My Name Is Not Easy (50 page)

O U R S T O R Y

“Clever,” Father said without looking up. “Very catchy.

Sister Mary Kate and her acts of Providence . . . now
there’s
an uplifting story.”

Father scooped up his papers and slid out of the room.

“You kids keep at it,” he called back.

Amiq was hovering behind Chickie like a big crow, reading her story.

“Sister Mary Kate and her student volunteers are up to their elbows in sandpaper and varnish, and from out of the dust, shiny new desks are arising,” Amiq read.

Chickie frowned and swatted him away, but you could tell she was proud of her story. It
was
good.

“Sounds like all that dust is gonna get stuck to the varnish on their elbows,” Amiq said.

Junior grinned at the image, resisting a sudden urge to laugh out loud.

“Is not,” Chickie squeaked, pulling at the sleeve of her sweater and swatting, again, at Amiq. She reminded Junior of an indignant little squirrel.

“And those desks look just like new, too,” Chickie chit-tered.

Amiq smiled innocently. “Absolutely.”

Junior ducked his head, biting his cheeks to keep from laughing.

Amiq began pacing around the room like he was being propelled by some kind of creative energy, circling over Junior like a bird of prey. Swooping down so suddenly it made
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

Junior fl inch. Th

en he landed on the chair next to Junior’s

and watched him impatiently, like he expected Junior to do something. Something
he
wanted done.

Junior bent his head over his paper and began scribbling furiously. He wasn’t really writing anything important; he was just trying to distract Amiq, trying to
hear
the words to his story. Th

ey still seemed to be rolling along in the back

of his mind, just out of earshot. If Amiq would just leave him alone, maybe he could hear them. But Amiq refused to be distracted. Every time Junior ducked his head lower, Amiq ducked his head, too, sticking his nose right up next to Junior’s paper until pretty soon it seemed like Junior was either going to have to stop writing or start writing on Amiq’s nose.

Junior put his pen down and looked at Amiq.

“It was a good story, the one you wrote,” Amiq said.

Junior shook his head. No, it wasn’t a good story. It hadn’t said what Junior had wanted it to say. Junior realized this with sudden clarity.

“You aren’t going to let them bully you around, are you, Junior?” Amiq said.

Junior sat up straight, adjusted his glasses, and looked Amiq right square in the eye. “No one’s bullying me around,”

he said.

“You remember that story about the duck hunters?” Amiq said.

Junior nodded.

“Civil disobedience, just like you said.”

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O U R S T O R Y

“I never said that,” Junior pointed out.

“And it only works when writers do their job and write about it,” Amiq said.

Junior blinked with surprise. He was a writer! No one had ever called him that before. He liked the sound of it. He liked it a lot.

“Th

ose Barrow hunters weren’t trying to be disobedient,”

Junior said. It felt like he was speaking with a brand-new authority, the authority of a
writer.
“Th

ey were just trying to

feed their family.”

He started to correct himself—he’d meant to say
families
—but then he started thinking about the word
family.

Family started out in one village and spread to another and then another. Spread throughout the whole state of Alaska and even down into the Lower 48, some families. And they were all related, too. Just like Luke’s uncle having a cousin in Barrow that time they did the Duck-In.

Th

e human family
—he’d heard that phrase before, too.

Suddenly the idea of people just trying to feed their family took on new meaning. He thought about Project Chariot—

the force of the blasts shooting out into the ocean, where people catch whales to feed all the families. And he thought about the ice cellars where they stored whale meat and
maktak
for the whole community family, and about the bomb shelters where people were going to hide from the bomb that threatened everybody—the whole human family.

He saw the mushroom cloud of a bomb, like he’d seen it in
Life
magazine, and the feathery spray of the whale . . .

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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

Amiq was still talking, all right, but Junior barely even heard him. Junior was recording sentences in his mind. Th ey

were the kind of sentences no one could ever ignore. He picked up the neatly typed story Father Flanagan had dismissed and tossed it into the trash. Amiq watched him with a look—a look of what? Surprise? Shock? No, Junior decided; the word was
astonish.
Amiq looked astonished.

“You can’t just throw it away!” Amiq’s voice rose. “Just because Father said so?”

“Yes, I can.” Junior said.

“Stand up for yourself for once,” Amiq said.

But Junior wasn’t listening. Junior had started to tell another story in his mind. It was like talking into the tape recorder, but this time, a tape recorder with the sound
on.

Th

e reel went round and round, and people were listening.

He couldn’t see them, but he could feel them. Th

ey were out

there, somehow, listening to his words. At fi rst it was just the people in his village—his
aaka
and all his aunties and uncles—people who knew him and understood the story.

But then there were others—strangers from Fairbanks and Anchorage, maybe even Seattle—a whole audience of people who thought the way Father thought. He could feel them leaning forward, as if they were trying to understand. And it was up to him to tell this story in a way they
could
understand, because he was the storyteller. He was the writer.

“You could send it to the
Tundra Times,
” Amiq said.

“Wrong audience,” Junior said. Everyone looked at Junior, and their faces all said the same thing:
Audience?

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