by Lisa Grekul
“Ya zaspivaiu sohodni odnu pisniu – ‘Tsyhanochka.’”
Three or four students snicker in the back of the class. Dr. Pohorecky raises her eyebrows. The Shumka dancers – all twelve of them – cross their arms in unison.
The performance doesn’t go well. I’ve never performed for an audience like this. I suspected that the other students would be jealous, so it’s not like I expected them to jump out of their seats, clapping and singing along. But I anticipated a few smiles, at least; a couple of heads bobbing in time with the music. What’s wrong with them? “Tsyhanochka” is a lively song. It’s all about passion and longing. I sing it with passion and longing. Nobody seems to notice. I feel as though I’m performing for thirty-three statues, their faces as blank as stones. Even Dr. Pohorecky looks bored. Halfway through my song, she stops watching me, and starts writing on the notepad in front of her. For all I know, she could be doodling.
They applaud, politely. No one says a word to me, though, as I return to my seat. Not a single word. Dr. Pohorecky keeps her eyes on her notepad. The strangest feeling washes over me as I listen to the next presentation, and the presentation after that. I feel like my cousin Kalyna – like I can suddenly see the world through her eyes. The other students in class tolerate me, but they don’t really want to know me. I’m too different. I don’t belong, and they know it. They don’t even try to pretend. Polite applause. That’s how we treat Kalyna.
At the end of class, after Dr. Pohorecky has given everyone feedback on their presentations, the other students drift out of the classroom in groups, comparing marks as they go – in Ukrainian, of course. They make jokes in Ukrainian. I’m the outsider, and the inside joke. I know they’re laughing at me.
If Sophie actually was supportive, maybe I could tell her how badly the presentation went. I’d have someone to confide in. A shoulder to cry on. But I don’t dare tell her the truth. I won’t give her the satisfaction. In the evening, when she gets home from her classes, I’m all smiles. I announce that I got the highest mark in the class – ten out of ten. The prof loved me. The other students gave me a standing ovation.
Sophie raises her eyebrows, as though she doesn’t quite believe me.
“I’ll show you the prof’s comments,” I say, reaching into my knapsack, hoping that she won’t call my bluff.
“Don’t bother. It’s enough to hear you gloat.”
Dr. Pohorecky’s comments are crumpled in a ball at the bottom of my knapsack. She didn’t give me a grade on my presentation, just a couple of sentences explaining that I’ll have to redo it. Singing a song doesn’t count for anything. It doesn’t show what language skills I’ve picked up over the past few weeks, especially since I mispronounced most of the words to the song. I’m supposed to go back to class tomorrow and talk for five minutes, like everyone else. Then she’ll give me a grade.
Only I’m not going back to Ukrainian class tomorrow, or the day after that. I’m never going back. I’m never setting foot in that classroom so long as I live. I can’t show my face in front of the other students. I’m not one of them. Nothing will change that.
I start skipping Ukrainian.
And then, after a few days of skipping Ukrainian, I start skipping the odd music class too.
It’s not only that my music classes are boring. It’s that, lately, I can’t stop thinking about Sister Maria. I can’t push her out of my mind. In my music classes, we’re going through the same material that she taught me, step by step. When my professors talk, I hear her voice in my head. When they play recordings of music that she played for me, I see her at her piano, her arms outstretched over the keys. Sitting in class is like watching a movie of my piano lessons with Sister Maria. I try to daydream about something else – anything else. I shake my head to make her go away. But she always comes back, like a ghost, following me around wherever I go. Dr. Kalman’s lessons are the hardest. I wonder if Sister Maria can see me in his office – if she can see him touching me, breathing down my neck. If she can see me unlearning everything I learned from her.
By the end of September, I quit going to classes altogether, and I formally withdraw from the university – just in time to have my tuition refunded. My hands shake as I sign the forms in the registrar’s office, and then throw my student card into the garbage can outside the students’ union building. I don’t feel relieved, I feel sick to my stomach. I have to tell Sophie. I can’t keep pretending to go to classes every morning. I have to tell Mom and Dad. I can’t keep taking their money. They’ll be so hurt. So disappointed.
October 3rd is the deadline that I give myself. October 3rd I come clean, and tell everyone the truth. That gives me a few days to prepare. I need to show Mom and Dad that I have a plan. What’s my plan? I’ll get a job on campus. Or I’ll move back to St. Paul, and get a job there.
Those are my options.
October 3rd is the day.
Then, on October 2nd, the phone rings, and, out of the blue, everything changes.
Two
Mom and Dad call first, to tell me that a fellow from the United World Colleges called them, looking for me. They can’t imagine why. Mom’s guess is that he’s looking for a donation. Dad says that I should tell him where to go.
Then Tim Van Luewen calls to explain why he’s been trying to get in touch with me.
According to Tim, one of the scholarship recipients has decided to give up her place at the uwc in Victoria. Because I’m on their list of alternate candidates, her scholarship is now mine for the taking.
I’m an alternate?
I tell Tim that I don’t understand.
He says that I should have received a letter. The letter explained that, while I wasn’t at the top of their list, I was near the top. Near enough to be named an alternate. The selection committee always chooses alternates, in case one of the scholarship recipients turns down a placement.
I should have read my rejection letter more carefully before I threw it away.
“So I’m going to Victoria?” I ask.
“Not Victoria, Swaziland. If you decide to accept the scholarship.”
I have to sit down.
“The school year in Victoria has already started,” Tim explains, “so it doesn’t make sense to send a student there. Or to any of the colleges in the northern hemisphere. They all start their classes in August. The college in Swaziland is different. It’s in the southern hemisphere. Which means that classes at Waterford start in January.”
“But I thought you didn’t send students to Africa. I thought Africa was out of the question.”
Tim says that they’re willing to make an exception. These are exceptional circumstances. They’ve never had a student give up a scholarship. And they’ve never had a candidate express interest in going to Africa.
“You’re one lucky lady,” he says.
Of course, I am in no way obliged to accept. I shouldn’t feel pressured to go to Swaziland.
“It’s a big decision. Take your time. Think about it, talk to your parents.”
I tell Tim that I don’t need to think about it. I don’t need to talk to my parents.
A miracle has happened. I’ve been saved. It’s divine intervention. I don’t have to feel bad now when I tell Mom and Dad about withdrawing from university. They won’t be disappointed in me after all. They’ll be thrilled.
I do need some time, though, for the news to sink in. So much has happened since my scholarship interview. It feels like a lifetime ago. I haven’t thought about my uwc application in months. Africa, Africa. I keep saying the word to myself. I’m going to Africa. It doesn’t seem real. Africa. It doesn’t seem possible. A-fri-ca.
I wait a few minutes before I call Mom and Dad.
But I can’t tell them over the phone. The news is too big, too important. I pack a bag, quickly, and grab the car keys. Sophie is out with friends. I leave her a note. Gone to St. Paul – going to Africa – call home when you get in!
It’s the shortest trip home that I’
ve ever made. I crank up the radio and sing along at the top of my lungs. Every so often, I have to remind myself to ease up on the accelerator. I feel like I could fly.
Mom and Dad are waiting for me at the front door. Sophie has called them. She’s told them about the note that I left her. They’ve put two and two together. Dad is grinning from ear to ear. Mom is white as a sheet. Wes joins us as we make our way to the kitchen.
“When?” says Dad.
“In January.”
“You haven’t accepted, have you?” says Mom. “We need to talk about this first. As a family. What about university? You can’t just quit. We have to think this through.”
“I’m taking it,” I say. “I’m taking the scholarship. I’ve already told them.”
“Have you thought about your sister?” says Mom. “You’re her roommate now. You’ve signed a lease. Have you thought about that?”
Wes says that Sophie could find another roommate. She has lots of friends at university.
“She doesn’t like living with me anyway,” I say. “Living together hasn’t been so great for either of us.”
“What are you talking about?” says Mom. “That’s nonsense. You girls have a beautiful apartment, a car, money. You have a perfect arrangement. We’ve given you everything, and you’re going to throw it away to go to some godforsaken country on the other side of the world? What’s wrong with you?”
Dad tells Mom that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He says that we should consider it at least. The university isn’t going anywhere. I can always go back.
“You think she’s going to come back?” says Mom, her eyes blazing.
I’m not sure if this is the right time to mention that I’ve already dropped out of university, but I have to tell them sooner or later.
Dad takes the news well. He says that it doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done. We need to look ahead, focus on the future.
Mom gets up from the table after I’ve confessed. She says that she can’t look at me; that, if my goal is to send her to an early grave, then I’m succeeding. She can hardly finish her sentence before she starts to cry.
Dad gets up to follow her, but then he changes his mind. He walks back to the table, shaking his head and grinning. Before I know it, he’s lifted me off my chair, and he’s hugging me, and swinging me around the kitchen.
“That’s my little girl!” he says. “That’s my girl!”
Wes is the most excited, though, by far. Shortly after I give him the news, he goes to his room. When he comes back to the kitchen a few minutes later, he’s got a stack of books, magazines, and loose-leaf papers in his hands. Over the next few days, by consulting his hunting almanacs and wildlife encyclopedias and rifle magazines, Wes plans a complete safari. He makes a rough sketch of basic necessities – transportation (Land Rover), food (malaria pills?), camping gear (include mosquito netting). He compiles a list of big game animals indigenous to southern Africa – zebra, giraffe, lion, warthog, impala – all organized under the headings Big Cats, Antelope, and Other. Beside each animal, Wes notes the calibre of rifle he thinks would do the job.
When Sophie comes home for the weekend, she hugs me, congratulates me.
She says, “I’m so happy for you!” And she tells me not to worry about the apartment. She’ll find a new place after Christmas, a one-bedroom. No big deal.
I’m not sure if Sophie really means it. I’m not sure if she really is happy for me. When Mom comes up with reasons for me not to go, and when I argue with her, Sophie leaves the room. She could stand up for me, but she doesn’t.
Mom says that the night before I received the phone call from the uwc selection committee, she dreamt I was getting married.
“You were standing at the altar of the Greek Orthodox Church at Szypenitz,” she says, “dressed in my wedding gown, of all things. The traditional Greek Orthodox wedding crown was on your head, pressing down on my veil. I don’t know who you were marrying. I couldn’t see the groom. Father Zubritsky was there, though. He was marrying you. In Ukrainian.”
The dream is how Mom knew that something terrible was going to happen. She says that, in dreams, weddings mean death. That’s what my scholarship is to Mom. Death. Mine or hers, she’s not sure. Maybe both.
For the next few months, our house becomes a battle zone. Mom won’t help me move out of the apartment in Edmonton. Dad and Wes come to pick me up and take my furniture back to St. Paul, but Mom stays at home.
She says that I’ll miss the change of seasons here. I say that it’s only one year and, besides, seasons change everywhere. Swaziland must have its own winter. Mom says that I won’t be safe in Africa. I’ll get mugged, or raped, or murdered. I say that I could just as easily get mugged, raped, and murdered right here in St. Paul. Mom says that medical care is substandard in a Third World country like Swaziland. What if my appendix bursts? I’ll be three days away from a good, Canadian hospital. I say that the college will take care of me. There must be doctors on campus and Johannesburg is a hop, skip, and a jump away. Johannesburg is a major, modern city.
We fight non-stop – about the quality of the food in Swaziland, the water, the standard of living. Mom worries about diseases like bilharzia, yellow fever, malaria. She clips articles from the Edmonton Journal, Maclean’s, Time magazine – anything that has to do with violence and bloodshed in South Africa.
My aunts don’t help. Mom talks to them on the phone every week, and they all tell her the same thing: she and Dad shouldn’t allow me to go. Auntie Mary, Kalyna’s mother, is the worst. She’s closest to my mother, and the most vocal about how dangerous it is for me to go to Africa by myself. Once, she even talks to me on the phone, trying to talk me out of it. Why am I so determined to hurt my mother? she wonders. Why do I want to break her heart? Auntie Mary says that I’m selfish and ungrateful. After all my parents have done for me, this is how I thank them. It’s shameful.
I want to tell Auntie Mary that she’s wrong, and that it’s none of her business. But I can’t. She’s my oldest aunt. I can’t talk back to her.
I phone the South African Embassy in Ottawa instead, requesting general information on the country. They send me a big manila envelope in the mail filled with pamphlets and brochures advertising sandy white beaches and flashy casinos and luxurious spas in Durban and Cape Town and Sun City.
I spend a lot of time in my room then, scanning the articles Mom has found and going through the Embassy package. It doesn’t seem possible to me that South Africa is as bad as the newspapers say, or as good as the brochures suggest. So I take out a few books from the town library. Books, I think, will paint a more accurate picture. The St. Paul Municipal Library has three titles in its South Africa section: a novel, Cry the Beloved Country, by Alan Paton; a collection of Nadine Gordimer short stories; a dog-eared paperback on the history of apartheid. I borrow them all.
The books are all about apartheid – passbook laws, homelands, police brutality – even though they’re written by white people. Nothing about surfing paradises and holiday spots. The more I read, the more worried I become. Maybe Mom is right. Maybe it is awful. Maybe it isn’t safe.
By Christmas, though, I’ve got my passport, my transit visa for South Africa, and my Student Residency Permit for Swaziland. My itinerary has been confirmed by the scholarship committee, the headmaster at Waterford has guaranteed a place for me. All of my textbooks are waiting for me there. On January 19, I’ll board the plane in Edmonton. Edmonton-Toronto, Toronto-Montreal. Montreal-Paris. Paris-Johannesburg. Johannesburg-Manzini. My route is the cheapest and most direct one that the committee could arrange at the last minute; the price tag is almost five thousand dollars. They’ve arranged and paid for everything – flights, tuition, room and board. They even give me spending money. I can’t change my mind. Not now.
Whatever else I need, Dad buys. He buys mosquito netting for my bed, a special mosquito screen for the window of my dorm room, and a twenty-four month supply of malaria pills. Hiking boo
ts, running shoes, leather sandals. A special leather pouch that fits snugly inside the front of my pants for my passport. And five hundred Canadian dollars in American Express traveller’s cheques.
He’s really excited about my trip. I think he wishes that he were going himself. The college sends me information about Swaziland, in general, and the college, more specifically – so that I can prepare. Dad pores over the fat photocopied booklet, making notes on Swaziland’s climate, geography, average temperature, rainfall, humidity. Swazi history, the history of Waterford. Swazi culture. The relationship between students at the college and the Swazi people. He becomes a walking encyclopedia on the subject of Swaziland. Over the Christmas holidays, it’s all he talks about.
“Now, isn’t that interesting,” he says at breakfast one morning, while he underlines a paragraph in the booklet.
My mom presses her lips together, takes a deep breath. I can see that she’s getting fed up with Dad’s mini-lectures.
Yesterday he told us all about the variety of ecological zones in Swaziland – rainforest in the northwest, dry savanna in the east; high veld and low veld; mountains and plains. Remarkable for a country that’s not much bigger than Vancouver Island. The day before, he gave us a summary of colonialism in Swaziland, from the arrival of the British in the nineteenth century and the consolidation of their power in Swaziland after the Boer War, to independence, in 1968. English is still an official language, along with SiSwati. But the country – a kingdom, technically – is now ruled by King Mswati III. Mswati’s father, King Sobhuza II, had over one hundred wives and close to seven hundred children. My mother winced when Dad talked about the old Swazi king. Sophie called Sobhuza a pig. My dad scolded her. He said that wives and children are signs of wealth in Swazi custom. The tradition, he explained, is for the king to take on at least one new wife each year at the Umhlanga, or the Reed Dance. It’s an annual, eight-day ceremony during which hundreds of Swazi girls gather to perform for the king. He chooses his bride from the crowd.