Sunflower
Coda Danu-Asmara | Fiction, Fall 2024
It was not concerning that Tor’s son had run away. He always hid in the same place: under the elevated train tracks of the 7 line, sitting on that little platform atop a rusty ladder, shivering in the noonday wind.
Tor picked up the plastic plates scattered all throughout his son’s room, letting the crumbs fall where they may. Tor stepped over the books lying on their spines, all halfway read and never finished. As he walked out of the room, his dark reflection was briefly caught in the cracked screen of a computer monitor.
Tor brought the plates to the sink. There was no real rush—the school had only called a few hours ago to let Tor know his son had vanished. He dipped each plate into the soapy water that had been drawn for the day, making sure to spill as little as possible. He left them near the broken windowpanes, where the sun got in the best.
Tor shooed away the fruit flies buzzing around the bananas. He picked up the bunch, looking at each in turn, before choosing the two greenest ones. His son would be hungry, yes, but this behavior must not be encouraged.
The flies had settled on the blue painting. Today, Tor let them stay.
On his wedding day, Tor still did not know how to speak English. He had been taking night classes, he had his day job as a pizza delivery salesman, he had even gone to Webster Hall and lost a tooth in a bar fight, but the language did not come naturally to him. Not much really did. In that backyard somewhere out upstate, standing in stiff clothing, in front of a few people he only vaguely knew, whispering vows ten thousand miles away from where he was born, he must have been happy.
By the time his son was born, Tor’s English had improved enough that he was able to speak to his son in a broken dialect. He chose to speak that language only to him. What was the point of speaking to him in anything else? His own language was a pidgin whose awkward phrases sounded like the rattling of wings. In this country, English would get him ahead. In the hindsight of later years, perhaps his son would mourn his ignorance, but he would be a mourning king, sitting atop a pile of gold and gems. Besides, Tor’s own father did the same to him—his father’s native language, which was even more arcane and obscure, lay unknown to Tor, all so that he could succeed in the context of his own life—and he had succeeded, hadn’t he? He was here, after all, living more comfortably than anybody could imagine.
The kitchen began to rattle. The 7 was passing by.
When Tor’s son ran away for the first time, Tor had trouble understanding the principal over the phone. He asked again and again for clarification, hearing her get more and more frustrated, her words enjambed with indignation—who is this tongue-tied idiot, losing his son and not even caring that it has happened, letting the world make all the decisions for him.
It was probably time to go soon. Since he would probably be back in less than an hour, Tor unplugged the fridge to save on the power bill.
When Tor used to run away from school, he would scamper behind the rice paddies, where you could find the toothless drunkards playing dice, where there was always enough to share. He made sure he was never found—or was that only because nobody ever cared to look for him?
Tor glanced at the blue painting before turning to the door. It only took a few tries to pull it open this time. In the hallway, Tony was there, smoking like always, staining his white undershirt tobacco orange.
The sounds of construction echoed all the way down the stairs. What did Tor’s family house look like again? What color were the cracked tiles on the ground? When did they get electricity installed? Did they ever get electricity installed? When it rained, where did they all huddle to stay dry?
A shake. Another 7 passing by.
The opportunity had presented itself so many times. His old friends offered a lot and promised more, if only he would move back. In the emerging economy of a developing nation, artists were not only desired but needed. Nationality could not be manifested but created. So what if the schools weren’t any good? His son would manage well enough.
He picked up his pace down the steps, even though he had no interest in rushing.
Out of habit, when Tor reached the ground floor, he took a quick diversion to check the mail to see if there was anything there for him. The ritual was always the same: climb up the one step into the mailroom, where there were hundreds of little numbered boxes stretched from wall to wall. Tor closed his eyes, trying to find number 7F using only his physical memory. It was a little game he played when he was alone in the mailroom. He had tried to teach this simple pleasure to his son, but he was no good. Not only was he not tall enough to reach the mailbox, he always wandered to the wrong corner of the room. The way his little face fell when he failed again and again—it seemed too cruel to keep it up, no matter how much his son begged him to try just one more time. Tor had no such issue. When he moved here, he was already blind. The sights and the sounds were so foreign as to be completely incomprehensible to his brain. It was less like a waking dream and more like a fictional world. He had seen this city many times in movies, when the censors were nice enough to let a few slip by, and like any good film, this city ran on incomprehensible logic. Like a tight screenplay, no moments could be wasted, and the gawking and loitering so inherent in Tor’s culture was slapped out of him within only a few months. Tor reached his hand forward. There. He brought the key to the lockbox and found the hole on his second attempt. It went in with a satisfying click, but then…
Tor opened his eyes. 6H. The wrong one. He quickly looked around to see if anybody was watching before moving the key to the correct hole.
The mailbox was empty. He left the mailroom while the construction just kept wailing on and on. It didn’t bother him. Tor had always been accustomed to life without silence.
When he came into the lobby, the glass door had shattered. Somebody had thrown a brick through it. The doorman was sweeping up the shards. Tor stepped over him.
The city afternoon was bright. To Tor’s left, a truck selling empanadas for a dollar each, which he considered getting, but they could have anything in them, and he didn’t want to take the risk of eating any pork, even if he didn’t really hold that belief so strongly, maybe one day he would come to regret it, when all his friends were dead and he was afraid to be next, so he did not want to take the chance. To his right, a man pushing a cart filled with eggs, expertly dodging every obstacle in his path, his limber body twisting in the breeze of people, even though his bones were starting to ache, even though one day he won’t avert the cart in time and the yolk and albumin will spill everywhere, and that will be it, after fifteen years, that would be it. To his centre, it was only himself, going forward, pressing forward, with purpose.
The elevated subway tracks. The rising beams. The little broken ladder. In the darkness, a small brown body.
Tor cut across the moving traffic, deafening the honking, unthreading through weaving cyclists, until he came to the divider where the tracks lay. With a body that only grew weaker, he pulled himself up the ladder until he came next to his son.
Tor offered a banana without looking at his son. His son took it and held it close, doing nothing else with it.
“How did you know I was here, Be?”
“You are always here.”
“Hmm. I suppose so.”
An ancient sedan covered in duct tape rear-ends a taxi at the stop light. The taxi driver rushes out, shaking his arm, not even closing the car door, his black beard swaying in the unrefreshing breeze.
Tor knew that his son expected some words to pass between them: first, the retribution for all that he’d done wrong, then the affirmation of his good qualities, then the two would climb down the ladder together, and then, they would live happily ever after. Tor was smarter than his son—he would not fall into that trap. Instead, he took out the other banana for himself and peeled it, knowing that his hungry son would finally follow his lead.
The taxi driver is banging on the crooked car door, shouting something in a language that he would never teach his children.
Tor was almost finished with the banana by the time his son started his.
Pedestrians are gathering around the shouting man, pulling at his sleeves, telling him to calm down, telling him to just move on, that his slighted masculinity isn’t worth this fight, that he is causing a scene, that somebody is going to get the police involved even though they hate the police, so just stand down, please.
Tor raised his arm to throw the banana onto the ground but his son reached out to catch it – and by doing so, started to lose his balance on the little ledge. But, of course, Tor’s leg was already lifted in such a way to prevent his son from falling.
His son licked his lips, trying to keep composure, trying to make it seem like nothing had happened. “You shouldn’t throw things on the ground, Be.”
Tor considered arguing, noting that the banana peel would be picked apart by pigeons and squirrels before the end of the day, and besides, what is the difference between it lying on the ground here, among a thousand plastic bags, candy wrappers, and burnt tires, and it being shoved into a big hole in the ground, that this city is already toxic and hateful and horrible, and how much worse can we really make it—but his son was old enough for righteousness but too young for cogency, so such an argument would really only serve to make everybody unhappy, and besides, Tor wouldn’t be able to find the words to really say what he meant.
The taxi driver was walking away from the car at last, returning back to his car, where his passengers had long since fled, fearing confinement with this unhinged lunatic and preferring to mingle with thousands of strangers.
“Today, at class,” his son began, and then paused. “Before I left. We were learning about plants. Bot-a-ny.”
Tor grunted, adjusting himself to be no more comfortable than before.
“The teacher told me—she told me.” He paused. “You know that sunflowers follow the sun?”
Tor chose to respond. “Yes, I knew that. The yellow flower looks at the sun to find the light.”
“Yes, yes, but my teacher told me that’s a myth. Actually, actually, only the young sunflowers follow the sun. Before they get their yellow. It’s not the adult ones. When they’re fully grown, they stop moving completely. Did you know that? Teacher says not many do.”
At last, Tor glanced down at his son, looking at the brown skin that was uniquely their own. “Yes, I knew that.”
“But you said—”
The traffic had begun to clear. The altercation that had just been going on was nothing more than a billionth of a fragment of the city’s eternal memory. Tor slowly climbed down the ladder, careful not to slip or fall or show any moment of weakness. He watched intently as his son followed, shivering and shaking in the afternoon light. In a different time, the clear sky that bordered the endless stretch of grey could have looked like a painting.
______________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
Fiction presents the people who we could have been, the relationships we could have made, and the lives we could have lived. Either we depict the universes we wished could have happened or the universes we deeply fear, but only by making something up completely can we come close to figuring out who we really are. I am not the son, and my father is not the father, but our trace fossils are exactly the same.
Coda Danu-Asmara is an American-born labor activist living in Australia. His previous works of fiction have been published in ANMLY, Thrice Magazine, TheWriteLaunch, and others. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, the Best of the Net, and the Best American Short Stories.
Sunflower
Coda Danu-Asmara | Fiction, Fall 2024
It was not concerning that Tor’s son had run away. He always hid in the same place: under the elevated train tracks of the 7 line, sitting on that little platform atop a rusty ladder, shivering in the noonday wind.
Tor picked up the plastic plates scattered all throughout his son’s room, letting the crumbs fall where they may. Tor stepped over the books lying on their spines, all halfway read and never finished. As he walked out of the room, his dark reflection was briefly caught in the cracked screen of a computer monitor.
Tor brought the plates to the sink. There was no real rush—the school had only called a few hours ago to let Tor know his son had vanished. He dipped each plate into the soapy water that had been drawn for the day, making sure to spill as little as possible. He left them near the broken windowpanes, where the sun got in the best.
Tor shooed away the fruit flies buzzing around the bananas. He picked up the bunch, looking at each in turn, before choosing the two greenest ones. His son would be hungry, yes, but this behavior must not be encouraged.
The flies had settled on the blue painting. Today, Tor let them stay.
On his wedding day, Tor still did not know how to speak English. He had been taking night classes, he had his day job as a pizza delivery salesman, he had even gone to Webster Hall and lost a tooth in a bar fight, but the language did not come naturally to him. Not much really did. In that backyard somewhere out upstate, standing in stiff clothing, in front of a few people he only vaguely knew, whispering vows ten thousand miles away from where he was born, he must have been happy.
By the time his son was born, Tor’s English had improved enough that he was able to speak to his son in a broken dialect. He chose to speak that language only to him. What was the point of speaking to him in anything else? His own language was a pidgin whose awkward phrases sounded like the rattling of wings. In this country, English would get him ahead. In the hindsight of later years, perhaps his son would mourn his ignorance, but he would be a mourning king, sitting atop a pile of gold and gems. Besides, Tor’s own father did the same to him—his father’s native language, which was even more arcane and obscure, lay unknown to Tor, all so that he could succeed in the context of his own life—and he had succeeded, hadn’t he? He was here, after all, living more comfortably than anybody could imagine.
The kitchen began to rattle. The 7 was passing by.
When Tor’s son ran away for the first time, Tor had trouble understanding the principal over the phone. He asked again and again for clarification, hearing her get more and more frustrated, her words enjambed with indignation—who is this tongue-tied idiot, losing his son and not even caring that it has happened, letting the world make all the decisions for him.
It was probably time to go soon. Since he would probably be back in less than an hour, Tor unplugged the fridge to save on the power bill.
When Tor used to run away from school, he would scamper behind the rice paddies, where you could find the toothless drunkards playing dice, where there was always enough to share. He made sure he was never found—or was that only because nobody ever cared to look for him?
Tor glanced at the blue painting before turning to the door. It only took a few tries to pull it open this time. In the hallway, Tony was there, smoking like always, staining his white undershirt tobacco orange.
The sounds of construction echoed all the way down the stairs. What did Tor’s family house look like again? What color were the cracked tiles on the ground? When did they get electricity installed? Did they ever get electricity installed? When it rained, where did they all huddle to stay dry?
A shake. Another 7 passing by.
The opportunity had presented itself so many times. His old friends offered a lot and promised more, if only he would move back. In the emerging economy of a developing nation, artists were not only desired but needed. Nationality could not be manifested but created. So what if the schools weren’t any good? His son would manage well enough.
He picked up his pace down the steps, even though he had no interest in rushing.
Out of habit, when Tor reached the ground floor, he took a quick diversion to check the mail to see if there was anything there for him. The ritual was always the same: climb up the one step into the mailroom, where there were hundreds of little numbered boxes stretched from wall to wall. Tor closed his eyes, trying to find number 7F using only his physical memory. It was a little game he played when he was alone in the mailroom. He had tried to teach this simple pleasure to his son, but he was no good. Not only was he not tall enough to reach the mailbox, he always wandered to the wrong corner of the room. The way his little face fell when he failed again and again—it seemed too cruel to keep it up, no matter how much his son begged him to try just one more time. Tor had no such issue. When he moved here, he was already blind. The sights and the sounds were so foreign as to be completely incomprehensible to his brain. It was less like a waking dream and more like a fictional world. He had seen this city many times in movies, when the censors were nice enough to let a few slip by, and like any good film, this city ran on incomprehensible logic. Like a tight screenplay, no moments could be wasted, and the gawking and loitering so inherent in Tor’s culture was slapped out of him within only a few months. Tor reached his hand forward. There. He brought the key to the lockbox and found the hole on his second attempt. It went in with a satisfying click, but then…
Tor opened his eyes. 6H. The wrong one. He quickly looked around to see if anybody was watching before moving the key to the correct hole.
The mailbox was empty. He left the mailroom while the construction just kept wailing on and on. It didn’t bother him. Tor had always been accustomed to life without silence.
When he came into the lobby, the glass door had shattered. Somebody had thrown a brick through it. The doorman was sweeping up the shards. Tor stepped over him.
The city afternoon was bright. To Tor’s left, a truck selling empanadas for a dollar each, which he considered getting, but they could have anything in them, and he didn’t want to take the risk of eating any pork, even if he didn’t really hold that belief so strongly, maybe one day he would come to regret it, when all his friends were dead and he was afraid to be next, so he did not want to take the chance. To his right, a man pushing a cart filled with eggs, expertly dodging every obstacle in his path, his limber body twisting in the breeze of people, even though his bones were starting to ache, even though one day he won’t avert the cart in time and the yolk and albumin will spill everywhere, and that will be it, after fifteen years, that would be it. To his centre, it was only himself, going forward, pressing forward, with purpose.
The elevated subway tracks. The rising beams. The little broken ladder. In the darkness, a small brown body.
Tor cut across the moving traffic, deafening the honking, unthreading through weaving cyclists, until he came to the divider where the tracks lay. With a body that only grew weaker, he pulled himself up the ladder until he came next to his son.
Tor offered a banana without looking at his son. His son took it and held it close, doing nothing else with it.
“How did you know I was here, Be?”
“You are always here.”
“Hmm. I suppose so.”
An ancient sedan covered in duct tape rear-ends a taxi at the stop light. The taxi driver rushes out, shaking his arm, not even closing the car door, his black beard swaying in the unrefreshing breeze.
Tor knew that his son expected some words to pass between them: first, the retribution for all that he’d done wrong, then the affirmation of his good qualities, then the two would climb down the ladder together, and then, they would live happily ever after. Tor was smarter than his son—he would not fall into that trap. Instead, he took out the other banana for himself and peeled it, knowing that his hungry son would finally follow his lead.
The taxi driver is banging on the crooked car door, shouting something in a language that he would never teach his children.
Tor was almost finished with the banana by the time his son started his.
Pedestrians are gathering around the shouting man, pulling at his sleeves, telling him to calm down, telling him to just move on, that his slighted masculinity isn’t worth this fight, that he is causing a scene, that somebody is going to get the police involved even though they hate the police, so just stand down, please.
Tor raised his arm to throw the banana onto the ground but his son reached out to catch it – and by doing so, started to lose his balance on the little ledge. But, of course, Tor’s leg was already lifted in such a way to prevent his son from falling.
His son licked his lips, trying to keep composure, trying to make it seem like nothing had happened. “You shouldn’t throw things on the ground, Be.”
Tor considered arguing, noting that the banana peel would be picked apart by pigeons and squirrels before the end of the day, and besides, what is the difference between it lying on the ground here, among a thousand plastic bags, candy wrappers, and burnt tires, and it being shoved into a big hole in the ground, that this city is already toxic and hateful and horrible, and how much worse can we really make it—but his son was old enough for righteousness but too young for cogency, so such an argument would really only serve to make everybody unhappy, and besides, Tor wouldn’t be able to find the words to really say what he meant.
The taxi driver was walking away from the car at last, returning back to his car, where his passengers had long since fled, fearing confinement with this unhinged lunatic and preferring to mingle with thousands of strangers.
“Today, at class,” his son began, and then paused. “Before I left. We were learning about plants. Bot-a-ny.”
Tor grunted, adjusting himself to be no more comfortable than before.
“The teacher told me—she told me.” He paused. “You know that sunflowers follow the sun?”
Tor chose to respond. “Yes, I knew that. The yellow flower looks at the sun to find the light.”
“Yes, yes, but my teacher told me that’s a myth. Actually, actually, only the young sunflowers follow the sun. Before they get their yellow. It’s not the adult ones. When they’re fully grown, they stop moving completely. Did you know that? Teacher says not many do.”
At last, Tor glanced down at his son, looking at the brown skin that was uniquely their own. “Yes, I knew that.”
“But you said—”
The traffic had begun to clear. The altercation that had just been going on was nothing more than a billionth of a fragment of the city’s eternal memory. Tor slowly climbed down the ladder, careful not to slip or fall or show any moment of weakness. He watched intently as his son followed, shivering and shaking in the afternoon light. In a different time, the clear sky that bordered the endless stretch of grey could have looked like a painting.
________________________________________________________________________
Why is this piece your Trace Fossil?
Fiction presents the people who we could have been, the relationships we could have made, and the lives we could have lived. Either we depict the universes we wished could have happened or the universes we deeply fear, but only by making something up completely can we come close to figuring out who we really are. I am not the son, and my father is not the father, but our trace fossils are exactly the same.
Coda Danu-Asmara is an American-born labor activist living in Australia. His previous works of fiction have been published in ANMLY, Thrice Magazine, TheWriteLaunch, and others. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, the Best of the Net, and the Best American Short Stories.