Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis (29 page)

There were evenings that I can still remember down to the last detail. Like one time when I was supposed to draw houses in my math notebook. They were supposed to be six squares wide and four squares high. I had already finished one house and knew exactly how to do it, when my dad suddenly sat down next to me. He asked me how the next house should be drawn—where the squares should go. Frozen with fear, I didn't count anymore but started to guess. Every time I pointed to a wrong square, he slapped me across the face. When I couldn't give any more answers because I was crying so hard, he stood up and went over to the rubber plant. I knew what that meant. He pulled out the bamboo stick that was acting as a support for the plant, and then he beat me on the rear with that bamboo stick until my skin was so raw it was peeling off all by itself.

By the time I sat down at the dinner table every night, I was already afraid. When I dropped a crumb on the tablecloth, I got slapped. When I spilled something, I got a spanking. I could hardly bear to touch my glass of milk anymore. I was so nervous that I caused some small disaster at almost every meal.

In the evenings, I always asked my dad (as sweetly as I could) if he had any plans for the night. He went out a lot, and the first thing we did after he left was breathe a very deep sigh of relief. Those evenings were wonderfully peaceful. But when he got back later on, there was always the threat of another disaster. Usually he was drunk by then, so just one small thing could cause him to go totally apeshit. It could be toys or even just a piece of clothing that was lying around because no one had put it away. My dad always said that nothing was more important than tidiness. And if he saw something that hadn't been cleaned up when he came home, he'd drag me out of bed and beat me. After he was done with me, my little sister would also get a beating. Then my dad would throw all our stuff onto the floor and demand that we pick it up and put everything away in just five minutes. Of course we could almost never get it done, so we'd get another spanking.

My mom would usually just stand in the doorway and cry while all this was going on. She didn't dare defend us because then he would beat her, too. Only Ajax, my Great Dane, would intervene. While my dad was beating us, he would whimper in a really high voice and stare at us with his big, sad eyes. Ajax was the only one who could bring my dad to his senses because he loved dogs as much as we all did. He once yelled at Ajax, but never beat him.

Despite all that, I still loved and respected my dad. I thought he was way better than other kids' dads, but I was still terrified of him—despite the fact that I thought it was completely normal when he would smash things or hit whoever happened to be around him. It wasn't any different at the other kids' homes in the projects. Sometimes they even got black eyes, and so would their moms. There were some dads who even passed out drunk in the street or woke up in the playground. Sometimes furniture came flying out of the windows from the apartments above us, and women would yell for help so that the police would have to come. It wasn't anywhere near that bad with our family. My dad never got that drunk.

My dad constantly nagged my mom about spending too much money—even though she worked and he didn't. Sometimes she would tell him that most of it financed his drinking escapades, his women, and his car. Then their fights would get physical.

His car, the Porsche, was the one thing in this world that my dad loved most. He buffed and polished it every day (or at least every day it wasn't in the repair shop). There couldn't have been another Porsche in all of Gropiusstadt—and certainly not owned by somebody who didn't have a job.

Back then, I didn't have a clue about what was really bugging my dad—why he was constantly going berserk on us. It didn't dawn on me until later, once I started talking with my mom a little bit more often. Little by little, I began to see things for what they really were. He just couldn't make it, didn't have it in him to hold down a job and support a whole family. He always wanted to make it big, aimed high, and fell back down again. His dad despised him for that. Grandpa had warned my mom before the wedding that his son was a “good-for-nothing son of a bitch.” My grandpa used to have big plans for my dad: The family was supposed to regain the wealth and status that it had in the old days, before the DDR seized all of its possessions.

If he hadn't met my mom, he might have become a farm manager or certified dog breeder, in which case he would have probably bred Great Danes. He was studying farm management when he met my mom. She got pregnant, so he quit his studies and married her. At some point, the idea got lodged in his mind that my mom and I were to blame for his misery. All that he had left of his grandiose dreams was his Porsche—that, and a few snobby, cocky friends.

He didn't just hate his family, he completely rejected us. He didn't want anything to do with us. He even went so far as to deny our existence to his friends. They weren't supposed to know that he was married and had kids. When we met his friends, or when someone picked him up from home, I always had to call him “Uncle Richard.” Because of the regular beatings, I'd learned to keep things straight, and I never made a mistake. As soon as other people were around, he was my “uncle.”

It wasn't any different with my mom. She was never allowed to tell his friends that she was his wife, and she wasn't allowed to act like his wife either. I think he always said that she was his sister.

My dad's friends were younger than him. They still had their lives ahead of them, or so they said. My dad wanted to be one of them—he wanted to be young again and not have to worry about providing for a family (or failing to do so). That just about sums up my dad. As far as he was concerned, we were just deadweight, holding him back and dragging him down.

But back then—when I was six, seven, eight years old—I didn't have a clue, of course. My dad simply reinforced the code of conduct that I'd learned at school and in the street: It was a dog-eat-dog world—eat or be eaten. My mom, who'd received enough beatings in her life, had arrived at the same conclusion. “Never start anything,” she drilled into me. “But if someone hurts you, then you hurt them back. Punch, and keep punching— as long and as hard as you can.”

It took me a while to completely absorb that lesson. At school I started with the weakest teachers. I kept interrupting class with my own running commentary. It made the others laugh, at least, but I didn't start to win any respect from my classmates until I started doing the same thing with the stricter teachers.

I'd learned how you got your way in Berlin: You had to show no fear, and always be ready with something quick and cutting. No one got anywhere without a big mouth. The bigger the better. After I learned how to intimidate people with my insults, I started to back it up with muscle. I wasn't really that strong, but when I got angry, I got angry. I learned that a big mouth combined with a bit of well-timed fury could win out over someone much stronger than me. It got to the point where I would even look forward to pissing people off because then I'd get a chance to prove myself again after school. Often, I didn't even have to get physical. The kids just respected me.

In the meantime, I turned eight. All I wanted was to just grow up already, to be an adult, like my dad, and to have real power over others. Whatever power I already had, I experimented with and used as much as possible.

At one point, my dad actually found a job. It didn't make him happy, but it at least paid for his Porsche and for his alcohol. And so now that he had a job, my younger sister and I got to stay home alone in the afternoons. I'd also become friends with a girl who was a couple years older than me. Being friends with her made me proud and gave me even more credibility at school.

Almost every day after school, we played this game with my little sister: We collected cigarette butts out of garbage cans and ashtrays; then we straightened them out, held them between pinched lips, and puffed away. When my sister tried to get a piece of the action, though, she got a slap on the fingers. We ordered her to do the housework—to wash the dishes, dust, and do whatever else our parents had asked us to do. Then we grabbed our doll carriages, locked the apartment, and headed out for a walk. We kept my sister locked up until she'd finished all of the chores.

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