Stephanie de Velasco - Tiger Milk

Nini, says Nico reaching out to me at the last minute, then I throw up right in front of the bin. My knees hurt, my head hurts, my legs, between my legs, my arms, hands, feet, everything hurts, the whole world is hurting me.

Here, says Nico handing me a tissue.

I wipe the puke from around my mouth.

He didn’t do it, I say.

Of course he didn’t do it, says Nico. Amir of all people, he won’t even burn an ant with a magnifying glass, but you’ll have to prove it.

There’s proof, I say.

Jameelah looks at me threateningly.

Nini are you okay, she says putting a hand on my forehead, you’re burning up, she says like she’s some kind of nurse, you need to drink something right away, let’s go.

She grabs my arm and pulls me to the mall, angrily shoves open one of the glass doors and then pushes me onto an escalator and up to Tiziano ice cream shop and into the bathroom there. She never lets go of my arm, vice grip, just like the night before at the playground. She pushes open one of the toilet stalls and shoves me inside.

What the hell is wrong with you, I say ripping my arm free.

No, she shouts, what the hell is wrong with you. You’re crazy. We had an understanding!

What kind of understanding?

That we’d keep our mouths shut about Tarik and let the police handle it.

But we didn’t know they would arrest Amir!

It doesn’t matter, a deal is a deal. You can’t just go telling Nico everything without getting my approval first.

Understanding, approval. You’re so German. Amir is innocent and we have to help him.

I’m so German, she says, you’re so German! You’re so naïve you have no idea what that was on the playground, do you?

Of course I do, I say, it was a murder.

It wasn’t just a murder, says Jameelah getting right in my face. Her breath smells of Tiger Milk and used condoms.

What do you mean? What else could it be?

Jasna, says Jameelah, always off at the clubs drinking with her Sorb. You have no clue. They all planned it and Amir is in on it if he told the cops he did it. But of course I’m the evil Nazi, by all means!

Stop it! Amir would never plan something like that!

Then why did he say he did it?

No idea, maybe Tarik threatened him.

No idea, yeah? I’m going to tell you something. If you’re the sister of a guy like Tarik and you fall in love with a Serb and go dancing and drink rum and cokes with him all night you are living dangerously. But you wouldn’t understand. You can’t possibly imagine that because you’re so German — you are the one who is a typical German.

I am not! It might be true that I’m not the smartest but you don’t have to have read as many books as your beloved Lukas to understand what a murder is and what you should do when you witness one. It’s Lukas’s damn fault that we’re mixed up in this shit in the first place.

Oh right, now it’s Lukas who’s guilty is it?

No! But Tarik should be punished not Amir. You can’t just let this stand. I mean, first you take the jewellery then you throw away my ring and now this, it’s not on.

Have you ever stopped to think about all the questions they’ll ask, says Jameelah, we stole from a corpse! They’ll end up thinking we did it.

We just have to explain it to them. Come on help me find the ring in the garbage and then we’ll go to the cops.

No fucking way am I going to the cops, says Jameelah pressing herself against the wall of the stall. Her lower lip starts to tremble, her eyelids flutter like two tiny butterflies.

I swallow.

You have no idea what all of this could mean, says Jameelah, all you can think of is that stupid ring that you don’t even know is your mother’s or not, which makes sense because you have no need to worry that you’ll be deported to someplace where they make their houses out of camel shit.

What does that have to do with this, I say.

Everything. This shit with Jasna will bring nothing but trouble, nothing but bumps in the road and right now the road needs to be smooth until everything is settled with the immigration department. And Tarik is dangerous, really dangerous. An eye for an eye, that’s the way they think. Just imagine if more shit happens.

I grab Jameelah.

What else could possibly happen, I say but Jameelah throws my hand off her shoulder and says, Do you think I don’t know what I’m talking about? Just imagine coming home and finding cops all over your living room and seeing your mother and Jessi lying dead on the sofa, imagine that.

Someone enters the bathroom and goes into the next stall and starts taking off their clothes. I hear the rustle of a tampon package. Jameelah is still leaning against the stall divider which is covered with scrawled notes. Hey sweetie lets fuck but only if you’re blonde says a note written in fat sharpie right next to her head, and I wonder what that is doing in the women’s bathroom.

You still don’t get it do you, whispers Jameelah looking at me with a triumphant look.

I shrug my shoulders.

I think you’re exaggerating.

Then go ahead and talk to the cops, whispers Jameelah, you can talk to them for all I care, just keep me out of it. I don’t know anything about it and I was nowhere near there whatever you say, understand? And don’t ever bother calling me again because if you go to the cops we’re done being friends.

You don’t care about me anyway, I say.

That’s not true, it’s the opposite.

And what about Amir? Why don’t you care about him?

What a load of shit that I don’t care about you guys. Man, don’t you get it, I’m trying to protect you.

That’s not true, I say, you’re only thinking of yourself. Amir doesn’t matter to you. And you say you don’t want to go to the police because you know I won’t go on my own.

Listen to me, says Jameelah taking my hand, we will go to the cops, just not yet. First we’ll talk to Amir. He has to tell the truth. We’ll try to convince him to tell the truth. It’s the only way I’ll consider doing it. Until that happens we can’t tell anyone, nobody can know that we saw it. He has to say it first, then everything will work out.

And what about the ring, I ask.

Jameelah rolls her eyes.

Fine we’ll go get the ring, she says, but first you have to swear. Swear that you won’t say anything to anyone.

I swear, I say.

Pinky swear, whispers Jameelah holding out her pinky finger.

Okay, I say, pinky swear. I hook my pinky into her pinky and kiss my thumb.

On TV people who’ve seen something bad always wake up drenched in sweat. They dream about the bad thing night after night and each time they wake up they’re happy that this time it was just a dream and they fall back to sleep exhausted and everything is alright again. It’s in scenes like those that you can tell they are actors, you notice it especially with the whole bathed-in-sweat thing. I mean, what would have to happen for someone to wake up drenched in sweat? You only ever see people bathed in sweat on TV, there’s no such thing in real life, which is how you can tell that very few people have ever really been through something bad, because I know how fake that is now that something bad has happened to me.

In reality it’s the other way around. Everything is dark and quiet at night but when the light comes through my window in the morning that’s when everything comes back, Jasna’s bloody clothes, the smell of blood and jewellery and Tiger Milk, and anything unpleasant takes on huge proportions, way bigger than it should, like Jessi’s crying or Mama’s sofa and pillows, and anything nice seems insignificant, like the sun, the food at the pool, the planet, the summer school holidays. Some things also look different or sound different, for instance I’ll think I see the moon but it is just the light atop a crane, or I’ll see a face sighing at me in the sauce warming up on the stove even though it’s just crap spaghetti from a can. The whole world is warped and distorted like you’re cross-eyed all the time. It’s only when it gets dark again that it stops and everything is quiet, though in summer it gets dark so late, which is why I wish it was winter.