Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. (9 page)

I often thought about divorce but didn't have the courage. Whatever self-confidence I'd managed to salvage after my dad was done with me was crushed by my husband.

Luckily I got a job in Berlin pretty quickly and netted one thousand marks weekly as a stenographer. Being appreciated again and having a real job gave me new sense of strength. I wasn't as willing to put up with the usual amount of grief from my husband. He and his grand plans started looking ridiculous to me. The arguments between us became less and less tolerable. We tried separating several times, but that never really worked, since I still felt attached to him. Maybe it was because he was my first love, or maybe it was because of the kids. I'm not sure. I couldn't manage to find spots in either preschool or kindergarten for the girls—but at the time, I couldn't have afforded it anyway. So I didn't mind that at least Richard was home every now and then. The divorce got postponed again and again, until in 1973 I was strong enough to correct my mistake and finally went to see a divorce attorney.

I wanted to give Christiane a better life than I'd had up to that point. Right after Christiane was born, I swore that she'd never find herself in the kind of miserable marriage that I'd wound up in. Christiane would be allowed to develop her talents freely, and she wouldn't be forced to be a secretary or a bookkeeper like me; she would have the freedoms I never had and be raised like a modern child, according to modern practices. Based on that thinking, I probably let her get away with way too much later on.

After the divorce, my top priority was finding a new apartment. (I couldn't just stay in our old place because Richard
refused to leave.) Luckily I found one in a new tax-incentivized housing development. The rent was fairly reasonable, and I also got a spot in the garage, even though I didn't have a car. It was still way too expensive for me, when it really came down to it, but I didn't have a choice: I had to get out of that marriage, once and for all. I wanted a new beginning for myself and for the kids, whatever the cost.

Richard wasn't even able to pay child support. So I told myself, There's only one thing you can do: You have to pull yourself together, work the occasional overtime shift, and find some way to provide for the family. The girls were now ten and eleven, and up to that point they'd only experienced the absolute minimum in terms of furnishings and comfort. We didn't even have a real couch—just a hulking thing to sit on, cobbled together from a lot of other discarded bits and pieces. I was deeply hurt by the realization that I couldn't even provide a decent home for my kids.

I wanted to make it up to them after the divorce. I finally wanted to have a pretty apartment, where we could all feel at home. That was my dream. That's what I worked for. But I also wanted to be able to indulge them a little bit. I wanted to be able to buy them pretty clothes and go on weekend trips where we didn't have to watch every penny.

With that new goal in mind, I worked myself to the bone. I was able to finally provide a nice room with pretty furniture for my daughters, and I let them choose the wallpaper, too. In 1975, I was able to give Christiane a record player as a present. Those things made me happy. I was so glad to finally be able to afford something special for my girls.

And when I got home from work in the evening, I'd often bring some treats back with me. Little things. But I had fun going
to Wertheim or Karstadt
¹⁵
to pick something up. Usually I'd just get whatever was on sale. Sometimes a new candy; sometimes a funny pencil sharpener or some other trinket. When I came back with things like that, they'd be so happy and give me these giant, heartfelt hugs. Those days felt like Christmas to me.

Today I understand of course that I was hoping to compensate for my absence with money and gifts. I shouldn't have worried so much about money. I should've spent more time with the kids, instead of working so much. To this day I don't understand why I left the girls alone so often. As if money could make up for a mom's time. I should've taken advantage of the welfare money I could have received instead. But welfare was out of the question for me back then. My parents had always pounded it into me that one should never be a burden to society.

Maybe I should've taken my ex-husband to court for his refusal to pay child support. I don't know. In any case, in my effort to create a pretty house, I totally lost sight of what was really important. I can spin it any way I want, but in the end, I always wind up with only myself to blame. I left the kids alone, and they had to take care of themselves. Christiane certainly needed much more support and guidance than I was able to provide. She's more sensitive, less stable, and more susceptible to peer pressure than her younger sister is. Back then, I never even considered the possibility that Christiane could end up going down the wrong track—despite the fact that I was able to see the daily struggles of so many other families in the suburb where we lived. There were constant domestic fights and beatings. Drunkenness was out of control, and it wasn't uncommon to see a man, woman, or teenager lying drunk in the gutter. But I lived with the delusional belief that if I set an example for my girls, and didn't mess around with a lot of guys, and didn't let myself go, then they would follow my example.

I really believed that we were on our way up. In the morning, the kids would go to school. They made their own lunches back then. And in the afternoons, they'd often go to the riding rink and head over to the stables in Rudow. They were always crazy about animals.

Apart from some jealousy issues between the kids and Klaus (my boyfriend, who had moved in with us), things were going really well. When I wasn't working, or tending to the house, or managing the kids, I still wanted to have some time to take care of him, too. He was a source of real calm for me. But because I wanted to have more time with Klaus, I made a serious mistake: I let Christiane's sister move in with her dad—who was lonely at the time and had managed to win her allegiance with all sorts of promises.

So now Christiane was alone when she got home from school. And at this point, she got mixed up with some much more dangerous kids. But I wasn't able to notice. Kessi, her girlfriend who lived nearby, and who hung out with her in the afternoons, seemed to be really sensible and mature. And Kessi's mom kept an eye on them off and on. Sometimes Christiane was at Kessi's, and sometimes Kessi was at our house.

They were both about twelve or thirteen years old, the age where you get curious and want to try everything once. And it didn't bother me when they went to the youth club at the Center House, which was set up and run by the church community in Gropiusstadt. I was sure that Christiane was in good hands with those church people. I never could have imagined that the teens in Center House would be allowed to do things like smoke pot.

I was envisioning something totally different. I was comforted that Christiane was growing into a happy teenager and not
just missing her sister all the time. Since she'd made friends with Kessi, she'd started laughing again. Sometimes those two were so ridiculously silly that they made me laugh, too. How was I supposed to know that they were giggling so much because they'd been smoking pot—or even something worse? It never would've occurred to me.

THE CLIQUE WE HAD THEN
was like my family. We had friendship, affection, and love, too, I think. Even the way we said hello to one another had something magical to it. We kissed each other on the cheek, and it was tender and affectionate. My father had never kissed me like that.

In our clique, problems didn't exist; we didn't talk about them. No one wanted to weigh anyone else down with whatever shit was going on in their life. When we were together, the nightmare of the “real world” completely disappeared, and we were like our own little island of peacefulness and friendliness surrounded by a world of people living unhappy, miserable lives.

We talked about music and pot. Sometimes about clothes, and sometimes about people who rebelled against what we viewed as a police state. We liked people who took instead of being taken— people who stole cars and robbed banks. And after I dropped acid that first time, I felt like I was finally one of them—especially since it had been such an awesome trip, and I felt as though I'd handled it like a cool pro. I felt like I had proved myself.

Suddenly I had a new outlook on things. I went out into the country again. When I was younger, I'd go there with my dog, and somehow I experienced the countryside through him. Now, I would never go out there without either getting high or tripping. I started experiencing nature in a totally different way. It dissolved
into colors, forms, and sounds that were reflective of my moods. I thought I'd finally gotten a handle on things. And for a few months, I was generally happy with myself.

But eventually things started to get old. Pot and acid didn't give a proper kick anymore. We'd gotten used to them. We were used to getting high like that. There wasn't anything new or exciting about it.

Then one day somebody came into the club and said, “I've got something really new: ephedrine. This stuff is awesome.” I took two ephedrine pills without knowing exactly what I was swallowing, but obviously (or as I know now) they're a kind of upper. I washed them down with a beer because that's what everyone else was doing. But even that wasn't easy for me at the time because I hated beer, and I hated all the drunks I saw every day around the city, always drinking, and always totally shitfaced.

All of a sudden, it seemed like there were tons of pills floating around in the club. That same night I took a Mandrax, which is a kind of a high-octane sleeping pill. Once I'd done that, I was convinced again that everything was perfect, and I loved everyone in our little group.

In the weeks that followed, we took a prolonged cruise through the entire pharmaceutical industry.

Things were starting to deteriorate at school. I didn't do any homework anymore and always woke up tired. Despite that, I did manage to advance to eighth grade. I sometimes still got decent grades in language arts or social studies because the topics interested me—sometimes, at least—and because I was just naturally good at them.

But especially in those classes in which I didn't totally space out, I got into trouble more and more often. Sometimes I'd get into arguments with the teachers, and sometimes with the other students. I just thought it was horrible the way people treated
each other there. I hated the way the teachers were so hypocritical, since the high morals and ideals they were teaching were in such stark contrast to the way they treated the students, and also the way they turned a blind eye to the students who were treating each other so horribly.

I still remember a big fight I had with a teacher who wanted to talk to us about environmental conservation. The whole class was totally apathetic. They weren't interested in anything. Still, that wasn't really their fault, since there was nothing to take notes on and nothing to learn. The teacher's self-righteous ramblings and the way he paid no attention to any of his students really got on my nerves. So at one point I lost it. “What sort of shit are you talking about?” I yelled at him. “What the hell do you even mean by ‘environmental conservation’ and ‘respect for the environment’? I mean, that has to start with us, with human beings learning how to treat one another. That's what this shit-for-school should teach us first—that as a human being you should show interest in and care for others. The goal shouldn't just be to be louder and stronger than everyone else, or to lie and cheat and rip people off just to wind up on top, with the best grades! It's about time the teachers finally got a clue, and addressed the real problems in this school, and started treating the students fairly!” And so on. I actually kind of liked that teacher—at least compared to the others. That's why I got so furious at him for ignoring us and thought it would make a difference to let him know how I felt—loudly and clearly.

So in a word, the school sucked, and I hated it. We didn't have any contact with the teachers outside of the classroom. And because everyone's class schedule was always changing, it was hard to make and maintain friends. Here again it was dog-eatdog. Nobody helped anybody, and everybody wanted to be better than everybody else. In this meat grinder, the teachers took it out
on the students because they had the power to hand out grades. The students knew that if they pissed off a teacher, that teacher could retaliate by slapping them with a bad grade. And the students, in turn, took advantage of any of the teachers who were too good-natured to assert themselves.

I realized how profoundly unfair everything was, but I kept trying to fight back—sometimes because what I had to say really mattered to me, and sometimes just to disrupt class. By now, most of my classmates only paid attention to me when I was screaming about something or other; they didn't have any interest in hearing my thoughts about how shitty everything was.

That didn't really bother me though—not like it used to— because the only people I wanted to accept me were the people in my clique. When I was with them, there wasn't any of that stress or fighting. But even then, when I was hanging out with my group, I often sat by myself. I participated less and less in the conversations. But it didn't really matter, since our conversations were always about the same things: pot, music, the events of the previous night, and, more often now, the street prices for things like acid and pills. I was usually so stoned that I wanted to be just alone and not have to talk about anything