The Red Ball
opening excerpt
Frobisher Bay, Northwest Territories, 1969
I stumble along the icy road after Mummy, my face stinging where it’s not covered by my scarf and every breath freezing my lungs. Down the hill the low buildings of the town puff clouds from their chimneys. A few people are out on the white-and-grey harbour, small shapes bent over small holes making long shadows across the ice. If we had a toboggan I wouldn’t have to walk but we don’t and Daddy took our Ski-Doo to the airport when he went to go flying so Mummy and I are walking today. Clouds puff from my scarf. I’m a chimney.
Mummy waves to a lady who is pulling a child on a toboggan up the rough road away from the centre of town. The child looks younger than me, more like a baby.
“Toboggan!” I shout, pointing. They come closer. The baby’s eyes stare out from the fur circling its pulled-up hood, glancing my way then looking off into the distance, ignoring my mummy and me.
“Hello. I’m Peggy. Please, English?” Mummy asks, rolling her hands.
“Halu. Ii. English, yes,” the lady says. She stops and pulls back her hood with its fur trim. The fur reminds me of Roosty, my kittycat. The woman squints in the sun. Her black hair is shiny and straight and cut into bangs like my blonde ones. The wind blows her hair in strings across her face.
Mummy smiles big at the lady and claps her hands together. She talks fast, saying words I don’t know. “Do you know where I can find Jeela…or Geela Sow—” Mummy pulls a piece of paper from the pocket of her coat. She is shivering and her gloved hands shake. “Geela Sowd—lua—pik? She makes parkas?” Mummy points at the lady’s coat, a coat the same colour as the polar bears Daddy showed me yesterday in his National Geographic magazine.
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