A Drop of Rain Read online

  Anyway, I find out what the surprise is when, unsuspectingly, I walk in the front door, turn right in the front hall, enter my room, and see . . .

  White, thin face. Long, greying, brown hair. Loose hair, foaming all over the pillow. Metal bars on sides of high hospital bed. Whole table by window filled with medical equipment like bed pan, surgical gauze, white tape, scissors, ointments, disinfectants. The only non-medical thing on the table is a green, potted, jade plant that used to be in the living room. It stretches toward the window for more light.

  “Hanna?” I ask stupidly.

  “Hello,” she says. And love pours out at me from her greyish-blue eyes. I don’t remember her eyes being so grey before. Can eyes get grey when you are sick?

  “Hello,” I say. I don’t go and kiss her like I used to when I was a little kid. I just sort of smile wanly, wave and glide back into the front hall. Then I stare at Mom, who stares at me. Then Joe finishes bringing in all my suitcases. (Grandma bought me two more suitcases to hold my new clothes.) Joe nods at me, kisses Mom on the cheek and leaves.

  Mom puts her finger to her lips to tell me not to say anything. She shuts the front door quietly behind Joe. She says with this falsely cheerful voice: “Come and see the garden, darling. I have something to show you.” We go out to the back of our little back yard, where there are no vegetables or flowers, only weeds. But at least Hanna can’t hear us, so we can talk freely.

  Mom and I have always been pretty good friends, but I feel that Mom betrayed me by not telling me what happened during the summer while I was away.

  As payment for giving up my room and helping with Hanna, this is what I negotiated:

  -I get to keep and wear all the clothes, plus the “frivolities, frills and clutter” that Grandma bought for me in Edmonton.

  -I get to work part time during the school year, if I can find a job. And I can spend the money on anything I want, including a trip to somewhere warm at Christmas, if I can find somebody “responsible” to go with.

  Mrs. Henderson, I just read what I wrote. I realize that I sound hard hearted. But I am not. Although Hanna is like a mother for my mother, I don’t know her all that well. We haven’t visited much for the past four years, since Mom and I moved to Mapleville. Even when I was a little kid, although Mom and I spent our holidays with Hanna, she was always remote. She was more like a teacher than an aunt. (No offense.)

  One time when I went with Mom to visit Hanna in Montreal, Hanna had to make sure that we saw where the Oka Crisis was happening. She insisted that we go to where the Native warriors were camping, and where the army was patrolling with rifles and tanks. Hanna was very happy that Mom had rented a car to go to Montreal. She wasn’t happy because we could drive to the St. Lawrence River to swim, or drive to the Laurentian Mountains to hike, but that we could drive to see Indians and soldiers staring at each other. This serious, scary stuff was more interesting for Hanna than the fun stuff that we also did.

  Mom said Hanna’s serious attitude toward life was a result of being born during a war and living under communism. I love Hanna. She has always been kind to me. Nevertheless, I feel closer to my mother’s birth-mother, my grandmother in Edmonton. Grandma Whitehead is more normal because she was born right here in Canada, like me.

  Last Tuesday evening when I got my tape recorder ready and went to interview Hanna about her memories of World War II, she just gave me her loving look and changed the subject.

  “I remember a fairy tale from old Vienna about a basilisk at the bottom of a well,” she said to me in French. “Have you heard this story?”

  Hanna speaks French better than English. She talks in that language and expects me to understand. Actually, I do understand, because I went to a French immersion school.

  “No,” I reply, feeling angry. “Look, Hanna, I need your memories of World War II for a school assignment for tomorrow. I don’t have too much time . . .”

  “Now this basilisk was croaking down at the bottom of the well,” Hanna goes on, looking at the ceiling. “The croaking was a terrible sound. It sounded like a cross between a rooster, a frog and a serpent. And there was a terrible smell. Like rotten eggs. The townspeople thought of this strange animal as a monster. And indeed they were right. He was a horrible monster whose glance meant instant death . . .”

  “Um, excuse me, please,” I say politely, and I get up from my chair by Hanna’s bed and switch off the tape recorder. “I’ve just remembered that I’m supposed to do something for Mom. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I go to see my mother in her bedroom, where she is making up an assignment for her students. Mom has a desk, computer, chair and filing cabinet in her bedroom, as well as a bed, bedside table and dresser. The room is small and crowded.

  “Hanna isn’t cooperating at all,” I explain. “She’s just telling me some fairy story, as though I’m still a little kid. I guess she just doesn’t understand how urgent this is.”

  Mom sighs, takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes.

  “Hanna senses your resentment of her, I’m sure,” says Mom. “And your lack of understanding of her situation.”

  “How can I understand if nobody tells me anything?” I ask.

  I am thinking that Mom looks tired.

  Mom looks into my eyes. Then she nods.

  “Last night I found this notebook of mine from twenty years ago,” says Mom, getting up from her desk and going over to a heap of papers on her bedside table.

  Mom hands me an ordinary school exercise book. There is writing on the first twenty pages or so. There is a yellowed article about Poland that Mom published in the Edmonton Journal a long time ago. Then there are blank pages.

  “It’s notes I made when I was visiting Poland in 1979. Turn to my visit to the Auschwitz Museum. You can copy what I said about that for your history assignment. I’m sure your teacher will be satisfied.”

  I spent an hour typing Mom’s handwritten notes about Auschwitz. Even though I already knew about concentration camps from a film we had to watch in Grade Nine, I found Mom’s comments heartrending. I handed the notes to Mr. Dunlop the next day.

  I found out yesterday that Hanna does not have AIDS. So I don’t have it.

  Curtis has not phoned me yet. I am worried about him. Maybe he is having trouble in his life right now, like I am. He admitted that he had failed Grade Twelve last year, but he didn’t say why. I should have talked less and listened more.

  Curtis

  No art class this year. I’ve taken all I can. Mr. Bell, the new physics teacher, is okay. In English we have to study a novel, plus stories, plus a play, plus poetry, plus writing skills. Nothing new there, or in the other courses. Should have passed Grade Twelve the first time.

  The woodpecker tapped on my soul. Its message was, “To thine own self be true!” That’s what Dad said on the phone last night. “If Audubon can spend seventeen years finding himself, you can fail Grade Twelve once, while you search for your vocation.”

  Dad says if I really want to be a wildlife artist, I should develop a portfolio in my spare time. But I still have to work at school. Or I won’t get into art college.

  “Bike out to the countryside and sketch on weekends,” he says, “then concentrate on boring high-school subjects during the week.”

  I saw She Wolf in school, but she did not see me, because I ducked. She wears expensive clothes. Her grandparents are rich.

  “You’re a lone wolf,” Mom always says. “It’s not normal for a young man to spend so much time alone.”

  She never says what she is really thinking—that I’ll turn out like Dad. She leaves that for the idiot drunkard, Steve.

  Why did I come back from Dad’s? Oh, yeah. He’s got to build a new business and a new relationship now. He needs more time and space.

  One day, Steve old man, you’ll go too far. You hear that?

  Lone Wolf has spoken.

  Eva

  I have been looking at the photograph album that Hanna once called �
��as precious as life itself”. It is small. It fits in my hands. The photographs begin in the late 1930s.

  A lovely, smiling, dark-haired woman in her twenties is leaning against a railing. This is Hanna’s mother. A handsome, proud, sandy-haired man in his twenties is standing in front of a Christmas tree. This is Hanna’s father. And mine.

  There is a white, stucco house not so very different from houses I have seen here in Canada. It is not a mansion, but there is a sense of spaciousness—some lawn, a few trees.

  There is another shot of rolling Polish countryside—I don’t know where exactly in Poland. The fields and forest look like those here in southern Ontario.

  In the first photograph of Hanna, she is a chubby, sturdy baby being lifted into the air by our paternal grandmother. Our grandmother looks proud but worried. In the second photo, our paternal grandfather is holding her. Hanna is reaching out for her mother. Our grandfather looks distracted.

  There are no pictures of our father holding her because he was not there. Hanna was born in the autumn of 1939, after Poland had been invaded by Nazi Germany, after the Second World War had begun. Our father was away from home; he was fighting the enemy abroad. Neither of us ever saw our father, although we exchanged a few letters and spoke a few times on the telephone.

  There is a photograph of our father in a pilot’s uniform. You can hardly see his face for the goggles and tight helmet. At that time, he was in the Polish division of Britain’s Royal Air Force. This is the last photograph of him in the album.

  Except for photographs of Hanna being christened, and of an uncle posing in a soldier’s uniform, there are no other pictures of the period of the war. There are no other pictures of our paternal grandparents. For some reason, there are no pictures of Hanna’s maternal grandparents.

  In a photo taken just after the war, Hanna is maybe six years old. She is walking hand-in-hand on a city street with her mother. Both are dressed nicely, rather formally.

  Other pictures taken in the next few years are more casual. Hanna (seven?) and her mother are at the seashore with friends, having fun in the water. Hanna (eight?) is standing in a garden. Hanna (ten?) and a family friend are posing in the mountains in folk costumes.

  There are no pictures of the terrible difficulties after the war. Only pictures of good things: flowers in a vase on a table, unidentified adults enjoying a picnic in the forest, unidentified family friends visiting for a few hours.

  Then suddenly Hanna is a student. How old is she? Sixteen? Eighteen? She’s at a table near a window. There are books and papers on the table, and she is writing or doing calculations. There is another picture of her a few years later. She is sitting in a field beside a saddle, looking pensive. Didn’t she want to ride the horse?

  Finally, she is a young woman. She is the same age as her mother was at the beginning of the album. She is not smiling, however. She is not looking at the camera. Her face is turned inward as she walks along. She is thinking.

  Joe

  Naomi is giving Eva a hard time about Hanna being in her bedroom. Why does Eva feel guilty about having made this arrangement? Eva is unsure of herself emotionally.

  Strange how my ex-wife, Jill, exhibits so many of the superficial trappings of femininity: the makeup, the false fingernails, etc. Yet underneath Jill is cynical and tough.

  I love Eva’s freshness and fragility.

  Hanna is just a few years older than me, yet she is dying.

  My classes are going well. After twenty years of teaching, however, I am longing for a change. So many colleagues who started in the late 1960s, when the colleges first opened up, are taking early retirement now. They’re my age.

  I wonder if I can hold out for another ten years.

  Eva is enthusiastic about teaching because she has been working in an engineering firm. When I started teaching, I had been counselling young offenders. Initially, teaching was a change: a new challenge.

  Eva is almost twenty years younger than me! Does it matter? No, we are truly in love.

  Jill wants more money for the boys. They are involved in hockey, as well as baseball. Jill says I have no idea of the price of things today. I had to make do with second-hand stuff when I was a kid, so why can’t the boys?

  I wish the boys were interested in photography, so I could do some shoots on weekends. I missed a gorgeous sun pillar the other day because I didn’t have my camera with me.

  John Van der V. says some press in Toronto wants to publish a book of his astronomical photos. I’d love to do a book on weather.

  All I need is a tornado!

  Week Three

  Naomi

  Saturday, September 25, 1999

  Mr. Dunlop was impressed with my mother’s notes about the Auschwitz Museum. He read them to the whole class yesterday. Then he tried to start a discussion about the persecution of the Jews during World War II. Unfortunately, what happened next was totally embarrassing.

  “During the Second World War, Jews were like people with AIDS today,” says Mr. Dunlop. “Pariahs. Outcasts. Yet they were no different from you or me.”

  “I thought people with AIDS were homosexuals or drug addicts,” says Bob Carter. “I don’t know about you, sir, but I’m no fairy or dope fiend.”

  “No, you’re just a ree-tard jock and beer-swilling jackass,” mutters David Sutton.

  The whole class hears David’s remark and laughs. Even Mr. Dunlop smiles. Only Bob Carter scowls.

  “Actually, you’ve got a point, Carter,” says Mr. Dunlop. “One must be careful about making generalizations about groups of people. One must . . .”

  “I wonder if Naomi is Jewish,” says Melony Price. “Her first name is Jewish, and her last name is foreign.”

  “Thank heavens Mapleville is finally becoming a little more cosmopolitan,” says Mr. Dunlop, as I feel my face turn hot and probably purple. “We need all the West Indians, Italians, Vietnamese and Greeks we can get to make this WASP enclave more interesting.”

  “Melony is just jealous because Mr. Dunlop picked Naomi’s assignment to read out loud,” says Sarah Smith.

  Sarah sits behind me. She has waist-length blonde hair. She takes modelling lessons. She has gorgeous clothes. Plus she sings with a band!

  “I’m not jealous,” says Melony. “I was just stating facts. Naomi looks different, and her name is different.”

  “No more personal remarks, Melony,” snaps Mr. Dunlop. “Such remarks lead to the same intolerance that got out of hand in Nazi Germany. Many people look ‘different.’ I do. You do. What is normal? Naomi is certainly ‘normal’.”

  “Actually, I am one quarter Jewish,” I burst out. “Supposedly, I look like my Jewish grandmother, my father’s mother. My last name is Polish. My mother’s grandparents came from Poland to Canada shortly after World War II. They were Christians, not Jews. I look like the women on that side of the family too. They also have dark hair and eyes.”

  “Thanks for taking Melony’s remarks so well, Naomi,” says Mr. Dunlop. “I’ll bet your Jewish grandmother had a lot of stories about World War II. Authentic testimony . . .”

  “I never met my Jewish grandmother,” I say. “She died before I was born. One of my grandfathers was a war hero. He was a pilot in the Polish wing of the British Air Force. One of my great-grandfathers was a partisan. That’s an unofficial soldier in the Polish underground. My father’s father was a journalist. I don’t know whether he was a war correspondent or not. All these people died before I was born.”

  “I see I’ve got myself a first-class history student this year,” says Mr. Dunlop, beaming.

  “Not really,” I say, feeling my face getting even hotter and purpler.

  “I thought Melony was totally ignorant to pick on you like that,” says Sarah after class as we’re walking home.

  History is our last class on Friday. We have walked partway home together each Friday since the beginning of the school year. Previous Fridays we talked politely about general topics. This Friday, we sudd
enly talked on a personal level, as though we were friends.

  “Melony is as dumb as Bob,” I say. “I hear they’re going out together. They deserve each other. Actually, I was more embarrassed by Mr. Dunlop. Now he’ll expect me to write brilliant essays or something, and I really don’t care about school that much. I’ve got a job now, and I’m into fashion. I want to open a clothing boutique like my grandmother did after her kids grew up.”

  “You don’t have to go to university for fashion,” says Sarah. “But I think you still have to go to a community college.”

  “I don’t want to go to university,” I say. “Or college. I’m not an intellectual like my parents and Aunt Hanna. Anyway, there are hardly any jobs for university graduates. It took my mother fifteen years after university to find a full-time job so she could raise me and buy a house. By the time Mom found the perfect job, I was already raised.”

  “Didn’t you say that your father is a journalist?” asks Sarah.

  “That’s my grandfather. My father is a translator over in Poland,” I say. “He used to translate for this guy called Lech Walesa. Walesa was a revolutionary leader who won the Nobel Prize for peace about twenty years ago. My parents are divorced.”

  “That sounds exciting,” says Sarah, pausing at my ugly little red-brick bungalow. “I mean, about the Nobel Prize.”

  “It’s not,” I say. “Because I’ve never seen my father. He has another family. A wife and son. There’s no contact at all. Not even letters. Mom hears news about him from an old aunt who still lives in Poland. This aunt has an apartment across the hall from my father’s apartment. She is so old that she actually knew my father’s parents and grandparents!”