Parka

Prompt: The Garment

This story was inspired by one of my childhood parkas that lives in a box in my basement, waiting—naively so—to be passed on to a future daughter I may never have.

I’m originally from a small town in the Northwest Territories of Canada, where wearing parkas in the frigid winters is standard for Indigenous families like mine. They are beautifully handcrafted and incredibly warm.

I moved out of the North later in childhood and don’t recall if I continued to wear my parka or not, but it’s entirely plausible that I stopped wearing it to fit in long before I would’ve outgrown it.

I hope you enjoy my response to London Writers' Salon’s September 7th Weekly Writers’ Hour Contest prompt, The Garment: Write about an item of clothing, whether cherished, forgotten, or never worn at all.

---

Image of a brightly coloured leaf-patterned parka in a cardboard box with moccasins. Photo by Paige Quinton.

Parka

by Paige Quinton

Fresh air pours in, sending dust motes swirling in the light. Finally, a reprieve from the dank darkness of my prison: a box of sagging cardboard stuffed under the stairs.

Kept company by tiny moccasins—their cool beads pressed into my cloth, their musky hides and soft fur a quiet comfort.

Suddenly, I’m lifted from the box for the first time in decades. A woman shakes me roughly, releasing more dust. She coughs, then pulls me into an embrace. I feel her heartbeat and recognize the cadence. She carries me upstairs, clutched to her warm body.

“Here we are,” she declares, holding me up by the shoulders, presenting me like a lost relic.

I remember the last time I saw her face, still plump and smooth with youth. She looked at me with embarrassment, for the first and last time. A girl at school had mocked me, and by extension, her. I absorbed her tears all the way home, trying to soothe her with my warmth, but it hadn’t been enough. She tossed me to the floor, shouting, “I’m never wearing that hideous thing again!” before storming off.

Her mother tried to persuade her to keep me, both of us bewildered by her sudden fickleness. Days of pleading followed before the girl emerged victorious with a new coat: plain pink polyester with Columbia on the breast. I was shoved into a box with forgotten clothing, left to stew in abandonment, to wonder why I wasn’t good enough. I had sheltered her from northern winters, and though it’s milder here further south, she still needed my warmth. Instead, I’d been discarded, replaced by a coat as common as the snag of fur in the teeth of my zipper.

The past fades like melting snow as a little girl exclaims, “Wow, it’s so colourful! I love it, Mama!” She takes me in with wide eyes—the exact shade of the leaves on my patterned cloth.

“I wore this parka when I was a little girl, and loved it so much,” says the woman.

Did she love me? There was a time when I thought she did. But then why did she discard me?

I’m swept over the girl’s arms, zipped up to her chin. My hem hangs to her ankles, the silken fur of my sleeves brushing her fingertips.

“Oh, it’s a bit big. Perhaps we’ll try next winter?”

Fear, icy as northern winds, grips me. No. I need to feel the wind, the sun, to catch snowflakes atop my hood once more.

“No,” the girl echoes my thoughts. “It’s mine.” She clutches me to her tiny body.

The woman laughs, exasperated. “Okay, you can wear it.”

I sag with relief as the girl sways, stroking my fur cuffs and tracing my zigzagged piping.

“Beautiful,” she breathes.

I hope she’s stronger than her mother, more resistant to judgement, wearing me until I can no longer zip, and my hem reaches her thighs. I hope she never shoves me back into that box.

---

Fun Fact: I don’t have any daughters, but I’m so lucky to have two toddler sons, and I fully intend to let them try on my parkas tomorrow. They’ll be comically big, but I have a feeling they’re going to love walking around the house in them, pretending to be “Mama.”