Page 83 of Four Aunties and a Wedding

“Um, it’s not what you think,” I say, or try to say, anyway, because just then, Ama gives a blood-curdling yell and lunges at Big Aunt.

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“Holy shit!” I don’t know what I was expecting. Well, I know at least what Ineverexpected, and that is a seventy-something-year-old woman with gray permed hair lunging at another sixty-something-year-old woman with gray permed hair. Another thing I never once expected? For the two of them to actually kick ass.

Ama sinks her claws into Big Aunt’s huge hair, and Big Aunt yelps and slaps everywhere like a whirling slapping machine. Staphanie jumps in, shoving Big Aunt back, and Second Aunt cries a war shriek and rushes in as well, followed quickly by Ma and Fourth Aunt.

Nathan, frozen with shock thus far, finally snaps back to his senses. He jumps into the fray and pulls Ama off Big Aunt. But as he holds Ama back, he gets pummeled by the others, who are still flapping at Ama. One manicured hand smacks him in the face. “Ow!” he cries. He stumbles, and Ama breaks free andlunges once more at Big Aunt. The two of them topple to the floor with a loud thump, and suddenly, the room is covered in a cloud of—

“Tea leaves?” I mutter, blinking hard. In my panicked, exhausted, practically delirious state, my first thought is:Did Big Aunt just metamorphose into a bed of leaves?Wouldn’t have been the craziest thing to have happened today.

“That ain’t tea leaves,” Fourth Aunt mutters. She turns and glares at Ma.

“Apa? Why you look at me?”

“I’m looking at the resident drug dealer,” Fourth Aunt says. “Good grief, Nat, I didn’t think you’d bring a whole cargo of weed with you to England.”

Ma’s eyes widen. “Eh? Apa? I not do that.”

Nathan coughs, waving his hand before his face, and crouches down to help Big Aunt up. “Is everyone okay?” Once Big Aunt is on her feet, he reaches down and helps Ama up. She must have been too dazed to swat his hand away, because she accepts his help and soon they’re all back on their feet, looking markedly winded.

The Komodo dragon atop Big Aunt’s head has snapped clean in two, and I can see now that the inside had been filled with the small, dried leaves. I quickly pick up the piece that has broken off and examine it. “Big Aunt, I think—I think your fascinator was filled with marijuana.”

“What?” Big Aunt booms. She slaps at her hair as if there’s a bee buzzing in it. The other half of her hat falls off and she kicks it across the room as if it’s a cockroach. “Nat!” she yells.

Everyone stares at Ma, who stares back with terrified eyes. “Apa? Why you all look at me?”

“Ma,” I say, struggling to keep my voice gentle. “All this time, I’ve just dismissed your whole TCM thing as, you know,Chinese medicine, but I think it’s time we all have an intervention about your drug problem.”

“What drug problem?” Ma cries. “Is not me!”

“Okay, Pablo Escobar,” Fourth Aunt snorts.

“Who Pablo Escrow?” Ma snaps. “I tell you, is not me!”

“It’s okay, Ma,” Nathan says, “there’s no shame in it. We’ll get you the best care...”

As everyone crowds around my poor mother, I bite back the tears. I’ve failed her. I’ve been so focused on my own shit that I completely missed the fact that my mom has a drug problem. And it’s so bad that she’s even willing to put her own sisters at risk by smuggling the drugs in their hats! That’s terrible! What happened to putting family first? What happened to the woman who cares so much about saving face that she insisted on having me cut up fruit for my aunts when they came over to help me get rid of Ah Guan’s body? This is so completely unlike Ma.

It’s SO unlike her, in fact, that maybe it wasn’t her—

No. I refuse to hope. I can’t afford to be disappointed again, not today.

And yet. I look around me at the huge fuss going on and the shambles the bedroom is in. I reach out and tap Second Aunt on the shoulder. She turns around, and I ask, softly, “Second Aunt, can I see your Komodo dragon, please?”

Her eyes widen. “You think she hide inside mine also?”

I shrug. “Do you mind?” She lowers her head so I can get at it, and I see a mess of hair clips and pins securing the Komodo dragon in place so tightly that it’ll probably take me half an hour to get it off her head. I recall, then, how Second Uncle had asked to see the fascinators months before the wedding, and his insistence early this morning on making sure the hats stay secure on their heads. I hadn’t spared it a second thought then,since I’d been distracted by other things, but now, his attention to detail seems suspicious as hell.

“It’s not Ma,” I gasp. “It was her.” I point straight at Staphanie, who glares back wordlessly. “Or them. I don’t know, it’s part of their whole scheme. You guys planted the weed in the fascinators. Before we left, you kept checking to make sure they’d brought the hats. It was part of your revenge process, wasn’t it? Along with making it look like we kidnapped Third Uncle.”

Staphanie looks like she’s about to fight, but Ama says one simple word: “Yes.” And it’s enough to slice through all of the noise in the room.

Silence.

“It was the only thing I could think of,” Staphanie adds quietly. “I mean, I wanted to plant cocaine, but I don’t know where to get coke. So I thought maybe weed would be bad enough.”

“What kind of lame-ass mafioso can’t get their hands on coke?” Fourth Aunt mutters.

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