A Drop of Rain Read online

  Hanna’s facial expression is more relaxed now. Eight hours have passed, and another nurse has just been and gone. This nurse said that the pill the new nurse gave Hanna can indeed cause hallucinations in some people. She also said that Hanna no longer feels physical pain.

  The nurse noticed that Hanna sometimes stops breathing momentarily. The end is near.

  Joe

  Sponsoring someone to come to Canada is complicated. I photocopied several pieces of identification—both Eva’s and mine. I typed a formal letter inviting Mary’s daughter to come to Canada for two months and stay with Eva. I went to City Hall to fill in approved forms and obtain proper certification. I obtained the name and address of the Canadian ambassador in Warsaw from the office of our federal member of parliament. Finally, I faxed everything to said ambassador. The process took most of a day.

  I don’t think anybody invited my dad’s family to come to Canada from Holland back in the 1920s. They just came. Or did they? Must ask Aunt Helen.

  Except for helping Eva, and chatting with Curtis, everything is pretty much the usual grind. I am glad the semester is almost over. I’m tired. Eva is exhausted.

  “Don’t be such a perfectionist,” I tell her, but she says she can’t sleep all night anyway, so she might as well work.

  Hanna is near the end.

  The boys enjoyed biking around the local wildlife park and drawing some of the animals. All with Curtis. Meanwhile, I took a leisurely walk with my cameras.

  Curtis followed the park expedition with “a scary, gross, new movie” on video: Godzilla. This exciting entertainment was accompanied by a large pepperoni pizza and a gooey chocolate cake, both purchased for a bargain price at the store where Curtis works.

  Meanwhile, I ate a bowl of oatmeal porridge and made up exam questions.

  Godzilla was a hit with the boys, as were the pizza and cake. Never underestimate the rotten taste of the average, male child—my sons!

  Week Thirteen

  Naomi

  Sunday, December 5, 1999

  On Tuesday, Joe and I took Mary from the hospital to her landlady’s house. Mary’s landlady must like Mary a lot. She wants to cook meals for Mary and take them to her in her room when Mary has to stay in bed. She will do this for free, as long as we buy Mary’s groceries.

  I visit with Mary for an hour after school every day, before I go home to eat dinner and do my homework. Mom comes home earlier from work now.

  Hanna is really close to death. She is in a sort of coma. The nurse told Mom that “hearing is the last sense to go,” so we must be careful what we say around Hanna. Mom bursts into tears a lot. I don’t know what to do for her.

  Curtis borrowed Joe’s truck and drove me to get some groceries for Mary. Mary insists on paying for her own groceries.

  Sarah is going through another phase of not paying much attention to me. Sarah’s brother got arrested for pushing drugs, and Sarah herself is having problems with her boyfriend. Personally, I suspect Sarah is sleeping with her boyfriend. Even if that is true, I can’t understand why she is avoiding me. Does she think I would criticize her? Maybe I would, but so what? Sarah says she’s failing all her courses. Why did she give up on school?

  Mary has a lot of doctor’s appointments in the next few weeks. Joe or Curtis and I are going to drive Mary to these appointments.

  Joe contacted the Canadian ambassador in Warsaw. He and Mom asked the ambassador to give Mary’s daughter a temporary visa for Canada, and he agreed to do this. Joe says he’ll drive me to the airport to pick up Anne. Mary’s landlady says Anne can stay on a cot in Mary’s room.

  I’ve still got to do homework, of course. The history project is almost finished. Here is a quote from The Breakup of the Soviet Union by B. Harbor: “20 August 1968. Soviet and other Warsaw Pact tanks invade Czechoslovakia to force liberal leader Alexander Dubcek to back down on reform plan.”

  What Naomi’s neighbour, an old Czechoslovakian woman, said when Naomi interviewed her:

  Since 1968, I have not gone back to Czechoslovakia. My brother, who still lives in Prague, can sometimes get to Vienna, so we meet there. When Czechoslovakia was still communist, we could talk on the telephone between Canada and Czechoslovakia. We would hear a “click”, and we would know someone was listening to our conversation. So we’d switch languages—maybe from Czech to German. Then there was another “click”, and somebody else who spoke German was listening. So we switched languages again—maybe from German to French. Then there was another “click”. What an incredible effort was used for spying on us!

  What an old Polish woman, a friend of the Czechoslovakian woman, said when Naomi interviewed her in the Czechoslovakian woman’s kitchen:

  I never saw my sister again after World War II, until 1992 when I went back to Poland. I was in Canada. She was in Poland. We’d write letters, of course, but they always arrived months late and censored. There would be holes where the most innocent remarks were made. The post office spent most of its time spying on us, rather than trying to deliver letters on time. Anyway, I didn’t want to send her too many letters. She could get in trouble just because she had a sister living in the West. We were always very careful.

  Sarah phoned. She said she has quit her band, and she might quit school. I asked her why. She said, “Sorry, but I’ve got to go now.” Then she hung up.

  My history project is due in one week. Mr. Dunlop said I had to have more documentation from “authoritative written material”, like books, newspapers and magazines. That is why I have been looking through a scrapbook Mom made for me when I was a kid. I don’t want to go to the library. It is crowded with other students who are doing projects too. Mom cut out the following article seventeen years ago. I copied the article exactly. It was on the front page of the Globe and Mail on Monday, December 14, 1981. Here is how it begins:

  Immediate Mass Strike Urged

  Angry citizens take to the streets after Poland declares martial law

  WARSAW—Poles reacted angrily and swiftly yesterday to the imposition of nation-wide martial law by the country’s Communist authorities.

  After a Military Council of National Salvation assumed power, police used water cannons to disperse angry crowds outside the Solidarity union’s Warsaw headquarters and union activists distributed leaflets calling for an immediate general strike.

  Troops, tanks, armored personnel vehicles and riot police took up positions in Poland’s large cities and on main roads. In a nation-wide, overnight operation about 1,000 people were reported detained, although authorities refused to reveal the exact number.

  I might also use another article from the scrapbook. It was in Time on January 4, 1982. Here are the headlines:

  Man of the Year

  He Dared to Hope

  Poland’s Lech Walesa led a crusade for freedom

  In this Time magazine article, there is a picture of Lech Walesa that shows my father standing near him. I have looked at this picture many times. My mother used to show it to me whenever I asked about my father. I used to ask a lot when I was little.

  Mom used to say that my father looked “tall, dark and homely”. She said Dad looked like the CBC newsman Terry Milewski, “Except Milewski’s better looking.”

  Recently Mom said my father is “probably paunchy and grey-haired now”.

  I said: “That’s better than being bald like Joe.”

  But now I’m sorry I said that, because Joe is being really nice to Mary and Curtis.

  The experience of looking at my father’s face is always cold but gentle. It’s like the snow flurries that began to drift down as I looked this time. If my father likes my history project, I’m not going to ask him if I can visit him some day. I’m just going to get on a plane, go to Warsaw and pound on his door until he opens it.

  Curtis

  School and work are tolerable.

  Naomi is worried about her mother and her friend, Mary, as well as her history project.

  Naomi’s mother is gr
ief-stricken about her sister.

  Mary reminds me of a snow goose driven far from her flock in a storm, like in the Paul Gallico story that Dad gave me when I told him I wanted to be an artist. Mary’s voice is quiet, but I hear a honk of distress in it.

  Mary is a small woman. She looks more like a sparrow than a goose. It’s her soul that makes me think of a snow goose.

  Mom is staying off my case and getting her own life together. She told Steve to move out. She threatened to call the cops if he didn’t. She told him she doesn’t want to see him again, “until he stops boozing and being abusive.” She’s going to a stress counsellor her doctor recommended.

  I spent last Sunday afternoon in the wildlife park. I biked around with Joe’s kids, then I showed them how to draw beavers, porcupines, raccoons and black bears. Joe walked around by himself and took photos.

  Joe says: “Don’t order women around. Let them see they can depend on your inner and outer strength, if they need to. Gently guide them, if they ask for help.”

  Joe says I can use his truck whenever I need it.

  Judo’s great. The first thing you learn is how to break your falls by rolling. Then you learn how to get your opponent off balance. Then you learn how to throw him. My goal is to get a black belt within a year.

  Mary

  The Prostitute and the Pickles

  My cousin knows some people in Gdansk on the Baltic coast. That is why she can invite me and my husband and children to go for a seaside holiday for the whole summer and stay for free in a vacant apartment. We take the streetcar every day to the beach, where the children make sandcastles and swim.

  Next door to where we are staying, a poor widow lives with eight children. This widow had six children of her own. Then, when a prostitute died leaving two neglected, harum-scarum children, the poor widow adopted those children too.

  The prostitute’s children are difficult, disobedient and backwards. They even go to the bathroom in strange places like the hallway. But the poor widow treats them like her own. She gives them lots and lots of love.

  This widow does not have enough money for proper food and clothes for her children.

  “I know how you can earn money,” I say to her.

  “How?” she asks.

  “Sell pickles at the seashore,” I say. “There are hundreds of people at the seashore every day. I am sure they would buy something refreshing and inexpensive like pickles.”

  “Impossible!” she says.

  “I’ll help you,” I say.

  The next day, early in the morning, I go with the widow to the farmer’s market. I lend her the money to buy a big basket of baby cucumbers, some salt, garlic, mustard seeds, horseradish and dill. Oh yes, and a nice, clean, new, wooden barrel. Then, after my husband takes the widow’s children and our children to the seashore, the widow and I make pickles. We put our ingredients in the barrel. Then we cover the barrel and leave it in a dark place in the widow’s apartment for five days.

  When the pickles are ready, the widow fills a bucket with them, boards the street car, and travels to the last stop—the beach. She sells the whole pailful in fifteen minutes at three zlotys per pickle. Then she returns to her apartment for another pailful.

  By the end of the day, all the pickles in the barrel are sold. Now the widow has enough money to pay me back. She can also buy more cucumbers, salt, garlic, mustard seeds, horseradish and dill. And four more barrels. Meanwhile, her children have played all day at the seashore with my children.

  My husband and I watch over all the children, so the widow is free to work. We watch the children play games together. We talk to them. And soon the prostitute’s children stop going to the bathroom in strange places and begin to act more normally.

  Soon the widow is selling pickles every day. By the end of the summer, she has enough money to buy food and clothes for her children. She can even buy them books for school.

  Capitalism can be good.

  And you know what? Those backward children of the dead prostitute grow up to be wonderful adults. The girl becomes a jeweller, making beautiful rings and bracelets. The boy becomes an electrician. Because they are orphans, the government supplies them each with a free apartment when they grow up.

  Communism can be good too.

  Both of them always remember their adoptive mother on her birthday and name day, at Easter and at Christmas. They always give her a nice gift, a kiss and a hug.

  My husband, children and I never forget the summer of our wonderful, seashore vacation.

  Not many summers later, in 1980, the Solidarity Uprising begins in the Lenin Shipyards at Gdansk. The shipyards are not far from where the children made sandcastles and the widow sold pickles!

  Solidarity is not led by the uneducated electrician, Lech Walesa. It is led by Pope John Paul II. Karol Wojtyla was a cardinal in Krakow and a professor of ethics in the Lublin Catholic University before he became Pope. Our Polish pope knows many languages. He has two doctorates. He is well educated.

  When Pope John Paul II comes to Poland for his first visit in 1979, Polish people go in the millions to attend his masses and see him pass in the popemobile.

  The state television tries to show that there are not that many people, but we know how many there are.

  We follow John Paul II on his pilgrimage to our holiest places at Gniezno, Czestochowa, Krakow and Oswiecim. Oswiecim is where, at the notorious Nazi concentration camp known in German as “Auschwitz”, a Polish priest, Maksymilian Maria Kolbe, gave his own life so another could live. Kolbe is a saint now.

  It is the pope who first talks about “solidarity”. Solidarity is not forced on us. Solidarity is not politics. It is truth.

  Then martial law is declared in Poland, and ordinary life becomes more difficult than ever.

  Now it is really war again.

  Eva

  For three days and nights she lay unconscious and seemingly oblivious to everything. She ate nothing. But then eating had been almost impossible for some time. She swallowed, however, when I tipped a sip of water over her dry lips.

  Perhaps it was the Chopin waltz that aroused her.

  “Come here,” she said to me, only now she could not speak. She only gestured with her hand. Or did she? Perhaps I only imagined that she signalled.

  I laid my head on her breast. On the breast that was not diseased. I put my arms around her gently.

  Soon, there was a rattle and a last breath. Soon, the last pulse was throbbing in her throat like the heartbeat of a little bird.

  Sunlight flooded the little room.

  “Much sunshine!”

  Joe

  Hanna is gone.

  A noble soul.

  I wish I had known her better, but by the time she came to Eva’s, she was too weak for much interaction.

  I felt that my job was to stay in the background, avoid intruding on her privacy and instead support Eva.

  Why could our rich, smug, North American society not offer Hanna a decent place?

  If there is a God, I hope He can forgive us.

  Week Fourteen

  Naomi

  Sunday, December 12, 1999

  Hanna died last Sunday morning at about 11 o’clock.

  I have never seen a dead person before.

  Mom was alone with Hanna when she died. I was playing a Chopin waltz on the piano in the living room.

  Mom sat with Hanna’s body for a while. Then Mom’s English Canadian doctor came, pronounced Hanna dead and left. Then two men came from a funeral home and took the body away.

  I was there.

  “She looks as though she’s had a hard time,” said one of the funeral home men.

  “Yes, she has,” said Mom calmly.

  The men put Hanna’s body in a big bag. Then they carried the bag out the front door on a stretcher.

  Mom went afterwards to the funeral home to visit the body. She walked over to the “home” by herself. She said she wanted to go alone.

  Mom is taking three
weeks off work—until after the New Year. She is exhausted. Luckily classes at the college are finished. Hanna waited to die at the most convenient time possible for Mom.

  There isn’t going to be a funeral, because Hanna didn’t want one. Hanna is going to be cremated, as she requested. In the spring, Mom will take Hanna’s ashes to a forest, as Hanna also requested.

  I spent most of Sunday afternoon in my room alone. I lay on my bed thinking for a long time. Then I got up, went to my desk and wrote down my thoughts. Here they are.

  Death is absence. Life is there, and then it is not.

  What remains after death is spirit.

  The world is often evil and dark, but one person’s spirit can be a light for the whole world, a force for good.

  Hanna tried to be a light for the world. Did she succeed? Sometimes what she did made my mother and me unhappy. She also made herself unhappy.

  Yet she did good. She made the world a better place.

  Despite her successes, grief overwhelmed Hanna for a while, taking away her hope. But then, after she came to our home, hope began to return.

  True, she wanted euthanasia. But she didn’t want to die because the world is too evil. She wanted to die because she could no longer live with dignity.

  I did not understand Hanna very well. I still don’t. She was a very different kind of person than I am. Still, I admire her. I also feel sorry for her. Maybe if Hanna had received the right kind of help, she could have got better.

  I hope my friend Mary’s cancer has not spread too far! I hope the doctors can save her!

  I wish I knew how to pray.