
It feels like the trees are starting to close in on me. Pressing in so tight it gets hard to breathe. What am I going to do?

What am I going to
do
?

I’m lost.

I start to run, desperate to get away, but the branches reach out and scratch my face, and the roots and rocks keep trying to trip me. When I stop to catch my breath, my heart is pounding against my chest so hard it hurts.

I want Swede!

I close my eyes tight and try to make him come. I know it’s dumb, but it’s all I can think to do. My feet are frozen to the ground, and I’m too scared to move.

Th

at’s when I remember something Swede said to Aaka

Mae once: a person can always fi nd a way out of a tight spot so long as they don’t panic.

I take a deep breath, trying to ignore my stomach, which seems determined to panic.

Don’t panic, Chickie Snow. Th

ink.

I say this over and over and over until my body starts to relax.

Th

en I have an idea: If there’s no way anyone’s going to see me or even know where to look, I’m going to have to make noise. A lot of noise.

“Help!” I holler it as loud as I possibly can, but my voice comes out soft and squeaky.

“Help!” I try to make my voice hard and tough, but

the cold wind gulps up the sound before it even leaves my mouth, and the dark swallows it. I start walking again,
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

anyhow, hollering weak little noises into the bristly black shadows, feeling more hopeless every step I take.

I’m done for. Mother Mary, help!

Suddenly I see something familiar: a fi fty-fi ve-gallon oil drum lying on its side. I look around real good because it goes to fi gure that where there’s oil drums, there’s people.

So now I’m standing here looking at that drum real hard, like it has to have the answer to my problem locked up inside it.

“Which way?” I whisper. “Which way?”

Everywhere I look seems full of black shadows. Th

en I get

another idea. I pick up a piece of dead wood and start banging on the side of that drum, yelling like crazy.

“Help!”
Bang! Bang!
“Help!”

I keep at it, hollering and banging with such a passion, I don’t hear anything else and don’t even realize there’s someone there until I see a fl uttering of white emerge from the black trees like a ghost. And believe me, this is a sight that scares the sound right out of me.

Th

en I realize it’s one of the nuns.

“Sister!” I bellow, running at her.

“My goodness,” she says. “What in the world is going on here?”

She’s really tall, tall as a tree, but something in her voice sounds more like a mother than like a nun.

“I . . . I got lost.” My voice feels small, and there’s a big, stinging lump of tears in my throat.

“What on earth are you doing out here?”

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“Looking,” I say, tears starting to roll down my checks.

“Looking for a tree.”

Sister sits down next to me, and before I know it, I’m crying for real.