"Indeed," Birdie said.
"You like that word, indeed."
"Indeed I do."
"Indeedy-do!"
Birdie didn't miss a beat. "Righty-o!"
"Okeydokey!"
"Hokeypokey!"
"Hocus-pocus!"
We stared at each other, grinning.
"Come see your grandfather Olafur's study." She took me to a door at the
far end of the living room. "You open it."
I turned the beveled glass knob, so shiny it made me think of diamonds.
Inside was a small room brimming with books. Books on every inch of wall,
piled on the chairs, stacked on the floor, covering the surface of a long
bench. Birdie led me to a wooden desk. She ran her hand over its surface,
like she was petting a very beautiful cat. "This is the desk where Olafur
wrote his poems. Of course, not here in this exact room. He died before we
moved here. But Sigga and I have reconstructed his study exactly as the
great poet liked it. Skald Nyja Islands."
"Scowled what?"
"Skald Nyja Islands."
"Oh."
"You say it, Freya." Her brow was furrowed and she sounded cross.
"Skowld. Knee-ya. Eece-lands."
"Good. What does it mean?"
"Mean?"
"In English."
I bit my lip.
"It means Poet of New Iceland. Hasn't your mother taught you a single
word of Icelandic?"
Alltaf baetist raun a raun," I said. "Mama says that to me a lot."
Birdie laughed. "Do you know what it means?"
"No," I admitted.
"It means trouble always follows trouble."
"Mama says trouble is my middle name," I offered.
Her smile disappeared again. "Trouble is not your middle name! Ingibjorg is your middle name. You were named after me and I was named after
my father's grandmother and she was named after her mother's sister. Ingibjorg has been in our family for as long as anyone has kept track."
I nodded obediently. Birdie made my head spin: in the space of one conversation she'd gone from happy to cross to laughing to mad again. I sat down
in my grandfather's chair and picked up an empty ink bottle from the desk.
"It smells like moss in here," I observed. "Everything is old."
"Except you," Birdie said. "You're new." To my surprise she kissed me on
the top of the head. Her lips stayed there for a long time, and I thought I
could feel them moving, as if she were talking without making any sound.
Upstairs were two bedrooms next to each other. One was Birdie's. It had
a four-poster bed with a canopy, a view of the lake, and a desk with a typewriter. The other room, Birdie explained, would be mine. My red suitcase
was sitting on the bed, and I felt happy to see it. I opened the suitcase snappity-snap. "This is Foxy. He comes from Cousin Helgi the mink farmer."
"Handsome beast," Birdie said.
While the grown-ups drank coffee, I sat on the couch between Birdie
and Amma Sigga. Mama and Stefan sat in stiff wooden chairs across from
us. I closed my eyes and stroked Foxy, from snout to tail, tail to snout, listening to the conversation without understanding. It was all in Icelandic.
Every once in a while I'd hear a word I knew, usually a name, like Freya, or
Anna, or Birdie, and then I'd open my ears wide for a moment. I wondered
if they could really understand each other, or if they were just making
sounds like gurgling water. Soon I fell asleep with my head on Birdie's lap,
dreaming Mama singing hymns.
The entire next day was spent preparing for Mama's homecoming party, an
event Birdie and I were to ruin-the first of our many conjoined disastersthough looking back, I can't find any trace of impending calamity in that
bright June morning. I remember waking with one thought only: This was
the day I would learn to fly. But where was Birdie?
"She's sleeping in," Sigga said. We were sitting at the breakfast table,
Mama, Sigga, and me, eating soft-boiled eggs on toast.
"And don't you even think about waking her," my mother warned. "Or
there'll be a scene."
"What's a scene?"
"Birdie has trouble waking up, is all."
"It's her dreams," Sigga added. "All that dreaming she does, all night
long. If she sleeps at all."
"Everyone dreams," my mother said. "But not everyone bares their fangs
at the breakfast table."
"Birdie has fangs?"
Sigga's kitchen was old but immaculate. It had none of the suburban colors
I was used to, the burnt orange and avocado appliances, the flower-power
wallpapers of my classmates' homes. Everything here was white and silver.
A shiny toaster that reminded me of Stefan's Rambler. Tin canisters labeled
SUGAR, FLOUR, SALT. A Scotch plaid thermos. A wall of glassed cabinets
with bronze latches that went clickity-click, clickity-click. And a large table
with a lemon yellow Formica top and bowed chrome legs. My job for the
morning was to help Sigga in the kitchen while my mother went out for groceries. It was the first time I was alone with my grandmother. Amina Sigga
won't put up with any nonsense. Even lacking her white headdress and green
velvet cape, I still viewed her as queenly.
"Now, elskan," she said in her thick accent. "Let's get started, shall we?"
I nodded, afraid to speak. Around my waist she tied an apron that hung
almost to my ankles, then dragged a chair over to the counter and told me
to stand on it.
I thought maybe she was testing me. "Mama never lets me stand on furniture."
"Well, I suppose it'll be all right this one time." When Sigga smiled her
face crinkled like a paper fan.
"How old are you?"
"Oh, fairly old I'd say. Older than many but not as old as some. Now, elskan, climb up on this chair and help your old aroma with the ponnukokur."
"What's ponnukokur?"
"What's ponnukokur?" a voice repeated. But it wasn't Sigga's. I turned to
see Birdie standing in the doorway, hair mashed onto one side of her head,
wearing a long pink bathrobe. "What's ponnukokur?" she said again. I was
glad she didn't know either.
But instead of answering, Sigga said, "Let her be, Ingibjorg. She's just a
child."
"How can she not know what ponnukokur are? Doesn't Anna teach her
anything? Are you aware that this child doesn't know one single word of
Icelandic?"
Alltaf baetist raun a raun, I said silently. Trouble always follows trouble.
"It may not have occurred to you, Birdie, but they don't teach Icelandic
in American elementary schools." It was my mother, coming through the
back screen door with an armload of groceries.
"Of course they don't," Birdie said. She was nearly shouting. "That's why
it's your duty to teach her!"
"That's easy for you to say." Mama spoke quietly but firmly. "I can barely
teach that child to hold still long enough to tie her shoes."
"She seems perfectly well behaved to me," Birdie insisted. "And if you
don't start her soon it'll be too late. Look at Vera's children. They're nearly
out of high school and they can't speak a word of Icelandic."
"And why should they?"
"Fine. Maybe Vera's children don't need to. Let them turn their backs on
the most expressive language this earth has ever known. But not Freya. Freya
is the granddaughter of one of our greatest poets. He's probably turning in his
grave. You have a responsibility, Anna. Doesn't she, Mama?"
Sigga sighed wearily. "Oh, Olafur's turning in his grave all right. Listening to his two girls fighting."
At least that's what I imagine she said, because most of the argument in
the kitchen that morning took place in Icelandic. It was an argument that
was repeated over many summers, in many variations. An argument I came
to know by heart.
"This language is who we are."
"What good could it possibly do her?"
"Good? What good? I'll tell you what good. `Language is a solemn thing. It
grows out of life, out of its agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined.' Oliver Wendell Holmes. That's what good it does. Sacred good."
And on and on. Even then, I sensed these arguments were about something more than whether I could speak Icelandic. Birdie was never satisfied. I was the living symbol of my mother's betrayal, of my mother's turning
into an American.
"Why do you stay there?" I heard Birdie demand once. "Now that you're
a widow? What keeps you there? You belong here with your people."
I wondered that too. My mother had no real life to speak of in Connecticut. Sometimes I thought staying in Connecticut might simply be my
mother's way of avoiding fighting with Birdie all year round.
Sigga let me crack three eggs into the ponnukokur batter, and this I managed
with only one small speck of shell. I tried to dig it out with my fingers, but it
was impossible to retrieve from the slippery whites. Sigga said, "Leave it, elskan, it's too small to matter." I was allowed to stir the batter and also to lick
the spoon. I watched while Sigga poured the batter into a small black frying
pan, making the thin pancakes one by one until there was a pile on the plate.
Then we rolled them up and sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar. Next, I
helped spread purple-black prune filling with a special knife, wide and dull, on
seven round yellow cakes Sigga had taken from the oven. She gingerly placed
one layer on top of the other to make the vinarterta. On the very top layer we
spread white frosting, in little wavelets. "Whitecaps," Sigga called them.
"What are whitecaps?"
"You'll see soon enough. When we get a storm on the lake."
I licked the cake batter off the knife, and it tasted like almond. Then
Sigga led me into the living room. "This china cabinet," she said, "was a
wedding present for me and Olafur."
The cabinet was dark wood and hand-carved, with rounded glass doors.
Each of its four shelves was filled with teacups and matching saucers, each
cup different from the rest, and each, Sigga explained, with a story behind it.
"What are the stories?"
"Not now. Another day, I'll tell you the stories of the cups. There are
nearly sixty of them. For now we just need to pick some for the party. And
I'd like you to select them. Since you're a guest of honor today."
I liked the sound of that.
"Use both hands, elskan. One at a time. We need twelve in all. Set them
on the table by the window."
Oh, the careful, excruciating selection. Each cup with its own charms.
Some had lips rimmed with gold. One had a dark red rose at the bottom.
Another was green as a lime with pale pink buds on the saucer. A black one
with gold stars and rim. And then ever so steadily reaching in, lifting them
out one by one and carrying each to the table as if it were full of something
hot and precious. It kept me busy a long time. Which was, I suppose, our
grandmother's intention.
In the early afternoon I noticed Birdie's bedroom door was open. Birdie was
sitting at a small table, still in the pink bathrobe she'd worn while arguing
with Mama that morning. The table looked like a desk, but it wasn't for
writing. It had a big mirror attached, and its surface was covered with little
bottles and jars, curlers, hairbrushes, combs. Birdie was outlining her lips
in red when she noticed me in the mirror.
"You've caught me at my vanity!"
I didn't know what that meant.
"It's a pun," Birdie explained.
I didn't know what that meant either. Birdie pulled a chair from a comer
of the room and sat me beside her. I could smell roses and lemons and something like cinnamon or was that a smell from the kitchen drifting up the
stairs?
"A vanity is a table where women do themselves up. But vanity also
means being conceited."
"Oh."
"Do you know what conceited means?"
"No."
"If you don't know a word, just ask me. Conceited means being overly
proud of your own looks."
"Are you conceited?"
"Some people say that. Some people have called me vain. Not to name
any names. But really, I'm not so beautiful, if you look closely. See how small
my eyes are, how they're too close together, and I have hardly any lashes and my eyebrows are skimpy and my ears refuse to lie flat against my head,
which makes it hard for me to put my hair up. Without all this"-Birdie
swept her hand over the vanity "I'd be downright homely."
And before I could ask: "It's a nicer way of saying ugly."
"Mama says you're the beautiful one."
"She does? She says that? Nonsense!" But I could see Birdie was pleased.
"Mama doesn't have a vanity table."
"That's because she's not vain. Sensible Anna!"
"Are you sensible?"
"Hardly."
I didn't see how anyone could think Birdie was homely or ugly or anything
but beautiful. Later I would. Birdie's face nearly purple with rage, or bleached
of life, or her eyes truly small and scowling. But not today. Today Birdie was
glamorous. Like a swan. But she had yet to mention our flying lesson.
"My wings itch," I hinted.
"Wings," Birdie repeated, buffing her chin with powder.
I couldn't stand it any longer. "When are we going flying?"
Birdie laughed like she had when I'd yelled "Stop, thief" to Stefan at the
train station. A loud, raucous laughter that filled the room, that made my
ears burn. I didn't see what was so funny. "You said you'd give me lessons if
I came to Gimli."
Birdie caught her breath. "And I will, elskan. Not today though. The
wind isn't right. No breeze. Impossible to lift off."
"Tomorrow?"
"Sure, baby. Tomorrow we'll go. If the conditions are right, tomorrow
we'll fly."
"Fly in the sky."
"Glide in the sky."
"Gliding sky high."
"Oh, you are the clever one, aren't you?" She pulled me onto her lap,
kissed me, then showed me in the mirror where she'd left the glossy red imprint of her lips on my cheek.
Later, Birdie came down the stairs in a splendid dress, white with red flowers nearly black in their centers. Fancy as the teacup roses.