Streulicht

Industrial snow marks the boundaries of the town. There is a hint of acidity in the air. Behind the factory bridge, the production halls roar. There her father works aluminium sheets day in, day out. This is where the narrator grew up, and this is where she returns to when her childhood friends get married. As she walks down the old paths, she remembers her father and her blind grandfather, who barely spoke, who didn’t want any changes in their lives and who couldn’t throw anything away until all bits and bobs spilled out of the cupboards. She remembers her mother, whose desire for freedom was stifled in the cramped conditions of a West German workers’ flat and who would go on to pack her bags and leave her daughter with her alcoholic father. She remembers dropping out of school early on. And the struggle to catch up on everything she had missed when she tried again. The shame mingled with fear, first of not passing again, then, as a parvenue, of being relegated back to her place.