by Christiane F
“Will you please get off my back?” he whined. “I'm putting extra dope into each packet. People will notice it. And then word will get around that I'm the man they need to see.”
”Whose dope is this, anyway?” I finally asked. It belonged to Piko of course, that slimy little crook. He used to survive on office burglaries. He'd recently gotten out of jail, on probation, and now he wanted to make a quick buck off of Detlef. Detlef, who was always too sweet for his own good. Piko had gotten the dope from some pimps on Potsdamer Street. They were his friends from jail. He got the stuff at dealer rates, but he didn't want to have to deal himself; instead, he wanted Detlef to take care of it. Piko didn't know the first thing about the heroin scene. He was a drinker.
When Detlef was finished up with his packets, we counted and added up the quarters, halves, and full grams for him. Math was never my strong suit, but I realized before Detlef did that we only had eight grams to sell, all told. He'd put too much in each of the packets, and if he'd sold them like this, he would've had to pay for two grams out of his own pocket.
So we had to go back and redistribute the dope. (I made sure to pocket any scraps that stuck to the papers for my own use later on.) Detlef made bigger foil packets and rolled out the dope with a beer bottle to make it look like a bigger supply. He only packaged halves and actually ended up with twenty-five packets. Not bad.
We shot up two packets to test the supply. It was good shit.
That same night, we took to the entire supply to Treibhaus, but for the moment, we decided to stash most of it. We buried it next to the dumpsters in the back. We never had more than three packets on us at any time. If there'd been a raid, they couldn't have nailed us as dealers. And in the end, it went pretty well. We sold five grams that first night. Word got around that the dope was good and that our portions were decent. Stella was the only one who complained about us. But in the end, even she got on board and asked if she could broker some deals for us. Like an idiot, I let her. For five halves that she sold for us, she got a quarter. But for us, there was nothing left. We didn't get one single penny from Piko for our dealing. If we sold ten grams, we could keep one and a half. And out of that, we still had to pay our own agents. That meant our earnings from dealing only amounted to our own daily requirement of H.
Piko came by every morning to collect his take. On most nights, we managed to bring in about two thousand marks. That was one thousand marks net profit for Piko because the profit margin from the middleman to the dealer is 100 percent. What we got was our one-and-a-half grams. In the meantime, Piko also didn't have to run hardly any of the risk, unless we ratted him out.
But that had already occurred to Piko, so he'd planned ahead. He threatened that if we ever got arrested and even so much as breathed one word to the police, we might as well go ahead and pick out a coffin that we liked. His buddies from Potsdamer Street would take care of us. And he said that he wouldn't even have to wait until we were out of jail. He had friends everywhere. He also threatened to set his pimps on us if we tried to cheat him of any of his money. We believed every word he said. The pimps had me legitimately terrified. I knew all about what they'd done to Babsi.
But Detlef refused to acknowledge that Piko was ripping us off. He said, “What do you want? The main thing is that you don't have to work as a prostitute anymore. I don't want you to do that ever again. And I don't want to do it either! And what other options do we have?”
Most of the small street dealers didn't fare any better than we did. They could never even get enough cash together to buy ten grams and start their own careers as middlemen. Besides, they didn't have the connections. How could we have gotten access to the pimps and other big-time dealers on Potsdamer Street? The small street dealers—who were all addicts themselves—needed a middleman who could pay them in dope. And the small-timers were always the ones who wound up in jail. Guys like Piko hardly ever got tangled up with the cops. They had an almost endless supply of street dealers to do their dirty work. Almost any junkie was willing to risk some prison time for two shots a day.
After a couple of days spent dealing at Treibhaus, things were already getting too hot for us. There were always undercover cops lurking around. I was having a hard time dealing with the stress. So we reorganized the whole thing: I kept negotiating at Treibhaus, and Detlef hung around Steglitz Station. Then, when I found a buyer, I'd send him over to Detlef at Steglitz Station.
The next week, when Detlef was back at Treibhaus and had some dope on him, a guy pulled over next to him and asked how to get to Zoo Station. Detlef freaked out and just started running. He threw the dope into the bushes somewhere.
When we met up again later that night, Detlef said he was sure the guy was a cop because nobody in Berlin would have to ask where Zoo Station was.
It was bad. It was like everywhere we turned, we saw a cop— in every car and around every corner at the Ku'damm. We didn't even dare look for the dope that Detlef had thrown away. We thought that the cops would be waiting for us.
We went into the Athener Grill to discuss our next move. We couldn't settle up with Piko the next morning because the dope was gone. And he would never believe our story. Then I got the idea to tell him that we'd been ripped off by some foreigners. We would say that a bunch of them had mugged us and taken all the dope and all our money. I said, “Weird shit's gonna happen with Piko anyway. So we should just spend the rest of the money. It's crazy that we haven't made a single cent while Piko is able to pull in a thousand marks every day. At the very least, I need to buy myself some clothes. I don't have anything for the winter right now. I can't run around all winter in the same clothes that I wore when I escaped from the hospital.”
We weren't born to be dealers. And although Detlef wasn't ready to admit that yet, he did finally agree that it didn't matter whether we gave Piko two hundred marks or nothing at all.
Very early the next morning we went to the flea market. If I liked something, Detlef would try it on first, and then me. We only wanted to buy what we could both wear, so that we could swap clothes occasionally. I ended up buying a used fur coat that looked really cute on Detlef. Then we bought some perfume, a music box, and other junk. But we just couldn't manage to spend all the cash because we couldn't bring ourselves to buy stuff that was expensive and useless. So we just stashed the rest of the money.
As soon as we walked through the door of Rolf's apartment, Piko showed up. Detlef said that he hadn't had his fix yet and needed to shoot up before cashing out. That wasn't true, of course, since as usual we'd had our fix as soon as we gotten up. But Detlef just wasn't ready to deal with this shit with Piko.
Piko said, “Okay,” and sat down to read a thriller that I had on me. Detlef rammed another quarter into his veins and then passed out without even pulling out the spike first.
It wasn't too surprising that he'd passed out like that because he already had another quarter in his system. I pulled the syringe out of his arm for him because if you just left it in then the blood would clot in the needle, and it would be hard to flush it out again. And this was our last syringe and needle, so that was pretty thoughtless of him, I thought. As I was dabbing the puncture in his arm with a cotton ball, I noticed that he wasn't really resisting me at all. I lifted his arm, and when I let go it just flopped back down, completely limp. I shook him and tried to wake him up, but he just slid out of the armchair. His face was ashen and his lips were blue. I tore open his shirt and tried to find a heartbeat. I couldn't.
I ran out of the apartment and into the hallway, still in just my underwear, but Piko was right behind me: “Don't do anything stupid!” he yelled. I rang the doorbell of a neighbor who had a phone, and told her I had to call the police immediately. I called 911 and said, “My boyfriend's not breathing. He's overdosing.” I had just given the cop the address when Piko came running back and yelled, “Stop, stop, he's conscious again!”
So I told the cop, “Sorry, never mind. It was a false alarm. You don't need to
come after all.” Then I hung up.
Detlef lay on his back with his eyes wide open. Piko asked if I'd said something about drugs on the phone, and if I'd given them the address. I said, “No, not directly. I don't think they could really take everything in that fast.”
Piko called me a hysterical bitch. He was frantic, slapping Detlef in the face and forcing him to stand up immediately. I told him he should leave Detlef alone for a while. Then he screamed, “Shut up and get me some water, you stupid fucking cow!” When I came back, Detlef was upright and Piko was berating him. I was so relieved to see Detlef conscious again that all I wanted to do was go and hug him, but Detlef literally shoved me away. Piko splashed some water in his face and said, “Come on, boy, we've got to go.”
Detlef still looked pale as a ghost, and he could barely stay upright. I told him he should lie down again. “Shut up!” Piko screamed at me. Detlef agreed that he didn't have time. And then they left the apartment together, with Piko acting as Detlef's support.
I was having a hard time coming to grips with what had happened. I was shaking like crazy. After all, for a second I was convinced that Detlef had died. I lay down on the bed and tried to concentrate on my thriller. Then the doorbell rang. I peered through the peephole. It was the cops.
I don't know what I was thinking, but instead of hightailing it out the window, I just went and opened the door. I admitted that yes, it was me who had called. I told them that the apartment belonged to a gay guy who was on vacation. And this morning two young guys came by and injected something into their arms. One of them had keeled over afterward and that's when I'd called the police.
The cops wanted me to give them names and descriptions, and I managed to come up with something for them. They took down my personal information and called it in. It didn't take long for a reply to come back. One of the cops said, “Well, why don't you come along then? You've been reported as missing.”
The cops were pretty nice though. They waited for me to put two of my books into a bag, and then they gave me time to write a note to Detlef. “Dear Detlef,” I wrote, “you can probably guess that I've been picked up. More news soon. Lots of love, Christiane.” I taped the note to the front door with some Scotch tape.
First they took me to the Friedrichstrasse police station and then to a holding cell. It was like something straight out of an American Western. Seriously, it even had iron bars instead of walls. When they locked me up, the iron door clanged into the lock with the same sound that I recognized from movies about Dodge City and Deadwood. And when they turned the key, it even made that famous creaky, grinding noise. There I stood, hands wrapped around the bars, utterly defeated. I couldn't even bear to take stock of how depressing it all was, so instead I just lay down on the cot and fell asleep. (At that point I was also still pretty doped up.) Later on, they brought me a little plastic container for my urine sample and a backup bucket to put below, so that I wouldn't pee on the floor. Anyone walking by would have been able to watch me pee. I got nothing to eat or drink for the entire day.
My mom came by around nightfall. She walked right past my cell without really looking at me. I guess she had to clear something up with the cops first. When they did finally unlock the door for her to get me, my mom just said, “Good evening,” as if I was a stranger. Then she grabbed me firmly by the arm and pulled me away with her. Klaus was outside, waiting for us in thecar. My mom shoved me into the middle seat and sat down beside me. Nobody said anything. Klaus got lost on the way back, and we wound up driving all over Berlin. It seemed like we would never get home.
When we stopped at a gas station, I told my mom that I was hungry and asked I if she could buy me three Bounty chocolate bars.47 She said okay, and got out to buy them.
After the second Bounty, I got sick. Klaus had to stop the car so that I could throw up. We started heading northbound on the autobahn, and that's when I realized that we weren't going home at all. Maybe it was going to be another institution or maybe a home, but either way I would break out soon enough. But then I started paying attention to the highway signs, and I realized where they were taking me: the airport. That's just fucking perfect, I thought. Now they want to ship me out of Berlin entirely.
As soon as we got out at the airport, my mom grabbed hold of me again, tightly. Then I spoke for just the second time since our reunion. Very slowly, emphasizing each and every word, I said, “Would you please let go of me?” But she held tight and stayed close by my side. Klaus was trailing behind us, ready to chase me down if need be. At that point, I just kind of resigned myself to whatever they were going to do. In the end, it didn't matter what they tried. There was nothing anyone could do for me. That's how I felt at the time anyway. I did survey my options for escape when I saw the signs for Hamburg, but in the end I was too weak-willed to really do anything.
Hamburg. Jesus. I had a grandmother, an aunt, an uncle, and a cousin who all lived in a small town about thirty miles outside of Hamburg. They were all incredibly dull, sad little people. Very bourgeois. Their house was so neat and tidy, it made me want to barf. You couldn't find a speck of dust, even if you tried. I once walked around that house in bare feet for an entire afternoon, and at night my feet were still so clean that I didn't have to wash them.
On the plane, I pretended to read my book. I got through a few pages. My mom was still playing deaf and dumb. She hadn't even told me where we were going yet.
As the flight attendant rattled off her little speech and got to the part where she said she hoped we'd had a pleasant flight, I noticed that my mom was crying. Then the words poured out of her. Without hardly stopping to take a breath, she told me how she just wanted to do what was best for me. She'd had a dream recently, where I was lying dead in a bathroom stall with blood all over the place and my legs all twisted up. A dealer had killed me, and she had to come identify me.
I'd always believed that my mom had psychic powers. Whenever she had a bad feeling about how the day was going to go, she would tell me to stay home, and when I didn't, then presto!—I'd get tangled up in a raid or get ripped off, or some other disaster would happen. It made me think of Piko, about how, when everything fell apart, Detlef and I had just ripped him off. Maybe my mom was saving my life with this intervention of hers. I didn't think any further than that. I didn't want to. Since my failed suicide attempt, I didn't want to think about much of anything.
After we landed in Hamburg, I went with my mom and my aunt to the airport restaurant. My mom had to take the next flight back. I ordered an orange soda—Florida Boy, my favorite brand—but they didn't have it. I guess they thought they were too good for orange soda here. So I didn't drink anything, although I was dying of thirst.
Together, my mom and my aunt started in on me. In a half hour, they laid out my whole future. I would have to go back to school, I would have to behave well and find new friends, and then later on I could do some kind of an apprenticeship. And then, once I was done training for a career, I could return to Berlin.
For them, it was simple. My mom was bawling again when we said good-bye. And I had to fight to keep from crying myself. That was on November 13, 1977.
Christiane's Mom
That whole day, I had to make an incredible effort to control myself and pull myself together. On the return flight to Berlin, I broke down and cried until all of the accumulated stress and anxiety had drained out of my system. I was sad and relieved at the same time. Sad because I had to give Christiane away. Relieved because I'd finally gotten her away from heroin.
I was convinced that I'd finally done the right thing. After the failure of the Narc Anon therapy, I realized that Christiane's only chance for survival depended on me taking her to a place where there simply was no heroin. When Christiane was living with her dad, and I had some distance from the whole thing, and some peace and quiet, it became clear as day to me that she'd die if she stayed in Berlin. Although my ex-husband assured me that Christiane had been off heroin since she'd been with him, I didn'
t put any stock in that. I would've never thought that my fear for Christiane's life could get even worse. But after the death of her friend Babsi, I didn't have even one single minute of peace.
When Babsi died, I wanted to take Christiane to stay with her relatives in Western Germany immediately. But her dad refused to agree to that. Since Christiane had moved in with him, he had obtained a court order for temporary custody. Anything I said was useless. He just didn't understand. Maybe because he hadn't yet experienced what I'd experienced. Maybe because he couldn't admit defeat.
While Christiane was living with her dad, I received the indictment against her. She was supposed to stand trial on account of her offenses against the narcotics law. Mrs. Schipke from the Narcotics Department had already called to give me a heads-up. To comfort me, she said that I shouldn't blame myself for what Christiane was doing. “Anyone who wants to do drugs will do drugs,” she said. “It's ultimately up to them.” She knew lots of addicts who came from good, upstanding families. And they also had to appear in court to deal with charges like these. I shouldn't torture myself about it.
I thought it was really cynical of them to use a little packet of heroin that I had once found in Christiane's room as evidence against her. Mrs. Schipke had innocently asked me to send her that packet for inspection. She had told me not to put my return address on the letter because that way nothing could be proven.
I don't think it's right that young people like Christiane are condemned for their drug use. Christiane never hurt anyone. She only destroyed herself. Who should sit as judge on that? And everyone knows how useless prisons are in curing addiction. The indictment was one more reason for me to send Christiane to West Germany.48 I was determined to get her to safety. I went to the guardianship office and explained the whole situation to them, everything, down to the last detail. For the first time, I felt like someone in some government agency or department was actually listening to me. Mr. Tillmann, the social worker responsible for our case, also thought that Christiane would be better off in Western Germany. He wanted to try to secure a spot for her in a rehab program since it was impossible to predict how soon he could restore custody of Christiane to me. In the mean time, it would be easier to get my ex-husband to agree to enroll Christiane in a rehab program than it would be to get him to agree simply to send her to her relatives in Western Germany. I could sense that Mr. Tillmann was really engaged and interested in helping Christiane and wasn't just making empty promises.