Stephanie de Velasco - Tiger Milk

It’s not so bad. I don’t want to live in Germany anymore anyway. Did you know I can do my middle school equivalency right here in jail? The teacher is nice, not like that witch Frau Struck. I might even be able to finish my high school degree and start college. I’ve been thinking I might want to be a doctor. Or maybe I can do something related to soccer, I don’t really know.

Doctor or soccer, says Jameelah tapping her forehead, you’re crazy, you’re in jail, don’t you get it, you’re going to be sentenced for a crime you didn’t commit, that’s insane.

Leave me alone, says Amir.

Did Tarik tell you some bullshit, asks Jameelah, did he say that you’d be the hero of the family if you took all the blame on yourself, that all the doors would be open to you, is that what he said, yeah?

Just go over to that guy and tell him the truth, I whisper nodding toward the guy in uniform.

Cut it out, says Amir, I thought you wanted to visit me.

We do but are we supposed to just sit by and watch you throw your life away?

What I do with my life is none of your business, it’s only to do with me, with me and my family.

You’re a coward, says Jameelah, saviour of the family my ass. You know what you are? You’re a little girl exactly like Tarik always said.

Shut up shouts Amir, you always know everything, you always tell us what we’re supposed to do. Jameelah says it’s like this and that’s the way it is, like you have a clue about life! Believe me, there are things that you don’t understand at all, things that aren’t logical but are still right, but you’ll never get it because you don’t have a family, you don’t know what it’s like to think of anyone but yourself!

Jameelah jumps up and her chair falls over.

You can kiss my ass, she shouts turning toward the door.

You kiss my ass, says Amir.

Cut it out, says Nico grabbing Jameelah’s arm.

The fuck I’m going to sit back down, she says, what the fuck do you know anyway you fucking kraut. You act as if you have a clue about what’s happening here. It’s pathetic.

Settle down, calls the guy in uniform, otherwise the visitation permit will be immediately revoked.

Nico makes a fist. I look pleadingly at Jameelah. She hesitates, looking at the door, then sits back down on her chair shaking her head.

Listen, says Nico looking at Amir, we just want you to think long and hard about what you’re doing. Family is important but Jasna was family too. You’re innocent I know it, even if I can’t prove it. But if you protect the person who really did it you open yourself up to other charges.

With his arms folded on his chest Amir looks out the window.

She wasn’t my real sister anyway.

What?

Only half.

What do mean only half?

She had a different father, says Amir, it happened during the war.

Aha, says Nico.

The sun streams through the window and the tiny dust particles float in the air like in outer space, weightless, without a care in the world, they’ve got nothing else to do in life other than fly around and then gather into a dirty pile. From the perspective of the universe, like Herr Wittner always says, the earth is no different than a speck of dust. Who knows, I think, maybe the particles here in this room are planets and we’re just too big and stupid to see the life living there and all the stuff happening there, bad stuff and beautiful stuff, who knows, that’s the way it is with earth after all which is nothing more than a speck of dust, a rotten speck of dust full of blood and shit.

What’s up with you says Nico.

Jameelah rummages around in her trouser pocket but Amir is faster and pulls a huge checkered handkerchief out of his pocket, the kind only old men carry around.

Don’t cry he says holding it out to me.

I blow my nose. I don’t know if it’s the grandfather handkerchief or what, no idea, but I’ve never blown my nose so loudly in my entire life, it sounds like the old men who sit in the park and blow their noses and the only thing missing is for me to hold one nostril closed and shoot snot from the other one onto the path. For as long as I can remember Jameelah and I have tried to protect Amir, from the boys who tried to throw his book bag in puddles and said things like what’s the point of all the books and folders you can’t read anyway you can’t write anyway, from the girls who opened shaken up soda bottles in his face and said you stink take a shower, and most of all from Tarik who would smack him on the back of the head and say stop crying you’re not a little girl but now I realize that Amir’s not little at all, no smaller than us, he’s just as big, bigger even, and much bigger and adult and older than all of us combined. I never had a grandfather but this is how I’d imagine him, like Amir, giving me his handkerchief and saying don’t cry like he’d become fifty years older from one day to the next. Maybe that’s how it is, maybe we all get old all of a sudden. Can that be true I wonder, is it possible that it’s not the passage of time that makes us old but the things that happen to us, that make us despair, but that we have to go through whether we want to or not because they are bigger and stronger than we are because life is bigger and stronger than any one person, that maybe it’s these things that make us old.

I didn’t want her to die you have to believe me, says Amir, you have to believe me, I didn’t want her to die.

I hand the handkerchief back to him.

We believe you, I say and look at Jameelah.

She’s sitting with her arms crossed looking at the toes of her Chucks then she looks up at Amir, at me, out the window and then back at Amir.

Of course we believe you otherwise we wouldn’t be here, she says reaching for Amir’s hand.

Slowly I reach out my hand and put it on the table on top of Amir and Jameelah’s hands then Amir puts his other hand on top of mine and then Jameelah does the same and then I pull out my other hand and put it on top of hers and Amir smiles and pulls his hand out from under ours and puts it on top of the pile of hands, Jameelah, me, Amir, just like when we were kids, one for all and all for one Jameelah always used to say, she got it out of some book but now, I think, it’s not like in a book, nothing is like it used to be no matter how many games we play with our hands.

The uniformed guy clears his throat loudly.

Time’s up.

Dig in man, says Nico nodding at the food and shaking Amir’s hand, and think it over, take some time to really think it all over.

Salam brother, says Jameelah.

See you soon, I say.

See you soon, says Amir handing back the handkerchief, here, take it, consider it a gift, you can wash it and keep using it. Not bad, eh? They’ve got tons of them here.

Thanks, I say putting it in my pocket.

Do you still have the box, Amir whispers when Nico and Jameelah have moved off to the door.

Of course, what do you think?

Get rid of it.

Why?

Get rid of it. Don’t open it just throw it away, okay?

Fine.

I’m not a bad person Nini.

I know, I say, I know who you are. We’re going to help you, it’s a promise.

No, says Amir, it’s too late and now that it’s too late I’d rather bleed than break.

Totally sad, says Nico when we’re back outside the exit. He takes a sketchbook and a pen out of his lunchbox and walks off along the prison wall. The gift basket is between me and Jameelah and we open the cellophane and take turns drinking from the second bottle of lingonberry juice.

What are you doing, I ask but Nico doesn’t answer he just stands in front of the wall and doodles in his sketchbook. The sun beats down on us.

Jameelah rolls her eyes.

The master artist at work.