At four in the morning, before the dawn call to prayer rang out from the village prayer hall, Sari was already awake. Not because she wanted to be, but because her body had grown used to it. She lit the kerosene lamp because PLN had cut off the electricity to her house two months ago over an overdue balance that still hadn't been paid.
In the small kitchen with woven-bamboo walls, Sari began kneading dough. Every morning, she made putu cakes and klepon to leave on consignment at Auntie Minah's corner shop, the only shop still willing to accept consignment goods without taking a large commission cut. In the past, before the price of flour and sugar went up twice a year, the profit had still been enough to buy side dishes. Now she had to calculate everything carefully to avoid losing money.
Her husband, Darto, had been out of work at the textile factory in the district town for a year. The factory had closed after orders from overseas stopped, for reasons no one knew—people in the village said it was because goods from other countries were cheaper. Darto was now an odd-job laborer, sometimes helping harvest other people's rice, sometimes working as a construction laborer when someone was building a house. Nothing was steady. Sometimes he went a whole week without finding work.
Sari had two children. The older one, Wulan, was in her second year of junior high school. The younger one, Bagas, had just started elementary school. Wulan's school fees were three months overdue. Every time her homeroom teacher called, Sari felt as if her stomach were being squeezed.
That morning, after leaving thirty cakes on consignment at Auntie Minah's corner shop, Sari walked to Mr. Karto's rice field to help with planting. Her wages were fifty thousand rupiah a day, paid after the work was done. It wasn't much, but it was enough to buy rice and cooking oil.
"You still holding up, Auntie?" Auntie Painah asked as they squatted on the field embankment to rest for a moment. She was Sari's neighbor and was helping with the planting too.
"Whether I am or not, I have to stay strong, Auntie," Sari replied with a faint smile, more to comfort herself than to answer the question.
Auntie Painah nodded. She knew exactly what it felt like. Her husband had also been without steady work for a long time.
That afternoon, on her way home from the rice field, Sari stopped by Auntie Minah's corner shop. Of the thirty cakes she had left on consignment, only eighteen had sold. She took the rest home, ate some herself, and offered the others to neighbors at a lower price. She refused to let the cakes go to waste. Every bit of flour she bought represented sweat already spent.
That night, after the children had gone to sleep, Sari sat on the porch with Darto. They counted the money they had—from the planting work, from selling cakes, and from Darto's wages for helping repair a neighbor's fence. They gathered it all together and added it up.
One hundred eighty thousand rupiah.
"It's not enough to pay Wulan's school fees," Darto said quietly, staring blankly toward the dark rice-field embankment.
"I know," Sari replied. "But it's enough to feed us this week. We'll pay the school fees in installments for now. Next month, I want to try selling more and make crackers too. Auntie Minah said crackers sell steadily, especially during the dry season like this, when people don't cook wet-cooked dishes as often."
Darto didn't answer. He only nodded, the unspoken exhaustion plainly visible in the lines of his face.
Sari looked at her husband. She knew Darto wasn't lazy. Before the factory closed, he had been a diligent worker, often putting in overtime for extra income. But their circumstances now made every effort feel like rowing through receding water—no matter how hard they rowed, the boat still barely moved forward.
"The important thing is that we can still eat, Darto," Sari said at last, trying to reassure him, though she wasn't entirely sure of it herself. "The children are still healthy. That's what we should be grateful for, at least for now."
Over the following weeks, Sari truly began making crackers. She learned from YouTube using the battered phone her older sibling had left behind, searching for recipes with cheap ingredients that still tasted good. Bagas sometimes helped dry the uncooked crackers in the yard, though he often ended up playing with the village cats while claiming he was "guarding the crackers."
Wulan, old enough to understand her family's situation, began asking for spending money less often. One afternoon, Sari saw her daughter sitting in front of the house doing her homework, wearing a uniform that had become a little too small after being worn for two years.
"You don't want a new uniform, Wulan?" Sari asked, feeling somewhat guilty that she hadn't managed to buy her one yet.
"It's okay, Mom. It still fits," Wulan replied with a smile, though Sari knew that wasn't entirely true.
A sense of guilt crept into Sari's chest whenever she saw her children holding back like that. But she also knew that crying over their circumstances wouldn't sell more crackers or make the price of rice go down.
Three months passed. Sari's cracker business began to attract regular customers—several corner shops in the neighboring village started placing orders too. The profit wasn't much yet, but it was enough to pay off half of Wulan's overdue school fees. Her homeroom teacher granted them leniency on the rest, allowing them to pay in installments until the end of the semester.
Darto finally found somewhat steady work, helping a produce middleman transport goods in a rented pickup truck. It wasn't his dream job, but it was fairly regular—three or four days a week.
One night, while counting their money as usual, Sari gave a small smile when she saw that the total was a little higher than in previous months.
"It's not much yet, Darto," she told him. "But I think we're not falling behind anymore."
Darto nodded, and for the first time in months, Sari saw her husband truly smile—not merely hold back his exhaustion.
Sari knew the road ahead was still long. Prices wouldn't suddenly fall, and work wouldn't suddenly become easy to find. But that night, as she listened to the crickets and watched her children sleep peacefully inside the house, she felt something she hadn't felt in a long time: a little peace.
Not because all their problems had been solved. But because she knew that no matter how hard this season became, she and her family still had a way to endure it—little by little, like crackers drying slowly beneath the sun, waiting until they were completely dry and ready to fry.