Dad’s Work. A short story by Maria Saba

My mother sews. She buys yards and yards of white fabric, cuts them into long pieces, which she stiches together to make large sacks. Once, when she was out, I went into one and rolled around on the floor. I couldn’t see her coming because I was inside the sack. I heard her scream and tried to unwind myself. She pulled me out and then she squeezed me in her arms and made me promise never to do that again. I didn’t understand why but promised just to stop her tears.

My father shoots. On the last Friday of each month my father takes me to work. We carry these white sacks and place them on a shelf. Then my father takes his gun from a cabinet and goes to the prison courtyard. I spread my notebook and crayons on his desk at the office. I tear up a page and put it aside to keep a ledger.

Yek, do, seh. Bang.

I hear a thud and draw a line on my ledger and then a two-storey brick house with four windows, two on each floor, and a purple door.

Yek, do, seh. Bang.

I hear a thud and add a line to my ledger and a chimney to my house. Smoke goes out of the chimney toward a yellow sun with rays spreading in all directions.

Yek, do, seh. Bang.

Grass covers the front yard of the house.

Yek, do, seh. Bang.

A river flows in front of the grass, with pebbles in the bottom and swimming red and yellow fish.

Yek, do, seh. Bang.

There is an apple tree on the left of the house, with red apples hanging from its branches.

Yek, do, seh. Bang.

An apricot tree on the right, with four orange apricots fallen on the grass. I fill out the leaves with my green crayon and the branches and trunks with brown crayons.

Yek, do, seh. Bang.

A cat on the bank of the river, his eyes following the fish. A boy staring at the stones at the bottom of the river.

The shots stop. I kneel on a chair by the window and open the shutter a crack. Two men carry the bodies in wheelbarrows. My father returns to the office and the smell of something smoky and something sour drifts in. He locks his gun in a cabinet. A man enters and takes the white sacks away. I have forgotten to fill my ledger. My father glances at my drawing and pats my head. “Is that you by the river?”

“Yes.”

“Where are we then? Your mother and me?”

“Inside.”

 My father nods. We go into another room, where he collects his money. We leave.   

We are on time for breakfast. My mother turns up the heat in Samovar. “How was work today?” she asks.

“Good. A very good year,” My father says, and slurps his tea.  

My mother puts two sugar cubes in my glass. I stir my tea, take a sip, and ask for more sugar. She smiles. I pour some milk into my tea and watch it swirl around until it hits the bottom of the glass. 

 My father tears a piece of lavash and dips it into sour cherry jam. “Next time you draw us too, son,” My father says.    

“Us at a picnic,” My mother says.

“That’s it son. Do a picnic one,” My father says, and we begin planning a picnic by the river outside the town.

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Maria Saba is a writer, storyteller, and arts educator, writing in both English and Persian. Maria’s short stories and personal essays have appeared in Ambit Magazine, The New Quarterly, The Bombay Review, and  the Cosmonauts Avenue.  Her short story collection, “My First Friend” was a semi-finalist for the Iowa Short Fiction Prize, and the title story published in Scoundrel Time, won the Editors’ Choice Award and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2017. Maria won the 2023 Joy Kogawa Fiction Award and excerpts of her novel, “There You Are” were shortlisted for the Exeter First Novel Prize and long listed for the Joy Kogawa Award for Fiction. Maria’s novella, “The Secret of Names” was long listed for the 2020 Disquiet Literary Prize.

Maria has received grants from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council and the City of Ottawa in English literature and served on various art juries. The winner of PEN Canada Scholarship for Writers in Exile and Wallace Stegner Grant for the Arts and an alumnus of Banff Centre Writing Studio (2016) and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (2022), Maria has a PhD in theoretical chemistry from the University of Toronto.

http://mariasabaye.blogspot.ca

https://www.facebook.com/maria.sabaye

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