by Lisa Grekul
When I get back to the hostel, I’ll have to contact Siya, too. Rosa’s mother requested that we let him – the father – know. But he won’t be back from Europe for another month, so I’ll have to write him a letter, and send it to the ministry in Mbabane. Poor Siya. At least if I could tell him in person.
As the sun begins to set, I start to wipe my eyes, start making my way down the hill.
On the path that leads down to the hostel, beside the sign at the border of the campus – the sign that separates Waterford from the rest of the hill – I stop for a few minutes to catch my breath. I’ve never paid much attention to the sign. It was painted by a group of students in one of the lower forms. You are now leaving Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa, it says, in letters that are slightly crooked, slightly uphill on the plywood sheet.
At the bottom of the sign, in the lower right-hand corner, there’s a painting of the college mascot, the phoenix, in black and white. Half-hawk, half-angel, it’s engulfed in fire, stretching its enormous wings upward to escape the flames. I like the painting. I think it’s good. It has imagination.
Though Rosa, I’m sure, would disagree.
Rosa would find all kinds of flaws in the students’ drawing. Real talons don’t curl like that. Put those wings on a real bird and he’d topple over in an instant, never take flight. She’d redraw the phoenix, turning the flames into a fiery womb, and transforming the phoenix into a baby bird with tight wings wrapped around its body to protect it from the fire. In fact, she’d redraw it and redraw it until there was no fire around the phoenix at all, just glowing red coals. Until it wasn’t even a baby bird anymore. She’d redraw it until it became a tiny fetus – an embryo with wings in a warm little incubator, but an embryo nonetheless.
An embryo like all the rest.
•••
The call comes after I return from my walk in the hills behind the senior hostel. Shelagh comes to my cubie to get me. She says that Katja sent her to find me. Katja picked up the phone when it rang. I should run to the common room. It’s long distance, and important. The person on the other end of the line says that it’s urgent.
For a split second, I think that it must be Rosa. Then I shake my head. It can’t be her. She’s gone.
“It’s a man,” says Shelagh. She overhead Katja saying “sir” on the phone.
Then it’s Siya. I take a deep breath as I pick up the phone. I have to tell him about Rosa, and I’m not sure how.
After Katja passes the phone to me, she stays in the common room. Not right next to me, but close by. She and Shelagh whisper quietly as I press the receiver to my ear.
“Hello? Siya?”
It’s not Siya.
It’s my dad. Why is he calling me?
“Is everything okay?” I ask, my heart in my throat. Katja and Shelagh glance over at me.
“Well,” says Dad. “That’s why we’re calling.”
He pauses.
“You know we don’t want to give you bad news on the phone. But we – well.”
Mom cuts in on the extension. “We don’t really have a choice.”
“Mom?” says Dad. “Do you want to tell her?”
“No, no, Dad,” she says. “You go ahead.” Her voice sounds far away.
I should ask what’s going on, but I can’t speak. Someone is sick. Or dying. There’s been an accident. A death? I should ask who – Sophie or Wes.
“Sophie’s fine,” says Dad, as though he’s read my mind. “Sophie’s just fine. Wes, too. They’re fine.”
“What is it then? Is it you, Dad? Mom? Are you okay?”
“It’s your cousin Kalyna,” says Dad. “Mary and Andy’s girl.”
What’s wrong with Kalyna?
Dad clears his throat. “They found her this morning on the outskirts of Vegreville. Just south of the pysanka.”
Mom interrupts. “The big pysanka in Vegreville.”
As if I don’t know the pysanka that they’re talking about.
“What do you mean found her? Who’s they? Who found her?”
“The police,” says Dad. “They think she must have wandered away from the house sometime last night. Mary didn’t even know she was gone. You know Kalyna. She was always disappearing.”
“What do you mean – was? Is she – are you saying that she’s –”
Dad sighs. Mom is sniffling.
“Colleen,” says Dad, “Kalyna didn’t take a coat with her. God knows what she was thinking. God knows if she thinks – if she thought – at all. We’re having a cold winter. Colder than usual. It’s been getting down to minus fifteen, minus twenty at night. She must’ve gotten lost and disoriented, then hypothermia set in. She just curled up on the ground and went to sleep.”
I can hear Mom blowing her nose in the background before she hangs up the extension. Dad covers the receiver for a moment and there are muffled sounds, muffled voices.
While Dad tells me about the funeral arrangements, I see Kalyna sitting beside me on the piano bench in our living room, her head bobbing up and down, side to side, in perfect time with the music, and I see her in Dauphin, singing along as Corey plays his tsymbaly. She’s crossing herself in the Szypenitz church while Father Zubritsky chants, and chasing after me in the Edmonton airport with her silly lei, to wish me a Bon Voyage. To say Aloha. I don’t want to think about her dying alone. Shivering in a snowbank next to the giant pysanka, without a coat or blanket. I want to remember her like she was when she stayed with us. When Sister Maria held Kalyna in her arms, and rocked her to sleep.
I should be used to the feeling that washes over me. The nausea, the dizziness. I’ve been through it before, when Sister Maria died. I felt it earlier today, when Mrs. McBain told me that Rosa isn’t coming back. After I’ve hung up the phone, Shelagh and Katja come up beside me, to walk me back to my cubie. I think they know that I’ve had some bad news because they put their arms around me as we make our way to my room. Maybe they’ve heard about Rosa, too. But they don’t say a word, and I’m glad. I don’t want to talk.
What I want is to go to sleep, and then wake up to discover that Kalyna isn’t gone. That Rosa is back in her cubie. That this whole day was just a bad dream.
But I can’t sleep. It’s still sweltering outside. We haven’t had rain in months, and my cubie is like an oven. I think somehow that rain would make me feel better. It would make everything come to life again, in green and red and gold, and it would cool the air, and wash away the dust.
The rain would wash away my tears, too. Bathe the salt from my cheeks. Carry me far from here on a giant, gentle wave, all the way home.
•••
The next flight from Manzini to Johannesburg leaves in the morning. If all goes well, I’ll get on a plane to London at noon, then catch a direct flight from London to Edmonton. In two days, I should be back in St. Paul, in time for Kalyna’s funeral.
Mrs. McBain says that, under the circumstances, the college can waive my final exam requirements. My grades over the past year have been excellent. They speak strongly enough for my academic performance. She’d like to have a copy of my Extended Essay before I leave, but I don’t need to sit my exams.
I have Mrs. McBain to thank for arranging my last-minute flight. Mrs. McBain and Katja. After I spoke to Mom and Dad on the phone, Katja went straight to Mrs. McBain’s house to tell her that I’d received some bad news. Then the two of them showed up at my cubie door, and sat on my bed with me, smoothing my hair while I cried, passing me fresh Kleenex.
For a while, I couldn’t talk, and they didn’t ask about the news from home. Eventually, though, I calmed down enough to explain. To tell them about my cousin Kalyna. Not just about her death, but about her life. I told them everything. How Kalyna used to be normal, and how she changed after her nervous breakdown. About the year she spent living in our house, all the hours I spent with her at the piano. Mrs. McBain and Katja nodded as they listened, taking turns rubbing my back. Katja held my hand the whole time
, tightly, like she was never going to let go. And the words poured out of me. I was like a dam that had suddenly burst.
I told them about Sister Maria, hiccuping as I described the way she played the piano, and the numbers on her arm. I told them about the day that Sister Maria met Kalyna. The way she soothed my cousin by speaking to her in Ukrainian. And I told them about Sister Maria’s funeral. How much I miss her. How I think about her every time I play the piano, every time I hear a piece of music. When I wake up in the morning, and before I go to sleep at night.
It never occurred to me that I could make it home for Kalyna’s funeral. Mom and Dad didn’t even ask. But Katja said that I should try, and Mrs. McBain drove me down the hill late in the afternoon, to her travel agent in Mbabane, to inquire about changing my ticket. It all happened so quickly, I hardly had time to take in what was happening. When we got back to campus, Mrs. McBain walked me back to the senior hostel. She left me with Katja while she went to see the headmaster about my final exams.
So I’m going home tomorrow. Just like that, I’m leaving Africa. I don’t know how I’ll get all my things packed in time.
One by one, though, the other scholarship girls appear at my cubie door, along with Thandiwe. They offer to help me take down my posters, fold my clothes. There isn’t room for all of us in my room, so Katja sends them away with armloads of my belongings. She takes charge. Shelagh and Nikola are to wrap my knickknacks in newspaper, all the stone carvings I picked up in the market, and the Swazi candles. Maria will put all of my books in boxes, which they’ll mail to St. Paul after I’ve left. Hannah and Thandiwe are going to fill my hockey bags with clothes and shoes, bedding and camping gear. Whatever doesn’t fit, they’ll send by post.
Katja stays with me in my cubie. She says that she’ll help me take down my posters, all of my photographs from home. The embryo drawings that Rosa gave me over the past few months. I tacked up her pictures everywhere – over my desk, above my bed, around my window.
We work in silence for a few minutes, our backs to one another. I lean over the desk, Katja kneels at my bed. Since Rosa was sent away, we’ve come to a kind of truce – though we’ve never actually discussed it. I’m not sure if this is the right time to talk to Katja about what’s happened between us. I don’t know if this is the right place. But I’m leaving tomorrow. I might not have another chance.
I speak slowly, and softly. “This means a lot to me. Everything you’ve done to help me. I don’t know how to thank you.”
I look over my shoulder at Katja. She keeps working, keeps her back to me.
“I wish we’d gotten off to a better start,” I say, “at the beginning of the year. I wish things had been different.”
Gradually, I work my way around my cubie, pulling down pictures as I go. Rosa’s red and green Christmas embryo, surrounded by holly. Her cartoon drawing of a fluffy Easter embryo – a cross between a baby duck and a baby bunny – inside an Easter egg, popping its chubby cheeks out of a crack in the shell. She won’t have another Christmas, or another Easter.
“You were right,” I explain, “Ukrainians did a lot of terrible, awful things – during the war, before and after the war. They did kill people. They murdered Poles and Jews. I’ve known that for a long time. I just didn’t want to admit it to you.”
I’m shoulder to shoulder with Katja now. Both of us are kneeling on my bed, staring at the same wall as we take down the last of Rosa’s pictures – a series of charcoal sketches, black on white. Embryos with blank expressions on their faces. Empty eye sockets. Of all the embryos Rosa gave me, these are my least favourite. I don’t know if they’re supposed to be young or old, male or female. They look half-finished to me, only half-formed. I’ve never understood them.
“I have nothing against Polish people. Really. I never have. I can’t even remember anymore why I got so defensive with you, why it was so important that I prove you wrong. I’m sorry. If I could take it back – that piece of paper I gave you – I would.”
We’ve finished with the pictures. My cubie is bare again. But Katja keeps her eyes on the wall in front of us, the wall beside my bed, while she reaches into her pocket.
She pulls out the notes that I made for her, from Ukraine: A History. The pages are dog-eared and covered in creases. They’ve been folded and refolded a dozen different ways.
“I’ve carried this around with me all year,” she says. “This history lesson. More than a history lesson. It reminds me of how stubborn I can be, even when I’m wrong. History isn’t so simple. I wanted to tell you. I stood outside your room many times. I tried to knock. I just couldn’t. Then Rosa was sent away. It was my chance to show you what I couldn’t say.”
Katja turns to face me. She still can’t say it. But I don’t care. I’ll say it for her.
“That we can be friends.”
Katja nods.
Shelagh and Nikola appear at the doorway of my cubie, wondering if I have more knickknacks that need to be wrapped. I pick up two carved wooden masks from the bottom of my closet, and the tiny figurines that I bought at Ngwenya Glass – a hippo, an elephant, a lion, a giraffe. The masks are for Sophie. She can put them up in her apartment. I bought the figurines for Wes.
I tell the girls that I can wrap these myself. I’m finished taking down the pictures from the walls of my cubie. I explain to them that I have nothing else to do – except finish my essay.
“How much is left?” Katja asks. “How long will it take you to finish?”
“An hour, maybe two.”
I’ll write a quick conclusion. Nothing fancy. Anything to get it done.
“Then for heaven’s sake go finish,” she says. “Go down to the music room. We’ve got your cubie under control.”
I shake my head. I feel bad, leaving the girls to finish my packing. And I don’t want to face my essay.
“Imagine that Rosa is by your side, helping you.”
When the tears start spilling down my cheeks again, Katja puts her arms around me. We hug for a long, long time.
“Think about your cousin. Don’t push away your memories. Write for your old piano teacher, Sister Maria. Imagine how proud she would be to read your essay once it’s completed.”
The truth is, I’m not sure that Sister Maria would be proud. And I think that I knew it all along, deep down, the whole time I was working on my essay. Right from the start. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to write the conclusion. Sister Maria wouldn’t be proud. Far from it. She’d be downright disappointed, just like Mrs. McBain. Sister Maria would say that my essay topic isn’t challenging enough because folk songs are too simple, too easy. If she were here, if she had her way, I’d be writing about Ukrainian composers. Continuing with her work. It’s what she wanted, the reason she left me her boxes of music.
And if Kalyna were here, sitting beside me at the piano in the music room? If Rosa were at the desk next to the stereo, her sketchbook open to a fresh page? They would tell me to carry on. Kalyna would be humming “Tsyhanochka,” and clapping her hands in time with the music. Rosa would be studying my title page, coming up with theories about how pysanky are just like folk songs: timeless, never changing artforms that are passed down over the centuries, repeated perfectly by each new generation.
But folk songs do change. That’s the whole point of my essay. I don’t know who wrote the songs, or what they sounded like when they were first performed. My oldest recordings are from the 1950s, so I’m not even sure how my grandparents sang them, if they sang them at all. Instruments changed when Ukrainian immigrants came to Canada. Over the years, their children dropped words to songs, and lots of Ukrainian dance bands translated songs into English. These days, they play folk music with synthesizers, electronic accordions, and electric guitars. They add rock and roll rhythms. I’ve heard folk songs played to samba beats, with Spanish guitar in the background. I’ve heard them played with saxophones and trumpets. I’ve heard them rapped.
Pysanky have changed too. How do I know
that the designs I make are authentic? Baba never taught my mom. Our family learned how to make them by looking at a book, with electric kistkas that Mom bought at the Ukrainian Bookstore in Edmonton. And Rosa didn’t even use the designs that I showed her. She drew embryos on her eggs. Of all people, she should know – she should have known – that pysanky are different each time you make them.
Flipping through my essay in the music room one last time, I finally see what my paper is missing. I’ve said everything there is to say about how Ukrainian folk music has evolved in Canada. My harmonic analyses are solid. With the recordings that I’ve collected, I make a clear case for the ways in which new instruments were introduced, and lyrics altered. But I don’t explain why the changes took place, and I don’t say whether it’s a good or a bad thing that the songs are never the same. I have to make a decision. It’s time for me to take a stand.
I just can’t stay focused on my essay. I keep thinking about flying home, about what it will be like when I step off the plane in Edmonton. According to Mom and Dad, Kalyna’s funeral is going to start early. Ten o’clock in the morning, at the Ukrainian Orthodox in Szypenitz, with Father Zubritsky presiding. My flight arrives at eight, and the drive to Szypenitz will take close to two hours. Which means that we’ll make it just in time. I won’t have much of a homecoming. A few quick hugs at the airport before we head off to the church.
The burial will follow the funeral service. Dad said that, a few years ago, Auntie Mary and Uncle Andy bought plots for themselves at Szypenitz. They prepaid all of their funeral expenses so that the family wouldn’t have to worry about money when the time came. Kalyna is going to be buried next to her dad. One day, Auntie Mary will take her place beside her husband and child.
To take my mind off the funeral, I plunk a few notes on the piano. With my right hand, I play some of the songs from my Extended Essay. Chervona rozha, the red rose. Oi u luzi chervona kalyna, in the cranberry grove. Tears drop onto the piano keys. It’s hopeless.
Poor Kalyna. The ground will be so cold. It isn’t right that she’s going to be buried in winter. Spring would be better, warmer. And I can’t believe that Father Zubritsky is going to bury her. Is he still alive? I don’t want him chanting at her grave – hospode pomylo, hospode pomylo – like a voice from the dead. Kalyna deserves a different funeral, a different farewell. Something brighter. She had enough darkness in her life.