the lion's tail

Every Chinese New Year a lion comes down our lane.

It is not a real lion. I know that. It is two people inside a big bright head with a fringe, and a body made of cloth, and a drum walking behind it going BOOM, and it dances house to house and bows at every door. The families give it oranges and a red packet, and it eats the packet right out of the air. I have watched it my whole life. It is the best thing that walks.

And every year the same thing happens. The lion comes. The lion dances. The lion turns the corner. And the lion is gone. Down the lane to the next street, the BOOM getting smaller, all the way down to the shophouses near the Causeway, they say, and us left standing in the road with the dust still going up.

This year I decided we would keep up.

"We are going to follow the lion all the way," I told the gang. "House to house. To the end. We are going to be a second lion, walking right behind the real one."

I called us the Second Lion. The name lasted about as long as it took me to say it, and the real lion never found out it had a rival, but you have to call a thing something before you can march it down a lane.

To follow a lion you need a lion. So we built one.

Pei Pei found a cardboard box for the head and cut eyes in it. Divya drew the face.

"That is a cat," I said.

"It is a lion," said Divya.

"It has whiskers."

"It is a proud lion," said Divya, and would not change it, so a proud cat it was, and it counted. We got an old sarong for the body, long enough for two kids under it. One at the front, holding the head up high. One at the back, bent over, holding the front one's waist.

I wanted the front. Of course I wanted the front. The front is the bright part. The front is up high. The front is the bit the oranges get thrown at. I put myself at the front before anybody could say anything, because if there is a bright part of anything, the part everyone looks at, I want to be that part. That is just true about me and I am not going to pretend it is not.

Nobody wanted the back. The back is bent over the whole time. The back cannot see. The back is just a bottom under a sheet, and nobody throws an orange at a bottom under a sheet.

"I will be the back," said Kavi.

I looked at him. Kavi is the loudest, fastest kid in the gang. Kavi has never once been quiet, not even by accident. The back is the bent-over, unseen, silent part nobody can throw an orange at. Kavi asking for the back was like the loudest boy in the world asking to be the quietest.

"You want the back," I said.

"I want the back," said Kavi, and climbed under the sheet behind me, happy as anything, announcing to the whole street, loudly, that he was the back.

Then Aiman turned up and started selling tickets for our lion, even though we had not finished building it. He told people they had to pay to walk behind it, as if we were the real lion dancers. He took two sen off a small boy before I could stop him.

We set off after the real lion, our cardboard head up, the proper drum going BOOM in front of us, our own drum being Faiz hitting a biscuit tin in time, very correctly, because Faiz does everything correctly and it is unbearable.

We made it eleven steps.

On the twelfth step the lane bends. I leaned left to take the bend. The back of our lion went right. The sheet pulled tight between us. The head went one way and the body went the other. Our lion split straight down the middle, in the road, in front of everyone. The front reached for a door on the left. The back marched off toward a longkang on the right. It did not look like a lion at all. It looked like two kids in a sheet trying to walk in two different directions, which is exactly what it was.

We fell over. A lion does not fall over. Ours did, in a heap, in front of an auntie's house, while the real lion bowed beautifully two doors down and ate a red packet out of the air to a big cheer.

I got us up. I tightened the sheet. I gave new orders. Orders fix things. That is what orders are for.

"When I lean, you lean," I told the back. "I will call it. I say left, you go left. I am the head. I see the way. I steer."

We tried again. I called every step. Left. Now straight. Now I am bowing, bow with me. And every single time the back was half a beat behind, because the words had to get from my mouth, under the head, through the sheet, to a kid who could see nothing but his own feet. A lion that bows half a beat late is a lion that head-butts a door.

We head-butted three doors. One auntie gave us an orange anyway, out of pity, which I took, because you take the orange.

By the fourth house I was hot, and the head was crooked, and the real lion was a whole street ahead, just a BOOM now, leaving us behind the way it leaves everyone.

Then the back of our lion spoke. Quietly, for once. From under the sheet, where he had been bent over the whole way, with his hands on my waist and his eyes on nothing.

"Stop telling me where to go," said Kavi. "I can feel where you go. Your feet. I have got your feet. Just walk. I am right behind you. I have been right behind you the whole time."

So I stopped calling it. I just walked.

I leaned into the next bend and said nothing. Behind me, the back leaned too, half a second before I had even finished leaning, because he had felt it through my waist before I had finished deciding it. I bowed and the body folded down with me, smooth, like one animal. I turned the corner and the whole lion turned the corner, the head and the tail going the same way at the same time for the first time all day.

We did not split again.

We caught the real lion at the very last house, right at the end of the lane, just as it finished. We stood close behind it with our cardboard head up and our tail steering us steady, and when the real lion bowed, we bowed, half a beat together, whole. The drummer with the real drum looked back at the two small idiots in a sarong, and he gave us one extra BOOM, just for us. I have never been given anything better.

Kavi came out from under the sheet, red and grinning and loud again, asking was he good, was he the best back, had I seen.

I had not seen a thing. I was the head, up in the bright part, with a cardboard box on my face.

"You were the best back there has ever been," I told him.

He told the drummer I had said it. The drummer, who had given us our one extra BOOM, agreed.