My Name Is Not Easy (34 page)

T H E M E A N E S T H E A T H E N S / S o n n y a n d A m i q
four in the buzzing darkness. Swinging it from one hand to the other like an animal playing with its prey.

“Spare the rod . . .” Father rattles, swinging hard.

It stings like hell, that two-by-four, swinging back and forth, fi rst to Amiq, then to Sonny, burning hot with every crack. Neither of them makes a sound, though—even when it feels like it’s crushing bone—because it’s the words Father says that sting worse than the blows. It’s the sound of Father Mullen’s voice, rasping like bees as he tells them both that they’re nothing more than dirty little savages and there’s no way in Hell either one of them could ever—
ever
—get into Heaven.

Nobody cares what happens to them except for Father, he hisses, because their people, their Native People, are as loose as rabbits with their kids.

Father is swinging that two-by-four back and forth like it’s a hammer, and the pain bites harder with each swing as he sinks his words—sharp as nails—right into them. All of them are doomed to Hell, he says, nearly out of breath—
all of them:
Sonny and his uneducated heathen mother along with Amiq and his no-good, drunken dad.

Amiq’s got a hard look on his face, and you can tell he’s shut Father out and gone someplace else, someplace mean and angry. You can tell he’s decided he wouldn’t go to Heaven even if they gave him a gold pass for the place.

Sonny’s thinking about his mom, who wouldn’t be at all proud to see him now. His mother, sewing slippers for the general’s wife, slippers with those tiny designs that make her eyes sting in the smoky light of the kerosene lamp. Sewing
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

just to keep the general’s wife’s feet warm so the general can go about his business of giving numbered juice to the kids at Sacred Heart School. Sewing just so both boys can stand there in front of Father to fi nd out there’s no possible way Father will ever forgive them for being heathens, even if there were some reason they wanted Father’s forgiveness, which right now, they do not.

Right now both Sonny and Amiq are determined as hell to be the meanest heathens ever, burrowing down into their own dark hides.

Waiting for their time to come.

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PART III

When the Time Comes

1962–1963

Giant chunks of blue green ice drift in the water around us,
alive with icy breath.

Along the shore, patches of gray green tundra fl oat off into the mist,
as distant as dreams.

When the fl ash of light comes, it’s sharp as a punch,
brighter than any sun we’ve ever seen.

And then it’s gone,

and it’s just us, skimming across the smooth black sea,
silent as spirits,

pitching our tent in the midnight sun and eating duck soup until
our bellies get warm and we dare to ask:

“What about that light?”

Uncle looks down, his face lit like a dark sun in the glow of the fi re.

“Light?”

And all we ever know about that light is that it’s something we
aren’t supposed

to talk about, aren’t supposed to remember, but we do.

Maybe it was part of an old story, a story that starts
with a nuclear fl ash too bright to

believe, a fl ash that changes

everything.

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Coupons and Bomb Shelters

DECEMBER 1962

CHICKIE

—

If somebody presses the button, the world is going to blow up, and that’s a fact. Th

e Russians have enough atomic bombs

aimed at us to blow our side of the world right off the map, and we have enough bombs aimed at them to destroy their side, too. All it takes is for one person on one side to press the button. Th

e button is red, and it doesn’t matter who presses

it fi rst, because as soon as it gets pressed, the bombs will keep fl ying until the whole world is blown to smithereens.

Th

is is true, and everybody knows it. We practice for the bomb in class by ducking under our desks and putting our heads between our knees, which if you ask me is stupid. What good would it do to have your head between your knees if a bomb blows you up?

Father Flanagan has brought an old magazine story to class with a big picture of an atomic missile on one page. Below that is a photo of President Kennedy, smiling, just like in the portrait we have of him that hangs in the hallway near the
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gym. Evelyn thinks President Kennedy is cute. Th

at’s Evelyn

for you.

Father tells Junior to read.

Junior is not a loud reader, but I hear him say it clear: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. . . .”

Junior looks up. “Father?” he says. But Father doesn’t hear him. Father is looking right at me. “What do you think, Chickie? Will the president achieve his goal? Will we beat the Russians to the moon?”

“Alan Shepard already went up into space,” I say. “We’ll beat the Russians for sure.”

Bunna, sitting right behind me, snorts. I turn around and glare at him. Who needs some stupid boy pig-snorting down their neck all the time? Father nods and looks at Bunna.

“Bunna?”

“It’s too late, Father,” Bunna says. “Th

e Eskimos already

beat everybody. Th

ere’s an Iñupiaq shaman who went to the

moon a long time ago.” He leans forward when he says it, drawing out the words like he’s trying to make sure I hear them.

“You know, when I was a boy growing up in Boston, my mother used to tell
me
stories about the man in the moon,”

Father says. “When you look at the moon, you can even see his face, can’t you?”

Bunna looks at me and makes his eyes go
naku,
which makes him look even goofi er than normal. I turn around.

Boys are so stupid sometimes.

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