Inga glared at the ceiling.
“Alvays it is ze same viss you. Vut do you sink zis vurlt is made uff, hmm? Nussing but canties unt sugar cakes unt parties unt dencing unt booze-soaked sex?”
“Oh, right! Because there certainly were never any parties or drinking or sex in Aesgard!”
“Joy unt luff…zese are
illusions,
my daughter. If you luff a men he vill alvays hurt you—if you trust a friend she vill stab you in ze guts. Life is hard vurk, drutchery, boredom, exhaustion. At its finest it’s honor unt devotion to higher ideals zan oneself, unt
ja,
higher even zan one’s family, vhich you could never see! You’re a demigoddess, Inka…You must rise to assume your true status. Beingk in an organization such as ze FOOCH means protecting mortal civilians, but not beingk like zem, not vallovink in zeir veakness unt self-pity unt ridiculous neet for ‘luff’—”
“Like you did?” said Inga. “So why bother devoting your life to protecting people you despise, Mother? Why not just abandon them, like you abandont Daddy and us?”
“I dit
not
abandon any of you! You all abandoned me, remember?”
“Even when you were with us,” said Inga, “you weren’t!”
The Battle of All Mothers, or, Not F*O*O*J but FOOI: Family of Origin Issues
T
hroughout their argument, both goddess and demigoddess walked the brink of discussing what I suspected was the trauma that had caused the greatest tragedy between them. For a daughter to side with a father following a parental separation, and then to develop two nested secret identities to sever her connection with her mother, indicated a profoundly violent amputation in the body of mother-daughter connection.
Despite Inga/Syndi’s paradigmatic divergence from her mother, Hnossi raised no objections to the biographical facts recounted by Inga. Nor did she say anything to rebut the charge that she both admired and despised the powerful males she pursued, squeezing from them whatever professionally nutritive juices she could before shoving them into the relationship composter, as her own mother Freyja had done before her and as Syndi would do after.
The sole counterpoint in Hnossi’s behavioral script was her adulation of Hawk King. Because Hnossi’s contempt for men had always become directly proportional to their desire for her, the Egyptian strong man’s unavailability to any woman only magnified Hnossi’s adulation of him, guaranteeing that the elder god’s death would crack valleys into the lowlands of Hnossi’s flattened affect. Arguably, the disruption of her immortal immune system that had led to her terminal condition could have been assigned in part to the psychemotional devastation caused by her true icon’s death.
But Hawk King’s allure for Hnossi went beyond his now permanent unattainability. Hnossi had inherited her mother’s magical feather cloak; while she could not transform herself into a falcon, in her possession the cloak transmuted into giant
hawk
wings. Hawk King had been famous for his impartiality, wisdom, and strict but compassionate leadership and guidance. His epithet among the supercommunity as simply “the King” spoke to the esteem in which he was held by all.
Unfortunately for Hnossi and her family, even while she’d admired Hawk King’s character, Hnossi had failed to manifest his kindly demeanor. She didn’t deny Inga’s charges that on their rare family “adventure” camping trips to Jotunheim and Pacari, Hnossi would become so enraged at her family’s refusal to follow her strict camping protocols (for instance, prohibitions against sleeping late or intrameal snacking) that she would go so far as to throw things at her husband—things such as boulders. Once when Hector failed to have the morning coffee ready at the instant of sunrise, she ripped down a butte and struck him over the head with it, terrifying the children, destroying their chariot and badly denting their iron cats with the resulting rubble.
Mothering had come no easier to Hnossi than had wifing; despite his nickname “Lil Boulder,” her son Baldur possessed neither superstrength nor invulnerability. Instead, much to his father’s delight, he was a brilliant painter and muralist who emitted scented paints from his fingertips as a spider would secrete webbing.
Considered by many to be a prodigy of Diego Riveran proportions, the eight-year-old took it upon himself to paint the entirety of Spectre Valley with a mural depicting the Mayan story of creation and doomsday. Art critics from around the planet flew at once to California to examine “the Work,” as it was called, some hailing it as the greatest single gigantic artwork in human history, not to mention the best smelling. Hnossi disagreed, ordering the boy to scrub off the entire work by hand since he’d painted it without state permission and was facing charges of vandalism, mischief and destruction of a state park. Hector and Hnossi clashed bitterly over the incident, with Hnossi ultimately denouncing “ze undiknified life of an artist” to her former-actor husband before freezing and burning off the mural with her twin swords. The wedge between them crept deeper.
Hnossi’s opinion of her elder child had been even less encouraging. While Inga’s early powers didn’t include hyper-emulation, her singing was hypnotic—literally. But since Iron Lass disliked rival F*O*O*Jster the Siren (the heroine whose 1968 lawsuit forced the Fraternal Order of Justice to change its name to the non-gender-specific “Fantastic”), Hnossi was entirely unsupportive of her daughter having any similar power. Desperate and lacking her mother’s positive reinforcement, young Inga soon began taking advantage of her hypnovocalism, singing to children and adults—especially males—to bend them to her bidding. The only people immune to Inga’s powers were her kin. But her father and brother adored her because of their familial bond, not requiring any sonic manipulation for their experience of love.
“But there’s something much deeper than this,” I told Syndi. “Something your mother won’t go near and something you’re only hinting at. Something truly awful happened between you two which made you distance yourself from your mother so greatly that you created
two
secret identities with which to obscure your connection to her. What is it?”
Hnossi’s ancient, deathly eyes fixed on her daughter like leeches, whether to shut Inga down or finally to open her up, I was not sure.
Inga/Syndi got up and excused herself to go to the bathroom.
The moment she returned, I said, “Tell me about Cassiopeia Rand.”
“What?” said Inga, floored. She clutched her hands to her chest as if my question had denuded her. “How the hell did you know about her?”
“Festus,” I said, showing her a folder from my briefcase. “He’s been very helpful with supplying additional background material from his extensive files.”
“My God!” said Inga, shaking her head and looking with disgust toward the ceiling. “How long has that old fascist been spying on me? On all of us?”
“Ach, Inga,” rasped her mother. “Stop beingk so dramatic. Ze man is ze vurlt’s greatest detectiff. Vut dit you expect him to do viss his information-gazzering apparatus? Answer crossvurt puzzles?”
“Duh, I dunno, how about,
catch criminals?
And not invade the privacy of law-abiding citizens?”
“Answer ze qvestion. Who is ziss Cassiopeia Rand?”
“Inga,” I pressed, “tell me about Space Girl.”
The Debut, Disappearance, and Downfall of Space Girl
I
had problems igniting my career, okay?” said Inga, glaring at me with all the toxic, self-indulgent angst of her Syndi Tycho persona, but without the incessant use of
like
and
gawd.
“It was 1981. I was nineteen. So I tried making my debut as Cassiopeia Rand, HKA Space Girl. I was singing Latin pop-lite tunes—this was years before Gloria Estefan blew up—and fighting a little crime on the side with my hypnovoice, just to get some press.
“I was starting to move up, get noticed. I even had an HBO special with special appearances by Cher, Cheech Marin, and Tim Conway. But the day my special aired,” she said, jutting her lower lip toward the hospital bed, “
Mother
up and declared her global war. Every channel was glued on her and her crusade for the next month! Debuts are delicate, Eva! And mine, thanks to her, was a complete dud! And unlike in heroics, in showbiz, you don’t get second chances.”
Believing her career was over, Inga-Ilsabetta exiled herself back east, eventually studying marketing, music production, and singing at the Alison Blair Institute for Advanced Disco Studies. Excelling in every course, by 1987 she created a brand-new persona through which to reinvent herself and forge her own second chance.
Dyeing her hair, and with the almost perpetually youthful looks of a demigoddess, she emerged as Syndi Tycho, HKA Power Grrrl, who in 1991 capitalized upon the need of the post-Götterdämmerung F*O*O*J to reinvent itself, too, in the wake of the promised “peace dividend.” An angry, exhausted, and broke public needed happy, lively, pretty new faces if the F*O*O*J was to survive into its new postvillain era. Fast-tracked, the “seventeen-year-old” became a made member in 1991 after a mere six-month candidacy and, with her new legitimacy, immediately launched extensive marketing tie-ins.
“The government loved me, the F*O*O*J’s corporate sponsors loved me,” said Syndi, “the public loved me, everyone loved me. Everyone was happy. It was great.”
“How about your mother?” I asked without malice, regretting the crumpling of her features as soon as I saw it. “How about you? Did you love yourself? Have you ever been truly happy?”
“Of course I loved myself! Of course I’m happy! What kind of question is that?”
“I think you didn’t feel loved, Syndi. That you never felt you were getting enough love. That you had a hole in your soul. That you believed your mother’d never given you enough of what you needed. That you had to comfort your heart-shattered father and raise your little brother by yourself, depriving you of time just to be a girl. You feared Kareem would never put you first—”
“Is that a crime, Eva? To be more in touch with my need for love than other people are?”
“It’s not a question of crime, Inga, but dysfunction, and of causing damage to others. You seduced Kareem
emotionally,
not just sexually. And the ramifications for him have been gigantic. Scandal might help
you
sell more albums, but this could quite likely be the end of Kareem’s career.”
“Unt you hat no right to treat Fraulein Biceps like zat,” said Hnossi. “She vuss a gut varrior. She deservt better. Regartless of her uzzer…you know. Her…liebenschtyle.”
“After you felt your mother’d rejected you,” I said to Inga, “you determined you’d never be rejected again. By anyone. Every relationship you’ve ever had—familial, platonic, romantic—
you
ended before
they
could.”
“God!” she said, pacing the tiny room like a black rat in a white box. “This is completely wrong, Eva! We’re supposed to be talking about what my mother did wrong! She’s the reason I’m so messed up!”
“ ‘Messed up’? Earlier you claimed you were happy and felt loved. Syndi…Inga…anyone as desperate as you were, as you still are, to avoid rejection—I mean, your entire career has been about attracting the attention you equate with love so as to guarantee yourself a never-ending ‘fix.’ Anyone
that
terrified of rejection has unquestionably harmed or debased herself in ways she isn’t proud of. Ways she may never have told another living soul…
”
Inga froze, focusing on me tapping the cover of my
POWER GRRRL
folder. Her blue eyes paled into water.
“Vut is it? Vut’s she talking about, Inka?” said Hnossi. “I don’t understandt…Vut are you getting at, Doktor?”
“You really should tell your mother, Inga.”
“This is so unethical of you, Eva!”
“Inka,” said Hnossi heavily, “
tell
me.”
Inga scrambled up into a chair as if afraid of floor mice, hugged her knees against her chest, her eyes looking like huge balls of wet ice.
“I did
the capes,
” she mumbled.
“Vut? Inka, you’re not—you’re not serious—”
Her daughter said nothing, saving her glare for me.
“Odin’s eye,” whispered the dying goddess.
The niche pornography industry called
the capes,
worth an estimated $2.5 billion annually in the United States alone, served those men and women who sexually fetishized superhero tunics and the people who wore them. On rare occasions a genuine superheroine or hero (always a fallen one) gained “employment” in the field, appearing in films, videos and holograms. Best known of these was the sole “success” story: Magna, the 1980s heroine and daughter of the Lodestone. At the height of the Götterdämmerung she’d left crimefighting to begin her own highly profitable pornographic production company in whose features she’d frequently “starred.”
And the file Festus supplied me contained photographic proof. As Cassiopeia Rand, HKA Space Girl, Inga had appeared in “supporting” roles of “adventure” films such as
Magna: Pirate of Men’s Pants,
“documentaries” such as
The Theory of Magnajism,
and “intellectual erotica” such as
Magna Cums Laudly.
“But there’s more, Inga,” I said, “isn’t there?”
“Mein todt, how can it get any vurse zan ziss, Doktor?” moaned Hnossi, clutching at whatever frosted-green crabgrass remained attached to her skull. “My own dottir! A whore for ze cameras! Ziss is all her fazzer’s fault, ze filse of all his showbiz dreams—”
