A Drop of Rain (16 page)

Back to the usual grind. Mid-terms this week. Enough committee work to choke a horse. Enough paperwork to . . . whatever.

Some good shots of the early snowfall.

Both boys are doing well in school. Their teachers were very positive during parents' night. Apparently the boys' school has the most problems of any in the city. The school brought in a Special Ed teacher full time last month for the rest of the semester.

“So many single-parent families,” said Jerry's Grade Six teacher, who surely knows that Jill and I are divorced. I guess I'm a decent father after all.

Sunday November 14, 1999

If it weren't for Mary, I'd quit this stupid job right away. Mary needs my moral support, and my physical help.

Mary says many people think cleaners are “nothing.” I say many people regard a cleaner as a machine. A machine is not human.

You finish cleaning a window. The next minute, a parent lets her kid smear the window with his sticky hands. You keep cutting your hand on the towel rack when you put the new rolls in. And the director is sure it's your fault, not the cheap design. You carefully put the mop away clean. But then some higher-up staff member, like the accountant or the social director, borrows it to clean up a spill. This well-paid, full-time person does not bother rinsing out the mop. So it is dirty when you have to use it again. Then the customers plug the toilets with sanitary pads, even though the sign says not to. So the cleaner fetches the plunger and plunges this disgusting stuff,
until the toilet stops flooding over. Plunging toilets is the janitor's job. But the janitor is busy with something else. So, to be helpful, the cleaner does it instead. Now the cleaner works extra time to finish her written-down cleaning quota, even though she is not paid for this time.

I am very worried about Mary. Often, towards the end of our shift, her lips get blue, and she gets chest pains. She says these symptoms are caused by the chemicals we use to clean windows and mirrors.

“I tell director we must not use so many chemicals, but he no listen me,” Mary says.

“Tell him how your lips get blue and you get chest pains,” I say.

“What for?” she says. “I already told him. He no listen to no old womans.”

“You should see a doctor about your symptoms,” I say.

“What for?” she snaps. “I
am
doctor.”

“Doctors aren't supposed to treat themselves, or their family and friends,” I say. “That's what Sarah says. Her father is a doctor.”

“I have no time,” she says. “I am starting from zero. When can I go to doctor?”

Mary tries to appear confident, but I think that she is worried about her health too. She is alone here in Canada, and our system seems cruel.

Sarah and I are becoming true friends. I told her I was angry at her for making me fail that biology test, and
for forgetting my audition for her band. After I did this, we had a so-called “heart-to-heart” talk, and Sarah apologized for being inconsiderate. She also said that her family is falling apart.

Sarah's father moved in with his secretary. Her brother moved in with a drug-pusher friend. Her mother cries all the time and blames her father for committing adultery and leading his son astray. Her mother also tells Sarah that Sarah is her “last hope”. Sarah thinks she (Sarah) is going to crack up if she doesn't move out too. She's not planning to go to Paris or New York now. She wants to move in with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend rents a house with three other guys here in Mapleville.

Curtis came over to our house for dinner last Saturday. He got along well with my mother, Joe and me. At first, Curtis mostly listened to everybody, but gradually he began to relax and talk.

At the dinner table, Curtis seemed interested when Joe talked about growing up without a father. Joe's father died when Joe was eight. Joe only had an uncle who was too busy with his business to pay much attention to him. That's why Joe is very careful to spend as much “quality time” as possible with his sons. Curtis nodded and looked sympathetic when Joe said all this.

Curtis seemed impressed when Mom told him that Hanna had devoted a lot of her time in her last years to caring for several young men with AIDS. He seemed
even more impressed when Mom told him that Hanna had been an art historian. He was grateful when Mom said she had lots of art books that Hanna had given her over the years, and that Curtis could borrow them. Curtis said there aren't many good art books at the Mapleville Library, and he has already memorized them.

After dinner, Joe and Mom went over to Joe's place to watch some intellectual videos. Mary visited with Hanna, and Curtis and I went to see
Tarzan
. After the movie, Curtis and I went for sundaes, and then for a walk. We talked for hours. He told me how the animators made
Tarzan
. I told him about how worried I was about Mary. He said that, unfortunately, there are no cleaning jobs available at the grocery store where he works.

Curtis talked more than he had on the plane. He even laughed. Curtis wants to be a visual artist. He would rather draw pictures than study academic subjects: that's why he failed Grade Twelve last year. Curtis is mostly a serious person, but he also appreciates humour, especially cartoons. Like me, Curtis has some problems at home. His father left him and his mother about two years ago. His father fell in love with another man, “came out”, and went to start a new life in Edmonton, but that didn't work out. Curtis loves his father a lot. He respects him as a brilliant guy who tries hard to be a great father. But Curtis finds it hard to forgive his father for leaving, and for not having much time for him right now. Curtis says he hates his mother's friend, Steve, who is an ignorant bully. Curtis says he doesn't usually tell people about his father being gay.

“Even though I'm not gay myself,” Curtis said, “I worry that if people know about Dad's orientation, they'll label
me
and make my life a lot more difficult than it already is. I just wish Dad had stuck around, so I could still do father-son stuff with him. We talk about everything—computers, birds, whatever. All Steve talks about is organized sports. He thinks every ‘normal' guy adores sports on
TV
. Personally, I like getting exercise, but I hate organized sports. Especially team sports. I'd rather bike, hike or canoe outdoors by myself.”

This was the best Saturday evening of my entire life. I
knew
Curtis was the right guy for me. My horoscope for Saturday said that I am “an attractive, warm-hearted person who is good with people.” I hope Curtis agrees.

Had a good time at Naomi's house.

Mary is difficult to understand, because her English is so bad. But she is nice.

So is Hanna, who said only one sentence to me. She is too sick to talk much.

Eva is a great cook and generous. She said I could borrow her art books any time.

Joe is a great guy. Hulking grizzly bear, but as gentle as a white-tailed deer.

Naomi is bee-yoo-tee-full!

Somewhere deep in the boreal forest, He Wolf howls.

“She Wolf,” he howls, “I woof you!”

Woo-oo-oo-oof!

I am sure I want to be a doctor. But sometimes I am not sure of myself. Am I good enough? Will my marks be high enough? Mommy and Grandpa can't afford to send me to medical school. I have to win a scholarship.

I do!

Then I am in medical school, and all we students have to work very hard. There are long hours in the classroom, long hours in the laboratory, long hours in the hospital, and long hours studying in our rooms. It is difficult to find time to eat and sleep, but I do. It is difficult to find time to have fun, but I do.

Mommy sends Johnny and me back to university with food parcels. Johnny is in engineering school in the same city as my medical school. We take care of each other.

I tell him that his girlfriend is seeing another man. I sew the buttons back on his shirts. He takes me to dances with his friends. He makes sure his friends are nice to me.

I don't have too much money, so I make my own dresses and do my own hair. I wear the same dress to a few parties, then I sell it to get money to make another dress. Also, I make dresses for the other girls.

I am sewing as I read a medical text. Read, stitch, stitch, stitch. Read, stitch, stitch, stitch. Read, stitch, stitch, stitch.

When we finish our medical exams, we want to celebrate. The other students say to me, “Mary, you don't drink, so you must guard the door. You must see that we do not go outside, shout on the streets and get into trouble.”

At this time in Poland, it was very dangerous to express your opinions of the communist regime publicly. No sooner had one war ended in Poland, than another had begun. As the Nazis fled, the Soviets invaded. After World War II, the Cold War. Now war was not about killing the body—unless we openly resisted. It was about killing freedom.

We medical students have to pass an exam about communism. About politics! I hate politics! This is ridiculous. Politics have nothing to do with medicine.

If we don't pretend to believe in communism, we must leave medical school. One student even goes to jail for mocking the system. One professor is sent to Siberia.

You know what it's like to be sent to Siberia? People are crowded worse than cattle in a box car of a long train. Everybody has to pee and poop in a pot in the middle of the box-car floor. There's no toilet paper. There's no privacy.

You have no change of clothes. You have no place to wash. You are dirty and stinking. Everybody is dirty and stinking.

Then, when you get to Siberia, there's not enough food. Just watery porridge, if you're lucky. In summer, there's hard labour on farms. In winter, there's severe cold—months and months in the deep freeze. And you don't have proper clothes to keep warm.

Often, of course, you die.

Stalin, who is the ruler now, is as bad as Hitler. Millions of people in his own country starve to suit his whims. Millions suffer.

Anyway, at our graduation party, the other students drink vodka, dance, sing and get louder and
louder in expressing their true opinions about politics. I don't drink. I never do. I lock the door of the house where we are partying, and I hide the key.

The other students are becoming aggressive. They are determined to go outside into the streets. They want to wake up the whole city by singing and shouting.

“Let us out!” they shout. “We want freedom
now!
”

They crowd around me and bully me.

“Give us the key, Mary,” they say. “We want the key
now!
”

“Just a moment,” I say. “I can't find the key. I don't remember where I left it. I'm looking for it. You go lie down and rest, while I look for it.”

Finally, I get all the girls lined up and resting on one bed. And I get all the boys lined up and resting on the other bed. And they all sleep safe and sound until morning.

Instead of going to jail, they all go off to different hospitals in different cities and towns all over Poland.

We begin our work as doctors.

Naomi seems to have “adopted” this boy Curtis, as well as Doctor Kowalska. Curtis is a nice boy, but I wish Naomi weren't so sudden and passionate in her likes and dislikes. I suppose she'll outgrow this wild intensity.

You can be “adopted” at any age, according to Hanna. Hanna adopted me in 1979, when I was a bit older than Naomi is now. She adopted me emotionally, not legally.

When Hanna adopted me, I was an emotional orphan.
My father had ignored me, my mother had never wanted me, and Grandmother Goralski had been severe and narrow-minded. I thought I had no feelings at all.

Actually, I had feelings of guilt, anger and despair. Only at that time, I didn't know I had those feelings. During Hanna's first few years in Canada, she stayed with my grandmother and me in Edmonton. One day Hanna and I learned that our father had died suddenly, before either of us had met him. (We had been intending to visit him in Colorado, where he lived. We were waiting until my Grandmother Goralski did not need constant care.) Typically, Hanna was more concerned with my feelings than with her own.