Indriyani was drowning in emptiness. Several hours later, after a motorbike taxi ride that felt unbearably long and agonizing, Indriyani got off at the footpath leading to the tea plantation.
During the ride, the driver had asked twice whether she was all right after seeing her tear-streaked face and the vacant stare that seemed to pierce through her helmet visor.
Indriyani had only shaken her head weakly, unable to form a single sentence to explain the ruins her life had become in a matter of hours.
Indriyani ran home, not caring about the mud swallowing her feet up to her ankles, not caring about the pitying looks from people standing along the road.
Her body was soaked through, her hair plastered to her face, but she felt none of it. She felt only one thing: the need to arrive. The need to hide in the one place that would never judge her.
Her bare feet—who knew where her flip-flops had gone? They had probably broken on the road—stepped through one muddy patch after another without her noticing the pain. The drizzle that had briefly stopped was falling again, thin but cold enough to pierce all the way to her bones.
The shack appeared beyond a bend in the footpath. Its light glowed dimly, and Mrs. Waluyo's small silhouette stood in the doorway—anxious, clutching a sarong, her eyes searching the darkness.
“Indri!”
Mrs. Waluyo ran to meet her, pulling her daughter into a hug before Indriyani could say a single word. Her mother's petite body felt warm and smelled of spices and firewood, an aroma that always made Indriyani feel like a little girl again.
“Oh my goodness, sweetheart. You're soaked through. Aren't you cold?” Mrs. Waluyo rubbed Indriyani's back, her hands moving quickly and anxiously.
“What happened? What's wrong? Why didn't you call me?”
Indriyani didn't answer. She only hugged her mother back, more tightly than she had since childhood, as if releasing her even a little would make her entire body collapse to the ground.
The tears broke free without permission. This wasn't a quiet, ordinary cry, but deep sobs that seemed to rise from the most hidden place in her chest, from the place she had forced to stay silent for hours.
She hadn't been allowed to cry at Mr. Wahyu's office. She hadn't been allowed to cry in front of Akbar. On the road, in the public minibus, and on the motorbike taxi that brought her home, she had bitten her lip, stared out the window, and held it all in. Now, against her mother's shoulder, everything spilled out.
Mrs. Waluyo didn't ask questions. She only rubbed her daughter's back in slow circles, led her into the shack, closed the rickety door with a creak, and sat her down on a wooden bench.
She fetched a dry towel, draped it over Indriyani's shoulders, and lit the small stove to heat some water. Indriyani sat with her head bowed, her tears dripping onto the packed-earth floor, forming small dark spots among the bits of mud falling from her feet.
“Tell me slowly, sweetheart,” Mrs. Waluyo said at last as she sat beside her. Her hand closed around Indriyani's.
“I'm listening.”
Indriyani drew a long, ragged breath. Then she spoke. About the tall iron gate. About Mr. Wahyu laughing at her plea as if she were nothing more than a minor nuisance interrupting his workday.
About the word “business,” thrown out like a verdict, and “individual negligence,” spoken without even a flicker of doubt in his eyes.
“He said Dad was careless, Mom.” Indriyani's voice sounded foreign to her own ears, too flat for something this painful.
“He said the company couldn't bear the consequences of personal carelessness. He said if the company helped every worker who got injured, it would go bankrupt.”
Mrs. Waluyo furrowed her brow. Her jaw tightened. “Your father has worked there for decades. His sweat, his strength—he gave everything to that plantation. And that's what he said?”
“He even laughed, Mom.” Indriyani stared at her hands, still dirty with mud.
“As if I were funny. As if my plea were entertainment.” Mrs. Waluyo said nothing. But Indriyani saw her mother's jaw moving as she held back something she didn't want to unleash in front of her daughter.
“And Akbar, Mom.” Indriyani's voice dropped, but its tremor ran deeper than before.
“When I walked out of that gate... I saw him. Inside a car. With another woman.” Mrs. Waluyo stared at her in shock.
“He kissed her, Mom. Right in front of me.” Indriyani said it softly, as if she still couldn't believe the words had come out of her mouth.
“I called out to him. He rolled down the window, and he... he said I was just entertainment. An escape. He said we were from different classes.”
Silence fell.
From the tiny kitchen came the sound of water beginning to boil.
“The woman beside him laughed, Mom,” Indriyani continued, her voice now trembling. “She said I was a beggar trying to move up in the world.” Mrs. Waluyo pulled Indriyani into her arms. This time, there were no words at first. Only a tight embrace and Mrs. Waluyo's long breaths, sounding like a desperate effort to hold back her anger.
“That's not true, sweetheart.” Her voice was hoarse. “You're not a beggar. You're not entertainment. You're my daughter.” Mrs. Waluyo slowly lifted her daughter's face, gazed into her swollen, reddened eyes, and wiped her cheeks with the edge of the sarong she had been clutching all this time.
“Listen to me carefully, Indri. People like them, people who can laugh at someone else's suffering, they're the ones who are truly bad. Not you.”
“But why, Mom?” Indriyani closed her eyes as the tears began to flow again. “Why can they be like that? Why does Dad have to be dying while people like them laugh?” Mrs. Waluyo didn't answer right away. She stroked her daughter's head slowly while gazing at the dark sky beyond the small window. Outside, wind moved through the tea trees, carrying a chill that slipped through the cracks in the walls.
“I don't know, sweetheart,” she said at last, honestly. “I can't explain why the world can be so cruel. I don't have a good answer.” Indriyani opened her eyes. She looked at her mother and waited.
“What I do know,” Mrs. Waluyo continued, squeezing her daughter's hand, “is that we've tried everything we can. We've knocked on every door available to us. Now we're at the end of the road, sweetheart. There's nothing more we can do with our own hands.”
“Then what's left?”
Mrs. Waluyo looked deeply into Indriyani's eyes. “Prayer. And the courage to believe that there's something greater than all of this. Something we can't see, but that may be at work.”
Water in the tiny kitchen began steaming furiously, its hiss filling the silence that followed. Mrs. Waluyo rose briefly, turned off the stove, and poured the hot water into two tin cups with a little ginger powder she always kept for cold nights like this. She handed one cup to Indriyani's still-trembling hands.
“Drink first, sweetheart. Your body needs something warm.” Indriyani held the cup in both hands, letting the steam rise against her face, still wet with tears and drizzle that hadn't completely dried. The sharp taste of ginger spread down her throat, calming her a little even though it couldn't erase anything she had just endured.
“Have you ever regretted being a plantation worker's wife?” Indriyani asked suddenly, her voice still hoarse.
“Have you never wanted an easier life?”
Mrs. Waluyo gave a faint smile, one filled with exhaustion but also a strange peace. “I have, sweetheart. When I was young. But I learned that true wealth isn't what you display in a big house. Your father is poor in possessions, but rich in spirit. That's what I've held on to all these years.”
Night descended slowly over the tea plantation, bringing a chill that crept in through the cracks in the shack's wooden walls. In the distance, crickets began calling back and forth, the only music accompanying the sorrow still settled in Indriyani's chest.
Outside the window, thick clouds blanketed the sky. But through a break in them, a tiny star glimmered faintly, holding on amid the nearly perfect darkness. Indriyani stared at it for a long time.
Maybe.
That was all. Not a great hope. Not a strong conviction. Just one small word that refused to leave, even though everything already felt hopeless.