Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

She closed her eyes, and I sat with her for a long time after she was asleep. I gazed at her face, which had always been chubby, but was now emaciated. At the same time, it was also remarkably smooth and almost young and mischievous, her nose slightly turned up and her nostrils large, with long front teeth that bit her lower lip, leaving marks on it.

Now the thought finally crept in that perhaps she had no months remaining, only weeks. I sat with Mom until twilight crept through the windowpane and settled over her bed. It wasn’t out of devotion that I sat there so long; it was because I wasn’t in the mood to stand up. The entire time I just held on to her hand, which was as shriveled as dried herbs. When I finally released my grip and stroked the back of her hand, Mom smiled in her sleep, out to her ears. When I turned around in the doorway, she was still smiling, a long farewell smile.

Heiður, who’d been babysitting Edda, was restless when I came home. Still, she’d brought her flute with her and used the time to practice once Edda was asleep. Always using the time. How frustrating for people from whom time is stolen: young mothers, parents of troubled youths.

I saw that she wasn’t happy with how long I’d been gone and how I hadn’t even bothered to call to let her know what was up.

I told Heiður that I’d intended to ask my mom how I came to look the way I did, but that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Heiður said, as usual, that I could ask until the cows came home, but I would almost certainly get no answers.

She can’t live more than a few weeks at most, I moaned, and suddenly found myself crying. Heiður tried to console me, and I wailed about how hard I thought it would be to live after Mom was dead.

She was never much of a support, Harpa.

Let’s not talk about that now. It’ll be hard to go on after Mom is dead, because everything between us is so unresolved. It’s all been left unsaid.

Is it possible to resolve things with people like your mother? Aren’t people like that constantly traveling all by themselves through incomprehensible spaces, as you yourself say?

So much can happen over time, I said. Many things change unexpectedly. If she were to live, maybe we’d come to understand each other, somehow. SO MUCH MIGHT BE POSSIBLE AFTER TEN YEARS THAT WOULD BE UNTHINKABLE NOW.

I remember what I said. I remember it very well. It figures I should remember it on this fateful trip, now, after these ten years, in fact, when channels are still closed that then I’d thought would open up. CLOSED CHANNELS would obviously be an excellent title for my story, which no one will ever write, and the best title for my life, which should never have been lived.

I need to pee. Once more. A wretched necessity, an endless disturbance. Broken sleep when you have to pee. A lot of people never sleep soundly because they have to go so frequently at night. Defective bladders are a problem throughout the world and a disagreeable ailment. Many women struggle with urinary incontinence, and it does nothing to increase their self-confidence.

No potty. Helmsperson Þuríður peed in a horn.

I need to pee.

This is a good place for it, my dear.

To pee outside in a thick fog would be an easy task for ordinary people who believe that if passersby see something, they’ll think the shapeless mass is a rock, not a pissing woman. But I’m no ordinary person. I don’t want to be seen squatting even if I might be mistaken for a rock. One disadvantage of a desert country like Iceland is how often you need to pee outside. It’s been extremely important to me ever since I was a little girl not to be seen squatting. I must have spent quite a few hours of my life searching for a safe place to pee. And no matter how well I searched, someone always came. Such is destiny. It’s unavoidable. You walk for half an hour up a gully in order to pee in peace, unseen by anything but the birds of the sky. Then someone comes walking by, always male: a shepherd, a backpacker, a dreamer.

Then, just ahead, a dreamland for outdoor pee-ers. Sea stacks standing upright, only an outhouse-distance from the road. I can crouch behind one of them in a covert operation, make it an intricate bathroom wall.

It’s wet going to the sea stack, a minefield of little morasses. The peeing spot is usually farther away than the traveler thinks. Now, the only way is to hop prudently from one tussock to another, avoiding stepping in the little mudholes. Wet feet could ruin what’s left of the trip, whatever’s left of it to ruin.

Nature lies dormant beneath this wet hide. The blades of grass bend beneath the spiderweb of drizzle. The drizzle is healthy for the hair and more moisturizing than any cream. Balsam for my chin, chafed in the night.

The sea sluggishly splashes the land. It doesn’t move on its own; it’s the currents that move it without its having a say, eternally on the same course, onto the land and off.

The heather behind the sea stack receives the warm liquid. The gush is the umbilical cord between me and the earth. The posture I’m in is bad for a woman with sore thigh muscles. I would give a great deal to be able to urinate standing up, yet without having to be a man.

The respectable woman always has a pack of tissues in her pocket.

To pee outside hasn’t been her favorite occupation, but here special conditions prevail, and even the most stable of characters could become addicted to this operation if they tried it, tinged as it is with salt air. HOW GOOD AND FAIR AND WONDERFUL ICELANDIC AIR IS ON YOUR BARE BEHIND. ACROSS YOUR BARE BEHIND would probably be a more poetic line.

Sheep bleat piteous baa s and troubled meh s, vomit-like sounds, no wonder, their being ruminants and all. A brownish individual, a bird that I name Móri, screeches and alights on the bathroom wall. A witness with wings.

When I stand up straight after a lengthy and voluminous urination suitable for an average-sized camel, I see my traveling companions preparing for similar operations, Edda squatting down behind a rock and Heiður behind a stationary lamb. It’s picturesque. They both have their backs turned to me, peeing landward. For the sake of form, I’d thought it better to turn my back to the sea.

Five cars rush by. One slows down and honks, suggesting that they’ve seen the knee bends of two women with their pants down. If they had any sense of decency, they’d drive past silently. Act as if they didn’t notice. Icelanders know no shame.

The bird, Móri, comes flying toward me, out from the soft white substance that covers the land. From where have you been sent, Móri, you worm, and how will you go about poisoning my toxic life today? It opens its beak and says that it’s been sent from the uppermost regions. Sure you’re not from Mom’s place? I say.

I’m careful to get in the car last, avoid argument, pretend to sleep, sleep if I can.

If I had money, I’d build a house by the sea. Here, probably. Then I could water tussocks behind rocks on a daily basis, with my freeborn buttocks in the salty wind.

I built a house by the sea

and the sea said: Oh kay

Here I am and my name is

Hudson Bay.

If I had money, I’d build a house by the sea and the sea would say oh kay , and I’d build another house in the birch thicket at the end of a glacier. And if I had supernatural gifts, I’d live in both houses at the same time. Unfortunately, that toughie Heiður has a house in a dream place, though it’s not a dream house as seen from the outside.

DREAM HOUSE. I was raised in Mom’s dream house. Anyone brought up in a dream house can’t live in a house of wakefulness.