Page 20 of Dial A for Aunties

“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!” Sheclaps 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.

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