A Drop of Rain (21 page)

The experience of looking at my father's face is always cold but gentle. It's like the snow flurries that began to drift down as I looked this time. If my father
likes my history project, I'm not going to
ask
him if I can visit him some day. I'm just going to get on a plane, go to Warsaw and
pound
on his door until he opens it.

School and work are tolerable.

Naomi is worried about her mother and her friend, Mary, as well as her history project.

Naomi's mother is grief-stricken about her sister.

Mary reminds me of a snow goose driven far from her flock in a storm, like in the Paul Gallico story that Dad gave me when I told him I wanted to be an artist. Mary's voice is quiet, but I hear a honk of distress in it.

Mary is a small woman. She looks more like a sparrow than a goose. It's her
soul
that makes me think of a snow goose.

Mom is staying off my case and getting her own life together. She told Steve to move out. She threatened to call the cops if he didn't. She told him she doesn't want to see him again, “until he stops boozing and being abusive.” She's going to a stress counsellor her doctor recommended.

I spent last Sunday afternoon in the wildlife park. I biked around with Joe's kids, then I showed them how to draw beavers, porcupines, raccoons and black bears. Joe walked around by himself and took photos.

Joe says: “Don't order women around. Let them see they can depend on your inner and outer strength, if they need to. Gently guide them, if they ask for help.”

Joe says I can use his truck whenever I need it.

Judo's great. The first thing you learn is how to break your falls by rolling. Then you learn how to get your opponent off balance. Then you learn how to throw him. My goal is to get a black belt within a year.

My cousin knows some people in Gdansk on the Baltic coast. That is why she can invite me and my husband and children to go for a seaside holiday for the whole summer and stay for free in a vacant apartment. We take the streetcar every day to the beach, where the children make sandcastles and swim.

Next door to where we are staying, a poor widow lives with eight children. This widow had six children of her own. Then, when a prostitute died leaving two neglected, harum-scarum children, the poor widow adopted those children too.

The prostitute's children are difficult, disobedient and backwards. They even go to the bathroom in strange places like the hallway. But the poor widow treats them like her own. She gives them lots and lots of love.

This widow does not have enough money for proper food and clothes for her children.

“I know how you can earn money,” I say to her.

“How?” she asks.

“Sell pickles at the seashore,” I say. “There are hundreds of people at the seashore every day. I am sure they would buy something refreshing and inexpensive like pickles.”

“Impossible!” she says.

“I'll help you,” I say.

The next day, early in the morning, I go with the widow to the farmer's market. I lend her the money to buy a big basket of baby cucumbers, some salt, garlic, mustard seeds, horseradish and dill. Oh yes, and a nice, clean, new, wooden barrel. Then, after my husband takes the widow's children and our children to the seashore, the widow and I make pickles. We put our ingredients in the barrel. Then we cover the barrel and leave it in a dark place in the widow's apartment for five days.

When the pickles are ready, the widow fills a bucket with them, boards the street car, and travels to the last stop—the beach. She sells the whole pailful in fifteen minutes at three zlotys per pickle. Then she returns to her apartment for another pailful.

By the end of the day, all the pickles in the barrel are sold. Now the widow has enough money to pay me back. She can also buy more cucumbers, salt, garlic, mustard seeds, horseradish and dill. And four more barrels. Meanwhile, her children have played all day at the seashore with my children.

My husband and I watch over all the children, so the widow is free to work. We watch the children play games together. We talk to them. And soon the prostitute's children stop going to the bathroom in strange places and begin to act more normally.

Soon the widow is selling pickles every day. By the end of the summer, she has enough money to buy food and clothes for her children. She can even buy them books for school.

Capitalism can be good.

And you know what? Those backward children of the dead prostitute grow up to be wonderful adults. The girl becomes a jeweller, making beautiful rings and bracelets. The boy becomes an electrician. Because they are orphans, the government supplies them each with a free apartment when they grow up.

Communism can be good too.

Both of them always remember their adoptive mother on her birthday and name day, at Easter and at Christmas. They always give her a nice gift, a kiss and a hug.

My husband, children and I never forget the summer of our wonderful, seashore vacation.

Not many summers later, in 1980, the Solidarity Uprising begins in the Lenin Shipyards at Gdansk. The shipyards are not far from where the children made sandcastles and the widow sold pickles!

Solidarity is not led by the uneducated electrician, Lech Walesa. It is led by Pope John Paul II. Karol Wojtyla was a cardinal in Krakow and a professor of ethics in the Lublin Catholic University before he became Pope. Our Polish pope knows many languages. He has two doctorates. He is well educated.

When Pope John Paul II comes to Poland for his first visit in 1979, Polish people go in the millions to attend his masses and see him pass in the popemobile.

The state television tries to show that there are not that many people, but we know how many there are.

We follow John Paul II on his pilgrimage to our holiest places at Gniezno, Czestochowa, Krakow and Oswiecim. Oswiecim is where, at the notorious Nazi concentration camp known in German as “Auschwitz”, a Polish priest, Maksymilian Maria Kolbe, gave his own
life so another could live. Kolbe is a saint now.

It is the pope who first talks about “solidarity”. Solidarity is not forced on us. Solidarity is not politics. It is truth.

Then martial law is declared in Poland, and ordinary life becomes more difficult than ever.

Now it is really war again.

For three days and nights she lay unconscious and seemingly oblivious to everything. She ate nothing. But then eating had been almost impossible for some time. She swallowed, however, when I tipped a sip of water over her dry lips.

Perhaps it was the Chopin waltz that aroused her.

“Come here,” she said to me, only now she could not speak. She only gestured with her hand. Or did she? Perhaps I only imagined that she signalled.

I laid my head on her breast. On the breast that was not diseased. I put my arms around her gently.

Soon, there was a rattle and a last breath. Soon, the last pulse was throbbing in her throat like the heartbeat of a little bird.

Sunlight flooded the little room.

“Much sunshine!”

Hanna is gone.

A noble soul.

I wish I had known her better, but by the time she
came to Eva's, she was too weak for much interaction.

I felt that my job was to stay in the background, avoid intruding on her privacy and instead support Eva.

Why could our rich, smug, North American society not offer Hanna a decent place?

If there is a God, I hope He can forgive us.

Sunday, December 12, 1999

Hanna died last Sunday morning at about 11 o'clock.

I have never seen a dead person before.

Mom was alone with Hanna when she died. I was playing a Chopin waltz on the piano in the living room.

Mom sat with Hanna's body for a while. Then Mom's English Canadian doctor came, pronounced Hanna dead and left. Then two men came from a funeral home and took the body away.

I was there.

“She looks as though she's had a hard time,” said one of the funeral home men.

“Yes, she has,” said Mom calmly.

The men put Hanna's body in a big bag. Then they carried the bag out the front door on a stretcher.

Mom went afterwards to the funeral home to visit the body. She walked over to the “home” by herself. She said she wanted to go alone.

Mom is taking three weeks off work—until after the New Year. She is exhausted. Luckily classes at the college are finished. Hanna waited to die at the most convenient time possible for Mom.

There isn't going to be a funeral, because Hanna didn't want one. Hanna is going to be cremated, as she requested. In the spring, Mom will take Hanna's ashes to a forest, as Hanna also requested.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon in my room alone. I lay on my bed thinking for a long time. Then I got up, went to my desk and wrote down my thoughts. Here they are.

Death is absence. Life is there, and then it is not.

What remains after death is spirit.

The world is often evil and dark, but one person's spirit can be a light for the whole world, a force for good.

Hanna tried to be a light for the world. Did she succeed? Sometimes what she did made my mother and me unhappy. She also made herself unhappy.

Yet she did good. She made the world a better place.

Despite her successes, grief overwhelmed Hanna for a while, taking away her hope. But then, after she came to our home, hope began to return.

True, she wanted euthanasia. But she didn't want to die because the world is too evil. She wanted to die because she could no longer live with dignity.

I did not understand Hanna very well. I still don't. She was a very different kind of person than I am. Still, I admire her. I also feel sorry for her. Maybe if Hanna had received the right kind of help, she could
have got better.

I hope my friend Mary's cancer has not spread too far! I hope the doctors can save her!

I wish I knew how to pray.

The title of my history project is, “Mary's Story: An Example of How the Broad Forces of History Affect the Private Lives of Individuals.” The title is Mr. Dunlop's idea. I am using quotes from Mary's stories—not
everything
she said. Then I am adding quotes from other people, as well as newspapers, magazines and books. I have a time chart at the beginning:

September 1939—Beginning of World War II: Mary is an innocent six-year-old who will see many terrible things that will make her want to be a doctor. Her family is quite religious.

1945—Beginning of Cold War: Mary's family starts over again, like they did after World War I.

1956—Soviet troops invade Hungary: Mary works as country doctor.

1968—Soviets invade Czechoslovakia: Mary is raising her children and practising medicine in a big city. It is difficult to make a living because she is not a communist.

1980—Solidarity Uprising begins: Mary's children are teenagers. Mary and her children, like most Poles, agree with Solidarity.

December 1981—Declaration of Martial Law: Life is hard and dangerous. Food is scarce; wages
are low. Mary is widowed.

1989-91—Fall of communism in Eastern Europe: Mary's savings are gone. She has a poor salary and pension. She leaves for Canada and starts all over again to build a life.

1999—Experience with capitalism reveals problems with that system: Mary has been working as cleaner in Canada for four years full-time. She is reduced to part-time. She becomes ill.

The life within Hanna was fading when I met her. She was like a fallen bird. She had hit the window of mankind's indifference.

Yet, Hanna looked at me lovingly. She smiled at me. “Your young artist is very nice,” Hanna told Naomi.

Hanna said this as I stood beside Naomi. These were the only words she spoke in my presence. She said the words slowly and clearly in English, so I would understand.

Hanna thought that being an artist was an honorable career, not shameful. She felt me worthy of this honour.

I am grateful.

When the Solidarity movement is fighting for the freedom of Poland, it does not use guns. Instead, it uses the truth.

There are open-air performances where poetry is recited into loudspeakers. And people applaud because the poetry tells the truth about life. About how we are not free or equal. Communism is good in theory. It means equality for all. But communism is not good in practice. If you belong to the Polish United Workers' Party—that's what the communist party is called—you have a powerful position and an instant apartment. You have these things even though you do nothing. If you do not belong to the Party, you have nothing, even if you work hard all your life.

Corruption ruins any system—communist or capitalist.

People look out their darkened windows at night, and suddenly they see lights in other windows. The lights spell, “Solidarity!” Then the lights go out. Then they come on again in a different place.