by Lisa Grekul
She’s trying to make a statement. Sophie never had a car before I moved to Edmonton.
I’d give the car back, if I could. I tell Mom and Dad that they should take it back. They say that Sophie is just being silly. She’ll get over it. Just be patient. She’ll come around.
They’re right. After classes start – once everything starts going wrong for me – Sophie goes back to her old self, more or less. She stops brooding about the car in her bedroom. Stops sulking around the apartment when I’m around. She smiles a lot more, and laughs again.
Mostly at me.
•••
Three weeks into September, I’m convinced that I’ve chosen all the wrong classes. Maybe the wrong program altogether.
For starters, my new piano teacher is a man. I’ve never had a man for a piano teacher. He’s a man, and he’s hairy. He’s got thick, black hair everywhere – on his arms, on his fingers. On the back of his neck. Curly black chest hair pokes out of his shirt, around the collar, and tufts of coarse black hair grow out of his ears. I catch myself staring at him during our lessons. I’ve never seen such a hairy man. There’s almost no space between his eyebrows. He’s got permanent black shadows on his cheeks where he shaves.
His name is Lazlo Kalman. I’m supposed to call him Dr. Kalman, though. And he doesn’t call me Colleen. It’s “Ms. Lutzak.”
Twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, we meet in his music room on the fourth floor of the Fine Arts Building. Almost all of my classes are in the Fine Arts Building, which is easy to get to. It’s only a five-minute walk from our apartment. My lessons with Dr. Kalman are supposed to last an hour and a half, but sometimes we finish early. Which is fine with me. An hour with Dr. Kalman feels like an eternity. I can’t wait for our lessons to end. On Monday and Wednesday nights, I try to think of excuses for leaving early. I have a meeting with another professor. A doctor’s appointment. A headache. I secretly hope that Dr. Kalman will come down with something serious so that my lessons with him will be cancelled. I’d like a different teacher.
As far as I’m concerned, Dr. Kalman’s office is more like a hospital room – or an operating room – than a music room. The walls are painted white, the bookshelves are white, the blinds on the windows are white. Sophie would love it. Except for the two black pianos at either end of the room, the whole room is white.
When I’m in his music room, I never know where to put my knapsack. I wish he’d tell me. Everything has a place. My bag seems to mess things up. On his desk, he keeps two sharpened pencils, an eraser, and a clean notepad of staff paper – nothing else. No loose papers. His bookshelves are lined with music books and sheet music, all arranged in alphabetical order. I think he’s got something against fresh air and natural sunlight because he keeps the windows closed and the blinds down. Not that his office is dark. There are rows of fluorescent lights on the ceiling, and fluorescent lights on each of the pianos. The light on top of the piano makes me feel like I’m playing the piano in a dentist’s chair.
Of course, I don’t play very much.
At the start of my first lesson, three weeks ago, Dr. Kalman asked me to play something for him, but he didn’t even listen to the whole piece before he stopped me. He said that everything is wrong with my playing – the way that I sit, the way that I touch the keys. Before I learn anything new, I have to unlearn everything I know. I’ve got tension in my whole body, apparently. Tension in my neck, tension in my shoulders, tension in my wrists. I strike the keys when I should stroke them. I try too hard to make the music come out of the piano, when it should flow out of my body. For the past three weeks, I’ve hardly touched the piano in his room. He doesn’t touch it, either.
He touches me a lot, though. In a creepy way. Sometimes he massages my shoulders, and the tops of my arms. He rubs my wrists and my fingers to loosen them up. Once in awhile he puts his hands on the small of my back, and keeps them there to correct my posture. I don’t know how to tell him that it makes me uncomfortable. Sister Maria used to touch me, but that was different. She only touched my hands. And I liked the feel of her fingers. They were softer. Gentler.
I don’t understand Dr. Kalman. Sitting in his office – just sitting in that sterile room – makes me nervous. I get a tight feeling in my chest, like I can’t breathe. My palms sweat like crazy, and my heart races. He tells me to loosen up, and he’s always talking about how my body has to be fluid like water – how the keys should be an extension of my fingers – but he runs his lessons like a drill sergeant. He’s a lot like Mr. Schultz, when I think about it. Worse even. There’s no small talk at the beginning of my lessons. No chit-chat about how my day has been, how my other classes are going. Not even a “Hello” or a “How are you?” I get the feeling that I’m interrupting him when I show up for my lessons. Like he’s got something more important to do, and I’m taking him away from it. I don’t see how I’m supposed to relax.
I try not to compare Dr. Kalman to Sister Maria. I try not to think about her when I’m having my lessons with him. But it’s hard not to. I know that Sister Maria’s music room wasn’t the neatest or the nicest. The paint was chipping on the walls, and the whole place smelled a bit funny – like mothballs and lemons. There were always papers scattered across her desk, across the tops of her pianos. She always had time for me, though. I never felt unwelcome in her music room. I definitely wasn’t tense. I used to live for my lesson with her. I’d count the days between my last lesson and my next lesson. And I spent hours with her in between, just visiting at the table in her room. Or listening to her play for me.
I miss playing, period. After three weeks of lessons with Dr. Kalman, I start to wonder if I’ll ever play again. He gives me exercises to practise instead of new pieces. All kinds of ridiculous exercises, like closing my eyes, and massaging the keys of the piano. Or rolling my shoulders forward and backward. The forward rolling isn’t so bad, but the backward rolling makes my breasts stick out. I feel like he’s always staring at me, studying my body.
I’m supposed to count myself lucky for getting placed with Dr. Kalman. All of the other first-year piano students tell me that he’s the best. Even the woodwind and brass students have heard of him. He’s a famous concert pianist, and he only teaches the top students in the piano program. Everyone talks about how famous he is, how great he is. How they wish that they could have just one lesson with him. I think they’d change their minds if they spent an hour with Dr. Kalman in his office. An hour is all it would take. An hour of rolling their shoulders around, never playing a single note. Getting touched with his hairy hands.
When I tell Sophie about my lessons with Dr. Kalman – about how much I hate the exercises he makes me do, and the way he looks at me – she says that I’m imagining things. She doesn’t believe that I haven’t played any music yet. She thinks that I’m exaggerating. When I tell her that I want to quit, or switch teachers, she tells me to toughen up. I’m just not used to criticism.
“For the first time in your life,” she says, “you’re not perfect. Welcome to the club.”
But it’s not just my piano lessons with Dr. Kalman. My theory class with Dr. Kitchener is just as bad. He spends two whole weeks going over material I learned two years ago. In sight-singing with Dr. Evans, we’re assigned baby songs. Sister Maria would laugh if she could see me reading the four-bar, three-note melodies that we have to perform for each other. It’s hard for me not to laugh when I hear the other students struggling. Haven’t they ever done sight-singing before? Dr. O’Connor’s course in keyboard skills is supposed to teach us to improvise chordal accompaniments to melody lines, and to make up melody lines to chord structures in our textbooks. The other first-year music students tear their hair out over it, especially the students whose first instrument isn’t the piano. I’ve been improvising on the piano since I was twelve.
I try hard to make friends with the other music students. Especially the pianists and singers. I figure we have a lot in common, and I want to have
friends like Sophie – a whole group of friends who go out together after class and in the evenings. I invite a couple of girls out for coffee after class one day – a piano major, and a voice major. They seem nice enough. Fairly talented. The voice major says that she doesn’t drink coffee because caffeine is bad for the vocal chords, and the piano major says that coffee makes her hands shake. I suggest hot chocolate. They say it’s got caffeine too. Tea? They don’t drink tea. Herbal tea? No thanks. Orange juice? Maybe next time.
I can take a hint. They just don’t want to hang out with me.
A few days later, I overhear them talking with some other music students – about someone in our keyboard skills class who is a real show-off. Someone they wish would drop dead. At first, I assume they’re talking about Scott, a violinist in our class with perfect pitch. Then I notice that Scott is in the group, doing some of the talking. I hear Scott say my name. They’re talking about me.
Sophie says that it serves me right. I should try a little harder to fit in.
“You don’t always have to be the best. Try screwing up once in a while, Super Girl. Try being human for a change.”
I don’t care what the other music students think. It’s not my fault that I’m good at what I do. They should try a little harder. Spend more time practising. I’d even be willing to help them, if they’d just give me a chance.
It doesn’t matter. I don’t like them anyway. As far as I’m concerned, they’re the snobs, not me. When Dr. Evans asks us to bring in pieces of music for each other to sight-sing, and when I bring in a Ukrainian folk song, they all turn their noses up to it – even Dr. Evans. Like it’s not real music because it’s not written by a famous composer. In Dr. Kitchener’s theory class, when I raise my hand to talk about common chord structures of country music, I hear whispering and snickering at the back of the room. Dr. Kitchener says that country and western music isn’t interesting to real musicians because it’s not challenging enough. I make a point of improvising honky-tonk songs when it’s my turn to perform in our keyboard skills class. Music is music. And honky-tonk piano is plenty challenging. Real musicians would know that.
The bottom line is that my music classes feel like a big waste of time. I’m bored. I don’t have any homework because I’m not learning anything new. If I’m lucky, maybe by Christmas Dr. Kalman will let me play beginner songs with one hand. Maybe by this time next year, in my other classes, we’ll get past beginner theory, and beginner sight-singing, and beginner keyboard skills. I just don’t see why I have to wait around, twiddling my thumbs, while everyone else catches up.
Of course, then there is my other class, Ukrainian 100 with Dr. Pohorecky. Which is harder, but not any better. In fact, I think it might be the worst. The tables are turned in Ukrainian, and I don’t like it one bit.
I don’t actually need a second language to get my degree in music. I just thought it would be a good idea to take Ukrainian as an elective – instead of something like psychology or anthropology – to reacquaint myself with my mother tongue after all these years. I found the course in the university calendar, in the Department of Slavic and East European Studies. “Introductory Ukrainian.” For people who have never taken any Ukrainian before. In a way, I felt guilty enrolling in a class for beginners because I’ve taken Ukrainian before. I thought that I’d intimidate the other students. But it seemed like a chance to get some easy credits. I wouldn’t have to work very hard to get a really good grade.
Apparently everybody in my class had the same idea. Except everyone else in my Ukrainian class is completely bilingual. And, as it turns out, I hardly remember anything that I learned in Mom’s Ukrainian classes.
So I’m the class dumdum. The class idiot. The dunce. All I’m missing is the pointy hat. I’ve never felt so stupid in my whole life. I don’t even remember how to read the Ukrainian alphabet properly. I keep getting English and Cyrillic letters confused. Aside from a handful of nouns that I recall from Mom’s classes, and one or two verbs, I’m totally lost. French words pop into my head when I’m searching for Ukrainian words.
At home, when I’m working on my Ukrainian, Sophie beams.
“Still struggling?” she says, smiling. “Still flunking your quizzes?”
I’m not used to being at the bottom of the class, and I’m determined not to stay there long. I conquered French in grade nine, I can conquer Ukrainian.
I spend all my free time working on my Ukrainian – doing extra exercises in the workbook, memorizing vocabulary, conjugating verbs. I phone Mom and Dad at night to ask them questions, to try out my pronunciations on them. I just can’t catch up. I’m always a step behind the class because the professor moves so quickly through the material. I can feel my face turn red every time she calls on me to answer a question. Half the time I don’t know what she’s saying and, when I do understand her, I don’t know how to respond. After awhile, I realize that phoning Mom and Dad doesn’t help. Dr. Pohorecky is from Ukraine. She pronounces Ukrainian words differently from Mom and Dad. She says that my accent is all wrong.
Sophie thinks it’s hilarious that I’m suffering in Ukrainian. She says, “Boh ne be bu kom.” God doesn’t hit with a stick. It’s payback for being a smartass in my music classes.
“How does it feel?” she asks. “Now that the shoe is on the other foot?”
I don’t think it’s the least bit funny. The other students in my Ukrainian class aren’t just bilingual. They all come from the same Ukrainian immersion school in Edmonton; they all seem to go to the same Ukrainian church; and I think that nearly all of them belong to the Ukrainian Club at the university. How can I compete? They’re the most Ukrainian people I’ve ever met. At least half of them are Shumka dancers. They’ve been on tour in Ukraine two or three times. One guy in class is the president of the National Ukrainian Canadian Students’ Union. He travels across Canada during the summers, meeting with other Ukrainian Canadian university students. Almost everyone in my Ukrainian class is in the Ukrainian Studies program, so they take all kinds of courses in Ukrainian literature, folklore, and history. A few of them have summer jobs at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village by Elk Island. Four months out of the year they become role players, living like Ukrainian pioneers and talking to tourists who stroll through the museum.
Sitting in Ukrainian class, listening to the other Ukrainian students talk together day after day about how important it is to keep Ukrainian culture alive, I picture them dressed in superhero costumes – embroidered shirts, tight satin pants, velvet capes. In my head, I call them the Super Ukes. Whizzing around the world to save Ukrainian culture wherever it’s being threatened.
During the third week of classes, though, when it’s time for us to give our first class presentations in Ukrainian class, I come up with a plan to show the Super Ukes that I don’t need saving. I might not speak Ukrainian, and I might not belong to any of their dance groups and church clubs, but I’m just as Ukrainian as they are.
Our assignment is to stand up in front of the class and speak for five minutes about ourselves. We’re supposed to talk about our families, where we grew up. How old we are. That sort of thing. Of course, the Super Ukes hardly need to prepare. They can make complex sentences and use big Ukrainian words without even trying. Next to them, I’ll sound like a five-year-old. “My name is Colleen. I have a mother. I have a father. I have a sister. I have a brother.” I refuse to do it. I decide to do something more creative instead. When it’s my turn to speak, I’m going to bring out my guitar. I’m going to sing “Tsyhanochka.” Before I start, I’ll say a few words about myself. Maybe something about how I’ve been singing Ukrainian songs all my life. But the main part of the presentation will be the song itself. My classmates are going to be stunned. Dr. Pohorecky is going to be impressed. For the first time since classes began, I’ll finally get a decent mark in Ukrainian.
I almost wish that the students in my music classes could be on hand to see me perform. And my music professors, too. Dr. Kalman could
hear me play a song for the first time from beginning to end. I’d show them all what real music sounds like. How a real musician performs.
On the morning of presentation day, Sophie hovers around my bedroom while I pack up my guitar. She makes a half-dozen sarcastic comments before I tell her to shut up. She doesn’t listen.
“I have an idea,” she says. “Why don’t you wear your Ukrainian costume? That would be a nice touch. And you could do a dance after you’ve finished singing. Or you could dance while you’re singing. Even better.”
“Mind your own business,” I say.
“Maybe you’ll get the gold medal this time. Think your prof is giving out medals?”
“Get lost.”
That was low. Bringing up Dauphin. Really low.
“Too bad Carla Senko isn’t here to help you,” she says. “Remember the last time you gave a presentat –”
“Get out!” I say, raising my voice. “Leave me alone!”
I don’t need to be reminded of my grade nine French presentation.
Sophie mutters under her breath as she leaves my bedroom.
“Just trying to help. Just trying to be supportive.”
I’m not the first to give my presentation in Ukrainian class, or the last. Dr. Pohorecky calls us up alphabetically, and I’m smack in the middle of the class list, right after Peter Kordan and before Tatiana Melnyk. I hardly listen to the other students’ presentations. Even if I could understand them – which I can’t, because their Ukrainian is too advanced – I’m too busy thinking about my song, and wondering what I should sing if Dr. Pohorecky asks for an encore, and daydreaming about my classmates’ reactions. For the first time since the course began, the Super Ukes are going to be speechless.
While I strap on my guitar, I introduce my song. In Ukrainian.