by Christiane F
They lived on a huge lake with nothing but forests and corn-fields around them, and he was sure they would take us in. He said I should finish school first, since that would be the smart thing to do. He would go ahead first and find himself a job (apparently they had lots of jobs available), and when I followed after him a bit later, he would have already found a log cabin for us to live in together.
I wanted to finish school first anyway. Things were already getting a lot better. I could feel it. I was determined not to talk back anymore; instead, I would focus on my schoolwork and getting good grades.
Detlef went off with a customer, but I was still standing around and waiting. Suddenly there were these two guys behind me. “What are you doing here?” they asked me, and I knew right away they were cops. I'd never been arrested before, and the cops didn't scare me because up to now they'd always left me alone. I'd been turning tricks for a few months now at Zoo Station, along with a bunch of other girls my age. There were daily raids by the cops, but usually they were just looking for people who had smuggled cigarettes or schnapps over from East Berlin.
So I stayed real cool and just told the cops I was waiting for my boyfriend. One of them asked me if I was working as a prostitute. “No way,” I said. “Why? Do I look like one?” Then they asked me how old I was, and I said I was fourteen. They wanted to see my ID, but you can't even get an ID until you're sixteen. (I made sure I explained that to them).
One of them, apparently the leader, jumped in then and said, “Why don't you hand over that plastic bag there?” Right away he found the spoon. He asked what I used it for. I said, “I need something to eat my yogurt with, don't I?” But then he pulled out the toilet paper with the needles and everything, and at that point I had to go with them. They brought me to the police station near the Zoo. I wasn't scared though; I knew that they couldn't throw a fourteen-year-old in jail. I was just pissed that these two shithead cops had ruined my day.
They locked me in a cell right next to the chief asshole's desk. I was still so sure of myself, somehow, that I didn't even try to get rid of the dope that I still had in a little plastic bag in my jeans. I just couldn't get myself to do it, to throw away good heroin. But then a woman cop came in. I had to take off everything, even my underwear; she examined everywhere, every orifice, before she finally thought about checking my jeans pockets, where she found the drugs.
One of the cops typed up the whole incident—all insanely complicated and tedious—on a sheet of paper, and when they were done they put a copy in a big fat binder. I was now on the record as a registered heroin user. But the cops were pretty nice about everything in the end, except for the fact that they kept coming back to me and asking, “God, sweetie, what the hell are you doing? You're only fourteen; you're young, you're pretty, but you're killing yourself with this stuff.”
I had to give them my mom's work phone number, and one of them went out of the room to give her a call. My mom got to the station after work, totally stressed out, around five thirty. She actually got into a conversation with these cops, who seemed like they were only capable of stupid jokes, and after, they asked her the same thing they kept asking me; she said, “I know, I know, it's hard with these kids now. I don't know what to do with her anymore. I helped her quit once. But she actually doesn't want to quit.”
That was the last straw: “Doesn't want to quit”? My mom didn't have the slightest clue about me or about heroin. Of course I wanted to stop. But how? That was what I'd like her to tell me. Once I was outside, she started to ask me all these questions. What had I been doing? Where had I been hanging out? And so on.
“Jeez, Mom, I was just at the station.”
“You know you shouldn't go there.”
“I was waiting for Detlef—but maybe I'm not allowed to do that anymore either.”
She thought I shouldn't be hanging out with that “unemployed, antisocial loser” anymore. Then she threw a question at me: “Are you selling yourself?!” And I screamed at her, “Are you crazy? I dare you to say that again. Why on earth would I ever sell myself—can you explain that to me? So you think I'm a prostitute, huh?”
She backed down pretty quickly. But now I was really afraid I'd lose my freedom. And it was kind of scary, how cold my mom seemed to act toward me all of a sudden. It seemed like she'd given up on me now and would just let me fall on my own, wouldn't bother helping me anymore. But then I realized that she wasn't helping me anyway by just nagging about not “going to that train station” or hanging out with “that loser Detlef.”
I had to go home with my mom, and I didn't have any junk for the next morning either. When my mom got me out of bed the next morning, she looked at my face and said, “What sort of eyes are those, sweetie? They're so blank. I see nothing but fear and despair in them.”
When she left for work, I looked in the mirror, and for the first time I saw what happened to my eyes when I went cold turkey. They were 100 percent pupil. Completely black and dull. Totally blank.
I felt hot and washed my face. But then I was freezing, so I took a hot bath. I couldn't bear to get out of the tub because it was way too cold out there. I kept adding more and more hot water. Somehow I had to make it to noon. There was no way I'd find a customer at the Kurfürstendamm station or someone who'd give me a hit before then. Nobody had any junk until the afternoon. As things stood, it was pretty hard to find anyone who would share some with you. I could forget about asking Axel and Bernd, as they watched their stash like hawks; they needed every quarter-gram for themselves. They could barely make enough money to buy only that much. Even Detlef was getting selfish with his supply. And the others on the street would have rather thrown their junk down the toilet than share it.
As the withdrawal symptoms got worse, I forced myself to get out of the tub so that I could try to find some money in the apartment. The living room was locked, as always. Klaus, my mom's boyfriend, did that because he was worried that I would ruin his LPs. But I'd figured out how to pick the lock with a wire hanger. Unfortunately, the living room was broke: It didn't have a dime. But then I remembered the beer can on top of the kitchen cabinet. My mom used it as a container for all her shiny, five-mark coins.
My hands shook as I grabbed the heavy beer can—partly due to the fact that I was going into withdrawal, but also because I was about to steal from my mom, and I'd never sunk that low before. I wouldn't have even considered it. That's why I was different from the other junkies—from people like Bernd, who'd taken everything from his parents' apartment, piece by piece: the TV, the coffee maker, the electric bread slicer—anything that could be turned into cash for dope. I'd sold my jewelry and almost all my LPs, but at least that stuff was mine.
So now I was dumping my mom's five-mark coins out of the beer can. The street price of a quarter gram had just gone down from forty marks to thirty-five. So I needed seven of the five-mark coins. I figured that since I usually charged my customers forty marks, I'd get a fiver back in change. So I could easily replace one five-mark piece every day. In a week I would have repaid the money, and my mom probably wouldn't even notice. So I took my seven fives and went to my morning hookup spot outside the dining hall of the technical university, picked up some heroin, and shot up in the university bathroom. I was already in full withdrawal at that point.
My mom checked my arms for fresh needle marks every night, so I shot into my hand—always in the same spot. It turned into a scab, but I told my mom that it was just a scrape that wasn't healing well. Eventually she noticed that I had a fresh needle mark. “Give me a break,” I told her when she found out. “What's the big deal? It was just today. I only do it once in a while; it's nothing to worry about.”
But nevertheless, she gave me a pretty good spanking. I didn't resist. It didn't really bother me much anymore. She treated me like a piece of shit anyway and was always yelling at me for something or other. Instinctively, she was doing exactly the right thing. An addict has to lose literally everything and feel like the las
t piece of shit on earth before she'll think seriously about changing something. Then she'll either kill herself, or she'll hang her hat on whatever slim chance she has to ditch the dope. But back then I didn't have that kind of insight yet.
My mom still believed in me, though, and thought I could get better. She made plans for me to go and visit my grandma and cousins over spring break. She said that it was possible I could even stay longer. I didn't know if I should be happy or worried about the separation from Detlef and the inevitable withdrawal symptoms I'd experience over there. But by now I was doing whatever anyone wanted anyway, I only insisted that Detlef sleep over the last night before I left.
During that last night in Berlin, I came up with yet another plan. After Detlef and I had sex, I told him, “We've always done everything together. I really want to cut this shit out while I'm gone. I'll never get this kind of an opportunity again. You should do it, too. Then when I get back, we'll both be clean, and we can start a new life.”
Detlef said that yeah, of course he wanted to quit with me. But that was no surprise. (He already had a source for metha-done.) By the time I got back to Berlin, he'd have a new job, and starting tomorrow or the day after that he'd stop working the streets.
The next morning I took a really big hit before I went off to grandma and my new life. When I arrived, the withdrawal symptoms hadn't started yet. But I felt like an alien in that idyllic farmhouse kitchen. Everything got on my nerves. It annoyed me that my little cousin wanted to get on my lap, even though I'd always loved playing with her when she was as a baby. The old outhouse—the one that I'd found so romantic last time—was also irritatingly outdated.
The next morning, the withdrawal symptoms started up with a vengeance. I slipped out of the house and went into the woods, but the birds wouldn't stop their stupid twittering, and a little rabbit made me jump right out of my skin. I eventually climbed up into a tree stand. I couldn't even smoke. I wanted to die up there. At some point though, I don't know when, I crawled back to the house and got into bed. I told my grandma that I had the flu or something. She was a little concerned but not too worried, despite the way things looked.
Above my bed there was a poster that showed a skeleton hand holding a needle. Below the hand it said, “Curiosity was the beginning. This is the end.” (My cousin insisted that she got the poster in school.) I didn't realize that my mom had already told my grandma that I was an addict. Now I was staring at the needle on the poster—only the needle though. I didn't pay any attention to the letters and the skeleton hand anymore. I just imagined that that needle held a quarter gram of first-class heroin. The needle seemed to peel away from the poster and float toward me. For hours I stared at that fucking poster and almost went insane.
My cousin came into my room a lot and pretended not to notice what was going on with me. She kept playing these annoying cassette tapes of teenybopper music, probably thinking that they could distract me somehow. In retrospect, of course, it was touching how they were trying to help me and pretending not to know what was happening with me.
That first day of withdrawal seemed like it would never end. Once, when I dozed off, I had a dream about this junkie I knew from the streets of Berlin. He was so messed up from shooting up that his skin had started to develop these open, oozing wounds all over. He was literally decomposing while he was still alive. His feet had already decayed and turned black. He could hardly walk anymore. He stank so badly—even from two yards away—that nobody could stand to be near him. But when anybody suggested that he should check into a hospital, he just grinned this deathly grin. He was just waiting to die. I couldn't get this guy out of my mind—that is, when I wasn't too busy staring at the needle in the poster or delirious from the pain. It was just like the first time, with all the same sweating and stinking and puking.
The next morning I couldn't take it anymore. I dragged myself to the phone booth in town and called my mom. I was crying and blubbering snot into the receiver. I begged her to come and bring me back to Berlin.
My mom was unfazed. She said coolly, “So you're sick again? I thought that you only used heroin sometimes. Well, in that case it can't be that bad.”
Finally I wound up begging her to send me some sleeping pills via express mail. I'd heard that in the next town over there was an active H scene. I figured that out during my last visit. But I didn't have the strength to get there. Also, I didn't know anyone over there. When a junkie is separated from his own scene he's totally helpless and alone.
Thankfully, the withdrawal period only lasted four days, just like before. When it was over, I felt empty, depleted, sucked dry. It didn't even give me a sense of triumph to know that the poison was finally out of my body. I felt nothing but disgust for Berlin again, but I didn't belong in this town either. Actually, I felt like I didn't really belong anywhere. I tried to just not think about it.
All I had for entertainment were the sleeping pills that my mom had sent (way too late) and a bunch of hard cider that was stored in my grandma's basement. I was starving though, and I ate everything. In the mornings I would start with four or five rolls, and in the afternoons, in between meals, I'd eat like a dozen pieces of flatbread with jam. At night I'd go into the giant pantry and binge on the canned plums, peaches, and strawberries (with piles of whipped cream on top). I could never go to sleep before two or three in the morning anyway.
In no time, I'd put on over twenty pounds. My butt got big, and I developed a serious potbelly. My relatives were delighted. Only my arms and legs stayed as skinny as they were before. But I didn't care. I couldn't stop eating—it was almost like I was addicted to food. It didn't take long before my skintight jeans didn't fit anymore. That's when my cousin gave me a pair of baggy pants like the kind I wore when I was eleven. It didn't bother me though. I was becoming part of the community here again. But I didn't think it was for real. That was a trip, a nice little movie, and it would all be over again soon.
I KEPT DRUGS OUT of my conversations with other people, and I also did a pretty good job of keeping them out of my mind entirely. I didn't want to ruin this pretty little movie I was taking part in. There was one exception though: Right after I arrived at my grandma's place I wrote a letter to Detlef asking him to send me some dope (for which I also included twenty marks). It showed just how hollow my earlier lectures about quitting were, but I couldn't help myself. I managed not to mail the letter, though, because I figured that Detlef would just spend the money on himself anyway.
I let my cousin show me around like I was a tourist and visited castles and other fortresses in the area, and I also went horseback riding almost every day. I went down into the quarry (which had once belonged to my grandpa), too, along with the other kids. My grandpa had literally sold the quarry and used the proceeds to fund his drinking habit. He drank himself to death eventually. That's the environment my mom grew up in.
My grandma told me that somewhere in the quarry there was a room, locked up behind an iron door, that contained all the old family documents. And so we spent almost every night searching for that door. Sometimes the workers would forget to take the key out of the backhoe. Then we would drive all over the quarry with that thing.
I got along really well with my cousin who was the same age as me. I told her about how much I loved Detlef, and she reacted as if it were a completely normal teenage romance. I also told her that we'd already slept together, and she didn't see anything wrong with that—she thought that was totally okay.
My cousin said that there was a boy from Düsseldorf that she had a crush on. He always came up to where she lived on camping trips in the summer. He had wanted more from her, but she had stayed firm. She asked me if I thought that was dumb.
I told her of course not. It was absolutely her decision, and if she didn't want that camper to touch her, then she shouldn't let him. She should wait until she found someone who she really wanted to do those things with.
Everyone up there came to me for help with their problems.
I turned into a regular “Dear Abby” for my cousin and her friends. I didn't mind though. I felt pretty comfortable doling out advice, especially when it came to adding some perspective to their trivial little issues and concerns. In fact, almost all their problems seemed ridiculously insignificant to me. But I always listened, and I always had some ready advice. There was nothing I was afraid to confront with these kids, but when it came to my own problems, I was helpless.
Detlef called me one night—and I was so excited and happy I could hardly stand it. He said that he was at a john's place—that's why he was able to call me. We talked for a really long time, thanks to this guy's generosity.
I told Detlef about my awful withdrawal experience and about how this time I'd almost gone insane. He said that he hadn't quit yet. It was just so sad. I was looking forward to seeing him again. I asked him if he could write me once more like he promised. Detlef said that he really didn't feel like it. But he'd call me the next time he came back to this john's apartment.
After our phone call, I felt reassured that I was as good as married to Detlef. We belonged together—no matter what sort of shit he got himself into. At night, before falling asleep, I'd spend several silent minutes sending good thoughts to Detlef. Praying almost. And I counted down the days until I'd be with him again.
My grandma gave me a regular allowance, and I saved every penny. I wasn't sure why. Saving money had never been my thing. But once I'd saved up forty marks, I couldn't deny what I was up to anymore. I was really proud of having saved so much and put it away in a safe place. Forty marks was the price of a shot. Forty marks was what I charged my customers. Forty was the magic number for me.
Once I'd realized what I had in mind, I reprimanded myself for stockpiling drug money even while I was working to stay clean. And then, to drive the point home, I went into town and bought myself a T-shirt for twenty marks, just to get away from that damned number forty! I'd come to my grandma's house with the sole intention of getting clean. I never wanted to shoot up again. That was the whole point—to get away from that life for good.