Hummingbirds are attracted to bee balm; they flutter around the showy red blossoms, darting in and out, lured by the bursting scarlet, and the perfume. They drink the bee balm’s sweet nectar, and then they escape to find more bee balm, more sweet nectar, more intoxicating color and perfume. Mother would make tea from the leaves of the bee balm when peppermint was scarce. But bee balm was not her preference, and I imagined the hummingbirds were grateful for this. Mother never commented on the beauty of the bee balm, or its scent; she cared only about its dark green leaves, coarse and toothed—about the flavor of them when dried and steeped. As I sit here with the preacher, waiting for the doctor to return, I see those hummingbirds in my mind, and I remember the scent of the bee balm tea. Snow blows against the window, spots it in wet white. And I wonder where those hummingbirds are now. The bee balm flowers have long ago withered, their sweet nectar drunk or dried. And the leaves have dropped to the ground, now that Mother is gone. I look at the preacher sitting near me, and I wonder, Is she more the hummingbird, or more like Mother? And what of Sanne and Rune? As to the preacher and Sanne, I’m not sure I know the answer yet. But as to Rune, he is the hummingbird.
“You’re pregnant,” the doctor says when she returns to the room. “I’d say you’re over two months.”
“Pregnant?” I say.
“Pregnant?” I hear the preacher say.
“That’s not possible,” I say. “There’s no way that’s possible.” I can’t quite take in what the doctor is saying. I am not the hog peanut. I am not the daylily, which can produce vegetatively, without fertile seed. I am a human, and a virgin. I can’t be pregnant.
“It is possible, Susanne. You are pregnant. I know this is upsetting for both of you—I can see you’re surprised. I imagine you need to talk. I don’t need this room for the next fifteen minutes. I’m going to give you some privacy, let you talk. Then I’ll come back. We can talk about your options.”
I see the doctor open the white door in the white wall; I see her step into the hall. And I see the white door shut. But it’s not the white I see. It’s the black of Mother’s clothes: I see them in my mind. I see her in my mind. And I imagine those black clothes bulging with me.
“Who’s the father?” the preacher says to my back.
I don’t turn around. I don’t know what to say, to think. Mother claimed I was born of a virgin birth, and now I’m pregnant, and I’m a virgin. The preacher didn’t believe my mother. Why would the preacher believe me? I wouldn’t believe, if it weren’t happening to me.
“Don’t tell me it’s Rune, Aslaug,” the preacher says. “Please don’t tell me that.”
“Rune?” I say. And now I do turn around, yet I can’t look at her God’s-eyes. “No. No.” But there’s a gnawing at me I can’t free myself from: Rune the hummingbird, Rune the bearer of mistletoe.
“I found a picture he drew of you. I found it on the table one night after Sanne and I were out, when we got home. You and Rune were downstairs when we got home—”
“No,” I say again. “It’s not Rune.”
She covers those eyes I can’t look into with hands that are shaking. And her breath, too, shakes in and out. She slides her fingers away, opens the windows of her eyes. “We need to keep this quiet. No one can know. I’ll help you, but no one can know. And you have to tell me who the father is. I have to know that.”
“You don’t understand,” I say. “I’ve never been with anyone in that way.”
“No,” she says, and I know Mother has come back to life in this room. “No.”
I look at the preacher’s eyes now because they can’t look at mine, and I see hers are still and unblinking. “Get dressed,” she says, and she unwinds my ball of clothes. “Right now.” She rips the robe from my shoulders, down my back, then stuffs it in the trash. I feel her watching me as I pull on my underclothes. She yanks Sanne’s dress over my head, hands me Sanne’s coat, Sanne’s boots. And we stream out, past the mallards, through the bleach, into the snow.
The preacher doesn’t speak as we drive back to the church. Her hands grip the black wheel, and her knuckles show white. I hear her breathing, deep in, jerking out. She drives fast. Snow sprays the side of the car and splats against the windshield. The heat is off and I can see my breath, and hers quivering out. “Art in the air,” I hear Rune say in my head. But I want him to stop.
The wind presses against the car, and I feel the wave as the car is pushed nearer the centerline, and then back. The evergreens we pass are so heavy with snow—I watch mounds of it drop in the wind—and the deciduous trees sparkle in ice and the rare ray of sun. I’m pregnant, I think. There’s a baby growing inside of me. The sun passes back behind a cloud, the sparkles fade. And the thought of Rune drags at me more.
We pull into the drive. The witch hazel has lost its leaves and stands skeletal. The stone of the building is peppered with snow. The preacher’s hands still grip the wheel; the engine still runs; the exhaust drapes the car. “Did you know?” she says.
“That I was pregnant?” I say. “No. How could I have known?”
“I can’t do this again.” Her hair has come loose; her lips are dry and chapped. “Tell me you know how you got pregnant, Aslaug. Tell me that.” Her eyes show pale, like Mother’s. And they glisten, unlike Mother’s. She takes her hands from the wheel, drops her face into them. “Tell me that,” she says, her voice broken by her hands. “Tell me that.”
I can’t, I think. But I wonder. Rune’s face and his body and his touch were so real. They were real.
I remember the schnapps; I remember Sanne mentioning Rune’s preparing the tray for me. Any plant could have been put into that schnapps. Did he drug me? Had he been drugging me?
He knew of the mistletoe.
And the pictures, I think. There were pictures of me sleeping. I’d seen them in his room, but it hadn’t occurred to me at the time: when would he have seen me asleep?
“Rune raped me,” I say. I don’t mean to say it; I mean to think it. But I say it.
“What?”
“He raped me.” And now I mean to say it; it all seems clear suddenly. Neither the preacher nor I have moved; everything around us looks exactly the same. Yet everything has changed. “I thought it was a dream.”
“No,” she says. “Rune thinks he’s in love with you. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. But he wouldn’t do that.”
“But he did,” I say. “He did.”
She rams her finger toward my face. “Shut up,” she says. “Shut up.” She’s sweating despite the cold, and her left eye twitches, becomes Mother’s eye. “Maren almost destroyed this family. I won’t allow you…” She drops her hand, folds her fingers into a fist, turns her face from mine. “Your father isn’t Mikkel, Aslaug.” Her breath fogs the window, and now the fog spreads wide. “Your father is my father.”
“That’s a lie,” I say.
But I’m not sure it is.
SOLOMON’S SEAL
2007
—Ms. Hellig, you claim you became pregnant approximately four years ago, isn’t that right?
—Yes.
—But you claim, don’t you, that you’d never before had intercourse at the time you became pregnant?
—That’s right.
—You hadn’t undergone any type of in vitro fertilization either, correct?
—Any what?
—You hadn’t had any medical procedure in an attempt to get pregnant, right?
—I wasn’t trying to get pregnant. I was a teenager.
—Ms. Hellig, you are aware, are you not, that in order for a woman to become pregnant, she has to either have intercourse with a male or undergo some sort of medical procedure, such as in vitro fertilization?
—Objection. Argumentative.
—I’m going to allow her to answer. I think it’s important we understand her knowledge about these things.
—I understand that’s what usually happens, but that’s not what happened to me.
—Ms. Hel
lig, what you’re saying, then, is that you became pregnant supernaturally?
—I don’t know how I became pregnant.
—Ms. Hellig, please take a moment to review this document. I’d like to mark this document as Exhibit Y. Are you familiar with it?
—Yes.
—Ms. Hellig, investigators found this document zipped into the pocket of your jacket when you were arrested. Did you author this document?
—Yes.
—Ms. Hellig, the date on this document indicates it was written about the time you claim you became pregnant, isn’t that right?
—Yes.
—This document basically is a record of two people having sexual intercourse, is it not?
—Yes, but it—
—And one of these people you wrote about is in fact you, correct?
—Yes, but—
—Thank you. And the other person is your cousin Rune Lerner, isn’t that right?
—Yes.
—So this document describes you having sexual intercourse with your cousin Rune Lerner?
—Yes, but it was—
—Thank you, Ms. Hellig. But you still claim that you were—that you are—a virgin?
—Yes, I—
—Thank you. Now, did you see a doctor to confirm your supposed virgin pregnancy, Ms. Hellig?
—Objection. Argumentative.
—Sustained.
—Did you see a doctor about your supposed pregnancy, Ms. Hellig?
—Yes.
—Do you remember that doctor’s name?
—Her name was Dr. Hoenir. She had a clinic in Bethan.
GOLDEN BUTTONS
2003–2004
I want to dream; I want this life to be a dream. I want to wake to find I’m that hairstreak, or a flower, or the oak tree come to life. For this life is transforming me, and the people around me; altering our forms, our composition, making us into something that seems but a slice of us, only harder: water frozen in motion, now an icicle knife. Is it the hairstreak’s freedom I’m longing for, or the resourcefulness of the flower? Or the deep roots of the oak? Or is it that I long to be another? Any other. Anything but a slice of myself. Because I am pregnant, and Rune raped me, and my father and grandfather are one.
My father and grandfather are one. Or are they? Did Mother prevent my seeing my reflection because she didn’t want me to know my face is her face, because her face is her father’s? Or is the preacher trying to startle me: into not seeing what is possible, because she couldn’t see what was possible those years ago, with Mother; or into not knowing what I know, that Rune raped me?
I wish I could see without the filter of me. I wish I could recall the preacher first describing Bedstefar to me those months ago, without the filter of me. I remember the preacher’s tone as awash in awe at Bedstefar’s love for Mother, and some longing for this love. But was her tone disguised to conceal the disgust, horror, repulsion, she felt? When Rune showed me the picture of Bedstefar holding Mother, I saw in Bedstefar eyes of pride, and protection, not the voracious eyes of Grumset, not the greedy eyes of the boy-man in Bethan. But did I see what I wanted to see? Do I remember what I want to remember? Bedstefar wouldn’t have harmed Mother, I tell myself now. She was his daughter; he loved her as a daughter. And yet I wonder, is love boxed in in this way? Or are my constructs just this, constructs that simplify the world as they distort it? Were my readings of the preacher and Mother and Bedstefar and Rune, and myself, such constructs? Have I imagined a world, only to miss the world?
In the world of my mind, I believed I was learning to see the preacher for what she was: human in her godliness; drunk in the spirit and on the earth. Capable of loving all sheep; therefore, capable of loving me.
But I saw today I am not one of her sheep; I will never be one of her sheep. I am Aslaug Datter, daughter of Maren. I am a reflection of who Mother was, and who Mother was is a reflection of her life before me. I am closing the circle, bringing the end back to the beginning, back to Sara, the sister of Maren, a person the preacher now must exhume.
I can hear them shouting—the preacher and Sanne and Rune. They are somewhere in this cavernous place—the beauty of which in this moment seems a gaudy wash. Their voices mingle the piercing with the leaden with the airiness of surprise. I hear wide gaps, broken-off chunks and the fading away. “How could you?” “She’s lying.” “Can’t you see it makes sense?” I know these words are about me, about the baby growing in me.
And I know I have to leave.
I have no idea where I’ll go or what I’ll do, but I know I have to leave.
How could there be a baby growing in me if not for Rune? “She’s lying,” I hear him say again. “She’s making it up.” I wish this were true; I wish it weren’t Rune. When the preacher mentioned Rune’s love for me, I wanted to recant. I wanted to tell her instead: “I’m in love with him, too.” But what do I know about love? I can imagine Mother mocking me, making fun of my adolescent feelings. “You’re little more than a child,” she’d have said. “Love is not responding to pheromones. Love is not feeling animal urges.”
Is that all it was? I wonder. Pheromones? Hormones? Animal instinct? Was my attraction to Rune simply this? It felt deeper to me, like he was not only awakening my body but filling my spirit. The same spirit awakened by the preacher’s touch. But now? Now I think, If it was love, then whom did I love? The Rune of my world would never have raped me. The Rune of this world did.
And then I stop myself from thinking about anything but leaving. I’ll leave tonight after they’ve all gone to sleep. I’ll slip out, and their lives will return to what they were before. And my life?
I’ll find my life. There is a world I left Mother’s world to find. A world I wanted to experience. I’ve been reading about God’s creation, not living God’s creation. Now I’ll find it, live it. Like I found the suitcase in the outhouse in the carrion stench.
I’ll have to find that suitcase, first, and again. I’ll have to find Mother’s notes, and the case of photos: these I can’t leave. And with the money and Mother’s mind as it was before me, and with Mother’s paper smiles, and her paper eyes, I’ll leave with more than when I came. And then I again think of the baby in me: I’ll leave with more than when I came.
But when the lights go dim in the hallway, and the sounds all fade, I can’t open my door. At first I press the handle quietly, try to push, but the door stays put. So I push harder, shove my shoulder against the door, but the door stays put. It’s locked, I think, and I slam my body against the door, no longer worried I might wake someone. But the door stays put. I start pounding and shouting. I want someone to hear me now; I want them all to hear me. I want them to come. But no one comes.
In my world, the preacher and Sanne and Rune agreed on almost nothing; in this world, it seems, they agree on this: to keep the inside in.
I wake to the sound of the bedroom door being shut and locked. I sit up and see I’m still alone. A plastic tray sits on the floor, holding a bright purple plastic cup full of tea steaming near a forget-me-not blue plastic bowl of clumped porridge—Mother’s porridge—and a peeled, graying banana. Next to the tray stands a paper bag, the same as the preacher used for the nails and wrappers and gum. But this bag is full of food: the sliced bread Sanne likes that tastes and feels, to me, like cardboard; the salty, sweetened peanut butter Sanne eats by the spoonful. En skefuld lort, I couldn’t help but think each time I’d watch her mash it. I unpack green apples and red apples and yellow apples, and hairy carrots, and celery, and a block of too-orange cheese, and a heavy bag of nuts. And a spoon. Plastic. And another plastic cup. And a cloth napkin embroidered “Jesus Saves.”
I sit down on the floor, circled by this rainbow of food, and plastic, and Jesus. How long are they planning to leave me in here? It hadn’t occurred to me last night they had any intention of keeping me here. They had to talk, I assumed. They had to decide what to do, before they let me free. Yet what of this food? It is more than for a day. It m
ay be more than for a week. And the irony of my escaping the cage of Mother’s grand house, full of books and Mother’s mind, to find myself in a cage a fraction of that size, full of plastic tableware and cardboard bread and a jar of shit, and a Jesus napkin to wipe away the shit, seems at once comical and horrible. And before my brain knows, my body knows: I have to get out of here. It feels every plane on my skin has an edge, every fine hair on my body has come alive. I stand and look out the small window on the door: no one is in the hall. I push the lever on the door. Locked.
Help me, Mother, I think. Help me figure out what to do. Urd, Skuld, Verdandi?
And then I realize: they’ve locked up my body; they haven’t locked up my mind.
I lift the plastic mug of still-warm tea, hold it in my palms. The smell of the tea is strong, and familiar. Distinctive. Not peppermint. I lift the mug to my lips, but I stop; I don’t drink.
Golden buttons. The scent of the tea comes from common tansy, the plant Mother called golden buttons. “I should have taken the buttons when I was pregnant with you,” Mother said to me once, waving a fistful of the orange-yellow tansy, mixing their scent into the wind. I’d been sloppy in my gathering, mistaking poisonous corn cockle for the garden phlox Mother used to treat her boils. But even Mother wasn’t this cruel, and she retracted her comment. For the golden buttons cause miscarriage—I figured this out later that night as I scanned one of Mother’s herb books, trying to understand Mother’s comment, her regret.
Who would do this? I think now. Who would even know to give me this?
I long for my mother. She was vicious at times, but she was my Artemis.
I can’t imagine Rune would do this—give me the tansy—and yet, I remember the morning only days after I’d arrived. He’d made me pancakes, served me them with the king’s crown jam. He’d known to make the jam; maybe he’d know to make the tansy tea.
I set the tea back on the tray, sit down on the bed. I look at the tea. Maybe I should drink it; maybe I should drink the golden buttons, let this pregnancy wash from my torso, like the painted hairstreak and the painted touch-me-not washed from my torso. Over time would the pregnancy be as if it never was? Or is its touch forever? Less the touch-me-not, more the sprawling forget-me-not.
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