The Tricking of Freya Read Online Free PDF Page B

us."
    "It's no trouble," Stefan said.
    "I won't hear of it," Mama insisted. "Anyway, Frey and I have had a long
trip. We're exhausted."
    "I'm not exhausted!" I protested.
    "Just a quick tour," Birdie pleaded. "Freya's never seen where we grew
up.
    "I thought you grew up on a farm."
    "We did at first," Mama explained. "In Arborg. And then after our father
died we moved to Winnipeg. The Gudmundssons were kind enough to take
us in until your amnia Sigga found work in Gimli. I don't know what we
would have done without the Gudmundssons."
    "The Grand Gudmundssons," Birdie said mockingly. "The Great Doctor
Gudmundsson."
    "Why was he great?" I wanted to know.
    "He was the first Icelandic doctor in Canada," Mama began. "And his
daughter Vera was my age, and treated us like her very own sisters."
    "Are you kidding, Anna? She treated us like country bumpkins fresh off
the farm. She made fun of our accents. You were her special charity project, she only wanted to My- Fair- Lady-ize you."
    "Vera was good to us," my mother insisted. "Dear Vera!"
    "Dear Vera," Birdie echoed. But she didn't say it fondly, the way Mama
did. Her voice had what Mama called that tone. Don't use that tone with
me, Birdie. That tone had a name, sarcasm, that made me think of an unhealed scar. But all that would come later.
    "Stefan," Birdie commanded. "Pull over!" Stefan parked the Rambler in
front of a two-story brick building with bright blue shutters and a pair of
white columns out front.

    "Jonsson Funeral Home," I read the sign out loud. "Is someone dead?"
    "Plenty of people are dead," Birdie said. "People die all the time. But
that's not why we're here. Tell her, Stefan."
    "My family runs this business," Stefan said. "I grew up here."
    "In a dead people's house?"
    "Indeed. All the old Icelanders came here, some young ones too. My
father sent them on their way."
    I studied Stefan closely. His glasses looked like the kind my own father
had worn, black and rectangular. "Do dead people wear glasses?" It was
something I had wondered about for a long time, and Stefan seemed like a
good person to ask, given that his family were experts in the ways of the
dead. He thought it over for a moment.
    "I doubt there's a need for eyeglasses in heaven," he replied. "But proba
bly no rule against it, either." He pulled away from the curb and a few
blocks later said, "We're in the old neighborhood now. The West End."
    "Home of the Goolies!" Birdie said it like a radio announcer.
    "Who are the Goolies?" I asked.
    "Who are the Goolies?" Birdie repeated. "Who are the Goolies?" As if it
were impossible for anybody not to know. Then she laughed. "I'm a Goolie,
Stefan 's a Goo lie, Anna s a Goo lie. You"re a Goo lie too.
    "I'm not a ghost!"
    "A Goolie's not a ghost. A Goolie's an Icelander. It's what the Anglos used
to call us, when we first came to Canada. It comes from the word gull, which
means yellow. For our blond hair." She ruffled mine. "And right there" she
pointed to a beige cement building on a comer, plain and square, with a sign
that read GOOD TEMPLARS-"that's the Coolie Hall. Center of it all. And now
we're turning onto ... Victor Street! Home of the First Lutheran Church,
where all good Goolies go on Sundays."
    "And home of the Gudmundssons," Mama added from the backseat.
    "Oh yes, the grand home of the Gudmundssons-pull over, Stefan."
    Most of the houses on Victor Street were small and wood-framed, but the
Gudmundsson house was brick and imposing, surrounded by a wrought-iron
fence and framed by rosebushes. "Can we go inside?" I asked.
    "Yes, let's," Mama said. "Maybe Vera's home."
    "No time for visits now," Birdie decided. "Sigga's making dinner for us back in Gimli. The tour must go on! Besides, you'll see Vera tomorrow.
We're having a little coffee party in honor of your homecoming."

    I turned around and looked at my mother over the backseat. To my surprise, Mama was wiping tears from her face with one of her embroidered