Chapter 7

7

It’s not long before Ma shrieks, “Nih! I find the angpao! This one, right? Ya kan?” She waves her phone around crazily, brandishing it so close to our faces that we all have to lean away to have any hope of seeing the screen.

“Tch, you stop moving it a bit,” Big Aunt tuts. Ma does as she’s told and we all crowd around it.

Sure enough, there’s a photo of Nathan holding a red packet that’s larger than the usual size. The red packet is, as Abi described, a brilliant gold in color, with fat pink water lilies swirling across it. It’s a stunning red packet, and the sight of it in Nathan’s hands brings a pang to my heart.

“Yes!” Abi shouts. “That’s it! That’s the one!”

Fourth Aunt snatches the phone from Ma’s hands. “Hey!” Ma protests, but Fourth Aunt ignores her and swipes to the left, going to the next picture, which shows a teenage girl beaming down at the red packet in her hands. There’s a thoughtful silence. All breath hangs suspended in the air, and the room is so quiet I can practically hear myself blink.

“Okay,” Abi says, breaking the silence, “so she’s the one who received it.”

“Hmm.” Big Aunt rubs her chin. “Is that Ah Gui’s eldest granddaughter?”

“Tch!” Second Aunt shakes her head. “No lah. Ah Gui’s eldest granddaughter in Sydney. Masa you don’t remember? Make us lose face ah, you don’t even recognize your own family.”

Big Aunt takes in a deep breath. “Oh, ya? So is mean you know who this girl is, ya? So? Who is she? Hanh?”

In answer, Second Aunt squints harder at the photo. After a while, she says, “Ah, yes, this is Katarina, is Meihua’s second daughter.”

“No, no,” Ma says. “Meihua’s second daughter is only twelve year old. This girl look like she maybe around fifteen, sixteen.”

Fourth Aunt snorts. “Like you know what a twelve-year-old looks like nowadays. They’re always trying to make themselves look older, haven’t you heard?”

Ma glares at her. “That’s just you. You think I don’t remember? When you twelve, you putting on so much makeup, acting like you fifteen. Even when you so small you acting like a not-right woman.”

Fourth Aunt rolls her eyes. “Oh right, and you as a teen were the saddest, most uncool thing ever. She was still wearing pigtails as a teen, did you know that?” she says to me.

I shrink back. No way in hell am I about to be dragged into this conversation. “Anyway,” I say quickly. Time to lead them back to the actual subject at hand. “So none of us know who this girl is?”

“Well, she’s got to be somebody’s grandkid,” Abi wails.

I empathize with his frustration. I, too, feel like wailing. This is the problem with families as huge as ours. We can’t even keep track of who’s who. I look down at my phone and swipe through the photos I took yesterday. There’s that girl again. Except this time, she’s standing next to a girl I do recognize. My niece Annabelle. They’re standing very close to each other and both of them are laughing, so clearly they’re familiar with each other. “Look,” I call out, raising my voice to be heard over the sound of my family squabbling with one another. “Annabelle knows her. We can ask Annabelle who she is.”

“Who is this Annabelle?” Second Aunt says.

“Aduh, how you cannot know who is Annabelle?” Big Aunt chides. “She is Selina’s third granddaughter. Like that you also don’t know? Is like you not even care about our family, how embarrass.”

Before Second Aunt can fire off a caustic retort, I quickly jump in. “Auntie Selina’s third granddaughter. Great job, Big Aunt. That would be my cousin Janis’s daughter, right? Right, cool. I’ll call Janis. I don’t actually have Annabelle’s number. Come to think of it, she should’ve been on the list of family to call, so good catch, Big Aunt.” I locate Janis’s name in my contacts list and hit Call before any of the aunties can say anything. I’ve had enough of them derailing everything with their petty arguments. Janis picks up on the third ring, and I quickly say, “Hey, Janis! It was so nice seeing you yesterday.”

“Who—oh, Meddy? Hi! This is such a nice surprise. I heard from Jems that we’re doing a cousins lunch?”

Wow, news travels fast. “Yes, yep, looking forward to it. Anyway, ah . . .” I falter. Now that I’m about to ask Janis for her kid’s phone number, I realize that it’s going to sound hella weird. Like, why in the world would I be asking that? I should’ve paused before making the call to think of a good excuse. Gah! I wrack my mind, trying to think of anything I know about Annabelle. She’s sixteen. She . . . she asked me about photography. Yes. I pounce on it. “Yesterday, Annabelle mentioned that she was interested in photography, and I would love to chat with her about it. Could you WhatsApp me her number?”

“Ah, that’s so nice of you. Are you sure it’s not a bother? I told her not to bug you about it.”

“Definitely not a bother!” My words come out so fast that they’re all strung together into a single word.

Janis laughs. “Wow, okay. Yes, I’ll send you her contact details right away. So nice of you, Meddy.”

“No worries. I’ll see you at the lunch. Okay, byeee!” I only exhale once I’ve hung up the phone. Phew. That went well. Thank god for shared interests. We all stare at my phone until it buzzes a few moments later. There it is. Janis has sent you a Contact. I click on it and hit Call Contact. Belatedly, I realize this is probably a faux pas as most teenagers say they hate talking over the phone. But whatever, we don’t have time to waste.

“Put on speaker,” Ma whispers.

The last thing I want to do is to put Annabelle on speaker, but Ma and the aunties are all goggling at me expectantly, so I do so just before Annabelle picks up the phone.

“Hello?” Her voice sounds wary.

“Annabelle? Hi, it’s Meddy. Your ah, your aunt?” Wow, that’s really weird, referring to myself as an auntie. God, I feel ancient.

“Oh my gosh, yeah, of course, hiii, Aunt Meddy.”

Hearing the words “Aunt Meddy” come from the mouth of a teen makes me want to crumble into a pile of ancient ash. “Hey, it was so great to see you yesterday. You’ve grown so much.” Oh my god, I’m even speaking like an old woman now.

Annabelle laughs. “Tell that to my mom. She still acts like I’m two.”

I laugh politely. “So anyway, I was looking through the photos from yesterday, and there’s someone I don’t recognize, and”—I give an apologetic grimace—“well, I feel awful about not knowing all of the members of my own family. Can I send you a photo? And maybe you can tell me which of my nieces she is?”

“Oh. Sure!”

I locate the photo in my gallery and send it to her. From the other end, there’s a sharp intake of breath. “Annabelle? You got it?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that—ah—” I’m distracted by Big Aunt flapping her hand and mouthing, “Ah Gui’s granddaughter.” And next to her, Second Aunt hisses, “It’s Meihua’s granddaughter.” I shake my head, ignoring them, and say, “Is that Uncle Ah Gui’s granddaughter? Or maybe Auntie Meihua’s granddaughter?”

“Oh no,” Annabelle laughs. “That’s my friend Rochelle. She came over to borrow a qipao and decided to stay for a bit to get some red packets. She’s a hoot.”

I look up at the ceiling. Why can’t anything be straightforward when it comes to my family? How did we get to this point, where the person who got the one red packet we’re looking for isn’t even our family? Struggling to keep my voice calm, I lean closer to the phone and say, “Ha-ha, yeah, she sounds great. Um, so, listen, we actually gave her the wrong red packet and we kind of—ah—need it back? But of course we’d be happy to replace it with a proper red packet.”

“A fat one,” Ma calls out.

“Oh, hi! Is that . . . Grandaunt Natasya?”

“Hallo, Annabelle, yes, it’s me. You so pretty now, ya, what a young lady you are.”

“Aww, thank you, Grandaunt. Anyway, yeah sure, I’m texting her right now.”

There’s a few moments of silence as Annabelle types out her message. It feels as though the seconds are crawling by, each one clawing to remain instead of passing by. A glance at Ma and the aunties and Abi tells me they’re just as anxious and jittery as I am. Big Aunt is glaring at the phone like she could intimidate it into behaving, Second Aunt is endlessly massaging the back of her neck, probably wishing she could lunge into a Tai Chi position, Ma is wringing her hands, and Fourth Aunt is—well, Fourth Aunt is pouting into her mirror while applying more lipstick, so I guess maybe she’s not too bothered by all of this. Next to her, Abi is standing with a clenched jaw, a vein pulsing in his forehead. Despite how reverent he’s been, especially toward Big Aunt, he’s oozing danger. It makes my skin prickle.

Annabelle’s voice makes us jump. “Oh.” She sounds taken aback.

“What is it?” Big Aunt barks.

“Uh, she says—wait, is that Grandaunt Friya? Um, hi, Grandaunt Friya. Didn’t know you were there too.”

“Yes, is me. Now tell us, what she say? Quickly.”

“Oh, ah, she says: ‘Sorry, but no.’ ”

Our breaths collectively catch in our throats. A scream very nearly rips its way out of me, but somehow, I manage to swallow it down. “What do you mean, no?”

“Um, I think it means she wants to keep the red packet she got from you guys?”

I imagine myself putting my hands around this kid’s neck and squeezing. Whoa, okay, Meddy. Take a step back.

Second Aunt grabs the phone and hisses right into it. “Why she say that? Such no manners girl. What kind of not-right kid is this? Hanh?”

“Uh. Hi, Grandaunt Enjelin. Gosh, how many of you are there right now?”

“Doesn’t matter!” Second Aunt is hitting pitch levels that would make Mariah Carey, or a pterodactyl, jealous. “You tell her right now that she need to be respectful of her elders!”

“Okay. Yes, I’m doing that.”

We all glare at the phone as Annabelle types a message, our chests rising and falling rapidly. A few seconds later, she says, “Rochelle says: ‘Nope.’ ”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen my aunties looking this enraged. If there’s anything Ma and the aunties cannot abide, it’s teenagers being rude toward their elders and betters. Each of them swells up, their faces turning pink, then red, their nostrils flaring. Part of me shrinks down to the size of a small child, and I have to resist the urge to find a rock to hide under.

“Annabelle,” Big Aunt booms in the Voice of God, “we are go your house now. We pick you up, then you come with us to this Rochelle house.”

“Wait, what?”

“We come now.” She stabs at my phone, disconnecting the call in the middle of Annabelle saying, “Hang on—” She nods at us. “Come, we go now.”

I wish I could simply agree and rush out with the rest of them, but I have to point out the obvious: “I don’t know that we should storm some teenager’s house. Are there laws against that? Would it technically be breaking and entering? Or harassment? I don’t know what the laws are like here, but it feels wrong to barge into a teen’s house?”

Big Aunt looms before me, and even though I’m at least an inch taller than her, somehow she’s looking down on me and I’m gazing up, quaking with familiar fear. When she does speak, her voice carries with it the weight of gods. “They will thanking us for teaching this child good manner.”

Abi, Ma, and the other aunties all nod solemnly. “Yes, this true,” Second Aunt says with gravity. “They will all say, ‘Wah, I fail to raise my child good, I so embarrass, thank you for teaching her manner.’ ”

“Okay . . .” I’m not sure if I’m truly convinced, but I know when I’m outnumbered, especially since it happens all the time. And anyway, we do need to get the title deed back, so it’s not like we have a better option. As my insides churn with conflicting emotions, I follow my aunties out of the restaurant and into the huge minivan once more. I can’t stop myself from picking at my fingernails as the minivan trundles down the roads toward Annabelle’s house. This feels wrong. But we don’t have a choice. And plus, I’m in Indonesia, not California, and the culture is vastly different here. My aunts would know better what is socially acceptable. Maybe they’re right, maybe people would be grateful when complete strangers scold their kids.

When we arrive at Annabelle’s house, Big Aunt reaches over the chauffeur’s shoulder and smacks her palm down on the car horn. The honk blasts through the air, making me jump. “Jesus, Big Aunt, stop—”

She lifts her hand for just one second before slamming it back down. Hooonk. Honk. Honk.

I’m about to bodily yank her back into her seat when the gates open and poor Annabelle slips out, looking harried. It’s an expression I’ve become very familiar with over the years, witnessing it often on the faces of people dealing with my mom and aunties. Annabelle waves at us with a half grimace, half smile as she rushes toward the minivan. Big Aunt gives a satisfied “harrumph” and leans back in her seat.

“Um, hi, everyone.” Annabelle does a small bow as she climbs into the car. “Hi, Grandaunt Friya, Grandaunt Enjelin, Grandaunt Natasya, Grandaunt Mimi, and Auntie Meddy.” She notices Abi and quickly adds, “Hi, Om.” Everyone nods happily. Wow, I’m impressed. Annabelle is trained well, knowing enough to greet each auntie individually instead of the Westernized way of simply saying, “Hi, everyone.”

I scoot to one side and she settles in next to me. “I’m so sorry for dragging you out like this,” I say with a grimace.

Annabelle glances at Ma and the aunties before she swallows. “Of course, not a problem. I’m so sorry that my friend’s being really weird about it all. I’m sure if we show up at her house, she’ll feel bad and return the red packet. She’s not normally like this.” She tells the chauffeur Rochelle’s address, and we start on our way. For a few moments, there’s a painfully polite silence as Annabelle smiles with pursed lips and we smile back at her with equally tight lips. I scramble my mind to think of something to say to her, but Big Aunt beats me to it.

“So where you know such a rude girl from?” Big Aunt demands.

“Oh, um, school.”

“Harrumph.” Big Aunt narrows her eyes. “You go to Singapore school, right? This why I tell your mother, don’t send you to Singapore school, they are too Westernized already. Better to send you to Taiwanese school.”

“Um . . .” Annabelle nods hesitantly, her eyes wide, probably wondering if Big Aunt is actually about to bully her mother into taking her out of her current school. (The answer to this is yes, obviously.) “Well, uh, like I said, she’s not normally like this.” Then she quickly adds, “I’m not talking back, I’m not disagreeing with you, Grand-Aunt. You’re totally right. But most of the kids at my school are very respectful.”

Second Aunt narrows her eyes and leans forward. “So most of the kids there are good kids, but why you have to befriend this no-good one?” She stabs a very aggressive index finger at Annabelle’s face. “You need to learn how to make better friends, otherwise aiya. You mix up with no-good crowd, then celaka deh.”

Poor Annabelle shrinks back, nodding, her eyes pinned to Second Aunt’s finger.

“Oh god, give the poor kid a break,” Fourth Aunt says. “It’s good of her to have friends who aren’t all nerds.” She winks at Annabelle, who only looks even more terrified, probably because she has no idea how she should react to this. My heart goes out to the poor girl. “Stick to this Rochelle kid, she sounds like she knows how to have fun,” Fourth Aunt continues.

“Hah!” Ma snorts. “You see? You see what bad influence you are?”

Fourth Aunt rolls her eyes. “If by ‘bad influence’ you mean I’m trying to allow teens to live a little in an extremely restrictive environment, then sure.”

I can practically see the cogs in Ma’s brain whirring frantically as she tries to parse through what Fourth Aunt just said. After a moment, Ma grumbles, “Bad influence.” She turns to Annabelle. “You don’t listen to her, she is always like this, always disrespectfulling her elders, very bad.”

Annabelle nods slowly, her wide eyes roaming everywhere. She looks like she’s half considering jumping out of the moving vehicle.

Time for me to rescue her. “So tell me more about your interest in photography.”

Annabelle’s shoulders relax a little and her face breaks out into a smile. “Oh yeah. Well, my mom gave me a secondhand Canon 1D for my birthday last year, and I’ve been taking all sorts of photos with it.” She takes out her phone and opens up her Gallery, and for the rest of the ride, we discuss photography with an intense determination, partly to make it clear to everyone else that we’re done discussing manners, etc., but also, to my delight, Annabelle’s a real photography buff, and it’s refreshing to be able to talk about technique and lighting and different lenses.

Before we know it, the chauffeur announces that we have arrived. We all climb out of the minivan and geez, Rochelle’s house is huge. Not as big as Julia Child’s ridiculous estate, but it’s definitely awe-inspiring.

“Yeah,” Annabelle says, as though reading our minds, “Rochelle’s family is loaded.”

Big Aunt snorts again. “Harrumph. This probably why she so spoiled, and so sombong.”

“Mm, yes, all this rich people, they are the most sombong ones in Indonesia,” Ma agrees.

Annabelle texts Rochelle to let her know that we’re outside of her house, and a moment later, there is a buzz and the gates swing open. We trudge inside, and when we get to the towering front door, Annabelle knocks on it. Nothing happens. Annabelle gives us an apologetic look. “Might take a while because their house is so big, it takes some time to get to the front door.”

Big Aunt reaches out and slams her fist into the door. Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Oh my god, Big Aunt, stop.”

“Just let her knocking on the door,” Ma mutters to me. “Nothing get her more angry than some kid making her wait like this.”

As Big Aunt pulls her fist back for another round of aggressive knocking, the door clicks open and out comes Rochelle, wearing a half-bored, half-annoyed expression. She gives us all a deliberate once-over before saying, “Yeah?”

“Hey, Roche.” Annabelle rushes forward. “This is—um, this is my family. They’re visiting from LA. And they’re here about the red packet.”

Rochelle crosses her arms in front of her and leans against the door frame. A small, smug smile plays along her lips. Unlike Annabelle, who carries herself with that awkward gait that so many teenage girls have, Rochelle oozes confidence. She’s pretty, and she knows it. She wears a plain white T-shirt and ripped jeans, but somehow, she looks like she would be completely fine strutting into a fancy restaurant. Her gaze is sharp as she takes us all in, obviously unimpressed by Ma’s, the aunties’, and even Abi’s disapproving frowns. And in one hand, she holds a very official-looking document. I don’t even need to see the words printed on it to know that it’s the title deed.

When she sees us staring with open desperation at the deed, she flips her hair over her shoulder and says lazily, “I told you I’m not giving it back.”

I can practically feel the temperature among Abi, Ma, and the aunties rising. “It’s really important—” I begin, but am interrupted by Second Aunt’s pterodactyl screech.

“Aiya! You dare to go against your elder ah? Who raise you become so ngga bener? Hanh? We telling you now, you give us back red packet, or else.”

Even though her rage isn’t directed at me, I can’t help but wince. Annabelle looks like she’s ready to bolt. But Rochelle looks entirely unperturbed.

“Sorry, lady,” she says, clearly not sorry at all, “but it’s actually kind of rude of you.”

“What?!” Ma and the aunties yelp in unison.

“Yeah, I mean, I was given the red packet. You can’t just give a gift to someone and then demand it back. That’s really rude. I mean, I would be embarrassed, if I were you.”

My mind is blown. I blink at Rochelle, seeing her in an entirely new light, because this is the point where I realize that we’re not dealing with a normal teen—we’re dealing with an evil genius. Using the threat of embarrassment, and therefore losing face, against Ma and the aunties is like stealing their ultimate weapon and then pointing it back at them.

Sure enough, Ma and the aunties are standing there shell-shocked, mouths agape, looking like they’re one step away from having aneurysms. They’ve wielded the threat of losing face so often to me and to others around them, but never, not that I can remember anyway, have they had someone—especially a younger person—use it against them. How are they going to deal with it?

Luckily, before they can explode, Abi snaps his fingers and points excitedly at Rochelle. “I remember who you are now. I’ve been standing here trying to recall because you look so familiar, but I couldn’t place it—” He takes a dramatic inhale, then says, “I recognize you from a wedding photo that was published in the Chinese-Indonesian newspaper last month. It was a photo of Kristofer Kolumbes Hermansah’s family at the wedding of his youngest son.”

Rochelle smirks, entirely unperturbed by this. “So you know who my grandfather is, old man. Now you know you shouldn’t fuck with me.”

Ma gasps. “Why you think we want to f—fudge with you? We don’t want to f—fudge with you. Why your mind is so pervert?”

For the first time, Rochelle looks unsure. “Uh, I didn’t mean it in a literal sense. It means like, to screw with someone.”

Second Aunt narrows her eyes. “I hear this ‘screw’ quite a lot. I know it also means having the sex. Why you say that about us? We are not here to be having the sex with you.”

“No,” Rochelle groans. “It means like, don’t fu—don’t mess with me!”

“Ah.” Ma, Big Aunt, and Second Aunt nod. Then they mutter to one another about how awful the younger generation is, to use such foul language so unnecessarily.

“Okay, they got distracted again,” Fourth Aunt says. She turns to Rochelle. “Who’s your granddaddy?”

Rochelle quirks a smug eyebrow. I don’t actually know if eyebrows can technically be smug, but hers definitely are smug. They’re the kind of brows you just want to take a razor to, because there’s way too much smugness in them. “Why don’t you tell them?” she says sweetly to Abi.

Abi frowns, his expression turning dark. “Julia, Kristofer, and I are the top three conglomerates in Indonesia. We own the three largest corporations.”

“So you’re rivals?” I ask.

He nods. “Well, the thing is, it goes beyond professional rivalry. Something bad happened years ago. We got into a terrible disagreement. We’d been friendly before that, but after that, the three of us became enemies.” He scoffs bitterly. “There have been plenty of times where we’ve gone out of our way to sabotage each other. We’ve each taken bad deals that we know we’d lose money on just to anger the others.”

“Tch,” Second Aunt tuts. “Why like that? Why you all so childish?”

Abi’s chest puffs out with apparent indignation. “I’m not the one being childish. The number of times that Julia and Kristofer have stabbed me in the back—” He stops himself and takes a deep breath. “Anyway. It doesn’t matter. What matters is . . .” He glowers at Rochelle. “You need to give us that title deed, child.”

Rochelle’s mouth twists into a sneer. “Child? Oh, you think I’m a child, do you? Would a child be able to steal your precious title deed?”

There’s a collective gasp, and we all stare at her in shocked silence. Then Annabelle says, in a small voice, “Roche, what are you talking about, steal? You were given the red packet by mistake.”

“Dude, seriously?” Rochelle laughs, an unpleasant sound. I’m finding that I really do not like this kid at all. “What are the chances that out of your humongous family, I would be the one who gets the red packet that contains the title deed?”