Elly

by Maike Wetzel

  My child being back again throws me out of kilter. I try to keep away from the pills. After all, there’s no reason to be unhappy any more. But I have been playing host to my worries and fears for too long. I can’t throw them out that easily. They keep knocking at the door again. I gradually reduce the doses anyway. I taper down. Then everything starts to close in on me again. My hackles are raised. I decide not to let it get me down. I want to be there for my children. I don’t want Elly to have a mother who is stoned. So I try to cope without the pills. But just when I’m lulled into a sense of security, when I think I’m free, the films start. They flicker in front of my mind’s eye. I can’t stop them. While I’m baking a cake, brushing my teeth, ironing my dress. Over and over again I watch my own demise. I see my body sailing off a bridge or hanging limply in the seatbelt in the fog of exhaust fumes. Sometimes I jump in front of a train. I feel the pain. And yet I know that I can’t actually kill myself. I don’t have the courage. Longing for death is just an outlet for the stress. But it’s the one thing that I can’t get under control. I pinch myself, I clamp my teeth together, I do press-ups to distract myself. I don’t want to go back to the cotton wool of the pills. But my nerves are stretched tight enough to snap. My veins throb in my neck. I tell myself that nothing and no one can make these films come true. But I can’t even read to the end of the headlines in the newspapers. Even before the end of the word I can hear pounding: over. End. Gone. These three words are my constant background noise; it stifles all other perceptions. Just as I think I’m going to explode, the death films stop. Gingerly, I raise my head above the parapet. No stones come hurling down onto my skull. I apply some blusher. The brush caresses my skin. I barely have a chance to enjoy the touch before I have to screw my eyes shut again. The sharp edge of a piece of paper slices through my pupil. It comes at me over and over. Slashes my cornea. Slowly, extravagantly. I run round the block. Scoop water into my face. That makes the paper disappear. But as soon as I’m calm, as soon as I try to sit still, the paper cuts into my eye again. It scythes through the jelly-like substance in my eyeball. I go back to my sweet pink friends. Swallow them before I go to sleep. They look so harmless. But they knock me out in thirty minutes or less. I dissolve. Sleep like a stone. I never wake with a start, I never lie awake thinking things over when my sweet pink friends have come to visit. They relax me. In the morning, my head is still fuzzy. I stumble into the bathroom. I can put up with the dizziness, water retention, and weight gain. The tablets wrap an apron of fat round me. My joints swell up. But the pills also lift the ceiling over my head a few centimetres higher. I can stretch and yawn again, I stop picking fights. The mental image of the sharp paper edge milling into my eyeball disappears. It’s such a relief. I can’t tell anyone about the films, or the sheet of paper. I’m ashamed of this nonsense. At the same time it makes me afraid. I wonder whether the despair will get the better of me some time. I need to make sure it doesn’t, at all costs. My children need me. I have to be there for them. I just need a little bit of poison. The doctor says: If only you knew how many people take pills. Don’t be so hard on yourself, she says. Do you need one hundred or two hundred? I try to take myself seriously even as a junkie. I look after myself. I look after my children. I’m not mad. But that’s what Elly’s therapist claims on the phone. She doesn’t say it out loud. But she repeats her words slowly and emphatically. As if I’m a foreigner. The therapist believes that Elly is not my child. That she is a stranger. I’m her mother, I say. I drive off. I need Elly. I can’t go back into the darkness. I can’t lose her again. It’s a matter of life and death.

  My name is Rena. Jana. Jasmin. Call me. I’ll listen. I was Sunday’s child, arriving into the world just in time for dinner. I didn’t look at the clock, but I know. I was there after all. My mother was too young. At the weekend she used to spin underneath the disco ball. She would lock the apartment door behind her. I was still too small to open it. When my mother bent over me in the light of dawn I could smell her sweat, the stale smoke in her hair, and the sharp tang coming from her throat. I reached my arms out to her. She pressed her bosom to my face. But on one of these mornings she didn’t find me in my bed. The sheet was cold. My mother called for me. She leaned out the window to see if I had fallen out. She looked everywhere for me. But I wasn’t in the apartment. I had been screaming. The neighbours rang the doorbell like mad. No one answered. They called the police. They took me to my grandparents’ house. From then on I stayed there. My mother never got me back. My grandfather despised me, even if he did show me how to tie up the berry canes or how to hammer a nail straight into a wall. My skin was just a touch darker than his — that was enough. The scars on my back tell the story. I can prove it. It’s all true.

  In school no one sat next to me. No one ever invited me to their birthday party. The children thought I was odd. The way I looked, the way I talked, the way I behaved. I was living with old people, my grandparents. I knew the big band music from the Musikantenstadl show by heart instead of chart hits. My clothes came from the charity collection box. I was uncool, a loser. I tried make myself fit in. I swotted up on the names of the right singers, I practised a tinkly laugh and told myself jokes in the mirror until the punchline sat right. But still the other kids at school didn’t laugh. They thought I was a bit slippery. They were right. No one could hold me. I even slipped through the fingers of the teacher who liked me and let me help out in the school library. I lost myself in the books. But the stories in them were no use. When I snapped the book covers shut, they were gone.

  One day I was playing alone in the garden. The neighbour was just raking his leaves. He looked around, then walked over to the fence. He opened his flies and showed me the trunk in his trousers. I don’t remember much more. I told my grandparents what happened. They heard what I said. But they didn’t react or do anything about it. They turned away and quickly started to talk about something else. I’m not sure how horrible the experience with the neighbour was for me at the time — what the man actually did, whether I didn’t actually feel curiosity and arousal alongside fear. I can’t remember that moment at the garden fence properly any more. But I know exactly what my grandparents did. They muted me. They acted as if I hadn’t said anything. What I wanted was for my grandparents to stop the neighbour from what he was doing, to protect me. Or at least to believe me. But my words fell down a deep, empty shaft. There wasn’t even an echo. It didn’t matter in the slightest what I said or did. It was as if I was already dead. I didn’t exist at all. Eventually I recognised it as an opportunity.

  I told the children in school that my father was a British secret agent. That’s why he was never around. I told them about my holidays in the Caribbean, the bruises I got from water skiing, slurping lemonade from half a coconut shell. My classmates were amazed. I knew I was fibbing, but it felt real. I began to take what I wanted. I stole. Tiny, useless things, sometimes electronic stuff. Mostly I threw the thing away immediately after taking it. Owning things isn’t important to me. I just want to belong. Sometimes, I was caught in the act. I would invent a sad story for the department store security or the shop owner. Sometimes I had leukaemia, sometimes my mother was on her death bed. My persecutors were thrown into great consternation every time, but their anger when they discovered the truth was even greater.

  When I turned twelve, my grandparents gave me up. They told children’s services that they were unable to cope. That was true. They weren’t making it up. I ended up in a residential school. I ran away from there too. I hitchhiked until I got to the capital city. But I was too timid and squeamish for a life on the streets. I was hungry, I wanted shelter. So I turned to a policeman and said I was a thirteen-year-old British girl who had run away from home. He took pity on me, looked after me. Back at the police station, however, he discovered that I barely spoke English. My ruse was blown. I was sent back to the residential school. But all the same I had worked out where my chances lay.

  I invent myself,
I play at being me, something new every day. I tell stories to stay alive. I kill off anything that gets in the way. I listen to people’s hearts and then I tell them what they want to hear. I lull them in. I use what I see and feel to do it. I take what I have and I bend it. I simply shift the perspective, illuminate the scene from a different angle. Make it brighter. Darker. Overcast. According to preference. Other people deceive to acquire money, power, or other advantages. That’s not what it’s about for me. I’m just looking for a role to fill, something long term. I’ve been running for so long. I move from country to country, children’s home to children’s home. I’m looking for somewhere to call home. Every time I’m picked up, I present as mute or ill. The adults who find me take care of me. I become whatever they desire. A poor child in need of protection. It feels good to be cared for. I gladly play helpless, full of misery. I only hint at the causes. An uncle who abused me. A car accident in which my parents and my brother died. I was the only one who survived, badly traumatised, in a coma to begin with. The couple who find me on the street are shocked. They give me food to eat and a roof over my head. I end up in a children’s home. I like it there. I go to school, I get good marks, I make friends with the other children. But one day someone sees me as I’m binding my breasts. The head teacher calls me in for a chat. I admit everything and move on. That’s how I do it every time. I have found sanctuary for a few weeks, sometimes months. But at some point my cover is blown. The carers, teachers, and psychologists are appalled. But they can’t punish me while I’m still not an adult. They want to cure me, but they can’t catch me. I can sense when someone is sowing suspicion. Then I leg it. While I’m on the run I think up the next poor girl. I’m the perfect actress. The newspapers have already reported my death. All I had to do was call one editorial office. The others reprinted it. I imagine my family waiting in vain for the coffin.

  Every time I’m uncovered it gets harder to build a new illusion. More and more people are becoming aware. Despite that, I still agree to interviews. I can’t resist the temptation. Being important. Real. True. Unmediated. I’m a legend. The team on one talk show are so touched by me that they offer me a job afterwards. The production manager wangles me into the audience telephone lines. I master the job with panache from the very first day. I am good at listening. The viewers complain, rant and rage. I understand them all. I promise them that their wishes will be fulfilled. That the editors regret their omissions. Both sides are happy. The broadcaster because I get rid of the moaners, and the disappointed viewers because I understand them. I’m the only one who is discontented. As soon as I put down the receiver, I have to be myself again. I can’t keep that up for long.

  I rent a small room in a hostel near the station. One evening I open the door. I stare at the unmade bed, the clothes horse with my clothes on top and the newspaper covered in my scribbled signature. It smells of the overripe melon which is rotting away on the window sill. The room feels narrow to me, like a carton. Quietly, as if I might disturb someone, I turn round. I leave the room door open. My damp clothes, a few magazines, a torch; the few things I possess, I leave behind. I jump on the next train. Electricity pylons, deserted houses with gabled roofs and carefully tended front gardens, wooden crucifixes, belching factory chimneys, and bundles of waste paper on goods stations flash past the window. I look out, but I don’t see the landscape, towns, my fellow passengers. I’m searching inside myself for something I can use, for some props I can repurpose for a new life. I practise on the guests in the onboard restaurant, test out their reaction. I resist the temptation to sensationalise. I adapt my story to a small-screen format. I disguise myself with a Mickey Mouse sweater and shave my eyebrows off. That gives my eyes the air of a rabbit, panicked, staring. I nick my face with the razorblade too. By the time I get off, I’m someone else. The adventure begins.

  I curl up on the final stop on a bus route. The driver finds me. But he’s suspicious. Panic rises in me briefly. I’m now well over eighteen, the age of criminal responsibility. I know I’m putting my liberty on the line. The police say I’m committing fraud. Supposedly I’m obtaining benefits by deception. If the bus driver doesn’t buy that I’m a child, I’ll definitely be sent down this time. I don’t let him touch me. I shield my bloody face with my hands. I babble incomprehensibly, lash out. He takes me to a hospital, then to supported housing. There they take me for a traumatised teen. The support workers accept the fact that I don’t give them a name, address, family members. I claim to have lost my memory. I am wearing clothes with no labels in, nothing about me gives an obvious indication of where I’m from. One young female doctor is particularly solicitous in her care. She tolerates my snarling and silence. Every day she moves her chair a little bit closer to me. She is pleased that I seem to be starting to trust her. I slowly thaw. For a while I live scot-free. One day a court has to decide who or what will bear the costs of my housing. It’s a purely formal process. When I appear before the court, the judge responsible looks me up and down. She leafs through my files. My carer asks: How long will it last? She has another appointment. The judge doesn’t look up. It will take as long as it takes, she says. She looks me right in the face. She asks my name, my place of birth. I shrug my shoulders. My memory loss is already on record. The judge furrows her brow. She continues, according to my files I’m a minor. My carer nods. The judge says I don’t look underage though. She requests a test. And she wants to add my fingerprints to the database. I blink. That mustn’t happen. Because then she would not only find out that I’m an adult, but also about the arrest warrant.

  The telephone in my carer’s office is my only chance. I call various children’s aid organisations. I claim to be a police superintendent and sitting next to me is a young female teenager with memory loss, who must surely have been reported missing. I describe my own appearance. I remain vague in the details, so that as many people as possible come into consideration. Finally I strike lucky. A woman remembers Elly disappearing without trace. The girl is a lot younger than me, but I think I can make it work. I ask the woman for a photo. The fax is black and white and blurred. I cheer when I see it. Elly is still a child. She doesn’t have any remarkable features. No unusually knobbly nose, no squint teeth. I think I can make out some similarity with my own features. Elly is the first role that I don’t dream up. Elly comes to me. She is a puppet. I borrow her. I tell the judge who I am. I’m Elly. I feel free. I wipe away my own misgivings. But then I download a higher resolution image of Elly. When I see it, my stomach flips over: Elly’s eyes are much lighter than mine. Even at the age of eleven, four years ago, she was almost as tall as I am now. How can I pretend to have hardly grown? I’ll do what I can. I delete the photo. I dye my hair. I put in blue contact lenses. But I’m sure it’s not enough.

  Shortly afterwards, the carer knocks at my door. Elly’s parents have travelled here. They are waiting in the visiting room. I’m afraid to stand before them. They will see immediately that I’m not their lost daughter. Then they will hit me, curse me, and punish me. I bite my lips nervously. I’m at a loss. If I tell the truth, I’ll have to go to prison immediately. But when I look Elly’s parents in the eyes, they’ll probably have me arrested as well. There’s just a tiny chance that I can survive that first moment at least, that I can fool them in the short term. I don’t have any choice. The carer is knocking for the third time already.

  I pull the hood of my sweater deep over my face and put on sunglasses. I shrink into my clothes. This way I look delicate and fragile. I move slowly, carefully. Elly’s parents need to see how scared I am. I am actually afraid right now, I’m all too vulnerable. I stumble into the room. Elly’s parents believe that my aversion stems from my experiences over the last four years. I have never mentioned abuse up till that point. It’s the people who take me in who put two and two together about my behaviour in this way. I’m happy to be taken for a damaged child, even though I’m twenty years old. Children are allowed to play whenever they want. />
  Elly’s mother’s voice trembles as she speaks to me. Her eyes are swimming. Elly’s father sniffs. I’m ready to run away when they embrace me. They confirm to the judge that I am their child. Before the official hearing they show me photos of my sister, the house, my friends and relatives. As if they want to drum into me what I need to get my bearings in my new life. They blame my slips on trauma. Thanks to the parental coaching with the photo album, I’m not caught out by the judge’s questions. The judge puts her stamp on my new identity. Even the border guards don’t cause any difficulties. I am travelling on Elly’s child ID card. Only Elly’s sister remains reticent. She never looks me in the eyes. Once, when we’re alone, she holds out a hand to me and wishes me lots of luck. So I’m sure she knows. But she doesn’t do anything about it. I’ve given myself the gift of a new life. Elly’s life. Finally, I’ve arrived; I’m home, finally. From videos and photos, I learn to swing on my chair like Elly. I repeat the old stories that Ines tells me to Elly’s parents and vice versa. Everyone gets excited by my memories returning.