the longest wall

We went to the sea, the whole family, on a day so hot the road was thinking about melting. The second my feet hit the sand I decided we were going to set a record.

The sea where we go pulls a long way back at low tide. It leaves wet flat sand that goes on and on, smooth and dark and perfect, the kind of sand that is asking to have something built on it. Most people build a castle. I was going to build a wall. The longest sand wall anyone had ever built in the whole history of the kampung, from the high tide line to as far as I could get before the sea came back.

First, the measuring. A record is not a record if nobody measures it. I found a long stick of driftwood and paced out a start line, heel to toe, very serious, and drew it in the sand. Everything past this line was about to be history.

Then I went to get builders. One girl cannot build the longest wall in history on her own. That is just a girl patting some sand.

I got the gang. Then I got other kids, kids I had never met, from families all up the beach.

"Do you want to be in history," I asked a boy with a bucket.

"What do I do," he said.

"Build that way." I pointed down the beach, out toward the water, where on a clear day you can see the grey Singapore towers, small and far across the strait. "Not up. Along. Away."

He built up anyway. Everyone built up. A pile of sand and a pair of hands just want to make a tower. I went down the line saying it over and over: not up, along, away. One boy made a beautiful tower right on my line, in the middle of history. I let him keep it. I called it a watchtower. A good foreman knows when to lose.

By mid-morning I had fifteen builders, half of them strangers. Then a boy ten steps down started a rival wall. Shorter than mine, but with a flag on it. I had not thought of flags.

"Kavi," I said. "We need a flag."

Kavi planted four. For a while the two walls forgot they were about length at all and became entirely about flags.

Aiman appeared, the way Aiman appears wherever there is a workforce. He could not sell the sand. Even Aiman cannot sell sand. So he rented out the one bit of shade under the one tree. The price went up every time a cloud crossed the sun and the shade got worse. The worse the shade got, the more Aiman charged for it. He never charges for what a thing is worth, only for how badly you want it right then.

Divya built next to me with her arms folded, which is hard to build with.

"The sea is going to take all of this," she said.

"Not before I measure it," I said.

Kavi was helping. Kavi only knows fast. He decided the wall needed water, to pack it hard the way the big people pack sand, so he filled a bucket at the sea, ran it up, and threw it at the wall.

A bucket of sea thrown at a sand wall does not make it strong. It makes a puddle. Then a slump. Then a gap. Kavi looked at the gap, decided it needed more water, and ran for another bucket. He sprinted back up, soaked and beaming, and washed away the exact bit he had just run up to save. Then he did it again. He was a tide all by himself, washing his own wall away as fast as he could carry water up to it.

Ayah wandered down from the umbrella to see history. I gave him a stretch of wall. He is good with his hands, and he built a proper bit, solid and packed, the best stretch on the whole beach.

"How long does it have to be," Ayah asked.

"Long enough that the sea gives up before I do," I said.

Ayah looked at the sea, which is the most patient thing there is, and did not say anything, and kept building anyway, which is the right answer.

And the baby came for the wall too.

The baby found a dip in the sand and decided it was a moat and filled it in, even though it was not a moat and was now a bump. Then it looked up at me, deeply pleased, for filling in a moat. The baby took a handful off the top of the wall, patted it into a careful little round, and ate it. A sand bun. Then it sat down. In the middle. A whole metre of record became a flat patch with a baby on it, looking out to sea.

Every so often I went back to the start and measured what we had, heel to toe along the wall, counting out loud so the beach could hear history happening. Every time, the number was bigger, and I announced it. And every time I announced it, the sea had quietly taken a bit off the far end I had already counted. The wall was the longest it had ever been and getting shorter at the same time. That is a very hard thing for a record to be.

So now the wall was being eaten from three sides at once. Kavi from the wet end. The baby from the middle. The sea from the front, the wet line creeping up the flat sand toward my start line, slow, and not stopping for anybody.

I ran between them for a while, holding the sea off one end and the baby off the middle and steering Kavi's buckets, and losing at every end at once.

Then I stopped running.

I picked the baby up off the wall. I did not carry it away to safety. I carried it to the very best stretch, the tallest bit, the one Ayah had packed solid, and I put it down right in the middle.

"Here," I said. "Help."

The baby helped. The baby knocked the whole stretch flat with both hands, delighted, and I let it. We knocked bits down together. We patted them flat. The baby ate another sand bun. I built a lump, the baby sat on the lump, and I measured the lump very seriously with my stick and announced it, loudly, as a record. The baby clapped for itself. The whole gang gave up trying to save the wall from the sea and started helping the sea instead.

The sea came all the way in. It found the end of the wall and took it, soft, one bump at a time, no fuss and no asking. We stood in the warm water and watched it go. The longest wall in the history of the kampung, melting into the next wave, then the next, gone, like it had never been measured at all.

Nobody minded. The gang were soaked and laughing. The kids I had never met went back to their own families. Aiman was trying to give the shade deposits back, which he is very bad at, because giving money back is the one move Aiman has never practised.

The baby reached up to be carried, sandy from its hair to its feet. I carried it up the beach to where Mak and Nenek sat under the umbrella. It put its head down on my shoulder, gritty and warm and heavy, and watched the last bump of the wall go under, over my shoulder. Then it gave one more small clap, for the sea, and fell asleep.