My first thought was, That’s my mother! She’s just like her pictures!
I hesitated at the sight of the strange woman. I saw the man standing beside her and didn’t want to leave the safety of Oma’s loving embrace. Oma gave me a little push. I wanted to please her, so I ran toward this living photograph and threw my arms around her, exclaiming, “Mommy, Mommy!”
It was like embracing a steel statue. Instead of hugging me back, she pushed me away. Her eyes met mine for a millisecond—black, piercing, empty. My head and heart froze. Everything seemed to stop. It was the first time I experienced rejection, and it felt like I had been slapped in the face.
I glanced furtively at the man beside my mother, my new stepfather, Helmut. His face registered no emotion. No connection. Empty.
I didn’t want Oma to know I was distressed, so I said nothing. Strangely, as close as I was to my grandparents, in my mother’s presence an impenetrable invisible curtain fell between them and me. It stole freedom and intimacy from our relationship and locked me in a prison of solitary confinement. Suddenly I was unable to share my heart with them.
No one spoke during the drive from Union Station to my mother’s house. I was still in shock from the cold rejection, and I’m sure my grandparents must have been dying inside. Their precious granddaughter was trapped in circumstances no one could change.
When we walked through the front door of my mother’s three-storey townhouse, I saw walls without warmth. This isn’t a home, I thought. It’s just a house! The interior was stark and harsh—foreign to me and bland, as if it were abandoned. I shivered.
They introduced me to Helmut’s teenage daughter, who was totally disinterested, and then showed me my room. Walls. A thin cot for a bed. One dresser. That was it. Cold and desolate! Panic rose in me, but words wouldn’t come.
Later I learned that Helmut’s first wife had died shortly before he met my mother. His 14-year-old daughter had to live with her dad. My mother had been charming to the poor girl before the wedding, but when the honeymoon was over, she became the wicked stepmother who made the girl’s life as miserable as possible. To have a little sister who couldn’t speak English thrown into the mix was too much for her, so she ignored me.
Like Cinderella, I slept in the cold, stark room that night, fearful of what was to come.
The next day was Halloween. We didn’t have Halloween in Germany, and I had no idea what it was. Ingeborg took an old bedsheet, cut two holes in it for eyes, tossed it over my head, gave me a bag and said, “There. Go knock on doors. They’ll give you candy.”
I was afraid, but I didn’t dare protest. Thankfully Helmut’s daughter went with me, but her unfriendly presence added to my discomfort. Looking back, I don’t know how I managed to last through the ordeal. I felt alone and disoriented, anxious and depressed. To not understand the language and go door to door under a white bedsheet with a surly, distant girl was a nightmare.
SHREDDED
During the three weeks my grandparents were there, Ingeborg did everything she could to keep us separated. It was heartrending for me and for them. We had planned that I would go with them to the airport when they left, but that day, as I came down the stairs ready to go, my mother held out her hand and said, “Halt! You’re not going. You’re staying here.” My grandparents were already out the door, so I couldn’t even say goodbye.
Apparently they asked where I was. When they realized what my mother had done, they rushed back in to look for me. Still in shock and sobbing at the top of the stairs, I ran down into Opa’s arms. He was beside himself, bewildered, frantic—hardly able to breathe. Oma choked back tears and couldn’t speak. Her look betrayed her understanding that they had released me into the clutches of a monster. At that moment we were ripped apart in flesh and spirit. Our family unit was rent.
I thought many times about my grandparents on their three-week journey back to Germany with a huge void in their hearts where a kiss should have been. Later I found out that Oma cried the whole trip. When she got home, she sent me a letter, but I didn’t receive it. Except for the odd one right at the beginning, my mother intercepted all my grandparents’ letters. I assume she cut off communication between us because she couldn’t tolerate the intimacy we shared. Jealousy had hardened her heart.
MISFIT
I can’t remember much about the first days in my new school, and I would be happy to forget them altogether. The German education system was far more advanced than the Canadian one, but I couldn’t excel in my schoolwork because I couldn’t speak English.
Kids laughed at my strange clothes and inability to speak their language. The teacher was even less understanding. She made me read out loud in class. I tried to read phonetically but pronounced everything the German way. For instance, the I pronounced tay. There is no “th” sound in German.
I had to protect myself at recess. The kids chased me around the schoolyard shouting, “Hitler! Hitler! She’s Hitler!” When they caught me, they hit me.
At lunchtime, I was horrified at the waste. If kids didn’t like the food in their lunch boxes or didn’t want to eat it, they threw it away. I couldn’t understand how anyone could throw away good food.
My one bright spot at school was an overweight girl by the name of Izzy Turner. No one included her in activities, but she was very kind to me. My self-appointed bodyguard, she was my place of refuge because she protected me. No one dared challenge her.
INCIDENTS WITH INGEBORG
The next seven years with my mother were a nightmare of abuse. I desperately wanted to talk to my dear grandparents, but they were out of reach. Had I not experienced a normal, stable environment of love with them, I don’t think I would have survived. Throughout all those years I held on to the good times—happy memories that breathed hope in me for my tomorrows. I learned that if you know that someone loves you, you can get through the toughest times.
Many times I longed for Oma’s love to lift me out of pain and suffering. One day I fell outside and scraped my knee badly. I could see pebbles in it, and it hurt. I ran into the kitchen and showed my mother. She glanced at it, turned the other way and said nothing. She was angry that I had bothered her. I was on my own. What to do? I tried to think what Oma might have done and used a facecloth to clean my knee as best I could.
Painful incidents with Ingeborg are still vivid in my mind. Happier days came eventually, and so did complete release from every hurtful memory. I can describe these incidents now without emotional pain. I am sad to say that many who have suffered the way I did do not recover, but there is a way. Let me share some episodes with Ingeborg first.
Ingeborg really was like a wicked stepmother. She had written to Oma saying she would provide me with everything new when I came to Canada, but that didn’t happen. Only once did she buy me something new—a pair of ugly shoes several sizes too big. Whatever belonged to me, she took away. She even took away my dolls.
I arrived in Canada wearing a little pale-blue cotton dress Oma had bought me, and that’s what I wore every day for four years. As I grew, the dress got shorter and shorter. It was very embarrassing. Oma had taught me modesty and instilled in me a consciousness to cover my body properly. When the dress became way too short, every day on my way to school I hid in an alley behind some garbage cans, took it off, and made it into a skirt. It helped cover my bare legs. With my sweater buttoned overtop, it looked like a long skirt. On the way home I went back into the alley and changed it back into a short little dress in a vain attempt to allay my mother’s beatings.
I didn’t really care that I didn’t have nice clothes. For some reason, the kids didn’t seem to notice that I wore the same thing all the time. Occasionally one asked, “Why are you wearing that again?” and I’d say, “That’s all I have.”
All I cared about was to be covered up. I wanted something that would fit and keep me