Kalyna's Song

by Lisa Grekul

  The first of the three is accompanied by an accordion player; she takes the microphone into her hands but holds it near her waist. Even from my place near the front, I can hardly make out a word of her song. The second of the three, taking note of the first singer’s mistake, shoves the mike right up against her lips. The action makes the amp squeal. It’s painful. I have to cover my ears.

  And though the second girl, too, is accompanied by the accordion player, she drifts through six or seven keys in the span of her song. Quite a feat, I think. I search the crowd for Corey, wondering if he’s heard her murder the song.

  Finally, the third girl takes her turn on stage. Her voice isn’t quite as weak as the previous two singers and she manages to stay in the same key as the accordion player. I think I’ve almost met my match. But then, just as I am prepared to grant that she will take second place at least, she forgets her words. Several awkward seconds pass during which she fidgets uncomfortably, making gestures for the accordion player to keep going while she tries to get her bearings back. It’s obviously hopeless. The third singer bursts into tears and runs offstage.

  A few minutes later, the announcer calls my name.

  “Please welcome our fourth and final competitor in the Women’s Vocal Solo Category – Colleen Lutzak.”

  Walking onto the stage, I feel sorry for the three girls with their bad skin, their limp hair, their baba slacks – Fortrel, I’m sure – and their spiritless performances. I’m still shaky in the knees, and I feel my palms sweat around the fretboard of my guitar. But I have a chance at the gold. I’m sure of it. As long as I sing well, the gold is mine.

  Instead of my stained Podillian costume, I’m wearing Sophie’s Bukovynian costume – a last minute idea of my mother’s, and a brilliant one. It took some pinning to make it fit, but it looks good. I wear my own boots with Sophie’s black wool skirt, and her blouse embroidered elaborately on the sleeves with orange and yellow thread. Sophie’s vest is made from soft sheepskin leather and black sheepskin wool, so I’m hot. So hot that I can feel sweat trickling down my chest and back, and down the backs of my legs. But the heat, the sweat – it will all seem worth it when I hold up my gold medal, Desna’s first. I’ll hold it up for Desna, and I’ll hold it up for Corey. To show him that I’m the best.

  On stage, my first move is to dismiss the accordion player; my second is to strap on my guitar and do some last minute tuning. And then, before I start to sing, I introduce my song in Ukrainian, something that sets me apart from my competitors. They didn’t say a word before they began to sing.

  “Ya zaspivaiu sohodni odnu pisniu – ‘Tsyhanochka.’”

  I say it with energy, with confidence. Is Corey in the crowd, watching me? I can’t find him, but then the audience is enormous. I say my introduction to him, wherever he is. I say it knowing that the rest of the performance is just a formality.

  Then I give all my heart and soul to “Tsyhanochka.” I feel my voice filling the stage and the seating area, I feel it soaring over the audience and across the concession stands. People turn from their hot dogs to face the stage. They clap and tap their feet. Old people smile and nod. In the back row, the Desna dancers and parents wave; some run up to the stage to take pictures. Mark Babiuk sticks two fingers into his mouth and whistles before I’ve even finished. At the end of my song, there is applause like I’ve never heard before. Thunderous applause that goes on for several minutes. Strangers in the crowd stand up and applaud, there are calls for an encore. In the front row, the three girls in the Fortrel slacks look glum.

  For the awards presentation, all four of us are called onto the stage. It strikes me as particularly cruel. Nobody really wants anything except gold, so two of us are going to be disappointed, and one of us is destined to receive no medal at all.

  As the bronze medallist is announced, I applaud with the rest of the audience. It’s Louisa Marianych, the second of my three competitors. She tries hard to smile as she accepts her medal, but the disappointment in her eyes is hard to miss. The first of my three competitors gets the silver medal. Lilliana Marianych. So they’re sisters after all, I think to myself. Lilliana hardly looks at her silver medal; she turns, instead, to the third sister on the stage.

  I look, too, at the Marianych sister who is left onstage, the girl who sang third in the competition. She is looking down at her feet and biting her bottom lip as she shifts her weight from leg to leg. I wish that I could console her, tell her that she’s obviously more deserving of a medal than her sisters. She’s a much better singer. I’d like to tell the judges. It’s not her fault that she forgot her words, she was just nervous.

  Just before the gold medal winner is awarded, Louisa and Lilliana Marianych move close to their sister, the girl whose name I don’t know; they each grab hold of one of her hands, so that she isn’t alone during the final moment of the adjudication, and they take turns whispering in her ear. To comfort her, I think. All three sisters – their arms linked, like one entity – look directly at me as the gold medallist is announced.

  It’s Lesya Marianych.

  The third sister is awarded the gold medal.

  Not me, her.

  As the adjudicator explains that my pronunciation needs work – I sing with a Canadian accent – I stare straight ahead at the audience. They loved me. They loved my song. I didn’t just sing, I entertained them.

  The members of Desna boo and stomp their feet, drowning out the voice of the adjudicator, and the rest of the crowd joins in. The Marianych sisters tell me that I deserved to win.

  “You’re so good,” they say. “So good.”

  As I make my way from the stage, toward the Desna part of the crowd, a lot of people tell me that I’m good. Good, or great, or wonderful.

  “You deserved to win,” they say. “It’s politics. These competitions are all political. You have a wonderful voice. Just wonderful! Don’t take it to heart.”

  I feel numb.

  When I finally reach Desna, the chaperones and the dancers are milling around, angry. Everyone is talking about the judging. The wives of Mr. Demkiw and Mr. Faryna try to lead their husbands away from the adjudicators’ table, but Mr. Demkiw breaks away from Mrs. Demkiw and swears at the judges in Ukrainian.

  “I’m sorry,” says Mom, rubbing my back. “We’ll have to talk about this later.”

  “Kalyna’s gone missing,” says Wes. “She’s disappeared, and we have to find her.” His eyes are wide, as though an adventure is about to begin.

  Mom and Dad aren’t alarmed. None of us is the least bit surprised, really. We’ve come to expect Kalyna’s disappearing act. She’s always wandering off. It doesn’t take much to catch her attention – bright colours, babies, puppies, music. One year during the Klondike Days Parade she followed a bright green 4-h float for two blocks before Uncle Andy caught up with her. Last summer in West Edmonton Mall she got lost for an hour tracking a set of twins being pushed by their mother in a double stroller.

  Dad asks Sophie if she’s seen any dogs.

  Sophie shakes her head, laughing. “Nope, no dogs. But there’s music playing all over the festival grounds. Kalyna could be anywhere.”

  Mom and Dad decide that the best idea is for Mom to look for Kalyna while the rest of us head over to the motorhome. Wes kicks at some gravel on the ground, disappointed that he can’t be part of the search party. But Dad explains that the Greyhound and the Yuzkos will be leaving soon. If we split up to look for Kalyna, the whole group will be delayed.

  “She was just with us a minute ago,” says Dad. “She couldn’t have gone far.”

  I hope, in fact, that Kalyna has gone very far – as far as the Grandstand at the southernmost boundary of the festival grounds. Then Mom will take ages to find her, and our departure will be delayed after all, by half an hour, or more. I need to see Corey once more, to say goodbye.

  I tell Dad that I’ve left my guitar backstage by accident – which is true – and that I’ll catch up to them shortly. Which isn’t true a
t all. I need time to find Corey.

  I run toward the musicians’ tent. I run like crazy, like a mad woman, like I’ve never run before, weaving through the crowd and bumping into people. It’s not easy to run in my boots. They’ve got two-inch heels that dig into the grass, threatening to slow me down. Once my ankle turns under and I nearly fall. My ankle aches, my heart races, I feel my blouse sticking to my back. But I can’t stop. I can almost hear Corey calling out to me with his tsymbaly, his hands making the hammers dance over the strings. “Tsyhanochko moia, morhanochko moia, tsyhanochko morhanochko, chy liubysh ty mene?”

  I know what’s happened. It’s all clear to me now. Corey came to watch me sing, just like he promised. He showed up in time to catch the whole competition. He watched from beside the stage, where I couldn’t see him. So he saw it all. He saw me lose, and he left, disappointed in me.

  I stop outside Corey’s tent to catch my breath and collect myself. I can hear tsymbaly music playing – Corey playing – and it brings a lump to my throat. Already I miss him. I tilt my head back, to keep the tears from spilling onto my cheeks. It doesn’t work, so I wipe them with the sleeves of my blouse, leaving blue-black streaks of mascara on my cuffs. A woman in her thirties pushing a baby carriage passes by and, with a look of sympathy, she hands me a Kleenex from her pocket. I blow my nose. I take deep breaths. I pace. And just when I think that I can walk into the tent and face my beloved, he starts to play “Tsyhanochka.” Our song. I give up. I’m ready to throw myself sobbing onto the grass.

  But Corey isn’t alone in his tent, he’s not alone at his tsymbaly. He has seated someone in my place, behind his tsymbaly; he’s let someone else hold his hammers and he’s wrapped his hands around someone else’s fingers. It’s a girl, smiling and laughing the way I smiled and laughed.

  It’s Carla Senko.

  Together, she and Corey play “Tsyhanochka,” my song. For all I know, they could have been playing together all afternoon, right through my performance. I stand and I watch. I watch Corey pull her toward him. I watch him brush his lips against hers. My stomach turns and tears wet my cheeks.

  Several minutes pass before I notice Kalyna seated on the other side of the tent, the other side of the tsymbaly. I notice her when she starts singing along with the tsymbaly music. Kalyna is wearing a white sundress dotted with big, red poppies; beneath the spaghetti straps of her dress, thick beige bra straps are showing. She’s pinned a pink, plastic corsage over her right breast and tucked her hair under a bright blue golf hat – a ladies’ golf hat, with a thin brim and a white pompom on the top. The pompom jiggles while Kalyna’s head bobs up and down, side to side.

  I decide to leave the tent. I’ll find Mom and tell her that Kalyna is in the musicians’ tent. I don’t want Corey and Carla to see me like this, mascara running down my face. I don’t want them to see me with Kalyna, either. I don’t want them to see that I know her. I don’t want them to see me at all. I just want to disappear, forget that I ever met Corey.

  But then, as I am about to walk out of the tent, the tsymbaly music abruptly stops. Corey and Carla exchange looks. He raises his eyebrows, grinning, and she covers her mouth to stifle a giggle. They are laughing at Kalyna – who keeps singing, loud and clear, carefully enunciating the Ukrainian words.

  Kalyna sings a complete verse before she realizes that her tsymbaly accompaniment has ended. For a moment, she looks puzzled. Then a serious expression washes over her face and she raises her hands like a conductor, signaling for Corey to continue playing. Carla laughs out loud. Corey looks away. He’s laughing too but I can see that he’s embarrassed, the way most people are embarrassed around Kalyna. Kalyna doesn’t understand. She tries again to get Corey to play, raising her hands to deliver the cue.

  I can’t let her go on like this. I feel my face flush deep red as I brush past Corey and Carla, but I have to help Kalyna. I put my arm gently around her shoulder, leading her out of the tent.

  “Who are you?” says Kalyna.

  “I’m your cousin. I’m Colleen.”

  “Me too.” She squeezes my hand and laughs. “Me too!”

  •••

  On our way home from Dauphin, between the Manitoba border and North Battleford, Saskatchewan, it rains non-stop. Everyone is quiet. Mom sleeps. Sometimes the Yuzko girls ride in our motorhome, sometimes Sophie rides in theirs. For a while, they stay in their own motorhomes and talk to each other like truckers on the cb radio until Dad tells them to stop.

  Mostly I sit by our motorhome kitchen table, playing the odd game of crazy eights with Kalyna and Wes. Kalyna doesn’t always remember the rules, so it isn’t easy. And sometimes she makes up her own rules, and gets angry at Wes and me when we don’t follow them. Eventually, Wes stops playing with us altogether. He plops himself down on the floor and sets out all of his G.I. Joe figures around him. After a while, Kalyna joins him on the floor. Wes is a good sport about it. He lets her borrow three or four of his army men. As he makes the sounds of grenades exploding, airplanes crashing – the sounds of automatic rifle fire and soldiers dying in agony – Kalyna plays house. She makes one soldier the mother, one the father, one the child. I sit beside her on the floor, listening to her make the sound of a baby crying, the soothing sound of a mother’s voice.

  Then, out of the blue, she gets confused. She can’t remember where she is or who I am, so I have to explain things to her.

  “I’m your cousin Colleen. Remember? We’re going home.”

  Part 2: St. Paul

  One

  My mother says that if I don’t learn to sing “Chaban,” she’ll go to her grave with a broken heart. She says it a few times – over breakfast; when we’re in the kitchen making supper; right before bed – but I ignore her. Once, while she’s asking me to sing with her, Mom’s voice cracks as though she’s about to cry. I pretend that it doesn’t bother me. I roll my eyes, leave the room.

  Usually, when Mom decides that it’s time for me to learn a new song, the two of us sit at the piano with her little yellow songbook, Let’s Sing Out In Ukrainian! Zaspivayemo Sobi! There are more than a hundred songs in the book, complete with music and lyrics. Together, we scan the index until she finds a title that she knows from when she was a girl. Then I sight-read the melody on the piano while she sings along. I can sound out the Cyrillic letters on my own but it’s easier if I hear her sing the words. She sings a line and I repeat it until I get the hang of it. Eventually we sing the whole song in unison from beginning to end. Sometimes Mom sings harmony. Her harmony always gives me the shivers.

  Things are different, though, since Dauphin. Two weeks ago, after we got home – while we were unpacking the motorhome, actually – I told Mom and Dad that I quit. Simple as that. No more Ukrainian dancing, no more Ukrainian singing.

  Now, Mom is doing everything she can to change my mind.

  At first, she and Dad both tried to talk me out of quitting Ukrainian dancing. They came up with all sorts of reasons for me to go back in September. I’d miss my friends. Dancing is good exercise. Wouldn’t I feel bad not performing at the annual Pyrohy Supper and in the Spring Concert? I told them my knee hurts too much – which isn’t true. As long as I wear my tensor bandage, my knee feels fine. But the thought of dancing again – in the same group as Carla Senko – makes me sick to my stomach. It’s bad enough that I’ll have to see her every day once school starts again. The thought of singing is even worse. It would be Dauphin all over again each time I opened my mouth.

  Dad said that I’d come around. “Leave it alone,” I overheard him tell Mom one night. “Just give her time.”

  Mom is too impatient to wait, though, and I’m too stubborn to give in.

  So she tries bribing me to learn “Chaban,” and when that doesn’t work she tries other tactics. I find her at the piano one Saturday afternoon with her little yellow songbook open to “Chaban.” Listening to her hum the tune of “Chaban,” seeing her struggle to plunk out the melody with her right hand, I get a lump in my throat.
Mom has always wanted to play the piano, but she’s never learned how. When Sophie and I started piano lessons with Simone, Mom tried to learn with us. While we practised our beginner pieces, she sat beside us on the piano bench, watching our fingers. Only she couldn’t keep up. We learned too fast, and she never got past the first few songs.

  I know what she’s trying to do. She wants me to feel sorry for her. I’m supposed to just plop down next to her like old times, like nothing has changed. But she wasn’t onstage in Dauphin. She doesn’t know what it was like. She didn’t have to stand there while the adjudicator placed the gold medal around somebody else’s neck. She didn’t hear Corey playing our song to Carla, or watch Corey kissing Carla, or listen to Carla laughing. I don’t care how badly Mom wants me to sing. My singing days are over.

  •••

  The truth is, everything has changed since Dauphin. Normally, by the end of August, I can’t wait for school to start again. Going back to school is a big event in our house. Sophie, Wes, and I get all new school supplies in St. Paul, and new clothes in Edmonton. Mom and Dad get new clothes, too, because they’re teachers. They go back to school with us. And then there is the excitement of new homerooms, new textbooks, new workbooks. Catching up with friends about what you did during the summer holidays. For the first time in my life, though, when September rolls around, I want to stay home. What are we going to talk about on the first day of school, the kids who went to Dauphin? How we all lost. How we came home with nothing.

  Our whole family drives to school together every morning. We live in the country, which means that Sophie, Wes, and I could take the bus to town, but it doesn’t make sense, since Mom and Dad need to drive in anyway. Mom teaches Ukrainian at Glen Avon, the Protestant school for grades one to nine. It’s on the west side of St. Paul. Dad teaches English at Regional, the only high school in town, on the east side. Until grade ten, kids in our area go to the Protestant school or the Catholic schools, St. Paul Elementary and Racette Junior High, but eventually everyone ends up at Regional – which is also Catholic, only there are no prayers and you can choose whether or not to take religion there. This year, Sophie is in grade ten, so she goes to Regional with Dad. Wes is in grade six, and I’m in grade eight. We’re still at Glen Avon.