Rune lifts a picture of a teenage girl and hands it to me. She stands in a thicket, the girl, with her arms spread wide. Her head is back and her mouth is open, and I know she is howling with laughter. The girl could be me, I think. But she’s not me.
“My mother?” I say, but I know it’s my mother.
Rune nods. “She’s a looker. The real reason Mor kicked Maren out had nothing to do with you, you know. Nothing to do with Mikkel. Mor was just jealous of Maren’s great beauty….”
But I shake my head. I don’t want him to joke about this. My whole history is sitting on this table, in a box. It’s so strange, I think, the way a life can be summed up. Anyone who went through this case would have known more about me than I knew myself.
I lift another picture, this one of a younger Sara wearing a dress that puddles about her, holding the hand of a man with Rune’s eyes. I find myself looking to the man’s hands, finding the web.
There’s another berry Mother would make into jam. The clammy ground-cherry. Mother and I would gather the yellow tomato-like berries, unwrap each berry from its papery balloon, then Mother would cook them and sweeten them and seal them away. But I never longed for the taste of the ground-cherry, never relished it, as I did the king’s crown, because I knew the berry’s past: ground-cherry fruit, before it ripens, is poisonous, like bittersweet nightshade. So when I would spread the jam across a thick slice of Mother’s bread, I always would wonder: Were they ripe enough? Or am I painting the bread with poison?
It seems to me now as I look at my past, as I learn more about my past, that perhaps it would be better if I didn’t know. If I’d never learned of the ground-cherry’s history, I would have been more able to enjoy the ground-cherry for what it had become. But now, it seems, I’ll always wonder whether my bread was painted with poison, whether it poisoned me.
Rune takes the picture of Sara and Mikkel from me. “You lived the first fifteen years of your life as Aslaug, not Mikkel’s daughter. You’re still Aslaug. He can’t take that from you.”
I’ve not lived my life as Aslaug, I think. I’ve lived as Aslaug Datter, the daughter of Maren. “So you believe it?” I say. “That Mikkel fathered me?” I don’t want him to believe this. I don’t want to believe this. I want him to believe in Mother. In other possibilities. I want to believe in Mother.
“I believe it doesn’t matter,” he says. “We all have a cross, you know. We all have some cross to bear. Maybe this not knowing is yours. You can carry the burden around with you, let it drag you down, but that’s all it does. Drag you down.” He lifts a stack of the photos, slides the one of Sara and Mikkel deep into the trunk, lets the stack drop.
As if that could do it, I think. As if burying Mikkel in a mound of memories could erase him from my life. And then I think of jail, of reading the story of Jesus carrying his own cross. “What’s your cross? You said the other day you’ve had to face reality since you were young. What did you mean?”
“That’s called prying, Aslaug,” he says. “But I suppose on the planet you come from, social graces are different than ours here on Earth.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“I don’t mind. But I thought maybe I could impress you a bit with my wit and creativity, and my remarkable ability to cook, before I told you I can’t read.”
“What?”
“Well, I can, but not well. I see the same words you see, but my brain jumbles the letters up. Scrambles them. I have to decode every word.”
“But you know poetry…. You recited that poetry.”
“I have a good memory. My saving grace. I hear it once and I don’t forget. I’ve been able to fool a lot of people because of it. Most people don’t know. Except Mor and Sanne, of course. And the people who broke the news to Mor when I was six. And this girl in the church, Rebekka. Sanne used to read to me, but she won’t do it anymore. Now Rebekka does. Mor pays her….”
“I’m sorry.” I can’t imagine not being able to read. I can’t imagine living without books.
“Relax, Aslaug,” he says, and I realize he sees what I feel. “I have some learning challenges, is all, I’m not going to die. Besides, I’m dumping that cross. You don’t know Sanne and Mor well, but living with them and not being able to read, I may as well have been a leper. It used to really get to me. But I’m not going to let it get to me anymore.”
Rune hands me a picture of a man with young Maren. The man holds her on his lap; he kisses her cheek. Her head bends into him and her eyes smile. She looks so confident, so carefree. It’s Mother, I know, but it’s not Mother, too: some part of this girl died long before Mother did.
“That’s Bedstefar,” Rune says. “Mor’s dad, Maren’s dad.”
“I know,” I say.
“You do?”
I see he wonders how I know. But how could I not know? This man is Mother; he’s me.
“Look at this,” Rune says.
The picture he hands me is of two babies, each with flesh-ringed thighs, each toothless, each grinning. And each gripping a handful of the other’s ringed flesh. The quality of the picture is poor, but I see one baby is nearly bald and November-snow pale. The other has hair of brown mounds and skin of bronzed mounds.
“It’s us,” Rune says. “It’s how I knew we were tight.”
“Tight?” I say.
“Friends. Fond of each other.”
I’ve never seen a picture of me before. “Are you sure this is me?”
“You are Aslaug, right? We’ve established that? Not Mikkel’s daughter, but Aslaug?”
He smiles, takes back the photo, flips it. “Aslaug and Rune,” it says, “1988.”
Rune lays the photo back in the pile, pulls out a painting. It’s a smear of orange and purple and turquoise blue. He points to a penciled name and date: “Aslaug, 1989.”
My hands are on the paint, its texture. And on the penciled name.
“And look at this one,” he says. “It’s mine.”
But I can’t look. The painting before me is so childlike. So innocent. So not self-conscious. So free. I didn’t recognize the grinning baby with plump thighs, and I don’t recognize the girl who painted this. Are they trapped inside me somewhere? Or am I like a butterfly that metamorphosed in reverse: began in flight, entered a chrysalis, lost its wings?
“Are you okay, Aslaug?” Rune says. But he knows I’m not okay. His arms are suddenly around me; my face is in his neck. I feel his strength, his warmth.
“Hey.” It is Susanne’s voice; Rune’s arms fall away. “What’s going on?” Susanne stands just steps away; her arms are stiff and still; her hands rest on her hips.
“I was showing Aslaug these old photos, her old artwork,” Rune says. “It’s hard for her to see….”
“Rebekka called,” Susanne says, like she’s lost interest in her own question.
“She’s coming to rehearse for Sunday?” Rune says, and now I realize Rebekka is the angel girl.
“I don’t know.” Susanne sits down and rifles through the trunk, but she doesn’t look long at anything. “Rebekka’s going through hell right now.”
“Is she?” Rune says.
“Don’t worry, though,” Susanne says, and she closes the trunk. “If Rebekka’s parents don’t kill her, she should be just fine.”
SOLOMON’S SEAL
2007
—Please state your name.
—Dr. Oda Lennart.
—What type of doctor are you, Dr. Lennart?
—A forensic pathologist.
—How long have you been practicing forensic pathology?
—Seventeen years.
—Where are you currently employed?
—I’m a medical examiner for the state of Maine. For the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. I’ve been in this position for almost two years.
—Are you familiar with the fire that occurred at the church on Kettil Street in Bethan?
—Yes. I conducted the autopsies on the two female corpses retrieved from that fire.
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—Could you determine their approximate ages?
—One was midforties to early fifties. One was in her twenties.
—Were you able to positively identify them?
—Yes, through dental records.
—And who were they?
—Sara Lerner. The woman who had pastored the Charisma Church. And Sara Lerner’s daughter, Susanne.
—Could you determine the cause of death for either?
—Sara and Susanne were poisoned.
—Objection. Move to strike. The doctor cannot know if someone poisoned these women. She can only know if they did or did not have poison in their systems.
—Objection sustained. Please strike that testimony.
—I’ll ask that again, Doctor. What did you determine was the cause of death?
—Both women died from poison.
—So they didn’t die from smoke inhalation?
—No. They were both dead before the fire.
—What kind of poison killed them?
—Both had toxic amounts of atropine and scopolamine in their bloodstreams.
—Atropine and scopolamine, the alkaloids found in jimsonweed?
—Objection. Leading.
—Others have already testified to this. Objection overruled.
—Yes.
—Is it your opinion these women both died from jimsonweed poisoning?
—Objection. Leading.
—I’m going to allow it.
—Yes.
—Why?
—Well, when I conducted the autopsy on Sara Lerner, I expected to find evidence she died of suffocation from smoke inhalation. I didn’t find this. It appeared she was dead before the fire. So I ran a toxicology screen. There was scopolamine in her system, and enough atropine in her to kill a cow. I found the same situation with the young woman, Susanne. The only other times I’ve seen this situation is when people consumed jimsonweed.
—What, if anything, else did you find unusual about the bodies?
—The younger woman had remnants of plant dye on her skin. It looked as if her skin had been painted at some point before the fire. We couldn’t decipher any image. Her body was too burnt. But we were able to determine that the dye came from the plant Sanguinaria canadensis. Bloodroot.
—Thank you, Dr. Lennart. I have no further questions.
ICE PLANT
2003
The sound pulses through me.
I’ve been in this church for only five days, and yet the sound is familiar enough to be comforting, this jarring, rage-like music that blares about soldiers and the enemy, God and Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Light.
It is Sunday morning, and upstairs Rune and Susanne are preparing for the service. I imagine them now as I saw them Wednesday evening: Susanne sitting at the drums, her mess of hair wrapped in a bud, or flowering down her neck and shoulders; her hands gripping the sticks, the blue veins riding her arms; her white dress splayed across her wide knees. And I imagine Rune’s hips waving, and his glasses slipping and his fingers stroking the strings. I see him close his blackberry eyes, disappear somewhere inside the music, or in the beauty of the church, or in some version of God. He opens his eyes, kneads his hair. His glasses skim up, skate down. Then up. Before his hands again find the strings.
In my mind, the preacher scurries. Her face is lined with excitement. Her pale hair is shining and knotted, her suit jacket lean; her wide skirt is pressed and prepared to spin and fly with the tambourine. She plants one glass of water on the podium, then another. And the bottle of yellowish liquid, which I now know is anointing oil, she exhumes from some sticky drawer and fixes on the center of the podium, pushing the water to one side. She passes through the pews, checking for hugging gum and stuffed wrappers and torn fingernails from the service before. And she collects these donations in a brown paper bag without uttering a word. Somewhere, behind one of the many closed doors, she disposes of the bag, and reappears with the excitement etched deeper: the time is approaching. Soon the parishioners will stomp in and limp in and roll in and stroll in; soon the buzz of their voices will echo from the stone walls and floor; soon the preacher will be respected among those who are her family in Christ. And Susanne and Rune will become the children she wishes they were, if only for these hours: pious and obedient and in awe of the preacher’s power.
I hoist my body from the warm sheets, feel my toes enfold the stone, wrap Susanne’s robe around me, wash my face and neck. The room smells stale and is hot, but the water splattering my skin is stinging cold, and when I look into the mirror expecting to see Mother’s face, I see cheeks made cherry by the cold, and youth: I see Aslaug.
“Aslaug?”
I realize the music has given way to plodding feet and a pounding on my door. Susanne’s face is framed in the door’s window. I towel my skin, open the door.
“Gudinden will have your head,” she says, “if you don’t get your ass in gear.”
“Get my what?” This is the first time I’ve been alone with Susanne since meeting her outside.
“Maren may have taught you every language under the sun, Aslaug, but speaking to you in slang is like speaking to a walrus.” She shakes out a rolled cigarette from her wide sleeve. “God forbid one of Mor’s sheep learns I smoke.” She tugs a book of matches from her shoe, drapes the cigarette from the corner of her mouth while she lights the match. But she doesn’t light the cigarette; she frees it from her mouth.
“How you feeling?” she says. “You seem out of it.”
“I’m okay,” I say. “I’ve been hoping we could talk….”
“You need to get dressed, for Christ’s sake.” And she laughs that laugh. “It’s the Lord’s day. The flock will be arriving within the hour, and Gudinden will want to announce the return of her long-lost niece to those who haven’t yet heard, so they all can baa and whinny in praise of God’s miraculous hand that guided you here.”
“Why do you go to the services?” I say. “Why do you play the music? You seem to have such contempt for it all.” I did what Mother told me because she was the law of my universe. Disobeying Mother was akin to leaping from a cliff and expecting to fly. But Susanne leaped long ago, it seems.
“Do you think I have a choice? As long as I live here, I go, I play, and around the sheep, I act the part. But that doesn’t mean I believe.”
“Well, I don’t think Sara believes God guided me here.” I think of the annoyance carved around the preacher’s leek-like eyes. She’s said little to me since that first night—but her eyes speak.
“Yeah, well. If she doesn’t want you here, she sure talks about you enough. You’d think you were the Blessed Virgin the way she and Rune go on.” She puts the cigarette in her mouth, jerks back the pink strand of hair that seems lured by her eyes, then tries to light the cigarette, but the match has burned low and sears her. “Damn,” she says. “No surprise why the ancients worshiped fire.” She drops the match on the floor, lights another. I feel the urge to pick up the match, but I see Susanne expects me to pick it up, so I leave it there.
“Do you think Sara would prefer I just stay downstairs? Not go to the service?”
“Are you kidding?” Susanne lights the cigarette now; the smoke snakes to the ceiling, swells into a cloud; I try not to cough, but I cough. “Gudinden would never pass up the opportunity to attribute some fortuitous accident to God’s grace.” And the laugh strikes. “I know I’m hard on her, but you need to give her a chance. You two just might grow on each other.”
I rummage through the clothes in the bureau drawer. They look like Indian pipe blossoms: white on white on top of white. Mother called the Indian pipe “ice plants” because the plants have no chlorophyll. “Sunlight nourishes the ice plants as much as it nourishes ice,” Mother said. “Not at all.”
“Why are all these clothes of yours the same?” I say. “They’re all white.”
“To drive Gudinden mad,” she says. But knowing I don’t understand, she adds, “There was this ancie
nt religious sect called the Essenes that Maren studied. Some of the scholarship about them theorizes they wore only white, so Maren did, too, when she lived here, because of them. I just like to remind Mor she’s not omnipotent.”
But Mother never wore white, I think.
“Why do you so want to goad her?” I say. Yet in a sense, I know. I would have loved to prickle Mother at times. Watch her squirm the way she watched me.
“Why not?” she says. “Seriously, though, I never got to be a kid. That’s why. I’m nearly nineteen years old, but I was never a kid. And now I’m not sure what the hell I am. I spent my childhood hearing how this life is just a precursor for the eternal life. That the only point of this life is to not get damned to hell. I was scared shitless by all the devil-talk as a child. And convinced I’d burn. I’ve never had a friend outside the simpletons who come to this church. I’ve never played a sport, seen a movie, gone to a dance. Hell, I’ve never been in the ocean, and we live miles away. What’s the point, right? It’s all meaningless at best, and almost certain to corrupt. So there you have it.”
“I never did any of those things either,” I say. But I didn’t know anyone who did; I guess in a way it was easier for me. Besides, Mother’s mind was a minefield. And the woods were Eden. And our house was a prison, but a palace, too: at times it spiraled deep into the earth, and deep into the sky, depending on Mother’s mood. I see that now. Life was a revolving mystery, sometimes terrifying, sometimes maddening. But always provocative. Interesting. And although its meaning seemed beyond my grasp, it never seemed meaningless.
“If I’d been a freak like Maren or a screwup like Rune, maybe things would have worked out better for me. Instead, I had no behavioral issues. No learning issues. In fact, I was ‘gifted,’ whatever the hell that means. What did it get me? Ignored. My needs were not pressing, right? I’d do fine no matter what, right? I got yanked from my father because of Maren’s needs. Yanked from school because of Rune’s needs. Shut up in this hellhole because of Mor’s needs. And left to be fucking bored out of my mind.
“Mor’s not a bad person,” Susanne says then, as if I’d asked. “A guilt-ridden person, yes. A fucked-up person, yes. An egomaniac at times. Absolutely. But she didn’t mean me any harm. She just didn’t mean me…anything. Anyway,” she says, “about the clothes, maybe the Essenes and Maren were onto something.”
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