Stephanie de Velasco - Tiger Milk

Give me your phone.

I unlock the gate and shine the light from Jameelah’s phone into the space. It smells of foul water from the heating system and musty clothes and in the front right corner there’s a pile of old coal from years ago, we’ve had central heating for ages now. Stacked against the walls are soggy moving boxes with Mama’s old clothes hanging out of them and next to the boxes is Rainer’s collection of useless electrical devices. No wonder that they keep piling up here, a waffle iron, a nacho heater, like we ever had homemade waffles or nachos. As above so it is below, didn’t Jesus or somebody say that, anyway that’s the way it is, our mouldy basement space looks like the drawer of shit in the hall cabinet, I think, and then I stumble over my old ride-on car past a broken kiddie pool and back to the Barbie dollhouse. The Barbie doll sitting in the living room is the one that lifted up that piece of chewing gum years ago, somehow it’s calming to see her, like there’s someone guarding the basement, like she’s the Hausmeister and probably the only Hausmeister in the world wearing nothing more than a metallic gold swimsuit.

Are we looking for something in particular, asks Jameelah. She coughs.

Yeah, that’s it there, I say pointing at an old guitar case sitting behind the Barbie house and covered by a thick layer of dust.

I didn’t know any of you could play guitar.

None of us can, I say pulling the thing out of the corner, my father played and he took his guitar with him, I say knocking on the case, but he forgot this.

Together we carry the case upstairs.

Jameelah moans.

What on earth is in there, she asks.

Anything I don’t want anymore but can’t throw away.

We drag the guitar case into my room. It’s filled to the brim with stuff and looks no better than the drawer in the hall cabinet. And there at the very bottom between a folder of old school essays and my autograph book is a bundle of postcards and tucked in there is the birthday card and underneath it is the CD.

The Bodyguard , says Jameelah giggling, let me see it.

She goes over to the CD player and puts it in. There are balloons on the front of the birthday card and mice are sitting atop the balloons, not cartoon mice, normal mice with four paws. The mice are watching butterflies and ladybirds and the tails of the mice form the letters Happy Birthday .

Is that the card?

Yeah, I say, but there’s no address on it, Mama must have thrown out the envelope.

Why do you want an address, asks Jameelah, you want to write to him?

I was thinking about it.

Have you searched him online?

Yeah but there was nothing. There were so many people with the same name, over 900,000 results.

Give me the card, says Jameelah stuffing a cookie in her mouth. Whitney Houston is singing ‘I Will Always Love You’ in the background. Just don’t cry, I think and swallow hard.

Watch it with your strawberry fingers, I say.

It’s fine.

Jameelah opens the card and frowns.

This is impossible to read, she says, the writing how can you read that writing?

I don’t know, I always asked Mama to read it to me but she didn’t want to, she refused, I say looking at the scrawl, typical adult writing, you really can’t make out a single word. Jameelah squints and leans over the card tracing the scrawled writing with her finger.

Wake ? No that can’t be it, doesn’t make sense. Make maybe? That’s it, make like and then the next bit is illegible again.

I take the card out of her hand.

Sandal or something like that, I say, make like a sandal ? No that’s stupid.

Sun something, sundial, make like a sundial , says Jameelah, if that’s it then I know what it says.

What?

It says make like a sundial and count only the hours when the world is bright . It’s some kind of saying, I read it somewhere. See, look, it also would fit with the words, says Jameelah pointing to the second line of scrawled letters.

True, I say, and then with love, Papa . That was the only part I could ever read before.

Why would somebody write that on a birthday card, says Jameelah.

What?

You know, make like a sundial.

Who knows, it’s just a saying.

Just a saying my ass, abandoning your family like that and then telling your daughter to make like a sundial. That’s fucked up.

You think so?

Yeah I do. Do you have a photo of him?

I get up and go to get my photo box out from under the bed and then I see it, Amir’s shoebox is there and I’m supposed to get rid of it and I’ve forgotten to and I’ll have to take care of that later, I think, once Jameelah’s gone because if she catches wind of it she’ll definitely want to open the box or whatever, that’s just the way she is.

I pull the box of photos out from under the bed, here I say, handing a photo to Jameelah.

Papa has me on his lap and is playing chess with the person who shot the photo. I know for a fact that Mama took the photo. If I didn’t know it for a fact it would never occur to me that Mama had ever played chess. Mama and chess are about as far apart as I don’t know, whatever the farthest apart two things can be is.

Never seen him, says Jameelah staring at the photo.

Of course not, how would you?

I don’t know, on Kurfürstenstrasse maybe.

That’s enough, I say ripping the photo out of her hand.

Just imagine, says Jameelah, picture us on Kurfürsten sitting on our usual electrical box and then all of a sudden your father comes past, that would be something.

That would not be something, I say, shut up.

Take it easy, says Jameelah.

Take it easy my ass.

Gingerly she takes the photo from me again and looks at it for a long time.

Be happy, she says, at least you still have a father. Mine can’t ever pop up somewhere, not even on Kurfürsten.

It doesn’t do me any good. If you don’t hear from somebody they might as well be dead.

Bullshit, says Jameelah, if you really wanted to you could see him. Or at least write to him.

I wanted to, I say, because of the ring.

Then do it. Just call him. That’s what I’d do. I’d tell him off. Just up and leaving his family like that.

Call him, I don’t know. I’m not sure I have the nerve.

Does you mother have an address book?

Yeah.

I’ll bet your mother has his number in it.

Why would she? They don’t have anything to do with each other.

Parents have that sort of information, especially when they’re enemies. Believe me parents who are fighting with each other are more tightly bound together than parents who get along.

Jameelah stands up and swats the cookie crumbs off herself.

Come on, show me the address book.

When we’re in front of Mama and Rainer’s bedroom I knock before I open the door just to be safe but there’s nobody there and the bed is freshly made, the decorative quilt is even on top, that must have been Rainer. There’s a table next to the window with a small TV on it and beneath the TV is a drawer where Mama keeps the remote and the TV magazine. Underneath the magazine is her address book.

Here, I say handing Jameelah the book with my heart pounding.

What’s his name, she asks.

Jameelah sits cross-legged on the bed, wets her pointer finger and starts leafing through the book. I watch over her shoulder as she goes through G, H, I, the quilt is all rumpled, hopefully nobody comes home, I think, Mama doesn’t like it when we go into her room.

There he is, Joachim, right below my number. Funny, eh, that we’re right next to each other, says Jameelah grinning, come on you’re going to call him now.

My head starts to throb.