The American Girl (56 page)

But this was before everything. Before Eddie, the American girl as she was called in the District, all of that. It was before Doris Flinkenberg also, in the beginning’s beginning. In the evenings, in the dark, we found ourselves on a fixed place in the garden on the First Cape where there was a crystal ball. From that place you had a view over the entire District. You could see the cousin’s house, where a light in the cousin’s mama’s kitchen was shining as always. She was in the kitchen, with newspapers, crosswords, and her baking, it was comforting to know that. Later in the evening, always at the same time, she called us in. All her “boys,” which included the girls, that was just the way you talked in the District, for evening tea in the cousin’s house. Bengt, Björn, Solveig, Rita. When the cousin’s mama came out on the steps and called out into the twilight, “Boys, time to come home now,” everyone started moving toward the dull light in the kitchen window of the cousin’s house from their own directions. It shone warmly like a lantern in a valley.

Later, when Björn was dead, that changed too of course. Bengt didn’t come in anymore. The cousin’s mama took tea in a thermos and a sandwich in a basket out to him in the barn. Solveig and I, we stayed in the cottage by ourselves. In the beginning anyway because we were scared senseless. And yes, when Doris came, everything became so different. There was nothing wrong with Doris Flinkenberg, it was just a bit difficult to have the energy to deal with her after everything that had happened.

But from there, from the garden on the First Cape, you also saw other things. For example the great woods, which started behind the First Cape, the one the English Garden imperceptibly blended into. A way into the woods, the marshes. First, Second, Third, Fourth. And the only one of the marshes that had a real name, Bule Marsh, where the public beach was for a short while before it was moved to a lake west of the town center.

Farther north (out of sight but you knew they were there) the outer marshes where the frozen and beaten Doris Flinkenberg came from, the one who was found in the house on the First Cape wrapped in a blanket.

. . . But in the garden, there was of course the other direction. The Second Cape with the housing exhibition, it was the first year after it. The houses were sold but life on the Cape was still new. Bencku was crazy about the Second Cape and the houses there, he knew everything about them and it was important to him that it should be that way, that he was involved, that he was a part of it. But Solveig and I, we didn’t bother about the Second Cape, the sea certainly, but as a body of water to swim in—that first year we mostly fretted about the public beach being moved from the bay surrounded by cliffs on the Second Cape to Bule Marsh because the area was now private. Though the fretting soon passed. Bule Marsh also had its good sides. It also became interesting later, when Miss Andrews came.

But so, it was one evening, a while after we had met Miss Andrews in the English Garden, and we looked around. Then Solveig out of nowhere yelled, “Look! There she is! Miss Andrews!”

It was in other words at the Glass House on the Second Cape, just outside. It was the baroness’s house. And Miss Andrews—she was the baroness herself. She was the one who lived in the Glass House; it was a remarkable discovery. We became very excited about it at first.

But it was like this that it started, a bit earlier, this was how we met Miss Andrews at Bule Marsh’s beach. It was an early summer morning and we had gotten up at five o’clock already to go swimming. We were going to become swimmers, that was our plan. Not a secret plan exactly, but certainly unofficial in such a way that neither of us wanted to talk openly about it. Not to mention how trite it would sound.

Training was required in order to become swimmers, training, and even more training, and a disciplined life. It was also a matter of not bothering about all the peripheral factors, like how the weather was and if it was cold in the water—in the beginning of the summer it was always needless to say ice-cold in Bule Marsh. It’s deep and the current is strong. But you got used to the cold and the currents. We jumped headfirst from Lore Cliff, taught ourselves the high jump all on our own, me and Solveig, though Solveig was the better one. “It’s just the two of us,” said Solveig and she said it all the time, already back then.

We were well under way with our morning training when it happened. She came out of the bushes, hullabaloo, like an animal. At first we thought it was a moose or something, but before we had time to become really frightened she was standing there in front of us, didn’t introduce herself but asked, almost harshly and strictly, who we were and what we were doing there.

We were quite surprised. This is what she looked like, Miss Andrews: She was maybe fifty–sixty years old, both of us thought old, Solveig and I, and light. Light hair, light skin, slender, thin, and tough so to speak like some women are who look good for their age, you know. She spoke quickly and nervously and didn’t breathe between sentences. And sweat often ran down her face, her cheeks and forehead were scarlet. Because of the excitement of a game—an adult game.

We would also learn that Miss Andrews had another way of speaking. Not entirely different, but she had many different vocal pitches for different situations. When she was someone
else in other places, the ones we didn’t have access to. But we understood that later. Places where she wasn’t what she said she wanted to be for us. Our godmother.

But then Solveig who had a highly developed sense of justice immediately became really irritated.

“As far as I’m concerned we still have everyman’s right in this country.”

“Well then, the public beach is HERE,” Miss Andrews grunted happily in response. “Then I’ve come to the right place after all.”

And that was how it started.

Our godmother. Miss Andrews. She said she loved water and water games but she couldn’t swim. Would we have anything against teaching her? In return she would teach us what she knew and that was a lot, for example the English language. With Oxford pronunciation, besides.

“You must understand, girls,” said Miss Andrews where she was standing in her bathrobe and her comfortable wooden sandals, “I am the only one here who speaks proper English.”

And, good God! How that sounded in the silence of the marsh. It sounded exotic. It sounded crazy.

And how us girls stared at her and didn’t know if we should laugh or be impressed. On the other hand, it was though a moose had called in the woods out of laughter, on the other hand the situation was simultaneously so tender, so devout. Miss Andrews was also a person who obviously wanted something from us, just us.

“What’s that?” Solveig blurted out in the typical District dialect she rarely spoke otherwise.

“Now it is I in turn who has difficulty with my hearing.” Miss Andrews tilted her head to the side and peered, eyes filled with humor.

“She says,” I said full of laughter because we used the district dialect for fun, “that now she doesn’t understand anything at all.”

“In other words it means,” said Miss Andrews, “that I am the only one here who speaks proper English. Though soon I do not need to be.” And blinked. “If you want to, that is.

“The language of the future,” Miss Andrews yelled and threw off her clothes. Seconds later she was standing in front of us on the beach cliff in an old-lady bra and enormous underwear.

“Come,” she called to us and slapped her thigh. “Hop in the water.”

And then—we didn’t believe our eyes—she threw off her bra, jumped out of the enormous underwear
don’t you say underswear here in the District
, and ran stark naked into the water with a scream that echoed wildly in the nature surrounding the marsh where also other eyes might be watching.

In the water with Miss Andrews. And Solveig after. And me. And then we splashed around along the water’s edge and tried to methodically structure the teaching assignment we now had on hand.

“Tomorrow,” said Miss Andrews when she left with the red towel in a turban on her head, “there will be a lesson again.”

We understood right away of course that she was partly bananas. But it didn’t matter. Besides, we were rather easily amused, Solveig and I. It wasn’t every day that strange ladies showed up and wanted something in particular from you. We liked her. To put it mildly. Things would get worse in that respect. Unfortunately.

Cat is running after mouse. Mouse is running round the house
.

And we studied. And giggle giggle giggle and giggle. The next morning she was back again. And the next. We carried on like that for some time and everything was good.

“And so, girls, conversation.”

“And so, girls, hop in the water.”

Miss Andrews. We taught her the breaststroke, freestyle, and the butterfly, in any case the basics and for the most part on dry land.
It became so messy in the water; when it was a matter of being in the water it turned out Miss Andrews had a hard time putting what she called “theory” into any kind of practice whatsoever.

She probably didn’t try very hard either.

“The current is taking me,” she joked. And up and showing her breasts.

But still, you could remember Miss Andrews this way when she was at her best:

“This is probably a hopeless undertaking, kids,” Miss Andrews called to us from the water when she, oblivious to the learning process, was gesticulating wildly with her arms and legs and her naked butt stupidly popping up piggypaddle above the surface of the water between strokes. Miss Andrews insisted on swimming in the nude due to eurythmic principles.

As I said. It was crazy, she was crazy. But we were loyal to her, very loyal.

We got our own life. It was a life that spoke against so much of the life that existed in the cousin’s house or in the District at all. It was meaningful. Too meaningful to be revealed to any outsider.

So she didn’t exactly need to ask us not to tell anyone about her existence, it was for a time our most important secret.

“Seize the day,” she also said. “You can do what you want.”

She taught us we could break boundaries and do what we wanted. Anything.

And she told us, in English, about Ponderosa, that ranch where you and the others who were her nieces lived, her real goddaughters, she said. She spoke about her nieces, about you and Inget and Eddie, like a story, with that perfect Oxford pronunciation, and we listened, but actually not as devotedly as she maybe thought. I mean America, Ponderosa, it didn’t mean anything to us. But maybe we were also a little jealous of you already back then.

It was completely clear that you, the real goddaughters and nieces, you beat us by horse lengths, we didn’t doubt that.

“We didn’t live on any ranch, Rita,” Kenny filled in then. “Good God, Rita, how that woman could make things up. She just had a lot of ideas about us, from the beginning I mean. Her ideas, in other words. She was so filled with them that she didn’t want to see. Well, keep telling now, I want to hear it to the end. Though I think that I know—”

But then later, Rita continued, it started going wrong. It started with us seeing her in the Glass House and we understood who she was. That she was the baroness. From the Glass House. That damned house. One of the Second Cape’s very finest.

“She’s tricked us,” Solveig said when we saw her there where we were in the garden. “Has she Rita?”

“No,” I said. “She just didn’t want to tell us. Not yet. It’s a game.”

And the stupid thing was that, even though we knew, expectations were stirred in both of us so to speak. In other words that was when we started expecting things from Miss Andrews. Expected for example that she would invite us to the Glass House. Or reveal herself. Confess. We didn’t know, but it hung in the air. Though Miss Andrews didn’t notice anything. Maybe we even started imagining that was the whole idea of the game. That she would take us, show us—yes, shit. Who knows. The frog who becomes a prince, all of that.

“Welcome girls, to my lovely garden.”

Her marvelous garden. That she would greet us there.

Then I made a mistake. It was one time not so long after. I ventured to say to Miss Andrews that Solveig and I knew something. That we knew that Miss Andrews wasn’t really Miss Andrews. That it was a game. I said it like that, so to speak half seriously, as if I wanted Miss Andrews to understand that Solveig and I were rather clever children.

That in other words Miss Andrews could be proud over having chosen such clever children for her friends. “My godchildren,” as Miss Andrews used to say.

So I continued talking and my intention was to invite Miss Andrews to go a step farther in this mutual confidence. It wasn’t like that. Of course. Miss Andrews may have understood, maybe even more than calculated. But what happened? Well, she lost her head completely.

What did the girls think of themselves? It wasn’t something she said out loud but it was certainly the essence of it all. She became so angry, angrier than we had ever seen her, ever been able to imagine her being.

The blood drained from her excited face, her lips turned white and quivered with indignation. Miss Andrews wrapped herself in her bathrobe and said with a tense voice that she had certainly not understood it was two ordinary snoops she had been dealing with the whole time.

Those words, how they fell out of the sky. They would never be forgotten.

And if she had known that, Miss Andrews continued just as tensely, while her hands impetuously tied the red towel in a turban on her head, and put her feet in her comfortable sandals—the ones she went on and on about how “feet friendly” they were (she was the only one in the whole world who wore real wooden clogs in the woods)—it wasn’t at all certain that the trade between them had existed at all.

“You understand of course,” she said finally, “that it was built on a trust that has now been forfeited.”

And then she marched away, in the woods. We stood and stared at her back, how she disappeared among the bushes and the trees.

And we regretted it SO.

But what did the girls think of themselves, really?