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.