Girl in Ice(62)

Sigrid rattled on, distracted by the toys on the bed, conversing mostly with her windup “ice bear” and stuffed narwhal. After my initial excitement, I was feeling somewhat screwed. How would I ever grasp her stream of consciousness answers to simple questions, much less those to complex ones? I got out of bed, opened my bottom drawer, and retrieved the bottle of stolen vodka.

I sighed and took a swig. “Val wants drink.”

“Sigrid want drink.”

“No, you don’t. Sigrid wants bird, and that”—I rubbed my forehead—“snake thing.”

Sigrid reached for the bottle.

“No, honey. Not for you.”

I sat on the bed next to her. The room was so overheated in contrast to the frozen world outside, the painted palm trees on the wall looked almost right. “Listen to me, Sigrid. Bahl is tahtaksah. Sad.”

Her face betrayed a mixture of delight and worry, perhaps from hearing a word in her language combined with a concern for what it meant. She reached out and touched my cheek. “Bahl?”

“Yes, I am sad.” I let the vodka warm me. “Bahl is tahtaksah because she is worried Sigrid dead. Bahl is afraid, she feels stahndala, okay? She feels fear. And she’s good at that. Fear. She feels fear for you, for herself, for the world, fear of the ice winds. Sigrid, you know the secret for thawing out alive, but you’re not telling Bahl. You can’t tell Bahl, but why? Bahl knows you’re getting sicker.” I pointed to her eye. “Hurt?”

“Yes.”

“This looks worse by the hour. Stahndala, okay? Fear. Oh, sometimes Bahl is so tired of Bahl. For being so useless.”

With her newly clean hand, Sigrid patted mine. “Bahl,” she said. “Tahtaksah.” Sad. She reached for the Inuit picture book—the real one, not the kiddie version—pointed at a photo of a hunter standing next to a woman.

“Mother, father,” I said in her language, then in English.

“Mother, father,” she repeated in English.

“Very good, Sigrid. Great job.”

She uncapped a red marker and crossed out their faces, then their bodies. Her hand shook slightly, Is she cold? I held it briefly; it was warm but continued shaking. “Mother, father…”

“Dead,” I whispered.

“Dead,” she said, solemn faced. “Mother, father, dead.” She pointed at herself, said, “Sigrid, dead.”

“No,” I said. “Sigrid is alive.” I pointed to myself. “Val is alive.”

“Aligh,” she said.

“Yes, alive.”

Gesturing at herself, she said, “Stahndala.” Afraid. Then, slowly, “Sigrid dead aligh.” She indicated the baby in the photo, a small face peering out from a papoose strapped to the mother’s back.

“Baby,” I said.

“Baby,” she said thoughtfully.

“Is baby dead alive, Sigrid?”

She looked at me soulfully, said, “Stahndala.” Afraid. She slipped out of bed and padded out of the room, and I was worried I’d gone too far with my questions, but she appeared moments later with the crescent knife she’d stolen from Jeanne, the ulu. She placed it on the bedside table and got back in bed with me, facing me. She said, as far as I could understand, “Joy, Val, seals, many, love, want, joy.” She smiled, eyes nearly closing above her high cheekbones, gleaming black hair cascading over her shoulders. She put her forehead on mine and breathed me in, and I breathed her in: Ivory soap, strawberry shampoo, a little-girl smell, snow. She pulled away, said again, “Joy, Val, seals, many, love, want, joy.” It reminded me of an old Inuit saying, “May your life be rich in seals.” Is this what she was saying to me, a kind of blessing?

Looking into her eyes, I said, “Joy, Sigrid, seals, many, love, want, joy.” She smiled with intense pleasure and turned, backing her body up into mine, a tiny hot ball.

She was asleep in seconds.





twenty-seven


Jeanne bustled around me as I rinsed my coffee cup in the sink, her sweatshirt dusted with flour and powdered sugar. Dirty pots and pans teetered on the counter, an uncharacteristic disorder. Above us, a clattering of boots on the roof, muted laughter, a wolf whistle, the tinny twang of canned Jimmy Buffett. Nora’s party was already in full swing at eleven in the morning, just before the break of “day.” By four, it would be full dark.

“Sure I can’t help, Jeanne?” I asked.

“You can grab those crackers and cheese,” she said, lugging a six-pack of beer out the door.

“Got it,” I said to her departing figure. The tray of crackers and steaming Velveeta cheese dip—which kept well perennially frozen, I was told—sat next to the block of ice, now covered by Raj’s beautiful prayer rug. He must have placed it there sometime after we gave Sigrid her bath. I gently drew back the rug, now heavy with melt and stuck to the tacky surface, letting my fingers glide over the smooth cold surface that was thawing in gentle waves. Overnight, the block had shrunk to half its original size. Only inches remained between the child and the stuffy kitchen air. In places, the baby’s body was clearer than ever: the tiny fingers, nails a dull gray, his wide, flat nose and cracks for nostrils, the eyebrows just a brush of fine black hair.

After checking on Sigrid—she’d shown little interest in getting out of bed that morning—I suited up and headed outdoors with the cheese dip, feeling like a waiter who’d forgotten where her section was. The sky was a soft faint lavender, the sun a yellow sheen at the horizon. The air felt raw but nothing like the usual blast of bitter misery. Nora’s cry made me turn toward the distant beach. She was running away from us, looking back and laughing. Raj, jogging toward her, called out, Go long! He popped a toy-sized football from hand to hand, feinted a throw, then lobbed it hard. The ball sailed over her head. Nora howled something like No fair! as she sprinted toward the beach and open sea where icebergs yawed and swayed like ghost shipwrecks. She snagged the ball and kept on going until she was a dot, until Raj took up a fast trot toward her, imploring her to come back.