Free The American Girl by Monika Fagerholm

give up, which was confirmedby a familiar and playful smack on the back. It was the Islander of course, who else?
    “Now we’re going to accelerate these machines!” he shouted. “Now we’re going to catch up to Mom!”
    As if everything was still a game. And Sandra realized again that it was incurably hopeless, all of it. But at the same time, she had to give up. She could not resist him either. He was so funny after all, so happy, her very own father the Islander, the charming one in high spirits. She could not do anything about it either, that the temperament was incorrigibly infectious.
    It was impossible to be angry with him for long. Because in Sandra there was also a little dog, the soft silk dog, the one who wagged its tail, wagged and wagged because it also wanted to join in and play.
    And they ran together and in the whirling snow someone howled like a lighthouse on a foggy sea:
    “Lorelei! Guess what! Sandra and I just came up with a brilliant idea! Now all of us are going to run back to the hotel as fast as we can and then we’re going to stay in the room and drink hot toddies all day long!”
    A moment’s silence, and then a radiant “my fantastic small super piglets!” could be heard in response.
    And the snow dispersed just in that moment and she was standing in the middle of the road in front of them, Lorelei Lindberg, arms spread out as if to envelop both of them in her embrace.
    “What a delightful idea, by the way!” she continued, lowered her hands and smiled so tenderly and devoutly. Nothing more was needed in order for the small, soft silk dog also to obey, run laughing toward Mom, so playful and so eager, nosing against her mother’s stomach and wagging her tail.
    Little Bombay
.
    They argued over whether IT was silk taffeta or habotai
.
    They argued, believe me. We prefer habotai. It’s so thin and light
.
    Like a veil
.
    “Waiting for the man.”
    So porous, as if it wasn’t fabric
.
    As if it almost didn’t exist
.
    “Little Sandra, what are you going to be when you grow up?” Lorelei Lindberg asks Sandra Wärn, her little girl, in Little Bombay, among all of the fabrics
.
    “I’m going to be a silkworm. A cocoon so soft so soft.”
    “Ha ha ha,” said Lorelei Lindberg. “I don’t think so.”
    “Or a silk dog.”
    And to the Islander, so soft and light:
    “She says she’s going to be a silk dog when she grows up. Isn’t there something special about her? Isn’t she wonderful?”
    And to Sandra:
    “I think, sweetheart, that you’re going to be a clothing designer when you grow up. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
    Silk chiffon and silk georgette. Two thin, thin materials that cannot be confused with each other
.
    We prefer georgette. Because a really nice georgette is difficult to find
.
    “But we have this one, you can see on this sample.”
    “Feel.”
    And it was in Little Bombay, among all of the fabrics
.
    Said and done. The family stayed indoors at their hotel the rest of the day. First in the bar and later in the restaurant and after a pass by the jet-setters’ nightclub the Running Kangaroo to their own hotel room again, with room service. It rocked, rocked. Sandra Wärn would not have many memories of that evening and that night and what followed after, a few days. Mostly gaps, hallucinations brought on by the alcohol, she would became very sick from the alcohol she drank in secret and could not tolerate.
    But from these gaps the following would, in any case, stand out. The image of Jayne Mansfield’s dead dog among the shards of glass after a car accident that was fatal for everyone involved; the movie star and the dog, and also a small, crushed whiskey bottle would remain lying on the asphalt. In the end that was the picture she threw up on, when there sort of became too much of everything. Then it was already night and it finally dawned on her parents that something had gone wrong. And there was a quick end to the festivities.
    In the hotel room: the Islander