the longkang voyage

The longkang was a river.

Most days the longkang is a drain. We treat it like a kingdom. We climb on it, we declare it ours, and once I put a flag in it and Pakcik came and took the flag away because it had been his broom. Most days it is dry except the bit at the bottom that nobody talks about.

Today the longkang was a river.

The monsoon had come down all night the way the monsoon does, the zinc roofs going so loud you could not hear the radio over them, and in the morning the longkang was brown and fast and full to the very top.

A river is something you sail.

I was going to be the first one to sail this one.

This is the kind of thing somebody beats you to if you stand on the porch looking at it. Aiman was already counting in his head what to charge for a ticket. Kavi was already at the bank shouting that she was first.

I went to find Pei Pei.

Pei Pei had started without me.

This is how it works with Pei Pei. You think of a thing, you turn the corner of the lane, and Pei Pei is already there with the thing. She does not ask. She does not say hello. She holds the thing up and looks at you over the top of it.

She had a baby bath.

I do not know whose baby bath it was. I am not going to find out today.

She had a length of fence panel. She had string. She had a cushion that was definitely not hers. She had her goggles on, in the morning, before any work had started, which is how you know Pei Pei means business.

"Boat," I said.

Pei Pei did not say anything. Pei Pei put the bath down. Pei Pei put the fence panel across the bath. Pei Pei tied the fence panel to the bath with the string. Pei Pei looked at the cushion. Pei Pei looked at me. Pei Pei put the cushion on the panel.

The cushion was the part that made it a boat and not a bath with a fence on it. That is a Pei Pei thing to know.

It was beautiful. It was also obviously doomed.

"It is a boat," I said.

Pei Pei put her hand flat on the boat for a moment. Then she went off to find more string.

I went to find the crew.

A voyage needs a crew, and a crew needs a ceremony, and a ceremony needs an audience.

We met at the gate. The boat was carried out by the gang, very slowly, because nobody wanted to be the one whose fault it was if it broke before the water. Ah Wei carried the cushion separately, on a tray, like it was the king of the ceremony.

Ah Wei had also brought supplies for the voyage. A plastic bag of keropok. A packet of sweets. Two small bags of rambutan he had carried with him because he is always carrying food. The supplies were stationed on the porch, under official watch, by which I mean Ah Wei was already eating them.

"You are eating the supplies," I said.

"They were going to go off in the rain," said Ah Wei.

"They are keropok and rambutan," I said. "They were not going to go off in the rain."

Ah Wei looked very sorry, with his mouth full.

Aiman was going round with a notebook. Aiman charges for everything. Aiman once charged me for standing in his shade. He had drawn a small grid in his notebook. The grid said the price of a seat. The grid also said the price of a seat with the cushion. He had added a line for wet conditions, which were already happening, on land, before anyone got in the boat.

"Wet conditions," I said.

"You are getting on a boat in the rain," said Aiman. "Wet."

"You are also in the rain," I said.

Aiman wrote that down too. I think it was a charge.

Kavi was doing what Kavi does. Kavi was running up and down the bank.

"We are going to be very quiet," I said. "And very still. The water is fast. The bath is light. Quiet. Still."

"QUIET," shouted Kavi. "STILL."

The whole street looked up.

"Quietly," I said.

"QUIETLY," shouted Kavi.

Then Divya turned up with the exercise book. Divya turns up with an exercise book whenever a plan has water in it. She had drawn a diagram. The diagram was the longkang, and our boat in the longkang, and an arrow that went from the boat to the bridge and then to the kitchen of the makcik who lives two houses past the bridge, because by the time we got there the boat would not be a boat any more, it would be the news.

"Hello, Divya," I said.

"Floods do what floods do," said Divya, evenly. "I think you should know."

"Noted," I said.

I did not note it.

Behind us, on the porch, Kak Long looked up from her phone. Not for long. Just long enough to see that something foolish was happening and to decide, officially, that it was nothing to do with her. Then she looked back down. From the kitchen door, Mak did the one eyebrow. In our house Mak's one eyebrow can mean forty things. This one was the one that means I am not going to stop you, but if you come back with a leech on your leg do not bring it through the kitchen.

I took it as a yes.

I named the boat at the gate, in front of the gang, with one hand on the cushion. I am not going to tell you the name. It was a very good name and you would only laugh. Nobody else ever used it. Pei Pei nodded once. Aiman wrote down "naming ceremony" and added it to the grid.

Then we carried the boat to the surau-side culvert and put it in the water.

For one minute, the boat sailed.

I want you to know that this minute happened. I have witnesses, even if their witness statements are useless.

The bath sat on the brown river like it had been doing this for years. The fence panel held. The cushion sat. We pushed off. The river took us, gently, like it had been waiting for us. We chanted Kavi's chant, which Kavi shouted in case anybody had forgotten the words she had just made up.

I had never been first at anything by such a long way. We were the first ever crew of the longkang. The bank went past us. Faiz, who lives a few houses down and who asks a grown-up before he does anything, was standing on the bank, and even Faiz looked like he wished he had got in the boat.

The minute ended.

The longkang is straight for a bit, and then it bends. At the bend the water does a thing. It speeds up. It piles on itself. It remembers, suddenly, that it is a river, and it is allowed to act like one.

The bath spun.

The fence panel argued with the cushion. The cushion lost. The cushion left the boat altogether and went on ahead of us, faster than us, as if it had decided it was a better boat on its own.

"AIMAN," shouted Kavi, helpfully.

Aiman was writing rescue prices in the notebook with one hand and holding on to the bath with the other. Pei Pei was watching her boat turn on us. She did not look surprised. Her machines always do this. Ah Wei had finished the keropok. Divya was already on the bank, walking with us at a sensible speed.

We did the rest of the trip sideways. The road-bridge culvert had been the plan. I had declared it a proper destination. Now we were getting there, fast, and at an angle the boat had not been built for. The boat had been built for one angle. That angle was still.

The bridge came faster than I would have liked.

We hit it.

The bath wedged. The fence panel came off in one piece, slowly. Pei Pei watched it go. She did not chase it. She nodded the small nod that means: that was its job.

Aiman was still holding on to the bath. Ah Wei was holding the empty supply bag. Kavi had fallen in once already, which was not fair, she said, because she had been the only one trying to be still, which she had been announcing.

Divya took the exercise book out from under her arm and started drying it gently on her shirt.

"The flood did what floods do," she said, mildly.

"Yes," I said.

The makcik network arrived on the other bank. They always arrive on the other bank. They had heard about the bath already, the way they always know things before you have finished doing them. There were three of them. There are always three. They were already talking. They were talking about pantang and about wet feet and about whose baby bath that was. Not at us, exactly. Around us.

The gang clambered out one by one. Kavi took the blame for the chant. Aiman started a fresh page in the notebook, headed "damages". Ah Wei held the wet supply bag out to me, apologetically. Pei Pei picked up the cushion, which had come back of its own accord, the way cushions do, and stood on the bank, and waited.

Everybody was out.

I was not out.

I sat in the half-sunk bath at the bridge. The water came up over the back of the bath and joined me, gently, the way water does. I was not in a boat any more. I was in a bath. In a drain. In the rain. At a bridge. Alone.

From the porch I could see Kak Long.

Kak Long sat up.

Kak Long put the phone down.

In our house Kak Long does not put the phone down. Kak Long is the phone. You speak to Kak Long through the phone, and she replies through the phone. Kak Long had her hand on the porch step. She was looking at me.

She got up.

She came across the yard. She did not run. Kak Long never runs.

At the door she stopped and went back in. I thought that was the end of it. Kak Long had nearly come out, and then remembered she was fourteen, and gone back to being fourteen.

She came back out with a sandwich bag.

She zipped her phone into the sandwich bag.

She walked down the bank in her slippers like she did not see the makcik network at all, although they had stopped talking to watch her, which was a thing they did not do for anybody. She put one slipper at the edge of the bath. She put the other slipper at the edge of the bath. She looked at me, the way she looks at me, which is mostly cross.

"Scoot," she said.

I scooted.

Kak Long got in the bath.

The bath did not sink any further, because the bath had already done its sinking. The bath sat. The water that was already in the bath was now between us. Kak Long was in slippers, in the rain, in a baby bath, in a drain, with her phone in a sandwich bag. I do not know what she was. She was just my sister.

All day I had been getting a crew. I had wanted my sister.

I did not say it. Not in a baby bath in a drain in front of the makcik network.

I just sat. She just sat.

Then she picked a leaf off my hair without looking at me, the way she would do for nobody else, and she flicked it into the water, and the water took it.

"You have a leech on your leg," she said.

I looked down. I did not have a leech on my leg.

"You will," she said. "It is monsoon."

"SECOND VOYAGE," shouted Kavi, from the bank. "NEW CREW."

Aiman had already opened a fresh page. He was writing "second voyage" at the top of it, very neatly, with the prices for two underneath.

Ah Wei held out the supply bag. It was mostly air. He was apologising with his face only, because his mouth was, this time, empty.

Pei Pei put the cushion in the bath, on the bit between us, very gently, as if it had earned it. Divya was already drying the exercise book.

From the kitchen door, Mak did the one eyebrow at both her daughters in a drain. Then she went back to whatever she was doing. Mak's other eyebrow was busy.

The water in the bath rose a small amount more.

The makcik network were still talking. The longkang was still a river, although less of one. The cushion sat between us, looking pleased with itself.

We did not go anywhere.

We stayed in the bath until the water started going down.