My Name Is Not Easy (7 page)

“Th

ey can’t eat this kind.” He leans up real close to the nuns. “You know.
Taboo
.” He whispers that word like he’s telling her a secret.

“Oh. Well. I see,” Sister says quickly. And blushes. Th en

she looks at Bunna’s tray.

“Why, you didn’t even get any milk!” she says. “Milk’s good for you, boys. You will drink some, won’t you?”

Sister sounds so worried about it that I raise my eyebrows quick to say “yes.” I don’t tell her we don’t like milk, especially
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

not Bunna. Milk always makes our stomachs hurt, sometimes.

Especially Bunna’s.

“Yes?” she says anxiously.

“Sure, Sister,” Amiq says. “Lots of milk.”

When I catch Amiq’s eye, I have to look away quick because all of a sudden I don’t have any control over my feelings. I might start crying or I might start laughing, and I can’t tell which. Everything feels weird and scary and funny, all mixed up together: us not eating meat and that old nun piling my plate sky high with string beans and carrots, and the way she watches Amiq out of the side of her eye like he’s a dog about to make a mess.

When she hands him his plate, Amiq looks at his food and says, “Why thank you, Sister!” smiling from ear to ear like string beans and greasy carrots is the best kind of present a kid could ever get. And all of a sudden I have to stare really hard at all those beans to keep from laughing, because if I start laughing now, it’s going to hurt. If I start laughing now, I’m probably gonna die laughing. Sometimes laughing is the worst kind of crying there is.

“Now you know how to take care of them nuns,” Amiq

whispers as we walk away. He nods back at the tall nun and winks at the old one, his grin as sweet as cake.

Winks!

And for half a second it looks like that old bird might even be trying to smile back.

Th

at Amiq, he’s something else.

“What’s a Whale Can?” Bunna asks.

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“Clan,” says Amiq. “Th

at’s
Indian talk
.” He nods over

at the table where the Indian kids sit, staring at us. “Th is is

Indian country, so we gotta talk that way sometimes. It’s what them nuns understand.”

“But how come you said we can’t eat meat?” Bunna asks, switching into Iñupiaq. He looks fi rst at Amiq and then at me. “Th

at’s a lie. We could eat meat anytime we want.”

Amiq looks at me for a second and says, “It’s not a lie,”

smiling.

You can tell Bunna’s trying to fi gure this out. Amiq looks like he’s trying to fi gure it out, too. “You know how they have to keep ocean foods separate from land foods, right?” he says suddenly.

Bunna nods. Everybody knows how in the ice cellar you have to store whale meat and caribou meat in separate rooms.

Th

at’s true.

“You know what happens if you don’t keep them sepa-

rate?”

Bunna frowns. He doesn’t know.

“You die,” Amiq says.

Bunna snorts, like he thinks it’s a joke, but you can tell by his eyes that he isn’t quite sure. “Yeah, so how we gonna know how they store their meat?” he says.

“Th

at’s right,” Amiq says, quick as anything. “How we

gonna know?”

I fi ll up my glass with milk, watching the nuns out of the side of my eye. Bunna fi lls his glass real slow. He’s watching the nuns, too, especially that big one, the
iñukpasuk
.

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“Th

ey gonna make us drink all of it?” he asks.

Th

e milk looks lumpy.

“
Atchuu
,” I say, shrugging. “It won’t hurt you.”

“Why can’t we just get meat instead?” he asks. “Th

em guys

know how to keep meat, I bet.”

“Don’t matter how they keep their meat, okay? We still don’t eat it.”

Bunna scowls.

“
Horse meat!
”
I hiss. “Th

ey’re trying to make us eat
horse

meat
. Okay?”

I’m talking in Iñupiaq and saying it hard, but as soon as the word leaves my mouth, I wish I never said it, because Bunna’s mouth gets real small, like a little zero, and you could tell he’s thinking about Roy Rogers and his horse, Trigger, who is someone a person would never want to eat. I know I should tell him it’s just a joke, but for some reason I just don’t want him touching that meat.

“I want to go home,” Bunna whispers.

“Me, too,” I say, loud and sharp. “And we will. Soon.”

“Is it horse milk, too?”

“Of course not,” I say. As if I know.

We sit down at the table, still talking, and I can feel them Indians watching, which is why I’m talking louder than usual and talking in Iñupiaq, too. I want them to wonder about what I’m saying and I want them to know by the sound of my voice not to mess with me. I’m concentrating so hard I don’t even notice that old priest, the one that took Isaac, hovering over top of us, tapping a ruler against the side of his hand like
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he’s keeping count of something. Tapping the whole room quiet until pretty soon it feels like everybody is holding their breath, watching us.

“And what was your name again, young man?” the priest says. Th

e way he says it is like he’s saying something else.

Something bad.

“Luke,” I say.

Amiq, behind him, mouths the word “FATHER,” then

looks down quick.

“Father,” I add quickly.

“Put your hands on the table, Luke,” Father says.

I do what he says, and he slaps the backs of my fi ngers with his ruler, slaps them hard enough to make the sting run up and down the sides of my arm like lightning.

“Here we speak English,” he says.

I stare off into the cafeteria, my face blank
. I will not cry . . .