the carry

We were going across to Pak Su's, in Singapore, for the day. And we were bringing a cake.

Not a normal cake. A tall one, from the good shop, in a pink box tied with string, made of layers and cream and a top that you are not allowed to breathe on. Mak had ordered it a week before. It was for Pak Su's family, who live across the Causeway and are a bit fancy and a bit kiasu. Kiasu means they do not like to lose at anything, even cake. They would notice a cake. They would notice if there was no cake. They would notice the cake either way.

Somebody had to carry it. There was a lot of discussion about who.

"I will carry it," I said.

"You will drop it," said Kak Long, my big sister, without looking up from her phone.

"I have never dropped a cake," I said, which was true, because nobody had ever let me hold one.

I made my case. I made all of it. And in the end Mak handed me the pink box, flat on my two hands. She looked at me for a second. It was a look I do not get very often, the look you give a person you are trusting with a thing. Then she said one word, "Careful," and that was the whole mission. Get the cake across the Causeway and into Pak Su's flat, perfect, not a dent, not a smudge. There and back was hours. I was nine. The cake was taller than my head when I sat down.

Aiman caught us before we even left the kampung. Aiman charges for everything and somehow he had heard there was a cake.

"I do cake insurance," said Aiman. "Ten sen. If the cake is damaged, I pay you back the ten sen."

"That is not insurance, that is just me giving you ten sen," I said.

"It is peace of mind," said Aiman, palm out. I got in the car. He was still quoting prices through the window as we pulled away. The cake and I were on our own now.

The Causeway is the bridge between us and Singapore. It is the most jammed place in the entire world. People say the jam, and they mean it the way you mean a mountain or the sea, like a thing that has always been there and always will be. Ayah crosses it for work. The radio talks about it like the weather. You do not beat the Causeway. The Causeway beats you. The only thing you get to decide is what you do while it is beating you.

So I decided to do a heroic delivery.

I narrated it in my head, the way you do. This was the longest and most dangerous leg of the great cake delivery. Here was the convoy, slowed by enemy traffic. Here was the brave courier, holding the precious cargo perfectly flat across many hard kilometres. The convoy did not move. For forty minutes the convoy did not move one centimetre. A lorry next to us turned its engine off. A man two cars up got out and stretched and got back in. The heroic delivery was, mostly, sitting completely still in the heat being heroic about it.

The first real attack was the baby.

The baby was strapped in the back with us and the baby wants whatever is the single most important object in any room, and a tall pink cake box held flat by its sister is, by any measure, the single most important object. The baby reached for it. The baby has a reach like you would not believe. I lifted the box. The baby reached higher. I held it up by the car window and the baby leaned out of its strap with one arm fully out, opening and closing its hand, very calm, like it had all day, which on the Causeway it did.

I gave the baby my other hand to chew. It chewed my hand and watched the cake. A truce. A wet truce, but a truce.

The second attack was the tilt. The car went round a slow bend and everything leaned, me, the box, all of it. For one second the cake inside slid. I felt it go, a slow soft heavy slide toward one wall. I turned the whole box against the bend, like a boat turning into a wave, and it slid back. I have never concentrated so hard on anything in my life. A drop of sweat went into my eye. I did not wipe it. You do not free a hand. The cake had both my hands and it was keeping them.

The third attack was the kindest and the most dangerous. People offering to help.

"Let me hold it for a bit, your arms must be tired," said Mak.

"I am fine," I said.

"Pass it here, we are nearly there," said Ayah.

"I have got it," I said.

This is the trap. Your arms are tired. They are shaking a little. And a grown-up offers, gently, to just take it for a minute, and the easy thing, the soft thing, is to hand it over, and then it was not really your delivery at all, it was a thing you held until it got hard. I did not hand it over. My arms could complain all they liked. They were not in charge. I was in charge, and the cake was, in the most important way, the thing I was in charge of.

We got over. We were in Singapore, which looks like our side but tidier, like somebody had been told company was coming. The roads were wide and the cars all stayed in their lines like they were a bit scared of something. We parked. We walked. There was a lift, a fast one, and my stomach stayed on the floor we left, and the cake stayed perfectly flat because I made it, and I will tell you, by then, the cake and I had been through things together.

And then came the last ten steps, which were the worst of the whole day.

Pak Su's flat. The door open. The whole family there, fancy and pleased and kiasu and warm under it, and the second they saw the cake, every single one of them reached for it. All at once. Aunty reaching, Pak Su reaching, Syafiq reaching, "let me, let me take it, oh you brought the cake, here, give it here, you must be tired, what a lovely cake, let me." Ten hands. After a whole Causeway of keeping every other hand off it, the real danger was the welcome.

I planted my feet. I found the table. I walked the cake the last ten steps through all those reaching hands, turned, bent, and put it down on the table myself. Flat. Perfect. Not a dent. Not a smudge. The top untouched.

Then I let go of it, and my arms floated up on their own like they had forgotten they were allowed to.

Everybody admired the cake. Nobody admired the carry. When you carry a thing right, it just arrives, looking like it was never in any danger at all, and nobody knows about the bend, or the baby, or the long hot still jam.

I did not mind. I sat down next to my cake. I was tired in a good way, a way I had not been tired before.

Aunty cut the cake and gave the first slice to the smallest cousin. It was a good cake. Nobody said one word about the carry, and that was right, because there was nothing to say. The cake was here. It had crossed the longest jam in the world flat and perfect, because somebody had said careful to me and I had been careful.

I would like to be the one they say careful to again. The next time there is a box for the far side of the water, I am going to ask to be the one who carries it.