The Tricking of Freya (10 page)

"Do you believe in Freyja?"

"You mean the goddess?" Sigga turned from the sink, her yellow rubber
gloves laced in suds. "Elskan," she said. "Nobody believes in Freyja anymore. That was a long, long time ago. Now people only believe in one God.
Or none at all."

If no one believed in Freyja anymore, could she still wear her bird cloak
and fly to other worlds? Could she still frolic in the waves with her brother,
Freyr, and their father, Njord? How many people needed to believe in her
before she could fly again?

I believe in Freyja, I said. Only I said it to myself. Sigga turned back to
the sink and I revisited my cereal, lifting large spoonfuls in the air, then tipping the spoon and watching the oatmeal slide glop by glop into the bowl.

The Sigga-days had a rhythm the Birdie-days had lacked. I was not allowed
out in the midday sun until my burn healed. Afternoons Sigga and I walked
down Second Street to the library, where she worked part-time. The Gimli
library was called Evergreen, a small one-story brick building under a group
of pines. If I got tired of being quiet in the library, I was allowed to sit outside but only under the shade of the trees, where the sun couldn't reach
me. Sometimes I lay on my back staring up into branches the green of
Mama's eyes. Or I made piles of fallen brown needles, then dashed them
with sticks. Mostly I stayed inside, sitting at one of the long tables reading
silently, or following Sigga as she returned books to the shelves. It seemed
everyone who came in the library asked after Mama. Some of them Sigga
introduced to me, but instead of curtsying I stared at the floor in sunburned
shame.

In the evenings we walked down to Gimli harbor and watched the boats
returning with tubs of fish still flipping and flopping, squirming and slimy,
startle-eyed. "If fish can't shut their eyes, then how do they sleep?"

Now that Birdie was gone it was Sigga who put me to bed.

"Nightie time," she'd say. I liked it when she said that, because it could
mean two things: time to put on your nightie and time to say good night.

"Would you like a story," Sigga asked, "or a rhyme, or a song?"

"A rhyme."

Tunglid, tunglid taktu mig ... she began reciting.

When she was done I asked, "What does it mean?"

Moon, moon, take me up. Carry me up to the clouds. Because there sits my
mother and cards raw wool ...

My sunburn began to peel in large flakes off my skin and still Mama had
not come back to Gimli. Every day it was maybe tomorrow. That's what
Mama would tell me on the phone. She called each night after dinner from
Vera's in Winnipeg. Sigga wouldn't let me talk long. Talking could wear
Mama out. Every day it was maybe tomorrow, but when tomorrow came to
its end Mama only called instead of coming. I wasn't up to it today, Frey. I'm
so sorry. Maybe tomorrow.

So it was maybe tomorrow for Mama and any day now for Birdie.

The rule was not to mention Birdie's name while she was gone. But I
knew Sigga was thinking about her. When Stefan came by, they talked about
Birdie in whispered Icelandic double secrecy-but I managed to figure
out that Stefan was receiving phone calls from her. I decided that Birdie was
not on vacation, she had run away from home. One night I dreamt she'd
joined a circus. She stood on a platform in the middle of the ring, splendid in
her cat-fur robe, glowing in the spotlight. People from the audience shouted
out questions about the future. But there was only one question I wanted
her to answer, and I was too afraid to ask. When are you coming home?

It was six long days after my mother uncurled from her comma that she finally returned to Gimli. I wore a dress but not the one I'd worn to the fateful coffee party. And I refused to put on the patent leather shoes that had
cracked the china cabinet glass. I never wanted to wear them again. Instead
I sat barefoot, peeling strips of dead skin off the soles of my feet. The rest
of my body had turned from red to tan. My mother didn't know about the
sunburn. Sigga said it would only worry her so I never mentioned it on the phone. I wanted to get all the dead skin off before she arrived. But some
pieces would not come unstuck.

As soon as Mama stepped out of Vera's car I could see she was not the
same Mama. Her face was pale and her wave was slow motion, fluttery and
vague. I ran to hug her, but Vera held up her hand like a stop sign.

"Gentle, Freya. You have to be gentle with your mother now."

I stood in front of Mama and let her put her arms around me. "So
golden," she said, stroking my face. "My little toasted marshmallow."

It turned out Mama's balance was off and she tipped over easily. Light
gave her headaches so she wore sunglasses all the time, even inside the
house. Like a movie star but pale and sad instead of tan and happy. A few
times she got dizzy and grabbed on to my shoulder or a chair for support. She
said it felt like a stirring inside her head. I imagined an eggbeater whipping
her brains into froth. Most of that first day she sat in a brown armchair in the
parlor staring out the window. I tried to get her to play Crazy Eights but she
kept losing track of the game. I could keep her playing War if I turned over
her cards for her. But that made it feel like solitaire.

Vera stayed for dinner and Stefan came too. It was a welcome-home
meal for Mama of roast lamb with mint jelly, boiled potatoes, green beans
slick with butter, doughy rolls hot from the oven. Vera and Sigga did most of
the talking. Mama took small nibbling bites. I jiggled the mint jelly on my
plate with a fork. I wanted to feel happy Mama was back, but it was hard to
feel happy with this not-quite-Mama. I longed to see her spruce green eyes
behind the sunglasses.

Sigga was serving saskatoon berry pie for dessert when we heard the
front door open then slam shut. A moment later Birdie was standing in the
doorway to the dining room.

"Greetings all!" she sang out. Then she saw Mama and stopped cold,
taking in her wan face and dark glasses. "Anna?"

Mama cringed and gave a little wave.

Birdie was dressed in a brand-new outfit. It was the shortest skirt I'd
ever seen, its magenta color nearly as shocking as its length. We all stared.

"It's the latest," Birdie announced. Her tights were pale lavender, her top
a fringed tunic.

"Where on earth?" Sigga said finally.

"Not Gimli, you can be sure!" From the doorway Birdie lifted up a large
shopping bag that said Eaton's in fancy letters on its sides. "You didn't think
Crazy Aunt Birdie would return empty-handed?"

Like a miniskirted Santa, she made her way around the table, presenting each of us with a gift. "Unwrapped," she apologized. "No time, no
time!" She took a small white box out of the bag first. "For she who rules
the roost!" Before Sigga could react, Birdie had pinned something to her
dress: a silver and black brooch shaped like a crowing rooster. I thought
Sigga might rip it off but she left it on, sitting stiffly with her hands folded
in her lap.

Next to Stefan's plate Birdie placed a small statue of a dog. "For our
ever-loyal Stefan. And for the sweetest sister a girl could have ..." She
pulled a box of chocolates from the bag and presented it to Mama, who
reached for it with two trembling hands. "And our dear Vera." Birdie shook
her head. "If only I'd known you'd be here! Nothing for you, I'm afraid."

Then it was my turn. Birdie stood behind my chair. I couldn't see her
but I could hear her excited breathing. "Little Freya," she murmured. "Darling girl." The next thing I knew she'd wrapped a scarf around my neck. It
was light blue with a pattern of trapeze artists hanging from swings and
clowns turning somersaults. I couldn't help but lift it in front of my eyes
and marvel.

"Thank you, Auntie."

"Nothing but the best for our little gymnast," she crooned. And then, to
my horror, she cried out in a high shrieking voice: I can do a cartwheel!
Birdie, look me!

In that moment I felt my first hate.

It was Sigga who put me to bed that night because Mama didn't trust herself on stairs. "Nightie time," she said wearily.

"Why did Birdie bring us presents if she's mad at us?"

"Birdie does things that are hard to understand."

"I thought when Mama woke up that meant she was fine."

"Give her time, elskan. She had a bad fall."

Then I was alone in the room. No story, no song, no rhyme. I reached under my pillow and found Mama's nightgown. Would she be looking for
it? I couldn't bring myself to give it up. Tracing the embroidery with my fingers, I stared out the window into dark night. Moon, moon, take me up ...
carry me up to the clouds ... because there sits my mother ...

In the days that followed Mama's homecoming, Birdie was eager to make
amends. It was a pattern I would soon learn to recognize: rages and denunciations, followed by disappearances, concluding with a chastened period of
trying to unburn bridges. Respectful to Sigga, solicitous to my frail mother,
and toward me-perhaps fearing she'd lost my affection for good-an excess
of auntly attention. Since my mother felt unsteady on the stairs, Birdie took
it upon herself to put me to bed each night, plying me with bedtime stories
the way other aunts might dole out candy. I was a greedy audience. Tales
from Birdie's childhood, Norse myths, ghost stories, and sagas -I devoured
them all, then begged for more.

But there was one story I requested again and again. Birdie called it
"The End of the World as Olafur Knew It," and she told it like this:

"The infant who would one day become the grandfather you'd never
meet was born in a turf-roofed farmhouse in the East of Iceland with two
teeth cutting through his gums.

"`Skaldagemlur!' cried his grandmother Ingibjorg, who was also the midwife."

"What's a midwife?" I interrupted.

"A woman who delivers babies. In Icelandic a midwife is called a ljos-
modir, which means light-mother."

"Were you named after Ingibjorg the light-mother?"

"Indeed I was."

"Are you a light-mother too?"

"Me? No, I'm a word-mother. Now listen." She paused, then switched
back into her story voice:

And so Ingibjorg lifted the newborn in the air and bared his upper lip so
his exhausted mother could witness the tiny nubs: a baby skald. Infants
born with teeth were called skaldageinlur and destined to become poets. Or
so it was said, and so some believed.

The child Olafur was raised on a farm called Brekka, which sat at the
bottom of a cliff so tall and sheer and gigantic it made Brekka look like a
tiny dollhouse. In summer, tall grasses and wildflowers topped the turf roof;
in winter, lids of snow. Brekka belonged to Olafur's uncle Pall, a farmerpoet, and Olafur's family lived there with him because they couldn't afford
a farm of their own. Times were lean in Iceland, people scrambled just to
stay alive, and in the summer the farmers worked so hard there was little
time for poetry. Winter was another story.

Winter in Iceland, Freya min, was much longer and darker than here.
Little work could be done outdoors-light was scant, the weather forbidding. Dark day after long dark day the Icelanders were trapped inside. How
did they stand it? They read. Members of the household took turns reading
out loud by the smoky glow of a lamp lit by whale oil: sagas and poetry and
the Bible and newspapers and any books they could get their hands on.
Books were passed farm to farm. The name for these evening readings was
levoldvaka, meaning evening-wake. In Iceland in winter, words took the
place of light.

One night, after the evening reading, Pall took Olafur aside. He had
taken a special interest in his nephew, who early on showed signs of the fate
his grandmother had predicted for him. There was nothing Olafur loved
more than the feel of a good rhyme, the words bouncing off each other like
a pair of lambs butting heads in a bright green field. Like the Viking skald
Egil Skallagrimsson, Olafur had composed his first poem at the age of three,
and there was no stopping him after that. Nor did his uncle try, though he
was careful to correct the boy's meter. Now, Pall had something else in
mind.

"Do you know the poem Voluspa?"

"Of course I know it!" answered Olafur.

"Recite it."

Olafur could not.

"My boy, you can't say you know a poem until you learn it by heart. A
true poet brands the words of the best poems into his mind. He breathes
them in and out. He speaks them from memory, he can recite them in his
sleep. Voluspa is our most ancient poem: it tells how the world began and
how it will end. It was composed in the oral tradition, in pagan times before
Icelanders knew how to write. I want you to learn it by heart."

"Isn't it very long?"

"Sixty-some verses. If you memorize one each day, you'll know the whole
by Easter. Then you can surprise everyone with a recital during the evening
reading."