I close my eyes and try to remember. A strange sensation – somehow very easy and yet unbearably difficult…
We were lying in bed – Todorka next to me, already long asleep and, I think, lightly snoring, or at least that’s the melody anchoring the memory somewhere deep inside my skull. And I was trying to stay calm.
No, not exactly trying. In fact, I was fighting with all my strength to hold on to that damn calm, but little by little I was slipping, with each passing moment my grip becoming more unsteady, my fingers clutching at some invisible support slowly loosening, and I was either dangling, or sinking, or maybe I had already begun to fall… I don’t remember, I don’t remember…

The day had started badly from the very morning. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that feeling – for me, it’s almost inevitable during periods of immense, prolonged tension. A bit like a battery that gradually drains over the course of the day. In the morning, especially if I manage to recharge with some physical activity, I’m wide awake; then I manage to push through more or less normally until mid-afternoon, and from there on… it’s pure Sisyphean struggle. Don’t even ask about the nights.

It must have been shortly after she gave me that ultimatum – I hope you remember it: “If you don’t move out, I’m leaving with the kids.” I vaguely recall trying to maintain some posture of independence, of composure, maybe even a kind of nonchalance… But these are just constructs. I have no real idea what exactly I was doing. But when night came and she fell asleep, that utterly unbearable sensation suddenly appeared out of nowhere…

Years later, in one of my stories, I described it as the experience of a man tied to a post on the shore, waiting for hours to be drowned by the incoming tide. A dramatic, vivid image. But that night, of course, my mind was producing everything but metaphors – I was sinking, brother, not in theory but for real, the air was leaving me and the feeling that I was slowly drowning… It started down at my feet, then gradually climbed up, engulfing my groin and diaphragm, tightening my chest, slowly rising to my throat. I clenched my fists, tried to resist…

Okay, okay, okay. Even I can feel it’s starting to sound a bit theatrical now – this layering of more and more textures of helplessness and silent terror isn’t adding much to the overall effect anymore. So by now the question naturally arises: “Alright, we get it, you were suffering. But why are you telling us all this?”

Well, I’m trying. I’m trying to give you as immediate a sense as possible of what exactly Lea went through – and how it more or less felt – day after day, day after day, day after day.

For two years…

⸻ ❦ ⸻

None of us could explain it. We had spoken many times with the two lead teachers in her class; we had tried to do everything possible to find some reason, some explanation for her inexplicable behaviour. Everyone just shrugged – Lea is very obedient, very cooperative, doesn’t cause any problems, we haven’t noticed any strange behaviours or warning signs…

By that time she was already living with Doreen, and I – without understanding a thing, not even a bit – lived with a sense of great relief. And Doreen was struggling – actually it’s more accurate to say had been struggling, since at that time our communication was severely strained. Lea had turned into a little infernal machine, exploding constantly – but always only around her mother, which filled me at the time with a rather nasty, petty, malicious feeling of satisfaction. “Serves you right, isn’t this what you wanted? Go ahead, now pay the bill, darling! I didn’t saddle you with this, you chose it yourself!”

Once, Lea ripped out a whole chunk of her mother’s hair – along with some of the scalp. The smashing, the raging, the attempts to hurt herself, to hit, to bite, to scratch – all of it had apparently become part of their daily life. Klaus couldn’t help at all – simply because Lea wouldn’t tolerate, not even for a second, the presence of anyone else in Doreen’s apartment. This went on for five years – Doreen calls them “my five years in solitary confinement.”

It was – had been – utter chaos. And there were zero options for understanding, for explanation.

Until, finally, the critical clues began to emerge. Lea started coming home with scratch marks – mostly on her arms, later also on her shoulders and neck. The climax came with clear signs of bite marks. Doreen snapped and began demanding explanations from the two teachers, but things got even messier because she herself had been forced to apply “restraint techniques” with Lea – some kind of holding grip, oh, don’t ask me exactly what, maybe a desperate embrace that rendered the child immobile for half an hour or so until the episode passed…

As a result of this, the teachers in turn discovered bruises on Lea’s stomach and wrists caused by her mother’s gripping hands, and in Germany, such things must be reported immediately to social and police authorities – by law. Ugh, I’m sweating even now…

We held a long and difficult meeting with all the people responsible for our family – the two teachers and a social worker. Thank God, all of them had known us well for many years, and agreed not to make the case public – but with the strictest possible warning that this must never happen again…

Which, of course, did nothing to calm Lea’s fury. She continued drowning before our eyes, with no way for us to help.

Until Doreen finally slammed her fist on the table.

And in doing so – saved us all.

⸻ ❦ ⸻

Here is Doreen’s letter to Lea’s two homeroom teachers. With it, the “mystery” is revealed as something more than trivial, but don’t think everything then became simple.

16 May 2010, 22:45

Dear team,

Lea’s refusal to go to school is so fierce and so determined that I see no way of “getting her there” against her will – I simply don’t know how.

Over the past few days I’ve had time to “listen” to Lea. The more time has passed since her last day at school, the calmer she has become. Today, after four days in Heiligensee together with her specialised support assistant, we picked her up – happy, full of energy, very cheerful. Her anxiety returned in the evening when she realised that tomorrow is a school day again – naturally, throughout these days I hadn’t allowed the slightest doubt about that.

Having seen again how much she enjoys going elsewhere (four days off, one of which she spent with my partner), I can no longer accept that she simply wants to stay at home or only be with me. She is genuinely happy when she can spend the night somewhere else or even just be somewhere else, to travel joyfully and adventurously with my partner; when he picks her up from me, she spends the day and night with him – the two of them even did the “trip” to Heiligensee together [in quotes because it’s very close – Z.E.], which Lea had been eagerly awaiting. There she meets and lives with completely unfamiliar people without hesitation, says goodbye without difficulty, enjoys the break. She was cooperative and very pleasant with everyone – as I learned today when they returned. By the way, this is already her fourth year attending summer camp!

So now I really believe the explanation is not a wish merely to be with me: she does not want to go to school.

After the parent-teacher meeting, dear Ms F., dear Ms M.-K., we agreed that I would inform you as soon as I reached a conclusion that could “justify” this rejection. Lea often says that M. [the only other girl in the class – Z.E.] bites, scratches, and hits her.

She also says things like:
“I don’t want to go to the ground floor.”
or:
“I want another class.”

The bite mark M. left on Lea’s shoulder is still visible – after more than two weeks.

My understanding is that the experiences of the last weeks – and probably even months [in fact, it was a full two years; Lea began refusing school already in 2008, when she lived with me – Z.E.] – have accumulated to such a degree that Lea’s trust in the school, in the class, has been so shaken she cannot endure it any longer.

I blame myself entirely for not having taken these attacks seriously earlier. Once her entire face was scratched – that too was caused by M. She had bitten her before as well.

By the way, I want to assure you that I do not consider M.’s actions malicious or mean-spirited. I see them as this girl’s [who also has a disability – Z.E.] way of expressing herself. But such explanations – or attempts at explanation – do nothing to help Lea (even if they help me a little)!

At the moment I can get Lea to school only through extreme coercion – in the literal sense. That does not feel right to me. My daughter has truly matured in recent months; one can talk with her, and she is relatively sweet and understanding.

I have always been very uncompromising, but right now I have reached the point where I clearly see how urgent her “cry” is – which, as you advised us in our recent conversation, we should interpret as a “cry for help.” I will no longer allow her to feel forced to bite, scratch, hit, or use any other form of violence just so that her mother might finally hear her! (As I already wrote in my last letter: these things have been happening almost daily here at home over the past few weeks.) We tried tolerating it for a while, but I can no longer – nor do I want to – go back. It is not right. And above all, it is not good for either of us; I am convinced that in the long run it will damage our relationship, which otherwise is defined by an atmosphere of love and trust.

Besides, I do not feel that I am giving in too quickly.

What should we do?

First: we should have another joint meeting.
Where exactly? At which table?

We really must help Lea – that is what I think.

Right now I believe I must offer her a completely different, new situation in order to rebuild her trust in school. Whereas earlier I saw changing classes only as a last resort – because for years Lea felt well cared for in your class – at this moment such a change seems to me the only solution I can imagine.

And I have a clear sense that we must act quickly so that things do not harden. The more time passes, I imagine, the more insecure she will feel when it comes to school.

I myself am working continuously, every day, to strengthen her trust in school again. Of course, it is in my interest that she go to school gladly.

Please also discuss our problem with the school administration, pass on both of my letters, and contact me again.

With warmest regards,
D. W.

And what did it turn out to be? That for two whole years, she had been bullied – systematically bullied – by the only other girl in the class? A problem that, in any other situation involving children with normal communication abilities, would have been resolved in a matter of days, turned, in Lea’s case, into something close to a tragedy – simply because of her total inability to communicate this „information“ to us in any way. I don’t know how you imagine such a situation yourselves – you’ve had the chance to read my own version just above.

But the difficulties didn’t end there. The two teachers, well-educated and experienced women, felt deeply offended by Doreen’s position and, more passively than actively, made it clear – both to us and to the school administration – that they didn’t believe this explanation and that they thought Doreen had more or less „made it up.“ The situation grew increasingly unpleasant, especially since, to all questions about whether M. was bullying her, Lea responded only with silence. I myself – another sin on my conscience – deeply doubted Doreen’s judgement. I mean, how could it be that two experienced teachers, plus several other assistants, wouldn’t notice that long-term bullying was happening in their small classroom group? That Lea was feeling like the proverbial animal caught in a trap? Oh come on, let’s try to find some other explanation.

But Doreen wouldn’t budge. She took the matter to the principal, fought her way through everything and everyone – including my lack of support – and in the end, she actually succeeded in securing a transfer for Lea to a different class.

You’re probably all wondering: „And what happened after that?“ Honestly, I don’t remember any radical or immediate change – with Lea, everything unfolds at a different pace – but after one, two, or maybe several months, her fear of school gradually faded, and sometime from 2011 onwards, things started moving along a more normal course.

And yet I – doubting Thomas – still didn’t fully believe what was written in Doreen’s letter. I still didn’t want to – or maybe couldn’t – entrust my faith to this woman. I was still being poisoned from within by hateful, tormenting emotions. I was still trapped inside my own cage.

Until…

It was two or maybe three years later, during one of the school celebrations. These events are held regularly, with great preparation and a well-organised programme. The children participate with enormous enthusiasm – it’s sweet, warm, and wonderful. So I’m standing in line for cake and drinks with Lea – she’s all dressed up, excited, glowing – and of course I’m enjoying the moment. Daddy’s little princess!

And right then, out of nowhere, with the speed of a snake, a hand slithers in from behind – long and thin – and right in front of my eyes pinches Lea, horribly, nastily, and hard. I’m telling you, it was vicious. The poor girl jumped, I caught her eyes for just a second – and I nearly burst into tears.

I had never seen such helplessness, such fear, such resignation – and such shame, oh God! She didn’t say a word, just crumpled in on herself, and I – completely stunned, not even fully realising what had just happened – turned around… and met another pair of eyes.

I won’t describe exactly what I saw – Doreen and I made an agreement long ago never to revisit that story in any way other than with forgiveness and forgetfulness. After all, we’re talking about actions committed by someone who is not fully responsible for what they do…

But I will confess – willingly or not – that in that moment, a very dark, very grim, very malevolent moment, a storm of emotions swept through my mind, soul, and body. The kind of emotions that sometimes drive people to do very grim, very heavy, very terrible things…