The Tricking of Freya

by Christina Sunley

  "Good dog." Birdie laughed, patting my head. I liked her again.

  "Woof!" I barked, but quietly, so my mother wouldn't hear. Then hung out my tongue and panted all the way to Gimli, imagining the gold-roofed houses I would find there-Gimli the town and Gimli the heaven having become one in my mind-dreaming of flying. Surely tomorrow Birdie would take me flying.

  4

  Forgive me, dear Cousin, for having confused that most splendid dwelling of the gods with a rinky-dink resort town on the mosquito-laden shore of Lake Winnipeg. I was simply a seven-year-old girl with my own ideas of majesty. And Gimli itself had harbored grand ambitions once: to serve as the capital of a New Iceland, est. 1876. It was a lofty dream almost instantly punctured by grim reality. In its first year, the New Iceland settlement was ravished by smallpox, a few years later by devastating floods. The lands the settlers usurped from the Indians and so painstakingly cleared quickly reverted to bog. Only the foolish and die-hard remained, our grandfather, Olafur, among them.

  Granted, Gimli revealed itself no home of the gods, but let's give the settlers due credit for optimism. Remember, it doesn't take much to look heavenly when the land you've left behind is covered in a foot of volcanic ash, your farm littered with the rotting corpses of your entire flock of sheep, the air itself burnt and stinking of rotten eggs. And the Ash Districts accounted for only a portion of the Icelandic diaspora. A spell of particularly wretched climate, lives of grim servitude in a near-feudal social structure, the seemingly unending suffering bestowed by foreign rule: reasons aplenty to get up and go. Life in Iceland was harsh; life in New Iceland only differently so.

  By the time I arrived in Gimli, nearly a century later, all that remained of the capital of Nev,, Iceland was a floundering fishing village masquerading as a beach resort. Welcome to Gimli-Your Place in the Sun!

  So I suppose it won't surprise you, Cousin, when I tell you that Oddi, our grandmother's house, was no palace capped in gold but an old dingywhite farmhouse with yellow trim, roofed with utterly ordinary red shingles. But you are, by now-assuming you've made it this far-an adult. I was a child fully expecting gold when Stefan pulled his old Rambler station wagon onto Second Street. I ran ahead of my mother and arrived at the door first, eager to meet my grandmother the queen. But Sigga too was a startling disappointment, in her plain brown apron and sensible lace-up shoes.

  "Elskan!" She held out her arms to hug me, but I shrank back.

  "Where's your crown?" I demanded.

  ? "My-. "

  "And your green velvet cape!"

  Sigga began to laugh. Then she stepped past me and folded my mother in her long arms. Marna, my mother said. Marna. Marna.

  That too shocked me. To hear Mama call someone Mama. Wasn't Sigga a grandmother, an aroma? But she was also the mother of my mother. That idea cramped my brain. I turned to Birdie. "Mama and Amma," I said.

  "Indeed," Birdie replied. "The big mother-daughter reunion. Quite a moment to behold."

  I had no idea what she was talking about. I tried again. "Mama and Amma," I explained. "They ... have the same letters in their names. But scrambled."

  "Indeed, elskan. How clever you are!"

  While Mama and Amma stood in the kitchen chatting and Uncle Stefan brought our suitcases from the car, Birdie led me on a tour of the house, beginning with the living room, which she called a parlor, a small room nearly overpowered by the dark wood of the wainscoting and a gleaming black piano. Lace curtains hung in the window, lace cloth covered the coffee table, lace doilies rested on the arms of a plush green couch. I tested the couch, bouncing on it lightly, then stood by the fireplace examining the photographs on the mantel. Some were identical to the ones on our mantel in Connecticut-Olafur with his pipe, Mama and Birdie wading, even a photo of me with two front teeth missing but there were many unknown to me as well. "Are these Our People?"

  "Indeed," Birdie said.

  "You like that word, indeed."

  "Indeed I do."

  "Indeedy-do!"

  Birdie didn't miss a beat. "Righty-o!"

  "Okeydokey!"

  "Hokeypokey!"

  "Hocus-pocus!"

  We stared at each other, grinning.

  "Come see your grandfather Olafur's study." She took me to a door at the far end of the living room. "You open it."

  I turned the beveled glass knob, so shiny it made me think of diamonds. Inside was a small room brimming with books. Books on every inch of wall, piled on the chairs, stacked on the floor, covering the surface of a long bench. Birdie led me to a wooden desk. She ran her hand over its surface, like she was petting a very beautiful cat. "This is the desk where Olafur wrote his poems. Of course, not here in this exact room. He died before we moved here. But Sigga and I have reconstructed his study exactly as the great poet liked it. Skald Nyja Islands."

  "Scowled what?"

  "Skald Nyja Islands."

  "Oh."

  "You say it, Freya." Her brow was furrowed and she sounded cross.

  "Skowld. Knee-ya. Eece-lands."

  "Good. What does it mean?"

  "Mean?"

  "In English."

  I bit my lip.

  "It means Poet of New Iceland. Hasn't your mother taught you a single word of Icelandic?"

  Alltaf baetist raun a raun," I said. "Mama says that to me a lot."

  Birdie laughed. "Do you know what it means?"

  "No," I admitted.

  "It means trouble always follows trouble."

  "Mama says trouble is my middle name," I offered.

  Her smile disappeared again. "Trouble is not your middle name! Ingibjorg is your middle name. You were named after me and I was named after my father's grandmother and she was named after her mother's sister. Ingibjorg has been in our family for as long as anyone has kept track."

  I nodded obediently. Birdie made my head spin: in the space of one conversation she'd gone from happy to cross to laughing to mad again. I sat down in my grandfather's chair and picked up an empty ink bottle from the desk.

  "It smells like moss in here," I observed. "Everything is old."

  "Except you," Birdie said. "You're new." To my surprise she kissed me on the top of the head. Her lips stayed there for a long time, and I thought I could feel them moving, as if she were talking without making any sound.

  Upstairs were two bedrooms next to each other. One was Birdie's. It had a four-poster bed with a canopy, a view of the lake, and a desk with a typewriter. The other room, Birdie explained, would be mine. My red suitcase was sitting on the bed, and I felt happy to see it. I opened the suitcase snappity-snap. "This is Foxy. He comes from Cousin Helgi the mink farmer."

  "Handsome beast," Birdie said.

  While the grown-ups drank coffee, I sat on the couch between Birdie and Amma Sigga. Mama and Stefan sat in stiff wooden chairs across from us. I closed my eyes and stroked Foxy, from snout to tail, tail to snout, listening to the conversation without understanding. It was all in Icelandic. Every once in a while I'd hear a word I knew, usually a name, like Freya, or Anna, or Birdie, and then I'd open my ears wide for a moment. I wondered if they could really understand each other, or if they were just making sounds like gurgling water. Soon I fell asleep with my head on Birdie's lap, dreaming Mama singing hymns.

  The entire next day was spent preparing for Mama's homecoming party, an event Birdie and I were to ruin-the first of our many conjoined disastersthough looking back, I can't find any trace of impending calamity in that bright June morning. I remember waking with one thought only: This was the day I would learn to fly. But where was Birdie?

  "She's sleeping in," Sigga said. We were sitting at the breakfast table, Mama, Sigga, and me, eating soft-boiled eggs on toast.

  "And don't you even think about waking her," my mother warned. "Or there'll be a scene."

  "What's a scene?"

  "Birdie has trouble waking up, is all."

  "It's her dreams," Sigga added. "All that dreaming she does, all night long. If she sleep
s at all."

  "Everyone dreams," my mother said. "But not everyone bares their fangs at the breakfast table."

  "Birdie has fangs?"

  Sigga's kitchen was old but immaculate. It had none of the suburban colors I was used to, the burnt orange and avocado appliances, the flower-power wallpapers of my classmates' homes. Everything here was white and silver. A shiny toaster that reminded me of Stefan's Rambler. Tin canisters labeled SUGAR, FLOUR, SALT. A Scotch plaid thermos. A wall of glassed cabinets with bronze latches that went clickity-click, clickity-click. And a large table with a lemon yellow Formica top and bowed chrome legs. My job for the morning was to help Sigga in the kitchen while my mother went out for groceries. It was the first time I was alone with my grandmother. Amina Sigga won't put up with any nonsense. Even lacking her white headdress and green velvet cape, I still viewed her as queenly.

  "Now, elskan," she said in her thick accent. "Let's get started, shall we?"

  I nodded, afraid to speak. Around my waist she tied an apron that hung almost to my ankles, then dragged a chair over to the counter and told me to stand on it.

  I thought maybe she was testing me. "Mama never lets me stand on furniture."

  "Well, I suppose it'll be all right this one time." When Sigga smiled her face crinkled like a paper fan.

  "How old are you?"

  "Oh, fairly old I'd say. Older than many but not as old as some. Now, elskan, climb up on this chair and help your old aroma with the ponnukokur."

  "What's ponnukokur?"

  "What's ponnukokur?" a voice repeated. But it wasn't Sigga's. I turned to see Birdie standing in the doorway, hair mashed onto one side of her head, wearing a long pink bathrobe. "What's ponnukokur?" she said again. I was glad she didn't know either.

  But instead of answering, Sigga said, "Let her be, Ingibjorg. She's just a child."

  "How can she not know what ponnukokur are? Doesn't Anna teach her anything? Are you aware that this child doesn't know one single word of Icelandic?"

  Alltaf baetist raun a raun, I said silently. Trouble always follows trouble.

  "It may not have occurred to you, Birdie, but they don't teach Icelandic in American elementary schools." It was my mother, coming through the back screen door with an armload of groceries.

  "Of course they don't," Birdie said. She was nearly shouting. "That's why it's your duty to teach her!"

  "That's easy for you to say." Mama spoke quietly but firmly. "I can barely teach that child to hold still long enough to tie her shoes."

  "She seems perfectly well behaved to me," Birdie insisted. "And if you don't start her soon it'll be too late. Look at Vera's children. They're nearly out of high school and they can't speak a word of Icelandic."

  "And why should they?"

  "Fine. Maybe Vera's children don't need to. Let them turn their backs on the most expressive language this earth has ever known. But not Freya. Freya is the granddaughter of one of our greatest poets. He's probably turning in his grave. You have a responsibility, Anna. Doesn't she, Mama?"

  Sigga sighed wearily. "Oh, Olafur's turning in his grave all right. Listening to his two girls fighting."

  At least that's what I imagine she said, because most of the argument in the kitchen that morning took place in Icelandic. It was an argument that was repeated over many summers, in many variations. An argument I came to know by heart.

  "This language is who we are."

  "What good could it possibly do her?"

  "Good? What good? I'll tell you what good. `Language is a solemn thing. It grows out of life, out of its agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined.' Oliver Wendell Holmes. That's what good it does. Sacred good."

  And on and on. Even then, I sensed these arguments were about something more than whether I could speak Icelandic. Birdie was never satisfied. I was the living symbol of my mother's betrayal, of my mother's turning into an American.

  "Why do you stay there?" I heard Birdie demand once. "Now that you're a widow? What keeps you there? You belong here with your people."

  I wondered that too. My mother had no real life to speak of in Connecticut. Sometimes I thought staying in Connecticut might simply be my mother's way of avoiding fighting with Birdie all year round.

  Sigga let me crack three eggs into the ponnukokur batter, and this I managed with only one small speck of shell. I tried to dig it out with my fingers, but it was impossible to retrieve from the slippery whites. Sigga said, "Leave it, elskan, it's too small to matter." I was allowed to stir the batter and also to lick the spoon. I watched while Sigga poured the batter into a small black frying pan, making the thin pancakes one by one until there was a pile on the plate. Then we rolled them up and sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar. Next, I helped spread purple-black prune filling with a special knife, wide and dull, on seven round yellow cakes Sigga had taken from the oven. She gingerly placed one layer on top of the other to make the vinarterta. On the very top layer we spread white frosting, in little wavelets. "Whitecaps," Sigga called them.

  "What are whitecaps?"

  "You'll see soon enough. When we get a storm on the lake."

  I licked the cake batter off the knife, and it tasted like almond. Then Sigga led me into the living room. "This china cabinet," she said, "was a wedding present for me and Olafur."

  The cabinet was dark wood and hand-carved, with rounded glass doors. Each of its four shelves was filled with teacups and matching saucers, each cup different from the rest, and each, Sigga explained, with a story behind it.

  "What are the stories?"

  "Not now. Another day, I'll tell you the stories of the cups. There are nearly sixty of them. For now we just need to pick some for the party. And I'd like you to select them. Since you're a guest of honor today."

  I liked the sound of that.

  "Use both hands, elskan. One at a time. We need twelve in all. Set them on the table by the window."

  Oh, the careful, excruciating selection. Each cup with its own charms. Some had lips rimmed with gold. One had a dark red rose at the bottom. Another was green as a lime with pale pink buds on the saucer. A black one with gold stars and rim. And then ever so steadily reaching in, lifting them out one by one and carrying each to the table as if it were full of something hot and precious. It kept me busy a long time. Which was, I suppose, our grandmother's intention.

  In the early afternoon I noticed Birdie's bedroom door was open. Birdie was sitting at a small table, still in the pink bathrobe she'd worn while arguing with Mama that morning. The table looked like a desk, but it wasn't for writing. It had a big mirror attached, and its surface was covered with little bottles and jars, curlers, hairbrushes, combs. Birdie was outlining her lips in red when she noticed me in the mirror.

  "You've caught me at my vanity!"

  I didn't know what that meant.

  "It's a pun," Birdie explained.

  I didn't know what that meant either. Birdie pulled a chair from a comer of the room and sat me beside her. I could smell roses and lemons and something like cinnamon or was that a smell from the kitchen drifting up the stairs?

  "A vanity is a table where women do themselves up. But vanity also means being conceited."

  "Oh."

  "Do you know what conceited means?"

  "No."

  "If you don't know a word, just ask me. Conceited means being overly proud of your own looks."

  "Are you conceited?"

  "Some people say that. Some people have called me vain. Not to name any names. But really, I'm not so beautiful, if you look closely. See how small my eyes are, how they're too close together, and I have hardly any lashes and my eyebrows are skimpy and my ears refuse to lie flat against my head, which makes it hard for me to put my hair up. Without all this"-Birdie swept her hand over the vanity "I'd be downright homely."

  And before I could ask: "It's a nicer way of saying ugly."

  "Mama says you're the
beautiful one."

  "She does? She says that? Nonsense!" But I could see Birdie was pleased.

  "Mama doesn't have a vanity table."

  "That's because she's not vain. Sensible Anna!"

  "Are you sensible?"

  "Hardly."

  I didn't see how anyone could think Birdie was homely or ugly or anything but beautiful. Later I would. Birdie's face nearly purple with rage, or bleached of life, or her eyes truly small and scowling. But not today. Today Birdie was glamorous. Like a swan. But she had yet to mention our flying lesson.

  "My wings itch," I hinted.

  "Wings," Birdie repeated, buffing her chin with powder.

  I couldn't stand it any longer. "When are we going flying?"

  Birdie laughed like she had when I'd yelled "Stop, thief" to Stefan at the train station. A loud, raucous laughter that filled the room, that made my ears burn. I didn't see what was so funny. "You said you'd give me lessons if I came to Gimli."

  Birdie caught her breath. "And I will, elskan. Not today though. The wind isn't right. No breeze. Impossible to lift off."

  "Tomorrow?"

  "Sure, baby. Tomorrow we'll go. If the conditions are right, tomorrow we'll fly."

  "Fly in the sky."

  "Glide in the sky."

  "Gliding sky high."

  "Oh, you are the clever one, aren't you?" She pulled me onto her lap, kissed me, then showed me in the mirror where she'd left the glossy red imprint of her lips on my cheek.

  Later, Birdie came down the stairs in a splendid dress, white with red flowers nearly black in their centers. Fancy as the teacup roses.

  "What do you think?"

  "It's beautiful," I said. Then my mother came in the room, brushing flour off her hands and onto her apron.

  "That's really something," she said evenly. "I didn't bring anything that dressy." She bent down and wiped the lipstick off my cheek with the corner of her apron.