The Tricking of Freya (4 page)

Night was when I loved my mother best. It was a lengthy process, unwinding my brain for sleep, requiring a continuous stream of story and
song. After pulling the crisp sheet up to my chin, Mama would take her seat
in the rocking chair at the side of the bed. Sometimes she sang, dreary
songs she called Lutheran hymns, but I always begged for a story and she
usually gave in. Reading aloud required holding the book and turning its
pages, and Mama preferred to keep her hands free for knitting, crocheting,
and embroidering. So mostly she talked story from memory as she stitched
tiny flowers to border our pillowcases and nighties. While Mama talked
and sewed I listened and stroked Foxy. Foxy was a stole sent as a gift by our
distant cousin Helgi, a mink farmer in British Columbia. Mama refused to
wear the stole, with its head, feet, and tail intact. Who on earth would want
such a disgusting animal around her neck?

I would. Thumb in mouth I'd lay my cheek against Foxy's auburn fur,
waking in the morning to find his pelt stiff with drool.

"A long time ago, when your grandfather Olafur the poet was a little boy, he
lived on an island near the top of the world, below the North Pole, in a
house with a sod roof."

"A sad roof?"

"Sod is grass."

"His roof was made out of grass? It was green?"

"It was green in the summer, but in the winter the house was so buried
in snow the only way out was a set of stairs cut into the snowdrifts. Above
where Olafur slept was a window as small as my hand. One morning when
Olafur woke up, he looked out the window as small as my hand and saw
that the sky was dark instead of light. It was so dark it looked like night. He
lit a candle and climbed down from the sleeping loft. He could hear the
sheep in the next room."

"Sheep in the house?"

"So they wouldn't freeze. And the sheep were crying, baaaaa, baaaaa, as
if they knew something bad had happened. Olafur scrambled up the icy
steps leading out of the house. And you know what he saw? Black snow
falling from the sky."

"There's no such thing as black snow!"

"It turned out to be ashes, a blizzard of ashes blocking out the sun. For
three days Olafur's family lived in darkness. Mount Askja had erupted, and
its lava spread in a thousand rivers of hot burning mud. But worse than the
lava was the ash. It killed cows and horses and sheep and buried people's
houses."

"Was Olafur's house buried?"

"Not completely. But nothing would grow on their land anymore, and all
their sheep died because there was no grass for them to eat. Olafur's father
and mother decided to leave Iceland and find a new place to live. Just think
of it: their people had lived on that island for a thousand years! But they had
no choice. On a summer evening, Olafur and his brothers and mother and
father packed up their things and climbed onto their shaggy horses. They
rode away from their farm, which was called Brekka, and they never saw it again. Olafur kept falling asleep in the saddle. They rode into midnight but
it was bright as day, because in summer the sun shines at night in Iceland."

"The sun can't shine at night!"

"It can in Iceland. And in the winter, the sun never shines. But this was
summer, and they rode all night until they reached Seydisfjordur, where
they boarded a boat crowded with hundreds of other Icelanders who were
starting a new life in a place called Canada. The waters were rough, and
Olafur was seasick the whole way to Scotland. From Scotland they got on
another boat, and this boat took them all the way to Canada. In Canada
they boarded a train. Olafur had never seen a train before, none of them
had. He thought little men were pushing it from behind. Finally they traveled by boat to a big lake, Lake Winnipeg. This was going to be their new
home. And do you know what they named their new town?"

"What?"

"Gimli. Now listen closely: I'm going to tell you why they named the town
Gimli. A long time ago, the Icelanders believed that in heaven was a beautiful palace with a gold roof. And the most beautiful room in the palace, where
the very best people went after they died, was called Gimli. Gimli shone
brighter than the sun. And so that was the name Our People chose when they
arrived in their new land. And someday, I'll take you to Gimli. Would you like
that?"

I wasn't sure. Which Gimli did my mother mean: the town in Canada or
the palace for dead people? I fell asleep dreaming of black snow falling onto
gold-roofed houses.

One Sunday afternoon each month Mama and I sat side by side on the orange plaid couch to telephone Our People in Canada. My job was to dial.
As Mama called out the numbers I'd drag the dial with my index finger over
to the small lick of metal that curled around the number one. Then I'd release it, savoring the clickety-clickety-click.

Mama let me speak to Amma Sigga first. The receiver felt big and
black and heavy in my hand. I was always afraid Amma Sigga would ask
if I'd run outside without my shirt or colored on the walls, but she never
did.

"Hiya-amma-sigga!"

"Well hello, Freya rnin."

Freya mine. "Does that mean I'm your Freya?"

"It certainly does."

If Amma Sigga had sent me a present, for Christmas or Easter or my
birthday, Mama would remind me to thank her. Usually Sigga sent things
she'd knitted from Icelandic wool, slipper-socks and sweaters and scarves
in white, gray, black, and brown.

"How did you like the mittens?" Sigga would ask.

"They're pretty," I'd answer politely, running my tongue over the small
holes of the mouthpiece. "But they're too scratchy so I never wear them."

Mama frowned at such comments, but Sigga took them in stride. The
conversations usually ended on a literary note. Sigga always wanted to know
if I was reading yet, and once I'd started, what. "Icelanders love to read,"
she'd say. "It's in our blood."

I thought Sigga's is sounded funny.

"That's because she rolls them," my mother explained. "Icelanders like
to roll their r's."

Whenever Amma Sigga said a word with an r in it, I imagined a pack of
is somersaulting on her tongue.

While my mother spoke with Sigga I wandered the living room, sticking
Lego pieces onto my fingertips, half-listening. It was a lot of talk about Our
People with the funny names, all easy and pleasant, up until the moment
when Mama asked Sigga to put Birdie on the line. No matter how happily
the conversation with Birdie started out, it nearly always took a bad turn at the
end. Mama would grow silent, and as she listened to Birdie she'd wrap the
long coils of phone cord around and around her wrist into a massive black
bracelet, then unwind it, then coil it up again. Usually, it was talk about why
Mama hadn't brought me to Canada yet to meet my aroma and my aunt.

"I know you're looking forward to us coming."

"Of course I want to come!"

"But you know I'm afraid to fly-"

"I can't manage her on a train for three days-"

"Birdie, believe me, she doesn't know how to behave!"

"I can so behave!" I'd shout in the background. "I'll sit still on the train.
Watch." I'd sit stiffly on my chair, knees pushed together, hands folded on
my lap. "See?"

Then I got to speak to Birdie. It always surprised me when Birdie got
on the line-even if Birdie and Mama had just been arguing, Birdie's
voice would sound happy and excited. "Well, kiddo," she'd say. "How's life
in in America.

I told her about the midget inside the traffic light at the end of the block
who switched the light green-yellow-red.

"Clever little fellow!" Birdie laughed. She didn't ask if I had actually
seen the midget or not. Another time I told her about a leaf I'd found that
was exactly half green and half orange.

"Sounds like a case of split personality to me," Birdie pronounced.
"Doesn't know if it's spring or fall!"

Once I confessed to Birdie that I wanted to learn to fly.

"You come to Gimli this summer, baby, I'll teach you how to fly!"

"You know how to fly?"

"Why do you think they call me Birdie?"

After the phone call was over Mama and I would sit at the kitchen table
for an afternoon snack. If the call had taken a particularly bad turn, Mama
wouldn't eat anything. I'd dip vanilla wafers one by one into my glass of milk.

"Well, Birdie's sick again."

"She didn't sound sick." I swirled the cookie crumbs into the milk with
my finger. "She didn't cough or sneeze or blow her nose."

"Well," Mama insisted. "She is sick."

"Will she be better by summertime?"

"I don't know, honey. Why?"

"She wants us to come visit her and Amma Sigga this summer." I often
imagined it, me and Birdie soaring over the lake, swooping and twirling like
trapeze artists, then diving off the edges of clouds into the sparkling water below. Mama and Amma Sigga watching from the beach, mouths open in awe.

"When you can behave, then we can go to Gimli for the summer."

But I did not behave, not well enough, not often enough. More summers
passed, and as each approached I'd hear my mother arguing with Birdie on
the phone. "I did not abandon you! I married an American. Really, Birdie.
Everything doesn't have to do with you."

But it did. In the end it did.

In addition to the phone calls there was a steady stream of letters back
and forth between Mama and her best friend, Vera. Vera had flown from
Winnipeg to help my mother after my father died, but I was too young to remember her. The letters came in blue airmail envelopes, the kind where
the letter and the envelope are one and the same piece of paper. Vera's neat
slanting script would fill the page. Mama would read Vera's letters at least
twice, and she always seemed sad after. "Homesick," she would say. "Vera
makes me homesick." I decided I didn't like Vera very much, not if she
made my mother sick.

It was not until I was seven and safely out of first grade that my mother announced we would spend the summer in Gimli. She bought me a suitcase
for the trip, and each morning the week before departure I squirmed under
the bed to slide it out for a look. The suitcase was a red so bright it made my
cheeks tingle sour cherry, with brass hinges and irresistible brass locks:
nudge the button with your thumb and snappity-snap the latch popped
open with a crisp metal ping like a popcorn kernel exploding itself against
the lid of a pot. Snappity-snap! Snappity-snap! Snappity-snap! Snappitysnap! Snappity-snap! Snappity

"You'll break it, Frey."

"I won't." But quit for fear of it. "Could a person travel inside a suitcase?"

"I don't suppose."

I imagined a shrunken version of myself settling onto a bed of dungarees, my mother latching me snugly in, my head resting on a pillow of socks
while Foxy whispered me to sleep. In the morning my mother would carry
Frey-in-the-suitcase to the train station, swinging me lightly in white-gloved
hands until the train screeched its arrival and everyone climbed all aboard,
all aboard.

The night before we left, Mama called Canada one last time. I was not
allowed to talk. "You'll see them soon enough." The call was mostly arrangements: what time the train would arrive, who would meet us at the station.
Then: "Is Birdie all right?"

"If she's not, we could always postpone."

"Of course we're coming. I never said we weren't. We'll wait for them at
the station then."

"Not go?" I asked as soon as my mother hung up.

"We're going, we're going!" Mama untangled the black phone cord coiled
tightly around her wrist. "Why does everyone think we're not going?"

Aside from an alarming episode when I got stuck between cars and had to
be rescued by a conductor, I behaved on the train. While Mama stared out
the window or knitted, I played endless games of solitaire. As we came
within a few hours of Winnipeg she began dropping stitches left and right,
sighing and ripping out whole sections of scarf. Every once in a while she
would sound a warning. "Your amnia Sigga is a proper lady, Frey. You're going to have to be very well behaved."

"I will." Red seven on black eight. Black queen on red king. Red two on
black three.

"Amma Sigga won't put up with any nonsense."

I imagined Sigga in her velvet Fjallkona cape, regal and strict as a
queen. "What about Auntie Birdie? Will she put up with nonsense?" As far
as I could tell from our phone conversations, Auntie Birdie seemed fond of
nonsense.

"Auntie Birdie ..." Mama began, then stopped herself.

"Auntie Birdie what?"

"You'll see soon enough."

Out the window things became very flat. There were no trees. Just miles
and miles of fields. Barley and wheat and alfalfa, Mama explained. Once
when the train stopped she took me onto the platform for my first glimpse
of prairie. All I could see was sky, blue in all directions. Except far to the
west. In that one corner of the sky, dark black clouds. From their underside
a gray streak connected sky to ground.