My Name Is Not Easy (9 page)

And Sonny was plenty tough.

Now, Amiq was marching his Eskimo pawns right past

Sonny’s table—on the Indian side—acting like he owned the place. Evelyn glared. “Who say they gonna be here?” she muttered.

Amiq stopped dead in his tracks and turned around real slow. “
We
say,” he said, staring right at Evelyn. And smiling a great big smart-aleck smile. Like he was laughing at her.

Evelyn’s eyes got black as water under river ice. You didn’t
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

have to know her to see she was not the kind of girl who let people laugh at her. “Yeah? So whatchu
doin’
here?” she snapped.

Amiq just stood there, grinning down at her.

“Scouting,” he said, like he was some kind of cowboy or something.

Th

at word made Sonny’s chest tighten.
Scouting.

If there’s gonna be any kickball around here,
Sonny thought,

it’s not gonna be my head.

Amiq sauntered over to the heart of the Eskimo table, grinning down at Chickie as he passed and winking at Donna.

To Sonny’s surprise, Donna blushed.

Chickie shoved another forkful of gluey fake potatoes into her mouth. All of a sudden she was missing Swede really bad. When Swede had told her about going away to boarding school, he never said anything about fake potatoes, that’s for sure. Th

e only thing he said was that she was going

to a place called Sacred Heart School and she couldn’t bring her hula hoop. He’d looked right square at the hoop and said it, too: “You can’t take it with you, Chickie. Sorry, girl.”

But that was okay by Chickie because you can’t go

anywhere on a hula hoop and Chickie had known forever that the one thing she wanted to do in life was to see what it’s like to live in a place where the roads don’t quit rolling at the end of town.

Th

at hula hoop had been the only hula hoop north of

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I N D I A N C O U N T R Y / S o n n y a n d C h i c k i e
the Arctic Circle, too. It had come north to Kotzebue on the barge, which is how Swede always ordered stuff for the store.

Which is why Chickie always got to eat real potatoes instead of fake ones.

“Real potatoes taste a whole lot better than fake ones,”

Chickie announced.

“I don’t care for potatoes,” Donna said quietly.

Chickie put her fork down with a sigh and studied the dry brown meat, slimy vegetables, and wedge of pie. At least the pie looked good. She took a bite of it, just to see, watching the nuns, who still stood by their food in the food line. It was apple pie with real apples and it did taste good.

Apple pie is as American as Wheaties and milk.
Th at’s what

Swede said one time. Not that they ever got Wheaties and milk at home. Th

ey’d probably get lots of Wheaties at Sacred

Heart, though, lots of Wheaties with this lumpy powdered milk. Canned milk was better. Why couldn’t they have canned milk? Chickie took another bite of pie and looked at Donna sideways.

“I wonder if that tall nun is the one who does the baking,”

she said. In fact she was pretty sure that the tall one, Sister Mary Kate, was the pie baker, but she fi gured she ought to be polite, her being new and all. Aaka Mae said she had a tendency to be bossy, and she wanted to be sure not to be too bossy with her new roommate, her fi rst friend at Sacred Heart School.

Th

e nuns were starting to put the food away now, and

Donna had turned to watch them. Chickie turned, too. An old priest was standing next to the wall by the door, all draped
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in black. He looked like a black cat, that’s what Chickie thought. Like a big black cat waiting to catch something live in his skinny old claws. Donna looked at him, too, but only for a second. Th

en she looked away quick like she already

knew that priest, already knew all about him.

Chickie looked back at the nuns, but she could still feel that priest watching them. It made her skin prickle. She quickly took another bite of pie, studying the way the nuns were putting away the food.

“Th

e tall one is Sister Mary Kate,” Chickie told Donna, helping herself to more pie. “I wonder if she’s going to teach us how to cook. She’s a good cook, don’t you think?”

“Maybe it’s the other one who makes the pies,” Donna said.

Chickie almost laughed out loud. She didn’t want to be rude or anything, but that skinny old nun disappearing into the kitchen with stringy beans looked way too mean to make a pie this sweet.

Chickie looked back at the priest, but he wasn’t looking at her and Donna, she realized suddenly. He was watching the boys. Boys take a lot more watching than girls do. Th at’s what

Chickie fi gured.

“Did your mom teach you how to cook?” Chickie asked Donna.

She tried to say it real easy like a normal kid would say it, a kid with a mom. But Donna gave her a funny look anyhow, like she knew.

“I never learned to cook,” Donna said quietly.

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It’s true that a person can tell things about another person without anybody saying it. For instance, you can almost always tell by their hair which girls have mothers and which don’t.

Chickie’s hair was wild as a snowstorm, whereas Donna’s was tame as black syrup. Chickie teased a piece of pie crust back and forth across her plate, suddenly self-conscious.

“I don’t have a mother,” Donna said.

Chickie looked up, surprised. Donna took a bite of her own pie and didn’t say another word.

Two of the Eskimo kids were talking to each other in Eskimo, and Chickie could see right away that the priest did not like this. Not at all.

It’s true that some people get mad when they can’t understand what other people are saying, and Chickie could tell that this priest was one of those kinds of people. She looked back at Donna, but Donna wasn’t looking at the priest and she wasn’t looking at Chickie, either. She was looking straight out the window, her eyes empty, like she’d gone someplace else, someplace where priests couldn’t go.