Crossroads

By Martha Fredrika

Once upon a time in Jakarta, lives a ‘queen’, Ratu, a gorgeous lady of Chinese descent married to a successful businessman. She lives a charming life until a sudden storm of events comes to ruin her perfect family.
In another part of this megalopolis, lives Sari, a simple girl from a small village in Java who grows up among prostitutes in a slum. After becoming successful, she gets out but finds herself having to deal with a sudden loss of someone dear to her.
Intan, a ‘diamond’ from the island of Sumatra, moves to Jakarta for a better future. An ordinary girl from an ordinary family, she lives an ordinary life before marrying an abusive man far from ordinary. Refusing to backdown, she takes whatever life throws at her and fights back.
Ratu, Sari and Intan find one another at rock bottom. At the crossroads, their lives intertwine and will never be the same again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664104365

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COPYRIGHT © 2021 BY MARTHA FREDRIKA.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/16/2021

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CONTENTS

SARI’S STORY

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

INTAN’S STORY

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

INTAN AND GATOT

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

RATU’S STORY

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

SARI AND CHOKY

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

RATU

Chapter Thirty-Two

INTAN

Chapter Thirty-Three

SARI, INTAN, AND RATU

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

SURYA

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Appreciation

• Papa Sumihar Silaban and Mama Ronaldine Warner for guiding me to live in faith.

• God Almighty, my faith in You have never let me down.

• Ester Ksatrianto, for making it possible for me to see the world and supporting my education.

• Dr Thor Kerr, my Course Coordinator at Curtin University.

• Rebecca Santi and Kyle Meihuizen, my study mates and support.

• Anna & Riady Prananto, Albert & Lucy Lazuardi, Sriagung Mulyaningsih, Suryani Sitompul, Lucy and Albert Lazuardi, Aunt Narelle Dornbusch, Susan Himawan, Medhia Suryo, Ruth and Sabar Simanungkalit for being there for me when I needed you.

• Author Liz Curtin Higgs, my inspiration.

• Jeremia Victor and Justicio Efraim, my sons, my moon, my everything. You are God’s precious gift to me and my power source.

Sari’s Story

Chapter One

A megalopolis with many skyscrapers and glamorous shopping malls, Jakarta is convenient for people with money. You can find and buy just about any goods and services in the city. If you are living on an expatriate salary, paid in dollars, Jakarta is a haven, where you can enjoy life to the fullest and still save a decent amount of money. Unfortunately, Jakarta does not treat the poor very kindly. If you do not have adequate resources, Jakarta can be a hell to live in. There is a wide gap in living conditions between the rich and the poor.

Jakarta is partly surrounded by the river. The grand river Kali Besar is the channel that connects Sunda Kelapa in the north to the old town of Jakarta in the south, parallel to the Ciliwung River in the east. The old town of Jakarta is an area with historical buildings built during the Dutch colonial period. There are slums along the riverbank. The slums, a side effect of urbanisation, are highly densely populated with the less fortunate that cannot afford better homes.

When she was growing up, Sari used to live in one of the slums along the riverbank. People bathed in the river and washed their clothes there. They also use it as a communal toilet and rubbish dump. The river would flood during the rainy season. It was dark brown in colour, dirty, and foul-smelling. Sari, desensitised, was not bothered by the odour of the river at all.

Little Sari and her parents lived in one of the shacks built with low-quality triplex board and tin roofs that stood wall to wall against each other. There was no privacy between neighbours. These shacks were usually leased by a landlord to blue-collar workers, like the construction workers, cleaners, shopkeepers, waiters, taxi drivers, and ojek (motorcycle for hire) riders. The ownership of these shacks was questionable. They were built illegally without any permit from the government. The people of the slum didn’t bother to question their landlords about it. All they needed was a place with a cheap lease in the city.

Chapter Two

In between the small shacks, there are warung, small shops that sell cigarettes, snacks, and drinks. People also sell various Indonesian meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner at affordable prices. These eateries are called warung tegal because most of the vendors are from an area in Java called Tegal. The phenomenon of warung tegal itself started in the 1960s, when people from other regions in Java, including from Tegal, migrated to Jakarta. From the ’50s to ’60s, the first president of Indonesia, Soekarno, had a big dream to build the capital city into a modern metropolis. Since the 1960s, Jakarta has been like a magnet for people from the villages, who come looking for jobs as construction workers to help build this new metropolis.

At that time, there was a high demand for catering services for the builders and workers at the construction sites, and the wives of workers from Tegal saw the opportunity to make money. They cleverly started cooking and selling