The Tricking of Freya (8 page)

The next thing I knew it was me and Birdie, alone in Gimli. Mama in the hospital in Winnipeg. Sigga staying at Vera's on Victor Street, spending her days
at Mama's bedside even though Mama couldn't see or hear her. Or anyone.
Or anything. It turned out Mama wasn't dead. But she was lying in a coma.

"You understand what a coma is?" Uncle Stefan asked. He'd come by to
check on me and Birdie.

I nodded. I figured coma was just the Canadian way of saying comma,
long o instead of short. I imagined my mother in a hospital bed curled on
her side in the shape of a comma. What would happen if she curled all the
way into a ball? Would she become a period? A period would be the full
stop ... but a comma was only a pause.

"Birdie said it's like sleeping. Except Mama might not ever wake up
again."

"She said that to you?" He tapped the bowl of his pipe sharply against
the ashtray and hot ash tumbled out. "That's crazy, to tell you a thing like
that."

I wasn't sure what he meant. Was it a crazy thing to say-or just crazy to
tell me?

The house with me and Birdie alone in it was very quiet, except when
the phone rang out like an alarm, trilling its is just like an Icelander. Brrrrrrrrrinnnnng! Brrrrrrrrrinnnnng! Which sounded like Bring! Bring!
Bring Marna home. When it rang Birdie and I would both jump up, anxious
for and dreading news. Usually it was Sigga or Vera, providing Birdie with
an update, or trying to convince her to bring me down to Winnipeg. Birdie
would have none of it.

"We're fine here, Vera."

"I know you have plenty of room. But it's better for Freya here. She can
play at the beach all day, take her mind off things. Water soothes the soul."

"Believe me, Vera, everything is under control. I can take perfectly good
care of this child."

On the phone with Vera and Sigga, Birdie sounded cheery; as soon as
she hung up she sank back into her gloom. We never went to the beach. In
fact, we never left the house. Mostly I was on my own. At night I'd change
into my nightie by myself and brush my teeth, but I was afraid to fall
asleep. If I fell asleep I too might never wake up. Instead I kept myself
awake listening to Birdie's word-rain. Birdie typed all night, then slept half
the day. In the mornings I'd go downstairs and cut myself a slice of leftover
vinarterta for breakfast. When Birdie finally woke up, she had little patience for me.

"I miss Mama."

"You should have thought of that before turning that cartwheel."

Other times, Birdie insisted it wasn't my fault. "It was that pesky fylgja,
to be sure."

"What's a fylgja?"

"A fylgja," Birdie explained, "is a follower. An attendant fetch. A spirit
that's followed our family all the way from Iceland. Our fylgja's responsible
for a lot of mischief. If dishes break, you can be sure our fylgja is at hand.
And an entire china cabinet?" Birdie shook her head in disbelief. "That is
surely the fylgja's work!"

I didn't believe her. I didn't doubt the fylgja's existence, but I took all the
blame for Mama's accident upon myself. I stopped asking Birdie for flying
lessons; my wings no longer itched. I was the girl who put her mother in a coma: I no longer deserved to fly. If my mother died because of my cartwheel, would that make me a murderer? Would I get sent to jail?

"Don't be so hard on yourself, elskan." Birdie found me one afternoon
crying on the landing.

I tried to speak between gasping sobs. "Is ... Gryla ... going to ... eat
7
me."

Birdie let out one of her raucous laughs. "Child," she said, sitting down
next to me on the stair, pulling my head onto her lap and stroking my hair.
"It was an accident. It wasn't your fault. You're not a bad kid. There are
much worse kids for Gryla to munch on. You want to hear about a bad kid?
A really really bad kid?"

I felt a glimmer of hope. Children worse than me? I wiped my nose on
the back of my hand and caught my breath.

"A long time ago," Birdie began, "there was a little boy named Egil
Skallagrimsson."

"It's a fairy tale?" I felt disappointed.

"Not a fairy tale. Egil was real. His story is written in a book called Egil's
Saga, which someday you will read for yourself. Egil is one of our ancestors,
and he grew up to be a very famous poet in Iceland. But he lived a long long
time ago. A thousand years ago! And he was the ugliest little boy you ever
set eyes on. When he was only six years old, he murdered another boy. Split
the child's head open with an ax. Then he bragged about it in a poem."

"Did he go to jail?"

"They didn't have jails in those days. If you committed a crime, you paid
your victim or his family money for it. And if it was a really bad crime, you
got exiled to the interior of the island, to wander the lava fields and glaciers,
and battle trolls and ghosts. But Egil was too young to be exiled."

"So what happened to him?"

"Absolutely nothing. His mother was proud of him, in fact. She said he
had the makings of a real Viking."

I thought about Egil a lot in the days that followed. Especially at night
while I was trying to stay awake so I wouldn't fall into a coma. Why did Egil
brag about killing someone? Why was his mother proud? My own mother, I
was certain, would not be proud of me. If she lived. And if she died? Maybe I wouldn't get sent to jail after all. Maybe instead I would be banished to
the lava fields of Iceland, left to the mercy of gruesome trolls and raging
ghosts.

On the third night Uncle Stefan came over with a whole whitefish, harborfresh, mashed potatoes, and green beans. It was the first real food I'd eaten
since Mama's accident.

Birdie looked awful. She wasn't wearing any makeup. Her skin was pale,
her eyes were red. "Haggard," she said, as she sat down at the dinner table.
"I look haggard. An old hag."

"Nonsense," Uncle Stefan protested.

But Birdie ignored him. "I had one of my dreams," she said. "The night
before it happened."

"Before what happened?"

Birdie looked at Stefan as if he were an idiot. "Before Anna fell. I dreamt
that I was back on our old farm, and I was standing outside in the sheep
pen-

"But you didn't have sheep on the farm, Ingibjorg. Only cows."

"I know that! It's a dream, Stefan. So then who drives up but Anna. She
opens the door to the car and steps out, and at the same moment, I open
the door to the sheep pen. Then all the sheep come rushing out and trample her."

"Why?" I asked.

"There's no why in dreams, Freya." She turned hack to Stefan. "So?"

"So what?"

"So, you have to admit, even a skeptic like yourself. That was a prophetic
dream."

"You know what your father would have said about it, Ingibjorg? Draum-
s ro !"

"What's draumskrok?" I asked. It was a hard word to pronounce with a
mouthful of mashed potatoes.

"Dream nonsense," Stefan explained.

Birdie left the table in a huff.

Stefan and I cleared the dishes, then I sat with him in the parlor while
he smoked his pipe. I thought maybe he was waiting for Birdie to come back downstairs, but he seemed content enough to sit there with me, side
by side on the moss green couch. He asked if I would like to light his pipe,
and then if I would blow out the match.

"You must be worried, elskan, about your mother."

I nodded, too choked to speak.

"I think she'll come out of this just fine." He draped his long arm around
my shoulders and gave a squeeze. Even though he was skinny, his body felt
solid, something I could lean against. I wondered if that's what a father
might feel like.

That night I woke screaming in my sleep. A sheep was biting at my ankles
with its rubbery black lips. Birdie heard me cry out and came to me from
the next room. "A sheep dream?" she asked. I must have spoken in my
sleep. I nodded.

"Oh, those sheep dreams can be awful. I know. But think about it, baby.
Those sheep never hurt a soul."

During the week my mother was in the hospital, I woke at least once a
night with bad dreams. I dreamt Amma Sigga fell out of my maple tree. I
dreamt the ambulance men were piling broken cups onto stretchers and racing them out the door. If I woke screaming, Birdie would soon appear at my
bedside. "I'm gonna wash that dream right out of your head," she'd sing, and
scrub my scalp with her fingers like she was giving me a shampoo.

One night I dreamt that my mother was curled in a ball floating on the
lake. I didn't call out. I woke up silent. I went across the hall to Birdie's
room. She wasn't typing, for once. She was sitting on her bed, looking out
the window. I stood next to her. We could see the full moon above the lake,
its reflection floating on the surface. Birdie was crying. I knew why without
asking.

"It's not your fault," I said, stroking her lank blond hair. "It was that
fylgja."

As each day passed that Mama didn't wake up, Birdie sank further into
gloom. The house smelled close, days of dishes heaped in the sink. I'd
been wearing the same clothes every day. I had no clean underwear. Who
needs underwear? Gloom-Birdie said. I hadn't had a bath. I'd eaten no vegetables. Mama would not be happy. But Mama didn't know. Mama
was sleeping.

Time passed slowly. I wandered the house, into the bedroom Mama had
shared with Sigga. I opened her dresser drawers and took out each item-the
simple cotton blouses, the knee-high stockings-and refolded them clumsily.
I climbed into her bed and discovered underneath the pillow her nightgown
with the embroidery across the chest. If her nightgown was here, then what
was she wearing in the hospital? I wrapped the gown around Foxy so I could
sleep with it at night. Tracing the embroidery with my fingers, I wondered if
the doctors were trying hard enough to wake Mama up. Couldn't someone let
loose a super scream into Mama's ear? Or jump up and down on her bed?
Mama's best friend, Vera, told me on the phone that God would be the one to
wake Mama up. I imagined him with his great white beard and a megaphone:
TIME TO WAKE UP! TIME TO WAKE UP!

How could Mama eat and drink if she was sleeping all the time? Was
she dreaming? Was she lonely? Did she miss me in her sleep?

"Mama tucks me in every night," I instructed Birdie. "Mama sings me
the church songs. Mama tells me to brush my teeth."

"Mama does this," Birdie mimicked. "Mama does that."

Through the gaps in the lace curtains I caught sparkling glimpses of day.
Sometimes Birdie got sick of my moping and ordered me to play in the yard.
I'd stand on the lawn remembering like a dream teaching myself to spin back
home in Connecticut. I couldn't imagine it anymore, whirling myself around,
or even climbing a tree. My legs and arms felt heavy, my feet dragged when I
walked. I lay down on my stomach and pressed my face into the grass. If
Mama woke up again, would she still love me?

On the sixth day after my cartwheel, at 7:38 p.m., Mama woke up.

"Why did she wake up at night," I wanted to know, "instead of in the
morning?"

Birdie stared at me in disbelief. "It doesn't matter when, silly. She woke
up! She woke up!"

Birdie grabbed me by the hand and pulled me through the house.
"Anna's awake!" she chanted. Anna's awake!" I sang it too, but I couldn't bring myself to call my mother Anna. So Birdie sang "Anna's awake" and I
sang "Mama's awake" at the same time. We ended up on the green couch,
gasping for air. Then I ran to the front door. No sign. I sat down on the
stoop. It was nearly nine o'clock, and the sunset still glowed behind the
trees. I turned my head back and forth, up the street then down. Not a single car in motion, or person. Gimli was tucked in for the night.

"What are you doing?"

"Waiting for Mama."

It turned out Mama wasn't coming home that night, or the next night either. She would check out of the hospital tomorrow, then stay at Vera's for a
few days while she regained her strength. But Sigga-Sigga would be home
tomorrow night.

"And look at you. Pale as a ghost." For the first time since Mama's accident Birdie opened all the curtains in the house, and the windows. "Air," she
proclaimed. "Air, and light, and water. Tomorrow we're going to the beach."

The lake was blue as the glass ink bottle Birdie kept on her windowsill,
sheening with light, and so big you couldn't see the other side of it. It
seemed more ocean than lake. The beach ran as far as I could see in either
direction, wide and flat and filled with people. Family after family packed
together on the sand. I could hear the high-pitched shrieks of kids and
gulls.

"The mob has descended," Birdie proclaimed. "Summer's here, and all
the city folk swarm to the lake at Gimli like lemmings to the sea. Welcome
to Gimli, home of the gods, your place in the sun! You don't see them up here
in winter, when the lake is covered with ice and the wind'll bite your nose
right off." But she didn't seem to mind. In fact, she seemed happy again,
fluttering down the beach in her floral jacket like a wild pink kite. We took
off our shoes and the sand felt warm and rough on the skin of my virgin
soles. I carried my sneakers with the laces tied together, twirling them in
my hand. Birdie wove in and out among the people on their blankets, kids
racing back and forth, women in swimsuits lying on beach chairs. I followed in her wake, struggling to keep up. Sometimes she waved a hand here
or there, but she never stopped to chat. Finally she picked out a spot at the
far end of the beach.