A Drop of Rain (9 page)

“Don't get your hopes up for art college unless you plan on paying for it yourself or getting into debt with loans,” she said finally, instead of saying what she was really thinking.

“Dad has never missed a support payment, except when he was bankrupt,” I reminded her. “Dad told me that he will back me financially on whatever I decide to do. Once his business is going well, he will help me through art school.”

Mom didn't say anything more, but she frowned. Luckily, she had to go to work, and I had to go to school.
Otherwise we might have started arguing again.

After school I biked over to the pond behind the old power plant. The pond is full of garbage, but mallard ducks and Canada geese still flock there. So do trumpeter swans from the Wendake Wildlife Centre.

No sign of Steve. (Thumbs up.) No sign of She Wolf. (Thumbs down.)

Mom says I can't take her car for a weekend sketching trip to Point Pelee Park. The car supposedly needs repairs. Not true. She's just overly protective. Of me, not the car.

Meanwhile, I'm going to take a bus to Toronto to see some art galleries, like Mr. Speers suggested.

One day during the war, as I am walking along the road, I hear the air raid sirens. I jump into the ditch, lie down, close my eyes and wait for the whines. The enemy airplanes fly in Vs like geese. Usually three planes, called “Stukas”, fly together. As the Stukas swoop down, you hear a whine. As the bombs fall, you hear a whistle. As the bombs explode—boom!

But before I hear a whine, a voice inside my head says, “Not here!” So I jump out of the ditch, run into the field and throw myself down on the black earth. Just in time. Whine, whistle boom. Whine, whistle, boom. Whine, whistle, boom. Boom, boom, boom.

One bomb drops right where I had lain in the ditch! Boom! Dirt showers me like dry rain. There's a great big hole over there, but I am safe.

Another day, my brother gets into serious trouble. It's evening after dark, and Johnny is playing with matches near the forest on the bridge near our house. With a much older boy who should know better, Johnny lights match after match. The two boys drop the burning matches into the stream.

After my brother comes home, and we are getting ready for bed, Nazi soldiers burst into our house. They point their guns at us. Their leader orders us to stand against the wall.

“You are hiding Polish soldiers!” the leader says, pointing his gun at Mommy.

“No, we're not,” says Mommy.

“We don't believe you,” says the leader. “We saw their lights at the bridge near your house. They were signalling. We saw them.”

“Honestly,” says Mommy, standing against the wall with her hands in the air. “We are not hiding partisans. You can see for yourself.”

The soldiers keep pointing their guns at us. Elizabeth and I start crying. Johnny remains silent and still, staring at the soldiers.

Then, for some reason, the soldiers decide that they believe Mommy, and they go away without even searching our house.

After they leave, my brother starts to giggle. Then he explains that it was he and his friend, not Polish soldiers, who had been lighting matches near the bridge.

Grandpa takes his belt out of his pants. He whips my brother hard! My brother nearly got us all killed!

Then, one day, we are really hungry. A bomb hit our potato field, and Nazi soldiers stole all our other
food too. That day more Nazi soldiers come by, driving a herd of cows.

Grandpa knew the soldiers and cows were coming. A neighbour told him. Grandpa hobbled around as fast as he could, getting ready. Then he asked Mommy, Elizabeth, and Johnny to stay out of sight at the neighbours.

Grandpa leans on our gate as those enemy soldiers approach. He reaches inside his jacket, pulls out a small bottle, and uncorks it just as the soldiers go by with the herd of cows. He seems to take a drink from the bottle. I wonder what he's doing, because he's never done this before. Anyway, I can see his throat isn't moving, so he's only pretending to drink.

But I keep quiet and still, because he told me to. Grandpa picked me to come with him because I look so harmless. “Your mother is too angry, and Elizabeth is too beautiful, and Johnny is too mischievous,” said Grandpa, “so you'll do for today.”

As Grandpa is wiping his mouth and putting the bottle back inside his jacket, the leader of the soldiers comes up to him.

“Good day to you, sir!” says Grandpa very loudly in German. I know some words of German too, because now I hear that language almost every day. Grandpa understands lots of German words. He speaks the enemies' language almost as well as they do themselves.

Grandpa sounds very friendly when he speaks to the leader of the enemy soldiers. I think that is odd, because at home he doesn't sound at all friendly when he talks about the Nazis. But I keep quiet and still, because Grandpa told me to.

“Care for a drink?” Grandpa asks the leader. “Pure one hundred per cent Polish vodka. First class.”

“Where did you get that?” asks the leader, yanking the bottle from Grandpa's hand. He's a big blonde man in a grey uniform.

“Bought it in the village,” says Grandpa with a shrug. I know Grandpa isn't telling the truth, because I saw Grandpa filling the bottle this morning from a barrel he hid in the barn. But I keep quiet and still, like Grandpa told me to.

The cows don't keep quiet. They moo loudly, swat flies and make cow pies. They wish they were munching happily in a grassy field, instead of waiting hungrily on a dirt road.

“Good?” asks Grandpa as the leader takes a drink. “You can have the whole bottle.”

“You know we'd take it anyway,” says the leader, wiping his mouth and handing the bottle to another soldier.

Even though the leader shares the bottle with the other soldiers, he's not nice. He shoves Grandpa against the gate. Then he feels in all Grandpa's pockets for more bottles or for a gun.

“Sorry, can't help you,” shrugs Grandpa. “No more vodka. No more nothing. But I tell you what.”

“What, old man?” asks the leader.

“I see you need somebody to take care of your cows. I'll take care of them for you until you come back,” says Grandpa. “I've got hay in my barn and a good big pasture. I can't feed people with hay and grass, but I can feed your cows, and I can milk them. I've got nothing else to do, and my granddaughter can
help. Those cows look as though they need milking right now.”

“How do you know we've been ordered away and need someone to take care of our cows?” asks the leader, shoving Grandpa against the gate again.

“I just guessed,” shrugs Grandpa. “I see how hard you're driving those cows. Marching is not good for milk cows. You must be a city fellow, or you'd know that.”

The leader lets Grandpa go.

“All right, old man,” the leader says. “We'll leave the cows with you for a week, until we return. But they'd better be here when we get back, and they'd better be fattened up nicely on your hay and grass. Or else that scrawny little granddaughter of yours is chopped-up chicken feed.”

And here the leader raises his pistol and aims it at my heart. I stay quiet and still, like Grandpa told me to.

Those enemy soldiers leave their herd of cows with Grandpa and me. There are almost thirty cows! Too many for just our little barn and pasture, so we share them with the whole village! One cow for every family!

Grandpa is the boss of the cows, and the whole village takes very good care of them. Not for a week, but for several months. And do you know how much milk, sour cream and butter you can get from thirty cows? Enough for a whole village!

The whole village shares bowls, pails and separators, as well as cows. A separator is a machine that divides the cream from the milk.

And do you know how much cheese you can make from so much milk? Enough for a whole village!

Grandpa makes huge rounds of Swiss cheese. He pours the liquid cheese into wooden forms. Then he hangs the forms for a long time to ripen. When the cheese is ripe, he puts wax around it.

In front of enemy soldiers, Grandpa pretends he is stupid, but he is not. He knows how to do lots of things.

The whole village eats that cheese all winter. And is it ever good!

The beginnings of the paralysis appeared last spring, in early June. By the time I arrived during the July 1st holiday, the little rented room was a sea of soiled tissue paper, half-eaten food, newspapers and clothing. Hanna's sinking ship was the narrow bed from which she rose only to shuffle to the sink, the hot plate, the washroom across the hall, or the convenience store across the street.

There had been no telephone for several months. She couldn't afford the expense. That's why I had not known. There had been no communication. She could not walk to the phone booth on the corner. Stamps were too expensive. Anyway, she had nothing to say.

White, fluffy, cottony bedding for seeds from the poplar tree outside the window had begun to pile up on the window sill and drift into the room. Insects had built a castle on the ripped screen that had been removed for repairs and left leaning against a wall.

I insisted that she see a doctor. Why? She knew she was going to die. She hadn't seen a doctor in four years, since the lump had risen in her breast. What
was the use of fighting the disease? “Fighting the disease” is an absurd expression. Let death come. She was ready.

The world was too evil, she felt. She had lived through Nazism, communism and then capitalism. Any system could be evil if people made it so. Her two “adopted sons” had found no work. They had died. Now she wanted to die.

She herself had stopped looking for work when she realized how many young people were feeling hopeless because there were no decent jobs for them. The suicide statistics for young people in Quebec had mobilized her. After seeing the statistics, she set her pride aside and accepted welfare.

She had a plan.

The case worker at the welfare office was patronizing. He could not imagine how Hanna felt being forced to beg. Hanna was, after all, an art historian and librarian with years of professional experience. Furthermore, she had computer skills, language skills and practical skills. She'd taken every course available! She was willing to accept any job that wasn't illegal or immoral! She'd sew. She'd frame pictures. She'd wash dishes, scrub floors or pick fruit. She could not go on accepting financial help from me . . . even if that help barely kept her from starving on the street!

“You are over fifty years old, madame,” says the case worker. “It is difficult to find work after forty. One is out of date. Then too you are a foreigner. Where are you from? Poland? You have been here only ten years. It is difficult for a foreigner to adjust to Canadian ways. One is out of step.”

When the lump appeared, she was already a social activist. To herself she justified accepting welfare by actively contributing to the community. She worked with young people, especially students, teaching them to protest, teaching them that the system was wrong. One of her “adopted sons” was a poet. Another directed plays. She assured them that their activities were important.

“Expressing true feelings is important,” she would tell them. “The single, dissenting voice is important. Pain is meaningful and must be described.”

Hanna nursed her “adopted sons” as they died from AIDS. At the same time, she continued to help others: the dispossessed and betrayed. Eventually there was no division between herself and her vast, adopted family. For a while, she even lived among young drug addicts in a derelict building condemned for demolition. Strangely, no harm came to her. Or did it?

After both of her “sons” died, her heart seemed to burst from her chest. When I took her to the hospital, the doctor showed me how the lump in Hanna's breast had become a large open wound. The raw, diseased flesh looked like the heart itself emerging. Her own pain she had not described.

I found the following scribbled note in one of Hanna's boxes.

-Blockage of the circulation of information.

-Crude structure of society.

-Alienation and dispossession of a great part of the population.

-Socio-cultural underdevelopment and its consequences.

-Negative selection process (the misfits and socially unacceptable).

-Culture, art and literature exist apart from “real life.” The essential role of these elements is not recognized, and society cannot develop harmoniously and structure itself organically.