Stephanie de Velasco - Tiger Milk

Jameelah mumbles something but all I can do is stare at the building as muted screams issue from it. The place has transformed into a locked music box. The ballerina inside has momentarily escaped from the box and is now losing her mind. Somehow I can understand Jasna, it must be awful to be imprisoned inside a dark box and then every time somebody opens the box you get spun around to some stupid melody. It rains and it rains. The pyjamas under my hoodie are soaked right through to my skin though it dulls the burning pain on my shoulders and when Jasna comes back out onto the balcony and climbs up on the railing again I get goose bumps.

Oh no, says Jameelah, she’s really going to do it now.

Today is the last day of school and I pick up Jameelah and Amir as usual. Amir is in the hallway trying to get rid of another couple of journalists, there have been journalists standing around from morning until night since the whole situation with Jasna.

Is it true that your sister was released from the hospital the day before yesterday, asks one of them. In his hands he has a notebook and he can’t wait to write something down in it.

Amir nods glumly. He’s had another smacking. Right under his eye is a big round purple blotch that his mother must have put there with her fat gold ring.

Your sister’s boyfriend told us that she was transported to a secret location in order to protect her from your family, is that true, asks the journalist.

I don’t know, says Amir.

Has she been in contact with you?

No she hasn’t.

You are her little brother, she doesn’t need to be afraid of you.

Amir looks over at me for help.

She only broke her leg, I say going over to stand next to him.

I mean really, only broke her leg, says the woman standing behind the guy with the notebook, it was a cry for help you need to dig deeper, and when I don’t know how to answer her she says, of all people a young woman should … but I don’t hear what a young woman should because luckily Jameelah comes rumbling down the stairs.

You’re annoying, she says to the two journalists, don’t you get it.

I’m from the biggest paper in town, says the guy.

Go interview some neo-Nazis, says Jameelah pulling Amir toward the exit.

Amir’s eye doesn’t look good at all and since we have some time before school we stop at the convenience store and buy a Müller milk and go to the playground. We sit down in the play fort above the slide and smoke a cigarette. Amir holds the cold milk container against his shiner.

In Germany it’s a crime to hit a child did you know that, says Jameelah.

I’m not a child, says Amir.

You are in the eyes of the law and if you hit a child in Germany you can be arrested for it.

Even for a smack, I ask.

I don’t know, but it’s the correct answer in any case.

Correct answer to what, asks Amir.

The German test, that was one of the questions.

Test, I say, do we have a test today?

Oh please no, says Amir.

No, says Jameelah, I mean the test for German citizenship. You have to know everything about Germany, what the duties of the president are and what holiday do you wear a mask for and all sorts of stuff like that.

I have no idea what she’s talking about.

Why would you need to know that, says Amir.

For whenever, in case we end up becoming Germans. I’ll be ready for the questions already, it’s smart.

It’s moronic, says Amir.

Jameelah looks at him angrily.

What’s moronic about it?

Nothing, says Amir, what are you trying to tell me? That I should press charges against my own mother or what?

Man, it just popped into my head, says Jameelah, don’t get bent out of shape.

Nobody says anything for a while.

I didn’t mean it that way, says Jameelah at some point, you know that, right?

It’s fine, says Amir.

Come on, I say, we have to get going.

When Frau Struck comes into the classroom with the report cards she looks the way she always does on the last day of school. She’s put pink lipstick on her thin lips and rouge on her face. To celebrate the day she also has on a dress, a white summer dress made out of linen, a typical teacher dress. The dress is so flimsy on the sides that you can see her cheap undershirt through it and because she’s not wearing a bra her breasts hang there like shrivelled water balloons. Her feet are in sandals and her toenails are painted, but no matter how much nail polish Struck uses her feet still look old, with cracks and scabby skin. Which we get put right in our faces on the last day of school, thanks ever so much.

Frau Struck always smiles on the last day of school because she’s looking forward to summer break more than all of us put together and also she thinks we can’t figure that out. She puts on a shitty dress, polishes her gnarled feet and acts all friendly, but up front on her lectern next to the report cards are her holiday books — a guidebook to South Africa and a teach-yourself-English crime novel.

So what are you all doing this summer, Struck asks as she distributes the report cards.

Fucking Frau Struck, says someone at the back quietly enough that you can’t tell who it was but loud enough for the entire class to hear.

Everyone erupts with laughter. Struck gets red splotches all over and tears well up in her eyes. For a second I feel sorry for her but when she smacks my report card on the table and I see that she’s given me Fs in maths and biology that feeling is gone immediately. She should just go and disappear without a trace wherever it is she’s heading, abducted like a character in her stupid crime novel, that would be something, Struck abducted by the Taliban and nobody willing to pay the ransom.

The first thing we do at the end of the school day is lock ourselves in the girls’ bathroom. We dump the milk out of the Müller container we bought that morning and pour in Mariacron brandy, maracuja juice and the last school cafeteria milk of the year and take turns sipping it and roll a cigarette.

Did I tell you I’m getting my wisdom teeth out at the end of the summer, I say.

Really, says Jameelah looking enviously at me, at the children’s hospital? It’s so nice there.

Yeah.

So what are we going to do for summer break?

Not fuck Frau Struck, that’s for sure.

Jameelah laughs.

No, but how about permitting ourselves to be deflowered, she says, what do you say?

I don’t know what she’s talking about.

Lose our virginity, we’ll lose our virginity. We’ll find the nicest boys in the world and go to bed with them. I’m through practising.

Good idea, I say and though I’d kind of forgotten about it, now that Jameelah brings it up it does seem like a good idea and it’s about time though she doesn’t need to talk in such a sophisticated way about it.

Do you know who you want to do it with, asks Jameelah.

I shrug my shoulders.

I was thinking Nico.

Nico? But you’ve known him forever.

I know, that’s exactly why I was thinking of him.

What do you mean?

Well somebody I’ve known for a long time might be just the right person. Plus he’s so big and strong that it would be easy with him, and it’s probably stressful enough doing it the first time that I’d rather do it with somebody I already know well.

But it’s supposed to be something special, says Jameelah fidgeting around with the Müller container.

Do you think so? I don’t know. I just don’t want anything to go wrong.

Jameelah takes a big gulp of Tiger Milk, stares at the floor and continues to fidget with the container, the popping noise it makes puts me on edge.

Now that the time has come we’re no more savvy than we were before, she says looking at me with her big eyes, maybe we’d be better off doing it with somebody from Kurfürstenstrasse after all.