My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me by Jennifer Teege

Author:Jennifer Teege
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781615192540
Publisher: The Experiment

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I LOVE THAT PHOTO of the three of us in matching nightclothes, on the bunk beds.

After Inge and Gerhard had put us to bed, we would have our stuffed animals and dollies talk to each other for a while: Manuel’s teddy—Grizzly—would growl, Matthias’s teddy Rascal would interrupt, and Jimmy, my dark-skinned doll, would also chime in. When we were tired, we would call out “Good–night–ev–ry–bo–dy!” We would take turns calling out the syllables one by one, and nobody was allowed to talk after that.

In another photo, we are standing proudly beneath the cross that stands at the summit of a mountain in the Austrian Alps, dressed in lederhosen and climbing boots.

My brothers and I became a unit very quickly. I felt very close to them immediately, and I still do today.

Having stayed at home with Inge for the first few weeks after my arrival in Waldtrudering, I soon wanted to join my new brothers at their preschool. I joined the same group as Manuel. In the mornings, the three of us trotted off together, collecting our friends on the way. Even though we were quite young, we usually went on our own. On the way home we always had to prove our courage: We would dare each other to walk closely along a fence, from behind which a big dog—we called him Buddy—would bark at us. My brothers would often send me ahead—I was the bravest of the three.

Waldtrudering is a quiet, middle-class suburb of Munich—a purely residential area where most of the dwellings are one-family homes surrounded by large gardens. The streets are named after German colonies and birds: Togo Street, Cameroon Street, Grouse Way, Birdsong Close. There are hardly any stores or businesses. It caused a stir when a McDonald’s opened on the arterial highway that links Waldtrudering to downtown Munich.

For the first few years we lived in a first-floor apartment; then we moved to a single-family home. The rooms were small and full of nooks and crannies. The hallway and stairs were unheated; when you opened a door, ice-cold air would gush in.

In the new house, my brothers and I had a playroom for messy games, but mostly we would play outside in the fresh air. In the summer months, the garden would burst into flower, and a hammock would be strung between two trees. There was a soccer field not far from the house, and a hill. In the winter, we would meet up with other children from the neighborhood and go tobogganing down the hill, tumbling and shrieking with joy. In the evening we would collapse into our beds, hoarse and exhausted.

At the end of the road were fields and meadows, and beyond them lay the woods. We played hide-and-seek there, rode our bikes around, started a club, and built dens in the woods.

My adoptive parents took us children on mushroom-picking courses, where we were taught how to identify the various species of mushrooms found in the woods. For vacations we would go

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