The preacher doesn’t answer my question, but she does answer. “I’m your aunt. Your mother’s sister.”
What does the monarch feel when it emerges from its chrysalis to find itself in a sea of monarchs? Or the spring beauty flower when it bursts into bloom, awakening in an ocean of pink? I’m not alone. The Yggdrasil crones are binding me to similar strings. We look alike, the preacher and Susanne and I; we are drawn from the same cloth. Yet I don’t know this older woman, this younger woman: they are strangers to me. I feel the pull of fate, though. Fate has chosen them for me and bound us together.
Until Yggdrasil crashes down.
“Why didn’t Mother tell me about you?” I say to Sara, this stranger, my aunt, the preacher. “She never told me I had family close by. She never told me I had family at all. Did you know we lived so near to you?” The questions burst forth like buds, all at once. I’ve been waiting so long for answers, like my entire life has been winter. “And my father?” I ask again. “Do you know him? Do you know who he is?”
SOLOMON’S SEAL
2007
—Ms. Hellig, in your experience, handling jimsonweed gives you a rash on your skin in the area where you come in contact with the weed, isn’t that right?
—Yes.
—And when your mother touched jimsonweed, she would get a skin rash, too, wouldn’t she?
—Objection. Speculation.
—Only answer what you know.
—She’d get a rash if she touched the weed, just like I would. She—
—Thank you, Ms. Hellig. Now, it’s true, isn’t it, that the hole you were digging in your backyard was intended to be a grave for your mother?
—Yes—
—Thank you. And the stone that was near the grave, that was supposed to be a gravestone, isn’t that right?
—A runestone.
—A runestone is a gravestone, is it not? Please just answer yes or no.
—Yes.
—I’d like to mark for identification a picture of this so-called runestone. Ms. Hellig, is this a fair and accurate representation of the object you are describing as a runestone?
—The picture shows one side of the stone.
—Okay. Please mark the picture as Exhibit R. Ms. Hellig, the etchings shown here on the stone, you made them, right?
—Yes.
—And you intended to put the stone over your mother’s grave, correct?
—Yes.
—Ms. Hellig, please read the word you etched into the stone, from right to left.
—I didn’t intend to write a word. I was writing Scandinavian runes. Symbols. They were supposed to be gifts to Mother. Protection for her.
—Ms. Hellig, assuming only for the sake of argument that these images here are runes, runes are letters, are they not?
—Yes, but—
—And letters are used to spell out words, are they not?
—Runes are also symbols.
—Please answer my question. Letters are used to spell out words, right? Just answer yes or no.
—Yes.
—Even if the letters here are runes, the word they spell is bitch backward, isn’t that right?
—It’s not what I intended.
—Ms. Hellig, answer the question. Even assuming the letters here are so-called runes, they spell the word bitch backward, don’t they?
—I know it appears that way—
—Thank you. Just a few more questions on this topic. You are aware, are you not, that the earliest Scandinavian runes, known as the Elder Futhark runes, may well have their origin in the Etruscan system of writing?
—Yes, Mother taught me—
—And you are also aware, are you not, that Etruscan usually was written right to left, like Arabic and Hebrew?
—Yes.
—It seems reasonable to assume, does it not, that Scandinavian runes would be read from right to left, then?
—Mother thought so—
—In other words, from the perspective of a reader of English, the runic language would appear backward, correct?
—Objection. Calls for speculation.
—She can read English. I don’t think she needs to speculate on this. I’ll allow it.
—Yes.
—Thank you.
SANGUISORBA
To Drink Up Blood
2003
The preacher and I sit on the steps of the church, this building that seems to reach into the roots of Yggdrasil, to house my fate. We look out toward the witch hazel, a web in the faded light. Sitting next to the preacher feels strange, awkward, too intimate. I can see her in my mind at the front of the church, spinning with her tambourine, touching the parishioners, watching them crumple. And I realize I still think of her as the preacher, even though I now know she’s my aunt: those images of her are seared in me.
I reach up, touch my scar. Seared in me. Like the butt of Mother’s cigarette pressed onto my chest. I imagine Mother now as she was the day I started to bleed: she had tobacco on her lip, her cigarette burned low. She unbuttoned my blouse, dragged. The cigarette pounced from her lips to my chest, and I felt the sizzling, the smoldering. The pain. “The blood comes just a few days a month. But it’s with you every day. Like this scar. Never forget that, Aslaug.” Then she cleaned the wound, disinfected it, bandaged it. And I thought she might hug me or kiss me or caress me. But she didn’t. Not with her body. But her eyes did. Her face did. And I realized her intention was not just to hurt me. That, in her eyes, she was teaching me. Giving me a gift. If only I’d understood the gift.
The mosquitoes move in clouds now; they insert their proboscis swords, drink our blood. I watch the preacher kill one after another. “Fader said Maren was born on the eve of the midnight sun,” the preacher says, and I assume she is referring to the summer solstice, when at midnight the Scandinavian sun still burns faintly in the sky. The preacher sent Susanne inside the church before she offered to tell me the story of my mother: of Mother’s birth and her childhood; and of Mother’s father, my grandfather, a man named Edvard Jokum; and of my grandmother, named Janne. “Moder claimed it wasn’t true,” the preacher says. “She swore Maren was born in the bright light of day, but Fader insisted. His beautiful flower Maren was born on Midsummer Eve, when, according to Fader, the herbs and flowers and spices are at their peak, making the air replete with magic, and with evil.”
It seems so fitting to me, this story of Mother’s birth. And yet, it seems too fitting in a way. My experience of Mother is tangled with herbs and flowers. And magic. And evil.
“I didn’t believe in any of that, even then. But I remember Fader telling me he lit a bonfire the night Maren was born,” the preacher says, “to protect his new daughter from witches and evil. For Fader insisted the witches are out on Midsummer Eve picking ingredients for their magic brews.
“I was nearly sixteen when your mother was born.” The preacher rocks to and fro and stares out at the day as it journeys to night. Her hands lie open and free on her lap, and I remember Mother’s hands long ago. “But I can’t recall whether Maren was born by day or night. I do recall a fire burning on Midsummer Eve, though, its flames orange and hungry, making night seem day. And I recall Maren’s alert eyes, their blue so deep when she was first born. Fader called her his Gnaphalium, because her hair was golden yellow, and, as she aged, her eyes grew lighter and almost iridescent—like shimmering pollen, Fader said. Fader loved Maren. He loved her in a way that changed him.”
I watch the preacher’s face now; I watch her eyes as she speaks, watch them traverse the muted colors of grass and sky and witch hazel. And I wonder if she has any sense what it’s like for me to hear this story of my mother, and of my grandfather and my grandmother; I wonder if she knows she is giving them life—that until now, I knew nothing of their lives.
“I wasn’t jealous of Fader’s love for Maren,” the preacher says. “I was older, not so needy of Fader’s love—and I couldn’t really relate to Fader. He was a botanist and mytho
logist, interested in what he thought was the interweaving of nature and the divine.”
I’m like my grandfather, I think. This Edvard Jokum. I’m not sure what to make of this; it makes me feel more connected to him, to Mother and to life. Yet I feel violated in a way, usurped, as if even the small bit of freedom I’d thought I’d preserved despite Mother was a farce.
“I never shared Fader’s interests,” the preacher says. “I had a calling on my life—a calling by God. I knew it even as a child. And I knew Fader’s beliefs were misguided. It was a strange place to be for a child, a teenager. Knowing your father is lost. I tried to pretend when I was younger. I tried to pretend I was interested in his theories, that I didn’t feel sorry for him, didn’t judge him. But he knew my interest wasn’t genuine. He’d hear Moder and me talk sometimes about God, about the calling on my life, about his soul. We were Lutheran, back then, Moder and I. In reality, even we were lost—that’s clear to me now. Yet, still, Fader seemed such a heathen.”
I feel the impulse to defend my grandfather, or myself—I’m not sure which. It’s hard to believe this woman is related to my mother. The preacher seems satiated, as if she knows all there is worth knowing. If Mother was anything, she was curious; she wanted to understand everything. It made her seem scrawny and ravenous at times, like she’d eat others alive if she’d the energy to, just to take in their minds.
“But Maren, she was just like Fader,” the preacher says. “She scoffed at Christianity, refused to go to church almost as soon as she could talk, wanted to run around the forest with Fader collecting specimens on the Sabbath. You can’t imagine how grateful Fader was to have Maren—to have a child who not only didn’t judge him but who loved what he loved. He doted on her, took her everywhere, taught her everything he knew. And Maren thrived, on the surface, but her soul was rotting, and this was awful for Moder. She and Fader started fighting about Maren. Then Moder became ill. She just seemed to wither away. And she died, in midsummer, the year Maren was fifteen.”
I’ve found my grandmother, only to lose her within minutes. I wish the preacher would have taken more time telling me about her. I wish she would have described what Janne looked like and smelled like and felt like; I wish she’d told me my grandmother’s favorite season, her favorite food, what she liked to read, before she took her away.
“I was married then,” she says. “I married Mikkel several years before Moder’s death, against her wishes. Mikkel was Jewish. I’d tried to convince Moder it didn’t matter that he was Jewish. I was so taken with him. He’d been my philosophy professor at Københavns Universitet. We started dating after I finished university. A month before I was supposed to leave for seminary, he called me, asked me to dinner. We were married six months later. I never left for seminary. But I was so happy. I felt so lucky. Mikkel was brilliant, and he made me laugh….” And suddenly she becomes Mother, as Mother sat at the breakfast table beyond that shield of light. I see the longing, the mourning: the wave of moisture across those eyes, and the kiss.
“I know now God was testing me. Tempting me with Mikkel to test my commitment to Him. And I failed. Mikkel became my god. It wasn’t until I’d given birth to Sanne, and I was pregnant again, that this became clear to me. I’d made such a mistake. I felt I had no purpose in life. I had Sanne, of course, and I was pregnant…but I felt I’d failed God. Then Moder died, and Maren became so needy. Sanne was just a toddler, but I mothered Maren more than Sanne in the months following Moder’s death. Maren became sullen, withdrawn, so unlike herself. And she developed arthritis. She moved in with Mikkel and me. Our marriage was already suffering. It couldn’t bear the additional strain of Maren living with us. Mikkel moved out. And shortly after that Maren said she was leaving, not only our house but Denmark. She was going to the United States. She’d been accepted at a college here in Maine. Bran. She was not yet sixteen, but she was gifted. I knew that. I encouraged her to go.
“She was in the States for less than two months when she begged me to visit. I agreed. I could tell by the sound of her voice that something had happened—that she needed me.”
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Sara says. “This isn’t about me. Why did you ask us to come? You said you were leaving Denmark to start a new life, but now you want to bring your life in Denmark with you here?”
“I want you here. And Sanne. And your new baby,” Maren says.
“But why? What is wrong? Is it something about Fader ?”
“Don’t tell Fader.”
“Don’t tell Fader what, Maren?”
“I’m pregnant, too.”
“Mor!” the little girl calls out. “Løb efter mig, Mor!” Sanne runs down the path; trampled leaves cling to her scarf and hair. “Chase after me, Mommy!”
“You are pregnant?” Sara says, but she looks at her daughter and the gray sky and the leaves.
“Don’t be angry with me—” Maren says.
But Sara interrupts. “I didn’t even know you knew about such things.” She is fondling her own hands as her eyes search Sanne’s hands, but Sanne’s hands are a blur. “You’re so young, Maren. Maybe you’re mistaken.”
“I’m a robin.” Sanne’s arms stretch wide. “I can fly!”
“I’m almost sixteen,” Maren says. “I’m not that young.”
“But you’ve been in the States for less than two months. How could this happen in such a short time?”
“I’m four months pregnant,” Maren says. “Three months less than you. I was pregnant before I arrived.”
“Mor,” Sanne says. “I’m flying away. I’m flying south.”
Sara wraps her arms around herself and begins walking again, toward Sanne. She can see Sanne’s hands better now: her fingers splayed, and those two webbed fingers not splayed. And she wonders. And then she says, “Before you arrived? But how can that be? I didn’t even know you had a lover. I’ve been like a mother to you since Moder died. How could you have not told me?”
“I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know?”
“I didn’t know I was pregnant. I found out the day I asked you to come.”
“But you knew you’d been with someone. You had a lover, Maren. And you didn’t tell me.”
“I’ve flown away, Mor.” Sanne has reached the end of the path. “I’m gone forever.”
“But I didn’t have a lover,” Maren says. “I’ve never had a lover.”
“I thought it was a miracle,” the preacher says. “I thought she’d been blessed by God. I’d been praying to God for direction, for a sign. I so wanted to know what God’s plan was for my life. Fader had become depressed; we barely spoke. And with my marriage falling apart and Moder dead and Maren gone, I felt abandoned by God. But I still believed in my heart God had a plan for me. So when Maren said she was pregnant, that she’d never had a lover, I convinced myself she was carrying the Christ child, the Messiah—that Jesus was returning to earth. I told myself God had chosen Maren rather than me because He was punishing my disobedience. It’s hard for me to understand, now, how I ever believed this. Why would God choose Maren—a young Scandinavian woman who didn’t even believe in Christ—to carry the Messiah? Perhaps I knew even then, but I couldn’t face the truth.”
“What truth?” I say.
But she talks over me. “I agreed to stay with Maren. I told her I would help her come to an understanding as to why she’d been chosen in this way. I told her I would help her raise the child. I was financially secure—Moder had assured that before she died. She didn’t want me to be dependent on Mikkel. So I bought this building, this church, for us. It had been a monastery. We could live here. It seemed so perfect.
“Maren never disputed my belief she’d been touched by God—that she was carrying some miraculous child. It was a way out of her having to face the truth. And she didn’t want me to leave her. She even permitted my talking to a reporter from the local paper, telling him Maren was carrying the Christ child. That was the beginning of the end. The reporter wrote
an article making fun of us. And then you were born. You were no Jesus. You were a girl—just an average girl.”
I can barely make sense of what she’s saying. It seems impossible she’s talking about Mother, about me.
“Things were difficult between me and Maren,” the preacher says. “She started coming up with bizarre theories about your birth. She started teaching herself all these old languages, studying all this nonsense. And then, one day, I was watching you and Rune, my son—I was watching the two of you play—and I knew, I knew it in my bones. Mikkel fathered you. On the surface there were reasons to doubt it, but down deep I knew. And I realized why Maren was so desperate to come up with some theory about your birth. She didn’t want me to figure out the truth.”
Mikkel? Your husband is my father? “No,” I want to say. “No.” I feel Yggdrasil is falling fast. Father was the light, to me, that slipped through the slit in the drapes—that reminded me of possibility. He was the whisper of wind forging its way that Mother never seemed to notice but that was a symphony to me; he was the bursting of spring and the fermenting of fall; he was the sensation of a cool petal in my palm. Father was the beauty that soaked me, that ran beneath Mother’s feet. “Don’t take him from me,” I want to say to her. “Don’t lock me in an even smaller room, a more narrow world.”
“I confronted Maren about Mikkel,” the preacher says. Either she’s oblivious to the impact of her words on me, or she’s pretending to be. “She denied she’d had relations with Mikkel, but she left just the same. And I knew it was true, then. When she took you and left, I knew it was true. You were two years old the last time I saw you. And Maren? She wasn’t even nineteen.
“Looking back, I know I shouldn’t have been angry with Maren. I know I shouldn’t have blamed her. She was just a girl herself—it’s awful what Mikkel did to her. But at the time I didn’t see it that way. I couldn’t bear to be around her. I couldn’t bear to see her. And yet, I couldn’t go back to Denmark either, be near Mikkel. Besides, it was better for my children to stay in the States. Sanne was nearly six by that time and had started school. Rune was only two, but he was born here. This was their home.
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