The Other Side

Metta Ray
October 3, 2006

The Other Side


The sky was grey and dreary. A cold drizzle fell outside. The pitter-patter on the car roof was hypnotizing. The sound had taken me off to some happy fantasy land of candy canes and Christmas presents. What will I get? I hope it’s the Cabbage Patch Kid® I’ve been begging for. Mom says they’re really hard to get here. I’ll be the only girl at my school with one!
BAM BAM BAM! I was awaken from my daydream by a jolting knock on the car window next to my right ear.
“Hold up your passport!” Mom snapped.
“PASS-a-PORT!” The guard hollered through the glass and rain in a broken German accent as he motioned his fist in a twirling manner.
My heart pounding and my hands trembling, I cautiously rolled the window down about five inches and held my passport up into the rain. I could feel the chilling air and icy raindrops on my hand and face. Mixed with the tension of the moment, my whole body shivered.
His frosted blue eyes carefully scanned my passport as I wondered why he didn’t just take it. Why do I have to hold it? My arm is tired. He is really scary. The rain is too cold. Is he going to hurt us?
The guard quickly took a step back and it startled me. He abruptly pointed towards the gate and said “For-ward!” in his once again broken accent, as if the only two English words he knew were passport and forward.
As we moved through the 20’ tall steel gate adorned with razor wire and guarded by soldiers my heart was still pounding.
“Mom,” I choked, “What just happened?”
“We went through the checkpoint honey.” She replied.
“Why didn’t the guy just take my passport? Why did I have to hold it the whole time? My arm is wet and my fingers are frozen!” I complained.
“They are not allowed to touch your passport.”
“Why?” I whined.
“In East Berlin freedom is something everyone wants and no one has, even some of the guards. Your passport allows you that freedom, the freedom to come and go.” She told me, ignoring my whining. “You are the daughter of a United States Air Force Master Sergeant. You have the freedom of any American.”
“Oh.” was all I could say as I still processed my mother’s explanation.
As we drove into the city to do some shopping, we observed old style European cobblestone streets and a public square. It was a circular area with streets stemming out from it in all different directions. There were ordinary people talking in front of the café, children playing in the square, patrons visiting shops; as if there were no gate at all.
“Only certain people in East Berlin are allowed to come to the shopping plaza.” Mom explained. “The ones you see here have been approved by their government as ‘citizens who will behave’. The government here doesn’t want us to know that their general population is unhappy. They are not allowed outside of that wall and that makes them unhappy.” Mom said, pointing back at the wall we had traveled through.
“But they look happy.” I said, not having looked too closely.
After a long pause of deep thought and observation (the way only a 9 year old can think and observe.) I asked, “So…They’re faking?”
“Yes. They ‘fake’ to have the privilege to go shopping. ” My mother said in a sarcastic yet serious tone.
Suddenly all of the color was sucked from my surroundings. The paint on the shops faded to various shades of grey, the clothing on the people turned to browns and grays and blacks. Even the skin of the people seemed to turn dull and colorless.
For the first time since our arrival, I looked closely at their faces. Their eyes were tired and hopeless, even the children and teenagers had the look of despair in their eyes. The children playing in the streets seemed to only be going through the motions. There was not laughter, no music, no cheering, and no color. There was nothing.
As I walked across the rain soaked cobblestone with my mother and the new baby doll stroller she had purchased for me, I noticed a girl the same age as me watching wantonly after my new toy.
She had shoulder length blonde hair and a knee length coat with four large buttons on the front. She was standing next to her mother who was sitting on a bench reading; the woman looked old enough to be her grandmother. The girls’ eyes looked me up and down as I walked by, taking in every inch of me. As if she had never seen another child before. She began tugging on her mothers’ sleeve as we passed.
“Bitte, Mama?” She pleaded as her mother hushed her punishingly.
Her eyes immediately hit the pavement in shame, but she raised them once more to get one more look at me, the ‘privileged child’.
Back in the car I sat quietly with my head hanging. I could feel the lump rising in my throat, choking me, and the tears swelling in my eyes. What a selfish child I am, I don’t even want this stupid stroller anymore. What if I was that girl? What if I was stuck on the other side?
My mother’s soft hand touched my leg lovingly.
“Metta,” She said in a whisper “you don’t have to feel bad about who you are. It’s not your fault that that little girl doesn’t have what you have, that she has to stay in East Berlin.”
With the lump finally breaking free from my throat in one loud outburst of sobs I cried “But she has nothing and I have everything!”
My mother smiled knowingly “That’s why we sing ‘God Bless America’. Be thankful for your freedom and always be mindful of the sacrifice it takes to maintain that freedom.”
Christmas day came and I got my Cabbage Patch Kid®. It was homemade, but I didn’t care. I didn’t put that doll down all day, except when I put her in my stroller that was made by a doll maker in East Berlin.
It was 1989 when the Berlin Wall was finally destroyed by the very people it had contained. East Berlin was free from communism.
When I heard the news my first and only thought was of the little girl in the streets of East Berlin on that cold and rainy day who now had her own chance at freedom. She got to go to the other side.