Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

Edda: Eat shit and start with your toes.

The man with eczema: Should I call an ambulance or the police?

Edda: The fire department.

The man: Where does it hurt?

I pointed at my knee and shoulder but couldn’t speak through my screams. I would have preferred to stop screaming now, but it was impossible. The more I fought against my wailing, the more acute it became.

The man: Did she hit you?

I nodded, and the wailing turned into a sobbing that pumped out tears with each exhalation.

The man (to Edda): That, you simply may not do.

Edda: It’s none of your business, you sack of eczema.

Unfortunately, the man’s wife had come to the door, an obese woman who moves slowly and definitely doesn’t look like an unbearable noisemaker.

The wife: How dare you say such things, child!

Edda (shouting loudly): How dare you come barging in here! It’s an invasion of privacy.

The wife (to me): Who should I call?

Edda: Call the Salvation Army.

I realized I would have to stop crying and try to say something in order to put an end to this abominable situation. Between sobs I squeezed out: Ih-hit’s oh-h-k-hay.

The couple from upstairs looked at each other. Tears were welling in the poor fat woman’s eyes.

I tried to stand up and thank them for their help, but my knee gave out and I sank to the floor.

The man (to his wife, and pointing at me): She’s broken something.

Me (on the floor): N-no-o (pointing at my knee). Th-hank you.

The man: I’ll drive you to the emergency room. No question.

I shook my head and said, Th-hanks. No.

The wife said: Come get us or call if you need anything. It doesn’t matter if it’s in the middle of the night.

Again I moaned out th-hanks and the blubbery couple drifted out the door like sailboats on a superslow wind.

I didn’t try to get up again. I crawled out of the room on all fours, without looking at Edda, but saw out of the corner of my eye that she was hesitant, for a moment. She quickly put the music back on, a tiny bit lower than before, I thought, though I could have misheard, numb as I was. After taking two potent painkillers, I fell asleep. The following morning I limped to the phone and called in sick to work. I was burning with pain, both in my leg and my shoulder, and knew I should go to the emergency room but couldn’t fathom making the trip, so I took a sleeping pill instead. I had a supply from my nervous breakdown on New Year’s Eve. You know, I have to carry around a miniature version of my medicine cabinet in my handbag, and I sleep with the pill bottles under my pillow. I can’t let the girl get hold of anything. That’s what these people do to you, drag you all the way down to their level. And you end up with drugs beneath your pillow, exactly like them.

There was little to stop me from swallowing enough pills to ensure I wouldn’t wake up again, and I knew pretty much how many it would take to do the job. I felt as if I had no choice but to do away with living, and do away with looking in my child’s face, in such bad shape as it was. I felt I never should have been born, much less have given birth. I’d never be strong enough to save myself. What an absurd stretch to imagine trying to save the child. I’d realized all of this earlier, admittedly, but just then I saw it with uncanny clarity.

As I was swallowing sleeping pill number two, the doorbell rang. I was so out of it that I automatically marched to the door like a robot, when it would have been best to ignore it. It was Aunt Dýrfinna. I had no idea she was in town, since she’s never in town. She’d taken a taxi to my place, and this was what she found.

There was no way that I wanted visitors, and in the doorway I said, in a slightly hostile tone, that this was really not the right time. Dýrfinna said that it didn’t matter one bit and invited herself in. She must have known that there was something afoot other than my lover waiting for me in bed, naked and impatient. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have barged in like that.

It’s curious what people notice, even when under immense physical and mental strain, including seriously contemplating suicide. I thought of the gray wool coat that’s about the same age as me, because Dýrfinna was wearing it when she came to fetch me for the first time down at the dock out east. I also thought of her handbag — where and when she found that, I have no idea. It’s a big, clunky container made of brown leather, with a sturdy iron latch; it would be well suited for holding rusty old medical instruments in a museum.

I took my aunt’s gray coat and forbade her from removing her orthopedic shoes. Under her coat, she was wearing a drably colored classic wool blazer with a pleated skirt. The buttons on the blazer were covered with the same fabric and edged in gold. Underneath the blazer she was wearing a brownish-pink silk shirt. After taking off her coat and putting down the Reformation-era midwife’s bag, she looked like a future member of Parliament for the Women’s Party.

She sat down ponderously on my old couch, which I’d just recently covered with beautiful upholstery fabric from your parents’ house. It was decorated with blazing tulips — red, yellow, and blue — which somehow looked perfect in my Bollagata living room. Dýrfinna remarked more than once that everything at my place was so lovely and tidy. That there was no question of my exemplary housekeeping skills, which I’d possessed ever since I was a little girl. And one could see quickly in children what sort of adults they’ll become. I couldn’t help thinking, however, that my experience as a parent seemed to refute such a theory.

I put coffee on, went into the living room, and abruptly grew wings. I was free from my sad earth, floating in neutral tranquility over my vale of tears, and I wanted to hear about anyone other than me and my delinquent child. Yes, as I recalled, Dýrfinna had retired relatively recently from her midwife job after almost half a century.

You never lost a child.

Never lost a child.

You also lost no woman in childbirth.

No one died.

You’re a bearer of health and happiness, Aunt.

I’ve been lucky.

It isn’t luck. You’re just so smart.

That’s not enough, Harpa. There are energies around me that I don’t recognize. It could be dead people joining with me — it’s said that the dead accompany some spiritual healers — although I don’t feel this relationship directly. I’ve sensed the presence of my dead mother, but it’s in a completely different manner from how some spiritualists describe it.

I certainly don’t have to worry about getting help from that direction, from my mother. It isn’t a nice thing to say, but that’s how it is.

Harpa, we should be careful of what we say, and of judging others. We don’t know what’s under other people’s skin. Your mother was so neurotic. She probably would have ended up in an asylum if she hadn’t had such a good husband.

Poor Dad.

He was tremendously fond of her. And presumably still is.

I don’t understand a life like Dad’s. The hardships he suffered as a helpless child nearly killed him, and then he continued to be a martyr in his marriage.

Love isn’t martyrdom, Harpa dear. We know so little of others’ rewards. Plus, your father has you and Sibbi.

Yes, he has me , Aunt, but am I his ? She’s the only person I can ask, but I’ll probably never get the words out. What on earth should I say? How is it, Aunt? Is it possible that I really belong to my dad? I mean to that side of the family. I’m so dark-skinned, like a black sheep.

The only person I can ask. But how do I go about it? No one’s prepared me for asking strange questions about my family and origin, calling into question the fundamental details of my own existence, which have always been taken as true.