The Family Dinner Table
Jakarta, 1978.
The air around Bandar Jaya always felt heavier, as though the dust from the construction sites rising across the city had deliberately drifted into the neighborhood and settled there. Down a narrow alley barely wide enough for a single bicycle, stood a house with unpainted cement walls. House Number Five.
That was where Bagas was born, and where he learned that a parent's love could apparently come with a condition: good looks.
That afternoon, reddish sunlight slipped through the cracks of the old wooden vents. Inside the stuffy living room, an old teak table stood proudly, even though one of its legs had to be propped up with two stacks of bricks to keep it from wobbling.
On the table, Mother carefully arranged the ceramic plates as though they were the most valuable possessions the family owned.
The savory aroma of fried chicken and vegetable lodeh filled the room. Bagas's stomach, which had held nothing but a glass of water since noon, growled loudly.
He had just placed his empty wooden basket in the corner of the kitchen. Since dawn, the nine-year-old boy had been running after city buses to sell newspapers. In the afternoon, he went from one neighborhood to another carrying the fried snacks his mother had made.
His small shoulders had begun to slope from carrying burdens that no child his age should have had to bear.
“Children, come eat! Mother has prepared some hot lodeh!” Mother called.
Her voice was bright and cheerful, filled with a tenderness she seemed to reserve only for certain moments.
One by one, the members of the household appeared.
Hendrik, the eldest, walked in with his chest puffed out. Though still in his early teens, he was already handsome, with clear skin and neatly slicked-back hair.
Aris and Tirto followed. The third and fourth children had similar features, with strong jawlines and pleasant-looking faces.
Finally came Dewi, the youngest and the only daughter. The neighbors were always praising her beauty. She hurried toward the chair beside Mother.
The four of them were Mother's pride.
Her “showpieces,” the children she loved displaying at neighborhood gatherings.
But when Bagas stepped closer, the atmosphere suddenly changed.
Bagas was the second child, yet he seemed like a stranger in his own home.
While his siblings had inherited good looks, Bagas had been born different. His skin was darkened by the sun, and his face was asymmetrical, with a nose Mother often said “ruined the whole picture.”
To Mother, Bagas was a dark stain on a white sheet of paper.
A disgrace whose presence had to be hidden whenever guests came over.
“Why are you just standing there, Bagas? Go wash your hands at the well out back. The smell of your sweat is ruining your brother's appetite,” Mother said without looking at him, her hands busy serving rice onto Hendrik's plate.
Bagas lowered his head and slowly walked toward the well.
No one offered him a seat.
No chair had been left for him at the main table.
Father had just returned home in his worn security guard uniform. He sat on a long wooden bench. His tired eyes glanced briefly at Bagas before returning to his own plate.
As a security guard earning barely enough to get by, Father knew that much of the household expenses, Hendrik's school fees, and his younger siblings' new clothes came from the sweat Bagas earned selling newspapers.
Yet Father remained silent.
In that house, Mother's voice was an unwritten law.
Mother began serving her princes.
Hendrik's ceramic plate was filled with steaming white rice, the largest piece of fried chicken, and thick vegetable lodeh.
Aris, Tirto, and Dewi received the same treatment.
They ate eagerly, laughing as they talked about what had happened at school that afternoon.
Bagas waited near the musty kitchen doorway.
He stood motionless, waiting for his turn.
But his turn never came.
After all the ceramic plates had been filled, Mother bent down and opened the lower cabinet. She took out a faded blue plastic plate with a cracked edge.
Clack!
She placed it on the cold kitchen floor, right beside Bagas.
On it was only a handful of yellowish rice... the leftovers from the previous afternoon, already hard and dry.
There was no fried chicken.
No vegetable lodeh.
“Eat this. Don't be spoiled. Your stomach is used to eating whatever you find on the streets anyway,” Mother said coldly.
“Besides, you were short by a thousand rupiah from your sales today. That's your punishment for being careless with the money.”
Bagas stared at the blue plastic plate.
The ache in his stomach grew stronger, but the pain in his chest was worse.
He watched his siblings enjoying warm rice and laughing together while he had to crouch on the kitchen floor like a stray cat being given scraps.
Hendrik glanced at Bagas with disgust, as though he were afraid the smell of poverty might somehow rub off on him.
“Mom, tomorrow I need money for a new book,” Hendrik said while chewing on his fried chicken.
“Don't worry, Hendrik. Tomorrow Bagas will sell even more newspapers so you can buy it,” Mother replied, gently stroking Hendrik's hair.
Bagas put a spoonful of the hard rice into his mouth.
It tasted faintly sour.
He swallowed with difficulty, forcing it down his dry throat.
One mouthful after another, he swallowed along with the tears he refused to let fall.
That night, beneath the dim glow of the oil lamp in the kitchen, Bagas realized something.
In this house, he was not treated like a son or a brother.
He was nothing more than a tool.
A money-making machine whose sweat was squeezed dry, only to be thrown away like trash when it was time to eat.
He stared at the cracked blue plastic plate, then turned his eyes toward the darkness outside the window.
A thought began to grow inside his young mind.
If Jakarta saw him only as a disgrace who paid for other people's comforts, perhaps somewhere else, he could finally become a human being.
