A Drop of Rain Read online

  “Consumed with guilt.” That’s what Joe says is wrong with Mom. I really don’t see why Mom should feel guilty about Hanna.

  I heard Mom talking to a nurse about something I was not supposed to know about. They were over by the big freezer, which is on the opposite side of the basement from my room, and on the opposite side of the house from Hanna’s room. It was so early in the morning that they thought I was still asleep. The nurses come to change Hanna’s dressing about six in the morning. Then they take care of Mom by talking to her or listening.

  “Hanna’s mother committed suicide at the same age for similar reasons,” says Mom. “She thought the world was too evil. Her loved ones had died or gone away.”

  Mom’s voice is high and tight. She pauses, but the nurse does not say anything.

  “After two young friends died . . . they died of AIDS . . . Hanna lost all interest in life. Even before that, she was becoming mentally ill. This happened over four or five years.”

  Another pause, but still the nurse does not say anything.

  “Now she says she wants to die. She wants pills or something. She says it’s cruel to continue this way. She doesn’t want all this help. She wants euthanasia.”

  “I’ll talk to the doctor about this,” says the nurse. “Maybe I can get him to visit her.”

  “Could you?” asks Mom. “Oh, thank you.”

  “You need more rest, Eva,” says the nurse. “Take a break now and then. Have the people from Hospice Mapleville been coming?”

  “Yes,” says Mom. “A volunteer came on Sunday, so Joe and I could get away for a few hours. But Hanna doesn’t like strangers here. She’d rather be alone. She doesn’t trust strangers. She thinks they’re spies.”

  “She shouldn’t be left alone,” says the nurse. “She’s completely helpless. She can’t even reach for a glass of water.”

  “I know,” says Mom.

  My alarm goes off. Supposedly to wake me up, so I’ll be on time for work. Mom and the nurse go upstairs. I’m really glad I’ll be with Mary all day, because I can talk to her as much as I want. We’re getting to be good friends.

  I don’t tell Mom that I overheard her, because it’s better if she doesn’t think I’m upset. She goes crazy if she thinks there’s something wrong with me. She’s overprotective, because I’m an only child, and because she didn’t have normal mothering herself.

  While she was growing up, Mom mainly had her strict grandmother: my Great-grandmother Goralski. Then, after she was already eighteen, Mom had Aunt Hanna. Mom lived with her mother, my Grandma Maggy in Edmonton, only for two years. One year was when she was a baby, and one year was when she was about my age. Mom was an illegitimate child. “When my mother was young,” Mom says, “she wanted to marry George and get on with her life. She didn’t want her mistake staring her in the face every day.”

  Actually, I was an illegitimate child too, but I don’t usually tell people. Now you know secret information about me.

  Mom believes in “thinking for oneself.” Independence of mind is very important to her, Joe, and Hanna. Those three think for themselves all the time. But I believe that a person needs to stop thinking sometimes and relax. I relax by visiting Grandma Maggy.

  Sometimes I worry that Mom is going to have a nervous breakdown from thinking too much. She is too tense. She tries to be a teacher at home as well as at the college. Mom represses too many of her emotions, so she can remain efficient at all times.

  Mom works incredibly hard. “I am very lucky to finally have a good, full-time job,” she says. “All my colleagues are men, and there’s never been a woman instructor in this department before, except for the ‘frill’ courses like English. I have to do everything as well as a man would. But I still have to run a household and look okay.”

  These days, for example, Mom leaves the house at 7:30 a.m., and she is not back until 5:30 p.m. I’m supposed to make lunch for Hanna and me, and to prepare everybody’s dinner. Making dinner usually means taking a frozen casserole out of the freezer and putting it in the oven. It also means making a salad, setting the table and preparing a tray for Hanna. Mom makes casseroles and stuff like spaghetti sauce on Saturdays.

  Mom eats dinner with me at the kitchen table. Supposedly, this is so we can talk, but I find we don’t really talk the way we used to, because we both try to hide our true feelings from each other. Then, while I do the dishes and my school work, she does college work in her room for a couple of hours. She doesn’t get a chance to visit with Hanna until about 9:30 p.m. When she sits beside Hanna’s bed, neither of them talk much. Both were always silent types. They’re alike in many ways.

  “Focussed, professional women,” Joe once called them. He called me a “scatterbrained glamour girl.” He was joking, but I didn’t appreciate his sense of humour.

  Mom leans her head against the rail of Hanna’s hospital bed. She dozes, I think, but Hanna doesn’t mind. Mom goes to bed at ten, but she wakes up at night and wanders around the house, or looks in Hanna’s boxes, or writes in her journal, or does more school work.

  Here is a typical dinner table conversation between my mother and me:

  “So how was your day, dear,” says Eva.

  “Fine,” says Naomi.

  “Did you get a chance to practice music after school?” says Eva.

  “No. I’ve given up on music,” says Naomi. “I’ve got too much to do with work and school.” (I haven’t, but I’m not going to admit to her that I lay on my bed in my room for two hours, wondering about why Curtis didn’t even say “Hi!” when I finally passed him in the hallway at school.)

  “You know you don’t really need this job at the Rec Plex,” says Eva. “If your school work suffers, you’ll have to quit. I see too many kids at the college missing their year because they’re overextended.”

  “I thought you said a lot of your students party all the time,” Naomi says. “I never party, because I don’t have any friends. Except maybe this girl called Sarah at school. I told you my best friend Pam moved to Vancouver with her family last summer. She never writes. Also I don’t care about my old gang at my old school. The girls just giggle and talk about boys they don’t know. The boys just talk about getting drunk or doing weed.”

  “I know from personal experience that being an only child makes it difficult to interact with one’s peers,” says Eva, sounding like a text book. “I’m glad you’ve been spending summers with my mother. She is very different from me. But it’s too bad that there are no other people your own age in Grandma’s neighbourhood. And no cousins. If Gord has fathered children, I suppose we’ll never hear about them. He’s become a drifter. High school drop out. Can’t hold down a job. . . . It’s his drinking. Magda never could face George’s alchoholism, or Gord’s.”

  “Um, could you please pass the ketchup,” Naomi says and changes the topic of conversation to her new job.

  Naomi thinks her mother is jealous of her grandmother’s love for Gord. Uncle Gord is actually quite funny, even if he is a “lazy good-for-nothing who lives off any woman who will have him.” That’s what his own father, George, says about him.

  Mrs. Henderson, please tell me if the following is acceptable for the poem we have to write for English.

  The Blind Man’s Song

  Where is the sadness in this misery?

  Where is my pain?

  I am walking in the rain.

  I am walking with a blind man’s cane.

  It’s so far to go.

  It’s so long to wait.

  It’s so hard to see.

  It’s getting so late.

  In the other place over by the gate,

  in the other place over by the river,

  in the other place, in the other place,

  there’s got to be some space to play in

  some way to stay away from

  the things that confound you, confuse you,

  refuse to let you be free;

  to find that place inside

&nbs
p; that never goes away.

  That never goes away,

  that waits

  to see if you’ll come back

  before it’s too late.

  Before the gate is closed,

  before the river runs no more, before there’s

  no place left to go.

  Go back and find your inside space!

  Stay away from

  the things that confuse you, confound you,

  and refuse to let you be free.

  Find that place that

  never goes away.

  Where is the sadness in this misery?

  Where is my pain?

  I am walking in the rain.

  I am walking with a blind man’s cane.

  Curtis

  Steve pounds on our door today, while Mom and I are eating supper. I look out the living room window. Steve’s face is puffy and red, so I know he has been drinking. I tell Mom not to let him in.

  “Go away!” Mom yells through the door.

  “Open the door!” Steve yells back, and then he starts swearing and kicking the door.

  “Go away!” Mom yells again.

  Steve keeps swearing and kicking. I am about to call the cops. Mom stops me.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “He’s going away.”

  “We should call the police anyway,” I say. “We should get a restraining order.”

  “Steve won’t hurt us,” she says.

  “You’re naïve,” I say. “You’re not a good judge of character.”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me like that!” she says.

  “Just because I’m young doesn’t mean I’m stupid,” I say.

  “Are you calling me stupid?” she yells. “You failed your school year!”

  “I failed my school year because you and Dad fight all the time, and because I can’t stand Steve,” I say. “Dad is a lot more intelligent than Steve. I wish Dad had never left.”

  “It wasn’t my fault your father left,” she yells. “And at least Steve is normal.”

  “You were incredibly cruel and unfair to Dad,” I say. “You made him feel totally depressed. Steve is an idiot. A low-life. A know-nothing.”

  Mom storms off to her room and slams her door.

  Mary

  Medicine

  When my oldest brother and sister died, Mommy didn’t know about medicine, because she was very young, not much older than Agnes is today. But now Mommy knows, because she’s more than forty. Almost fifty!

  This morning, I went with Mommy to gather plants in the forest to make medicine. The plants were ready for picking, and Agnes was too busy getting ready for her birthday party, and Elizabeth didn’t want to get dirty, and Johnny was helping Daddy in the barn. I like running through the fields and the forest, looking for exactly the right leaf or flower. I’m good at this, and I don’t care if I get dirty. Mommy says I can go with her all the time now, instead of Agnes or Elizabeth.

  I don’t care if Elizabeth says my socks are falling down, and my hair is messy. I don’t even care if Agnes says I am a beast.

  Elizabeth has beautiful, natural, golden curls. She is perfectly composed. She always looks in the mirror before she greets her guests, because that is what Agnes does. Agnes has beautiful, natural, golden curls too.

  My hair is plain brown and straight. Elizabeth says I have “piggy piggy piggy pig tails.”

  Agnes isn’t ready yet when her gentleman friend comes to the front door. He comes far too early for the party, yet he thinks he’s smart because he’s already at medical school. Agnes is going to go to medical school next fall. She’s going to graduate from high school next week. So this is a party for her birthday and graduation. It’s very important.

  When Agnes’s gentleman friend knocks on the front door, Agnes knows who it is because she peeks through the window. She says to me, “Go and tell him I’m not here yet.”

  I run to the front door and open it.

  “Agnes says to tell you she’s not here yet,” I shout. Then I slam the door shut.

  “B-e-a-s-s-s-t!” Agnes hisses at me, when I run back to tell her what I told him. Agnes has already heard what I told him, and she doesn’t like it. I don’t know why.

  I don’t care what Agnes says. I’m already learning about medicine with Mommy, so I’ll be a doctor too.

  And I’ll be floating through the birch trees in the middle of the night, like Agnes. It looks magical down there. The lanterns are lighting up the white trees and the white dresses. It sounds magical down there too. The music on the gramophone is romantic. Agnes’s gentleman friend comes back at the right time. He brings her a present. The other ladies and gentlemen come too, and now they’re all dancing. Dancing and dancing through the magical night.

  I’ll dance like that some day too. I love dancing, and I’m very good at gymnastics and other sports. That’s what Daddy says. He says it’s amazing how I can climb to the very top of the trees to pick apples. I’m like a squirrel, he says. And I’m as fast as a rabbit.

  But you know what happens after that night of Agnes’s party? The very next day, after they clear away the lanterns, the wind begins moaning in the birch trees. The white birch trees begin moaning like ghosts. Grandpa comes to visit us that day. The moaning goes on and on. It gets louder and louder. Grandpa shakes his head and says: “There will be war again soon. You mark my words.”

  Agnes does not go to medical school that fall, or ever. War comes on the first day of September. Nazi Germany invades Poland. And soon Agnes is sent away to Germany to work like a slave in a factory, building bombs and making bullets. I do not see Agnes again until she is an old woman. She lives in Canada then, and she comes to visit me in Poland. We laugh together about what I said to her gentleman friend, and what she said to me. But that is much later. A whole lifetime later.

  Meanwhile, that spring and summer and fall long ago, I help Mommy gather leaves and flowers and bark. I help her make medicine. It’s a good thing I do, because when the war begins, the enemy is wounding our friends, neighbours and relatives. And all the doctors and pharmacists have gone away with the Polish army, or else they have been killed.

  My Daddy has also gone away with the Polish army, and my Grandpa has come to live with us.

  I help people, like Mommy does. One night before the village doctor goes away, I am visiting a neighbour lady. She swallows eye medicine by mistake, because she thinks it is her heart medicine. She wants to ask the doctor what to do.

  The lady says to me: “If I die on the way, and I am alone, no one will tell my family what happened to me. I’m big and fat, but you’re thin and small. No one will notice you, Mary.”

  So I go with her.

  Soldiers go by on patrol as we creep along. I hear the squeaking of their heavy boots as they march along in the snow. We press ourselves into a hole in the fence, and the soldiers pass without seeing us.

  Finally, we reach the doctor’s house. The lady knocks, but the doctor will not open his door.

  It is very dangerous to open your door at night.

  Through the closed door, the lady explains her problem, and the doctor says that the medicine the lady swallowed will not hurt her.

  “Humph!” the lady says after we get back safely to her home. “I should have asked your mother! She lives closer, and she would have opened her door!”

  I am Mommy’s helper. She takes me with her when she delivers food and medicine to poor people. We have to go at night because the enemy will see us during the day.

  “How will we find our way?” I ask Mommy.

  “By the moon on the snow,” says Mommy.

  And now it’s spring again and warm. Soon we’ll start looking for plants and bark.

  A man with a terrible leg wound comes to our house. The wound looks horrible. It is full of pus.

  “It is infected,” Mommy says to the man. “I have no medicine left, but I’ll reopen the wound to drain. Then you go lie in the sun.”

  While the man is lying there,
our dog Bear comes and licks the wound. The infection disappears, and the wound heals in a few days.

  “Dogs have natural medicine in their mouth,” Mommy says.

  Eva

  There is a second photograph album—mine. Of course, it is also precious. In my album, there is only one photograph of Hanna in Poland. She is wearing a red blouse that I gave her. The blouse has white suns coming out from black clouds.

  There are some photos of Hanna and I together in Canada. We are standing side by side in a camera store, not saying “cheese.” We are sitting side by side in chairs, looking at a lake. We are sitting side by side on a bench, enjoying a park.

  I keep looking at these beloved pictures to search for clues as to when and why Hanna became ill. When did she lose hope? What was the objective reality that caused her to become physically and mentally ill?

  Increasingly, we saw each other only during vacations. In the past four years, I have gone to Montreal without Naomi. Hanna was unemployed for a long time, and for a long time she refused to take welfare, so she had no reserves. I gave Hanna as much money as I could, and I stocked her cupboard with non-perishable groceries.

  Hanna and I had grown apart. We lived about six hundred kilometres from each other. We had separate friends, separate activities, separate goals.

  This is natural after a child has grown up—even an “inner child,” which is what I was with Hanna. Also, I guess I was rebelling a little. I resented Hanna’s saying I was becoming too materialistic. I felt I was doing what I had to do, laying a base for my financial security, for Naomi’s future. How can you raise a child on the wages from part-time or temporary work?

  But Hanna and I remained vitally connected. We talked on the telephone often. I told her about my work problems, my babysitter problems, my child problems. Her few words—with me she was always a listener, not a talker—were always the right words. A stranger herself, she guided me through this strange land. Truly, she was like a mother to me. A wise woman.