9. Unfolding the Black Pages #1

 

Boom!

The loud sound of an explosion in the distance startled Mala, who was sleeping on her study desk. The little girl turned towards the front window of her house with still-red eyes. As she realized that the situation outside sounded very chaotic, she stood up from her seated position.

Mala was about to walk to the window to peek outside, as she had been doing all day, but her steps suddenly halted when she heard her father’s groans. Instantly, the little girl changed her direction and walked straight towards her father’s room.

“Dad, are you in pain again?”

She stood in front of her father’s room as she did earlier in the morning, trying to hear Warih’s reaction from inside. Unfortunately, no responsive sound reached her ears.

“Dad…?”

The girl repeated her call once again. Unfortunately, her father still didn’t respond. With a bad feeling, she now opened Warih’s room door and stepped inside. Her eyes widened in shock as she saw her father seemingly contorting in pain on his bed—with the position of his head and neck as if being pulled upwards due to the pain.

The muscles of his body appeared tense, and all the veins in his neck and face seemed to bulge out. He looked drenched in his own sweat, and his breath sounded rapidly raspy.

Seeing it, Mala jumped in shock. Reflexively, she ran to her father’s bed and stared at his anguished face with a shocked expression.

“D—dad… be patient. Just wait a moment, I will get your medicine,” the girl said with a panicked face.

Mala hurriedly descended from her father’s bed and headed straight for the small table where her father usually placed his medicine. Unfortunately, only the empty plastic wrapping of the medicine remained there.

She became even more panicked. She then glanced left and right, trying to locate her father’s medicine.

Where? Mala wondered frantically. Dad said he still has his medicine. Where?

 

Mala began searching every corner of Warih’s room for her father’s medicine. With trembling hands, as she continued to hear her father’s groans, she checked the medicine packaging on the table again. In that moment, she was stunned.

Three pills? Dad… only bought three pills from the health center yesterday?

 

The girl then turned to her father again, surprised.

Why? Why did Dad only buy three pills? If Dad bought this medicine two days ago, it means… since yesterday afternoon or evening, Dad actually ran out of medicine?

Has Dad… really run out of money?

 

The groaning sound of her father, now filled with intense pain, sent shivers down Mala’s entire body. She opened her father’s wardrobe, desperately searching for any possible medication. Unfortunately, she still couldn’t find anything.

“There will come a time when Mr. Warih will experience severe pain in his legs again, to the point where he might not be aware of his surroundings or even lose consciousness. If that happens, immediately take Mr. Warih to the hospital so I can examine him and possibly prescribe a higher dosage of medication.”

 

The doctor’s words from the past to Gabe Purba, who had helped bring Warih home from the hospital, echoed in Mala’s mind. The girl’s eyes began to well up as she opened a small drawer in her father’s wardrobe. Something inside made her freeze. There was a stash of cash that Warih had been keeping in an envelope.

Curious, Mala opened the thin paper covering the money with her still trembling hands. Upon reading her father’s rough notes on the paper detailing the costs of her admission to junior high school, the little girl instantly shed tears.

She never expected her father to endure such pain for several days just to maintain the school fees for her desired junior high school. Realizing this, she turned to her father behind her and started crying.

For a moment, she remained silent and cried. The girl was clearly confused. She was just a little kid who couldn’t yet handle the heavy situations in her life calmly. Therefore, when she saw her father writhing once again, whether she liked it or not… she did whatever came to her mind at that moment.

Mala immediately ran outside to seek help from Enyak Juri. However, after calling out to the neighbor for quite some time without anyone emerging from their door, she assumed that there was no one home. 

Unbeknownst to her, once she had returned to her house and closed the front door, Enyak Juri’s teenage daughter—Epi—opened their house door and looked around at the empty surroundings with a puzzled expression.

Still in a state of panic, Mala suddenly thought of making a cup of warm water for her father to drink. In her mind, the beverage might help alleviate his condition a bit.

Unfortunately, what happened next, as she tried to pour the drink into her father’s mouth, caused him to choke and spit out all the liquid.

Mala stood frozen in shock. Realizing that she needed to act quickly, the little girl reached for a cloth from the table in her father’s room and positioned herself to sit beside Warih’s head. Her hands quickly wiped the wetness from her father’s mouth and neck.

Surprisingly, as she was trying to wipe the damp area on Warih’s pillow, which was now mixed with his sweat, Warih suddenly convulsed. Whatever happened, his body abruptly turned halfway toward Mala, and his hands instinctively gripped her thigh tightly to endure the pain.

Shocked, Mala immediately screamed, feeling an extraordinary pain in her thigh. Unconsciously, she forcefully pulled her father’s hand and threw it away with a shocked expression. Just a few seconds after doing so, she then saw Warih’s head starting to droop on his pillow… and then he fainted there.

“Dad…?” Mala called, breaking the silence in Warih’s room.

“Dad…?” Mala called once more, her tears flowing. “Is the pain really intense? Tell me… how can we share this pain together?”

“Did I make a mistake? Should you not have had the water earlier?” Mala asked, sobbing. The child then dropped her head onto her father’s chest to hear his heartbeat. “You won’t die, right? Please don’t die. Don’t leave me alone….”

“You need medicine, right? I don’t have any money,” she said again with a voice that sounded so helpless. “If I had money, I would….”

Somehow, something suddenly clicked in her mind. She wiped away her tears, then quickly jumped off Warih’s bed to run to her room.

She immediately grabbed a round plastic piggy bank, where she always kept coins from her father’s parking earnings. Without hesitation, she brought it to the kitchen to open the piggy bank with a kitchen knife.

Once she succeeded in opening it, the little girl counted her savings one by one and immediately let out a sigh of relief.

Yes, I can buy medicine for dad!

 

She quickly grabbed the nearest plastic bag she spotted in the kitchen and emptied all her coins into it. After returning her old piggy bank and coins to her room, the little girl stepped out of the front door and glanced anxiously in both directions. 

She did so for a while with tears remaining on her face, until her attention was caught by a motorcycle approaching her house in the distance.

Upon spotting the approaching motorcycle, the girl hurriedly waved it down. Unaware that she was halting Fadli’s motorcycle, a young guy from her neighborhood known for his mischievous nature and disliked by her father.

Mala instinctively took a step back in fear. However, seeing that Fadli had removed his helmet and was looking directly at her, Mala felt compelled to offer a greeting.

“What’s wrong with you?” Fadli asked, his tone no longer bearing the familiar Betawi flair, noticing Mala’s still-swollen eyes from crying.

“A—are you heading out?” the timid little girl asked hesitantly.

“Yep, why?”

Mala did not answer immediately. Instead, she glanced back—specifically into her house—with a more cautious expression on her face.

“Errr… is *Engkok Tan’s drugstore open?” asked the little girl innocently, unaware of the looting of ethnic Chinese shops happening outside.

Upon hearing the name, Fadli burst into laughter. “Yes, it’s open, so…?”

“Um, can I ask you to buy medicine for me? I need medicine,” Mala said again nervously.

“You want me to buy medicine for you?” asked Fadli, his forehead creasing with a frown. “Hey, kiddo, how much are you willing to pay me to be a delivery service?”

Mala suddenly fell silent. She bowed her head in resignation upon hearing Fadli’s firm rejection.

“I don’t want to deliver medicine for you because I’ll be out all night,” Fadli continued. “But if you just want to go to that area, I’ll take you there!”

Mala looked back up at Fadli, torn between ignoring his casual remarks and her worry for her father. The danger lurking outside didn’t fully register in her mind as she grappled with conflicting thoughts.

“So, do you want to come or not?” asked Fadli impatiently.

Feeling pressured, Mala nodded immediately. “Wait a moment. I’ll take my things inside first,” she said, hurrying back into the house to retrieve her belongings.

The girl then hurried back inside to retrieve her bag of coins. She briefly glanced at the clock on the wall, which showed the time to be around five in the afternoon, before quickly entering her father’s room. There, she grabbed a paper and pen from her father’s desk and hastily wrote a short message to him.

After placing her message on the table, she approached her father’s closet to retrieve a black veil that had once belonged to her late mother. Only then did she turn back to look at her father, who remained unconscious, with a sense of sadness in her gaze.

Mala then took a moment to briefly kiss the back of her father’s hand, even with her face already wet with tears. As soon as she heard the horn honking outside, the little girl immediately dashed out of her father’s room. Unaware that as she did so, the note she had left behind had been blown away and now lay under her father’s desk.

Fadli himself, who was waiting on his motorcycle, frowned in surprise when he saw Mala come out with a wet face and footsteps that seemed abnormal. He glanced briefly at Mala who reflexively touched her inner thigh area with a pained face as she was about to get on her motorcycle, but decided not to ask the little girl about it.

“Hey, kiddo, does your dad know you’re going out?” That’s the question the young guy ended up asking little Mala.

Warih’s daughter just looked down and shook her head while wiping away the rest of her tears.

Fadli, who had observed the little girl’s reaction through his rearview mirror, now appeared surprised. “What’s wrong? How come you suddenly decided to come out? Today is the day of the riot. Are you trying to escape from your dad?”

“Riot…?” asked Mala, her attention drawn to the word.

“No … no, forget it,” Fadli replied nonchalantly.

Basically, Fadli was giving Mala a ride with the intention of dropping her off nearby. He actually knew that at that time, there were no shops run by ethnic Chinese people open in their area. However, he was too lazy to explain it to Mala and instead thought of teasing the child.

Yet, when he noticed that the road leading outside was blocked, the young man became confused.

“Why is the barrier here locked?!” the man asked, more to himself. “What’s wrong with *Pak RT?! Suddenly locking the barrier like this! What if someone from outside wants to come in?! And there’s no one here to guard it anymore!”

Fadli then turned to Mala with an exasperated look. “Hey, kiddo, do you want to get off here and walk forward by yourself or what? The road is closed, I want to go out through the back of Kubur Koja.”

“I’m afraid to go alone,” Mala muttered, adding to the confusion. “Is there another drugstore over there?”

“How should I know?! All I know is there’s a drugstore like that at Jembatan Tiga, but I can’t take you there. I’m heading to Kertajaya! If you want, just follow me until I get near the passageway to Jembatan Tiga. Then you can walk on your own from there.”

“Is the area safe?” asked Mala again.

“Safe,” Fadli replied offhandedly, although he actually knew that the situation in the Jembatan Tiga area had been heating up for several hours. But due to the rush, he immediately restarted his engine and drove off without waiting for Mala to think it over.

What Fadli didn’t know was that many of the shortcut routes to his destination had also been suddenly blocked off. This forced him to keep circling around in an attempt to reach his destination.

“What’s going on here?!” Fadli exclaimed impatiently. “If all the alleys are closed, I’ll grow old on the road! Can you believe it? We’ve been driving for over half an hour, and we’re still in the middle?! It’s almost sunset! Why are people here so cowardly?!”

At that moment, young Mala, despite her age, had a sense of foreboding. Moreover, she occasionally heard distant explosions whose origin she couldn’t discern.

Nevertheless, like any frightened child, Mala could only remain silent and dare not say anything. She simply watched as Fadli once again took her to search for another route.

About ten minutes later, the situation became smoother for the young man and Mala. There was one road that finally led them to penetrate the Kampung Kubur Koja area.

Once Fadli managed to break through to the slightly larger street, he suddenly noticed the presence of his friends in front of an empty shop not far from where they were. His group of friends from the Kampung Kubur Koja area were sitting drunkenly, enjoying the strains of dangdut music, when they also noticed Fadli’s presence there.

“Hey, Fadli, where are you taking a little girl like this in the evening?!” one of them shouted upon seeing Fadli across the street with Mala, laughing uproariously.

“I was heading to Kertajaya, but this kid suddenly wanted to come along. She said she needed to find a drugstore,” Fadli replied from the other side, briefly pausing his motorcycle to respond to his friends’ inquiries.

“Which drugstore is open at this time of day?! Many places have been burned down! Don’t you know that Chinese girls are being targeted everywhere?”

“Huh?” Fadli’s expression turned shocked upon hearing his friend’s outcry from the other side. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t take a little Chinese girl out like that! Chinese girls are being attacked everywhere!”

Upon hearing this, Fadli suddenly glanced at Mala on the back seat. Mala, also hearing the conversation, quickly put her late mother’s headscarf on her head out of fear.

“I’m not Chinese,” she whispered shakily to Fadli.

The girl had initially retrieved her late mother’s black veil from her house to cover her wet face and swollen eyes. However, she now felt compelled to wear it to conceal part of her pale white face and neck.

Despite hearing the alarming remarks from his friend, Fadli, who had just realized something from the other direction, now decided to move closer to his friends.

“Which shop did you loot to get such a drink?” Fadli asked as he parked his motorcycle there, paying no attention to Mala, who was still sitting on her motorcycle in fear. “Share a bit with me to warm up.”

“So come here first, don’t be in such a hurry!” said one of Fadli’s friends, whose face was already red from half-drunkenness, while thrusting his drink bottle at Fadli.

“Is it true that Chinese girls are being rap*d?” asked Fadli as he took a sip from the bottle of alcohol stolen by his friends.

Everyone there, all of whom had low education levels, burst into laughter at Fadli’s expense. Meanwhile, Fadli himself just smiled faintly.

“And here you bring a pretty little Chinese girl in a headscarf. You probably said no, but in fact, you’re already taking the initiative again!” commented another person there, causing another wave of laughter among themselves.

“Hush! She’s of Sundanese-Palembang descent! It’s just her face that looks Chinese,” replied Fadli, taking another gulp from his friend’s drink bottle. “Do you guys know Kang Warih who used to guard the Bandengan Utara Raya parking lot with Bang Gabe and Kang Alip, right? Well, she’s Kang Warih’s daughter.”

“I’d rather not do anything to Bang Gabe’s people!” said one of them, suddenly in a low voice. “You know that he used to be an executioner.”

Fadli laughed. “I haven’t done anything to this girl, especially since she’s from my area! I could get lynched by the folks from Buntek if I did anything to her! I just enjoy messing with this kid because she’s always so quiet at home.”

“Alright, instead of risking it… hurry and take her away! It’s already dusk. The kid’s eyes make us look like demons! Just remember, don’t head towards the main road. It’s dangerous for both you and the kid if you happen to run into people outside our area!”

Fadli nodded while chuckling. After taking another gulp from his friend’s hard drink, he then returned to his motorcycle and started the engine again.

“B—bang Fadli, I-I want to go home,” Mala suddenly said, tears streaming down her face as she sat in the backseat of Fadli’s motorbike.

“Huh?”

“P—please take me home. I’m scared.”

“Did you hear that earlier?!” Fadli asked, beginning to get annoyed. “If you want to go home, just get off here! Go back using the road we took to get here!”

“I’m scared, it’s already dark….”

“My goodness, you stupid little girl!” Fadli grumbled irritably, his mouth now reeking of alcohol. “You want me to take you home again?! Didn’t you see that many roads were closed earlier?!”

Mala, upon hearing this, suddenly burst into louder sobs, feeling even more terrified.

“Bang Fadli, I’m scared,” she repeated, her face now even paler.

Fed up, Fadli then immediately started his motorcycle again and turned it in a different direction. “Alright, if you want to go home, I’ll drop you off at the main road! How about that?!”

Mala, now seeing Fadli moving in a different direction, was instantly shocked. Reflexively, she screamed in fear as Fadli took her away from the Kampung Kubur Koja area towards Jalan Jembatan Tiga.

“Let me off, Bang! Let me off!” Mala screamed hysterically.

Fadli, who wasn’t actually serious about going there, laughed at Mala. What he didn’t anticipate was… the little girl taking Fadli’s words seriously, then daringly throwing herself off his motorcycle, causing her body to crash onto the asphalt road.

In a state of immense shock and disbelief, Fadli abruptly hit the brakes of his motorcycle and immediately turned to look behind him. He was about to get off his motorcycle again to approach Mala.

However, somehow, an unknown motorcyclist suddenly stopped near Mala and quickly said something to the little girl.

“Mr. Suwasto!” Mala suddenly shouted as she looked towards the motorcyclist.

Along with her shout, Mala then tried to stand up from where she fell while grabbing her bag again, and immediately ran towards the unknown motorcyclist before Fadli could reach her. Just a few seconds later, Fadli saw the motorcycle carrying Mala now speeding towards Jembatan Tiga Street, which at that moment should have been… forbidden.