A Drop of Rain Read online

  Mary

  Grandma! Grandma!

  In the middle of the night, when I return from an emergency case at the hospital, I lift my infant grandson Stephen out of his crib and take him to the potty. Why not? My daughter-in-law needs her sleep. She is tired from chasing her little son all day long.

  I lie awake thinking about things. Stephen is my third grandchild. Already he is two years old. Andrew is a business man. He travels back and forth to Germany constantly, so his wife and child need my help. My poor daughter-in-law! I’m no replacement for her handsome, dashing Andrew! Good thing he’ll be home soon.

  Adam and Anne are also married. They each have one child. Adam is living in my brother’s old apartment, because my brother is in Canada. Meanwhile, Anne and her husband are staying with my mother-in-law, now a widow as well as a great-grandmother. Adam is an engineer, and Anne is a nurse. They’re very busy these days, struggling hard to make ends meet. I’d love to retire, but how can I? When communism fell, I started from zero again. My savings are gone.

  Solidarity won freedom, but not prosperity.

  Doctors’ salaries are worse than ever. And if I retire, my pension will be too small to live on. My Polish pension would be the equivalent of about 200 Canadian dollars a month. How could I pay for food, clothes, telephone, heat, light, water and gas? The goods are in the shops now, but they’re expensive. Besides, I want to help my children.

  In my spare time, I knit mittens, hats, scarves and sweaters. I also sew everything from jackets, to dresses, to jeans.

  Adam has a very good job, but his family is crowded into one single bachelor’s apartment: two adults and one child in one small room. Anne’s husband has a university degree. He is trained to be a teacher like Paul was, but he’s trying to start a business. He thinks he can make much more money by selling flowers than by giving history lessons. He is probably right.

  Should I give up medicine and go help Anne’s husband with his business? No, they don’t need Grandma as well as Great-grandma. Should I work as a doctor in some African country? No, too hot. I don’t like heat.

  What about Canada? There is only my brother to invite me. My sister Agnes is dead, and so is her husband. I can’t impose on Agnes’s grown children. I don’t know them. I can’t ask them to pay my airfare, then feed and house me until I establish myself.

  Oh. The phone is ringing! What time is it? Five o’clock in the morning? I must have fallen asleep. I was dreaming that my oldest grandson, Michael, was very tiny—just a speck.

  “Hello?”

  “Mom? It’s Adam. I knew you’d be getting up to go to work now.”

  “What’s wrong, dear?”

  “It’s Michael. He’s very ill. I’m afraid for him. He’s been in the hospital for a week. First he had mumps. Now they think he has meningitis. They called a few moments ago. They said they don’t know whether he is going to live. . . . I’m so afraid.”

  “Goodness! I was dreaming about Michael just now. Don’t worry, dear. That hospital near you is excellent. I know those doctors well. He’ll receive the best care possible. You must pray, and I’ll pray too. You know what?”

  “What?”

  “My mother had a terrible case of mumps when I was a child. The side of her neck was as big as a bunch of bananas. She was unconscious. She didn’t recognize us. The doctor wrote out a prescription, but he told us that she probably wouldn’t live.

  “After the doctor left, an old neighbour woman dropped by to see how things were. She found us children crying and my father in despair.

  “ ‘Listen to me,’ said the neighbour woman. ‘Here’s an old folk remedy that the young doctor probably doesn’t know. Take flax seeds, make a poultice, and put it in a linen cloth. Heat the poultice in the oven, and put it on the swelling on your wife’s neck. When the poultice cools down, heat it in the oven again, and put it on your wife’s neck again. Keep doing this until the swelling goes down.’

  “ ‘I’ll try anything,’ said my father. ‘Johnny, you get some flax seeds from the barn. Elizabeth, you find a clean linen cloth. Mary, you run to the apothecary shop. Get this prescription filled. Cut through the cemetery, so you’ll get back sooner.’

  “I bolted out the door and sprinted down the street at top speed. It was night. I had never before entered the cemetery in the dark. I was terrified! But I passed those scary graves without stopping, and I got home with my mother’s medicine in record time.

  “My father gave my mother the doctor’s medicine, then he followed the neighbour’s instructions carefully. In a few hours, the swelling on my mother’s neck had gone down. She opened her eyes and recognized us.

  “ ‘Why am I here in bed?’ she asked. Then she fell asleep. The next day she was much better, although still very weak.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” says Adam.

  “For what?” I ask.

  “For the story,” says Adam.

  That afternoon I phone Adam. Michael is getting better!

  That evening my brother phones me. He asks me to come to Canada. His wife is very ill, and he needs help to take care of her.

  I say I’ll come right away.

  Eva

  As Hanna and I were leaving the Auschwitz Museum twenty years ago, I noticed something white and fluffy and cottony floating in the hot, still air. This fluff was carrying seeds from the poplar trees. I thought of this fluff as millions of torn souls, clumped together.

  When I found Hanna lying paralyzed and dying of cancer six months ago in her room in Montreal, this same fluff was in the air. It clung to the poplar trees outside her window. It clumped on the windowsill of her little rented room. It entered the room.

  Hanna too was little more than a skeleton—a boney ruin like the people in the photographs at the museum. But it was by the way she lived that I knew for certain that she was one of the Auschwitz millions, even though she had miraculously escaped death there. She was at one with them.

  Always she lived for others. Always she gave. Always she fought for what she believed was right. She fought fiercely for truth, for justice, for humanity.

  She never relented, even as she lay dying. I knew she was one of them. One with them. One with the millions.

  I knew this. But she never said that this was so.

  “What was your purpose in life?” I asked her.

  “To pass a message,” she replied.

  Here is a poem Hanna wrote for one of her adopted sons. I have just translated it from French. I never knew Hanna to write a poem, so I was surprised to find this.

  Our Reality According to Me

  You told me

  “I am not God”

  and I know this well.

  You are Man.

  I have entered

  into an imaginary place to live in your landscape

  in order to be created anew

  and inside out.

  That is to say

  it is necessary

  to find the sensation of tenderness again.

  You are how you are—

  you, for whom the clouds and birds

  sing.

  I am

  an awkward, crippled witch full of complex simplicity.

  I climb the stairs to find my life

  enclosed

  in your hand.

  I don’t know why

  but it is there.

  My life

  your life

  password

  of the magic square of——Avenue

  by way of the fourth dimension

  to the fifth

  all equally important.

  The little cat Mitsou

  plays with the light.

  The sun lingers beyond the window.

  You tell me

  “I don’t need you.”

  You gave me

  even so

  the most beautiful gift

  important and difficult—

  You.

  It is difficult to live in emptiness.

  I
t is difficult to live against the times,

  against all the hostile forces.

  But you know

  I am going to try to do the impossible,

  and I do not accept defeat.

  And

  so

  accept

  by kindness

  my failures

  which

  wound you and set you

  against me.

  In searching for lost sense,

  in searching for lost times,

  at war against all absurdity

  —all false evidence—

  I take you

  as clear light, as faint light,

  as light

  for the way

  to I don’t know where.

  I should like to give something—

  a drop of rain

  that is not too acid

  without any importance

  which by chance

  reflects the universe

  —a home

  for wanderers

  and birds,

  a refuge

  for renewal.

  Joe

  After I picked up Mary’s daughter at the airport and brought her to Eva’s, Naomi hugged me and thanked me!

  The semester is over. Eva needs to rest and grieve. I am holidaying with the boys.

  I took the boys skiing for several days. I also took them to Toronto several times. We did the Ontario Science Centre and the Royal Ontario Museum. We let Curtis get on with passing his exams, working at the store and courting Naomi.

  Hanna has taught me, among other things, that life’s too short to do what you don’t believe in.

  I will retire from teaching as soon as possible.

  I will earn a living in a way that does not exhaust me.

  I will allow myself to be directed from within.

  Week Sixteen

  Naomi

  Sunday, December 26, 1999

  In Grandma’s postcard from Hawaii, the water is blue, the palm fronds are green, and the sand is pinkish. In Mapleville today, the sky is grey, the tree trunks are black, and the snow is white. This afternoon, Mary wanted to sleep, so Joe, Mom, Anne and I went for a walk in the big nature park outside Mapleville. Curtis didn’t come because he is in Windsor visiting his grandparents.

  Anne loves wild animals almost as much as Curtis does. I’m glad I explored this park today, because now I will be able to talk with Curtis about something that interests him.

  Mary still has some pain, and she is weak from her operation, but she is very happy to have Anne with her.

  Anne spent all day every day at the hospital while Mary was there. I only went after school. Before and after the operation, Mary’s dark-grey eyes kept locking on my eyes or Anne’s. After the operation, as Anne and I stood on either side of Mary’s bed in Intensive Care, Mary held our hands—one hand of each of us. Mary was grateful to be alive. Anne and I were like chains holding her to life.

  Anne and Mary spend a lot of time talking quietly in Mary’s room. Mom and I try to give them as much privacy and space as possible, and they do the same for us.

  When we got back from our walk in the nature park, Mom went to her room, Anne went to hers, and Joe went home. I went to my room too. I lay down to think about everything, and I almost fell asleep. Suddenly some music for “The Blind Man’s Song” started to play in my semi-unconscious mind.

  As the darkness outside deepened, the music got louder and clearer. I went upstairs to the living room to try out the chords quietly on the piano and scribble them down on paper. Soon the whole piece was finished.

  Then I sat on the couch for a while looking at our tiny Christmas tree. Mom and I don’t believe in chopping down live trees to make temporary decorations, so we haul out the same little plastic tree every year. This year, the tree is on top of the book shelf in the livingroom. Hanging on the wall beside the tree is the sad but lovely “Fallen Bird” picture that Curtis won a prize for. Curtis gave me the picture for Christmas. I was thrilled.

  I gave Curtis a big box of oil paints. He likes my present a lot.

  I felt peaceful. Although Hanna died so tragically and so recently, my life seemed beautiful.

  Mom really likes Mary and Anne. She says helping them helps her feel “slightly less devastated” about Hanna.

  Joe and Curtis moved Mary’s stuff to our house in Joe’s truck.

  Mary lives farther from the Catholic church now, but a priest will come to our house once a week to give Mary communion and hear her confessions.

  Anne has to help Mary a lot. For example, Anne often brings little meals to Mary on a tray, so Mary can eat in bed.

  Anne brought lots of photos of Mary’s grandchildren. Mary looks at the photos over and over again.

  The doctors think they caught Mary’s cancer early enough, so it won’t come back. Mary has to take lots of pills, though. She also has to eat a special diet, rest and see the surgeon every few months for a check-up. She won’t be able to walk to church for a long time yet. But eventually she will be able to live more or less normally, as long as she is careful.

  Mary can’t go back to working full time, however, because that would be too hard for her physically and psychologically.

  Mary is going to sew clothes for Mom and me, as well as for her grandchildren. Already Mary is planning to turn our backyard into a magnificent vegetable garden. Our front yard will be a lovely flower garden.

  Curtis is talented, intelligent, sincere and funny. Also handsome and sexy.

  I’m doing really well in English so far. (Thanks, Mrs. H.) I got a “B” in biology and an “A” on my history project. Mr. Dunlop wrote that I had “organized my material well.”

  Maybe I am going to be a doctor or a nurse, if I don’t want to have a clothing boutique. Mom says my great-grandmother was studying to be a doctor when she dropped out of university to get married. She says I have other relatives who were doctors too. Actually, she says, I am becoming like one of them: Dr. Zosia.

  Mom met Dr. Zosia in Poland twenty years ago, when Dr. Zosia was a very old lady. Mom says Dr. Zosia was a mentor for Mary. What a coincidence that I met Mary!

  I sent a copy of my project to my father.

  Curtis

  I noticed a young, red-tailed hawk on a leafless tree branch beside the highway as Mom and I were driving back from Windsor after visiting her family for a few days.

  Mom’s older sister, Aunt Edith, says Mom should forget Steve completely and find another man. Grandma says Mom should start going to church again, do good deeds, and forget about men. Gramp doesn’t say much, except “Hmph.”

  They all agree I did “real good” this term. They sincerely hope I “keep on learnin’ and stay outta trubble.”

  I spent most of the visit in Gramp’s workshop, doing a painting of glaucous and Iceland gulls against the background of a lake freighter docked on the Detroit River. Naomi gave me a great set of oil paints for Christmas.

  Aunt Edith and Grandma said the painting was “real nice”, almost as good as “wun-a-them-paint-by-numbers-pitchers”. Gramp said, “Hmph.”

  Mom and I talked a lot during the drive back from Windsor. We laughed about the stuff her family said, but we also sort of agreed with them. They’ve got a lot of common sense.

  I moved back in with Mom. She needs someone to shovel her snow this winter. Steve is definitely out of her life. I’ll still visit Joe. We’re good friends now.

  Had a long talk with Dad on the phone. He’s moved back to Edmonton, and he’ll have more time now for our long-distance calls and summer visits.

  Naomi and I can go out to Edmonton together next summer.

  She will drag me to the West Edmonton Mall for shopping, and I will drag her to Elk Island National Park for sketching.

  I made sketches of the caged timber wolves at the local wildlife park, and now I’m doing an oil painting of a big male wolf leading his pack through the primeval forest at dawn.

  You can tell the le
ader is the strongest, the fastest and the smartest.

  His mate is also strong, fast and smart.

  She is alluring.

  Woo-oo!

  Mary

  Canada

  I had many years of experience in my own country as a doctor, a specialist. I even received awards for my work. But in Canada I could not find a respectable, paying job.

  I stayed with my brother for two years, keeping house and caring for his sick wife. Then, after his wife died, I stayed with my brother for another year. Then I got my Landed Immigrant papers, took English lessons and looked for a paying job.

  I could find nothing better than cleaning. I would not mind doing this job, if I were not highly educated, and if people treated me with respect.

  Here in Canada, however, people often seem to think cleaners are not worthy of respect. They write with lipstick on the mirror. They spill pop on new rugs. They throw sticky garbage on the floor. They stuff paper towels in the toilet.

  I am shocked by the casual vandalism and waste here in Canada. The director of the Recreation Centre, one of the places I worked, talked about saving money. But he did nothing about reducing the graffiti and garbage.

  What a terrible waste of my talents, education and experience! Why couldn’t someone have given me some little job related to medicine? I didn’t need perfect English to be an assistant in a hospital.

  If one of my children could have joined me, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But the Canadian government wouldn’t let even one of them immigrate. The government felt that I did not have enough money to sponsor a single grown child.

  My child and I would have worked together. We would have found a way to manage in Canada without taking handouts.

  It’s too bad I didn’t have enough money to go to school in Canada and requalify in my profession. My brother ate stale buns and lived in an unheated room while he requalified for engineering. And he wasn’t so young then either.

  The old fellow who owned the house where I rented a room was always complaining about foreigners coming here and taking away jobs from Canadians. I’ve never yet met any Canadian who wanted the jobs I did. Evenings, weekends, holidays—scrubbing toilets, sinks, floors. Usually all by myself.