by Lisa Grekul
Sometimes Dad drives, and keeps the car with him at Regional; sometimes Mom drives. It depends on who has errands to do at lunch. Today, Mom is driving because she has to go to the bank at noon. On the way to school, while everyone else chatters about the first day, I stare out the window of the car, wishing I were somewhere else. Anywhere else. St. Paul seems dingy to me, and worn out. Full of old rusted-out pickup trucks with cracked windshields and big cars with broken mufflers. Before we get to Regional, we pass the Co-Op Mall – which is just another word for the Co-Op grocery store – and Peavey Mart, where all the farmers shop, and two farm machinery dealerships. We pass the Red Rooster convenience store and gas station; Senecal Tire; Burger Baron. Nothing ever changes in this town. Nothing exciting ever happens here. There aren’t any nice places to eat, like in the city, or any real malls. We’ll never get a McDonald’s. We don’t even have a 7-Eleven.
After we drop off Dad and Sophie, and Mom turns the car back onto main street, we drive past the convent and the Catholic church near the centre of town. The cathedral is enormous and brick. It’s the most beautiful building in St. Paul – and the tallest, by far. I’ve never been inside it. The Catholic church is for the kids who go to the Catholic schools. St. Paul Elementary is two blocks east of the cathedral, and Racette is just north of it – right across the street, in fact.
And then, farther down main street, just a few blocks west of the cathedral, are the shabbiest buildings in town, the Donald and the Lavoie. They’re both called hotels but everyone knows that they’re actually bars. Any time of day you can see drunk Indians staggering out of the doors of the Donald, and drunk rig workers stumbling out of the Lavoie. It’s sad, and scary. The post office is right next door to the bars. Mom and Dad never let us kids pick up the mail. At the end of the school day, we wait in the car with the doors locked while they go to our post office box.
The rest of main street isn’t much better. There’s Al’s Topline Tackle, with stuffed deer heads and stuffed fish collecting dust in the window. The Boston Café, Mr. Wong’s Chinese restaurant, with faded, handwritten signs advertising the same specials week after week. The bingo hall, three pawnshops, the army surplus store. To get to Mom’s parking spot near Glen Avon, we make a left turn at the ufo Landing Pad – St. Paul’s big tourist attraction, and the most embarrassing part of town. It’s a gigantic, mushroom-shaped slab of suspended concrete with a dozen weather-beaten provincial and territorial flags flying along its back end. The Landing Pad was built in 1967 as our town’s Centennial Project. Other towns built curling rinks in 1967; they built hockey arenas, community halls. We built a Landing Pad, so that if aliens were to visit Earth, their first stop would be St. Paul. I hate it. I think it makes the whole town look stupid.
I wear my new plaid miniskirt and my new red shaker knit sweater on the first day of school but, walking through the main doors of Glen Avon, I feel a hundred years old. All the Desna dancers look like me – tired and sad and old. When I see their faces in the hallways, it’s like I’m back in Dauphin, watching them lose over and over again. Of course, at recess and lunchtime, when they all talk about their summers, nobody mentions the festival. They all want to forget that Dauphin ever happened.
And then it occurs to me that every other first-day-of-school has been the same. I just never noticed it before. Even when we competed and won at festivals in Vegreville and Hafford, we never talked about it at school – not to each other, and definitely not to other kids who don’t Ukrainian dance. Dancing is like some kind of secret that we all keep. Nobody talks about the practices each week, the costume fittings, our new boots that are specially made in Saskatoon. The Pyrohy Supper or the Spring Concert. Some of the boys in my group are planning to audition for Cheremosh, the professional dance group in Edmonton that our dance instructor belongs to, but no one ever mentions it around school.
Midway through the first day of school, while I sit with the other girls from Ukrainian dancing, all of us eating lunch together and listening to Carla Senko boast about how she’s switched from Ukrainian to French, I realize that we don’t talk about anything Ukrainian. It’s not just dancing, it’s everything. I happen to know that Kirstin Paulichuk and Tanya Yuzko go to Camp Kiev’s K-Hi every summer for two weeks where they learn about Orthodox church things, and how to speak Ukrainian and do embroidery and make pysanky. I also know that Henry Popowich speaks perfect Ukrainian because he lives with his grandparents and they refuse to speak English to him at home. I watched Dad and J.Y. spend half the summer making a pich, an outdoor clay oven, in our yard at the farm, so that Mom and Yolande Yuzko could bake bread like in the olden days. But at school none of us says a word about any of it. Not one word.
Glancing over at the Native students in our class, eating their lunch at the other side of the classroom, I wonder if they feel the same way. They must. It must be even worse for them. I’ve never heard them talk about what it’s like to be Native, what it’s like living on the reserve. Do they go to powwows in the summer? Do any of them speak Cree at home? There are five Indian reserves around St. Paul – Saddle Lake, Frog Lake, Kehewin, Good Fish, and Fishing Lake – and we have students in our school from almost all of them. It’s never occurred to me before but – why isn’t there a Cree teacher at our school?
Carla Senko talks non-stop about French class while we eat our lunches. Nobody dares interrupt her because everyone wants to be her best friend. She sits at her desk like a queen bee in her brand-new, jet-black, skin-tight jeans and her pale yellow angora sweater while all the girls giggle and coo at everything she says. Carla says she’s quit Ukrainian because it’s boring and stupid. All we ever do is learn vocabulary and numbers. In Miss Maximchuk’s French class they listen to French rock music and make up plays in French; they learn to play the spoons; and once a month Miss Maximchuk brings in French foods for lunch. Of course Carla knows that my mother is the Ukrainian teacher but she still goes on and on.
When I can’t take it anymore, when I get up to leave, Carla says, “No offence, Colleen.” As though that makes up for every mean thing she’s said.
She’s right. I know she’s right and that’s why I can’t fight back. My mother’s class is boring and nobody likes it, least of all me. I wish she taught something else, anything else, or taught Ukrainian differently. I wish that I didn’t have to be the Ukrainian teacher’s kid. Mom wishes it, too, because she does her best to forget that I’m in her class.
I’ve been in Mom’s Ukrainian class for four years, since grade four. And for four years, she’s completely ignored me. She’s ignored me, and I’ve ignored her. Five times a week for four years we’ve been in the same classroom, each pretending that the other doesn’t exist. I’m afraid that if open my mouth, I’ll accidentally call her “Mom” and get teased for it. She’s afraid that if she calls on me too much in class, word will get around that she favours me. I have to work twice as hard, three times as hard, as anyone else because Mom marks me harder than any other student. I’m the top of the class but you’d never know it. I never raise my hand, even though I know all the answers.
I try not to blame Mom. I know it’s not her fault that everyone hates Ukrainian. She’d rather be teaching something else. There is no such thing as a Ukrainian curriculum or Ukrainian textbooks, so she’s had to write her own readers and workbooks, and she doesn’t feel qualified to do any of it. She says that she got roped into taking the Ukrainian classes when the school board first decided to offer them because she was the only teacher who had taken a Ukrainian course at university. The principal took away her grade three class and made her do Ukrainian half-time and special ed half-time. Half the reason nobody likes Ukrainian is because we have to sit in the special ed classroom where all the slow kids go for help with reading and math. We feel like a bunch of dummies.
Sometimes, though, I think that if she tried harder Mom could make Ukrainian more fun. At home, we do all kinds of neat Ukrainian things – like singing together, and making pysanky at Eas
ter time. She could bring food in like Miss Maximchuk, or we could all go to the home ec room and make pyrohy. At the annual Christmas Concert, we could perform dances. All of us take Ukrainian dancing anyway, why not show off for the school?
But I know that Mom won’t change her classes, even if I asked her to. Even if I told her that I’ll go to my grave with a broken heart. The thing is, my parents don’t want us to be too Ukrainian. That’s why they never talk to us in Ukrainian, and why they gave us English names. It’s partly why they never take us to the Greek Orthodox church they went to when they were growing up. Once in a while, they talk about how they were embarrassed when they were kids at school – because they couldn’t speak English properly, and because they ate different foods. Being Ukrainian meant being poor and ignorant. The teachers looked down on them, strapping them when they spoke Ukrainian with other Ukrainian kids. Mom and Dad say that they went to university so that it would be different for us – so that Sophie and I could take piano lessons, and Wes could play hockey. So that we could live in a nice house, and focus on our studies instead of farm chores. So that we’d never be ashamed of where we come from.
The truth is, though, my parents can’t forget where they came from – not entirely. They don’t want to forget, either. At least that’s the way it seems. To each other – to my grandparents, and aunts and uncles – they always talk in Ukrainian. My mom cooks Ukrainian food all the time. Before Sophie was born, Mom and Dad lived in town for awhile but they were never happy there. Dad bought land ten kilometres northeast of St. Paul – land that was partly covered in bush and slough – and worked it like a pioneer, cutting down trees, filling in sloughs. Then he built a house with a big garden next to it, so that he and Mom could live on a farm again, and do everything their parents did. My mother’s pride and joy is her garden. She loves to make pickles and jams, pick wild mushrooms, saskatoons, kalyna berries. And she makes a point of teaching Sophie and me everything she knows.
In the spring and summer, my dad spends most of his spare time farming the land around our house, taking Wes out on the tractor, and then the swather, and then the combine. He plants wheat, just like his dad did. During the winter, after hunting season is over, Dad goes to auctions, looking for old John Deeres and other farm implements – the kind his dad owned and used. He buys old cream separators, old wringer washing machines, ancient snow machines – anything that reminds him of his childhood on the farm. There’s no real profit in Dad’s farming. His crops never do well – and, even if they did, he doesn’t seed enough land to make money. He keeps three granaries south of the house, in a part of the bush where he cut down trees by hand and made all of us pick roots by hand. But the granaries are empty of wheat and full of Dad’s junk. Sometimes, before it freezes in the fall, if Mom needs extra storage space for her vegetables while she’s canning, Dad and Wes haul them out to the granaries too.
Although Mom and Dad have never said so, there are rules. Rules that can’t be broken. I get it now. I see it so clearly. We never talk about the rules, but we all know them – everyone in our family, everyone in Desna, everyone who takes Ukrainian. It’s okay to be Ukrainian at home but not at school. At school you act like everyone else. You don’t talk about the stuff that goes on at weddings and funerals, at Ukrainian dancing, at festivals. You pretend that you’re not Ukrainian. That’s just the way it goes.
•••
By the time the news of Dean and Diana’s engagement reaches our household – via the bbc, Baba Babi Cazala, one Baba tells another Baba – it’s almost Christmas and Mom has stopped trying to convince me to learn “Chaban,” or any other Ukrainian song for that matter. Naturally, I’m going to be asked to sing at the wedding, and for the first time ever, I’m going to say no.
At least I think I’m going to say no. Part of me wants to sing, like I always do. It’s tradition. Whenever there is a family wedding, the bride and groom ask me to perform. In fact, our whole family gets involved because we’re the wedding family. We come as a wedding package. Wes is the ring bearer, Mom is the bridesmaid. In the hall, Sophie plays for me while I sing – mostly in Ukrainian, the odd time in English – and Dad is the mc. We’ve done this routine for Darlene and Rick, Orysia and Danny, Paul and Kelly, Sonya and Robert. It’s always the same. If I don’t sing, Dean and Diana’s wedding won’t feel right.
Dean is my cousin, my rich Auntie Helen and Uncle Dan’s son. Diana is the fiancée. The wedding date, May long weekend. At the Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton.
The aunts and uncles aren’t altogether happy with the news. The ceremony will take place in the Orthodox church at Szypenitz, which is where the wedding ceremonies in our family always happen, but we’ve never been to a wedding reception in a ritzy hotel. Plus on the bbc, there is talk of the meal being catered – catered and served rather than buffet-style. Fifty dollars a plate, Uncle Bill has heard, and not one Ukrainian dish on the menu. The bride isn’t Ukrainian, apparently. She’s an Angliik. Not like us. Auntie Rose has it from a reliable source that the flowers will be ordered not from Auntie Pearl – who has a shop in Two Hills and who takes care of the flowers for every family wedding – but from a flower shop on Jasper Avenue. From Auntie Natalka, the first to receive an invitation, comes a report that her son Steve has not been included on the guest list. Auntie Rose calls Auntie Natalka – has she been asked to the Second Day? To the Gift Opening? Auntie Pearl calls Auntie Natalka, Auntie Natalka calls Auntie Marika. Nobody has heard a word about the Second Day. Marika calls my mother, my mother calls Pearl. There is not going to be a Gift Opening. The Angliiks are too cheap to feed the guests a second time.
The problem is that Dean and Diana are breaking the rules. Weddings have to be done a certain way and they’re doing it all wrong. The bride and groom are supposed to invite the whole family – even distant cousins they haven’t seen in years – because otherwise feelings will be hurt. They’re supposed to order flowers from Auntie Pearl because her shop has never done very well. She needs the business. And everybody knows that there should be a Second Day, a Gift Opening, right in the hall where the reception has taken place. The guests eat the leftovers from the wedding supper while the bride and groom open their presents.
This wedding is going to be different and I don’t like it anymore than the aunts and uncles. I just might have to change my mind about singing. I might have to say yes when they ask me to sing – to keep at least one wedding tradition alive. In the months leading up to the wedding, I give the matter a lot of thought. It’s not an easy decision to make after I’ve worked so hard to convince Mom that I’m never singing again. I don’t like the rules – the rules about not being Ukrainian in some places, and being Ukrainian in others. I don’t think they make any sense. But if we can only be ourselves when we’re with the family, maybe we should fight for that. Maybe there’s a reason to fight. If I don’t sing at Dean and Diana’s wedding, it would set a precedent for other weddings. Then everything would change.
One month before the wedding, when no one involved in the wedding has called our family, we realize that something’s up. We’ve gotten the invitation, but Dean hasn’t called, or Diana. Or Auntie Helen, or Uncle Dan. Not that we expect Dean or Uncle Dan to call – it’s usually the women who organize the wedding details. The men just order the booze. Sophie and I think it’s weird, and even Mom and Dad are concerned. They should have called by now. Maybe they’re behind schedule with their planning; they’re waiting until the last minute to ask us. They forgot. It’s been cancelled. The wedding’s off?
Mom calls Auntie Jean to see if she’s heard anything about the wedding plans, then Auntie Jean calls Auntie Helen directly. All the aunts are shocked to hear that Mom isn’t going to be a bridesmaid, that Dad isn’t going to be mc. That I’m not going to sing. No, the wedding isn’t cancelled. But Auntie Helen says that half the marriage ceremony will be conducted in English, and wedding guests must pay cash for their drinks at this wedding.
Conversations on the bbc
Hot Line reach a feverish pitch with news of the cash bar. Mom is forced to pull the telephone away from her ear when she calls Auntie Mary. Across the kitchen we can hear the bellowing of Uncle Andy’s voice through the receiver.
“Since when? Since when do we pay to go to a wedding? Pay to go to a goddamn wedding! Who opened their wallets at my son’s wedding? That was a wedding. Food, drink, music. That was a real wedding, a goddamn real Ukrainian wedding. Nai shliak ta ba trafiv, goddamn chewtobachnik. I’d sooner go to my grave than go to this Englishman-wedding.”
But we all go – Uncle Andy included – in suits and dresses, ties and nylons; shoe-polished, powdered, pressed, and high-heeled. Sophie in her orange sundress, me in my lemon miniskirt, bra straps pinned to the shoulders of my blouse.
The road to Szypenitz isn’t long – forty, forty-five minutes – but it’s boring. More boring than ever because I don’t have songs to run through in my head. We drive past St. Bride’s, Brosseau, and Duvernay; past the same country stores that sell the usual hard ice cream and fishing bait. As we enter Saddle Lake, there’s the same worn, weather-beaten siding on the houses along both sides of the highway that cuts through the reserve. The same mangy dogs and rusty cars with grass growing up through their frames; the same kids playing on the shoulder of the road that leads first to Two Hills, then to Edmonton. After Saddle Lake, we make a sharp turn west toward Hairy Hill, where my parents went to school, then west past the old Szypenitz hall – same old graffiti, Grad ’76, Grad ’77 – and on to Szypenitz church, a mile or so down the hill.