Dear Child

by Romy Hausmann

Insulation panels are screwed over the windows. He creates day and night.

The first and last squares of a bar of chocolate, which always taste the best.

Do you know, Lena, at that time I still had no idea what he meant by “rules,” but I had understood one of them. I had to be you, or I would be dead.

Perhaps I am an impostor. Perhaps it’s not just your husband’s fault, but equally mine too. It’s still easier to convince myself that all those dreadful things happened to Lena rather than Jasmin.

You’ve got a scar, Lena. I’m going to have one too, soon.

“Do you know what it sounds like when you bash someone’s head in, Lena? It’s like dropping a watermelon on to the floor. Bam!”

I take five mouthfuls, because I reckon five’s a good number. One for each member of my family. One for Mama, one for Papa, one for Fräulein Tinky, one for me and an especially big one for Jonathan because he’s got to clean the carpet.

The bread has now got the outline of Africa.

The reporter is busily writing. About kisses and caresses that stick to my face and body and cannot be washed off.

She can also speak four foreign languages, in case you’re interested: English, French, Spanish and Italian. So please choose which one she should use to tell you and your colleagues to stop printing your bloody filthy lies!

His scribbles are so ugly that we’re not even allowed to have drawing time together anymore.

“Who is Sara?” “Our sister.” I scratch my neck, which has started itching as if I’ve been infected by Frau Hamstedt’s blotches. “But we didn’t keep her for very long because she was nothing but trouble.”

It smells bad in his room too, of stale farts,

They probably think I’m just a child and so I’m not particularly clever. But I’m much cleverer than them.

it’s already dark and the streetlamps cast yellow cones of light which distort everything into long, ghostly shadows.

“Papa gave it to me. He gave Hannah Fräulein Tinky and me the snow globe. It’s my most precious treasure.”

The wonderful little boy who wanted to cheer me up and gave me his greatest possession, his only possession.

He’s sobbing, quietly, with pain, with love.

It takes some people a little longer, which doesn’t make them a bad person, only a bit of an idiot.

But at least the candlelight is good enough for me to be able to see the difference between the three reds in my box of crayons. After all, I’m drawing the woman lying on the kitchen floor and I definitely need carmine for her.

Claret’s fine for old blood, and for really old blood the brown crayon is best.

“Nobody had to get injured,” he said, as if reading my thoughts. “I know. It’s my fault.” “Absolutely right.”

Five thousand and thirteen days. That’s how long I spent looking for my daughter, looking for answers, certain that I would find peace if I got any.

Five thousand and thirteen days, which in the end fitted into a story lasting ten minutes.

I imagine myself holding her hand and taking her out of the building to the parking lot. Putting on her seat belt in the back. Me sitting in the driver’s seat. Starting the car. “Let’s go somewhere really far away, Grandad,” a squeak comes from the back seat. I smile into the rear-view mirror and say, “Yes, my darling, let’s do that.” I’m lying beneath a starry sky. I could … We’re not that dissimilar, Herr Beck.

Our world has its rules and punishments and its own time.

As far as I’m concerned, you’ve become a stranger, and I’m going to make you feel this until the end. That’s power.

Every moment you leave us on our own here, I bring the world into our four solid walls. I create secrets and a private life.

I can bring the toy cat to life. I can flood the room with sunlight. I can fetch the stars from the sky. And one day I know my children won’t just see all of this through my eyes and my stories. One day they will step through these doors and out into the world.

You haven’t got us, not really. It’s your prison, not ours.