A Drop of Rain (7 page)

Mom storms off to her room and slams her door.

When my oldest brother and sister died, Mommy didn't know about medicine, because she was very young, not much older than Agnes is today. But now Mommy knows, because she's more than forty. Almost fifty!

This morning, I went with Mommy to gather plants in the forest to make medicine. The plants were ready for picking, and Agnes was too busy getting ready for her birthday party, and Elizabeth didn't want to get dirty, and Johnny was helping Daddy in the barn. I like running through the fields and the forest, looking for exactly the right leaf or flower. I'm good at this, and I don't care if I get dirty. Mommy says I can go with her all the time now, instead of Agnes or Elizabeth.

I don't care if Elizabeth says my socks are falling down, and my hair is messy. I don't even care if Agnes says I am a beast.

Elizabeth has beautiful, natural, golden curls. She is perfectly composed. She always looks in the mirror before she greets her guests, because that is what Agnes does. Agnes has beautiful, natural, golden curls too.

My hair is plain brown and straight. Elizabeth says I have “piggy piggy piggy pig tails.”

Agnes isn't ready yet when her gentleman friend comes to the front door. He comes far too early for the party, yet he thinks he's smart because he's already at medical school. Agnes is going to go to medical school next fall. She's going to graduate from high school next week. So this is a party for her birthday and graduation. It's very important.

When Agnes's gentleman friend knocks on the front door, Agnes knows who it is because she peeks through the window. She says to me, “Go and tell him I'm not here yet.”

I run to the front door and open it.

“Agnes says to tell you she's not here yet,” I shout. Then I slam the door shut.

“B-e-a-s-s-s-t!” Agnes hisses at me, when I run back to tell her what I told him. Agnes has already heard what I told him, and she doesn't like it. I don't know why.

I don't care what Agnes says. I'm already learning about medicine with Mommy, so I'll be a doctor too.

And I'll be floating through the birch trees in the middle of the night, like Agnes. It looks magical down there. The lanterns are lighting up the white trees and the white dresses. It sounds magical down there too.
The music on the gramophone is romantic. Agnes's gentleman friend comes back at the right time. He brings her a present. The other ladies and gentlemen come too, and now they're all dancing. Dancing and dancing through the magical night.

I'll dance like that some day too. I love dancing, and I'm very good at gymnastics and other sports. That's what Daddy says. He says it's amazing how I can climb to the very top of the trees to pick apples. I'm like a squirrel, he says. And I'm as fast as a rabbit.

But you know what happens after that night of Agnes's party? The very next day, after they clear away the lanterns, the wind begins moaning in the birch trees. The white birch trees begin moaning like ghosts. Grandpa comes to visit us that day. The moaning goes on and on. It gets louder and louder. Grandpa shakes his head and says: “There will be war again soon. You mark my words.”

Agnes does not go to medical school that fall, or ever. War comes on the first day of September. Nazi Germany invades Poland. And soon Agnes is sent away to Germany to work like a slave in a factory, building bombs and making bullets. I do not see Agnes again until she is an old woman. She lives in Canada then, and she comes to visit me in Poland. We laugh together about what I said to her gentleman friend, and what she said to me. But that is much later. A whole lifetime later.

Meanwhile, that spring and summer and fall long ago, I help Mommy gather leaves and flowers and bark. I help her make medicine. It's a good thing I do, because when the war begins, the enemy is wounding
our friends, neighbours and relatives. And all the doctors and pharmacists have gone away with the Polish army, or else they have been killed.

My Daddy has also gone away with the Polish army, and my Grandpa has come to live with us.

I help people, like Mommy does. One night before the village doctor goes away, I am visiting a neighbour lady. She swallows eye medicine by mistake, because she thinks it is her heart medicine. She wants to ask the doctor what to do.

The lady says to me: “If I die on the way, and I am alone, no one will tell my family what happened to me. I'm big and fat, but you're thin and small. No one will notice you, Mary.”

So I go with her.

Soldiers go by on patrol as we creep along. I hear the squeaking of their heavy boots as they march along in the snow. We press ourselves into a hole in the fence, and the soldiers pass without seeing us.

Finally, we reach the doctor's house. The lady knocks, but the doctor will not open his door.

It is very dangerous to open your door at night.

Through the closed door, the lady explains her problem, and the doctor says that the medicine the lady swallowed will not hurt her.

“Humph!” the lady says after we get back safely to her home. “I should have asked your mother! She lives closer, and
she
would have opened her door!”

I am Mommy's helper. She takes me with her when she delivers food and medicine to poor people. We have to go at night because the enemy will see us during the day.

“How will we find our way?” I ask Mommy.

“By the moon on the snow,” says Mommy.

And now it's spring again and warm. Soon we'll start looking for plants and bark.

A man with a terrible leg wound comes to our house. The wound looks horrible. It is full of pus.

“It is infected,” Mommy says to the man. “I have no medicine left, but I'll reopen the wound to drain. Then you go lie in the sun.”

While the man is lying there, our dog Bear comes and licks the wound. The infection disappears, and the wound heals in a few days.

“Dogs have natural medicine in their mouth,” Mommy says.

There is a second photograph album—mine. Of course, it is also precious. In my album, there is only one photograph of Hanna in Poland. She is wearing a red blouse that I gave her. The blouse has white suns coming out from black clouds.

There are some photos of Hanna and I together in Canada. We are standing side by side in a camera store, not saying “cheese.” We are sitting side by side in chairs, looking at a lake. We are sitting side by side on a bench, enjoying a park.

I keep looking at these beloved pictures to search for clues as to when and why Hanna became ill. When did she lose hope? What was the objective reality that caused her to become physically and mentally ill?

Increasingly, we saw each other only during
vacations. In the past four years, I have gone to Montreal without Naomi. Hanna was unemployed for a long time, and for a long time she refused to take welfare, so she had no reserves. I gave Hanna as much money as I could, and I stocked her cupboard with non-perishable groceries.

Hanna and I had grown apart. We lived about six hundred kilometres from each other. We had separate friends, separate activities, separate goals.

This is natural after a child has grown up—even an “inner child,” which is what I was with Hanna. Also, I guess I was rebelling a little. I resented Hanna's saying I was becoming too materialistic. I felt I was doing what I had to do, laying a base for my financial security, for Naomi's future. How can you raise a child on the wages from part-time or temporary work?

But Hanna and I remained vitally connected. We talked on the telephone often. I told her about my work problems, my babysitter problems, my child problems. Her few words—with me she was always a listener, not a talker—were always the right words. A stranger herself, she guided me through this strange land. Truly, she was like a mother to me. A wise woman.

There is a photograph that I can hardly bear to look at. It was taken after I started to work at the college, study for the Master's degree, and go out with Joe. In Hanna's eyes, there is terrible grief and exhaustion.

The mental illness grew slowly. There were little signs of it for several years.

She began to claim that people were following her.

She also claimed that, when she was attending a community college in Montreal, someone poured chemicals on her from above. She claimed that, when she was getting off a bus, someone jabbed her with a needle. “Maybe the needle had AIDS in it,” she said.

The person sitting beside me on the bus to Montreal was a spy, she claimed, even though she herself had not been on the bus. The police were out to get her, she claimed, so they would try to get me. The police got a young friend of hers at the college, she claimed, because the young friend tried to help her.

At the time, I thought her claims were nonsensical. I thought they were symptoms of illness.

“This is paranoia,” I said to Hanna. “These suspicions are crazy. This is not Nazi Germany. This is not Stalinist Poland. This is modern Canada. You worry too much. You are not eating right. You are identifying with your mother. You should see a doctor.”

She would not talk in her apartment. This was not new. This was a holdover from the past in Poland, when the apartment could be “bugged” with listening devices. When we went outside, and she did begin to talk, the words became crazier and crazier.

“There is a conspiracy,” she would say. “Multinational companies, drug companies. Capitalism is as bad as Nazism. I went to the hospital, and I saw that they just leave people in the hallways to die. I met my young friend there, my first adopted son. I kidnapped him from the hospital.”

“The hospitals are overcrowded,” I would say. “That's all. You need help. You
need a doctor. You need a decent job. I found you a job near where I work, but you wouldn't take it. Why?”

“I don't need help,” she would say. “I must stay here. I must stay with my people.”

“Maybe you should go back to Poland,” I would say. “Maybe you would feel better there. Your difficulties in Canada are driving you mad. That horrible job sewing in the garment district—what happened? Did someone hurt you? Why won't you talk about it? Why didn't you tell me?”

“Nothing happened,” she said.

“But after that you were never the same,” I said.

“The job with the ‘artistic pictures' was just as bad,” she said.

“You didn't tell me about that either,” I said. “You are always trying to protect me. You should have asked me what ‘artistic pictures' means here. How could you know they were making pornographic calendars?”

“Nothing happened. I left as soon as I saw what they were doing.”

“
Something
happened!
Something
is wrong with you! This has come from the past. This is not Canada today. You need help. Let me get help for you.”

“The doctors are in it too. You can't trust them. I can't leave my people. I belong here. I belong among the poorest of the poor. Young people here have no hope for a decent future. I have seen the suicide statistics for young people.”

“We are in a new society. Canada is very different from Poland. We can't judge what is happening here. We just need to concentrate on ourselves, on putting down roots.”

“I am staying here in Montreal. In the poorest district. These are my people. The poorest French Canadians are my people. The young, the unemployed, the sick are my people. Maybe I can do something here.”

Finally, I went to my own doctor in Mapleville to get advice about Hanna. My doctor is an English Canadian. He is one of these typical doctors who is finished with you in two minutes, because he's processing one hundred patients a day. I made an appointment for myself for a complete checkup, so I'd have a whole ten minutes. I spent my time describing Hanna's symptoms.

“It is very difficult for me to judge your sister's condition without examining her,” my doctor commented. “Then too there are cultural differences. My initial impression is that she has some sort of Christ complex, but don't quote me on that. I mean, she thinks she has to behave like Christ. Anyway, here in Canada it is difficult to commit a person to a psychiatric hospital without his or her consent. The only way one can do this is by proving that the person is going to harm himself or someone else. And that ‘harm' has to be serious . . . like suicide or murder. Has your sister attempted suicide? Don't forget that you need irrefutable proof, such as evidence from a police officer or social worker. Can you take a policeman with you next time you visit her?”

I couldn't take a policeman, of course, because Hanna was so paranoid about the Quebec police. And my French wasn't good enough that I could seek a social worker in Montreal.