"What do you think?"
"It's beautiful," I said. Then my mother came in the room, brushing flour
off her hands and onto her apron.
"That's really something," she said evenly. "I didn't bring anything that
dressy." She bent down and wiped the lipstick off my cheek with the corner
of her apron.
"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.