Kalyna's Song Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Book and Copyright Information

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part 1: Dauphin

  Part 1: One

  Part 1: Two

  Part 2: St. Paul

  Part 2: One

  Part 2: Two

  Part 2: Three

  Part 2: Four

  Part 2: Five

  Part 2: Six

  Part 2: Seven

  Part 2: Eight

  Part 3

  Part 3: One

  Part 3: Two

  Part 3: Three

  Part 4: Swaziland

  Part 4: One

  Part 4: Two

  Part 4: Three

  Part 4: Four

  Part 4: Five

  Part 4: Six

  Part 4: Seven

  Epilogue: St. Paul, 1992

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Kalyna’s Song

  lisa grekul

  © Lisa Grekul, 2003

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Edited by Geoffrey Ursell

  Cover and book design by Duncan Campbell

  Cover photo: “Portrait of Woman” by Shannon Mendes/Masterfile

  Author photo by Janis O’Neill

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Grekul, Lisa, 1972—

  Kalyna’s song / Lisa Grekul.

  ISBN 1-55050-355-3

  I. Title.

  PS8563.R446K34 2006 jC813’.6

  C2006-905172-0

  This publication has been funded in part by the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko, with the assistance of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Saskatchewan Provincial Council.

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Government of Canada through Canada Book Fund.

  Available from: Coteau books, 2517 Victoria Avenue, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada S4P 0T2

  www.coteaubooks.com

  For Auntie Sophie, and in memory of Auntie Jean and Uncle Sam.

  PROLOGUE:

  Swaziland, 1990

  When I board the plane in Manzini, the sky is about to burst. For the first time in months, there are clouds, dark grey and heavy with rain. The drought is almost over. You can feel it in the air, see it in the faces of the people milling around the airport. They’re ready for the rain. They know that it’s coming.

  I want rain before I go, so that when my plane rises and veers west I can look down on the countryside and watch it come to life again. When I arrived in Swaziland, almost a year ago, everything was green and lush. Humid enough that my T-shirt stuck to my back the moment I stepped onto the tarmac. So different from the winter that I left behind in Alberta. Mom and Dad tell me that they’re having a cold, dry December. These days, the temperature in St. Paul is minus twenty, minus twenty-five, with hardly any snow. They’re bringing my winter coat with them to the airport in Edmonton, and my felt-lined winter boots. I don’t want to think about stepping into that deep freeze. I’m not ready to leave.

  Of course, I can’t change my mind now. Even if I could, I’d only gain a few more days – a few weeks, at the most – in Africa. Sooner or later, I’d have to make my way back to Canada. Students who go to United World Colleges on scholarship are required to return to their home countries once they’ve finished their studies. We’re supposed to teach people about what we learned, living together with other students from around the world, from all different races and religions. I’m supposed to spread the word about peace and love. Like a missionary, but without the Bible.

  Maybe I will, eventually. First, though, I have to get through the funeral. Then I have to decide what I’m going to do with myself at home. My plans have changed so much over the past few days, over the past twenty-four hours, I feel like I’m in a tailspin. After final exams and graduation, I was going to backpack around South Africa with Rosa. My flight home was booked for mid-January, not late-December. And I wasn’t going to stay in Canada. Not for long, anyway. I was going to bend the UWC rules – stay home for a while, then leave again. I have all the application forms for universities in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Rosa and I both wrote away for them. We were planning to meet again.

  As the plane starts easing down the runway, I lean my forehead on the window, pressing my nose against the glass. Within minutes, we’re airborne. I keep my eyes on the ground, trying to memorize everything that I see. The hangars around the tarmac, the other airplanes. The car park outside the airport, and the road that leads from the airport to Manzini. I thought that I might see the college one last time, but the clouds are too low and too thick. After awhile, I can’t see much of anything.

  Then a flight attendant appears at my side, to see if I’d like a drink. I ask for some tissues. My supply of Kleenex has run out.

  At least I don’t have to sing at the funeral. I can sit in a pew like everybody else, and I don’t have to bite my bottom lip to stop myself from breaking down. For as long as I can remember, since I was a little kid, my family has made me sing at birthdays, anniversaries, retirement parties. At weddings and prayer services. I’m not allowed to sing at funerals, though. Not funerals that are held in the Orthodox church, at least. In the Orthodox church, only the priest can sing, and the cantor, and the choir that sits in the loft above the congregation. It’s just as well. There are no instruments in the Orthodox church, so even if I could sing – even if I wanted to sing – I wouldn’t be able to accompany myself on the piano or the guitar. And I don’t like to sing a cappella.

  But I can’t say it doesn’t bother me that I won’t be singing at my cousin’s funeral. Kalyna loved my singing, more than anyone else. At family gatherings, whenever I stood up in front of the crowd, she made sure that she was in the front row, up close to the microphone. She knew all the words to the songs that I sang, especially the Ukrainian songs. Sometimes she sang along with me, clapping and swaying in time to the music. The truth is, I should be singing at her funeral. She would want it that way.

  The problem is that she’d also want her funeral to be in the Orthodox church.

  My parents hardly ever took Sophie, Wes, and me to their church, the church that they grew up in, and I’m glad. Szypenitz church is dark and musty. In the summer, it’s stifling hot; in the winter, you can see your breath. It always smells bad, though. Like mothballs and incense. Father Zubritsky is crazy about incense. His services go on forever, and by the time he’s finished the church is hazy with smoke. I’m not looking forward to the incense at Kalyna’s funeral. Just thinking about it makes me dizzy, and sick to my stomach.

  Yet, for some reason, Kalyna liked being in church. I used to watch her at weddings, the way she listened to Father Zubritsky, her eyes fixed on him. It’s strange how well-behaved my cousin was in church, how at home she felt there. But then Kalyna wasn’t like other people.

  Mom and Dad say that Kalyna used to be normal, when she was growing up, and even after she got married, for the first few years. I never knew her then. Auntie Mary, Kalyna’s mom, is my mother’s oldest sister. In fact, Auntie Mary is almost twenty years older than my mother. When Kalyna was born, my mom wa
s seven years old. So Kalyna was more like a cousin to Mom than a niece; more like an aunt to me, really, than a cousin.

  Except that she never acted like an aunt. Most of the time, she acted like a little kid. We had to babysit her, basically, because she’d wander away if no one was watching. For a long time, I was embarrassed to be around her, and scared, too, of what she might say or do in front of other people. Kalyna used to wear silly outfits. Clothes that didn’t match, plastic flowers in her hair. Cheap rubber flip-flops and shiny costume jewelry. You couldn’t count on her to follow a conversation properly because she was constantly drifting in and out of her own crazy world. Sometimes she’d forget where she was, and who she was with. Out of the blue, she’d ask, “Who are you? What’s your name?”

  I used to remind her that we have the same name. Kalyna and Colleen. Hers is the Ukrainian version of mine; mine, the English version of hers.

  We had the same name. Past tense.

  In the future, though, no matter what happens – no matter where I go, or what I do – when I think about my time in Africa, I’ll always think about Kalyna. Before I left Edmonton, bound for Swaziland, she was the last person to say goodbye to me in the airport. Now I’m coming home to say goodbye to her.

  The plane touches down in Johannesburg right on time. Once I get through passport control, I’ll head straight for the British Airways departure gate. Then I’ll leave Africa behind me. Not just Swaziland, but all of Africa.

  Standing in line at the security check, I sift through my backpack, making sure that my passport is with me, my visa to get into and out of Jan Smuts Airport, my plane ticket. All of my important papers are tucked into my book.

  I bought the book in Paris, on a stopover during my trip to Swaziland. It’s a book filled with blank pages, like a diary. My plan was to write in it all year and then give it to my parents, and my sister and brother, so that they could see what it was like for me at the college. But I only wrote in it during my flights to Swaziland, and for a few weeks after I arrived. After that, I got too busy. I couldn’t keep up. Flipping through the book now, I’m embarrassed. I wrote everything in code, to hide my words from Siya, the Swazi guy who was sitting next to me on the planes from Paris to Johannesburg, Johannesburg to Manzini. And I wrote such silly things. I can’t show it to anyone, least of all my family. Mom and Dad would laugh. Sophie and Wes would howl. I’m tempted to tear out all the pages that I’ve written on.

  But I have a better plan.

  Yesterday, after I heard the news about Kalyna, I went down to the music room at school. I was supposed to be finishing my final project of the year, my essay on Ukrainian folk music. Instead, though, I got to thinking about Kalyna’s funeral, and my friend Rosa, and my old piano teacher, Sister Maria. And I started to write a song for all of them. The song should go in my book, I think. When I get home, I’ll paste it onto the pages that I filled with my writing. So the writing will always be there, underneath the music, only no one will be able to see it. That’s how the song works, after all. In layers. One voice on top of another voice on top of another. If you dig deep enough, there’s an embryo of a melody at the centre of it all that ties the song together.

  In a way, the embryo is me, and as the melody changes and grows, it tells my story, better than words. I don’t know if Kalyna would understand the song, but maybe that doesn’t matter. She’d like it anyway. She’d love it.

  She’d probably sing along.

  Part 1: Dauphin

  One

  The festival in Dauphin, Manitoba, begins with a parade of competitors from across the country. Our dance club has known about it for months. It’s like the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. All of the festival dancers, singers, and instrumentalists gather at noon on the steps of City Hall. There are official welcome speeches and opening remarks, and then the whole crowd marches toward the festival grounds. Dance groups walk together, carrying flags and banners to identify themselves, and where they’re from. Our mothers have worked for weeks sewing an enormous blue banner on which they have stitched our dance club’s name – in English and Ukrainian – with white thread. The banner says

  Desna – Disna • St. Paul, Alberta

  Our MLA gave us one hundred and twenty miniature Alberta flags. At eleven-thirty, with each of us waving two tiny Alberta flags, the Babiuk twins holding each side of the banner, we’re a sea of blue. A proud sea of Alberta blue.

  One of our chaperones, Mrs. Demkiw, had the idea to come early – to make sure we got a good spot in the parade, near the front. She insisted that we arrive at City Hall before noon. By twelve-thirty, though, when no other dancers have arrived, we’re starting to get nervous. Mr. Demkiw runs up the steps to City Hall. There are festival posters pinned up on either side of the doors to City Hall. Join Us in Dauphin for Canada’s National Ukrainian Festival, August 1-6, 1984. But the doors are locked. The dancers, all in full costume, get restless. It’s hot in Manitoba – hot and humid. The girls waste no time peeling off their velvet vests and headpieces. Their noses bead with sweat, their makeup runs in the heat of the midday sun. The Babiuk twins develop matching wet stains under their arms. My little brother Wes whines to Mom that he’s thirsty. If I were a bit younger, I’d whine too. My cousin Kalyna is the only one who doesn’t look wilted in the heat. For once in her life, she’s dressed just right for the occasion – short shorts, and a cotton halter top.

  All of the adults are worried – the Demkiws, the Farynas, the Yuzkos, and my parents. While the men gather to discuss the situation, rubbing the sweat from their foreheads with handkerchiefs, the women try to find shade for the dancers under various trees around City Hall. The chaperones decide that we’ll wait until one o’clock and then reassess the situation. Tammy and Tanya Yuzko and my older sister Sophie say that they’re going to die, over and over again. Tammy and Sophie are both fifteen. They’re always together. Tanya and I are best friends too. Even though we’re two years younger than our sisters, and in different dance groups – they’re Seniors, we’re Intermediates – we all hang around together at dance competitions and performances.

  “I’m going to die of sunstroke,” says Tanya.

  “I’m dying already,” says Tammy.

  “Colleen,” says Sophie, “this is worse than death.”

  I chose not to wear a costume today because I’m not actually dancing in the festival. At a pre-Dauphin dance rehearsal, I injured my knee. I’m still competing – in the singing competition – but, technically, I’m not part of Desna. Mom entered me in the Women’s Vocal Solo Category. I’m on my own here.

  But I feel sorry for the dancers. Most of them, anyway. Carla Senko, one of the girls in my dance group – who is also in my class at school – looks as though she’s about to faint from the heat. I take some pleasure in watching her suffer. We don’t get along. We’ve never been friends. Carla is a bully and a boss. A know-it-all. She’s pushy and mean – and still, somehow, the most popular girl at school and in Ukrainian dancing. If Carla drops from sunstroke, I might just smile and look the other way. Boh ne be bu kom, as my mother would say. God doesn’t hit with a stick.

  At a quarter to one, one of the guys from the Senior group marches over to the chaperones and says, “If you don’t get us out of here, we’re hitchhiking home.”

  That’s when the parade of dancers arrives. Out of nowhere. They descend on us like a thundercloud, like a hailstorm. Like a plague of locusts. The Volya dancers from Saskatoon, Trembita from Sudbury. They come dancing and singing. Vancouver’s Dazhboh Ensemble, Kamloops’ Skomorokhy Ensemble. Hordes of them, hundreds of them, smiling and laughing. Sopilka, Kateryna, Vesna, and Dumy. All the Ukrainian dance groups from every corner of the country. The parade started as it always starts, at the festival grounds. The participating dancers marched as they always march, toward City Hall. The Demkiws misunderstood. They got their wires crossed. Everyone else got it right except us. We’re the laughingstock of the festival.

  There isn’t time, th
ough, to dwell on our mistake. Our first dance group competes at three o’clock on the mainstage. We have to collect ourselves. Regroup. The chaperones call us together for a pep talk before the competition begins. They tell us to hold our heads high. So we missed the parade. So what? The dancing is what matters.

  By three o’clock, the festival grounds are alive with people – dancers milling around in groups, all in full costume, old people with walkers and canes, the odd wheelchair. Moms and Dads, little kids, babies. A few teenagers holding hands. They all carry festival programs with them; some carry umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun. Most of the competition is held on stages under tents, but sometimes there isn’t room under the tarp for the whole audience. Mothers spread sunscreen on the arms and legs of their children.

  As I make my way toward the stage to watch our first dance group compete, the Senior Girls, I hear applause in the distance, a voice making an announcement over a loudspeaker. Two old women sell pyrohy and kolbasa from inside a trailer that’s been converted into a portable kitchen; polka music blares from a ghetto blaster beside their grill. The sign over their trailer says Baba’s Best. Seven dollars for a half-dozen pyrohy, a chunk of sausage, and a pop. There’s a long lineup outside the window of the trailer.

  My parents are sitting in the bleachers with Wes and Kalyna. Sophie is offstage with the other Senior Girls, all in Lemko costume, all waiting for their music to begin. I don’t want to sit next to Kalyna, but she’s saved a seat for me, so I have no choice. Wes doesn’t mind Kalyna because he’s too young to know that there is something wrong with her. Sophie and I know the truth, though. Kalyna is weird. We never know how to talk to her, what kinds of things we should say. There’s no way to predict what planet Kalyna is on; she randomly selects the stuff she talks about. Now that I’m sitting next to her, I want to move. I’m scared of her. She might drool, or touch me.