Chapter One

One


I am staring at the crystalline frozen tundra of ice–licked Alaska. Surrounded by an endless snowy desert, a little Eskimo girl pounds her way through the rushing, snowflake–laden wind as cheerful music plays.

“Put on your kami–kluk to stay warm and dry…”

No, I didn’t board a flight to Juneau. I’m watching Sesame Street with my daughter, Violet. It’s one of Grover’s world–friendly segments where global cultures are profiled through the dewy, pure lens of a child’s eyes. We visit a Chinese boy who is a top acrobat and can spin fourteen plates on his face and a little Indonesian girl who can balance six bowls on the top of her head. While dancing.

Today Grover has transported us to the forty–ninth state—and our local lass is suiting up to face the Arctic chill, with the help of her mother, who sews fur pelts together to fashion a tikiyook, or coat, to repel the subzero temps. She rushes out into the crisp fresh air to meet other children, also clad in PETA’s worst nightmare, and skips off into the fluffy white mounds, laughing sweetly.

It all looks so wholesome, so simple, so uncomplicated. No fancy schools to get into, no apartments to compare. It looked pleasant there, out in the bleak but weirdly alluring slate of glistening frost punctuated only by playful tykes toting their homemade lunches to school in swinging buckets.

But then the bilious pit in my stomach reasserted itself, and I couldn’t help but think this awful, impure thought: I bet one of the moms is looking over the other kids’ kami–kluks to see if the stitching is be