Tiger Milk (12 page)

She’s dead I whisper, really dead.

Jameelah nods.

She’s dead, you can see it in her eyes. They’re not looking anywhere, they’re gone, no longer on earth. It’s like in that YouTube video where a group of men hunt down a woman and kill her in the street in some hot country, they used a knife, too, and now Jameelah and I are standing in front of Jasna exactly the same as in that video, except we don’t have a camera.

The engagement ring is on her finger.

The ring, I say.

Jameelah continues to stare at Jasna’s dead body. She’s still holding the container of Tiger Milk in her hand. I wonder how she managed to get down the slide holding the Tiger Milk and the bin bag. A nightingale sings up above us somewhere and it sounds horrible.

The ring, I say again.

Shut your mouth says Jameelah and then she bends down and with trembling fingers takes the hairband out of Jasna’s hair and drops it into the Tiger Milk.

What are you doing I ask.

Don’t ask just help me, she says, then she brushes Jasna’s hair back and reaches behind her ears and undoes the giant gold hoop earrings and drops them into the Tiger Milk.

Come on says Jameelah, her watch, her bracelets, her rings, all of it, put it all in the container like we always do, that’s cheap, real cheap, got it?

I don’t ask. I squat down next to Jameelah and carefully remove a gold bracelet and then another and another, dropping one after the other into the Tiger Milk. We work silently and one piece of jewellery after the next plunks into the Tiger Milk until Jameelah looks away for a second and I take the engagement ring off Jasna’s finger. It comes off easily because it’s too big for her. But it fits me. It fits me perfectly.

Come on, says Jameelah, let’s get out of here.

We stumble down the dirt path to the entrance to the yard, the clip-clop of our flip-flops echoing behind us. Why didn’t anyone ever tell us this could happen here I ask myself, why didn’t anyone ever tell us it could happen here.

As I put the key into the lock I noticed how much my hand was shaking. I was so scared that Jessi might hear us – that she’d be standing in the hall with her giant puffy slippers asking us questions – so I stuck in the key and opened the lock as quietly as I could. Jessi had laid down on the sofa with Mama, all four of her limbs splayed out. She had on her bathrobe and her puffy slippers and Mama was snoring softly.

We went into my room and put on our pyjamas.

I’m cold Jameelah said so I went into the kitchen and warmed up some milk. While I was warming the milk I kept thinking I had dried blood on me but it was just my imagination. It’s just that it seemed so real because of the tiny red hearts all over my pyjamas. I went to the bathroom and washed my hands two or three times and then the milk was warm and Jameelah and I drank it in bed.

I didn’t sleep I just pretended I was asleep and Jameelah didn’t really sleep either, I know because she laid there too still and too compact, different from the way she normally slept. I did it to try to calm Jameelah and I don’t know but I bet she probably did it for the same reason.

At one point I went to the bathroom even though I didn’t need to go. I sat on the edge of the bathtub and stared at the ring. The green stone in the middle wasn’t really green it was dark-green, almost black, though I guess it could just be its age – maybe gems were like people and if you hadn’t seen them for a long time you didn’t recognize them at first glance. I wanted to take the ring off and put it in the little basket on the shelf so Mama could find it but it wouldn’t come off so I ran my finger under the tap and used soap to pull it off. But then I put it back on.

I couldn’t fall asleep forever and all I could think about was how often Jasna had given me cigarettes or gum, how she gave me a henna tattoo once, how we dunked our hands into the warm red liquid and it squished up between our fingers. I laid in bed and wondered again why nobody had told us that it could happen here, and how it would have been easier to bear if Jasna had screamed. Then I would have known that it was Jasna and that her scream could shatter the world like so much glass. There were people who could do that, I’d seen it on TV, but Jasna hadn’t screamed she’d just moaned a little. I realized that ever since I was a little kid I’d thought that death was something loud, like in the movies, blood spraying, screams, pieces of flesh flying, but none of that is true. Death is silent, it doesn’t make any noise at all, and it smells of rose petals. Death takes you in its arms and softly moans goodbye.

Jameelah fell asleep at some stage but not me, because every time I thought of Jasna I also thought of Tarik. A thousand things popped into my head all at once, even more things than when I thought of Jasna, and not just the lambada and the way he always mimicked MC Hammer. No, also the way he sometimes played with me and Amir, the way he played made-up games with us like plane crash in the Carpathians or left for dead in prison, the way he told us how to lick the moisture off the walls of the prison so we wouldn’t die of thirst, or how you could eat the flesh of dead passengers to survive, how that was okay in a situation like a plane crash. And then I remembered how he gave me a belt for my birthday once, a pink leather belt with rivets. He’d added the rivets himself he said, ten rivets, each with a big glittering stone on it, a happy birthday for each year, Nini, he said, and as all of this flooded into my head I realized it wasn’t just Jasna who was dead but Tarik, and that because Tarik had killed Jasna he was even more dead to me than Jasna and then I ran to the bathroom again even though I didn’t need to pee, I just needed to cry.

I didn’t fall asleep until it was light outside and even then I kept waking up, once because the room smelled so weird, like blood and milk. You’re imagining it again, I thought, just like the hearts on my pyjamas, but then I noticed that the Tiger Milk container was sitting on the nightstand and that the smell of blood and milk was coming from there, from the metal jewellery, so I shoved it under the bed next to Amir’s box and when I saw Amir’s box I thought for a second I should just open it.

I wake up at one. I go to Kaufland and buy cornflakes. Back home Jameelah and I eat cornflakes in bed. Jameelah just stares at the wall and shovels cornflakes into her mouth and she reminds me of Mama with her blank hazy look, and just like with Mama I’m afraid to ask what she’s thinking about and I just rub my eyes and figure she’ll say something at some stage, probably something about the jewellery or whatever, but she doesn’t and there’s just the murmuring sound of cornflakes crunching.

What are we going to do now, I ask at some point.

Just wait, says Jameelah, believe me I know how to act in a situation like this.

I don’t really understand but Jameelah calmly drinks the milk out of her cereal bowl and then says you can’t rush into anything, you can’t make a move without considering it carefully do you understand, she says, normal thinking doesn’t apply anymore, one thing following from another, waiting to see what happens, no way. Now you have to stay out ahead, your thoughts galloping out in front of events, always a step ahead.

I nod and keep eating my cornflakes.

Time ticks away and we lie in bed without saying a word. At some point I lean down and pull the Tiger Milk out from under the bed and put it on the nightstand.

What’s the story with this stuff, I say, do we go to the cops with it?

No. We have to get rid of it, all of it.

Get rid of it why, I ask, why did we even take it?

I don’t know.

What do you mean you don’t know, you had a plan for the jewellery.

No I didn’t.

Yes you did.

No, I did not. It was just an impulse.

Impulse, I shout jumping up from bed, you had an impulse? You’ve lost your chador I shout. Why did we take the fucking jewellery, tell me right this second why we took it!

I don’t know says Jameelah quietly, burying her face in her hands, and anyway you did it too.

No I only did it because you did, because I thought you had a plan.

What the hell kind of plan was I supposed to have had?

I have no idea, maybe something to do with your beliefs or whatever, or maybe to take the stuff to the police to prove something or other.

What fucking beliefs screams Jameelah, since when do I have beliefs and why am I always supposed to know everything and have a plan?

It feels like my skull is vibrating.

Jameelah gets up, drinks the Tiger Milk in one gulp and dumps the jewellery into the grocery bag with the bottles.

What do we do with it now, I ask.

We’ll deal with it later, Jameelah says, I have to go home.

I put the grocery bag on my dresser. We slowly get dressed and I double-knot the laces on my Chucks. Mama and Jessi are watching TV and fortunately don’t pay any attention to us. We head out but the playground is all cordoned off. There’s a tarp ringing Amir’s linden tree and a bunch of men in black jackets are standing around drinking coffee while one of them picks up all the rose petals with a litter picker like the one we use in Tiergarten.

Great now we have to go all the way around, what a bunch of shit, says Jameelah but all I can do is look up at the play fort and the slide and at the cloudy sky above and that’s when I see it as clearly as the digits that Rainer’s alarm clock projects onto the ceiling above the bed, I see our clock which yesterday had only just struck fourteen minutes past birth, meaning we had about another fifty to go, is now at twenty-past, meaning we’ve only got another forty minutes of life left. That’s not possible I think but then again maybe it is, what do I know.

The pavement in front of the building is full of journalists. They’ve brought their cameras and are leaning on their gangly legs against the building’s façade drinking coffee, the crap coffee Frau Stanitzek sells, and talking, smoking, laughing. I’d love to know what there is to laugh about here.

Should we really go over there?

Of course, says Jameelah, I know how to act in a situation like this. We’ll do it just like Hollywood actors. Hold your backpack to your chest like it’s as precious as a Louis Vuitton and then we’ll shove our way through them all slick and cool and if they get pushy we just say no comment like Angelina, you know. Sunglasses would be helpful but who cares we can do it without them, okay?

Okay I say, got it.

It’s not so bad that we don’t have sunglasses with us because they don’t actually pay any attention to us. They just stand there staring blankly as we push our way through them to the entryway, which is lit up by the cameras like they’re shooting a movie here. Sure enough there’s Frau Stanitzek with her mangy pooch in her arms standing in the doorway telling her life story to some creep from the tabloids, talking about her dead husband and her shop and all her fucking health problems and whatever else.

I could tell you things, says Stanitzek, but I won’t because I’d just get threatened again. If I said what I really think I might as well close my shop.

Just as we’re about to go up the steps and inside a journalist comes up to me, the same woman who was here the time before, when Jasna jumped off the balcony.

Just a broken leg, she says looking at me scornfully, is that still your story?

No comment, I say and press my backpack to my chest.

Jameelah is trying to pull me up the steps when a police car drives down the street with its siren blasting and blue lights flashing. The tabloid reporter leaves Frau Stanitzek standing in front of the doorway.

We go back into the street and I get hot flashes as the door of the police car opens and Tarik gets out. He has Selma in his arms. Together with a police officer Tarik helps his mother out of the car. She hides her face behind a big white handkerchief, a rag so completely soaked with tears that it’s see-through and you can see her face shimmering through it like a ghost. Another cop gets out and slams the car door shut and hands Selma a chocolate and tickles her tummy but she just throws the candy on the floor.

Majka, she screams and starts to cry again.

There’s your mummy, says the officer pointing at Tarik’s mother but Selma just screams louder and squirms in Tarik’s arms.

Majka, she screams, Majka.

Tarik puts an arm around his mother. A few journalists shout questions. Tarik answers gallantly as if nothing has happened. That he can be standing on the street here with Selma in his arms like that, it’s just not right. God’s earth is rotten. It must be. Because if there were any such thing as god or justice then there’s no way Tarik could stand there with Selma. If there were then you know what would happen, at this very instant fire would rain down or at the very least frogs would rain down or maybe a giant bolt of lightning would strike Tarik. But it’s not raining at all, not even the tiniest spark or most pathetic frog is falling from the sky and the only blitzes of lightning are coming from the cameras.

Have they arrested anyone, the tabloid reporter asks the police officer.

No comment says the officer.

The cameras are glued to Tarik and his mother. Maybe this is all just a movie I think, like one of those gala premieres you see on TV except that we’re not the famous actors, Tarik is. The only thing missing is the red carpet and for Tarik to start signing autographs. There’s one other thing missing, too. Amir.

Where’s Amir I whisper.

Jameelah shrugs her shoulders and at that moment Dragan comes around the corner. When he sees Tarik he stops in his tracks as if he’s grown roots then suddenly starts running directly toward Tarik.

Uh oh, I think, and just as I do I also realize I’m scared of Tarik.

I’m going to kill you, you fucking cripple, screams Dragan, you better start praying to your Allah right now!

The two cops try to wrestle Dragan to the ground but it takes a while before they can subdue him even though there are two of them. I can see he has tears in his eyes, tears of rage and tears of grief. Tarik’s mother screams, Selma cries even louder, and the journalists stand there with their cameras trained on the scene. All of a sudden I hear someone shout from above.