by Lisa Grekul
After they saw my ranking of the colleges, Mom and Dad weren’t so keen anymore about the whole uwc idea. Mom, in particular. I don’t think she’s pleased at all that I’ve made it to the interview stage of the selection process. She doesn’t offer me any advice.
I almost think she’d like to see me fail.
Sometimes, I’m not sure myself if I really want to succeed. I’ve never been away from home before. I’ve always lived in the same town. I’d miss my family, Sister Maria, Mr. Kaushal. I can’t imagine living somewhere else – away from everyone – for a whole year.
But the chance to finish high school in another school, in another country – I just don’t see how I can pass it up. I have to try my best.
And anyway there’s no turning back now. I’m halfway there.
So I pore over the songs that I’ve been writing over the past few months. I go through all eight of them, trying to find the one that will help me win. While I’m sitting in my bedroom singing, I try to picture my new bedroom in Africa. I try to imagine what my new bed will feel like. I wonder who will be sitting next to me in that room someday, listening to me sing.
It’s not easy picking the right song.
I’ve been working on a song for Sister Maria called “Ashes and Dust” but it’s not finished yet. And, even if it were finished, it’s too personal. Too private to sing for strangers.
There’s “Song for Leonard Peltier” and “Daddy Went to Vietnam,” both of which I love. They’re my favourites. The melody of the Peltier song is haunting, and the chorus to the Vietnam song is absolutely brilliant. It’s inspired. I sing it at least a half-dozen times before I accept that it’s not the one.
Can a flag tell me about the man I never knew?
Can a flag hold my mother like her lover used to do?
Can this flag that flies for every war we’ve ever won
Tell me if my daddy was the winner in Vietnam?
The problem is that Vietnam has been overdone. So has Peltier, for that matter. They’re both sort of dated, too. I need a more current topic to sing about at the interview.
“Miss a Meal for Mozambique” might do the trick, except that it’s not particularly subtle. A good song shouldn’t whack you over the head with its message. When I get to the last four lines of the refrain, I’m almost embarrassed. It’s not very subtle at all.
Miss a meal for Mozambique
And stop a baby’s crying
Miss a meal for Mozambique
And stop humanity - humanity - from dying.
But then “Hear the Cries,” about the persecution of Buddhist monks by the Chinese in Tibet – it’s too subtle. Will the committee know what it’s about? I refer to the monks as butterflies getting caught in a net of hate. It could mean anything, really.
“Holding Hands,” I think, is probably safest. Because it’s vague, and it’s meant to be vague. It’s just a song about general world peace.
Holding hands
Reaching out for others in other lands
Caring for your brothers
And holding their hands!
Brothers. The women on the committee could be offended. I have to scrap “Holding Hands.” In fact, it might be a good idea to write a whole new song for the interview.
Before I go back to the drawing board, I leave my bedroom to make a cup of herbal tea. The stuff tastes like boiled grass and it looks like pee but I drink it because Mr. Kaushal says that it’s cleansing for the body and mind. I need some cleansing to get a fresh perspective on my songwriting.
When I walk into the kitchen, I’m surprised to see Yolande Yuzko sitting with Mom at the kitchen table. I didn’t hear Yolande come in. They’re drinking coffee, eating poppyseed cake – my favourite. They’re talking, too, though they stop abruptly when I appear.
“Hi Yolande,” I say, leaning over her shoulder to grab a piece of cake.
Yolande gives me a funny look. A sympathetic sort of puppy-dog look.
“It’s all right. If I get a scholarship, I’m fully prepared to give up my mother’s poppyseed cake. It’s only one year. Sister Maria says that we’ll all blink twice and I’ll be home again.”
Yolande knows all about the colleges, the interview, the scholarship. Mom has been phoning her every second night to talk about it. Neither Yolande nor Mom laughs at my joke.
“Colleen,” says Mom, “sit down. Join us for a cup of coffee.”
“So that you can brainwash me into staying home? For-get it. Uh-uh. Plus Mr. Kaushal says that coffee kills brain cells and I’ve got songwriting to do.”
Yolande runs her finger up and down the side of her coffee cup.
“Just five minutes,” Mom says. “Yolande’s brought us some news. Something you need to hear.”
Wes barges in through the kitchen door, slamming it shut behind him. He’s all decked out in Real Tree camo, his face smudged with black and green paint. He drops his rifle onto the linoleum.
Mom frowns. “Is that thing loaded?”
Wes ignores her. “Hey!” he says to Yolande, grinning. “You still here?”
“Tell me that gun isn’t loaded,” says Mom, raising her voice.
“Number one,” says Wes, “it’s not a gun, it’s a rifle. And number two, no, it isn’t loaded. It’s empty. I emptied it into a rabbit about ten minutes ago.” Wes lets out his war cry, “Yee-hoooooo.”
“Killer,” I hiss under my breath.
“Oh C’lleen,” he says as he pours himself a glass of milk. “Sorry to hear about your piano teacher. That’s a real bummer, eh?” He gulps down the milk.
“What about my piano teacher?” I ask him. Then I turn to Mom. “Sister Maria isn’t teaching me anymore?”
Mom looks at Yolande.
“What?”
Is she moving? Getting transferred to another convent? Can they do that?
“Didn’t you tell her?” says Wes, stuffing two pieces of poppyseed cake into his mouth at once.
“Tell me what?” I say, getting distraught. What is there to tell me?
“She died,” says Wes, his mouth full. “Sorry,” he shrugs. “I thought you knew.” He picks up his rifle, then goes back outside.
“How do you know?” I spit the words at Yolande. “Who told you?”
“I was working last night.”
Yolande is an X-ray technician; she picks up all kinds of gossip working at the hospital.
“They brought her in around eight o’clock,” Yolande continues, softly.
“Who? Who brought her in?”
“The other sisters. Two of them, Sister Josephine and Sister Marie-Claire. But it was too late. The doctor on call said that she had a massive heart attack. Even if they’d brought her in sooner, it wouldn’t have made a difference. It was her time.”
“That’s not true,” I say, my throat tightening. “That can’t be true. I just had a lesson with her a few days ago. Tuesday. Not even a week ago. She was fine on Tuesday, she was perfectly fine. It couldn’t be her – there must be a mistake – someone else – it couldn’t be her. She was fine.”
“Colleen,” says Yolande, “I saw her. I saw her after she went, and she looked beautiful. Very peaceful. She looked like she was at peace.”
The phone rings and I seize the opportunity to get out of the kitchen, get out of the house. At peace. That’s what they say about everybody who dies. Sister Maria was peaceful? Full of peace? Yolande doesn’t know that. Nobody knows that. Nobody has any idea how Sister Maria felt – if she was in pain, afraid, alone. Angry. I run across the yard toward the bushes behind the house and down the trail that leads from the machine shed to the clearing at the top of the hill.
Here it’s peaceful.
Dad keeps his three old granaries in the clearing, plus an enormous stack of firewood cut from deadfall, an old rusted-out threshing machine that he can’t seem to part with, a broken-down John Deere tractor, and eleven snowmobiles. The snowmobiles aren’t any good. I stretch out across them and look up at the sky, my ey
es wide open. They’re Merc snowmobiles – all of them – and the newest is twenty-three years old. Really, they’re antiques. Merc doesn’t even make snowmobiles anymore. Dad loves his Mercs because his dad had one. He says that they’re big, solid, working machines; good for overnight ice-fishing trips, not like the new fiberglass racing Ski-Doos. In the machine shed, he keeps two of his Mercs in working condition – more or less. They’re always breaking down, and he’s always trying to fix them. If you ask me, Dad doesn’t really want to keep the snowmobiles going. He wants to keep the memory of his dad alive; the memory of the times they spent together on late fall hunting trips, and ice-fishing trips in the winter. These snowmobiles – the ones that are nestled between the pines and the poplars, the wild hazelnut and cranberry and raspberry bushes – these Mercs will never run again.
Can Sister Maria see me in this snowmobile cemetery, crying? I can’t believe that she’s gone. I can’t believe it. Tears trickle from my eyes, down my temples and into my hair. I need her. I need her to talk to me, to tell me things. To take my hands off the keys when I’m playing poorly, and waltz around her music room when I’m playing well. To ruffle my hair when I make a joke. To squeeze my hand when I’m feeling down. We were supposed to learn “Malaguena” for two pianos, four hands. We were supposed to go to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at the Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton. I was going to write her long letters from the college in Africa. I promised to tell her everything about it once I got there. When we talked about my scholarship interview, Sister Maria didn’t say if – she never said if. She said when.
What’s going to happen to her other piano students?
What’s going to happen to her work?
Because I am sobbing, I don’t hear them approaching – our dog, Ralph, first, and behind him, Dad.
“Beautiful day,” says Dad, scratching Ralphie behind the ears. “No mosquitoes yet.”
I nod, wiping the tears from my face. Afraid that if I open my mouth, I’ll start sobbing again.
“I guess you’ve heard,” he says.
I don’t say anything.
“Father Levasseur just called the house.” Ralph curls up at Dad’s feet. “He asked to talk to you, Colleen. I know this is all happening pretty fast but he’d like you to sing for Sister Maria’s funeral. He needs to know if you’ll do it.”
I shake my head, sniffling. “Someone else can do it.” Not me.
“He asked for you, Colleen, not somebody else. You.”
Ralph gets up suddenly, and starts pacing at the base of a spruce. There must be a squirrel on the upper branches of the tree.
“That’s crazy,” I say. “Lots of Sister Mari – lots of her students sing. Claire Boisvert, Angèle Thibault. I’m not Catholic, I’ve never been to a Catholic funeral. I’ve never even been to Mass. Why me?”
“The sisters asked for you,” says Dad. “Specifically. They asked for you to sing ‘Ave Maria.’ Mom told Father Levasseur that you know the song and he said that he’d arrange for one of Maria’s other students to accompany you.”
Ralph starts scratching around the tree.
“Mom talked to him?” I ask.
Dad nods.
“Then she already told him I’d do it, didn’t she?”
Dad watches Ralph scratching in the dirt.
“Didn’t she?”
Dad doesn’t answer.
“Well, she can phone him right back and tell him I’m not doing it. I’m not.”
I’m sick of being asked to sing – every wedding, every birthday, every concert. And now funerals. Why me? Why am I the one who always has to practise and get nervous and puke? I won’t do it anymore. I’m sick of it.
“I know that it’s hard for you,” says Dad.
“No you don’t. You don’t know the first thing about it.”
“You think I want to be mc at every wedding?” he asks, softly. “At every graduation and every twenty-fifth wedding anniversary? I don’t. You think I want to give the eulogy at every prayer service, every toast to the bride, every keynote address? I don’t want to do it. I never want to do it. I know what it’s like.”
“So why do you keep saying yes?”
Dad shrugs. “Because they ask, I suppose. Because I’m good at it. Because I wouldn’t be any happier sitting in the crowd. You and I, we’re performers. That’s our calling. And when we’re called to do it, we have no choice.”
Ralph starts barking wildly now, howling and jumping at the lower branches of the spruce. Dad calls for him to stop but he keeps woofing and yowling.
“I’d sing ‘Ave Maria’?”
“‘Ave Maria,’” says Dad. “That’s what the sisters want, and Father Levasseur. He said that Sister Maria would want it, too.”
Dad grabs the dog by the collar. “Come on, Ralphie. Let’s go back before you bark yourself to death.”
I cringe at the mention of death, and the tears return. Dad notices that I’m crying.
“If I were giving the eulogy,” he says, “I’d probably say something like ‘for everything there is a season.’”
He puts his arms around me.
“Doesn’t make it any easier, does it?” he asks.
Ralph appears at my side, sniffing at something in the grass.
“There’s one more thing,” says Dad. “Some of the nuns, they’ve been sorting through Sister Maria’s things, packing up her belongings.”
I’ve never liked the other nuns at the convent. The thought of them poking around Sister Maria’s music room makes me sick. Scavengers. They have no right. She hasn’t even been buried yet and already they’re clearing out her room, taking away all that she left behind.
“Her affairs were all in order. She was a very orderly woman, you know. She made her wishes very clear.”
Ralph rubs his nose against my leg.
“She’s left you her music,” says Dad. “All of it. I thought you might like to hear that. It’s yours, if you want it. Father Levasseur said that we could pick it up from the convent whenever you’re ready.”
As Dad walks back to the house, I lie down again on the snowmobile, turning my face toward the bush. I try to focus on the trees, the sound of the phoebes singing. The feel of the plastic snowmobile seat against my cheek. But all I see is Sister Maria sitting at her desk, writing notes in my dictation book. I hear her music all around me, echoing in the woods. I feel my hand on her arm while she plays, holding on tight. And I don’t want to let go.
•••
For the funeral, Dad wears a black suit and a black and red polka-dotted tie; Mom wears a plain black dress, long, with white appliqué daisies around the neckline. I wear the new outfit that Sophie and I picked out for my scholarship interview. Mom thinks that the outfit is inappropriate. “Slacks to a funeral,” she says. “It shows disrespect.” But she’s letting it go. I don’t own a skirt or a dress.
In the car, on the way to town, Mom says, “Just this once. Next time you’re wearing a dress.”
But there will be no next time. Sister Maria will be buried only once.
Dad has the air conditioning in the car turned up full blast. It’s twenty-seven degrees outside today so it feels more like the middle of July than the beginning of May. There isn’t a cloud in the sky. It doesn’t seem right, all of this brightness, this sunshine. I think that it should be raining – pouring rain. The whole world should be crying for Sister Maria.
Mom makes idle conversation about her garden and her bedding plants.
“I want to get the cucumbers planted this afternoon, and maybe my petunias if there’s time.”
Nobody responds but she continues.
“I wonder if there’ll be frost. Middle of May, we usually get frost. Maybe I should wait with the cucumbers.”
Dad looks at me through the rear-view mirror.
“You okay back there?” he says.
I clench my fist around the Kleenexes scrunched up in the palm of my hand.
“Fine.”
“Just don�
��t look at the casket while you sing,” Mom says, matter-of-factly. “Or the congregation. Don’t look at them, either. They’ll all be crying, you know.”
I don’t know who will be in the cathedral for the funeral. Sister Maria has almost no family – just one brother from Montreal and his son. I wonder if they’ll make it to the funeral. All of the nuns will be there, of course, and the priests, however many of them there are in town, and the bishop. Sister Maria’s piano students, their parents. The odd friend she may have had from outside the convent. I can’t imagine that there will be more than thirty or forty people. The church, I think, will be nearly empty.
I’m shocked, then, as we approach the cathedral. Cars line the street in front of the church, across from the church, beside the convent and the rectory. There are Saskatchewan and British Columbia license plates on some of the cars. Sister Maria’s ex-students, maybe. Dad pulls the car around to the parking lot at the back of the church; it’s full, too.
“So many people!” says Mom. “Where did they all come from?”
We end up parking in a residential area, three blocks from main street. Two cars follow us, and both park behind our car. I feel nauseous and nervous. What if I cry in front of all these people? What if I can’t stop? While we walk up the stairs of the cathedral, a hearse parks at the side of the church. I press my fistful of Kleenex against my eyes.
“Dad,” I whisper, as we enter the church.
He doesn’t hear me.
“Dad!”
He puts his arm around me, leaning down so that I can whisper in his ear. My voice cracks.
“I can’t do this, Dad. I can’t. I can’t do it.”
Organ music fills the cathedral, “The Twenty-third Psalm.” Mom hugs me and gives me a quick peck on the cheek before she joins Yolande in a pew near the front of the church. Dad pulls me aside at the back of the church. He takes the red handkerchief out of his breast pocket and gently wipes my eyes with it.
“Of course you can do it. It’s not going to be easy but you’re going to do it, and do it beautifully.”
“No, I’m not, Dad. I’m not!”
I’m starting to panic now.