I was nine years old when I lived in a three-by-four-meter one-room rental in Cakung.
The bathroom was outside. In the morning, I had to wait my turn with three other families. Sometimes, before my turn came, I could already hear the school bell ringing in the distance. I would go back to the room, grab my bag, and leave feeling like I hadn't quite finished becoming a person.
Dad worked at a motorcycle repair shop on the edge of Bekasi Road. He was paid by the day. When business was good, he came home carrying the smell of oil clinging to his hair. When business was slow, he came home carrying silence.
Every morning, Dad ironed my uniform on top of an empty instant-noodle box. Beside him, a kerosene stove smoked as it cooked the rice. He could do two things at once: straighten my collar and make sure our breakfast didn't burn.
“When you grow up, get an office job, okay? One with air conditioning.”
I nodded as I ate rice with sweet soy sauce.
Back then, I thought air conditioning was the highest form of success. Higher than a big salary, more luxurious than a spacious house. I didn't yet know that what Dad really wanted wasn't for me to sit in a cold room, but for me not to have to measure my life by how long I could endure a hot place.
Outside, people were starting to fight over the bathroom. Plastic buckets clashed together. Sandals scraped across the cement floor. Dad turned off the iron, then patted down my neatly pressed uniform.
“Don't forget school.”
I put the last bite in my mouth and nodded again.
My uniform was smooth. The box was dented. The rice was a little smoky. And Dad, as usual, left for the repair shop first, wearing a shirt whose sleeves still held black stains.
It was only years later that I realized: that morning, I wasn't the one being prepared to leave for school.
Dad was preparing a future I couldn't even imagine yet.