Stephanie de Velasco - Tiger Milk

I have to tell you something, she says looking at Lukas, I dreamed about you, I dreamt that you captured some kind of mythical beast, it was see-through with two heads. It was like a cross between a dragon and a kangaroo but it lived in the water and could purr like a cat.

Lukas laughs.

You should write that down, he says, that’s really poetic imagery.

I already did, says Jameelah.

He is really good looking somehow, at least when he’s listening to Jameelah tell him something, though maybe we all look nice when she is telling us something. Lukas wants to say something but two hands come from behind him and cover his Bambi eyes. The hands belong to Anna-Lena, Anna-Lena whose hair is always freshly washed — only freshly washed hair moves like Anna-Lena’s.

There you are, she says and kisses Lukas on the cheek. Anna-Lena who always smells like flowery perfume and writes Love you my angel on everybody’s rucksack but doesn’t really mean it. You can’t say I love you if you don’t actually mean it, that’s against the rules.

Behind her come Nico, Nadja, and Tobi.

S-bahn party, shouts Nico throwing his hands up and starting to run across the plaza toward the station. I can hear the beer bottles clinking against each other in his backpack. We run after him toward the S-bahn. As Lukas plays around with Anna-Lena a few steps ahead of us, Jameelah stares at him as if she’s in a trance.

She loves him, Jameelah whispers.

Yeah, I whisper back, but he’s her cousin.

So, says Jameelah, it’s not illegal.

Still, you just don’t do that, I say taking her hand, which is ice cold.

The creature in my dream, says Jameelah, he captured it for me, he showed it to me, and then he kissed me, he captured it for me and not for her.

I know, I say.

Mama lays on the sofa basically all the time. Most of the time her eyes are closed, but when I come home she sometimes opens them and asks, where were you. When she opens her eyes she always looks horribly tired, like she’s just arrived from some faraway place and only flopped down on the sofa here in our living room by blind luck. I don’t think she’s really looking for an answer to her question. Me on the other hand, I’d love to know where she was, where she always goes behind her shuttered eyelids, all those hours she spends alone on the sofa. Mama’s sofa is like a remote island she lives on. And even though that island is in the middle of our living room, a thick haze obscures it from view. You can’t dock on Mama’s island.

Lately Jessi’s been lying on the sofa with Mama more and more often, she lies next to her with her head buried in her breasts, motionless, like she’s in a coma. Maybe Mama’s disease is contagious, though Mama isn’t even really sick, I just always think she is because that’s how it looks. I know that Jessi drinks. Out in the hall above the goodie cabinet, where all the sweets are stored, is a glass-front cabinet. Jessi gets into that and drinks the Eier liqueur. I bet if Mama knew she would slap Jessi in the face. I only know because last week when I was in the kitchen I heard the click of the glass-front cabinet. You can open the goodie cabinet silently, but the glass-front cabinet has a magnetic catch that clicks, that’s how I heard it. And also you can see the remnants of Eier liqueur stuck to all of Mama’s JOY glasses. Jessi drinks the liqueur out of the dusty glasses and then just puts them right back on the shelf in the cabinet, like nothing ever happened. Then she lies in her bed like she’s dead. Her room reeks of alcohol, like alcohol and little girls, like the gym when the fifth graders have been in there right before us.

Once a week I sit down with Mama on the sofa and brush her hair. Rainer went out of his way to buy an expensive brush for that at Spinnrad, all organic materials, just like Mama said it should be. Sometimes Mama cries when I brush her hair but I act as if I don’t notice, I think it’s better that way. Jameelah’s mother says you can wake someone who’s asleep but someone who’s only pretending to sleep you can never get to wake up.

When I look out the window in my room I see the playground where I played as a child. We’ve lived here forever, just like Nico, who lives directly across the courtyard from us, on the same floor. I learned how to walk and how to ride a bike on the pavement in front of our place. Once I roller skated on the sandy path that leads from the playground out to the street where Jameelah lives. Jameelah was coming the other way, also on roller skates, the same kind as mine, only in red. I traded her my blue left skate for her red left skate and we roller skated until the ball bearings were clogged with sand. Then we climbed the old oak trees and tied pieces of yarn onto the branches. One oak belonged to each of us. Actually, no, that’s not true, Amir’s tree was the one linden tree right in the middle of the oaks. Nico was allowed to climb in my tree and I was allowed to climb in Jameelah’s, but nobody was allowed up Amir’s linden tree except Amir. The trees all had names but we all forgot them except for Amir. I haven’t climbed my tree for ages but Amir says the yarn is still hanging from his. Over the years the bark has grown over the yarn, but the ends of the strands are still visible, which is proof that we didn’t just dream the whole thing up, at least that’s what Amir says.

When I go to Jameelah’s I always cross the playground. The playground’s pretty big and right in the middle of it is a huge sandbox. Somebody drew an invisible line through the middle of the playground and the German and Russian kids never go on the slide and the Arab and Bosnian kids never go on the swings. Back when Jameelah and I roller skated around the playground there wasn’t yet an invisible line.

Amir lives in the same building as Jameelah, right behind the playground, down the path and out to the side of the building that faces the street. In front of the door to the building I see Dragan standing around. He’s smoking. Well, actually, smoking doesn’t really describe it. He’s sucking on his cigarette like he’s trying to hurt it, and every now and then he spits violently on the pavement with a loud splat. A dark pool of spit has formed at his feet. The name Dragan says it all. It sounds evil, like dragon or Dracula. I mean, there’s a lot of Serbs named Dragan but maybe Tarik is right, maybe all Serbs are evil, I have no idea, but this one is for sure. I slink toward the door to the building, trying not to draw attention. I push the doorbell for Amir’s apartment.

You, says Dragan but I don’t acknowledge him, man, why doesn’t the stupid door buzz open.

Turn around when I’m talking to you, girl.

What is it, I say.

Dragan flicks the butt of his finished cigarette into the pool of spit and it sizzles as it sinks in and he smiles and spits again. I feel sick. And Jasna is in love with this guy, disgusting.

Are you going up to Amir and Tarik’s place, he asks.

I nod.

Tell Jasna that I’ll wait down here for her no matter how long it takes, I’ll wait for her.

How romantic, I think as the door finally buzzes open.

The door to Amir’s apartment is open and inside it smells like coffee and dirty nappies, just like it always does.

Hello, I call wondering whether I should take off my shoes. In the entry hall is a folding drying rack hung with men’s underwear that must be Tarik’s.

Hello, I say again then I walk into the living room and find Tarik and his mother sitting there. She never says guten Tag, she just nods and smiles. Maybe because she can’t speak a word of German, seriously not a single word. Jameelah says you can’t even borrow an onion or an egg from her because she doesn’t know the words onion and egg.