7
Present Day
I sit in the garage for what seems like hours, wondering just how the hell my life has spun so out of control. And what in the world am I even doing here? Why am I home, instead of at the police station? It might not be too late. I could probably still go to the cops, explain everything. They’d be sympathetic, maybe. But when I think about turning the engine back on and driving out of the garage again, every drop of energy leaks out of me. I slump against the wheel, boneless. I just need to stay here for a bit. Gather enough courage. Decide what I would say to the police.
There’s a sharp knock on the window. I jump so hard I bump my head on the roof of the car. Now I know what the saying “jumped out of their skin” means.
“What are you doing in there? You drunk? Aduh, were you drunk driving?” Ma calls out in Indonesian, her voice muffled through the window.
I open the car door, heart thundering. “Ma, you scared me!”
She frowns at me. “What is it, Meddy? What’s wrong?”
I wasn’t planning on telling her anything. Of course I wasn’t—the last person I want to tell is Ma. She wouldn’t know what to do, or say, or—
“Ma, I killed him.” Tears spring into my eyes when I hear myself say those words out loud. I killed him. How many more times would I have to say that?
“Kill him? Kill what? Aduh, Meddy, how many times must I tell you, don’t drink so much. You see, now you’re not making any sense.”
“I killed him, Ma. Jake. The guy you set me up with!” And now, finally, I let the tears flow, because saying his name is awful. It’s not just some body in my trunk; it’s a body who used to be a someone.
Ma stops her nattering mid-sentence. Her mouth claps shut, and she stares at me for a while. When she next speaks, it’s in halting English. “This is like what you and Selena like to say? You kids always saying, ‘Wah, you killing it!’ Like that, ya?”
“No!” I cry. “I mean I literally killed him, Ma!” Not knowing what else to do, I take out my car key and hit a button. The trunk pops open with a click that might as well be a gunshot inside our small garage. All noise is suddenly amplified; I can hear my own heartbeat, and Ma’s sharp intake of breath.
“Meddy,” she whispers, “this is joke, right? You just joking with me?”
“No, Ma, this isn’t a joke.”
A strangled laugh from Ma; then she shakes her head. “You kids, ya, you always think you are so funny.” She wags a finger at me and strides to the back of the car, still shaking her head. “My daughter, such a joker, so—AIYA wo de tian ah!” She stumbles back, hands covering her mouth.
I wince.
“Meddy,” she hisses. “Meddy! This is not funny.” She looks back and forth between me and the trunk. “Are those fake legs? What you call it—man-ee-kween?”
I shake my head, fresh tears springing to my eyes. “No, Ma, it’s not a mannequin. It’s really Jake, I swear.”
She utters a noise that’s somewhere between a howl and a whimper, then takes a moment to steel herself before peering closer into the trunk. She whimpers again when she sees the rest of the body. I imagine what she’s seeing from her vantage point. First the shoes—brown loafers, no socks—then the legs, the torso, and then the hoodie covering his face.
“Why you cover the face?” she says. “Something horrible happen to it, is it?” She shudders. “Is there something sticking out of the eye? Aiya, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” She flaps, grimacing. “Is it broken glass in his eye?”
“No, Ma. There’s nothing sticking out of his eye. I just thought it would be, I don’t know, more respectful.”
“Oh.” She nods. “Yes, you right, more respectful.” She pats me on the cheek. “I raise you so well.”
Hysteria rises from deep in my stomach and I have to swallow it. Trust Ma to take pride in my etiquette when I’ve just shown her my date, whom I’ve killed, in the trunk of my car.
“I did just kill a person, so I don’t know that you can say you’ve raised me well.”
“Oh, he must deserve it.”
I bite my lip to keep from bursting into tears again. I’m so grateful that I don’t have to explain myself to her.
“Okay!” Ma says, straightening up, all of a sudden in control. She’s not even breathing hard anymore. There’s a glint in her eye that she gets the week before Chinese New Year, when she goes absolutely berserk and cleans the house like Marie Kondo on crack. “You. Inside. Now.” She slams the trunk shut and herds me through the back door into the house.
Inside, she tells me to sit at the kitchen counter. I follow her instructions, too exhausted and defeated to argue. And, as much as I hate to admit it, I’m glad she’s taking over, because I don’t know what the hell to do in this situation. So I slump onto a chair, rest my elbows on the kitchen counter, and bury my face in my hands. Please let me wake up and find out that all this was a nightmare. Any moment now.
A steaming cup of tea is placed in front of me.
“TCM,” Ma says. “You drink now. You got too much ‘yang,’ your insides very hot. Your breath smell so bad.” She shuffles out of the kitchen.
I stare at her retreating back. Traditional Chinese medicine, seriously? Who would think about bad breath at this particular moment? Still, I take a sip, and the herbal tea is like an elixir, spreading its sweet warmth through my entire body, down to my freezing hands. I take another sip, then another, and before long, I’ve finished the entire cup and actually feel a little better.
Ma strides back into the kitchen. “Okay, I call Big Aunt already. She will be here in few minutes.”
“WHAT?” I jump out of my chair. “Ma, oh my god, I can’t believe you did that.”
She looks genuinely confused for a second, but then her face clears and she laughs, waving me off. “Oh, no worry, no worry, she say she will call everyone else for me, okay? Won’t just be Big Aunt coming here, you don’t worry, all your aunties will come too.”
“WHAT??” I cry. I throw my head back and stare up at the ceiling. This can’t be happening. “Ma, that’s not—we shouldn’t be telling everyone about this!”
Ma frowns. “Not everyone. Just your aunties.”
“That’s everyone!”
“Meddy,” she tuts, disapproving. “They are family. It’s different.”
“It’s murder!” I cry. “Or, well, not murder, it’s more like self-defense, but still. Ma, there’s a dead guy in my car. This is not the kind of thing you share with everyone, even if they’re family.”
“It’s exactly kind of thing you share with family,” Ma says.
“What do you mean, it’s exactly the kind of thing you share with family? What other things have you guys shared that are in any way like this?”
Ma waves me off and says, “Come, help me cut mango for aunties. If we don’t offer any food very ngga enak.”
“Seriously, Ma? You care about saving face right now? I think we’re kinda beyond that, aren’t we?”
She gives me a look as she bends down to open up the fruit drawer in the fridge. “Meddy, how can you say that? Your aunties coming over, so late at night, coming to help us get rid of body, and we don’t even offer them any food? How can? Oh, we have dragon fruit, good, good. Big Aunt’s favorite. Wah, got pear too. Very good. Help me peel, don’t be so rude to your aunties, you will bring shame.”
“Oh, right, it’s the lack of fruit that’ll bring shame, not the dead body in the car.”
But less than a minute later, I’m standing at the kitchen island with a peeler in one hand and a Korean pear in the other. My mind keeps going, Bwaaa, this is so surreal. There is a dead body in my car and I’m standing here peeling fruit! For some reason, I continue peeling and cutting. I suppose I might as well, since I don’t have any better ideas.
Just as I finish cutting up the giant pear, the doorbell chimes.
“Go get door,” Ma says. She’s still slicing up the last dragon fruit.
I head for the front door, still in that weird I-must-be-dreaming state of mind. I don’t even know what to say to my aunts. Thank you for coming to help figure out what to do with this guy I killed?
But I’m spared having to say that, because the moment I open the door, Big Aunt pats my cheek and says in Indonesian, “My dear Meddy, it’s okay, don’t worry. Go sit down,” and then strides past me. Second and Fourth Aunts follow, each one clucking, “Don’t worry, we’re here now, stop crying.”
“I’m not crying—”
Second Aunt tuts, as though my lack of tears were a personal affront to her, before joining the others in the kitchen. Noise explodes from the kitchen, though not of the “Oh my god, Meddy did what?” variety. More of the “Wah, dragon fruit! Aduh, you shouldn’t have bothered!” variety. I can hear Ma pulling out chairs and shouting merrily at them to sit down and have some mangoes. “Ah Guan gave me a whole crate when he came back from Indo. A whole crate!”
Taking a deep breath, I steel myself and go into the kitchen.
“Meddy!” Big Aunt shouts.
Oh god, here it comes. Now they’ll start freaking out about the body.
“Have you eaten?” Big Aunt says. “Come! Come here and sit down, oh, you look so pale.” She gets up from her seat.
It’s as though a switch clicks on inside me. I automatically hurry over, pushing her back down onto the chair, saying, “Please, Big Aunt, don’t bother yourself. I’ll grab a chair. You sit and enjoy the fruit, okay? Can I get you anything else?”
From the corner of my eye, I sense Ma’s approval, and it makes me want to laugh out loud and sob. I mean, seriously, I’ve just killed a man, and she still cares about me being respectful to my elders.
Big Aunt spears a sliced mango and takes a dainty bite. “Wah, so good.” She takes another bite and sighs. “Nothing beats Indonesian mangoes.”
“Yes, Indonesian mangoes are the sweetest,” Ma says. “Does anyone want herbal tea? I boiled a pot for Meddy and I have some left over.”
“Tch, no thanks, I don’t believe in that old-fashioned TCM stuff,” Fourth Aunt says.
Ma glowers at her. “Traditional Chinese medicine is real medicine!” She launches into one of her usual tirades about how TCM has been medically proven to work and is much better than Western medicine and so on and so forth.
I’m stuck in a nightmare. I know it. Maybe I got a concussion from the accident. Maybe I’m actually in a coma, and my coma-brain is coming up with this weird-ass scenario, because there is no way that I’m actually sitting here, in the kitchen, watching my oldest aunties eat a mango and Ma and Fourth Aunt argue while Jake lies cooling in the trunk of my car. Just when I’m about to scream, Big Aunt puts down her fork with a meaningful clatter.
Everyone sits to attention.
“So,” she says, turning to me and switching to English. Behind the kindly wrinkles that I know so well I could sketch them in my sleep, her gaze is eagle sharp. “Tell Big Aunt what happen. Start from beginning.”
I don’t hesitate. There’s just something about Big Aunt, a mix of firm authority and motherly warmth that nobody can say no to. I’m feeling so guilty about having them rush here in the middle of the night—to help me with a dead body, no less—that I try relaying the story in Indonesian. But not even one sentence in, Second Aunt tells me my atrocious Indonesian is giving her a headache and I should just stick to English. With some relief, I tell them about my date with Jake, about how he insisted on driving me home, and the things he said.
My aunts and mother cover their mouths with horror and shake their heads.
“How could you set Meddy up with such a douchebag?” Fourth Aunt snaps at Ma.
Ma’s face is as red as a Louboutin sole. “He was so nice online! Perfect gentleman, even offer to cook terong for me—er, for Meddy.”
“What’s terong? Is that fermented shrimp paste?” I say.
“Tch, no,” Ma says, switching to English. “Shrimp paste is terasi. Terong is eggplant.”
Something clicks inside me. “He offered to cook me eggplant? That’s weirdly specific.”
Ma nods furiously. “It’s why I think, wah, this boy is meant for you. He even know what is your favorite food.”
“I need to see these chat messages.”
Ma takes her phone from her pocket, and my aunts all take out their glasses. As Ma hands the phone to me, Fourth Aunt swipes it from her hand.
“Hey!” Ma says.
Fourth Aunt ignores her and starts scrolling. Her eyebrows shoot up, almost disappearing in her hairline, and she bursts into hysterical laughter.
“Why you laugh? What is so funny?” Ma snaps.
Still laughing so hard she can’t catch her breath, Fourth Aunt pushes the phone to me. I skim through the messages, and . . . Oh. My. God. It is so much worse than I thought.
Jake1010Hotelier: Hey
Meddelin Chan: Hello!
I look up at Ma, aghast. “You used my real name on this site? And is that—” I tap on the little icon next to my name, and it enlarges to show an actual picture of me.
“I don’t know you are supposed to use fake name! How am I supposed to know that?”
“Maybe by not pretending to be me and making a fake dating account? I mean, for god’s sake, look, Jake didn’t upload any pictures of himself!” Ma looks so hurt that I immediately regret saying that. “I’m sorry, Ma, I know you just wanted to help.”
She gives a tiny nod, and I resume reading.
Jake1010Hotelier: Love your pic
Meddelin Chan: Thank you!! You so sweet!!
I grit my teeth in an effort to not snap at Ma again. How many exclamation marks can the woman use in a single reply?
Jake1010Hotelier: So, wedding photography, huh? That must be interesting.
Meddelin Chan: Oh yes! Very interesting!! What do you do?
Jake1010Hotelier: As you might have guessed from my screenname, I’m a hotelier. I own hotels. Many of them, actually.
Meddelin Chan: Wahhh! So impressed!
It goes on like that for a while, Jake bragging, describing in great detail each and every one of the hotels he owns, and Ma replying in the most bimbotic way that’s humanly possible. Anyone reading this would think I’m desperate for Jake’s approval, but I know that this is Ma being polite. This is how she’s raised me, to encourage others to talk about themselves, and then find the good things in what they say and show appreciation. I can’t tell whether it’s a Chinese thing or an Indonesian thing, but whatever it is, it worked on Jake. After only a few days of messaging back and forth, he sends this message:
Jake1010Hotelier: I feel so comfortable chatting with you, Meddy.
Meddelin Chan: Me also!
Jake1010Hotelier: It’s so hard finding someone I really click with, you know? I feel as though I’ve known you for a long time.
Meddelin Chan: I agree!
Jake1010Hotelier: Sooo wanna meet up?
Meddelin Chan: Yes! So happy you ask now! Yesterday my body not taste so delicious, but today is better.
Oh. My. God. Noooo. In Indonesian, the phrase “tidak enak badan” means “not feeling well,” but its literal translation is “body not delicious.” Behind me, Fourth Aunt resumes cackling, while the others go, “What? What’s so funny?”
I read on.
Jake1010Hotelier: Oh. Wow, okay. Damn, girl, you’re even thirstier than I thought.
Meddelin Chan: Haha! No, no, not thirsty! I have a lot to drink. Quite wet now.
Jake1010Hotelier: Wow. Damn. If I’d known, I would’ve asked you out sooner.
Meddelin Chan: Wah! How you know eggplant my favorite??
Jake1010Hotelier: It is, huh? Well, I’ve got a real big one for you.
Meddelin Chan: Oh! I can’t wait! LOVE eggplant!!
I slam the phone down and stare at Ma. Fourth Aunt is literally lying on the floor, laughing.
“What? What is it?” Big Aunt says. “He sound like very nice boy, offer to cook eggplant for you.”
“Right?” Ma cries, gesturing wildly. “I read that and I think, wah, this boy is so lovely, so caring for my daughter, even ask her, is she thirsty?”
I bury my face in my hands. “Nooo! Ma, those emojis—the water droplets and the eggplant—they’re sexual innuendos!”
Three pairs of eyes stare at me in utter confusion while Fourth Aunt howls with laughter.
“Sexual . . . what? In-you-when-what?” Second Aunt says.
I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with my aunts and mom right now. “Sexual innuendos. You know, like, sexual wordplay. The eggplant symbolizes the—um—the male uh, the um.” This is ridiculous. I’m twenty-six, for god’s sake, and yet I can’t say the word “penis” out loud in front of my mom and aunts because part of me is sure they’d scold me for saying it. Instead, I use my index finger to air-draw the universal symbol for penis.
“Eggplant,” Big Aunt says. “Yes, he say eggplant, we know that.”
“No—”
“She means PENIS!” Fourth Aunt howls, and then doubles over again, laughing.
“What?” Ma gasps. “No. But—”
“That sound not right. I think you wrong,” Big Aunt says stridently. She snatches the phone from me and frowns at it again. “See, he say, ‘If I’d known, I would’ve asked you out sooner . . . I’ve got a real big one—’ Oh.” She drops the phone on the counter as if it’s turned into a cockroach.
Ma’s standing there, frozen, a look of horror on her face.
“Ma, you okay?”
She turns to look at me slowly, then says, in a voice full of horrified wonder, “Eggplant is penis?”
“Yeah.” I sigh, feeling so ashamed of my generation.
“I thought he mean, you know, fried eggplant. I thought—” She looks so lost and small that I can’t help but feel sorry for her. I put an arm around her shoulders and squeeze.
“It’s okay, Ma. I know.”
“Yes, it’s okay, everyone has to learn how to sext at some point,” Fourth Aunt says.
I shoot her a dirty look.
“Sext?” Ma says.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, patting her shoulder. “So, um. Okay, so this clarifies some things. Not that it excuses Jake’s behavior in any way, but I see now why he was so . . . uh—”
“Horny?” Fourth Aunt says. She grins when I shoot her another dirty look.
Ma’s hand flies to her mouth again. “Meddy, is it . . . did I get boy killed because I say I want to eat his eggplant?”
I open my mouth to answer, but my aunts beat me to it, shouting, “NO!” in unison.
“So what if you say you want eat eggplant?” Second Aunt says. “Maybe one day you want eat eggplant, but then another day you don’t want, is okay you change mind.”
“Yes, he is very bad boy, very bad,” Big Aunt says.
“But if I don’t say, ‘Wah, yes, I want to eat your eggplant,’ then maybe he not so—you know—”
“Meddy, when he said those things to you in the car, what did you say to him?” Fourth Aunt says.
“I told him no, I wasn’t interested in that. I moved his hand off my knee. I was pretty clear about what I wanted and didn’t want.”
“See?” Fourth Aunt says, triumphantly. “The eggplant doesn’t matter. That was just flirting. Everybody does it. But he chose to take it further after Meddy said no. It’s not your fault.”
I nod emphatically. “It really isn’t your fault, Ma.” A tiny voice in my mind says: Well, it kind of is, in that if she hadn’t impersonated me in the first place . . .
I squash the voice down. No use pointing fingers now.
“Okay, back to what happen,” Big Aunt says. “So this baggy douche try touch you—”
“Douchebag,” Fourth Aunt says.
Big Aunt waves her off. “Douchebaggy try touch you—”
“Um, and then I kind of freaked out—panicked—and uh. I may have Tased him a little.”
Four pairs of eyes stare at me, horrified.
“Meddy,” Second Aunt breathes. “You have Taser?”
I can’t help cringing as I nod. Here it comes. They’re going to—
“Can we see?” Second Aunt says.
Huh?
“Wah, wonder what model you got,” Big Aunt says. “Is it like my one?” She picks up her handbag from the kitchen counter and rummages in it, looking over her reading glasses.
Fourth Aunt sighs. “They got distracted again. Hey!” She claps at them, like they’re raucous puppies. “Focus! It’s very late and we have an early morning.”
Big Aunt straightens up, clearing her throat. “Ah, sorry. You show me Taser later. Okay, so you Tase him. You get him where? Neck? Cheek?”
I gape at her. “Um, the neck.”
They all nod. “Always go for neck,” Ma says. “I hear neck is best place to Tase. Very sensitive. Good, Meddy.” She pats my cheek with approval.
It takes a second for me to gather my thoughts from the mess of WTF-ness. “And then, uh, then he crashed the car, and when I came to, he was—uh. Well, you know.”
“He die already,” Ma says, flatly.
None of my aunts seem surprised by this, which means Ma must have told them over the phone before they came, or maybe it means that MY FAMILY IS A BUNCH OF PSYCHOPATHS. I choose to go with the former.
“Then how?” Second Aunt says.
She can say that again. We sit there for a bit, silent, each of us deep in thought. For the record, my thoughts are still stuck in WHY ARE THEY SO CALM WHAT IS GOING ON ALSO OMG I KILLED A MAN.
Big Aunt takes off her reading glasses with a sigh. “Okay. Where is Jake now?”
“In the trunk of my car,” I say, wincing again at how insane it sounds.
She nods. “Nobody see you, right?”
“I mean, I don’t think so? There was no one around. It was a quiet street, I think he chose to go down that street because, uh, you know, he wanted to—you know.”
My aunts and mother all mutter curses in various languages—lots of F-words being tossed around in Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Indonesian.
“I tell you, ah,” Ma hisses, “it is good thing he already dead, otherwise I kill him.”
Even Fourth Aunt nods in solemn agreement to this. Hearing this makes tears spring to my eyes again. The fact that there’s no question among them that I did the right thing in defending myself is as soothing as a tight hug, and I just want to melt in their arms and sob and let them take care of everything.
“Okay, so we getting rid of body,” Big Aunt says, with her usual authority.
“Hang on,” Fourth Aunt says, “why should we do that? Why not just go to the police? I mean, it sounds like a pretty clear-cut case of self-defense.”
Ma scowls at her. “Yes, we know it is self-defense, but police don’t know. They see we got dead body in trunk, they will for sure say, ‘Oh my god, you murder him!’”
Fourth Aunt glares back at her, opens her mouth to say something, stops, turns to me, and says, “Why did you put the body in the trunk?”
Despite being the youngest of the lot, Fourth Aunt is still formidable. All the women in my family are. Except for me, I guess. I quail under her gaze, my voice coming out flimsy. “Um. I freaked out. I didn’t want to wait another second longer for someone to come by, my phone was dead, and I didn’t want to drive back with it next to me. In hindsight, I guess I made the absolute worst choice I could’ve made.”
“No, worst choice is you leave him there, on side of the road,” Second Aunt says.
“Ohhh, yes, that one even worse,” Ma says, nodding gratefully at her before shooting Fourth Aunt another dirty look. Fourth Aunt ignores her.
“Surely if we go to the cops and explain everything, they’ll see that Meddy is no killer. Look at her!”
I’m suddenly the subject of four pairs of shrewd eyes once more. I try my best to not cringe away from the attention. Big Aunt exchanges a look with Ma. Though the question is unspoken, I know what she’s asking Ma: It’s your daughter, what do you want to do?
Ma straightens up. “We are not going to police. No, I don’t trust them. We don’t know what they say. They might say she temperating the body—”
“Tampered with the body, you mean,” Fourth Aunt says.
Ma shoots her a look of pure venom. “They might say she block justice—”
“Obstructed justice,” Fourth Aunt says.
“It’s very clear what I mean!” Ma snaps. “Yes, we know your English is very good, no need to show off, okay?”
Fourth Aunt throws her arms up. “I’m just helping!”
Big Aunt catches her eye and gives a small shake of the head, and immediately Fourth Aunt deflates, her breath coming out in an angry sigh. She mumbles, “Do whatever you want.”
It’s as though there’s a fire under my skin. My cheeks are red-hot. My mom and aunt are fighting because of me. I mean, okay, Ma has never gotten along with Fourth Aunt, and they fight every chance they get, but still, it sucks to be the reason they’re fighting now.
Big Aunt nods. “Okay, no police. Come, we go see body.”