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 said every reason I could think of. 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.

"You can put it down, you know," said Kak Long, from her phone. "It is a forty-minute jam. The cake is not going anywhere. Neither are we."

"A courier does not put down the cargo," I said.

"A courier's arms are going to fall off," said Kak Long, and went back to her phone, and was right, and did not need telling she was right.

The first real attack was the baby.

The baby was strapped in the back with us. The baby wants whatever is the single most important object in any room. And a tall pink cake box, held flat by its own sister, is, by any measure, the single most important object there has ever been. 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. A grown-up offers, gently, to just take it for a minute, and the soft easy thing is to hand it over. I did not hand it over. My arms could shake all they liked. They were not getting the cake.

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, as if they were a little bit scared of something. There was a lift, a fast one, and my stomach stayed on the floor we left, but the cake stayed flat, because I made it.

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.

"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 turned out to be 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.

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

That was when the baby got it.

The baby had wanted that cake since the kampung. It had reached for it across the whole Causeway and got a chewed hand for its trouble. And now it was on Pak Su's clean floor. Everybody was looking at the cake. Nobody was looking at the baby. So the baby crawled the last little bit, reached up one fat arm, and put one finger, slowly, all the way into the top of the cake.

One perfect hole. Right in the middle. After everything.

Nobody moved. I looked at the hole. I had carried that cake across the longest jam in the world, and the baby had put one finger in it in the last four seconds.

Then Aunty laughed. She cut the cake, and she cut the middle slice first, the one with the finger-hole in it, and she put it on the baby's plate.

"That one is yours," she told the baby. "You ordered it."

The baby ate its hole out of the middle of the cake, very pleased, with cream up to its eyebrows, and everybody had a slice, and the cake went down to nothing the way a good cake does.

Mak caught my eye across the table, over the wreck of the cake she had said careful about. She did not say anything. She did the eyebrow, the one that is not the cross one.

I had a slice of my own cake, finally, sitting next to the empty box I had carried it the whole way in. It was a very good cake.