The Tricking of Freya

by Christina Sunley

  "Of course you didn't." Sigga leaned her head in from the kitchen doorway. "No need. This is a simple Saturday afternoon coffee party with relatives, not some fancy dress ball. Really, Ingibjorg."

  "Are you saying I shouldn't wear it? Just because Anna is going to wear some plain old Jane dress?"

  "It has nothing to do with Anna. It's too much, that's all."

  To my surprise, Birdie went upstairs without a word. You could be a grownup and still have your mother tell you what to wear. When Birdie came back down, she was wearing a beige skirt and a short-sleeved top. Sigga and Anna were in the kitchen, but Birdie modeled it for me, spinning once around.

  "Dour enough, don't you think?"

  Even in a simple outfit, Birdie shone. Dour, I decided, was simply another word for pretty. "Very dour," I agreed. "Dour indeed."

  My mother took me upstairs to dress. I ran to open my red suitcase, snappity-snap, but it was empty. Mama pointed to the closet, where my two dresses were hanging, then opened the bureau drawers one by one. The top one for my panties and socks, the next for shirts, the bottom one for shorts and pants. Mama had unpacked it all for me, without my knowing, without saying a word. I hugged her around the waist, burying my face in her flourdamp apron.

  "What's that for?" Mama asked, stroking my hair. She didn't smell like roses or lemon or anything but pure mother.

  Mama and I greeted all the guests who came to the door, each enveloping Mama in a Viking-size hug. "And this is your ... ?"

  That was my cue to cross one shiny black shoe over the other, lift the lacy edges of my dress, and curtsy. Say "Pleased to meet you. My name is Freya."

  Except everyone seemed to know my name already. They wanted to talk about who I looked like (my grandmother, my grandfather, my mother; no mention of my ghostly father), and they wanted to pat my head and pinch my cheeks. Especially Mama's best friend, Vera. Vera was tall, nearly as tall as Birdie and Mama, and had a long skinny neck. Vera fussed over me for a long time, and then her husband, Joey, lifted me high in the air. But where was Birdie? Vera wanted to know.

  "Oh, she'll be down soon enough," Sigga said.

  "Probably in her room," my mother added. "Waiting until everyone gets here so she can make a grand entrance."

  I peered up the stairs. There was Birdie, standing in her bedroom doorway, listening. She wasn't wearing the beige skirt anymore. She was back in the white dress with red flowers. When she saw me, she turned away and shut herself inside her room.

  Some people stayed all afternoon: Uncle Stefan and his grandfather Old Gisli, Vera and Joey and their two boys. Others came and went. Friends of Sigga's, friends of my mother's-and who could have imagined my mother with all these friends? She seemed not to have a single friend at home in Connecticut, none that I could think of. None who hugged her fiercely, none who wept at the long-lost sight of her.

  Sure enough, once the room was crowded Birdie came down the stairs, oddly glamorous. All attention went to her, for a moment, then back to my mother and me. The guests of honor.

  Stefan's grandfather Old Gisli kept me occupied for a time. True to his name, he was by far the oldest person I had ever seen. He wore a brown suit shiny at the knees and frayed at the cuffs, and his shirt collar was yellowed around the neck where it met the white of his scraggly hair. He walked with two canes, each topped with an elaborately carved knob. Cane-step by canestep he made his way across the room, then leaned the canes up against the arm of the green couch before lowering himself down. While Stefan went to get Old Gisli coffee and cake, I snuck over for a closer look at the canes. Each handle was carved into a different but equally ugly gnarled face, with huge eyes and wide leering mouths.

  "Trolls."

  I turned to find Old Gisli leaning over the arm of the couch, watching me with his watery eyes.

  "Huh?" Huh was not a word I was allowed to use, but Old Gisli didn't seem to mind.

  "Trolls," he said again, and this time I understood him, despite his thick accent. "Whittled 'em myself."

  I ran my finger over one of the troll's roiling eyebrows. Then Old Gisli began speaking in Icelandic, as if he were singing a song but without a tune. When he was done he leaned back into the couch with a toothy grin. "That," he said, "was a little verse of your afi Olafur's."

  "Skowld Knee-ya Eece-lands?"

  "That's right. He was a good friend of mine, your afi was. And did you understand the poem?"

  I shook my head. I was afraid he might be displeased with me for not knowing Icelandic, but he didn't seem to mind. The poem, he explained, told about when the Icelanders came to America, but their trolls and elves stayed behind in Iceland.

  "Why?"

  "Nowhere to hide. Elves prefer twisted bits of rock and cave. Manitoba's too flat for an elf's taste. But Gryla came over. That she did." He began reciting again, and then took me through the poem line by line in rough English. Here comes Gryla ... Gryla has six ears that swing down to her thighs, and three heads, each the size of a cow, and a nose like a goat's but with eighteen bumps, swollen and blue. Two long teeth descend below each of her chins. She is very picky about food and eats only children; she is so picky that she eats only the lazy children, the ones who make noise and trouble!

  For a moment I was too stunned by this gruesome vision to speak. Had my grandfather written that poem too?

  "Hardly!" Old Gisli's laugh was hoarse and grizzled. "Gryla's been around since long before your afi was even born."

  "Is she still around?"

  Old Gisli nodded. Then he might have winked. Or he might have caught a speck of dust in his eye. A moment after finishing his vinarterta he was dozing chin on chest.

  Vera's boys were teenagers. Back home my mother had warned me away from teenagers, especially hippie teenagers. Hippies, my mother advised, wore flared pants called bell-bottoms, and the boys had long sideburns and, worse, long hair. While I was being introduced to Vera's teenagers, I studied their pants: flared! Not only that, but one of them, Andrew, had hair nearly to his shoulders. The boys ate two plates of ponnukokur each, then announced they were going for a walk on the beach.

  Maybe they would like to take little Freya with them? Vera suggested.

  "Sure," Andrew agreed, reaching for my hand. I quickly hid both hands behind my back and shook my head no.

  Many times since I've wished I'd gone with those boys. We would have run on the beach chasing gulls, and by the time we returned to the party I'd have been tired out, my flying energy expelled. Instead I endured hour after hour of curtsying to new arrivals, carrying plates of ponnukokur around the room, and eating far more than my fair share of vinarterta. Mama and her dear Vera were sunk deep in conversation on the couch, Sigga kept pouring more rounds of coffee. And Birdie? She seemed truly like a bird to me, flitting from guest to guest, telling coy little jokes, pecking at vinarterta crumbs. Once she drew me up on her lap.

  "Looks just like her mother, don't you think?" Vera's husband, Joey, asked.

  "You think?" Birdie sounded dubious. She studied my face, traced my nose with her finger. "Yes, I suppose she does, just a little," she conceded.

  But mostly Birdie ignored me, and Mama too. I began to get antsy. My new shoes hurt, the lace collar of my dress itched, my legs had that twitchy run-starved feeling. I began taking little hops as I walked, I went up and down the stairs three times for no reason. "Settle down, Frey," I heard my mother say. "That's enough, Frey."

  I was bored with grown-up talk. Although mostly in English, it still seemed like a different language. Long discussions about people with funny names and how they were related to other people with funny names. Uncle Stefan gave me a pat on the head whenever he saw me, but mostly he was occupied with keeping an eye on Old Gisli, or hovering several feet from wherever Birdie happened to alight. Keeping an eye on her too. I tried to get Birdie's attention, to see if maybe she would change her mind about taking me flying, but she was too busy talking to an old woman named Thora. It seemed Birdie didn't even see me. So
I put my hands around her eyes from behind and shouted "Guess who?"

  Birdie's coffee spilled on her lap and she screamed, "Goddarnnit!"

  The room fell silent.

  "Frey!" My mother was across the room in an instant. "Frey, I told you to settle down. Oh, Birdie, I'm so sorry. Your fancy dress."

  A large stain bloomed in the lap of Birdie's dress, a brown rose among the red.

  "It doesn't matter," Birdie said.

  "Oh, that's good of you to-"

  "What matters, Anna, is that you insist on calling the child Frey."

  My mother stared, mouth open.

  "When her name is Freya! Not Frey. Frey-and you should know this, you would know this, if you remembered anything our father told us-Frey is one of the names for Freyr, who was a male god, a fertility god-"

  "Ingibjorg," Sigga interrupted. "It's just a nickname."

  Birdie stared at Sigga impatiently, then tossed her head. "Frey was a male fertility god," she repeated. "And you know what that means?" She paused and looked around the room, daring someone to answer. Everyone stared at the floor or into their coffee cups. Except Old Gisli. He was leaning forward on one of his troll-headed canes, studying Birdie intently through his rheumy eyes.

  "You know what that means, Anna?" Birdie continued. "That means he had a giant phallus. So when you call her Frey instead of Freya, you're calling that darling child a giant phallus!"

  "That's enough, Ingibjorg." It was Stefan, putting a firm hand on her shoulder. "Come in the kitchen and we'll get you cleaned up."

  Birdie shrugged him off. "Oh, yes, you'll clean me up all right!" Then to my surprise-for she seemed hardly to have registered my presence-she suddenly pulled me onto her lap with one arm. I could feel the coffee stain from her dress spreading warm and wet onto my back, but I didn't move, sat stiff and silent while the guests began to leave, thanking my mother and Sigga in hushed voices at the door. Then Mama came and tried to lift me off Birdie's lap.

  "That's right," Birdie said. "Poison her against me."

  "I don't need to," Mama answered. "You'll do that yourself."

  Birdie let go of me, but I held on to the arms of the chair, resisting Mama's attempt to pry me off. My mother caught my eye. "Frey," she said. Then hesitated. "Freya." She turned and went into the bedroom she shared with Sigga, shutting the door behind her loudly. The closest my mother could come to a slam. The house was silent except for the muffled whooshing and clinking sounds of Sigga washing dishes in the kitchen. Around us in the empty parlor were cups still filled with coffee, half-eaten pieces of vinarterta abandoned on plates. The coffee spill on Birdie's dress was beginning to turn clammy against my back. Abruptly Birdie shoved me off her lap. "Go on," she said.

  "I want to stay here with you."

  She laughed, not her loud and raucous laugh but a defeated imitation of a laugh. "And why, little Freya, would you want to do that?"

  What I wanted was to cheer her up, to change her back into the smiling, flitting Birdie of an hour ago. "I'm sorry I made you spill your coffee."

  She rubbed my head but didn't speak. I noticed for the first time long creases on the sides of her mouth. The scent of gloom rose off her perfumed skin.

  "Birdie?"

  She didn't answer.

  "Birdie?"

  Nothing. If only I could fly already-that would distract her! Then it came to me: I would do a cartwheel, one of those feats of acrobatic magic performed by fourth-grade girls on the playground at recess. I loved to watch their legs sail through the air, skirts flying up, one leg following the other, making a perfect sideways-spinning wheel of flashing flesh and white ankle socks. That I had never actually done a cartwheel did not hinder my confidence for a second.

  "Birdie, I can do a cartwheel!"

  She nodded vacantly. No matter.

  "Birdie, look me!"

  Sugar-charged I sprang from my feet, the flats of my hands slapping the wooden floor, my legs flying upward, not in a neat arc but wobbling and flailing in a graceless handstand, then plummeting uncontrollably backwards over my head. Splick-splack: first one then the other of my sharp-heeled Mary Janes split the glass doors of Sigga's precious china cabinet. Side by side we crashed to the floor, me and the cabinet that had been Sigga's fancy wedding present-

  I lay stunned in a pile of splintered wood and china fragments, the broken handle of a teacup curled around my pinkie. All Sigga's stories, smashed to bits. I closed my eyes.

  "Oh my God," Birdie screamed. I kept my eyes closed. I heard the kitchen door burst open and then Sigga was leaning over me. "What hurts, child? Tell me what hurts."

  Everything, nothing. I couldn't talk. Sigga was wiping a bloody cut on my forearm with a hankie when I heard my mother cry out "Lord, Frey!" I turned my head just in time to see Mama fall in a dead faint, twisting at the ankles, crumpling down. Then a loud smack as the back of her head hit the edge of the telephone table. Thud as she hit the floor.

  Birdie reached her first. "Anna," she cried, gently shaking my mother's arm. Anna!" But my mother didn't answer. She was dead.

  Or so I believed. My mother was dead, and I was the one who had killed her. I began to sob. Here comes Gryla, I heard Old Gisli say. I closed my eyes, but it was too late, she'd appeared in my mind, her three heads bobbing hungrily, her six ears swaying, her dangling chin-teeth sharp and glistening.

  5

  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 follow
ed 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."