My Name Is Not Easy (45 page)

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E S K I M O R O D E O / L u k e

right now, enough to know that Isaac’s alive somewhere, writing letters and swimming and climbing trees. Maybe even looking up at the same winter sky I’m looking at right now.

Maybe even watching the same stars I’m watching—the ones in the hunter’s constellation, bright as blazes. Th e one them

taniks
call Orion’s Belt.

When they fi rst told us how they named those three stars Orion’s Belt, we used to wonder, me and Bunna. We knew those three were really hunters, and we wondered how those three hunters got trapped like that in a giant’s belt.

I look up, and all of a sudden I’m laughing. Laughing and laughing all by myself, under the bright black sky. Th em hunters are right there, and that giant Orion don’t even know it.

Th

em hunters aren’t trapped at all. Th

ey’re just waiting for the

chance to take a shot. And when they do, that big old dumb Orion won’t even stand a chance. Not one single chance.

I don’t know how I know this, I just know.

I don’t know how Isaac’s gonna fi nd his way home, all right, but he will. All of a sudden, I’m as sure about this as I am about anything. Isaac will fi nd his way home. One way or another, we will all fi nd our way home. Even Bunna.

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Unchained Melody

MARCH 7, 1964

DONNA

—

Th

e girl in the mirror is watching her hair fall to the fl oor in thick black ropes, falling to the scratchy snip-snip rhythm of Evelyn’s scissors. Th

e girl in the mirror concentrates hard on

something off in the distance, as if she doesn’t even hear the coiling and uncoiling sound of scissors cutting hair. She holds her chin up, aloof and certain.

Sixteen.

Th

e girl in the mirror is and isn’t Donna. She isn’t the shy Donna, the timid Donna, the afraid-of-everything Donna.

Th

e girl in the mirror is a brave new Donna, a Donna people will have to pay attention to, a Donna who expects attention.

Th

e words she whispers inside have the force of volcanoes.

River. Rushing. Kiss. I’m re-creating myself with words,
she thinks.
Words inside.

Rose holds up a copy of
Life
magazine, that old one with the picture of Jackie Kennedy on the cover. She holds it up alongside the mirror, squinting at it hard, like she’s trying to
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U N C H A I N E D M E L O D Y / D o n n a
make a positive identifi cation, trying to identify that brand-new girl.

“You look just like her, Donna,” Rose says, slapping the magazine down with decision.

Donna looks at Jackie Kennedy and tosses her hair. She feels as sassy as a gull, so free she could spread her arms out and drift upward without any eff ort at all. She imagines herself looking down at that old magazine, which lies fl at on the fl oor, buried beneath a heap of long black hair. Her hair.

“What are you going to wear to the dance, Donna?”

Chickie asks.

Donna imagines herself naked, not needing clothes, warming herself like a mink in the spring sun.

“I don’t really have anything,” she says.

In fact, it doesn’t matter one bit what the new Donna wears, not one bit.

“You can borrow my pink sweater,” Rose says.

“Perfect,” Evelyn says, stepping back to eye the image in the mirror like an artist trying to get perspective. Donna smiles.

Th

e new girl, the one in the mirror, smiles back. She is ready.

In the cafeteria, Donna sits a little bit aside from the others, listening to the clackety-clack of dinner trays and the tinkling of silverware and the way it mingles with the soprano of girl voices, chattering about the dance. She’s wearing the soft pink sweater that belongs to Rose and her own tight black skirt,
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

and she sits there on that hard cafeteria bench in that skirt and that sweater, feeling the curve of her spine as though it were the stem of some new kind of fl ower. She feels distant, not totally there, not totally anywhere.

Amiq’s voice rises above the rest of the noises like a birdcall, sharp and distinct. Never mind what he’s saying; the words don’t matter. Donna is high up on a cliff somewhere, looking down into a billowing green valley, moving to the sound of Amiq’s voice like a birch tree in the wind.

Waiting . . .

She has her eyes closed now. Th

e gym is festooned with soft,

dreamlike colors, and the music, which had been bright rock-and-roll a moment before, has transformed to match the colors—Donna can feel the change in the music with her whole body, like a change in the weather.

Warm
s
pring rain.

It’s “Unchained Melody,”
and the words wash over her, touching something deep inside, something fl uttering and birdlike. Something so exquisite she hardly dares breathe for fear of dislodging it, of forcing it to fl y.

Lonely rivers fl ow to the sea, to the sea. To the open arms of
the sea . . .

Dancing with Amiq, Donna feels like she’s fi nally come home. Like there’s nothing else in the whole world except Amiq’s body next to hers, Amiq’s arm around her waist.

How did it come to be like this?
She doesn’t know, doesn’t care. All that matters are Amiq’s arms, holding her tight against
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