My Name Is Not Easy

When I go off to Sacred Heart School, they’re gonna call me
Luke because my Iñupiaq name is too hard. Nobody has to
tell me this. I already know. I already know because when
teachers try say our real names, the sounds always get caught
in their throats, sometimes, like crackers. That’s how it was
in kindergarten and in first, second, and third grade, and
that’s how it’s going to be at boarding school, too. Teachers
only know how to say easy names, like my brother Bunna’s.
My name is not easy.
My name is hard like ocean ice grinding at the shore or
wind pounding the tundra or sun so bright on the snow,
it burns your eyes. My name is all of us huddled up here
together, waiting to hear the sound of that plane that’s
going to take us away, me and my brothers. Nobody saying nothing about it. Everybody doing the same things they
always do. Uncle Joe is cleaning his gun and Aaka—that’s
my grandma—is eating maktak. Jack is sprawled out on the bed reading Life magazine, and Mom’s dipping water from
the fifty-fi ve-gallon water drum to make tea for Aapa, my
grandpa.
Bunna’s chasing Isaac across the floor on the opposite
side of the room, showing him how to play cowboy with his
authentic Roy Rogers gun and holster set. Pretending there’s
a whole pack of Indians under the bed. The only thing under
the bed is one little Eskimo: our youngest brother, Isaac, mad
about the fact he’s always got to be the Indian.
I know that pretty soon Aapa’s gonna finish his tea, and
when he does, he’s gonna belch and say taiku. But he isn’t
thanking Mom or Aaka or anyone, he’s just saying it. Taiku.
Thank you.
Some things are good to know, like knowing what lies
on the other side of that smooth line the tundra makes at
the edge of the sky. When you don’t know, you feel uneasy
about what you might find out there, which is how I’m
feeling about Catholic school right now. Uneasy. Wondering
if it’s gonna be good or bad or both messed up together.
I never met them Catholics, yet, but I heard about them.
If you give them a kid ’til the age of seven, they got ’em for life.
That’s what Catholics say. I watch Isaac scuttle across the floor,
an uneasy feeling stirring in my stomach. Isaac is only six.
Aapa stands up from the table and belches good.
“Taiku.”
I wonder if Aapa knows what Catholics say. Probably
not. Jack’s the one who told us about them Catholics and he
wouldn’t say it to my aapa because Aapa is not a Catholic.
Jack is Mom’s boyfriend.
Uncle Joe wipes his rag along the barrel of his gun and
hands it to me, like he always does. “So. You going off to that
place where they make you eat Trigger?” He leans down next
to me when he says it, too, like he’s sharing a secret.
I think about Roy Rogers’ fancy horse, Trigger, in the
movies they show at the community center sometimes, and I
get an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Joe smiles the kind of smile that says he knows stuff that
other people don’t know.
“You mean your momma never told you? Them Catholics,
they eat horse meat.”
Mom doesn’t hear this because she’s too busy pouring tea
for Aaka. But Jack hears it, all right, and he’s not happy about
what he’s hearing. I can see it in the way he looks up from
his magazine real sharp, fixing his eye on Joe. Jack keeps his
mouth shut, though, because Uncle Joe don’t think much of
white men, and Jack knows it.
“What they want to eat horse meat for?” I ask.
“Cheaper,” Joe says.
Aaka is still eating maktak, and even though no one ever
said it, I know them horse-eating, kid-stealing Catholics aren’t
ever going to feed me what I like—whale meat and maktak.
And I’m all of a sudden so hungry, it seems like I could never
get enough to fill me up.
Bunna flops down onto the bed next to Jack and Isaac.
Jack’s got a picture in Life magazine of a school somewhere
down south in the Lower 48. It has one of those big orange school buses out front of it, and I don’t like the way Bunna
looks at that bus, his eyes all full of possibilities, because I
know there’s no way I am ever going to find any possibilities
at all at Sacred Heart School, big orange bus or not.
Mom sets the teakettle on the stove, gazing at the three of
them, her eyes soft.
“Isaac, your face,” she says.
Isaac slips off the bed quick as a lemming, but Mom
catches him quicker.
“You want them white people to think you’re a puppy?
Here, lemme wash your face.”
I hear the plane overhead, flying low enough to shake the
windows. I hold Joe’s gun on my shoulder, sliding my cheek
sideways along its smooth stock, trying to pretend it’s not
heavy, watching the plane buzz down out of the sky at the
far end of town, like a big fat fly. It’s one of them military
planes, a C-46. I squint down the gun’s barrel with my good
eye as the plane lands, following it through the gun’s sight as
it drags its swelled-up belly across the tundra, sunlight fl ashing off its silver skin. The dogs are complaining about it, their
voices yapping mad at first, then yowling up together into one
voice, that long-tailed howl they always make when the plane
lands.
As far as you can see out, there is tundra, tundra turned
red and gold with fall, tundra full of cold air and sunshine. I
take a deep breath. It feels like that plane has poked a hole in
the sky, and all the air is leaking out.
I hand the gun back to Joe, the gun that’s gonna be mine when I’m old enough to take the kick. Next spring maybe.
“Boys?” Mom says. “You hear? Get your stuff . Plane’s
come.”
I’m twelve years old, all right, and Bunna, he’s ten. But Isaac,
he’s only six, and all I can think of is those Catholics and what
they say about kids. Why can’t we wait until Isaac turns seven?
When I climb up into that plane, the wind’s blowing hard,
same as always.
“Take care of your brothers,” Mom calls, and I turn around
quick. One last time.
Th e wind sweeps my hair across my eyes and carries Mom’s
words backward. It pulls me backward, too.
Stay here, the wind says. Stay.
Mom stands on the edge of the runway right next to Jack,
my aapa and aaka and all our aunties and uncles with their
babies. Some of our aunties are crying, but not Mom. Mom
says we’re Eskimo and Eskimos know how to survive. She says
we have to learn things, things we can’t learn here in the village. Mom does not cry, and neither do we.
Take care of your brothers. I hang on tight to those words
as I sit down inside the plane. It’s full of kids, this plane, kids
going off to boarding school, mostly teens, because there’s no
high schools in none of our villages. Every single teen from
every single village in the whole world, maybe—all of us being
swept off to some place where there won’t be no parents, no
grandparents, no babies. Only big orange buses and trees and
teachers choking on our names.