Tiger Milk

by Stephanie de Velasco

  Snitch! Pig! she screams.

  Stop, I scream.

  Backstabbing Schwein!

  Stop, you’re going to break my arms, I scream and then I hear someone call out.

  Stop right now both of you!

  I’d love to stop but since Jameelah doesn’t stop I don’t stop either and then comes water, wet and ice cold, and I frantically try to catch my breath.

  Who are you, shouts Amir, he’s standing next to us on the pavement with a red bucket in his hand, are you dogs or are you my friends?

  One of my flip-flops is broken and my bag with my swimming gear has opened up and my bathing suit, sunscreen, cigarettes, and tampons are strewn about the pavement. My face is burning and my arms are killing me.

  I’m not going along with this any longer, shouts Amir, you guys need to make up, you hear me!

  Slowly I stand up.

  Fine by me, I say, I’d love to.

  Jameelah looks at me, her hair is all crazy and blood is dripping from her lip onto her tank-top. For a second I think she’s going to put out her hand to shake but she just picks up her bag from the ground and says never and then walks off toward the playground.

  Wait, I call after her but Jameelah doesn’t turn around. In my mouth I taste sand. I spit on the ground.

  Nice way to say hi, says Amir grimacing.

  Sorry.

  The pain in my arms slowly subsides but my face still burns.

  How are you doing, I ask.

  Good.

  Are things working out, I ask. I mean, with everything?

  Listen, says Amir, I don’t want to talk about it, about any of it. None of it you understand.

  Okay.

  Good.

  Happy Ramadan, I say.

  Thanks, to you to. Bajram Serif Mubarek.

  Ready to go?

  Amir smiles.

  Today I’m going to jump off the ten-metre platform.

  Swear on your mother’s grave, I say and for a second I think I shouldn’t have said it but I don’t really mean his mother’s grave, it’s just something people say, you really have to think about your choice of words now and the things you just say without meaning it, but Amir just laughs and smacks my legs with his duffel bag, I swear, he says, I swear on my mother’s grave, today I’m going to dive off the ten-metre platform.

  At the pool I can see Nico, Tobi, and Nadja from a long way off, laying in our usual spot.

  Yo, yells Nico getting up and coming toward us, great to see you.

  Amir slaps him five.

  Hi, says Nico looking over at me.

  I ignore him and put my Aladdin towel down next to Tobi and Nadja.

  You want anything from the snack kiosk, I ask Amir.

  Nah, he says, it’s Ramadan.

  Are you really fasting, asks Nadja.

  I’m trying, says Amir.

  Nadja takes a drag on her cigarette.

  Isn’t it unhealthy?

  It’s his business, I say.

  I know but not eating and drinking all day, it sounds tough to me, you have to have an iron will.

  I have an iron will, says Amir pulling a Star Wars towel out of his bag.

  So, says Tobi, are you living with Jameelah right now?

  Amir nods.

  So fucked up, Tobi says, that they just threw you in jail like that.

  I dig around for my wallet.

  Why don’t you come with me to the kiosk, I say, then we can go to the diving platform.

  Amir stands up. We go together across the lawn and then Amir suddenly stops.

  What’s up, I say.

  Back there, he says nodding his head in the direction of the kiddie pool.

  Dragan is sitting beyond the kiddie pool. He’s wearing his purple swimsuit, like always, and like always a few of his friends are sitting around him playing cards and drinking Slivovitz. Somebody smacks Dragan on the shoulder, he laughs, but not with his eyes, only with his mouth. Herr Wittner said one time that it normally takes thirteen different muscles to make a real smile and that if they aren’t all being used it’s not a real smile, but then again what does normally even mean.

  He rang the door yesterday, says Amir.

  Who, Dragan?

  Yeah. Noura answered. He wanted to talk to me.

  Why?

  He wants to know where Jasna’s buried.

  And?

  They buried her in Visegrad where my father’s buried.

  Why don’t you tell him?

  I don’t know, says Amir, not yet. Maybe at some point.

  At the kiosk I buy a bulette with mustard and a bread roll. I sit down on the sun-warmed tiles next to the diving platforms and watch as Amir climbs up to the ten-metre platform. My face still hurts from Jameelah’s fingernails but luckily the wounds in my mouth from getting my wisdom teeth pulled don’t hurt anymore, the lead doctor took out the stitches that had popped out and replaced them, but those came out too and things didn’t heal so well, that’s what the lead doctor said, and he said I should be careful about hard things and spicy things. I bite into the hard crust of the roll. Amir waves at me, I wave back, and then somebody taps me on the shoulder.

  Can I sit with you, says Nico.

  Leave me alone, I say but Nico sits down anyway.

  Don’t you get it?

  No, says Nico, to be honest I don’t. I know you’re upset that I went and did it on my own but I had no choice.

  No choice? You went straight from the hospital to the police! You didn’t think about it for even a second. You didn’t give me a chance to think it over.

  I told you I was going to go to the cops.

  You said you would go to the cops if I didn’t.

  You were in the hospital, says Nico.

  We had a deal, I say.

  A deal? What deal?

  That you would go if I didn’t go, I say, but I never had the chance to go.

  Amir was sitting in jail, innocent, and I was just supposed to sit around?

  A deal is a deal! You can’t just go to the police without talking to me.

  A deal. Maybe I should have filled out a form or something, says Nico.

  You should have asked me!

  I did but you’re so stubborn you wouldn’t listen. If it was up to you Amir would still be sitting in jail.

  Right, of course, now I’m the bad guy.

  I thought I was, he says.

  I stay silent.

  So what are we supposed to hate each other for the rest of our lives now because of it?

  That’s fine as far as I’m concerned. I’ll never forgive you for not talking to me first, and your ring, you can have that back too. I don’t want it.

  Fine give it to me, says Nico.

  Do you think I would still be wearing it? I threw it somewhere in my room and hopefully the vacuum cleaner will find it.

  Nico looks at me angrily.

  Now get out of here, I say.

  Whatever you say, he says standing up.

  I look up at the ten-metre platform. Amir is standing on the edge staring down at the water.

  Don’t look down, I think.

  Amir puts out his arms.

  Put on Rihanna Burana, he calls, I’m going to do a double-Amir royale with extra cheese and hot sauce!

  The security guards look over blankly. Amir jumps and pulls his knee up and holds it against his chest while in midair and then he splashes down in the best cannonball I’ve seen in ages. People clap and howl. Snorting and with a smile plastered across his face, Amir swims over to the side of the pool.

  So, he asks, how was I?

  Heavenly, I say, you were heavenly.

  It’s slowly getting dark and our bags bump lazily at our legs.

  It’s unfair that I only got to go to the pool twice this summer, says Amir as we walk down the street toward the playground.

  Next year is another year, I say.

  Who knows what will happen then, says Amir.

  Nothing will.

  Hope
fully, he says and his gait becomes noticeably slower.

  We don’t have to go that way, I say, we can go around the back.

  No, wait a minute.

  For a few minutes we just stand around. I’m barefoot, I threw out my busted flip-flops on the way home, and the street is warm beneath my feet but not as warm as a few weeks ago at this time of day, that’s one way you know that summer will be over soon, I think, but this is the first time in my life that I’m not sad about it.

  Amir lifts his nose.

  Come on, he says tossing his bag over his shoulder and marching into the playground. We go through the sandbox and over to the play fort and Amir stops there.

  Up there is where you were sitting, right?

  Yeah, I say, we were up there.

  And it happened back there, says Amir, right?

  Yeah it happened back there.

  Amir slowly spins and looks all around as if he’s never been here before in his entire life, as if this isn’t our playground, as if it’s the Holocaust memorial on the other side of Tiergarten, and just like the tourists who stand around surveying the memorial looking all serious, that’s exactly how Amir looks at the playground now. Back when the memorial was first opened we used to play there, hopping from one stone pillar to the next or hiding in the spaces between them until Noura was worried sick about us, but then the city banned it, they said this is a memorial not a playground but it always remained a playground in my eyes. But now, as I watch Amir looking out over our playground, I realize that our playground is no longer a playground.

  Amir goes back across the sandbox and over to our trees. He stops at his linden tree, he lets his bag fall to the ground and starts to climb.

  Come on, he calls looking down at me.

  I throw my bag down next to his and start slowly climbing up behind him. My bare feet smack against the bark. I have no idea how long it’s been since I last climbed something. Strange that you just stop climbing, and you can’t really remember the moment when you stopped doing it. Adults always know when they quit smoking or drinking or when they stopped nursing their baby, but you’re younger when you quit climbing trees or playing with marbles or Barbies and you don’t remember when it happened, you forget long before you’re an adult.

  The little heart-shaped leaves of Amir’s linden tree get denser up near the top of the tree and the branches are thicker and darker. I see Amir sitting on a thick branch above me.

  Here, he says pointing to a spot next to him on the branch, here’s the proof.

  I can’t see it, I say.

  Amir rummages in his pocket and pulls out a phone.

  You got another one, I say.

  It’s Tarik’s old one. It was in my room when I came home, says Amir aiming the light from the phone’s display at the branch.

  Crazy, I say looking at the short piece of thread hanging down from the branch. The bark looks weird, like an arm that’s been bandaged and the skin has grown back around it. I look out through the leaves at the city. It’s already dark up here in the leaves but the rest of the city is still lit up, off in the west you can see the radio tower and it looks like it’s on fire because the sun is setting behind it.

  You can’t be angry at Jameelah, says Amir.

  I’m not, what do you mean?

  Because she didn’t want to go to the police, that’s what I mean.

  Oh.

  She didn’t want to get involved you know.

  I know, I say, but if it wasn’t for Nico you’d still be sitting in jail right now.

  Tarik’s there now, which is just as bad.

  But Tarik is guilty.

  Yeah, says Amir, I know, but still. Do you still have the box?

  No, I threw it away like you said.

  Good.

  How long will Tarik be in jail?

  A long time, says Amir, and when he gets out he’ll go directly from jail to the airport and then off to Sarajevo and then Visegrad.

  I pluck a leaf and rub it between my fingers.

  Have you ever been there, I ask.

  Stop that, Amir says taking the leaf out of my hand. He looks past me, off toward the east through the leaves and shakes his head.

  Tarik was born there, he says, they lived there, Babo, Majka, and Tarik. Tarik had a red bicycle, there’s a photo of him riding a red bike in his bathing suit, the sun is shining like today, can you picture it, he was riding a bike normally, with two healthy legs, says Amir, but then the war came. Babo went to the army, nothing got better, things just got worse and more dangerous. Majka took Tarik. There’s a bridge in Visegrad, a very old bridge from the middle ages, and the river runs beneath it. Majka wanted to cross the bridge. There were Chetniks on the bridge. She turned around but they followed her. Tarik screamed and wanted to help her and one of them shot him in the leg.

  Amir rips the leaf in his hand and then rubs the pieces between his fingers.

  They raped her, he whispers, then they tied Tarik to her body and threw them into the river. Tarik told me the night everything happened. I went straight to the police. On my own. Tarik didn’t pressure me at all. Neither did Majka, nobody pressured me, everyone just thinks so because they want easy answers to everything, they want to understand things right away, things that don’t have anything to do with each other. But the truth isn’t like mathematics, it’s always something singular and it’s never logical.

  The red orb in the sky disappears behind the radio tower, it’s nearly nighttime up here in the tree.

  Visegrad, I say, the sound of the word is nice. Like a combination of vitamins and ice and grass and glad.

  Yeah, says Amir, people think so. But it’s always the case that places where bad things happen sound nice, well, either funny or nice, did you ever notice that?

  Yeah, I say, I thought that about Fukushima.

  Or Auschwitz, says Amir, Auschwitz sounds like Slivovitz, don’t you think? It makes everything that much more awful you know, it’s like poetry, that combination of tragedy and comedy, life seems to love that sort of thing.

  You think so?

  Yeah, says Amir, definitely. That’s the way life is. When things are going too well something has to come along to mess things up, otherwise it wouldn’t be life you know.

  Night has descended on his face, just the whites of his eyes, four half moons, glint at me.

  Where was she lying, he asks.

  I look down at the ground, at the dry dirt around the trunk.

  There.

  Where exactly?

  There, I say and point down to a spot next to where we used to play marbles.

  What did she look like, Amir asks.

  What do you mean, I say.

  I mean at the end. How did she look?

  I stare at the spot where Jasna had lain. Her tight white t-shirt, blood running out of her left side and soaking into the ground, pinkish yellow puke in the corner of her mouth and her eyes like in that YouTube video where a group of men hunt down a woman and kill her in the street in some hot country.

  Go on, tell me.

  Peaceful, I say.

  Really?

  Yes. Very peaceful.

  Rainer’s taxi is standing in front of the building. I go through the courtyard and up the stairs and look for the key to the apartment but I’ve barely stuck it into the lock before the door opens. Mama grabs me by my hair and yanks me into the apartment and the next second I get smacked in the face.

  Do you know how late it is, she screams, you shouldn’t be roaming around like this, how many times do I have to tell you!

  I duck out of the way.

  First and second period are cancelled tomorrow, I say.

  I do not care, Mama screams, after everything that’s happened. We get worried.

  Rainer comes out to the hall.

  When it’s dark you are at home, that’s what we agreed, he says, and as long as you are living under my roof you will stick to it.

  I look him up and down. The way he’s standing there
in the greasy coveralls that he wears at home like other people wear bathrobes, his thin grey and blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. I can’t help thinking of his porno collection under the floorboards, the way he loves to sit in front of the TV and pick at his toenails, that for him is what it means to be home, the same way he stares at the toilet paper after he wipes his ass, what is there to say to someone like that. Without saying a word I turn around and go into my room. I undress, open the window, and let my legs dangle out the window and smoke a cigarette.

  There’s a quiet knock at the door.

  Nini, whispers Jessi and I can hear in her voice that she’s crying.

  I just wanted to go to the bathroom and then it happened, says Jessi pointing at a blood stain on her underwear. I flick the cigarette out the window and hop down from the windowsill.

  Come here, I say and pull her onto the bed, it’s not so bad, are you in pain?

  Jessi shakes her head.

  No but I don’t want Rainer to find out, he said that when I get my period I’ll get a white jumper as a gift and have to eat tomato soup, that’s what they do where he’s from, that’s how they celebrate it. I don’t want that, I don’t want tomato soup, I hate tomatoes.

  Come with me, I say and take her hand.

  Quietly we creep to the bathroom. I search in the cabinet.

  Here, I say handing her a tampon, put one leg up on the toilet seat like this and then you stick it into yourself.

  I’m scared, says Jessi.

  No need to be scared, it’s easy.

  No, I’m scared of getting that shock that you can get.

  What kind of shock?

  From the tampon. Pepi told us about it at school, he said that you can die from tampons. You get some kind of toxic shock and then you’re done for. It’s right there on the box, there’s a warning on every package.

  You’re not going to get toxic tampon shock, I certainly know better than Pepi.

  Are you sure?

  I’m sure. You can sleep in my room tonight and I’ll keep an eye on you.

  Okay, says Jessi pulling down her underwear. You just shove it in?