the brave queue

It was jab day at the clinic, and the waiting room was full of little kids about to cry.

You know the feeling in a room like that. Everybody small is sitting on the hard plastic chairs, swinging their legs, not looking at the door, because the door is where the jab is. One little one starts to wobble, lip first. Then the next one catches it, because crying is the most catching thing there is. More than yawning. More than a cough. One goes, they all go.

I was there for my jab too. But I am nine, and I had decided I was not going to be one of the ones who wobble. I was going to be brave. The loudest, most obvious brave anybody had ever been at a jab, so that every little one in the room would look at me, copy me, and not cry.

So I took command of the waiting room.

"This," I told them, "is the brave face."

I showed them. Chin up. Eyes front. No looking at the door. I drilled them. I marched them round the waiting room in a brave-face parade, chins up, arms swinging, while their mothers watched and one auntie laughed quietly into her hand.

"When the nurse calls you," I said, "you walk. You do not run and you do not drag. You give her your arm like you are handing over a thing you do not even need."

One little one, who could not have been four, practised giving me her arm. She practised it so well that she gave it to me by accident for the rest of the morning, every time I walked past, just in case it had become her turn.

Aiman was there, because Aiman is wherever there is a queue. He started selling places near me at the front, where the bravery was strongest, one sweet for each spot, like paying to stand near a fire to keep warm. He had a guarantee, too. If you took the sweet and then cried anyway, he would give the sweet back. He sold a lot of sweets that morning, and somehow never once had to give one back.

There was one baby who would not learn the brave face. This baby had decided to learn the opposite. Every time I did a big brave chin, the baby did a bigger wobble, on purpose, watching me, getting ready, like a singer warming up before a show. I left it out of the parade. Some people come to a clinic specially to cry and would not thank you for stopping them.

And next to me the whole time was Hana.

Hana is my cousin and she is brave about almost everything. Not this. Hana had gone the colour of cold rice. She was holding the edge of her chair with both hands, so hard her knuckles went pale, looking at the door like it owed her money. She was not crying. She was holding on. As long as I was next to her, she was holding on.

"Syafiq says on his side you get a sticker after," I told her, to help. Syafiq is our cousin across the Causeway, and he gets a sticker for everything.

"We do not get a sticker," said Hana.

"No," I said. "We get to not have cried. That is better than a sticker." I did not fully believe it, but a commander says the thing the troops need.

Then we waited. Waiting is the worst part of a clinic, worse than the jab, because the jab is one second and the wait is an hour. The practising-crying baby got better and better, its wobbles climbing higher and louder. A toddler asked its mother forty times whether it was nearly its turn. I walked up and down the row, telling each little one to keep their chin up wherever it was starting to droop, and mostly they did, because I had decided they would.

Then the nurse looked at her list and called a number. And it was Hana's.

Hana did not move. Hana could not move. Her knuckles went white on the chair and her chin started to go.

So I stood up.

"I will go first," I told the nurse. "She is right after me. We go together. I am in front."

The nurse, who has seen everything, looked at me, and looked at Hana the colour of cold rice, and understood the whole thing in about one second, the way clinic nurses do. She said all right, and called me in instead.

I walked to the door. My legs did not feel like a commander's legs. I went in anyway. I sat on the chair and gave the nurse my arm, chin up, eyes front, exactly the way I had taught it.

Then the nurse picked up the needle.

And my brave face fell straight off my own face. My chin came down. My eyes went to the door. The cry came up from the place I do not control. The exact wobble I had drilled out of everyone else all morning. Rising up in me now, in the chair, with the needle coming.

Through the open door I could see Hana. Next. Watching. Holding her chair. Waiting to find out if it was a thing a person can do.

So I put the chin back up.

I do not know how. I put it back up and I looked hard at a spot on the wall, and my chin shook the whole time, and the nurse did the jab, quick, a sting and then over. I did not cry. Hana was watching. So I did not.

The little ones cheered when I came out. The brave-face army had its leader back, with a plaster and no tears.

Then Hana went. She came through the door white as rice, sat in the chair, gave her arm, and kept her eyes locked on me the whole time, through the open door. I kept my chin up so that hers would stay up too. The nurse did it. Hana did not cry. She got down off the chair with a plaster on her arm and her chin still up, and she looked at me, and I looked at her, and that was the whole of it.

Last of all, they called the practising-crying baby, the one that had been rehearsing its big number all morning. The whole room braced. Mothers covered their ears. This was going to be the cry of the century.

The nurse did the jab. The baby opened its mouth all the way, wound right up for the performance of its life, felt the sting, was so surprised it had actually happened, and forgot, completely, to cry. It sat there with its mouth open and nothing coming out, robbed, betrayed by its own plan, looking around for somebody to explain where its big moment had gone. Aiman gave it the biggest sweet of the day, on the house, for effort.

We walked out into the sun, the whole brave-face army spilling out of the door behind us, chins up, plasters on, the parade still going because nobody had told them they were allowed to stop. Hana was in the middle of them with her plaster and her chin up and not one tear anywhere on her, marching like she had personally invented being brave that morning.