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 crying 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.