When I approached with a comb, she climbed on a chair—all obedience—and sat facing the block of ice. Serious, somber. In front of us, the baby flew sideways through the ice, a cherub escaped from Michelangelo’s ceiling. I relished the feel of Sigrid’s small, wet head, the slow but steady progress the comb made through her soft, shining hair. Her wet-leather smell replaced by that of cheap shampoo. She reached up and touched her hair, whispered something I didn’t catch. I wanted to give her a trim but knew that would be pushing it. The ice made dull popping sounds as it melted. I smelled carbon, tar, an earthy musk. When I was mostly done, she knocked my hand and the comb away and climbed down off the chair.
I thought she would run off to her room as she always did in the evenings, but this night was different. She headed to the corner of the living room where I kept the picture books, drawing paper, and markers and gathered them all up in her arms. Tromped down the hallway.
Not to her room, but to mine. I followed.
She heaved everything helter-skelter on my bed. Crawled into the chaos. Opened one of the picture books and pointed at a bird. Praying this mood wouldn’t vanish, I grabbed my digital recorder and tucked myself into bed next to her.
“Bird,” I said.
“Bird.” She reached up into the air as if grabbing a bird and pulled the phantom creature toward her.
“You need a bird. You want a bird. Sigrid want bird?”
She said, “Sigrid want bird. Sigrid want bird.” She flipped madly through the book as if searching for something. Frustrated, she shoved it to the floor.
I opened the book on the history of Greenland. Pointed to a young Inuit girl around her age, circa 1888, standing in a swirling snowstorm. “Snow,” I said, pointing to it. “Sigrid, say snow.”
“Suh-no.”
I had an idea. “Wait here, please, Sigrid.” I ran to the kitchen, got a glass of water and a piece of ice, brought them back. Set the ice a few inches from the water on a sheet of notebook paper on my desk. Curious, she slipped out of bed, stood eye level with the display.
“Ice,” I said, touching the chip.
She repeated, “Ice.”
I pointed to the glass. “Water.”
“Water.”
Giddy with excitement, I drew a line on the paper with little arrows from the ice chip to the water and said, slowly, “Thaw.”
She let me take her finger and touch the ice, trace the arrows, then touch the glass of water. “Thaw,” I repeated.
She smiled and said, “Taw.”
“Yes! Thaw.”
“Taw.”
“Okay, good. Now watch.” I drew another line with arrows, this time from the water to the ice. “Freeze,” I said, with great drama. Touching the glass of water, arrow, and ice, then reversing the order, and back again, I said, “Water, freeze, ice. Ice, thaw, water. Now you do it.” I took her hand and she let me touch the items with her finger one by one.
“Ice. Taw. Wahter,” she said. “Wahter. Feeze. Ice. Feeze!” she repeated, giggling. The word freeze seemed to crack her up.
“Good job, Sigrid.” I went back to the snow scene and pointed at the young girl. “Girl.”
“Guhl.”
“Girl.”
“Grlll.”
She learned so fast. Through repetition, goofy pantomime, picture books, and drawing, she mastered yes, no, freeze, thaw, baby, eat, drink, hungry, wake, sleep, walk, fish, dog, talk, hair, eye, snow, water, ice, ice bear, seal, walrus, dead, alive, and fly, everything caught on my recorder. For one versus many, I emptied a bag of marbles on the bed. With her weeping, drooping eye, she learned the concept of hurt, of sick. I think I even got across the word sorry, after spilling a bit of water on her by accident and repeating the word a few times. Abstract verbs were tougher. Want versus love, for example.
Pointing to her and then the picture of the bird, I said, “Sigrid wants bird.”
She nodded, said, “Yes.”
I was so thrilled by her progress I hugged her, surprising her slightly. “Val loves Sigrid,” I said in an exulted tone. Then I let her go and hugged myself, an enraptured expression on my face. Pointed at her. Repeated, “Val loves Sigrid.”
She thought this was hilarious. She hugged herself, saying, “Love, love, love Sigrid,” before bursting into her own language, which—I had to continually remind myself—was most likely liberated from English’s choke hold of subject-verb-object. A simple sentence such as I like fish might be translated as something like: happy, delicious, love, want, the kind of fish, the time of year it is caught, likes it the way her grandfather used to make it, burnt at the edges and roasted over stones, wants the fish now, thanks the spirit of the fish, misses her grandfather.