Steinunn Sigurdardottir - Place of the Heart

To torment myself on the way down, I look at the old road, how it twists in tight bends, precipitous and narrow from the lowland up to the heath. The combined miseries that I’ve suffered on Kambar are not insignificant. One of my first memories is of Mom’s fear of heights manifesting itself here, her calling for Jesus to save us and me screaming in the backseat.

I’m ashamed to say it, but I still sometimes feel dizzy on this broad, winding road with its steel guardrails. My sense of balance is probably a bit out of whack. Heiður’s driving doesn’t help, as she accelerates and decelerates by turns, for no apparent reason.

How much I wish I weren’t in this overstuffed vehicle that reeks of moonshine. This isn’t the day to be here. It’s a day to be nowhere, except in Grandma’s Grove, tending to sweet little trees and listening carefully to every keen word uttered by my very own streams and waterfalls.

I don’t want to be thirty-one with my life behind me, all because of an accident when I was small and stupid and didn’t know how to say no to a shy but pushy boy. I want to be a fourteen-year-old girl, me as I was before .

Fourteen years old on the coastal ship Hekla or Esja , on my way to the eastern part of the country, running thirsty eyes over waves and crests and skerries, with salty sea-air in my lungs.

The seas cover three-quarters of the earth, land only one-fourth, Dad taught me, turning the illuminated globe on his desk.

Fortunately, the lands are small and shallow compared to the seas.

Fortunately, my land is an island surrounded by a very large sea.

Everything seems gentler from the sea: the island is bluer, the fjords greener, and the glaciers softer. When I was at Laugarnes School I wrote THE SEA IS MY LAND, a story for the school paper about sailing east to my countryside.

For half the year I looked forward to sailing east, just as much as I feared Sunday drives, steep slopes, and narrow bridges with bends in them, and Mom running her mouth nonstop. No matter how hard I tried to shut it out, her hoarse voice crashed into my ears and filled my head.

There was nothing to do but bite the bullet and curse under my breath. Dad remained ridiculously focused behind the wheel, his shoulders stiff and his chin thrust forward. Whenever possible, he peeked over his shoulder and smiled at me and my brother, Sibbi, as we pinched and scratched each other in secret to the sounds of Mom ranting.

The old Škoda is the first car I remember, its color a peculiarly washed-out yellow-gray-brown-green. Mom had just returned from getting her hair permed and colored, her hair white and dull, her red mouth running like a machine in a monologue about sloths, which take eight days to digest their food, and about the foster daughter of wolves, Mom’s all-time favorite subject during my childhood. Amala and Kamala in India, raised by wolves, discovered by men, and taken into Reverend Singh’s orphanage. Amala and Kamala dashed about on all fours with tangled hair down to their waists, terrifying civilized men at midnight with their howling and devouring carrion, bloody from their mouths to their ears.

Sibbi started teasing me early, saying I was a foster child from the Far East. With my looks, I believed him, and I cried myself to sleep at night. Kids don’t know that such things constitute normal sibling torture.

I wanted to raise myself above the wretched status of foster child and instead become a fantastic and very rare foster daughter of wolves. I practiced it like a circus act when I was home alone. Wearing only my underwear, I crawled and howled across the kitchen floor as fast as I could. Once, my mother caught me. I thought she’d gone to town, but she’d actually only stepped out to the nearby fish shop. She’d come all the way into the kitchen and clearly witnessed the whole thing, but acted as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I was terribly ashamed and wanted to cry, but instead said: Bak pú vó . It was one of the few things that little Kamala ever learned to say, and means doll in a box .

Fish, said Mom, pointing at the haddock.

Yes, of course. This is what I’ll name my autobiography, which will never be written: THE FOSTER DAUGHTER OF WOLVES, the name of a book that exists and is about something else.

I roll down the window, and Edda shouts: Do you want to kill me? I promptly roll it up again.

No, it isn’t fun to be the goddamn wimp that I am. In fact, it can be dangerous. Edda wouldn’t be in such a state if I were tough enough to deal with the world and her.

Edda, should we stop at Selfoss as usual and get ice cream?

My only child doesn’t hear. She’s in her own world, with her Walkman headphones in her ears and her eyes shut. Her face is pale, and she has light-green circles under her eyes, and she isn’t particularly well washed. A red scar from an ugly injury runs from the top of her ear over her cheekbone and almost all the way to her nose. Edda’s an emaciated child with more life experience than a seventy-year-old man. She’s wearing a leather vest over a torn sweater and greasy black stretch pants, with a spider in her earlobe, and a skull ring from little Rúna on her index finger. Defenseless Rúna, who didn’t survive the world that my daughter entered this past year.

Will you please stop in Selfoss, Heiður? Edda’s got to have an ice cream.

Edda? Heiður asks. Ice cream?

It’s an unbendable tradition on our jaunts: ice cream in Selfoss.

You call this a jaunt?

Let’s say it’s a jaunt. That we’re just on an outing to Selfoss, and when we set off from there, we’re not going any farther east than to Hella. If you divide up the route and shut the gates in between, it becomes bearable — many short jaunts.

You’re quite the expert.

Those who have delinquent children become experts in time and space, I say. They learn to cut time into pieces in order to survive it, change the road into turnouts and splice them together into one main road.

Heiður asks whether it’s worthwhile to stop, since the girl would probably just be irritated.

Yes, and that’s also how she’ll be if she doesn’t get ice cream. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

There’s a slight twitch around Heiður’s mouth, in the sensitive flute-nerves adjacent to the base of her powerful nose. She’s in no mood to discuss the vicious circle of my life right now.

Where is everyone? she asks.

Nowhere. We’re alone in the world.

Queen of the road! sings Heiður, accelerating in the middle of Ölfusá River Bridge and taking a reckless turn into the sleeping town.

Have you lost your mind? hisses Edda, after tumbling over.

You should be wearing a seat belt, dear.

I’d need a life belt, the way you drive.

Strange that the creature sometimes seems to have a sense of humor. Delinquent children generally don’t have a good eye for the absurd side of human life, as far as I’ve seen.

Aren’t you going to stop, woman? exclaims Edda.

At the last moment, Heiður swerves into the parking lot in front of the ice-cream shop, and brakes with a piercing screech.

Shall I get you something from the shop, Edda, or are you coming in?

She says nothing, but her crooked old smile reappears and her face brightens momentarily.

Heiður skips perkily into the shop, like a five-year-old girl on a playground, while Edda drags along behind, her shoulders bent in the world’s glummest slouch.

The morning sun shines brightly, the day is calm, the view extends far into the highlands — into the heart of my country, which I’ve never had a chance to explore. To me, Sprengisandur and Kjölur are terrae incognitae; the routes over my own highlands are unknown to me.