by Alexis Coe
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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2. Berlin-Kreuzberg was a neighborhood in West Berlin. Today it is an urban district within Berlin that was combined with Berlin-Friedrichshain to form Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg.
3. Gropiusstadt is a subsection of Berlin devoted almost entirely to public housing. It was named after Walter Gropius, the architect who first envisioned the complex.
4. DDR stands for Deutsche Demokratische Republik—although most English speakers know this country more familiarly as East Germany. East Germany was dissolved and joined with West Germany in the German reunification on October 3, 1990—not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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MAIN CHARACTERS
INTRODUCTION
PART I
GIRL SLAYS GIRL
CHAPTER 1
I Don’t Care if I’m Hung!
CHAPTER 2
The Great Drama
CHAPTER 3
Mr. and Mrs. Alvin J. Ward
CHAPTER 4
Price the Pistols
CHAPTER 5
I Thought You Were a Lady
CHAPTER 6
You Told and I Did Too
PART II
A MOST SHOCKING CRIME
CHAPTER 7
Erotomania
CHAPTER 8
Maiden Purity
CHAPTER 9
Delicate Hands, Horrible Deed
CHAPTER 10
Attendance Even Greater than Opening Day
CHAPTER 11
Quite a Flirt
CHAPTER 12
Fair Lillie
CHAPTER 13
The Old Thread-Bare Lie
PART III
LUNACY
CHAPTER 14
The Hypothetical Case
CHAPTER 15
Vicarious Menstruation
CHAPTER 16
An Impossible Idea
CHAPTER 17
Her Own Best Witness
PART IV
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CHAPTER 18
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EPILOGUE: SEXUAL MONSTERS
APPENDIX
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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