the makcik weather

You cannot keep a secret in our kampung. I know this because I have tried, and because the makcik network exists.

The makcik network is Mak's friends. There are usually three of them. They move together, the way weather moves, and like weather they arrive without anybody sending for them and they know things before the things have finished happening. A makcik can tell you it is going to rain on Thursday and who you are going to marry and that your cousin failed his driving test, and all three will turn out to be correct, and she will have told you before your cousin has even got in the car.

This year I decided to beat them.

I was going to keep one secret. One. A surprise for Nenek.

Nenek runs our whole house from a chair and gives everything away and keeps nothing for herself. So I had decided that for once Nenek was going to be the one who got surprised. A small thing. Her favourite kuih, the green ones, and all the kids on the porch, and a banner, and Nenek not knowing until she came out and there it was. A thank-you for Nenek, who never lets anybody thank her.

The only problem was getting it past the weather.

"This is a covert operation," I told the gang, behind the surau where nobody could hear. "From this moment we use code. Nenek is the Eagle. The kuih is the Cargo. Nobody says the real words out loud. Understood?"

"Why is Nenek the Eagle," said Kavi, at a volume that reached the next kampung.

"Quietly, Kavi."

"WHY IS NENEK THE EAGLE QUIETLY," said Kavi.

Divya looked at me. Divya is my best friend and she does not waste words. "They already know," she said.

"They cannot already know. We are behind the surau. We just started."

"thiae," said Divya. "They always already know."

I did not listen. A good Commander does not listen to the one person who is right.

I sent Hana to buy the green kuih, but secretly, from the far stall, so the near stall would not gossip. Hana came back having bought the kuih, and also having been told by the makcik at the far stall to wish Nenek a lovely surprise. The makcik at the far stall. Two streets away. Before Hana had said a single word about Nenek or kuih or surprises.

"How," I said.

"I don't know," said Hana, who cannot lie, and so I knew she really did not know. "She just knew. She put extra in the bag. The extra was free. She said it was for the Eagle."

The Eagle. Our code word. A makcik two streets away was using our code word and putting free kuih in the bag for it.

I tightened security.

This was my mistake, and I can see that now, but a tightened security is the most interesting thing on a street, and the most interesting thing on a street is exactly what the network runs on. The more we whispered, the more we met behind the surau, the more we passed folded notes, the more the makciks had to talk about, and the better they got. I had not built a secret. I had built the best gossip in months and handed it to the people who eat gossip for breakfast.

By Thursday a makcik stopped me at the kedai, smiled, and asked, kindly, whether the banner was going to be green to match the kuih.

I had not told anyone about the banner. The banner was new. The banner was that morning.

I went home and lay on the floor for a while, which is what I do when a plan has beaten me.

On Friday, the day before the surprise, it all came apart. Aiman, who I had hired to keep the kuih cold in Pakcik's freezer, charged me a storage fee I could not pay, so he told me, loudly, in front of Pakcik, that the Cargo for the Eagle would have to come out of the freezer early. Pakcik, who hears everything and forgets nothing, did the small wave that means he has known the whole story since last Tuesday. Kavi, hearing the word Cargo, announced to the kedai that it was NOT about Nenek's surprise, which is the one sentence in the world that tells everybody it is exactly about Nenek's surprise.

By evening I was sure it was ruined. The whole street knew. The Eagle had surely heard. Somewhere Nenek was sitting in her chair already not-surprised, the way she is never surprised by anything.

I almost called it off.

Then Saturday came, and the strangest thing happened.

Everything was ready.

I do not know how. The green kuih was there, fresh, more than I had ordered, and nobody could tell me who had brought the extra. The porch was swept, and I had not swept it. The banner, which Pei Pei had built out of a bedsheet and two broom handles, went up easily, because somebody had already put the two nails in the wall exactly where the broom handles needed to go, and I had not put in any nails. The right kids turned up at the right time without me sending word, as if word had been sent.

And Nenek came out onto the porch, slow, the way she comes, and she stopped, and she put her hand to her mouth, and she was surprised.

She was actually surprised. The one woman in Johor who is never surprised by anything was standing on her own porch with her hand over her mouth, looking at a green banner and a plate of green kuih and a yard full of kids who loved her, and she had not seen it coming.

That is when I felt them behind me.

Three makciks, at the edge of the yard, where the weather waits. They had not come for kuih. They were not helping themselves to anything. They were just standing there, watching Nenek be surprised, and one of them caught my eye, and she winked at me, and she did not say one single word.

And then I saw the whole of it.

They knew. They had known the whole time, from behind the surau, from the code words, from the banner I had told nobody about. They could have spoiled it with a single sentence in Nenek's ear, the way they spoil everything, the way they told my cousin about his own driving test. And they had chosen not to. They had carried it for me. They had put the extra kuih in the bag and the nails in the wall and they had kept their mouths shut, which for a makcik is the hardest and most loving thing there is.

Keeping the street's secrets is not what the network is for. Keeping a kid's surprise for her grandmother is exactly what it is for. That is the whole rule.

I tried to work out how they had done all of it. The kuih, the nails, the swept porch. I could not. I gave up. You do not get to know how the weather works. You only get to stand in it and be glad it came.

The makcik winked once more and turned to go, the three of them moving off together the way they came, off to know something else before it happened.

Nenek cut the first green kuih and gave it round. Smallest first. That is me.

She still did not know who had got the nails in the wall.

Neither did I. I have decided I am better off not knowing. Some weather you just let happen.