Sparrow in the Wind

by S. Rose

“Tell me the names of your cousins again.”

  “You know their names.”

  “But I can’t say them like you.”

  “Oh, alright, but then will you let me finish the story? Here the cousins aren’t even born yet.” I nodded vigorously. “Karluf, Agnesa, Ole, and Vilborg.

  “Karluf Johansen couldn’t believe his luck when they told him he would be a grandpa, after all. He bestowed upon the newlyweds a sum of money that he’d saved for his daughter’s inheritance, now put to better use as a gift for the growing family. With that, the Larsons would be able to purchase the farm outright, with enough left over for improvements. They were overjoyed.

  “Oddfrid was just as happy, since now he would have enough money to go to America, a whole six months ahead of schedule. He explained once again to the family—and anyone else he could corner—how they would stop in Boston, but their final destination would be Racine, Wisconsin, where his second cousin, Tarald, had gone three years earlier. He showed everyone on the map how it was way out in the middle of the country. In a rare long distance phone call, which Oddfrid took at an office in town (since they didn’t have a phone), cousin Tarald explained, while trying to show off his recent acquisition of English, ‘Ya, I tink it’s kinda goot here in Racine. I make here goot money, and we got us already a real nice place. And der is a Lutheran Kirke for to bring up the child. So I tink you like it pretty goot here too.’

  “But now that it was really about to happen, Klara was not happy at all. This was due in part to the fact that she had conceived again, at last. She’d waited three months to mention it, fearing it might be a false hope, but in the fourth month she felt a tiny kick.

  “Oddfrid couldn’t believe his good fortune: immigration to America, and a son at last—he insisted that it was a boy. Klara at least wanted to wait until the baby was born, but her husband argued that it would be far more trouble to travel with an infant. Besides, this way little Sjurd would be born in America and what a wonderful thing that would be. Klara was not convinced it would be such a wonderful thing but didn’t push the matter any further.

  “Oddfrid set out to Oslo to book passage for three on the S.S. Stavangerfjord. He was shocked to learn that Gudrun would require a full-price ticket; he was speechless with horror when he understood the total cost of about two-hundred-and-eight US dollars per person. ‘My God in heaven,’ he muttered, for that was over six hundred dollars, and for third class, too. He had promised his wife a comfortable journey, something of a luxury vacation, but steerage would just have to do.”

  “How much was six hundred dollars in 1927?”I interrupted again.

  “Back in 1959, Papa and I figured out that it would be like paying over three thousand dollars.”

  Gudrun continued. “Klara was just entering her sixth month of pregnancy when they waved goodbye to the Larsons at the dock. Old Mrs. Sigurdsson remained at home; she couldn’t bear to watch. As the ship pulled away, Klara had the most dreadful sense of loss and foreboding: it was as if her living, breathing self remained on shore, and she was but a ghost departing the earth.

  “Then, for the first time in her life, an astounding thought crossed her mind, something she had never even considered before: she might have simply said no. She could have said, ‘Oddfrid, I choose to stay. I don’t want to leave my brother. I like it here just fine, and we don’t need new opportunities. We don’t need to be rich . . . we have riches enough.’ The thought came to her out of the blue—she had never once heard her mother contradict her father. It was a whole new idea that a wife might have a different opinion, but it came too late.”

  Gudrun looked up from her writing. “I remember the pained expression on her face. ‘What is it, Mutti? Are you feeling ill?’ I asked, but she said, ‘No, just a bit tired, is all.’ She forced a smile. I wasn’t fooled but to question my mother further was out of the question.”

  “Why didn’t Klara tell her husband she was going back to Norway without him?” Sparrow wanted to know.

  “That just wasn’t done . . . it was unthinkable. I know it’s hard to understand in this day and age,” Aunt Gudrun explained. “Sometimes, I can’t believe it myself, the way our lives were handed over to our husbands and fathers, to be tossed about like a ship at sea. Don’t get me wrong. I loved my father and so did my mother. But lately, I’ve realized something that I’d wished I’d known sooner.”

  Sparrow and I eyed each other questioningly for a moment, then trained our full attention on my aunt.

  “Before long, you’ll both be young women,” she continued. “I want you to know that a woman has a right, moreover, a duty, to decide what’s best for her children . . . and for herself. We just didn’t know it.”

  Gudrun laid her pages aside. Her large white hands lay motionless in her lap as she looked far away, over my head and through the window, open wide to a sweet summer’s day. The room was quiet as a cloister—even the birds must have stilled their song in the heat of the afternoon. The only sound was the sharp tat-tat-tat of Morfar’s clock on the mantel. The quietude reminded me of all those Sundays when we played dominoes, me on the lumpy leather hassock and him in his overstuffed armchair, where unbeknownst to either of us my life had begun. Hardly a word passed between us; time itself might have stood still if it not for the steady rhythm of the clock.

  “What a great story,” Sparrow exclaimed, her eyes shining with emotion. Her enthusiastic praise shattered our introspection; she clearly didn’t understand that my aunt had not yet finished. “Auntie, you gave me an idea,” she gushed. “I’m gonna write my family’s story. I’m gonna tell how my ma and grandpa survived the concentration camp . . . and how she died to save my pa. I’m gonna write about Timmy and his rabbits, too.”

  “Good for you.” Aunt Gudrun smiled indulgently.

  “May I be excused now? I wanna go write a letter and tell Pa.”

  “Of course, dear.” Sparrow dashed from the room.

  My aunt rose from her chair and walked with noiseless steps to the ornate marble mantelpiece. I watched curiously as she opened the little door to the clock and with one finger, stopping the brass workings. It fell silent. She returned to her seat by the window, but left the pages lying on the table and picked up her story from memory.

  “The passage to America took over nine days. The third-class accommodations were cramped, and my mother became very uncomfortable. During our second night at sea, she began to vomit violently. At first the ship’s doctor assumed it was seasickness. He gave her the standard medicine, which did no good at all, since she had really picked up a terrible intestinal virus. Day and night, I held the bucket for my mother. Then it started coming out the other end. Mama was always very private, but she was so sick she hardly cared who saw her anymore. They couldn’t get anything to stay down, not one drop of liquid. On the third day of her illness, I was tending her in the ship’s infirmary when I saw blood on the sheets . . . so much blood, all of a sudden. I cried out for the nurse, who took one look and called for the doctor. Then someone started to pull me away by the arm, but I grabbed the iron bedstead and cried, ‘No, I don’t want to leave Mama . . . please let me stay, she needs me.’ I gripped the rail at the foot of the bed . . . the iron was ice cold. I can almost feel it in my hand . . . it’s a strange thing to remember. Papa rushed over to pull me away just as the baby came . . . spilled out in a big gush of water and blood under the blanket. I thought at first Mama went potty in the bed, but when the nurse threw back the bedding, I saw him . . . my baby brother. He didn’t cry or move. He was pinched and wrinkled and much too tiny to be born. My ears began to ring. I could see people’s mouths going, but I couldn’t make out the words. All I heard was a high-pitched tone and a sort of whooshing, like the wind blowing in my ears.

  “I only got a glimpse before the nurse snatched him up, wrapped him in a white blanket and took him away. Then someone took me away, too. Later that day, I stood by my father and prayed as a minister buried little Sjurd at sea.”

 
; “Oh, Gudrun . . . why ever didn’t you tell me all this before?” my mother asked plaintively. “I mean, you mentioned that our mother had a miscarriage on the crossing, but I had no idea that she was so far along, or that you saw it happen. My God—you were only twelve. All this time, I never understood the pain you carried.”

  “I certainly couldn’t tell you as a child,” Gudrun explained. “Then as the years went on, there didn’t seem to be any point in burdening you.”

  “But you deprived me of sharing the family sorrow,” she said sadly. “I could’ve been a better sister . . . a more understanding daughter . . . but you didn’t let me.”

  “Ya, I suppose you have a point. In a way, I’ve been selfish too.”

  IN THE SILENCE that followed, I went to look once more at the small, black-and-white family photograph in its silver frame kept on the mantelpiece alongside Morfar’s clock. It was taken just before they embarked. I’d always wondered why Klara and Gudrun looked so sad. They didn’t smile at all, and their eyes peered timidly into the camera. When I was little, I imagined it was because of their clothes; Grandmother wore a stiff-looking black dress made of heavy wool with the collar buttoned up tight around her neck. Even though my aunt was only twelve, her dress was a somber carbon copy. Although Oddfrid wasn’t exactly smiling, he had a confident, almost jaunty air about him. He had no idea of the tragedy soon to come. Sparrows in the wind, I thought.

  Gudrun took up her pages again. “I’m almost finished,” she said.

  “Oddfrid was a man of very few words and almost none of them were employed to express human sensibilities. However, on his deathbed, he made a confession to his eldest daughter that in his lifetime he had done three things which he sorely regretted. The first, to have cursed his brother, was an out and out sin. The second dreadful mistake stemmed from greed; he had placed desire for worldly wealth ahead of his wife’s feelings, and everything else, which cost them a son. But there was still one more thing . . .”

  And here I pick up the thread of Gudrun’s story in my own words, to afford her the much deserved praise she never would take for herself.

  Although Oddfrid Sigurdsson had come to terms with his sin against Sjurd, he confessed it once more upon his deathbed as an act of contrition. He admitted that his second fault, while not committed against his daughter, sorely affected her, for it broke her mother’s heart and deprived her of a brother.

  But Oddfrid bore the most bitter remorse for his third, and he felt, greatest transgression, because it was rooted in stubborn pride and self-righteous judgment. He realized, too late, that through this error, he had inflicted undeserved pain upon his steadfast, devoted daughter who’d held the family together in times of great hardship. He had committed a terrible injustice and caused her lasting sorrow. And so for the third time in his life since becoming a man, Oddfrid Johan Sigurdsson wept, as he humbly begged her forgiveness.

  I am eternally grateful to my Aunt Gudrun for opening a portal into our past, the history of my maternal line. From then on, I saw myself as not only the child of two parents but as part of a greater story that began long ago on distant shores. So much of our lives depend upon our ancestors—not only their actions but whether they were clever or strong or in good health. I learned that fate doesn’t always rest upon monumental choices, like with Oddfrid at the ticket window. At times, our destiny seems to float on a whim, or is knocked down by a stroke of bad luck. But as Grandfather Oddfrid Johan Sigurdsson learned in his old age, fortune sometimes masquerades as misfortune, or a curse as a blessing in disguise. It can be hard to know for sure when you’re in the thick of it.

  Epilogue

  THAT FRIGID WINTER night in 1963, George Parsons was committed to a state mental hospital, the very place where his ancient Aunt Greta still resided. Based upon his own admission, he was charged with second degree murder, but found not guilty due to insanity.

  Reuben Parsons was charged with accessory to murder after the fact and several lesser charges that I no longer recall and which no longer matter. Since the only witness was mentally incompetent, his culpability would’ve been virtually impossible to prove. But before the trial began, Reuben judged himself and imposed a sentence, looping one end of a rope over the rafters in the chalet and the other around his neck. He stood atop the very ladder used to string up my birthday party lights.

  The enigmatic old man left a will, bequeathing his property, mortgaged though it was, to the Stony River Band of the Chippewa Nation.

  The gruesome death of Horace Hatchet Junior at the hands of Timmy Schimschack made the front page of the Blackstone Bugler; it hit the headlines from Kenosha to Bayfield, and even ran in the Duluth Tribune. When news of the double homicide/suicide crossed the border and landed in the Winnipeg Free Press, it finally caught up with Lester Schimschack.

  Lester returned from Canada to locate his son, but his sudden surge of paternal responsibility came too late. After being released from the hospital, the hemophiliac hadn’t lasted a week in the juvenile detention center. As often happens, those rough boys beat up the newcomer. Timmy died of a brain hemorrhage.

  As soon as my mother was able to sit up and fill out the paperwork, she divorced her husband and took back her maiden name. She terminated my father’s parental rights and through some legal loophole, nullified his role in my adoption. Once again, I was deprived of a father; from there on out I was Cassandra Lynn Sigurdsson. Kristina remained my legal mother.

  When I turned twenty-one and against my mother’s strenuous objections, I decided to visit George Parsons, the man who, however imperfectly, had been my father for my formative years. I had an urgent desire to reconnect with him just then, to put each missing father into his proper place.

  Two days after my birthday, an airmail letter had arrived for Aunt Gudrun—from Italy. Silvio Salvatore hoped to meet me and had written to ask permission of my aunt and parents. I learned that I had three sisters, two brothers and a set of paternal grandparents, along with a multitude of aunts, uncles, and cousins, all eager to see me—a genuine Italian Catholic family.

  Just before sunup, I hit the road in a borrowed pickup truck and made the journey north. I kept to the major highways but didn’t dare take the rattly old thing over 55, so it was nearly one o’clock by the time I reached Blackstone city limits. And I hadn’t even stopped for lunch. The sanatorium was ten miles northwest on the outskirts of Iron County—still had a ways to go, so I decided to drive through downtown Blackstone and pick up a snack.

  The sight took my breath away. Main Street was still paved in the original gray cobblestones, and Swenson’s Drugstore stood on the corner of Third and Main, across from the Five and Dime. I rounded the corner of Baker’s and, lo and behold, Dandy Donuts was still in business. I selected a dozen assorted jellyrolls and cruller, cream-filled, sugar-powdered, and chocolate-frosted donuts, all warm and fresh and still made by hand. I thought about coffees to-go, but figured they’d probably be cold by the time I got to out there.

  I drove past the Iron County fairgrounds, packed with people and animals for the Columbus Day Fair. I’d forgotten all about it. The day was sunny and crisp under a crystal blue sky, as if God had recreated that day in 1962 when I was Cassandra Lynne Parsons, AKA Owl Woman, the best dressed girl in Blackstone Community School, and goat milker extraordinaire. I wished I could take a flying leap out of the moving truck, run onto the fairgrounds and keep on running right back in time—a magical scenario where I would transfigure into my eleven-year-old self as I passed the ticket window, where I’d find all the people I’d lost, alive and well and together again.

  MY STOMACH DID backflips when I checked in at the nurses’ station. I hadn’t even phoned ahead to ask if he wanted to see me—too afraid the answer might be no. I had to open the box and show the donuts to a security guard.

  The nurse on duty seemed surprised when I asked after George Parsons. She explained that he was allowed visitors, but only two ever came. They’d kind of adopted him, coming t
o call with a gift every Christmas since 1963. She showed me the guest log: it was Al Johnson and Matilda Graham.

  I had not seen my father for half a lifetime, but instantly recognized him from behind, the gaunt man with the sparse gray hair sticking out on either side of that jagged scar. He was sitting alone with an open newspaper and smoking like a chimney, a lit cigarette between his bony fingers and another going strong in the ashtray. I had no idea what to expect as I approached. I was afraid to call him Dad, since technically he wasn’t anymore. Calling him Mr. Parsons felt cold and unnatural, but George seemed equally inappropriate.

  “Hi,” I said simply, clutching the paper sack from Dandy Donuts with knuckles suddenly gone white. “Would you care for some donuts?”

  He registered mild surprise as he peered over his newspaper, then pulled his reading glasses down the bridge of his nose for a second look. A hint of a smile played across his thin lips as he folded the paper and laid it aside. I noted the picture of a burning Vietnamese village on the front page, an image that had become tragically ubiquitous.

  He cleared his throat. “Terrible thing, this war,” he remarked casually, as if to a fellow patron at a coffee shop.

  “Horrible,” I heard myself concur.

  “Have a seat.” He gestured to the opposite chair. I sat. “You want a cigarette?”

  “No thanks, I don’t smoke.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He took a long drag, then turned his head reflexively to avoid blowing smoke in my face. I’d seen that courteous gesture a thousand times without thinking about it, yet the particular way he grimaced to blow smoke from one corner of his mouth suddenly brought down an avalanche of feelings. “Well, let’s see what you’ve brought here.” He lifted the box from the paper sack and opened it. “Ah, cruller . . . my favorite.”

  “I remember. I think I’ll take a jelly log . . . oh, darn, I forgot the napkins.”

  “I’ll get some. There’s coffee too, not very good, but . . .”