An Inevitable Advance: a short story
by Tony Chavira
Kareem had nothing to his name for most of his life, and he was comfortable with that constant. He never complained or worried about the next day: the next day meant waking and working. But he cared most about the people closest to him, though he had few friends. Maybe he would have considered his son Azad his friend, had they tried to become close when he was alive.
Azad sat in the passenger’s seat as they drove away from the house, watching the water trickle toward him from a cracked and lifeless hillside. He was sixteen and remembered smoking with Jose and Matthew Garcia in their shared backyard when they first really noticed the yellow grass. They could see it forming between the hills before, but he always considered it a dividing line between the area his dad yelled at him for playing in and their backyard. But when it finally reached the edges of their backyard, Azad found that the yellow grass was wet. And salty.
Mister Garcia made Matthew and Jose dig a ditch so that it wouldn’t affect his roses, but by then the salty water was already trickling in to fill up their garden. Kareem dug their ditch himself. Azad never thought there was anything special about their backyard. They didn’t go out of their way to maintain it. It already had a ton of yellow crab grass and weeds, no roses or plants worth saving. But Kareem still extended Mr. Garcia’s ditch, without his son’s help.
Azad only lived in Westwood but came back maybe once a month. They spoke frequently enough. Besides, his dad worked eighteen hours a day. There really wasn’t enough time for a substantial conversation, not that they engaged in substantial conversations when Azad actually felt like visiting. Azad would sit with Kareem at the table, talk about work. School. Azad’s uncle. The ditch, full and overflowing. It didn’t help that the storm drains were full of ocean water.
But Kareem absolutely didn’t want Azad to feel guilty about going to school; it was hard enough getting accepted to a university in the first place. Money was just another obstacle, Kareem found a way and Azad never thought about it. All the same, sitting in the same room as his father’s casket, Azad couldn’t stop feeling an ever-lingering tension between them that first began the night before he left home for the UCLA dormitories. Azad had glimpsed at Kareem’s Bank of America checking statement, which was never left out to be discovered. When Azad looked up to him in a mix of shame, anger and confusion, Kareem express a single emotion. In silence, he took back the statement, re-locked it in the cabinet in their cramped hallway and went to bed.
About other things, Kareem would open up to Azad. Kareem had spoken many times about how he had first purchased their home. When he finally came to America in 2009, his cousin’s family helped him to get a teaching job. He was just grateful to have a job in those days: right out of school and he and Dina had just been married. Azad never thought to ask how a cousin in Iran could’ve helped his dad get a job here, but asking Kareem for an explanation also meant you were questioning his motives. Best to wait until his dad brought the topic up on his own.
Azad forced his eyes to the floor, physically unable to make eye contact with the casket. I’m glad my mother died when I was too young to remember, Azad thought with shameful conviction. Then sat forward, trying in vain not to feel guilty for his callousness.
Azad knew that he’d have to get up soon and look at his father’s corpse in front of everyone, and in a fleeting moment he suddenly hated his father for converting to Catholicism later in his life. Nothing the priest said affected Azad. It was just an automatic process: stand up, kneel, recite keywords, pretend that this had a bearing on his life for onlookers. Maybe he didn’t know his father as well as he would’ve liked ... did Kareem spend any time in this church? Did he know this priest when he was alive? Azad had been convinced, work was Kareem’s religion. Kareem didn’t need religion as badly as his religion needed people like Kareem, Azad thought. People who were resolute, people who were reliable, people who were complacent.
Azad should have come home to Encino more often, or at the very least tried to speak about it with Kareem. Instead he waited.
Azad stood mechanically when the priest beckoned, unable to draw his thoughts from the ditch Kareem was forced to dig on his own. The ditch which slowly came to overflow as the oceans rose five, then ten, then fifteen feet. He ambled forward and remembered watching Kareem do the only thing in his power to prevent the salty, yellow grass from overtaking their disheveled lawn. The only option that his father and Mr. Garcia could ever afford.
He stared down at his father’s shell, struggling to pull stronger feelings out of himself, for the crowd. He wondered if he could tear up in front of the other teachers from Kareem’s school that barely knew him. Or in front of the few children that didn’t dismiss him as “mean” or “weird.” Or in front of so many people that wouldn’t have cared if anything was wrong unless he collapsed in front of them. Finally, something overtook him.
All Azad could think about was that quiet, awkward moment that was present at every dinner, every time he came home to visit. A conversation they never had about a debt that didn’t die with his mother, a debt Kareem tried desperately not to increase. A debt Kareem couldn’t leave to his son.
And callously watching his father attempt to fortify against the advance of the yellow grass.
The hardest part was that Azad couldn’t tell what he felt, but knew that he just couldn’t afford to reflect right now. He needed to find a way to cover the rest of the funeral expenses.
www.racaia.com | tony@fourstory.org
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