the balloon

I had a balloon.

I want to be clear about how big a deal this was. I did not have a balloon yesterday. I had never, in my whole life, had a balloon that was only mine. And now I had one. Red. Full of somebody's actual breath. Bouncing on a string. The greatest thing anybody in this kampung had ever owned.

I gave it a name. I am not going to tell you the name. It was a very good name and you would only laugh.

The rule was simple. The balloon had to live one whole day. From morning until the evening azan. That was all. One day.

Easy.

It was not easy.

The first problem was the baby. The baby is the smallest one in our house and the baby wants whatever is the most important thing in the world, right now, in its mouth. The baby looked at my balloon the way a cat looks at a moth. Then the baby began to crawl across the floor, straight at the balloon.

The baby is faster than it looks. I have watched that baby cross a whole room before anyone finished saying do not let the baby cross the room.

I held the balloon up high. The baby looked up. The baby has all day. Having all day is the baby's whole job.

This was going to be a war.

I held the balloon up for one hour.

You try holding your arm straight up for one hour. Go on. I will wait.

My arm started to make its own decisions. Mak came past with a tray of kuih and did the eyebrow at me. Just one eyebrow. In our house Mak's one eyebrow can mean forty things. This one meant put your arm down, you silly girl. I did not put my arm down. You do not put the arm down when the baby is in the room. That is how you lose a war and a balloon on the same morning.

But an arm cannot be a fortress all day.

I needed guards.

So I got the gang.

First I got Aiman. Aiman charges money for everything. Aiman would charge you to tell you the time, and then charge you again because now you know it.

"I need you to guard a balloon," I said.

"Guarding is fifty sen," said Aiman.

"I do not have fifty sen."

"Then it is one ringgit," said Aiman. With Aiman the price goes up when you cannot pay it. I think it is the only sum he knows and he loves it very much.

Then I got Kavi. Kavi runs everywhere and shouts everything. Kavi does not do slow. Kavi does not do quiet. Kavi has never met them. I told Kavi to guard the balloon and stand very still and be very quiet.

Asking Kavi to be still and quiet is like asking the rain to stop halfway down.

Kavi guarded the balloon by running around it shouting "I AM GUARDING THE BALLOON."

A balloon's three biggest enemies are a pin, a baby, and someone running near it with their elbows out. I had hired the elbows and stood them right next to the baby.

Then Pei Pei came. Pei Pei does not talk. Pei Pei builds. Pei Pei had heard the word balloon and gone away and come back with a thing made of a broken fan, a bicycle wheel, and a lot of string.

She held it up. She did not explain it. Nobody explains a Pei Pei.

She put the balloon inside it. The thing closed around the balloon, gentle, like it had done this a hundred times before. For one moment it was the most beautiful machine in Johor. The balloon sat in the middle of it, turning gently, like a small red king.

Then the fan part remembered it was a fan.

I am not going to tell you everything the machine did. Some of it I am still working out. The short version is that the balloon went up, the machine went sideways, Kavi went after both of them shouting, and Pei Pei watched her own machine with the face of a person whose machine has joined the enemy.

The balloon came down off the roof beam. I caught it. With my face, mostly. But I caught it.

The house was not safe. The gang was not safe. I needed somewhere with a door that shut and nothing in it that ran.

I needed the freezer.

The freezer is at the kedai and the kedai is Pakcik's. Pakcik sells everything anyone has ever needed, and when you come in he is already leaning on the freezer, because Pakcik saw you coming yesterday.

"I need to put a balloon in your freezer," I said.

Pakcik did the wave. The small one. The small wave means Pakcik already knows the whole story including the end, and he is going to let you find it out the long way.

He opened the freezer. I put the balloon in, between the ice and a fish that was having a much worse week than me. I shut the door. Cold. Shut. Nothing in there runs. I had won the morning.

I opened the door to check on it after one minute, because that is a normal amount of time to leave a balloon you love.

The balloon had got small.

It had got small and wrinkled and sad, like a grape that had been left in a pocket for a week. I made a noise I am not proud of. I grabbed it and held it against me and breathed on it and told it some things, and it came back. It got big and round and red again, like nothing had ever been wrong and how dare I suggest it.

Pakcik watched all of this. He did not say anything. Pakcik saying nothing is louder than most people's whole families.

Behind me a voice said, "What is wrong with thiae's balloon."

The makcik had arrived. The makcik network always arrives. Nobody sends for them. They come the way weather comes. There were three of them. There are always exactly three of them. Never two. Never four. Three. And they already knew about the freezer, the machine, the fish, and the small sad grape part, and they had not been there for any of it.

By the time I got to the door the whole street knew I had a balloon, and the whole street had an opinion about how to keep it.

Getting a famous balloon home through this kampung is not a walk. It is an obstacle course built by people who love you and want to watch.

The sun wanted it. The sun in Johor is heavy. It leans on you all day. It would lean on a balloon until the balloon popped, just to be left alone. A balloon left in it goes BANG without asking anyone.

The zinc roof wanted it. Our zinc roof is the loudest roof in the world and it is covered in things that have decided to be sharp.

A goat wanted it. I will not explain the goat. There is always a goat. I just want you to know the goat was there and the goat was interested.

Divya walked next to me the whole way. Divya is my best friend and Divya is right about things, which is a hard quality in a best friend.

"It is a balloon," Divya said. "Balloons pop. That is the main thing they do. It is basically their job."

"Not this one," I said.

Divya did not argue. Divya never argues. Divya just stays next to you being right, quietly, until the part where she has to help.

I got it past the sun by being its shade. I got it past the zinc roof by going the long way. The long way goes past the longkang. The longkang is the drain, and we treat it like a kingdom. The kingdom would have loved a balloon. It did not get one. I want that on the record.

I got it home. I had thrown my whole self around that balloon so many times that I came home with dust in my hair, mud on my knees, and a leaf in my ear I do not want to talk about.

The baby was waiting at the door. Of course the baby was waiting at the door. The baby is always there for the part where it goes wrong. The baby came across the floor. I went over the baby like a small tired hero and got inside.

And then it was almost the azan.

I had nearly done it. One whole day. The balloon was still red, still round, still mine, still full of the breath of whoever had been kind enough to fill it.

Everyone came to watch the end. They pretended they had not. Kak Long came and sat with her phone and said she was not even watching, while watching. Mak came with the tray. Atok came as far as the door, which for Atok is a long journey, and stood there with the radio still going behind him. The makcik came. The gang came. The baby was already there.

I held the balloon and we all looked at it.

In our house nothing is ever only mine. Everything is shared, or handed down, or it is the baby's now. For one whole day this one red thing had been only mine and nobody else's, and I had carried it through all of them, and it was still here.

I did not say that. You do not say a thing like that out loud in a full house. I just held it a bit tighter.

That was the mistake.

I held it a bit tighter, and then, because I had nearly won, and winning makes you stupid, I hugged it. I hugged my balloon with my whole self, the way you hug a thing you have defended from a baby, a machine, a freezer, a fish, a goat, and the sun.

BANG.

Our zinc roof is the loudest thing for miles. That BANG was louder.

For one second nobody moved. The balloon was gone. There was a small red bit of skin on the floor, looking embarrassed, and my two arms still hugging the air where the balloon had been.

Then the whole house laughed.

Not at me. Well. A bit at me. Mostly it was the big warm laugh a full house does when the thing everyone was holding their breath about finally goes off. And the dangerous one in the room turns out to be you.

I laughed too. You have to. You defend a balloon all day from the whole kampung and then you are the pin.

The baby crawled over. The baby had something in its hand. The baby held it out to me, very pleased, the way the baby gives you things.

It was another balloon. A second one. Flat, and damp, and a bit chewed, and it had clearly been somewhere I did not want to think about, for some time.

I took it. Of course I took it.

A balloon is a balloon. The rule starts again tomorrow.