Maggie Lou, Firefox
Maggie Lou, Firefox
“You’ll come with me tomorrow to the Friendship Centre. I’ll teach you how to box”.
I drop my sandwich and leap out of my chair like a racehorse out of a starting gate. I run to Moshôm, almost knocking him over as I wrap my arms around him.
“Thank you, Moshôm! Thank you!”
He messes up my curls and laughs.
I disappear into a daydream about dancing in the ring. My entry song, “Fire Woman” by the Cult, plays in the background as I walk up the aisle toward the boxing ring in a sparkling black robe. Moshôm walks proudly beside me. My head is down and I’m deeply in thought, getting my thoughts into the match. The bedazzled black hood is draped over my head, and a beautiful fox is engulfed in flames on the back. As I swing my winning combos in front of me, it looks like she’s dancing in the fire.
That night I lie awake for hours, tossing and turning so often that I get tangled in my bedsheets. I lie in bed dreaming of entering the ring to the sound of people cheering, seeing my mom, kohkom, and aunties screaming in the crowd.
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because my tired eyes pop wide open as the first rays of sunshine leak through our curtains.
I leap down from the top bunk, not caring how much noise I make.
Mornings are the worst time for my hair. It bounces around my head like a lion’s mane when I land.
Rheana screams from the bottom bunk.
“Nothing to worry about, little sis.” I dance around the room, punching the air. “That’s until I learn how to BOX!”
She lies in her bunk, glaring at me.
“Go away. You’re annoying,” she says.
“You just wait, Rheana. I’m gonna float like a boat and sing like a bee.” I throw a few fast punches in combination. “BAM BAM BAM!”
Rheana rolls her eyes. “It’s float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. Oh my gosh!” She pulls her blanket over her head.
I ignore her. She’s annoying and is only eleven, which means she knows nothing.
Maggie Lou, 13, loves wrestling and boxing, so she’s always encouraging her younger siblings to ‘fight’ with her. Mom is becoming irritated by the ensuing damage to their home. Moshôm, Maggie Lou’s grandfather, works as a boxing coach, and, worrying that Maggie Lou may hurt herself, he offers to give her boxing lessons at the Friendship Centre. Part of learning how to box involves learning respect for discipline, and Maggie Lou spends the first few weeks at the Centre cleaning and getting to know some of the boys who are already boxing. Finally, Moshôm thinks she’s ready to learn how to throw a punch. She goes through weeks of punching the air and practicing her footwork. When she finally has her first boxing match, she’s put in so much effort that she wins the match with a more experienced boy. Then the Centre closes for the summer. Maggie Lou decides she wants to help her father and cousin build houses. After she learns a bit about building – from cleaning up a work site to picking colours and putting down flooring – it’s time for Maggie Lou to learn about shooting a rifle. Mastering that skill pretty quickly, she goes hunting with her older brother and an uncle. They don’t kill anything on their trip out together, but, over the course of the day, Maggie Lou hears a pack of howling coyotes, finds herself sitting beside a “small buck” with antlers, and is so close to a moose that “when he breathes, [she] can see his nostrils flare.”
Author Arnolda Bowes succeeds to a degree in modelling a strong and brave female character, as well as in sharing her wonderful Métis culture. And there are some scenes with Maggie-Lou’s younger siblings which readers may find comical. However, Maggy-Lou’s behaviour veers unbelievably from wildly childish, such as when she insists on wearing dirty work boots to bed, to an adult-like calm and control, as when she’s allowed to help lay flooring and pick fixtures for houses her father is building. And, other than Moshôm, secondary characters are largely one-dimensional.
Concerning plot, boxing came to an end for no credible – or at least, understandable – reason. Maggie Lou was just starting to achieve an important goal, as well as to form an interesting relationship with the boy she defeated in her first boxing match, This reader was invested and expected both aspects to be further fleshed out when the plot suddenly moved on to house-building with Dad and a cousin. While Maggy Lou’s family uses the Indigenous Michif language at times, if their home is situated on a Reserve, it would have been clarifying to have had that fact stated/shown in the story.
Bowes clearly has a lot of interesting stories to share. This reader would have preferred she write a second book, rather than interrupting Maggy Lou’s boxing dream and relationship with Moshôm and the boys at the Friendship Centre.
Karen Rankin is a Toronto teacher and writer of children’s stories.