Chapter 1: The Missing Cheerleader

The ball came in from the right flank, but Matty had not hit the ball properly. Instead of serving it left to Jogi, who was waiting in the penalty area, and by the look of it invisible to opposing defenders, he gave it too much spin and the ball sailed into the right direction but also back to about twenty meters from goal – right in my direction. Not quite willing to bother much, I simply hoofed it – volley – and the ball smashed into the back of the net, right in the upper left corner. There was much rejoicing, but I couldn’t quite get into a jolly mood – our cheerleader was missing.

Our cheerleader, that was Ilka, my mom of sorts. Well, she wasn’t really my mom, but then she certainly was in more ways than my biological mother. It was complicated. Ilka was Christian’s mom. Christian was my best friend in childhood. Like me, he would have been fourteen now, if he wasn’t dead. When we were both eight he was run over by an 88-year old woman while he was walking across a zebra crossing. The half-blind old bat had mixed up throttle and brakes and had sped up instead of slowing down, smashing into him at seventy kilometres per hour. He had been dead before he hit the pavement. His neck had snapped upon impact.

His mother was devastated. Christian’s father died when we were three, also a traffic accident, and like Christian he’d been the innocent victim of someone else’s fault – a drunk driver. Two people who should have been anywhere but in control of a car had wiped out her entire family in the space of five years. And nobody bothered to help Christian’s poor mom. Well, almost nobody...

Twelve year old me was on the way to Christian’s place, wanting to ask his mom how she was doing and volunteer to help with caring for his grave. Provincial Germany was a place where you better not kept a grave untidy, or people would automatically assume you never washed, lived in the mud and were generally a bad person, and besides, I didn’t want Christian’s memory to fade. Most of his other friends had almost forgotten him after just four years.

That were pretty serious thoughts for a twelve year old, but I guess the fact that I had to grow up without my father had given me an involuntary head start on growing out of childhood. Nobody knew who my father was, not even my mother, who had been too drunk to remember whom she had fucked or even if it had been only one or where it had happened. Well, I was living proof that she had at least still remembered the basic mechanics of the act, or, in doubt, she had just passed out and some guys had fucked her unconscious carcass.

I had never called her mom, because she wasn’t in all but the laws of biology. She barely acknowledged my existence. I had to make my own breakfast since age seven, got fed in school for lunch and for dinner there was bread with whatever that woman had bought and if there was nothing I ate just the bread.

My biological mother was just too happy to let me stay at Christian’s place over the weekends. I bet she never realized he was actually dead. What I didn’t know at the time was, that my so-called mother was an unregistered prostitute and went through myriads of punters on Saturday and Sunday, earning the money for her booze, the cigarettes and the occasional slice of bread she left me.

How I could be one of the tallest in our class at that age mystifies me to this day. My diet certainly wasn’t healthy, and I was awfully skinny.

And that skinny boy was walking up Herder Street towards the place I had spent so many weekends at. But what I saw was not what I had expected. Christian’s mom was sort of hugged by a man, but from the way she moved I could see she was blind drunk. I had seen it all too often with my own mother and I was bitterly disappointed. Christian’s mom had allowed me to call her by her name, Ilka, because she hated being called ‘Mrs. Kurtz’. It means ‘short’ in German and she was only 1.65 meter in height.

Anyway, Ilka had always made me feel better, because she wasn’t perpetually drunk like my mother. I feared she would become like my parental unit. But what shocked me the most, was the fact that the man wanted to undress her – on the street. Not knowing what went on, I walked up to them and said loudly: “Mom, we were waiting? What kept you so long? And who is this man? Is it a friend of Daddy”

That made the old geezer let go of her and run in a bloody hurry. Ilka was standing – well, swaying – closing one eye repeatedly, trying to make out which of the two Mario Hermers she had to dress down. One of her breasts was hanging out and never having seen one, my interest was piqued for a fraction of a second, but I got into ‘drunk-woman-autopilot’ mode again. I had experience handling a clattered woman. With her short height of 1.65, she was a mere 5 centimetres taller than I was at the time. It wasn’t a problem to cover her up and I closed the buttons on her blouse. She let it happen, too wasted to register much.

It was hard work, especially if you’re only twelve and weigh only forty-eight kilos, but somehow I managed to help her get home. We fell down a couple of times, and we looked dirty and ragged like homeless people by the time we arrived. I eventually got her inside. What was I supposed to do now? I could hardly put her to bed like that, after all we had landed in the mud a few times. I felt like I was doing something very, very naughty, but I undressed a woman for the first time.

Ilka didn’t even register who she was with. Years later, remembering that incident, I understood in what sort of condition my biological mother must have been when, whoever had done it, had put me into her womb. The big problem was of course getting the panties and socks off as she was barely able to stand on two legs, let alone having to lift one, if even only for the shortest moment. Finally I’d managed it and she was swaying about, clinging to the rim of the sink for some sort of support.

She had not said a single word so far. From time to time she had mumbled something, but it was just gibberish. Using a sponge and some shower gel, I washed her as good as possible under the circumstances and for the first time in my life I saw a naked woman. I had seen one of her breasts out there, but now I saw the pair of them in full. Remembering it as an adult, I can tell she was in excellent shape. Her breasts were small but firm – you can’t expect two melons on such a short woman – but they were exceptionally well-shaped – at least in so far as a clueless twelve year old could make an assessment.

She had a thick black triangular bush of hair in her nether region and when I washed it she let out a drunken giggle and said something in a language that hadn’t been invented yet. Finally I managed to clean up most of the dirt and towelled her dry. Tugging at her arm I made her follow me and I directed her to the bedroom, where she fell onto the bed, face first.

I knew what was coming, so I looked for a bucket. My own mother was a drunkard and I had cleaned up vomit more often than a paediatrician. But I hadn’t found one by the time first gagging noises came from the bedroom. I grabbed a large pot from the stove and ran. I made it just in time so she could barf into it instead of soiling the floor. I used my shirt to wipe the bile off her face as I didn’t find anything else on short notice.

When I went to the bathroom to clean the pot, I finally found the bucket I had missed at least two times before. I filled it with a bit of water and put it next to the bed. Seeing that I was just as dirty and with added bile on my shirt now, I stripped down to my underpants and went to wash myself too.

Not feeling like going home just to deal with a second drunk woman, I found a large beach towel and used it as a cover to sleep on the couch in the living room.

I was woken up by retching sounds the next morning and I got up to check on Ilka. She was cleaning her face with the towel I had left on her night stand. She looked shocked when she saw me, shocked and quite ill.

“Mario? What are you doing here, and why are you in your underwear?”