And then there was Birdie.
Sometimes I wonder if the whole kidnapping escapade would have occurred if it hadn't been for Vera being chosen Fjallkona. It irked Birdie so terribly. (Other times I'm convinced she'd been planning our surprise vacation for years.) Vera, Birdie insisted, had about as much right to be Fjallkona as a seagull. It demeaned the position, to choose someone like Vera. Now your amnia Sigga, Birdie went on, she deserved to be Fjallkona. But Vera? Vera, who never taught her boys a single word of Icelandic? Who can barely speak the language herself, and proud of it? What does Vera represent? Eaton's, that's what. The Ladies Aid. A do-gooder. Why they might as well have picked Anna!
"What's wrong with Mama?"
"Nothing's wrong with her. It's just that she's not exactly qualified to be Fjallkona."
"Why not?"
"She's an American housewife, that's why not!"
"What about you? Could you be Fjallkona?"
"Never in a million years, baby. Never in a million years would they pick someone like me to be Fjallkona. Someone who spends every single day of her life perpetuating our ancestors' literary heritage. Someone who actually speaks the language. Someone who actually studies our history! Oh no, baby. Not me."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm not a pillar of the community. Because I'm not married to the manager of Eaton's, with two boys on the Winnipeg High School hockey team."
"But Amma Sigga was chosen, and she wasn't married to the manager of Eaton's."
"You don't understand, do you? They'll never choose a crazy spinster."
"What's a spinster?"
"A woman who never marries."
"Are you really crazy?"
"So they say, elskan. So they say."
Usually Birdie thrived at Islendingadagurinn, the yearly infusion of visitors enlivening our insular Gimli existence. By the hundreds they came, maybe thousands, pouring into Gimli from Winnipeg and all the little towns throughout the Interlake region (some of which had their own Icelandic festivals, though none as big as Gimli's): Lundar, Hnausa, Hecla, Selkirk, Riverton, Arborg, even little Reykjavik on the next lake over. And from beyond Manitoba, from anywhere Icelanders had settled and their descendants still lived, towns in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. Small towns just over the border in North Dakota: Cavalier and Akra, Gardar and Mountain. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Washington State. Even Iceland.
If only you had been there, Cousin! I imagine you almost as an older brother or sister, sitting by my side at the harbor forking up syrup-soaked pancakes, the great days of the festival unfurling before us like a colorful Viking sail. Together we'd have watched the kite-flying contests and raft races, horse shows and fireworks, performances by the Icelandic National Theatre Troupe flown in from Reykjavik, not to mention the New Iceland Music and Poetry Society. The glima wrestling, the sailing displays in the harbor, the poetry contest (I won three years in a row, children twelve and under). Kinsmen barbecues and beer gardens. We'd eat sausages called rullupylsa and brown bread (to think you've never tasted our aroma's brown bread!), even sneak out of the house to spy on the grown-ups at their drunken midnight dances. Maybe tie two of our legs into one and enter the three-legged race.
But you weren't there.
Mostly I tagged along with Birdie. It was one big family reunion of the Icelandic diaspora, such as it was. The kind of occasion where Birdie shone: the daughter of the great Olafur, Skald Nyja Islands. (Yes, my mother too was the poet's daughter, but she hated attention and kept a low profile, especially after the accident.) Birdie milked the occasion for all its worth, leading tours of the poet's study, showing off his library, consorting with visiting dignitaries from Iceland, even the president himself. But Birdie was no snob; she talked to everyone, and listened too. Of course, what Birdie said to people's faces and about them behind their backs varied considerably. Like Icelandic grammar, it was all in the prepositions.
Islendingadagurinn was the one time of year when Birdie could reliably obtain all the attention she craved-that's why it was so shocking on that Saturday morning in 1978, the first day of the festival, when Birdie announced she was staying home. If she'd been depressed, her absence would have seemed plausible. When she was depressed she wanted nothing to do with anything human. Or if she'd seemed bitter and resentful, I would have known she was brooding about Vera being chosen Fjallkona. But if anything she seemed happier, more excited than usual.
"You're not coming?"
"I'm staying home this year. I've got work to do."
And so Birdie holed up in her bedroom churning out her Word Meadow. Or so she claimed. Now I know she was doing nothing of the sort. As soon as Mama and Sigga and I left the house on the last day of the Islendingadagurinn festival, Birdie began her preparations, packing one suitcase for me and one for her. Checking our airline tickets and passports one last time. Arranging the cab that would take us to the airport. Then setting off to find me, pluck me out of the crowds, out of my Gimli summer, out of my life as I knew it, and as it would never be again.
Islendingadagurinn hadn't been much fun for me without Birdie. The beach was so crowded with visitors you could hardly find a place to lay your blanket, plus it was hot that year, and unusually buggy. I hung around with Mama and Sigga, scratching my mosquito bites while they chatted with every degree of cousin you could possibly imagine. Cousins a thousand times removed. Until you had to wonder if they were even cousins anymore.
It was Monday morning, the last day of the festival, that Birdie finally made her appearance. The sky was dark, heavy with clouds, and I was standing on the curb at the corner of First Avenue and Centre Street waiting for the parade to make its way across town, from Johnson Memorial Hospital to Gimli Park, wondering which would come first, the rain or the parade, when I felt a hand slip into mine. Birdie! She was wearing a coat I'd never seen before, a lightweight salmon pink raincoat belted at the waist (one of several items, I learned later, purchased in her pre-Iceland shopping spree at Eaton's). The color highlighted the pink of her cheeks, and over her perfectly coifed blond curls was a matching head scarf. How fashionable Birdie seemed to me, and beautiful, despite the fact that she was then nearly fifty. I squeezed her hand in excitement. The sounds of the brass band drifted down the street. The crowd murmured and I strained to see the beginning of the parade.
"There's Vera!" I shouted. She looked resplendent in her emerald robe, waving to the crowd from a shiny white car. I jumped up and down, waving my own hands over my head. Birdie seemed not to see. "Where is Anna?" she wanted to know. "And your amnia?"
"They're at Gimli Park. Sigga needed to sit down. She's eighty-three, you know."
"I know," Birdie said. "Believe me, I know."
"Vera's going to lay the wreath down at the pioneer memorial. And then later she's going to give her speech. I heard her practice it last night. Are you going?"
"Why bother? It's the same every year, those speeches. The glories of the homeland, the glories of the new land. It's bullshit."
"Bull ?"
"Yes, bullshit. A farce. A fraud, a mockery of all we hold truly dear. Oh, once it meant something, I suppose. But now it's just a big hoo-ha. The real culture of New Iceland is dying. The older generation will die off, and soon hardly anyone will be left who speaks the language." She held up the printed festival program. "It's not even written in Icelandic anymore. It's coming to an end, this little world. It's coming to an end. Not that it has to, of course. But it takes more than holding a cheesy festival once a year to keep a culture alive. Skip the ponnukokur, people!" She was yelling now, at the backs of the crowd that was breaking up, drifting toward Gimli Park. "Skip the rullupylsa, the brown bread! Skip Islendingadagurinn!" People turned their heads and stared. Luckily I saw no one we knew. "Teach your children Icelandic! Let them learn it from their grandparents. Our language is our culture. Make them read the Sagas. Take them to Iceland, damn it!"
I shrank back in embarrassment, but Birdie grabbed my hand and bega
n leading me away from the parade-in the opposite direction from Gimli Park.
"Hey!" I yanked back with equal force, pulling her toward the crowd she'd been yelling at, toward the park. We stood like that for a moment, in the middle of town, at the corner of Centre and First, tugging each other. Then Birdie put her hands on my shoulders and looked me in the eye. The air smelled like wet metal, and the clouds had turned the purple-green color of bruises.
"Elskan," Birdie began. "Today is a very special day for you. For both of us.
I nodded. For some reason I was trembling.
"I'm taking you somewhere," she continued. "To something much bigger and better than our silly little Islendingadagurinn."
She glanced at her watch, then took my hand again. This time I didn't resist as she began leading me down Second Avenue toward our house. The street was completely deserted; everyone in Gimli was at the festival. What could be better than Islendingadagurinn? Better than the tolling of the bell and the laying of the wreath on the pioneer cairn? Or the sight of the Canadian Mounties escorting the Fjallkona into Gimli Park? Would I miss Vera's speech she'd been practicing all summer?
"Where are we going?" I finally asked.
"Iceland, Freya min. I'm taking you to Iceland."
And then it started, as if she'd orchestrated the whole thing: a flash of lightning, a crack of thunder, then the splatter of plump raindrops. As we ran I caught glimpses of the lake, the wind whipping up whitecaps like dabs of frosting on one of Amma's cakes. The water and the sky drenched the same bruised green. We loved those summer thunderstorms, Birdie and I. Thunder and lightning, thrill and danger. When other people ran in from the rain, we ran out into it. Except on this day. On this day Birdie pulled me through the rain laughing and dripping into the front door of the house.
"Quick, change your clothes. The cab will be here any minute!"
"Cab?" No one in our family ever took cabs.
"We're traveling in style, elskan."
"But where are we going?"
"I told you, silly, Iceland!"
"In a cab?"
"We're taking the cab to the Winnipeg airport." Birdie looked at me like I was vitlaus, an idiot. But it was all happening so fast. It was hard to keep track. A loud honk made me jump.
"Grab your suitcase, kiddo," Birdie instructed. It was sitting by the door, cherry red and expectant. The next thing I knew Birdie was directing the cabbie to take the long way out of town. To avoid the traffic, she explained. The Islendingadagurinn commotion.
To avoid being seen by anyone we knew, I realized later. Much later. And way too late.
And that was how your mother stole me willingly in broad stormy daylight in the middle of the Islendingadagurinn parade.
Of course I did, Cousin! It was the first thing I asked, as soon as we got in the cab: Does Mama know?
"Of course she knows!" Birdie answered, a look of shocked offense on her face. "We've been planning this for months, your mama and your amnia and I."
"But why didn't anyone tell me?"
"We wanted it to be a surprise, that's why, you little fool! Aren't you surprised? Aren't you?"
I nodded. "But why . . ." It was hard to know what to ask first.
"Why what?"
"Why are we leaving in the middle of Islendingadagurinn?"
"It's not the middle. It's the last day. Besides, it was the only flight I could get."
"But how can we afford it?"
"Everyone chipped in, that's how. Your mama, your amnia, me, even your uncle Stefan. They wanted to have a big send-off party for us, but I know how you hate parties. I convinced them you'd like it better this way, the greatest surprise of your life."
"Really?"
"Do you honestly think I would make something like that up?"
"No," I answered. Because that's what Birdie wanted me to answer. The truth was I wasn't sure, but loyalty kept me from expressing any more doubts. If I doubted Birdie's word, I'd be doubting her. Doubting her sanity, her suitability, her fitness. I would be thrown into the other camp, of those who betrayed Birdie (there were surprisingly many, by her count), those who scorned her. I believed myself to be Birdie's one true ally in the world, and for that loyalty I was gifted her affection, the heightened magic that was life in her presence. True, Birdie shifted like lake weather, there were times when I fell from her favor, felt the sting of her whip-sharp tongue. But even that was better than the void of dullness that was my life in Connecticut.
Yes, I had one, of course, though looking back over these pages I see I've scarcely mentioned it. There's not much to say. Life with Mama in Connecticut was a limbo I endured between Gimli summers. I kept my promise about being good; I tried my best to be invisible. I never raised my hand in class but answered correctly when called upon. I took care of Mama, kept track of her canes and her sunglasses. It was lonely. At night I dreamt long and wildly, in the morning had no one to tell my dreams. Just Mama, who nodded her head in that vague way that could mean either yes or no. Or nothing.
See me as I was then: thirteen years old and taller than the tallest boy in seventh grade. White-blond hair to my waist, thin and scraggly like the rest of me. It fell in my face a lot and I let it. Kids thought I was strange and I was. In addition to my not-playing, I walked around muttering to myself. Or so it seemed to them. They called it witch-talk. Freya's witch-talking again! Actually, I was working on leggja a rninnid laying in my mind, memorizing poems Old Gisli had taught me, or ones of my own. And I read. I hid in books, and behind them. I read like an addict, in class with a book sequestered on my lap, during recess leaning against the chain-link fence, bouncing along on the school bus, at the dinner table, by flashlight under the covers after Mama turned my lights out. Reading, reading, and counting the days to the Gimli summer. The only good thing about my life in Connecticut was that no one knew. Let them think I was strange, let them think I was a witch. I didn't care. As long as no one knew I'd nearly killed my mother. Turned her dizzy and distracted and old before her time.
Six years had passed since my first Gimli summer. Six years of being good. Six years of being something other than myself. Maybe I actually believed that our surprise trip to Iceland was fully funded and sanctioned by the proper authorities, Mama and Amma. Or maybe I was, simply, ready to go. The storm helped. Sometimes I think that if it hadn't been for that storm, with its scent of danger and thrill of lightning and reckless thunder, I would never have left town with Birdie ... that on a clear day I would have kept a clearer head.
The storm had subsided by the time we reached the airport, out on the prairie edges of Winnipeg. It reminded me of my first train ride to Canada, how shocked I'd been by the flatness of it all. How Mama and I got out of the train and spied a storm raining down in another corner of the sky. We still took the train every year. Mama was still afraid of flying.
"I've never been on a plane before." We were sitting on plastic chairs in the lounge, waiting to board.
"I know that, elskan. You'll be fine."
She held my hand as the plane took off. My heart flapped wildly. Finally, finally, Birdie was taking me flying! Out the window I could see Lake Winnipeg. Gimli I couldn't locate. I wasn't used to seeing our world from on high. "Where's Gimli?" I asked.
"It's a speck," Birdie answered.
"Do you think it rained on Vera's speech?"
"I do, baby," Birdie said with a satisfied smile. "I do."
Poor Vera in her soggy cape, her crowning moment eclipsed by daggers of lightning, her much-practiced speech drowned by thunder. Even though Birdie had said those speeches were bullshit. And that Gimli was nothing but a speck.
The plane banked east, my stomach dipped, and anything I could recognize down below was gone. I stopped thinking Gimli then, began thinking Iceland. Iceland! Birdie had often talked about taking me someday, but my mother always claimed we could never afford it. A trip to Iceland seemed as remote and impossible and enticing as rocketing to Venus.
12
> It was a night flight, but it never got dark and I never slept. Birdie never let me. She talked the whole way to Iceland. True night never had a chance to fall, not when our plane was keeping pace with the sun. We raced that sun all the way to Iceland. As we sped through the sky, it was continually setting. Then in some miraculous way, that same sunset became a sunrise in Iceland when we landed.
In the hours between this perpetual sunset-sunrise, while the other passengers turned off their overhead lights and settled under blankets, Birdie got talky, filling my head with visions of an Iceland so marvelous I quivered in my seat. We would take the Ring Road, she began.
"What's the Ring Road?"
"The Ring Road," Birdie explained, "is the crowning achievement of Icelandic engineering. The first highway to circle the entire island, completed with much fanfare several years ago. Now it may not seem like much, elskan, this building of a road, but in Iceland even roads face unimaginable odds. Roads take a lot of abuse, they contend with forces of nature you can't even imagine. Glacial floods. Mud slides. Avalanches. Lava. But the Ring Road has been built to survive all that. It's the only way to see Iceland. You can't drive across the island, Freya min, it's completely untraversable in a normal car."
Why? I wanted to know.
"The interior, where they exiled criminals in the old days, is nothing but glaciers, my girl, and vast lava deserts, and glacial rivers that change course so quickly that no sooner do you build a bridge than it's washed into rubble. Only huge buses with enormous wheels can cross the interior. Used to be, in your grandfather's time, people rode horses to get from one place to another, or hopped in a boat. But now there is the Ring Road, and on the Ring Road, my girl, we'll traverse the whole island, you and I."
The Tricking of Freya Page 11
