the last one awake

I wanted to hear what our house sounds like after everyone is asleep.

That is all. Our house is the loudest house I know. All day, everybody talking at once, the baby, the radio, the kuih trade, Kak Long on her phone, the whole thing going from morning until late. Then every night it all stops, somehow, and goes quiet, and I am always asleep before the quiet happens, so I have never once heard it. I wanted to be awake in my own house when the house was not.

The trouble is Nenek. Nenek goes in at nine, and when Nenek goes in, that is the signal, and the whole house follows her down into the dark like the tide going out. Nine o'clock. The selipar comes off Nenek's foot, and the house is over.

So I planned an operation to defeat sleep.

You cannot defeat sleep on your own. Sleep is bigger than one person. So I called a sleepover and built a system. Shifts. Two awake, the rest resting, then swap, like sailors, so somebody was always on watch and the whole night could be crossed in stages.

"What if a grown-up checks on us," said Hana.

"We hide. Everyone gets a spot."

"What if we just fall asleep," said Divya.

"That is the one thing that cannot happen, Divya. That is the whole enemy."

"I am only saying," said Divya, "that it is what is going to happen."

Pei Pei built the rig. She tied a length of string from each of our big toes, one to the next, with little weights along it. If the kid on watch felt themselves going, they could tug the line. The tug would run along and wake the next one. An anti-sleep machine. Toe to toe to toe, all of us strung together in the dark.

It did not survive the night.

Ah Wei went first, mid-snack, with food still in his hand, because a full Ah Wei is a sleepy Ah Wei.

"I am only resting my eyes," said Hana, sitting bolt upright. She said it three times. Each time her voice came slower. Then she said nothing at all, still sitting straight up, fast asleep without ever once lying down.

"I am NOT EVEN TIRED," said Kavi, in a voice that woke two houses, and was asleep before the echo got back.

Divya had said, at the start, that this would not work. Then she had gone to sleep on time like a sensible person, fast asleep and still right all along.

And then the rig went wrong, the way it was always going to.

Somewhere in the dark, the baby found the string. The baby is not even supposed to be in the operation. The baby is in every operation. The baby grabbed the string and pulled.

The pull ran down the whole line. Toe to toe to toe. It woke up every sleeping kid at once. Every kid except me. I was already awake, because I was the one on watch.

"WHOSE TURN," said Kavi, sitting bolt upright, fully asleep.

"Not mine," mumbled Hana, to nobody, already going back down.

For one moment the whole gang sat up in the dark, awake, confused, and attached to a baby. Then, one by one, they lay back down and went straight back to sleep, leaving me exactly where I had started. On watch. Alone.

Then sleep came for me too. It comes for you sideways, when you are most sure you are fine. My eyes went down on their own and I dragged them back up. I stood up, because you cannot fall asleep standing, and then I nearly fell asleep standing. I tugged my own toe-string, which woke nobody, because everybody at the other end of it was already gone.

So I pinched my arm whenever it tried to take me. I counted the dark. And very late, much later than nine, much later than I have ever been awake in my whole life, the house finally went quiet, and I got to hear it.

And it was not quiet.

That is the thing nobody tells you. The house after everyone is asleep is not silent. It ticks and settles. The fridge hums. The zinc roof clicks as it cools, letting go of the day. Far off, a lorry on the road to the Causeway, going to cross before the morning jam. And underneath all of it, in our own house, there was one more sound that should not have been there at that hour.

Somebody was up.

I went to look, very carefully, on watch to the last.

It was Nenek.

Nenek, who goes in at nine, who is the signal for the whole house to end, was moving through the dark, slow and sure, doing a round. The back gate, checked and latched. The rice, put in to soak for the morning. She stopped a moment over the baby, who had finally let go of the string, and pulled a thin blanket up over it without waking it. In Atok's corner the radio was still murmuring low to an empty chair. She turned it off, and the house went one notch quieter. She did not need a light. She has done it so many times her feet know the way in the dark.

She saw me in the doorway. She was not surprised. Nenek is never surprised by anything, and she was not surprised by a small girl awake at an hour she should not even know exists.

She did not send me to bed. She held out the thin blanket.

"The other babies," she said. She meant me, and Kak Long, and the gang, all the sleeping ones. She meant help me cover them.

So I did the round with her. I carried the blanket.

"This one does not stay shut," she said at a window, and showed me how you wedge it with a folded bit of card.

"Cloth," she said at the kuih, and I put the cloth over it so the ants would not find it in the night.

"Shoes," she said at the door, and I lined up the slippers the gang had kicked everywhere, small to big, the way she likes them, so the first foot out in the morning finds its own pair.

We went through the whole sleeping house together, the two of us, the last two awake, putting it to bed. Kak Long with her phone finally dark on her chest. Kavi, who was not even tired, with his mouth wide open. Ah Wei still holding his snack.

Then, at her own door, Nenek pointed me down the dark hall to my mat. I did not argue. It was her door.

I lay down. The house ticked and settled around me.

I heard Nenek, last of all, still up, doing the one window I had not been shown.