PARTIALITY

When I was sixteen, my father slipped while unloading freight and injured his back.

He was out of work for nearly a year on Krankengeld — sick pay — which didn’t come close to covering what we’d lost.

The family had lost its main income.

My mother’s wages weren’t enough, and so — as though it were simply understood, nothing to discuss — I started working more.

I took a Minijob at a bakery near our house on weekends, and tutored younger kids in the neighborhood in maths and English in the evenings.

Every euro I earned, I handed straight to my mother, keeping only a little for myself.

Lukas was twelve that year, still training with his football club, still going to camp, still taking private lessons.

I once asked my mother why I had to work while Lukas didn’t.

She looked at me, her voice cold: “You’re the sister.

You have to be his support.

When your brother succeeds, the whole family benefits.

Why are you keeping score?”

I had no answer for that.

I finished my Abitur with the top marks in my year, which qualified me for Economics and Finance at Goethe University Frankfurt — one of Germany’s most respected schools for the subject.

But the day I got my acceptance letter, my mother sighed: “University’s tuition-free, sure, but living costs and books add up.

Are you sure about this, or should you do an Ausbildung instead — quicker, you’d start earning sooner, you could help the family out earlier.”

I cried alone in the bathroom that night.

But the next morning I was up early, looking for campus jobs to cover my own living expenses, without asking my mother for another cent.

I worked as a part-time research assistant for a finance professor, and weekends on the front desk of a hotel near the airport.

Three years of university, and I barely had a single day off.

Lukas failed his vocational-training entrance exams a few times.

My mother never blamed him for it, just said: “It’s fine, some kind of training will work out, what matters is that you enjoy it.”

He eventually took a short graphic design course at a private school, costing nearly three thousand euros — which my mother paid cheerfully, without a word of complaint.