"I appreciate you doing all this," I said, taking a sip of weak coffee.
"It's nothing, just a couple of donuts."
"No, I mean what you're doing for Sigga. Packing up the house. I wish I could stay and help." A lie. I wanted my buildings back, brick protection
from gaping skies, streets thick with strangers, nights that are never truly
dark, city lights burning brighter than mere and distant stars.
"I wish you could stay longer too. It would do Sigga good. We worry
about you, you know. We never hear from you."
"Don't worry about me. I'm fine. Just busy, is all." Another lie, feebler
than the last. But I would be busy, soon, I thought, remembering yesterday's resolve to emerge from hibernation, get on with my life. As soon as I
returned to New York I'd start anew, will my life into its robust future.
Abandon my basement sublet, for starters, maybe find an airy loft. Quit my
miserable job. But for now I had questions. Ingihiorg's child. I figured I
might as well ask him, this keeper of family trees, not to mention Birdie's
lifelong friend. I took another sip of coffee, tepid now as well as weak.
"Stefan?" I began breaking off little bubbles of Styrofoam from the lip of
the cup. Just ask. If anybody knew it would be him. "Did Birdie ever ...
have a child?"
Stefan froze midbite. Then swallowed, brushed crumbs from his beard,
and stared at me like I was mad. "What do you mean?"
"I mean ..." I couldn't think of another way to say it. "Did Birdie ever
have a child?"
"You know she didn't, Freya."
"I know," I admitted. "I mean, I thought I knew. But I heard something,
last night. Some people at the party, talking. I overheard someone say something about Ingibjorg's child."
"Who?"
"I don't know, I was outside having a cigarette. I heard through the window."
"Surely whoever it was didn't mean Birdie. Ingibjorg is a common
enough name."
"In Iceland, maybe. But how many do you know around here?"
"Well, none, offhand. None still living. It's no longer so common around
here. But in Iceland it's still very common. So maybe it was Thorunn. In
fact, I think Thorunn's sister has a daughter named Ingibjorg, who has a
child of her own. Ingihjorg's child. Mystery solved."
"But I heard them say Birdie's name, too."
"Be that as it may, Freya and it would not be surprising to hear Birdie's
name mentioned at her mother's one hundredth birthday party-Birdie
never had a child. It's nonsense. I would know. I knew her all her life. A
pregnancy takes nine months. Don't you think I would have seen? It's not
the kind of thing you can hide."
We sat in silence for a minute. Then Stefan spoke again. "Really, Freya,
I wish you would focus on present concerns. Consider extending your visit.
It would mean so much to Sigga."
"I can't. I told you that before." Guilt and resentment fused together, indistinguishable, my voice as indignant as if I believed my own lie. "I have to
be at work tomorrow."
"Freya, I hope you won't take this the wrong way. God knows you've
been through a lot, losing both your parents, and your aunt so ... horribly.
But surely you must see ... Sigga needs you."
"She didn't even know who I was."
"I was hoping that you might take more responsibility for your grandmother. You have a chance to make things right with Sigga before she dies."
"It's too late for that."
"I'm sorry you feel this way. Well, I suppose there's nothing more to be
said on the subject." He stood up, carefully pushing the vinyl yellow chair
back under the table. "I'll be working on packing Olafur's study today. Take
what you want from the rest of the house."
I could hear him as I went upstairs to get my things, packing Olafur's
books into boxes, to be carted off to the University of Manitoba. I knew
Stefan despised me, but I was certain I despised myself more. I took nothing from that house, because nothing was what I believed I deserved.
Outside it was cool and crisp. Heavy dark clouds. What Mama used to call
brisk. As a child I'd imagined wind as the whisk of invisible brooms, whipping white froth on the lake, white froth in the sky. Whitecaps and white
clouds, dabbling the bright blue surfaces of lake and sky. I stood outside
Betel, looking out on the harbor, composing myself after the argument
with Stefan. Discussion, as Mama would say. I never asked him to buy my
plane ticket. Anything he chose to do for Sigga was of his own free will.
And had nothing to do with me. Visiting Sigga that morning was my last remaining obligation, and then I would be gone from there, done with
that.
Fortunately, Sigga knew me again. I found her in the Betel library, new
as everything else there, though when I looked closely I saw that most of
the books on the shelves were old ones with Icelandic titles. Stefan collected them, Sigga explained, from people's attics. When the old folks die.
Hardly anybody left in Gimli reads Icelandic anymore. So there sat our
great sagas spine to spine with large-print mysteries and Reader's Digests.
"How does it feel to be a centenarian, Amma?"
"Exactly the same. My joints are no more creaky today than yesterday.
But no less so either."
"Amma, can I ask you a question?"
"Of course."
We were sitting in two adjoining chairs, which meant I wasn't facing
her. That made it easier to ask. But not easy. "Did ... Birdie ever have a
child of her own?"
Silence. Then, "Whatever gave you that idea?"
"I overheard some women talking last night. At the party. They said
something about Ingibjorg's child."
"Oh my." Sigga closed her eyes for a long moment, and when she opened
them again it was with a faraway gaze. "She was a lovely child. So lively and
bright. A handful!"
So Birdie did have a child! "Tell me more about her, Amma."
"We just adored her. We did everything we could for her."
"But ... what happened to her?"
"I don't know, really. I suppose they were there all along, those parts of
her nature. That made her so wild, and so ... depressed. But when she was
a child those aspects were bearable. Charming even. Oh, how Olafur loved
that child! She was his favorite. Sometimes I think that's what went wrong,
that if he hadn't doted on her so, given in to her-"
"Amma, who are you talking about?"
"Birdie. Aren't we?"
"I thought we were talking about Birdie's child."
"Birdie's child?"
"Amma, I need to know this." I spoke slowly, clearly, loudly, right into
her hearing aid. "Did. Birdie. Ever. Have. A. Baby."
Sigga's mouth was open, as if she was about to say something, but no
sound came out. Her eyes had shifted, she was staring at something past
my shoulder. I turned in my seat to see Halldora standing in the doorway,
watching us through her thick-lensed glasses.
"Here is my darling Halldora!"
"I didn't mean to interrupt your visit."
"Interrupt? It's no interruption. You're to come and join us. Have you
met my Freya?"
.
"Oh certainly, I have. A lovely girl she is."
Halldora and I exchanged tight little smiles, then she sat down on a
small love seat opposite Sigga and me.
"I was just about to tell Freya something," Sigga announced. "But for the
life of me I can't remember what. My mind is going, I'm afraid."
"Nonsense," Halldora assured her. "But didn't you have a big day yesterday! How did you sleep?"
"Oh, fine, I suppose. But I had one of my dreams. Freya, I'm afraid Halldora doesn't think much of my dreams."
"But dreams are so important," I said pointedly, pleased to contradict
Halldora in that, or anything.
"I think so too. Would you like to know what I dreamt?"
I nodded. It didn't matter now. We couldn't talk about anything important with Halldora there.
"It took place back in Iceland, on the farm where I grew up. It was summertime and it was my job to mind the lambs in the pen. Usually my eldest
brother did that chore, but in the dream, it was my turn. I sat on a little rock
and read from a book late into the night. It must have been June, the sun
was that bright. Every once in a while I threw a little something on the fire,
pieces of wool or dung or moss, anything to keep it smoking. The smoke
kept the eagles away, and the foxes. They'd come to steal the baby lambs.
"In the dream I was watching over two lambs and two ewes resting in the
pen. And the grass was so green, greener than I'd ever seen it, and their wool
was very white against the green. I can't remember what I was reading, but I must have been very involved in the book. I wasn't paying proper attention to
my duty. And then suddenly I heard a terrible screaming and I looked up to
see a large eagle making off with one of the lambs. I'd let the fire go out
while I was reading. It was an awful sight, the poor thing squealing and
struggling under those huge dark wings, and I could see blood in its wool,
where the talons pinched. I stood watching until the eagle and the lamb
were a speck in the sky."
"What a horrid dream," Halldora said.
"Oh, that wasn't the end of it," Sigga continued. "There's plenty more.
My father was in the dream, and he was very gloomy. It was no small thing
to lose a lamb. And meanwhile, the other ewe, the one that hadn't lost its
young one, stopped giving milk. So we'd lost one lamb, and my father was
fearing we'd lose another because its mother had no milk. But then a
strange thing happened. One of the dogs came trotting up with the dead
lamb hanging from its mouth. The eagle had dropped it. So my father took
the dead lamb and he skinned it. And then he took the skin of the dead
lamb and sewed it onto the live one, the one whose mother wouldn't give
milk. He presented the fake-skinned lamb to the mother who had lost her
own little lamb, hoping that she would recognize its smell, I suppose, and
mistake it for her own. This was done, you know, by the farmers back then.
You could also try to get a ewe to adopt another ewe's lamb by introducing
them to each other in the dark. But in the dream my father did it this way,
by sewing on the skin of the dead lamb."
"Did it work?" I asked. "Did the mother accept it?"
"Oh, she accepted it all right. But the funny thing was, the second skin,
we just left it on the lamb. Never took it off. So the lamb had a funny, lopsided look. A queer shagginess. And then my father sold it, in the end, to a
family in the next valley. It left me with a terrible feeling, when I woke up.
I don't know what it all means."
"Too much excitement last night is all it means," Halldora declared.
"Whenever you have too much activity, then you have one of your dreams.
Nothing mysterious about it."
"I suppose not."
"Amma." I stood up. "I have to go now."
"Didn't you just get here?"
This same conversation, again. Sigga's memory a sieve. "I got here Friday," I explained, but patiently. "And now it's Sunday, and I have to be at
work in New York tomorrow."
"I wish you could stay a little longer."
"I do too." Even a few minutes longer, a few minutes without Halldora
there. So Sigga could answer my question. Did Birdie ever have a child?
Sigga had been just about to answer me when Halldora had interrupted.
Meddlesome Halldora!
Sigga's thin cracked lips brushed my cheek like the wings of a trapped
moth, her clouded eyes shining with tears. I was unable to say anything.
"Bless, elskan," Sigga called after me. "Bless bless!"
Bless means good-bye in Icelandic.
It began to rain as soon as I turned the rental hearse south onto Highway 9.
The heavens are weeping, Mama used to say when it rained. Let them weep.
I drove past field after sodden field. Good-bye to Gimli, to Amma and
vinarterta, to ghostly surprise parties, to the house thicker with memory
than with dust, to shifty lake weather, to distant relations I'd never see
again, to the brand-new Betel and cranky Halldora, to Stefan and his precious genealogies. Let him spend his life in the muck of the past. I was
done with it, I was moving on. The only thing hard to leave behind was
Sigga.
By the time I reached the outskirts of Winnipeg, the rain had stopped
and the sun was breaking through, glinting on the brick of crumbling buildings. I nearly pulled over to take a photograph-brick is a favorite of
mine-but there wasn't time. And plenty of brick awaited me in the city,
which I found myself thinking of, maybe for the first time, as home. Goodbye to my basement apartment, hello to the sunlit loft. My mind hopped
from one eager plan to the next as I pulled into the car rental lot, returned
the van, checked in at the Air Canada counter.
And then I was sitting in a hard plastic chair in the waiting area with an
hour to spare, suddenly exhausted. I'd hardly slept that night. I closed my
eyes, but instead of entering my own dreams I found myself in Sigga's. The
eagle swooping up the lamb. The dog appearing with the dead lamb in its
teeth. The dead lamb's coat sewn onto another lamb that had been taken from its true mother because she couldn't give milk. A queer shaggy disguise, to fool the new mother. A farmer's trick.
And then I got it, the real trick: the bird's lamb = Birdie's lamb = Birdie's
child. Sigga had been about to answer my question when Halldora appeared. So she answered it instead with the dream. Maybe Sigga hadn't understood the dream, but I did. Birdie had a child she couldn't raise, so she
gave it up for adoption. A new mother took it as her own. Plain as day.
I stood up, no longer sleepy, and began pacing the waiting area. There
was a child, I was sure of it. No matter what Stefan said, or didn't say. Sigga
had as much as told me so, in the language of dreams, which does not lie.
Birdie's child! What would such a person be like? Fragments of Birdie. And
an unknown father. Growing up in a Birdie-less world. Ignorant of kennings or Gimli summers.
Maybe I could even find Birdie's child, now grown. There might be records I could locate. Wouldn't Birdie have wanted that? Didn't I owe that
much to Birdie? But first I had to find out if it was true. And the only one
who knew was Sigga. Any answers would die with her.