The Good, the Bad, and the Aunties (Aunties, #3)

by Jesse Q. Sutanto

To my readers. Thank you for adopting the aunties as your own.

The wind is a constant song in my ears, the air so cold and refreshing it sparkles against my cheeks as I whoosh down the ski slope. I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve tried skiing.

“What’s a brain hemo-hedge?” Images of a hedge growing out of my head swirled through my mind. Ma waved her hands around her head, opening and closing her hands. “Is when all the blood come out of your head. All the blood.” My mind replaced the hedge bursting out of my head with buckets of blood exploding from it in a red geyser. I swallowed, feeling ill. “Wait, so this is a thing that happens when people play soccer?”

the poor thing had no idea she was (1) this close to having her head explode like a watermelon on the beach,

(Decopitot: verb. To have something hit you in the head so forcefully that your head is replaced by that thing. Highly probable when playing high-velocity, high-strength sports like basketball in first grade.)

vessel

If they knew that part of my honeymoon with Nathan was a ski trip to Val Thorens, the highest ski resort in France’s Trois Vallées, they would freak out like never before.

A shrill, familiar jangle tears through the peaceful, snowy calm, shattering my focus. I startle, my right foot slips an inch to my right, and that’s all it takes to overturn my balance. My skis swerve precariously, and the world tips sideways as I try—and fail—to stop myself from falling over. Luckily, the snow is as soft as a pile of feathers,

glaring at me so hard her gaze is like a laser shooting through the phone screen.

Ladurée in Singapore also have, why you need to bring all the way from LA? And she say—you know what she say?” “Let me guess,” Nathan says with a smile, “she said the ones from LA are different from the ones in Singapore?” “YES!” Ma cries with indignant triumph. “As if she can tell the difference. Is a franchise, of course they will all taste the same.

Argh, what is it about Ma that makes me want to hug her even while she infuriates the heck out of me?

“I promise you they don’t sell fake Hermès bags in France. I think it’s an actual felony,” I laugh. The shock and delight on Ma’s face is everything.

“Maybe she enter wind,” one of the uncles suggests. “Enter wind?” Nathan says. I gently pull Ma’s hands off my face. “It’s an Indonesian phrase—masuk angin. It means catch a cold.

My mind spins, trying to keep up with my mom and aunts and their drug use. “Yeah, we all got a prescription for it,” Fourth Aunt says so simply, like she’s talking about the weather. “Big Aunt talk in her sleep the whole time,” Second Aunt snickers. “Keep on shouting orders at the flight attendants in her sleep.”

The family home is a huge, ostentatious mansion in Pantai Indah Kapuk, north Jakarta. Like many of the other towering mansions in PIK, when the aunties and uncles renovated the house five years ago, they chose to go baroque, the most over-the-top architecture that has ever been architectured. I’m talking about a literal giant crown built atop the roof of the house, like that’s going to fool anyone into thinking we’re actual royalty.

I hate having to explain this stuff to non-Indonesians, who always seem to be horrified by the concept.

they look at Nathan and gasp. “Is he a movie star?” my five-year-old niece, Jeassyka, wonders aloud, her eyes wide.

I can’t help smiling as I watch everyone, loving the noise and warmth that fills the entire house. It’s no wonder that Ma and the aunties make sure to come back every year. They seem younger here somehow, more vibrant and filled with life. “I love this,” Nathan says, echoing my thoughts. “This is so lively. I can see how everyone living together under one roof really works for your families.”

People often say they hate surprises, but see, the last time my mother and aunts surprised me, I killed that surprise, so when I say I hate surprises, I really mean it.

leap up, my body flinging itself into motion before my mind can catch up. My mouth, too, works on its own accord, shouting before I even realize what the words are.

as another deafening crash judders through the house. How in the world can this man sleep through all that noise?

cavalcade of sleek black cars, each one equipped with flashing blue lights, like cops, and each one with people hanging out the windows, playing some musical instruments with gusto. I count at least ten cars in the procession, snaking up the driveway like a black dragon. A black dragon of explosive music. “Is this a regular part of Chinese New Year here?”

It’s a deep, rich voice, brimming with confidence. A shiver runs down my spine.

This is . . . this is delightful.

Abi is the freaking mafia lord that my mom and aunts had told me about back when we were in Oxford. Abraham Lincoln Irawan, the guy who was infatuated with Second Aunt when they were teens and joined the mafia to impress her. Oh my god. Why in the world is Abi, a literal gangster, here in our front yard?

I have had enough of anything that might even come close to being illegal.

a huge puff of hair pokes out, followed by Fourth Aunt’s face moments later.

a qipao for me and a button-down shirt for Nathan, both of them made out of the same red batik cloth. I love batik, I adore how every piece of batik cloth is unique, each one hand-painted with painstaking detail.

It’s really nice, seeing my mom and aunts in a tizzy over something that, for once, has nothing to do with me.

the amount of emotion and history between them is so thick it’s almost solid.

The world turns soft and warm, like the entire universe has just gone “Awww.”

you’ve hardly aged at all. Or rather, you have, but like a limited edition Patek Philippe.”

It’s such a lolsob moment.

I try to sear every face into my memory, taking the time to hug each one of them before they can escape.

This time, there are a lot more desserts than usual, because sweet foods signify a hope for a sweet year ahead.

Why does even an innocent question get the kind of reply that makes me feel chastised? But my cousins are around me, and they all laugh and share a look with me, and I feel my heart expanding because I’m not alone.

all of us have been soundly defeated by lunch.

Something about the knocking jars me, piercing straight through the satiated haze. I jump up, all of my instincts screaming. Something is wrong.

Whoever’s outside really wants to be let in.

No one would wear that expression unless something was very, very wrong.

This can’t be happening. It can’t be. But wait, what is happening?

I’m surprised her face doesn’t melt under the furious heat of Second Aunt’s glare. Second Aunt shifts, straightening up, her chest ballooning and her nostrils flaring.

I haven’t seen her in over thirty years, but I bet you she is just as genit as before.”

Abi’s eyes meet mine, and the chill spreads from my spine to the rest of my body. My scalp crawls. His eyes are filled with pure, animalistic desperation. “I—I don’t dare to think of the consequences of that, my dear,” he whispers. He tries for a smile, but it ends up a ghastly grimace.

Fourth Aunt is watching with horrified glee, her eyes wide and shining.

they will send men to—ah, ask for it. Unless we find it first.” The way he says “ask for it” triggers alarm bells. Somehow, I don’t think he meant people politely asking where the title deed might be.

Abi quails under our collective surprise.

She’s still wearing that expression of horrified glee, grinning like a kid on Chinese New Year.

I feel as though my head is about to burst from all the oh-hell-no going through it.

I’d thought that our family home was big, but this house dwarfs it completely. At least five stories high, it looks like an actual Indonesian castle, complete with beautiful stonework. No doubt its grandiosity is supposed to humble visitors, and it works. I feel completely out of my depth, and painfully aware of the discrepancy in power.