Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. (5 page)

Instead of the adventure playground, we kids were given a real attraction. They built a sledding hill. It was awesome the first winter. We could choose our own runs down the hill. We had a “death run” and an easy run. The boys whom we called rockers liked to make sledding dangerous. They formed chains with the sleds with the goal to run us over. But we could dodge them and go down other runs. Those days when there was snow were among my happiest days in Gropiusstadt.

In the spring, we had almost as much fun on the sledding hill. We'd run and play with our dogs and roll down the hill. The most fun was fooling around on our bikes. The downhill rides were insane. It looked more dangerous than it really was. Because if you actually did crash, you landed in the soft grass.

But guess what? Soon they didn't allow us to play on the sledding hill anymore. They said, “This is a sledding hill, not a playground, and certainly not a racetrack for bikes.” The scars we had made in the lawn had to grow over and recover, etcetera. By now we were no longer little kids, so the word
forbidden
had lost its effect on us, and we kept on going to the sledding hill. Then one day, the men from the landscaping department arrived and put up barbed wire fencing all around the sledding hill. But we only conceded defeat for a few days. Until someone found some wire cutters. We cut a hole into the barbed wire that was big enough to get through with our dogs and bikes. When they patched the hole, we cut it open again.

A few weeks later, the little army of construction workers was back. They started walling off and paving over our sledding hill. Our “death run” got turned into steps. Paved walkways cut through all of our runs. Onto the top of the hill, they put a cement platform. One strip of grass remained for sledding.

During the summer months, there wasn't a thing left for us to do on the hill. In the winter, the one remaining sledding run was way too dangerous. But the worst was having to walk to the top. You now had to negotiate stone slabs and steps that were always iced over. We bloodied our knees, bumped our heads, and, if it was really bad, got a concussion.

You see, everything was made more and more perfect in Gropiusstadt.

When we moved there, this grand example of a model suburb was not finished yet. Especially right outside the high-rise quarter, there was much that had not yet been perfected. What we considered to be our paradise playgrounds were just a short walk away, so even we younger kids could get to by ourselves.

The most beautiful spot was near the Wall,
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which wasn't far from Gropiusstadt. There was an undeveloped strip alongside it that we called the “little woods,” or no-man's-land. It was almost twenty-two yards wide and nearly a mile long. There were trees, bushes, tall grass you could disappear in, old boards, and water holes.

There we climbed around, played hide-and-seek, and felt like explorers who every day discovered a new part of our little wild wood. We could even make campfires and roast potatoes and make smoke signals.

But inevitably, one day, it was discovered that kids from the projects were playing over there. Then the troops arrived again to create order and clean up. And they put up the all-too-familiar signs. Nothing was allowed anymore; everything was forbidden: biking, climbing trees, letting dogs run off-leash. The policemen, who were lurking around the area anyway because of the Wall, made sure that the new rules and regulations were obeyed. Apparently our no-man's-land was now a bird conservation area. A little later, they turned it into a garbage dump.

But there was still the old landfill, which had been covered over with earth and sand. We often played on it with our dogs. This was also secured against us, first with barbed wire, then with tall fencing, before a scenic restaurant was built on top of the dump.

Another beautiful spot to hang out was in a few fields, that the farmers no longer cultivated. There, the corn and cornflowers and poppies and wild grasses and nettles grew so high that you would soon sink into them up over your head. The government had bought these fields with the intention of turning them into real recreation areas. Piece by piece they were fenced off. A riding stable swallowed up one portion of the old fields,
and tennis courts were built on another part. So now there was nothing left for us. That took care of all the places we could go to get away from Gropiusstadt.

At least my sister and I worked and rode horses at the riding stable. In the beginning, we could ride wherever we wanted to go. Later, it was forbidden to ride on all streets and even country roads. They had built a dedicated riding path for that purpose. Exactly the way a proper riding path was supposed to look, with nice sand and everything. Probably cost a lot of money. This riding path ran right alongside the railroad tracks. Between the fence and the railroad tracks, you could just barely fit two horses side by side. That's where we were supposed to ride now, as the freight trains came thundering past. I'd like to see a horse that doesn't bolt when a loaded freight train thunders by a couple of yards away. In any case, our horses always freaked out. And the only thing you could think about at that moment was, I hope my horse doesn't run into the train. But I was a lot better off than the other kids because I had my pets. Sometimes I took my three mice with me to the sandbox at the playground. At least the playground regulations didn't say, “No mice allowed.” We built tunnels and caves for them and let them run around.

One afternoon, one of the mice ran into the grass that we weren't allowed to step on. We couldn't find it again. I was a bit sad but consoled myself with the thought that the mouse was probably much happier outside than in the cage.

Of all evenings, my dad picked that one to come into our kids' room and look into the mouse cage. He asked in a funny tone of voice, “Why are there only two? Where is the third mouse?” I didn't sense any danger yet, didn't pick up on the weird tone of voice. My dad never liked those mice and always told me to get rid of them. I told him how the mouse got away on the playground.

My dad looked at me like a lunatic. I knew that now he'd go totally psycho. He screamed and immediately started beating me. He was hitting me, and I was wedged into my bed and couldn't get out. He had never before hit me like that, and I thought he was going to kill me. When he also started in on my sister, I got a couple of seconds of air and instinctively tried to get to the window. I believe I would have jumped, right out of that eleventh-floor window.

But my dad grabbed me and threw me back on the bed. My mom probably stood crying in the doorway again, but I didn't see her. I only became aware of her when she threw herself between my dad and me. She pounded on him with her fists.

He'd completely lost it. He was punching and beating my mom in the hallway. Suddenly I was more afraid for my mom than I was for myself. So I ran after them into the hallway. My mom tried to escape into the bathroom and close the door before my dad could get there. But my dad had a good grip on her hair. The tub was full of laundry soaking in soapy water like every evening because we didn't have the money for a washing machine. My dad thrust my mom's head into the full tub. At some point she emerged from the water. I don't know if my dad let go of her, or if she managed to free herself.

My dad had turned deathly pale and disappeared into the living room. My mom went to the closet and put on her coat. Without a word, she left the apartment.

That was without doubt one of the most terrible moments of my life, when my mom simply left without a word. Left us alone in the apartment. At first, all I could think was that he'd come back and continue beating us. But in the living room, all was quiet, except for the TV, which was on.

I brought my sister into my bed with me. We hung on to each other. My sister had to go pee. She didn't dare go into the
bathroom, and she was trembling. But she also didn't want to pee in the bed because that would result in more beatings. At some point, I don't know when, I took her by the hand and walked with her to the bathroom. From the living room, my dad said good night to us.

Nobody woke us up the next morning. We didn't go to school. Some time before noon, my mom returned. She hardly spoke a word. She packed a few of our things, stuffed Peter, the cat, into a bag, and told me to put Ajax on the leash. Then we were off to the subway. The next few days we stayed with one of mom's work colleagues in her small apartment.

My mom explained to us that she wanted to get a divorce. My mom's colleague's apartment was too small for my mom, my sister, Ajax, Peter, and me. After a few days, her colleague showed signs that we were getting on her nerves. So my mom packed up our stuff again; we grabbed the animals and headed back to Gropiusstadt.

My dad came into the apartment just as my sister and I were taking a bath in the tub. He came into the bathroom and said real normal-like, as if nothing had happened, “Why did you go away? You really don't need to sleep at strangers' houses. The three of us would've had a nice time together.” My sister and I just looked at each other awkwardly. My dad pretended that my mom was invisible for the rest of the evening. He looked right past all of us, as if we weren't there. And he never said another word to us about it. That was somehow worse than beating us.

My dad never beat me again. But the fact that he now pretended that he was no longer part of our family was horrible. He was there but not there, and that made me miss having a dad even more acutely. I never hated him; I'd only been scared of him. I'd also always been proud of him. Because he loved animals, and because he had such a cool car, his '62 Porsche. In a weird way, he no longer was our dad, although he still lived with us in
our small apartment. And then something else really terrible happened: Ajax, my Great Dane, suffered a fatal abdominal infection and died. Nobody consoled me. My mom was totally preoccupied with herself and the divorce. She cried a lot and didn't laugh at all anymore. I felt very alone.

One evening the doorbell rang. I opened the door, and it was Klaus, one of my dad's friends. He wanted my dad to go barhopping with him. But my dad had already gone out.

So my mom asked him in. He was much younger than my dad—in his early twenties. And this Klaus guy suddenly asked my mom if she wanted to go out and get something to eat. My mom didn't hesitate: “Sure, why not.” She got changed, walked off with him, and left us alone.

Other kids might have been pissed or afraid for their mom. I had those feelings for a moment, too. But then I was honestly happy for her. She looked positively perky when she left, even if she tried not to show it. My sister noticed it too: “Mom was really happy.”

Klaus came by more often now, when my dad wasn't there. It was on a Sunday, I still remember it very well, when my mom sent me out to take the trash downstairs. I was very quiet when I returned upstairs. Maybe I was quiet on purpose. When I peeked into the living room, I saw Klaus kissing my mom.

I felt really weird and tiptoed into my room. Neither of them had seen me. And I didn't tell anyone about what I had seen. Not even my sister, from whom I usually didn't keep anything.

I began to feel pretty weird and uncomfortable about this new guy who was always over at our apartment. But at least he was always nice to us—and (even more importantly) always really nice to my mom. She was laughing again, and she'd almost completely stopped crying. She even started thinking about the future again. She talked about moving into a new apartment with Klaus and about this new room that my sister and I were
supposed to get if we all moved in with him. But of course we didn't have that new apartment yet. And my dad wasn't moving out anytime soon. In fact, he stuck around even after my mom and he were finally divorced. My parents continued to sleep in the same bed even though they hated each other. There wasn't really another choice: We still had no money.

And when we finally did get another apartment, one subway stop away, in Rudow, things weren't ideal either. Klaus was a permanent fixture now, and even though I still thought he was kind of nice, he was always getting in the way. He soaked up a lot of my mom's attention and also got in the middle of fights between my mom and me. I just didn't accept him as one of us. I didn't think that this guy, who was just in his early twenties, had any right to tell me what to do. And so, as a result, I had less and less patience with him.

We started getting into fights—just over little things at first. Sometimes they were my fault. Most of the time, we fought about music. My mom had bought me a record player for my eleventh birthday, just a little cheap one, and I had a few records: some disco and teenybopper music. And, in the evenings, I'd put on a record and turn the volume all the way up, loud enough to burst your eardrums. One evening, Klaus came into our room and asked me to turn down the record player. I didn't. He came back and yanked the arm off the record. I put the arm back on and positioned myself in front of the turntable so that he couldn't get at it. At that point, he pushed me away, and as soon as that man touched me, I freaked out.

When we had these fights, my mom would cautiously take my side. That was also awkward because then it would escalate to a fight between Klaus and my mom, which made me feel kind of guilty. There was definitely one person too many in the apartment (and I had a strong suspicion about who that one person was).

That being said, for the most part our fights weren't that bad, and they weren't that frequent either. What was worse than the fights was the quiet, when we'd all sit together in the living room. Klaus would be leafing through some magazine or flipping through channels on the TV and my mom would try to start a conversation, first with Klaus, and then with us, and then with Klaus again, and nobody would respond. It was so uncomfortable. When my sister and I couldn't take it anymore, we'd ask if we could go outside to play, and nobody ever objected. Klaus, for his part, usually seemed happy when we left. So we'd stay away for as long as possible.

Looking back, I can't really blame Klaus. After all, he was only in his early twenties. He didn't know what it meant to have a family. He didn't get how much our mom loved us and how much we loved her, and he probably couldn't understand that we needed some time alone with her during the short periods that we got to spend together in the evenings and on weekends. He was probably jealous of us, and we were just as jealous of him. My mom wanted to be there for us, but she was also worried about losing her boyfriend, so it wound up really stressing her out.