Yep, I say, just shove it in.
It is easy, says Jessi looking at me with surprise.
See. It gets easier too, at some point you’ll be able to put a tampon in while standing at a bus stop or in class without anyone noticing. Just takes practice. And Rainer doesn’t have to know, it’s none of his fucking business, you hear me.
Jessi nods, pulls up her underwear, and sits down on the toilet seat cover.
Do you know, I say, that you didn’t used to want to sleep in Mama’s bed when she had her period?
I know. I thought the brown stains on her nightgown were disgusting, says Jessi pointing toward the tampon, why don’t you feel it?
No idea, that’s just the way it is, it’s normal.
That’s good.
Yeah, I think so too.
I’m hungry, says Jessi.
There’s nothing to eat, I say.
Yes there is, in the refrigerator there’s a plate that says For Nini from Noura Eid Mobarak. Are you hungry too?
I shake my head.
Go get the plate, I say, but be quiet, I need to go out again.
What if I get toxic shock?
You won’t. Lie down in my bed, I won’t be long.
I go back into my room, gather the clothes off the floor, and look down at the corner of the carpet where something is sparkling, but it’s not what I’m looking for. I open all my drawers and my jewellery box, rifle through the pockets of my jackets and trousers, I crawl around on all fours and look under my desk and my bed and then something occurs to me. Quietly I get the key to the basement out of the drawer in the hallway and go downstairs. With my phone I light up the storage space looking for the guitar case. In the little compartment inside is the ring. I go back upstairs and put the ring in an envelope.
Dragan I write on the front, and on the back flap, Visegrad.
I’m tired, the usual condition during eighth or ninth period. Frau Struck is blathering on about the citric acid cycle and diagramming some crazy shit on the chalk board and talking nonstop. Her mouth, that thick pink rubber band, doesn’t stand still for even a second. The more complicated something is, the faster Struck tries to explain it, and the fewer questions you’re allowed to ask, I know how it is so I just let it go. Normally Jameelah and I play city-country-AIDS during eighth and ninth period but now I sit next to Amir and he takes notes the whole time, what a kiss-ass, it’s like he knows I’m completely lost.
Out the window I can see a man in paint-splattered clothes re-painting the white lines of the basketball court in the playground. When he’s finished he goes over to the mushroom-shaped gazebo and has a smoke. It makes me think of Nico who is out in the city somewhere in paint-splattered clothes painting something and stopping for a smoke now and then. I look back at Jameelah as inconspicuously as possible. She’s playing tic-tac-toe by herself and doesn’t notice Struck coming toward her desk.
Wake up there, says Frau Struck snapping her fingers in Jameelah’s face, explain this chemical reaction to me.
What, says Jameelah.
This, says Struck going back up to the chalk board and slapping the right side of it with her T-square.
No idea, says Jameelah, I don’t like acid.
The painter is still sitting in the gazebo smoking. I’m about to put my head down and sleep but then on the other side of the playground the door to the gym opens and Anna-Lena runs out heading in the direction of the girls’ bathroom holding something under her jumper. I peek back at Jameelah again, she’s stopped playing tic-tac-toe and is staring out the window like she’s in a trance. I hold my hand to my stomach, grimace, and raise my hand.
Say you know the answer, says Struck.
No, I say, I’m feeling really sick.
Struck raises her eyebrows.
Really Frau Struck, I need to go to the bathroom.
Well off you go.
I run down the steps and out across the playground to the girls’ loos and quietly push the door open. Somebody is throwing up in one of the toilets, throwing up and crying. I creep into the next stall, crying, puking, then silence, then crying and puking again and silence again, over and over again until something is being taken out of a packet, but it doesn’t sound like a box of tampons, more like some kind of medicine or something from the pharmacy, and then the sound of somebody peeing. As quietly as possible I climb up on the toilet seat and peer over the stall. There’s Anna-Lena holding a pregnancy test in her hand.
What are you doing, I ask even though it’s pretty obvious.
Paralyzed with fear she looks up at me, I jump down from the toilet and knock on the door to her stall.
Open up.
No, she says, get out of here.
Open up, I say, otherwise I’ll go get the janitor.
The lock rotates from red to green. Anna-Lena is sitting on the toilet seat cover, her face swollen from crying and her hair caked with vomit and snot, Frieda Gaga not looking so freshly laundered. No matter what else happens, I think, I’ll definitely mark this day with a red X on my calendar.
Show me the test, I say.
Leave me alone, says Anna-Lena.
I go over to the sink and pull a huge ball of paper towels out of the dispenser and then the door to the bathroom opens. It’s Jameelah, she stands there with her hands on her hips and glares at me.
What’s going on here, she asks.
I point my thumb at the stall.
She might be pregnant, I say.
Who? By who?
No idea, good question.
Jameelah rushes over to the stall.
Is it true, she says but Anna-Lena doesn’t answer.
I asked if it’s true!
What business is it of yours, says Anna-Lena.
Where’s the test, says Jameelah but Anna-Lena puts her hand behind her back.
Jameelah gasps.
Fuck your test, whose is it, but Anna-Lena squeezes her lips tight as if that will help somehow.
Who was it, says Jameelah again shoving Anna-Lena’s shoulder and then grabbing her and shaking her, whose is it, she says, but when Anna-Lena still doesn’t answer Jameelah grabs her hands from behind her back, holds her wrists, and shoves her up against the wall of the toilet stall.
Let me go, screams Anna-Lena, you’re hurting me.
Shut your mouth, Jameelah screams pressing her harder, look me in the eye do you hear me, look me in the eye and tell me it’s not what I think it is!
What is going on, I wonder, Islam will rule the world it says next to Anna-Lena on the wall, and beneath that, Men are like toilets either taken or full of shit, Look it’s Nutella and Here I sit and contemplate shall I shit or masturbate, and by the time I reach masturbate I finally get what this is about, it’s about Italy and Anna-Lena and Lukas.
Oh no, I whisper.
Jameelah slowly lets go of Anna-Lena’s wrists and sinks to the toilet seat. Anna-Lena crouches down and covers her face with her hands and as she does the pregnancy test falls out of the back pocket of her trousers and onto the floor. I look at the results and there are two stripes, two parallel pink stripes. That’s what life looks like at the very beginning, when it’s still invisible to the naked eye.
Jameelah bends down and picks up the test and examines it as if it’s hers, then she drops it back onto the floor. She puts her hands together in her lap and they sit there like two people who have broken up but didn’t really want to.
Give me some toilet paper please, says Anna-Lena standing up slowly.
Toilet paper, I say looking her up and down, screw toilet paper! You slept with your own cousin, man if that’s not some medieval shit, I say, and always bothering us and writing love you my angel on our rucksacks and not meaning it at all, if that’s not totally sickening, I say, that’s a thousand times more sickening than blackheads and spiders and herpes all put together.
With a long howling sound Anna-Lena lets herself sink to the floor again.
And stop fucking crying, I say but the cry
ing just gets louder.
Anna-Lena, says Jameelah.
Ah come on, I say, forget it.
Anna-Lena, says Jameelah shaking her, Anna-Lena, she says again and shakes her harder but Anna-Lena just cries louder and louder.
If somebody comes in right now we’re fucked, I say.
Smack her one, says Jameelah.
What?
You should smack her one. Like you did to me on the street the other day.
Really?
Yeah, says Jameelah, do it.
With pleasure, I say making a fist.
No, says Jameelah, just slap her.
Why?
Because you hit hard.
Sorry about the other day, sorry about everything, I say.
Shut your mouth, says Jameelah, and smack her.
Got it, I say and a second later Anna-Lena gets one across the face.
With one hit the sobbing stops.
Are you two out of your fucking minds, screams Anna-Lena.
Oh stop acting like that, says Jameelah, a teacher could come in at any moment and then you’d have to tell them the whole story.
She grabs Anna-Lena and tries to lift her up.
Come on help me.
Together we pull Anna-Lena over to the sink. Jameelah pulls a bunch of paper towels out of the dispenser, wets them under the faucet, and hands them to her.
Here, clean up your face.
Obediently Anna-Lena wipes her face.
What do I do now, she says softly.
You have to go to the doctor, I say, then you have to wait three days and then you can get rid of it.
No, says Jameelah, you have to talk to your parents.
No, I say, she doesn’t have to, there’s mandatory confidentiality.
Jameelah rolls her eyes.
Man there’s no confidentiality if you’re under sixteen, you can’t do it on your own, you have to get your parents to sign off, how is it that I’m the only one who knows this stuff? Any idiot can fuck but why can’t you people use condoms?
I look at the floor. How does she always know this kind of thing, I wonder, but the fact that I didn’t use a condom with Nico she has no way of knowing, but still, I think, I’m not going to sleep with anybody else without a condom and next week I’m going to get a library card, even Orkhan and Tayfun have library cards, but that’s just so they can go annoy the librarians when they get bored, but I won’t annoy anyone there, I think, I’m going to take something out every week until I finally know more than Jameelah.
I can’t tell my parents, says Anna-Lena, if they find out they’ll take me out of school and put me in some nunnery in Bavaria, they want to send me there already.
Jameelah looks at the clock.
Come on, she says, we’re going to Kottbusser Tor.
Kotti? What are we going to do there, asks Anna-Lena.
We’re going to see my mother, says Jameelah, she’ll help you.
I’ve never been to see Noura at the clinic. They only operate on women, women who are pregnant and don’t want the baby, or women who don’t want to get pregnant at all. They also get some women who have shoved things up their backsides or in the front and can’t get them out on their own. Jameelah once told me there’s a special box where they collect the things that have been surgically removed from women, everything from screwdrivers to fluorescent light bulbs all of which they have apparently accidentally fallen on. I always find it funny but Jameelah, Anna-Lena and I don’t talk as we walk down Oranienstrasse toward the clinic and I don’t feel like laughing.
I feel sick, says Anna-Lena holding her stomach, I need something to drink.
You can drink something when we get there, says Jameelah.
No, a real drink. Something cold and clear, like a shot of vodka. I need to get a miniature bottle of vodka.
No liquid courage, only the real thing, says Jameelah.
She grabs Anna-Lena by the arm and pulls her across the stripes of the cross-walk to the entrance to the clinic. She pushes the bottom bell. The door buzzes open.
Let’s go, says Jameelah pushing Anna-Lena through the door. We go through the entryway and out into the courtyard. I see Noura through a window.
Mama, calls Jameelah running ahead.
Noura looks up and walks toward the door with a look of shock on her face.
Children, she says, what is it, what happened?
Without a second’s pause Jameelah tells her everything. She talks and talks and makes all kinds of gestures with her hands as she does, and Noura nods and pats Anna-Lena’s hair, but she also looks very stern throughout, she looks around at each of us with a serious look on her face and saves the most stern look of all for Anna-Lena of course. The way Noura always does things, all at the same time and always properly, Jameelah must have inherited that from her, I think.
Noura puts her arm around Anna-Lena.
You come with me now, she says, we’re just going to do a normal examination and then after that Dr Mahmoudi will examine you, and you two, says Noura looking at me and Jameelah, you wait here.
The waiting room is empty. Tired, I slump into a chair. Jameelah picks up one of the magazines lying on the table and flips through it, flipping the pages, flipping, flipping, way too fast, you can’t read that fast, you can’t even see the pictures on the pages when you flip through that fast.
Can you please tell me why we’re doing this, I ask at some point.
What?
Why are we helping her? Because of Lukas?
Stop it, says Jameelah, I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t even want to think about him, otherwise I’ll kill myself, seriously.
Not over an idiot like that. You don’t need him.
Need him? What’s that supposed to mean?
Look as of today at the latest he’s an asshole, right?
What do you know, says Jameelah.
I’m just saying.
Just saying my ass, you’re just saying what anyone would say, Jameelah says letting the magazine drop to the floor.
What’s that supposed to mean, I say.
That you have no clue about love, says Jameelah.
And you do, right.
Yeah, because if you really love somebody then you can’t change that no matter how shitty that person acts. And you can’t do anything about the fact that you can’t change it either.
I know, I say, I mean of course you can’t do anything about it but you can’t really love somebody who hurts you so badly. He doesn’t deserve it.
Of course I can, you see, says Jameelah, and anyway what business is it of yours, what business is it of Anna-Lena’s, it’s not even Lukas’s business that I love him, I’m allowed to love whoever I want and he doesn’t have to love me back, but I can be in love with anyone and nobody can stop me.
Of course you’re allowed. I just don’t want anyone to hurt you.
You can’t help it, it happens anyway, she says picking up the magazine, but maybe I can keep her from having his baby.
The door to the waiting room opens and Anna-Lena walks in.
So, asks Jameelah.
Nothing, says Anna-Lena, took my blood pressure and that. I’m about to see the woman, what’s her name again?
Jameelah frowns.
Mahmoudi, Dr Mahmoudi.
Mahmoudi right.
I look at Jameelah.
Yes, Jameelah says, we’re going to wait.
My left leg has been asleep for a while, it seems like forever since Anna-Lena went into surgery. We’ve been through all the magazines. I look up at the ceiling of the waiting room. Noura turned on the lights a little while ago and I stare at the fluorescent bulbs and at the mosquitoes and fruit flies dancing on them. The mosquitoes and flies try to out-buzz the bulbs.
Look, I say pointing up, they just waste their time up there even though they have so much less of it than we do down here.
Yeah, says Jameelah, they’re like real gods.
Gods?
Yeah they aren�
��t aware of time, they know only light and fruit and blood and at some point they’ll just die without ever feeling the need to think about their life, whether they lived it well or not.
Do you know this one, I say, two fruit flies meet and one says hey do fancy a fuck and the other says no I have my momentary visitor.
I don’t get it.
You know, the fruit fly has its monthly visitor.
I still don’t get it.
Come on, a fruit fly doesn’t have a monthly visitor, it gets its period for a couple of seconds, not a couple of days, get it.
Oh, says Jameelah still looking up at the ceiling and not really listening.
What is it, I say, what are you thinking about?
Can you remember what Jasna shouted when she was standing on the balcony, what she said to her mother before she jumped?
Yeah she said first you drag me into this world and then you leave me all alone.
I think that’s true, says Jameelah.
What?
That we’re dragged into this world. I mean nobody asks you, nobody asks whether you want to or not.
Yeah, I say, that’s true.
Maybe that’s why babies always cry so much, says Jameelah, because nobody asked them whether they wanted to come here and because they’re still so close to whatever it was that came before and they can’t stand to be here on earth.
True, I say, and when mothers calm their babies it’s actually a great big lie because they’re trying to make life more bearable, you know, as in hey it’s not so bad, here look, here’s your rattle.
Exactly, says Jameelah, but the babies know better and they would rather go back where they came from.
Do you mean something like reincarnation?
I’m not sure but anyway you are pretty much brought into this world against your will, says Jameelah.
The door to the waiting room opens and Dr Mahmoudi and Anna-Lena come out.
Well, asks Jameelah.
I have to go home, says Anna-Lena holding up an envelope, I have to speak to my parents.
Are you really pregnant, I ask.
Anna-Lena nods.
What’s in the envelope, I ask.
Paperwork for the abortion.
Termination of pregnancy, says Dr Mahmoudi and puts her arm around Anna-Lena but Anna-Lena shrugs it off.
Tiger Milk Page 20
