Stephanie de Velasco: Tiger Milk

Deport you? Why?

Jameelah looks at the floor and fidgets with the Müller jar, squeezing the plastic sides and making them loudly pop back out.

No idea. But my mother’s worried.

They can’t just kick you out.

You have no idea how it works, says Jameelah, it can happen just like that.

You don’t even know any Arabic, I say.

That’s not true. I can understand it. But even if I didn’t, it doesn’t make any difference to them. They don’t care.

So, what now?

We just have to wait now, says Jameelah, they’ll send us notice one way or the other sometime in the next three months. Though my mother wanted to try to get us naturalized.

Naturalized? You mean become actual German citizens?

Exactly.

Is that difficult?

Pretty difficult, yeah. You have to fill out all kinds of paperwork and take a test. If you pass the test you get a real German passport instead of the stupid residency card we have now, and then we wouldn’t have to constantly run around to all these government offices anymore, we wouldn’t have to get our residency permits extended all the time. Man, if that ever happens, if I ever become a German citizen, I’ll throw a huge party.

Sounds good to me, I say.

Yeah, says Jameelah, but it won’t be just any old party. I’ll throw a potato party.

A what?

A potato party. Orkhan and Tayfun did the same thing, like in that one movie, you know, where the guy serves nothing but things made out of potatoes.

I look out the window of the subway car and think, three months. I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to think what it would be like if Jameelah wasn’t around anymore so I grab her hand and hold it tight.

Things are always changing, even if you don’t want them to, says Jameelah.

No, I say, everything will stay the same if we want it to. When you’re grown up, you can keep things the way you want. You decide everything as an adult, that’s the good part of being grown up. And anyway, three months, do you know what that means?

Jameelah shakes her head.

Three months means we have the whole summer in front of us.

I have a pebble in my shoe. I kind of like it when I have a pebble in my shoe. It’s like someone’s there, like someone’s accompanying me through the world. I can play with it if I get bored, roll it around with my big toe, round and round like a circus horse being paraded around the ring. I don’t know why, but when I have a pebble in my shoe I never feel like I’m alone.

Jameelah and I put our feet up on the seat bench opposite us. The pebble tumbles down toward my heel and diamond-shaped clumps of dirt fall from the soles of our Chucks onto the seat. The dirt is from Tiergarten, sometimes as part of detention we have to go to the park and do stuff. Jameelah kicks her shoes against each other and the dirt rains down on the seat. She smiles and takes a big gulp of Tiger Milk.

Leave some for me, I say.

We still have the bottle, she says, kicking her backpack. Dangling from the zipper is the luggage tag I gave her back in elementary school, the one with the cartoon mouse. The mouse used to be white but it’s grey now, that’s how long me and Jameelah have been best friends. On the front of the backpack, handwritten with a sharpie it says Love you my angel, from Anna-Lena . Anna-Lena is full of it. It’s a load of shit that she loves Jameelah. And a load of shit that Jameelah’s an angel.

Some old man, typical senior citizen, walks past us.

Get your feet down, he says.

We’re getting out at the next station anyway you old Nazi, says Jameelah.

The old idiot stands there with his mouth open. Jameelah chugs the rest of the Tiger Milk and drops the container on the floor. At the station we get out and sit down on a bench to mix another round in an empty soda bottle I have in my bag.

Crazy, says Jameelah as she pours brandy into the bottle, there are some words with magical power in Germany. When you say one of them the world comes to a complete halt. Nazi. The world just stops and stares at you.

More like words that are cursed, I say. The old bastard felt insulted. You know how it is with the word Nazi.

Yeah, okay, that’s true, Nazi is a bad example, but if you think about it there really are words that make people stare at you, whether they feel personally insulted or not. I mean, forget the old guy, imagine what would happen if I just said Nazi out loud, not even at anyone. Everyone would stare. Or Jew. You can’t say Jew. Even though it’s really just a normal word.

That’s another bad example.

Jameelah puckers her lips, thinking it over.

True, true. But you know what I mean, like … I can’t think of a good one right now.

The last few drops of school milk trickle into the soda bottle with the brandy.

Vagina, I say.

What?

Vagina’s one of those words, I say.

Jameelah looks at me blankly for a second.

Vagina, vagina, she shouts, exactly, that’s what I mean! It’s just a normal word.

No reason to shout, I say.

What, you, too? You said it first, she shouts, that’s exactly what I mean, you can’t say it, you just can’t say it.

She jumps up and the mouse on the tag on her backpack swings around like it’s gone crazy.

New game, says Jameelah and the millions of bracelets she’s wearing jangle in my face, let’s try to think of all the totally normal words in the world that you’re not allowed to say.

Only if you come up with the next one, I say.

She thinks.

Nazi, Jew, vagina, it’s not that easy to think of another one.

Jameelah grabs a pouch of loose tobacco out of her backpack and starts to roll herself a cigarette. She tries to sprinkle the tobacco out smoothly and evenly on the rolling paper, precision work she’s doing. Neither of us says anything for a while, maybe because we both know what’s coming and we both know we could still reconsider it. But I don’t want to reconsider it. And anyway, it was Jameelah’s idea originally.

We’re going to do it again aren’t we, I ask.

Jameelah doesn’t react, she just sits there calmly, rolling her cigarette.

Come on, I say.

Jameelah licks the edge of the rolling paper and shoves the finished cigarette in her mouth and then looks at me.

You think we should, she says, pulling her Zippo out of her backpack.

I think we should. It was a good laugh last time.

More like crass, that’s what it was last time, crass. Or cross.

Yeah, it was cross. But it was fun, too, right?

Her dark eyes bore into me. She takes a drag on her cigarette and blows the smoke out the side of her mouth. I grab the cigarette from her and take a drag.

Why else did we dress like this?

Jameelah cracks a smile.

Fine, she says, you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Give me a break, you sound like our teacher.

I hand the cigarette back to her.

But today I get to put the condom on, Jameelah says, the red one.

We hop down the stairs of the subway station together, two steps at a time, down to Kurfürstenstrasse.

There’s a lot happening on the street, as always. People are racing from one shop to the next. It seems like everyone on Kurfürstenstrasse has a bit of tuna salad or ketchup stuck to the corner of their mouth. That’s because every third storefront is a place to get cheap food. I counted one time. Department store, optician, bakery; clothing store, office supplies, sandwich shop; more clothes, bed linen, fish and chips. On and on. The further down the street you go the cheaper the places get, that’s where the mobile phone stores and ninety-nine-cent shops are and loads of Turkish bridal shops and nail salons. Just beyond the discount baby store is where you start to see the women standing around.