My Name Is Not Easy

Donna works in the garden with Sister Sarah. Donna appreciates Sister Sarah’s quietude and seriousness. Donna recalls the nun she thought was her mother, Sister Ann, and notes that in Sister Ann’s absence, Donna hasn’t let anyone else to get close to her emotionally. Sister Mary Kate interrupts their gardening with the news that someone found a dead moose on the side of the road. She tasks Sister Mary Kate with dressing out the carcass for meat for the school. Sister Mary Kate doesn’t know how to dress a carcass. While Sister Sarah calmly collects chamomile flowers, she recommends that Sister Mary Kate find the Aaluk brothers, Luke and Bunna, to help her and further suggests that she take Donna along.

Mail arrives for the students. One student named Junior gets the best mail because it is not even letters; he receives tapes of people from back home talking to him. Junior then tapes his own stories over these voices to send back home.

The nuns enlist Luke and Bunna in skinning the dead moose and harvesting its meat. The fact that they have never seen a moose before does not occur to the nuns and priests, who assume that Luke and Bunna are good hunters and skinners because of where they are from.