by Tia Wilson
“I work in the harbour. I check boats in to the dock and square away all the paperwork. That takes up my mornings. In the afternoons I help weigh the boats catches for the day. I love it, its a mix of sitting in the office for half the day and the other I get to spend outdoors.”
“I thought you were a model,” I blurt out and then smile self consciously at her.
“I wish. I’m just a regular Icelandic country girl. Thanks for the compliment. You are very beautiful yourself,” she said smiling and then bent in to whisper in my ear, “the men here would go crazy for a woman as attractive as you.” I’m not going to lie, the compliment from Gunna felt good.
“I don’t know,” I said looking away from Gunna, “I’m only out of a relationship and I don’t think I’m ready to put myself out there again.”
Gunna squeezed my arm and bent in towards me and whispered, “We have a saying here in Iceland.” She proceeded to say a couple of words in her lilting Icelandic accent. Even though I couldn't understand a word she had said it had sounded poetic and beautiful.
“What does it mean?” I asked, eager to hear a lyrical piece of Icelandic folk wisdom.
“Fuck the pain away,” she said with a broad grin and a sparkle in her icy blue eyes.
I laughed and was already starting to really like Gunna. “Thats one way to deal with it,” I said with a grin.
“Its the only way. The winters are long and dark here. They can be tough to get through and doubly tough if some jerk has stamped your heart into the snow. Thats how we Icelanders deal with it, otherwise winters would be hell. What do you plan to do tonight?”
I had planned to get straight into bed and watch a movie on my laptop. I didn't want to sound like a total square so said, “I have no plans.”
“You should come out with me and my friends. I can show you around town and introduce you to a few guys. The men of Akureyri are,” and she kissed the tips of her fingers like a chef complimenting a meal.
Gunna seemed at total ease with her good looks but I didn’t get the vibe that she thought she was any better than me. I had seen that all too many times in striking women, they expected things to be handed to them. Gunna seemed down to earth and level headed. I had seen a large amount of tall blondes with perfect skin and dazzling smiles since I arrived in Iceland so maybe Gunna thought she was nothing special. Lately I had been feeling anything but beautiful and I felt my insides clench when I thought back to my breakup a little over a month ago. My heart was still hurting from it and my confidence had taken a major knock. Even as a child you are thought the power of words and how hurtful they can be. As an adult I sometimes thought I had built up a fairly thick skin to the barbs that some men had thrown at me over they years. I’d had boyfriends think they were being subtle when they hinted that my ass might be a little too big and maybe we should sign up to a gym together. I’d had other men love my curves but drop some hints about another perceived flaw that I had. Working in tech and surrounded by men all day had inoculated me from most of the dumb things men can sometimes blurt out. Even so I wasn't ready when I had my last fight with Craig.
I should of seen it coming before everything came to a horrible end. The day of the breakup had been going ok. I had been with Craig for nearly six months and I had foolishly thought that everything was going good between us. He worked in a company that provided part of the computer code that our eduction application used. He had caught my eye when he first came into our office, not because he was one of the rare african americans in the tech industry, it was because of how fine he looked. I loved the guys on my team, but most of them tended to make little effort in their appearance. T-shirts and flip-flops were king in our office and I was on board with that. When Craig walked in wearing a bespoke suit I couldn't take my eyes off him as he strode across the office and headed towards our meeting room.
Nate sat beside me in our open plan office and he flicked a rubber band at my head. “Do you know him?” he asked with a big smile.
Nate had caught me staring. “Because he's black?” I said and shot him a faux angry look.
“No. Because your tongue was practically hanging out of your mouth,” he said.
Nate raised his hand in the air and shouted, “Hey Craig.”
Craig turned around and beamed in our direction. And oh. My. God. He is coming over to my desk. My heart starts pounding and I could already feel my palms begin to sweat.
Nate glanced at me with a smile. My whole body tingled when Nate introduced me to Craig. And so it went from there. At first we bonded over having the same job. Then we bonded over what it was like as the only african american in our companies and then pretty soon we were spending every night together. It all fell into place so easily, I had never fell so hard and so fast for a man before.
I’m not going to lie. Those first few weeks were intoxicating. We were both doing work we loved and getting paid well for it and we felt like we had so much in common. In the evenings over take away we would bounce ideas off each other. Eduction software was both our passions and we each dreamed of a robust system that we could roll out in developing countries to connect teachers and students. We both had big dreams to change the world around us. Those initial weeks were amazing. Even when Craig would belittle a work colleague I put it down to stress and the recipient possibly deserving it. I was too blinded by my feelings to see that Craig had a mean streak a mile wide and he was not afraid to use it to cut a person down to size.
I was blind to his meanness until the fight that ended it between us and I then felt his full wrath. We both had a couple of cocktails on us that horrible night and I don't even remember what the initial seed was that started the momentum going and swung us closer to the horrible moment. What I do remember crystal clear and which still stings every time I think about it, is the one word he called me. I hadn't been called it since I was eight years old and never once as a successful woman with an exciting career I shouldn't of let his cheap insult get to me. I did and it stills hurts me a month later. As a woman I thought I had the resilience to rise above his words but hearing him shout it into my face had hurt me to my core. Craig knew exactly what word grenade to lob at a persons weak point.
At the height of the argument as it spun out of control Craig looked at me with cold eyes and said, “You know what your problem is?”
“What?” I said in a clipped voice. I could see he was readying himself to say something that there would be no coming back from.
“You’re an ugly bitch.”
The word ugly hung in the air between us like a swarm of biting black flies. He glared at me waiting for me to react.
Hearing him call me ugly was worse than a slap to the face. The word was like a punch to my stomach. He stood watching me his lower lip quivering in defiance. I could see in his eyes that he knew he had gone too far. I could feel anger well up inside me like the rising magma of a volcano and I exploded and shouted a string of hurtful things at him. He absorbed my words without showing any crack of emotion and that was it. As soon as he stepped out the door and slammed it behind him I crumpled on to the couch. I felt ugly. In my wallowing pity I thought that Craig was right and it was devastating. I phoned in sick for a few days and ate pizza and binge watched some shows. I couldn't face looking in a mirror, afraid to look at the ugly woman that Craig knew I was. Once I got back into work and reconnected with the world, we had a series of curt email exchanges and it was over between us.
Ugly. The word lodged in my mind after the breakup. If a man glanced in my direction I imagined he was seeing a twisted horrible creature that he pitied. I was an intelligent woman and no matter how much I tried to escape from the shadow of that horrible word it reared up again and made me feel like a troll. My confidence swung to a new low and every time I thought about him shouting it in my face I imagined a horrible distorted version of my face floating before him. A nose too broad and flat, eyes that bugged out slightly and skin that was too dark. I knew in a part of me deep inside that
I looked nothing like the fun fair mirror version of myself. Logic couldn't reach me during that time and as the wound started to heal I let my heart harden. I was suspicious of mens intentions and pulled back from any that flirted with me on nights out.
Ugly. With that single word he had knocked me down and made me doubt my perception of myself. I was even starting to get angry with myself for allowing his hurtful words to be still be affecting me. When the opportunity to come to Iceland to demo our application came up I jumped at it. I needed to be away from San Francisco for awhile. I needed to be away from everyone I knew all so I could try to shake off what Craig had done to me. On the plane from the states I had leafed through the inflight magazine. It was packed with features about the rugged landscape of Iceland, the stunning blue glaciers and the fiery volcanoes. It was also filled with the types of men that looked to me like they came from another age. Men who worked outdoors, who worked with their hands and had a touch of the viking about them. An old fashioned man who would sweep you off your feet and carry you to his log cabin close to a waterfall. There was not much of that kind of guy in the tech scene in San Francisco. I knew it was foolish to think such a man really existed. Maybe I need someone like this I thought as I had traced my finger over a picture of a muscular Icelandic man standing atop a glacier and staring off towards the setting sun.
The plane dropped suddenly and everyone in the cabin moaned in fright. Gunna reached out and took my hand and I was happy for the human contact. The plane banked hard and I squeezed tight on Gunna’s hand. My eyes were fixed on the swirling snow outside the window. It looked like we were in the middle of a massive blizzard.
The intercom crackled to life and the pilot spoke in the sing song cadence of the Icelandic language. Once he was finished he switched to English, speaking in a perfect British news anchor's clipped and enunciated tone.
“I am sorry about this little patch of weather we have hit. We are going to have to divert the flight to the town of Isafjordur. Population one thousand five hundred. The flight will be grounded for the day and we hope to have another scheduled for tomorrow. We apologise for the change of destination. All flight crew prepare for landing.” crackled the pilots voice over the intercom.
The plane bounced in the air and the engines made a high pitched whirring sound. The seatbelt sign blinked on and we strapped ourselves in. Gunna laced her fingers in mine and we gripped each other tight. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the window as I watched the tip of the wing vibrate in the storm. I imagined we where inside a huge snow globe and an unruly child was shaking it as hard as he could. Beyond the light that the plane cast I could see nothing but total blackness.
It is a cliche to say that out lives flash before us in times of danger but as I stared out at the swirling storm and the plane lurched from side to side by the buffeting winds, events from my life buzzed through my brain. When I was six my aunt took me to a restaurant while my mother was in hospital. I had climbed up on the back of the high backed booth chairs and stared down into the inky abyss behind them. A wire mesh covered the gap between the chair and the wall and I ran my fingers across it feeling the buzz of it against my skin. In the corner where the two chair backs met there was a hole in the wire big enough to fit my fist into. I glanced over my shoulder and my aunt was reading a yellowing paperback and not paying attention to me. I stretched my arm down into the hole and kept it still so that it wouldn't scratch against the frayed pieces of the wire mesh. My skin had prickled as I lowered it down into the darkness. The air was cool down there and it thrilled me to reach behind and discover this secret place. I grabbed my favourite doll off the table. She had pale skin, long blonde hair and unrealistic proportions. I loved that doll and she travelled every where with me. I held her by the hair and then dangled her over the hole behind the chairs. I looked back at my aunt to see her reaction. There was none, she continued to leaf through her book without looking up once.
I lowered the doll into the cool air of the hole. The skin on the back of my neck prickled and a jolt of pleasure coursed along my back. I raised the doll back out of the hole and held her dangling above the pit like I had seen in a morning cartoon. Then I looked my doll in the eyes one last time and opened my fingers. I felt a whoosh of butterflies in my stomach as I watched her fall into the hole and hit the mysterious ground behind the booth chairs. My aunt looked up at me when she heard the noise of something rattling around and as soon as she locked eyes with me I burst out crying. I was overcome with such sadness and despair for the loss of my doll.
Tears streamed out of my eyes and my aunt sprang into action. I told her what happened, adding that it was an accident and not a deliberate sacrifice of my doll. My aunt called over a waiter and when he seen how upset i was he got down on the floor to see if he could save my doll. The bottom of the booth chairs had boards blocking off any access to the underneath and when the young waiter said that he couldn't get my doll, my crying upped a notch and I became near hysterical.
The manager came with a toolbox and tried to unscrew the chairs and after awhile he had to give up as it wasn't possible to get in behind the booths without some serious work. My aunt apologised to the management and on the way home she bought me a new doll. One that was meant to be better than my lost one. I pretended I was happy with it, but the truth was I could never look at the replacement without being reminded of my lost doll. I hid the new one at the back of my wardrobe so as not to be reminded of that day.
A gust of wind hit the plane and it felt like it was pushed to the side as the engines struggled against the gale force winds. Another image from my past flashed in my mind. One I wished I didn't have to think about again. It was the last night with Craig and the horrible fight we had. The wind eased off and the whirring sounds of the engine reduced in volume. I closed my eyes tight and pushed away all thoughts of Craig. I’m not going to waste another second on that bastard I told myself. Life is too short to let a man like him get under your skin. He is the true ugly one if he could say something so full of malice to you. Screw him. I’ve wasted too much time being down, if we get through this I promise myself that I will start opening my heart again. I wont waste any more time feeling sorry for myself I chant in my mind. When we touch down its the start of a new you, and the new you is going to take chances I told myself.
Gunna squeezed my hand and said, “Are you ok?”
I nodded my head and then realised I had started to smile. “I made myself a promise and I intend to keep it once we land.”
“I promised myself a large glass of whiskey when we touch down,” Gunna replied.
“Right now that sounds perfect,” I said.
I cursed inwardly and tried not to get too stressed about my missed appointment, there was no chance that I would make it to the conference in the north of the island now. It was a big deal to get invited to the university in Akureyri and it was part of an arctic union with other universities across the nordic countries. If I was successful in Akureyri it might open up access to other places. I hoped that they would be ok with me delaying the meeting. It was a constant fear in the tech world that your competitor might swoop in and capitalise on any of your mistakes. We had already had two engineers poached by a company called teach tech partners who were demoing a similar piece of software to ours. I believed in our product with all my heart and teach techs offering was lacking in certain areas. If I messed up these meetings and teach tech got wind of it they might be able to elbow me out of the deal.
Several universities in Iceland had shown an interest in our software and this meeting was going to be a big deal for my small team of five. When I had touched down in Iceland only hours ago on a direct flight from San Francisco the weather had been clear and crisp in the capital of Reykjavik. I had no time to enjoy the city as I then headed straight for the tiny city centre airport for my connecting flight to the town of Akureyri.
To try to take my mind off the plane being buffeted in the strong wind I mentally went through my
options. I needed to be at the University in Akureyri by noon tomorrow, maybe I could rent a car and drive there? Or maybe the flight tomorrow would get me there in enough time. Either way it was going to be tight. I only hoped that if I couldn't make it in time the dean would reschedule, but with it being this close to Christmas I wasn't sure if that would be a possibility. My team would be gutted if this all fell apart and teach tech scored a win against us.
“What do you think my chances of getting to Akureyri by tomorrow?” I asked Gunna.
She shook her head and said, “its a complete white out, most likely the roads will be closed. We are landing in a very remote part of the country.”