the brave queue

It was jab day at the clinic, and the waiting room was full of little kids about to cry.

You know the feeling in a room like that. Everybody small is sitting on the hard plastic chairs, swinging their legs, not looking at the door, because the door is where the jab is. One little one starts to wobble, lip first. Then the next one catches it, because crying is the most catching thing there is, more than yawning, more than a cough. One goes, they all go. A whole waiting room of little ones can come down like a roof in the rain, and once it has come down there is no putting it back up.

I was there for my jab too. But I am nine, and I had decided I was not going to be one of the ones who wobble. I was going to be brave. Not a little bit brave, either. The loudest, most obvious brave anybody had ever been at a jab, so that every little one in that room would look at me, and copy me, and not one of them would cry.

So I took command of the waiting room.

I lined the little ones up and I taught them the brave face. The brave face is chin up, eyes front, and absolutely no looking at the door. I drilled them. I had them practise the chin. I marched them round the waiting room in a brave-face parade, chins up, arms swinging, while their mothers watched and one auntie laughed quietly into her hand.

I taught them the rest of it too. When the nurse calls your number, you walk, you do not run and you do not drag. You give your arm like you are handing over a thing you do not need anyway. You pick a spot on the wall before you sit down, so your eyes have somewhere to be that is not the needle. I had a whole doctrine. The little ones drank it in. One of them, who could not have been more than four, practised giving me her arm so many times that she gave it to me by accident for the rest of the morning, every time I walked past, just in case it had become her turn.

There was one baby who would not learn the brave face. This baby had decided to learn the opposite. Every time I did a big brave chin, the baby did a bigger wobble, on purpose, watching me, getting ready, like a singer warming up before a show. I left the baby out of the parade. You cannot save everyone, and some people have come to a clinic specially to cry and would not thank you for stopping them.

Aiman was there, because Aiman is wherever there is a queue. He started selling places in the brave queue. One sweet to stand near me at the front, where the bravery was strongest, like standing near a fire to keep warm. And he had a guarantee he was very proud of. If you took the sweet and then you cried anyway, he would give the sweet back. He would not, of course, because by then you would have eaten the sweet, but the little ones could not work that out, and Aiman did a roaring trade in courage.

By the time the running order was set, I had the whole room organised. The bravest at the front. The wobbliest tucked into the middle, where the bravery was thickest. The practising-crying baby quarantined right at the back near its mother, where it could do no harm. It was, I will say, the best-run waiting room that clinic has ever seen. The lady at the desk had given up pretending not to watch.

Then we waited. Waiting is the worst part of a clinic, worse than the jab itself, because the jab is one second and the wait is an hour, and an hour is a very long time for a room full of little ones to stay brave in. The practising-crying baby got better and better, working its way up through the scales. A toddler asked its mother forty times whether it was nearly its turn. I walked the line like a general before a battle, checking chins, topping up the brave where it had gone thin, and the brave held, mostly, the way a thing holds when one person has decided it is going to.

And next behind me in the line was Hana.

Hana is my cousin, and she is brave about almost everything, but not this. Hana was terrified. She had gone the colour of cold rice. She was holding the edge of her chair with both hands, so hard her knuckles went pale. She was looking at the door like the door owed her money. But she was not crying. She was holding on, because I was in front of her in the line. As long as I went first, and came out fine, then she could go, one step behind me, the way she goes everywhere one step behind me.

Then the nurse looked at her list and called a number. And it was mine. Out of order. Far too early. Before the little ones, before the parade, before anybody, my number, first.

I had built a whole running order, and the nurse had read off a completely different one. So I had to go first, now, for real, with the entire brave-face army watching me. The children I had personally trained, all their chins up, all their eyes on me to see how a brave person does it.

I stood up. My legs did not feel like the legs of a commander. I walked to the door anyway.

I got through it. I sat on the chair and gave the nurse my arm, chin up, eyes front, just like I had taught. And then the nurse picked up the needle.

And my brave face fell straight off my own face. My chin came down. My eyes went to the door. I felt the cry coming up from somewhere I do not control. It was the exact wobble I had spent all morning drilling out of everyone else, and now it was rising up in me, in the chair, with the needle coming.

And through the open door I could see Hana. Next in line. Watching. Holding her chair with both hands. Waiting to see if it was a thing a person can do.

So I put the chin back up.

I do not know how. I put it back up and I looked hard at a spot on the wall. My chin was shaking the whole time. The nurse did the jab, quick, a sting and then over, and I did not cry. I did not cry because Hana was watching, and if I cried then it was a thing that makes you cry, and Hana would have to do a thing that makes you cry. So I made it not be that, in the chair, with my chin shaking, by deciding it was not.

The little ones cheered when I came out. The brave-face army had its leader back, and its leader had a plaster and no tears. They went one by one after that, chins up, copying, and most of them did not cry, and the ones who did cried only a little, and got a sweet from Aiman that he absolutely did not refund.

And Hana went. She came through the door white as rice and sat in the chair and gave her arm and kept her eyes locked on me the whole time. I kept my chin up so that she would keep hers up too. The nurse did it, and Hana did not cry. She got down off the chair with a plaster on her arm and her chin still up, and she looked at me, and I looked at her, and that was the whole of it. I had gone first so that this, for her, would be a thing you can do without crying. And it had been.

We walked out of the clinic into the sun, the whole brave-face army spilling out of the door behind us, chins up, plasters on, the parade still going because nobody had told them they were allowed to stop. Hana was in the middle of them with her plaster and her chin up and not one tear anywhere on her, marching like she had personally invented bravery that morning.