the friday jam operation

"You are Deputy Commander," I told Hana. "Field operations. Stand up straight."

Hana stood up so straight she looked like a broom.

"And you," I told Divya, "are Intelligence Officer."

"I have homework," Divya said.

"Intelligence Officers do not have homework on Fridays."

"That is not how homework works."

It is exactly how homework works if you are running an Operation, but I did not have time to explain that, because Ayah was still in Singapore and it was already very serious.

Here is the Friday rule. Ayah works in Singapore all week and we do not see him. Then on Friday evening he crosses the Causeway and comes home, and the first thing, before anybody else gets him, is that he sits with Nenek and eats her hot kuih. Just the two of them and Nenek. Not the whole house. Just us, before the swarm comes down on him.

The kuih has to be hot. If it is not hot it is just kuih.

But this Friday was a long weekend, and it was payday, and it had rained. All three. At the same time.

I went to check the intelligence. The intelligence was Atok. Atok sits in the corner with his radio the way other people sit with a cat. He believes everything the radio says and nobody who is not the radio. I asked him about the Causeway.

"Jam sampai Woodlands," Atok said, not looking up.

Then he went back to the traffic report like he had just told me it might be a bit cloudy.

In the kitchen Mak was already making more kuih. Not the special kuih. The other kuih, the big tray, the kind you make when a lot of people are going to come and sit and not leave. Nobody had told Mak that people were coming. Mak just knew. Mak always knows. She did not say anything. She kept folding the little parcels, one, one, one, like she was being paid by the parcel, which she sort of is.

So that is when I started Operation Balik. Balik means come home. I named it myself. I think the word for the name is exactly right.

Operation Balik had three objectives. I wrote them in my head in capital letters so they would feel official.

ONE. Get Ayah home before the kuih is cold.

TWO. Get Ayah home before Nenek goes to bed. Nenek goes in at nine. At nine the selipar comes off her foot and Nenek is done, and once Nenek is done there is no special kuih, there is just Tuesday but on a Friday.

THREE. Get Ayah home before Kak Long and the baby finish the kuih.

Objectives two and three were not personal. They were tactical. They felt extremely personal but I told everyone they were tactical.

Kak Long was on the porch on her phone. Kak Long is sixteen and her phone is part of her hand now, the doctor probably cannot get it out. She did not look up. But she heard everything. She always hears everything and pretends she is somewhere else, like Singapore.

"Who is in charge of the baby?" I said.

The baby was under the table eating something. It was not food. It is never food. We do not know where the baby finds these things. The baby is the most powerful person in this house and the baby cannot even say jam.

"Divya is in charge of the baby," I said.

"I thought I was Intelligence," said Divya.

"You can be both. The baby cannot be argued with, so this should be easy for you."

Divya looked at the baby. The baby looked back at Divya and put the not-food in deeper.

Objective one was eyes on the road. I climbed the rambutan tree, because the rambutan tree is my lookout, and from up there I can see the road, and the road is where the car comes from.

I cannot actually see Singapore from the rambutan tree. I have never told anybody this. It would damage morale.

Across the road, Pakcik at the kedai was moving things around in his freezer the way he does. He saw me up the tree and waved. I waved back, but commandingly, so he would know it was official. He went back to his freezer.

I called down to Hana.

"The road is clear," I reported.

"Clear to where?" Hana called up.

"As far as I can see."

"Can you see the Causeway?"

"...The road is clear as far as I can see."

Hana did not say anything after that. She is a good Deputy Commander. We both did not say the thing, and not saying the thing is sometimes the only way an Operation can keep going.

Through the kitchen window I saw Mak. She had heard the whole report. She did the eyebrow. Just one eyebrow. In our house one of Mak's eyebrows going up is the same as another person standing on a chair and shouting. The eyebrow said it.

Objective two was the radio plan. The traffic line has a phone number on the side of Atok's radio. I had read it off while he was not looking, which I think counts as proper intelligence work. I took Mak's phone. Mak did not know I took Mak's phone. This is in the report under a different heading.

I called. It was a recording, which I had not planned for, but a good Commander improvises, so I left a message.

I gave them Ayah's name. I gave them the colour of Ayah's car, which is the colour of a car. I told them where on the Causeway he probably was, which I did not know, so I said the middle. I asked them, please, if it was not too much trouble, to say his name on the radio and tell him to hurry, and to mention it was about the kuih so he would understand it was urgent.

Behind me, Atok's radio said: "Jam di Causeway, jam di Woodlands, jam di Tuas. Semua jalan sesak."

Every road. Jammed. The radio did not say Ayah's name. The radio said every road. Atok turned the volume up a little bit. He did not look at me. The radio was looking at me enough for both of them.

That was when the makcik arrived. The makcik arrive the way rain arrives. Nobody opens a door and then they are inside and they already know everything. One of them was telling Mak the jam was very bad this week. Mak said yes. The makcik already had a piece of kuih. Nobody had given it to her. The makcik network does not wait to be given things. They are very advanced.

Objective three was the motorbike. Atok has a motorbike. The plan was that Atok would ride to the Causeway and lead Ayah's car home through the jam, in front, like a duck.

I told Atok the whole plan. He listened to all of it. He did not interrupt once, which made me think it was going well.

"Motorbike cannot go through the Causeway," Atok said.

"Why not?"

"Rules."

"Whose rules?"

"The government's."

"Can you ask them to change it? Just for today?"

Atok turned the radio up again.

From the corner, Divya said, "I said we should just wait."

I did not dignify that with a response. A Commander cannot dignify everything. There would be no time for the Operation.

While the motorbike plan was happening, Kak Long had eaten one piece of the special kuih. One. She did not look at me when she did it. She was hungry and she is sixteen and she pretended the kuih had simply happened to her, like weather. I declared the kuih under military protection and put Hana on it.

Hana guarded the kuih very seriously. She stood right next to it with her arms folded. She also said it smelled really good about four times, which a guard should probably not announce, but she is a good Deputy Commander and a guard is allowed to have feelings.

Then I went up the rambutan tree to check the road, because a Commander cannot leave the road unwatched, and I was gone four minutes. Four. I counted them later for the report.

Down below, while I was gone, Hana said it smelled really good a fifth time. Then she said just checking it is still okay, which is not the same as eating it. Then she said just the corner, the corner is not the important part. I know this because she told me about it later in her debrief, which she gave me without being asked.

In those four minutes the baby was not with Divya. Divya was checking her homework, because it turns out that is, in fact, how homework works. And the baby, who can find anything, who once found a whole shoe in the longkang, found the kuih.

The baby did what the baby does. I will not go through all of it. I came down the tree and there was kuih on the table and kuih on the floor and kuih on the baby and the baby was, in the most important way, in it. Sort of face-down in it. Quietly. Like it had always lived there.

Hana looked at me. Hana had been guarding so hard. Her arms were still folded. There was nothing left to guard.

Objective One: not cold, it was gone. Objective Two: Nenek was still up but only just. Objective Three: the baby.

Nenek was in her corner. She had watched the whole thing and not got up. She did not say a word. She pressed her lips together, the way you press your lips together when you are not surprised about anything, because you have been watching babies get into kuih since before anybody's mother was born and you already knew exactly how this was always going to go. It was not a cross face. It was the kind that knows.

Then the phone buzzed. Kak Long's phone, because mine is the rambutan tree. It was Syafiq.

Syafiq is Pak Su's kid and he lives on the Singapore side and he is roughly my age and he is the most pleased person I have ever heard. He called to tell me that on his side the road was completely clear. Then he told me he had counted the cars going in. He had counted them. Two hundred and sixteen. He said he stopped at two hundred and sixteen because his mak called him for dinner, and he was very disappointed he had to stop at two hundred and sixteen, and he was going to start again after dinner. His side was totally fine. He did not understand why anyone would even live on the Johor side if the jam was always like this.

I hung up. I did not have an answer. I went and stood on the porch.

Kak Long had heard.

"He's annoying," Kak Long said.

"Yes."

"He's also right that the traffic is always bad."

"I know."

Kak Long put her phone down on the step, just for a second, and came and stood on the porch too.

I sat on the step. The kuih was wrecked and the Operation had failed at every objective and I had run out of objectives. Atok's radio murmured through the door. The makcik were still talking, they will talk through anything, they would talk through the end of the world and know about it first. The azan had gone a while back and the sky was doing the after-the-azan colour. The zinc roof was still dripping from the rain even though the rain had stopped. It does that. It keeps going long after it should have finished.

I was not even cross. I just sat there.

Then Hana came out and sat down. Then Divya, with the baby, who she had finally caught. Then Nenek came slow to the door and stood in the door frame. Nenek does not sit on the porch steps. The steps are for children. She stood and watched the road with us. Mak came out with a tray, whatever kuih was left, which was not much, and she did not say one word about the rest of it. She put the tray down. She sat.

Nobody said we were waiting for Ayah. Nobody said anything.

"The baby ate your Operation," Hana said.

"The baby ate everybody's Operation," I said.

Then there were headlights.

It was very late and they were Ayah's headlights and they came up the road slow and Ayah got out and he looked like a man who had driven through a car park for four hours, which he had. He looked at the porch. All of us on it.

"Ramai," Ayah said. So many of you.

"Jom makan," said Mak.

A Commander is trained to assess the situation. The situation was that Ayah was still holding his car keys. He had not put them in his pocket yet. He had been out of the car for at least ten seconds.

I jumped up and told him about the Operation. I told him about the rambutan tree and the traffic line and the message and the colour of his car. I told him about the radio and the government and Atok and the motorbike that was not allowed to go like a duck. Ayah listened to all of it. He sat down on the porch step next to me because he was too tired to walk the rest of the way into his own house.

Then I told him about the kuih.

"The kuih is finished?" Ayah said.

"Not exactly finished. More like the baby was in it."

"Is there any left?"

"One piece. Nenek saved it. It is cold."

Ayah ate the one cold piece. He chewed it slowly, like a man thinking about it properly, and then he said it was the best piece. Nenek made a sound. It might have been a laugh. It might have been her clearing her throat. With Nenek you do not ask which.

Kak Long's phone buzzed on the step. It was Syafiq. He was still awake over there and he wanted to know if Ayah made it. I picked the phone up and read it. I did not write back. I put the phone face-down on the step. Ayah was here. Syafiq could wait until next week. Syafiq could count more cars.

Hana had fallen asleep against the porch post with her arms still a little bit folded. Divya had gone home, her mak had called, somewhere in there. Kak Long had her phone back but she was still on the porch, which meant she had not gone in. Inside, Atok's radio went quiet. The traffic report was over for the night, so Atok was over for the night too.

The baby was asleep face-down on the porch mat with a little bit of kuih still on its face.

Mak went in to the kitchen. Nenek followed her, slow. Atok's light went off. It was just me and Ayah on the step, and Kak Long, and the baby, and Hana against the post.

I did not go inside.

Nobody did.