Two

By the time we touch down in Swaziland, Siya knows half a dozen words and phrases in Ukrainian. Hello, Dobryden. How are you? Iak sia maiesh? Merry Christmas, Happy Easter. Khrystos rodyvsia, Khrystos voskres. Cookies, korzhyky. Ia pechu korzhyky. I bake cookies.

In return, Siya teaches me Swazi words, and how to act when I’m with Swazi people. Once we arrive in Swaziland, Siya is back to his old, know-it-all self again.

“Remember,” he says, as we make our way across the tarmac, “Swazis will greet you all the time. Nearly everyone speaks English, at least in Mbabane and Manzini. But, nonetheless, wherever you go, they’ll greet you in SiSwati. You must greet them back in SiSwati. It’s the custom. They say, ‘Sawebona.’ You say, ‘Yebo.’”

Siya drags out the vowels of the SiSwati words. Saweboooona. Yeeeeebo.

While Siya talks, I stare straight ahead, across the runway, over the airplane hangars, and up along the horizon into the hills stretched out before us. Dark, wet-green hills speckled with blue-grey rock and clusters of tall, leafy trees. I didn’t expect this. There were no photographs in the information booklet from the college, and when Dad talked about the different ecological zones in Swaziland, I didn’t really pay attention. I expected savanna. Dry, flat grassland, like in movies about Africa. Almost desert. The odd spindly shrub; a few baobabs with bone-thin, twisted trunks.

Siya is giving me a ride to the college. On the plane, right before we touched down, I told him that I was prepared to take a taxi – Dad said that there should be lots of taxis around the airport – but Siya wouldn’t hear of it. He said that the taxi drivers will know I’m a foreigner. They’ll know that it’s my first trip to Swaziland, and they’ll adjust their fare accordingly.

I see what he means – about everyone knowing that I’m a foreigner. It’s thirty degrees Celsius outside, and at least thirty-five degrees inside. No one else in the airport is wearing corduroy slacks or a heavy wool sweater. No one else is carrying a winter coat, lugging hockey bags across the floor of the airport.

No one else is so white.

There are dozens of other Caucasian people milling around me. The flight from Johannesburg was packed full of South Africans, all destined – according to Siya – for the casinos of the Ezulwini Valley. But the Caucasian South Africans aren’t white. Each is tanned to a particular shade of brown. Deep bronze-brown, dark olive-brown. Golden yellow-brown. My skin hasn’t seen the sun for months; it looks more blue than brown.

At the airport in Swaziland, it’s me who needs help now, not Siya. I need help carrying my hockey bags; help understanding what the Swazi officials say as they examine my residency permit and stamp my passport. Their accents are so thick, they might as well be speaking another language. Siya translates for me. He shows me how to shake hands properly with Swazi people, according to their custom. As I extend my hand, I’m supposed to clasp my left hand around my right wrist.

Siya has his own driver. The driver is waiting for him in the parking lot near the airport in a shiny new black Mercedes. Siya teaches me that it’s called a car park here, not a parking lot. He sits in the front seat of the car, on the left side, because the steering wheel is on the right. I sit in the back. As we ease out of the car park, I pull out my camera. And, on the way to the college, I shift from side to side, camera poised so that I don’t miss a shot. This is my first real glimpse of the Swazi countryside. I want photos of everything. Women walking with baskets on their heads, babies tied to their backs with blankets; groups of schoolgirls in uniform, chatting on the shoulder of the road. Men in traditional Swazi dress, and little boys herding goats along the ditches.

By the time we reach Mbabane, though, forty-five minutes later, I’ve taken a dozen photos of cows. Cows grazing in the fields beside the road, cows walking along the shoulder of the road. The cows are fascinating. They’re so skinny that I can count protruding ribs, and they have abnormally long, twisted horns growing out of their heads. Three times, Siya’s driver comes to a full stop to avoid hitting a cow. I think that maybe he should plough into the poor animals, to put them out of their misery. Around Mbabane, the cows finally peter out, and then the shopping malls start, complete with supermarkets and gas stations and hamburger joints.

As we approach Mbabane, Siya decides that a tour is in order. He says that I’ll be spending a lot of time in Mbabane, and I need to know my way around – where to open a bank account, who to see about cashing travellers’ cheques. I need to become familiar with the South African Trade Commission, so that I know where to apply for my next transit visa. He wants to show me the Ekhwezi Bar and Grill, a good place to hear live music, and Marco’s Restaurante, the best place in town for pizza.

According to Siya, it’s easy to find your way around Mbabane – though I’m not convinced. I think it’s going to take time for me to get used to the place. He shows me Allister Miller Steet – the main street of Mbabane, home of the Ekhwezi and Marco’s, and Barclay’s Bank. He says that Indingilizi, the only art gallery in town, is nearby. Allister Miller is the centre of all the action; at the south end of it is the Mbabane Market, a great place to buy cheap local crafts – soapstone carvings, wooden masks, swatches of the brightly coloured fabric – and west of the town centre are the two shopping centres, The Mall and the Swazi Plaza, with supermarkets, drugstores, ice cream shops, and clothing stores. Siya says that I should check out the shops in The Mall for upscale, locally made souvenirs – handbags, jewellery, t-shirts, and ceramics.

Siya points to all of the places he talks about, but they pass by so quickly – and there’s so much to see – I’m not sure that I’ll remember anything from our tour. Oncoming traffic makes me squeeze my eyes shut constantly because I feel like we’re on the wrong side of the road. Our driver seems reckless the way that he takes corners, ignoring pedestrians who are trying to cross the street. I see poor people everywhere, many of them old and crippled and begging. I know that Swaziland is a Third World country. Somehow, though, this isn’t what I expected to see. They’re dressed in rags. They have no shoes. Some are children who couldn’t be older than seven or eight.

As we make our slow ascent to Waterford, along the narrow road that winds up and around the Waterford hill toward the college near the top, I spot a mud shack with a thatched roof, an open cooking fire, two children chasing each other around their mother. My camera is lifted and I’m ready to take the perfect photograph – a bit of Swazi shrubbery framing the scene, the African sun setting in the background – but I just can’t snap the picture. The woman looks up as our Mercedes passes by; her children wrap their arms around her legs and stare at us. I feel ashamed, pointing my camera at them as though they were animals in a zoo. As though their poverty is something fascinating for my scrapbook.

Welcome, says the sign at the gates of the college.

WELCOME

Waterford Kamhlaba United World College of Southern Africa

we are all of the earth, which does not see differences of colour, religion, or race. we are ‘kamhlaba’ – all of one world.

King Sobhuza II

But the earth does see differences. It sees differences all the time. I’m seeing them too, for the first time.

•••

There’s nobody at the college gates to greet me, and nobody at the main office – except for a night watchman who says that everybody else is at dinner, and that I should make my way over to the cubies straight away. He’s not particularly friendly. I tell him that I don’t know what the cubies are, let alone where they are. I ask him to show me. But the watchman doesn’t seem too thrilled about the idea. He pretends that he doesn’t understand what I’m saying.

So I walk back to the car park. Back to Siya, who is waiting for me in the car for the word that everything is all right. Everything isn’t all right. I’m starting to dread the moment that Siya drives away. What will I do without him?

Siya talks to the night watchman himself, and he promptly finds out exactly what and where the cubies are. Cubie is another word for room. It’s short for cubicle. My cubie is in the senior girls’ hostel, not far from the main office. The watchman says that Siya can’t help carry my bags there, though. Unless he’s a student or a teacher, Siya isn’t allowed on campus. We have to say our goodbyes in the car park.

I feel my heart race. I don’t want him to leave. I’ve gotten used to him. I like him. How will I carry my bags by myself? How will I know where to go? How will I understand what people are saying?

After Siya arranges for the night watchman to help me with me bags, he gives me his phone number in Mbabane. Pressing it into my hand, he says that I can call him anytime. “We should get together sometime,” he says, “downtown.” He says that he’ll pick me up at school, anytime.

And then he shakes my hand – the Swazi way.

“Hamba Kahle,” says Siya. Goodbye, in SiSwati. And then, with a grin, “Do pobachennia.” Goodbye, in Ukrainian.

I throw my arms around his neck and thank him for everything.

“Thank you, Siyabonga. Siyabonga, Siyabonga.”

If I weren’t on the verge of tears, I’d probably find it funny.

•••

It isn’t hard to find my cubie once I know where the senior girls’ hostel is. Every cubie has a name on it. Inside my room, I find a copy of Official Rules and Regulations, a timetable, all of my textbooks, and a letter that tells me what to expect over the next few days. I’m welcome to spend this evening exploring the campus, figuring out my way around. First thing tomorrow, though, I have to be in the assembly hall for the headmaster’s opening remarks. Then classes begin. They don’t waste much time.

Or much space.

Each cubie is five feet by six-and-a-half feet, with a cement bed built right into the wall, and a mattress on top of it. Across from the bed, there’s a desk; beside the desk, a cupboard, also built into the wall. The cubie door doubles as the cupboard door, so that when the cupboard is open, the cubie is closed, and vice versa.

Settling into my cubie isn’t my first priority. Showering is. I’ve been wearing the same clothes since I left home. Shower first, unpack later. I can almost feel the water pelting my shoulders and back, rinsing away the last three days of traveling.

Are there rules against showering at this time of day?

Flipping through Official Rules and Regulations, I hear water running, voices echoing against tile. It must be all right.

But it isn’t all right. It isn’t all right at all. Two steps into the bathroom – soap, shampoo, conditioner, and razor wrapped inside my towel – I realize that I’m in trouble. There are no walls between the shower heads, and no curtains. Nothing to divide the shower area from the toilets and the sinks. Just one, big steamy room filled with wet, naked bodies. Three girls stand side by side under three jets of water, chatting as they lather their armpits and crotches. At the sink, two girls brush their teeth, bare-breasted, towels wrapped around their waists.

My heart races as I slip back into my cubie, shutting the door tightly behind me. I’m a private person. Showering is a private activity. What if I have my period? Other girls will see me. They’ll stare at my nude, menstruating body. I won’t do it. I won’t shower in a group. If I have to, I’ll get up in the middle of the night. I’ll shower at four in the morning, if that’s what it takes.

For now, a change of clothes will have to do.

Of course, nothing is left unwrinkled in my hockey bags. I packed my bags well over a week ago, so all of my clothes are creased. I pull out a pair of brown walking shorts, a white cotton t-shirt. The girls’ hostel is split into two corridors, connected by the bathroom, and each corridor, I discover, has a communal iron and a communal ironing board. Shorts and t-shirt in hand, I head down my corridor to press my clothes.

Another girl has beaten me to it. A girl in a beige bra and a long, black skirt. A black girl ironing a blouse with black-and-white polka dots.

My first new friend.

I decide that while she irons, I’ll introduce myself – find out her name, where she’s from. Then I’ll ask her if she wants to come with me to find out where we eat, and whether dinner is still being served. I’m starving.

Except that, by the time I reach the ironing board, the girl is walking away. She’s walking away quickly, though I can see that she hasn’t finished. Half of her blouse is still criss-crossed with sharp creases.

“Hang on!” I say. “Come back!”

The girl stops dead in her tracks. Slowly, she turns back toward the ironing board.

I point to the ironing board. “You can finish.” I smile.

The girl doesn’t smile back. Without a word, she lays her blouse again across the ironing board.

“Are you from here?” I ask, trying to be cheerful. “From Swaziland, I mean?”

The girl shakes her head as she passes the iron across her blouse.

“From South Africa?”

She nods, her eyes focused on the blouse in front of her. She’s shy, I think. I’ll have to do the talking.

“I’m from Canada. My name is Colleen.”

I wait for the girl to introduce herself. She keeps her head down, keeps ironing.

“What’s your name?” I ask, after several moments have passed.

“Thandiwe.”

“Thandiwe. What a nice name. Well, Thandiwe, I’ve been travelling for the last three days. My clothes are so wrinkled. Just look at these shorts. I don’t know how I’ll ever get them straightened out.”

Thandiwe looks up from the ironing board. “Shall I press them for you?” she says, quietly, whispering almost.

Why would she press my shorts?

“If you want,” she says, “I could show you how to press them yourself. It’s not very hard once you get the hang of it.”

“I’ve got the hang of it thank-you-very-much,” I say, laughing. “Who do you think has been ironing my clothes all my life?”

The girl shrugs. I stop laughing.

“Me!” I say. “I have. I’ve been ironing my clothes all my life!”

Thandiwe doesn’t seem convinced. She looks at me as though I’m lying. She must think that I have servants at home to do my ironing. I’m sure of it. But not all white people grow up with servants. We don’t all have nannies and maids and housekeepers.

Making friends here is going to be tricky, I see. Trickier than I thought. I’m going to need time to come up with a strategy.

I apologize for disturbing Thandiwe. I tell her that I’ll come back later. Slowly, I walk back to my room.

Staring at the walls of my cubie, I open a Mars bar. Thank God for the Mars bars Mom bought me. I start to plan where I’ll hang my pictures, and where I’ll set out the odds and ends that I brought from home. Above my bed, posters of my favourite singer, Joni Mitchell. Joni Mitchell in blue jeans and a tie-dyed shirt, sitting in a pile of straw next to her yellow acoustic guitar. Joni Mitchell close up – pensive – her hair long, hanging limp and straight. Joni Mitchell live, in concert. Eyes closed, mouth open.

On the back of my cubie door, with thumbtacks, I’ll pin up my print of Picasso’s “Three Musicians.” Beneath the Picasso, I’ll tape up the small paper Canada flag that I saved from last year’s Canada Day celebration in St. Paul. And around the burglar bars in my window, I’ll wind a red and green flowered scarf. The kerchief that I wore during my last year of Ukrainian dancing.

Unrolling my close-up of Joni Mitchell, I hear voices nearby. Voices chattering and giggling; girls on their way back from dinner. When I open my door, I see three girls walk into the cubie across the hall: three Indian girls in brightly coloured saris. I watch them settle onto the bed together, and light a stick of incense. Ribbons of smoke drift out of the half-open cubie door. It’s not like Father Zubritsky’s incense, though. The Indian incense is rich and spicy. I inhale deeply.

For a moment, I hesitate. I can’t just barge in, and push myself on them. I can’t exactly force them to be my friends. I could ask to borrow masking tape for my posters. A tea bag maybe. Some sugar? Then I remember my Canada pins. The tiny plastic Canadian flags that Mom gave me for Christmas. Gifts for the girls, icebreakers. Conversation starters.

Pins in hand, I knock on the half-open door. “Helloo-oo. Saweboooona!”

The giggling stops. One of the girls pokes out her head.

“Yes?”

“I’m your new neighbour!” I reach out to shake her hand. “Colleen Lutzak, from Canada.”

The Indian girl gives my hand a polite squeeze. Her name is Preeya. Inside her cubie, I meet Vijia and Samina. After the three girls thank me for the Canada flag pins, the four of us sit together.

I ask questions – “Where are you from? How many years have you been at Waterford? How many years have you known each other?” – and they give one word answers.

“Botswana.” “Seven.” “Seven.”

A few minutes later, I excuse myself, explaining to Preeya, Vijia and Samina that I’ve got bags to unpack, posters to put up. Back in my cubie, I hear one of the girls mimicking my voice with a thick drawl – “I’m your new neighbour from Canada.” Another girl says, “Shhhh.” The giggling resumes.

I try not to let the Indian girls bother me. I try to concentrate on decorating my room. But tears come to my eyes as I stare at my empty cubie, my blank walls. Up the corridor, girls gather outside their rooms, talking and laughing. Down the corridor, someone turns on a stereo. Outside my cubie door, two girls reunite for all the hostel to hear.

“I’ve missed you so much!”

“I’ve missed you, too!”

The two girls gossip about their travels over the Christmas holidays, they share news from home.

It doesn’t take me long to figure out that most of the girls have been going to Waterford for years. They all know each other. They’re old friends. For all I know, I’m the only new student in the senior class. I’ll never make friends here.

With tears in my eyes, I plunge my hands into my hockey bags. I pull out all of my jeans, t-shirts, shorts. My one-piece bathing suit, my two-piece bathing suit. Socks, panties, bras. Flannel pyjamas. In one of my bags, there’s an envelope of photos taken at home over the last year. I’ll put the pictures up around my bed, above my desk. In the spaces between Jonis, between Picasso and the Canada flag.

I know that I packed them. Photos of Mom and Sophie in the summer – Mom lifting her first batch of pyrohy from the outdoor clay oven that Dad had just built; Sophie at Mom’s side, holding back our dog Ralph as he jumps at the loaves of bread. Photos of Sophie, Wes and me posing one Halloween in matching green costumes. We went as three peas in a pod. Dad and Wes ice fishing at Blacket Lake in red and black Merc snowmobile suits, the two of them holding up thermos mugs of rum and coke, saying “Cheers” to the camera.

Where are the photos?

Panicking now, I turn the hockey bags upside down, shaking their contents onto my bed. A box of Tampax drops out, scattering tampons across the floor. Plastic cassette cases crack against the cement; my hardcover copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude drops onto Joni Mitchell’s torso, ripping a hole in her guitar. I don’t care.

When I finally find the envelope, I ruin half the pictures inside. Tears drip onto the photos, onto Ralph’s nose, onto Mom’s bread. Onto Sophie’s green hands.

My first night at the college is a rough one. I see every hour on the clock, hear every strange noise outside my window. I consider showering at three in the morning, but I don’t want to wake up the hostel, and I’m scared to walk around in the dark.

At a quarter to six, just as I’m nodding off, a troop of girls starts traipsing up and down the corridor, to the shower room and back to their cubies.

When I find my way to the dining hall, two hours later, and then the assembly hall, my eyes are bloodshot and swollen from lack of sleep, and from crying.

The assembly hall is a long, rectangular auditorium filled with rows of benches that slope down to a stage at the front. Dark red velvet curtains frame the stage; there’s a podium in the centre, and a piano in the wings. Everyone has an assigned area in the assembly hall – senior students at the back, junior students at the front, faculty on stage behind the podium. The headmaster, Mr. Harrington, starts the opening assembly with the Swaziland National Anthem, followed by a reminder that Waterford was founded in 1963 as a challenge to the separate and unequal educational systems in apartheid South Africa. He quotes King Sobhuza – the same words that are on the sign at the college gates. We are all of the earth which does not see differences of colour, religion, or race. We are ‘Kamhlaba’ – all of one world.

I sit with my books on my lap up near the top of the hall, looking down at the other students. They all sit in clusters – white students separate from black students separate from Indian students. Boys sit with boys, girls with girls. Boarding students apart from day students.

While Mr. Harrington runs through the college rules, I take notes in the book that I bought in Paris. Attendance at breakfast is mandatory. It’s served from 7:00 a.m. to 7:50. There is a compulsory morning assembly from 8:00 a.m. to 8:20. Classes from eight-thirty to twelve noon. Lunch until one, classes until three. Afternoon sport from three to five. Between five and six, more classes. Between six and seven, dinner. Study period from seven and nine. Check-in and lights out by ten-thirty.

Every other Saturday morning, we have classes. Four extra hours of classes every second weekend.

For a minimum of one term, all students are required to perform Community Service: four hours of mandatory volunteer work in Mbabane, eight kilometres from the college.

Walking, hiking, or jogging in the hills behind the school is prohibited, unless we have permission from the on-duty staff member. Swimming in the college pool is prohibited, unless we’re supervised by the on-duty staff member. Day trips to Mbabane are prohibited, unless we have permission from the on-duty staff member.

No loud music is ever allowed in students’ cubies. Boys and girls can mix in the common room only but never in each other’s cubies.

No smoking, drinking, or drugs, on or off campus.

It takes me a few days to find my way around campus – to figure out where I’m allowed to go, and when. All of the school buildings are situated around a central, quadrangular courtyard – the senior and junior hostels, connected by the dining hall; the classroom block; the assembly hall; the library; the sick bay; and the main office. We’re allowed in the dining hall at mealtimes, but not before or after. During class time, we have to be in the classroom block; between classes, we’re supposed to socialize in the courtyard. Most of the buildings on campus look the same. They’re made of whitewashed concrete and they have flat roofs. Teachers, though, live in round, thatched-roof rondavels built higher up in the hills, just past the playing field and the pool, a few minutes’ walk from the main part of the campus. We’re not supposed to go near their houses.

The school grounds are lush and green – there’s grass everywhere, and flowers I’ve never seen before with big, bright blossoms. A huge avocado tree grows right outside the senior hostel – complete with real avocados. The assembly hall is surrounded by poinsettias. I’ve only seen poinsettias in pots, at Christmastime. I didn’t know that they grew into trees. I can’t wait to tell Mom.

I’m not the only new senior student at Waterford, taking in everything for the first time. Six new students in total have come to Waterford on United World College scholarships. Six including me. All girls. We meet each other during the first day of classes, while we’re all stumbling around, trying to orient ourselves to our new surroundings. We all have History together. That’s where I learn their names and their nationalities.

Maria is a doll. Literally. She’s four foot nine, maybe four foot ten, with miniature doll hands and miniature doll feet. We spend five full minutes in our first history class trying to figure out where she’s from. “Eets-tseel-ay,” she says. “Eets-tseel-ay.” Italy? “Eets-tseel-ay.” Italy. “eets-tseel-ay.”

She points to her country on the globe in the corner of the classroom.

Ah. Chile.

One of the scholarship girls, Nikola, speaks five languages. Spanish, unfortunately, isn’t one of them. She’s German. Tall, stick thin, no shape. Her hair is blue-black but dyed, obviously, because there is a quarter-inch of blonde growing out along her centre part. Her real eyebrows are almost completely plucked away and she draws fake brows over her eyes with black pencil. Nikola only wears low-cut, sleeveless shirts. Short, tight skirts. Her legs are covered with fine, blonde hair.

Then there is Katja, who is from Poland, apparently. Listening to her talk in class, I would have guessed she came from England. In her voice, there’s no trace of a Polish accent – nothing remotely Eastern European – and her grammar is impeccable. Katja dominates the history class. She’s good with dates, good at analyzing events. A brain, actually. Katja is a total brain. She never takes her eye off the teacher, Mr. Afseth. Never talks out of turn. Never smiles.

Shelagh is bright, too. Bright in class. Bright blue eyes, bright red hair. But foul-mouthed and hot-tempered. Two or three times during each class, Mr. Afseth has to remind Shelagh to clean up her language. I don’t mind it myself. Shelagh is Irish and Catholic, from Belfast. Even when she’s swearing, I like to listen to the lilt in her voice, the rhythm of her language.

We almost never hear Hannah’s voice. She doesn’t say much, and she’s soft-spoken when she does speak. She sits beside me, alternately chewing her fingernails and the end of her pen. Her hair is black – real black, not dyed like Nikola’s. Sometimes Hannah takes a strand of it in her fingers and twirls. When I glance over at her paper, I see that she takes notes from right to left, in Hebrew. She’s from Israel.

After History, I try to strike up conversations with the other scholarship students. Three days in a row I try. Three days in a row, the girls brush past me, rushing to get to their next class. Almost all of them are taking the same subjects, so their schedules are identical. I’m the only scholarship student in my English literature class, and the only scholarship student in my French, environmental studies and economics classes. The exception is music. Katja, the girl from Poland, is in my music class. The two of us are the only scholarship students taking music. We’re the only senior music students, period.

It’s just my luck, getting stuck with Katja Malanowski three hours a day, five days a week. History isn’t so bad, because the class is big. As long as Katja isn’t talking, I can ignore her. Music is a different story, though. I can’t block her out. There are only two of us, after all, and we’re both piano students. I wish that she played a different instrument, or that she screwed up once in awhile. But she doesn’t. Katja understands theory inside and out, she’s got a good ear, her playing is impeccable – and she knows it. She struts into music class every day. When our teacher, Mrs. McBain – who is also the head of the Senior Hostel – asks us a simple question, Katja gives complicated, ten-minute-long answers. She’s never stumped, and she never second-guesses herself. She makes Siya look humble.

If she were friendly, music class would be better. Everything would be more fun. During the evening study periods, Katja and I are the only students allowed outside the hostel because we need to go to the music room to practise. We could walk across the courtyard together, quiz each other on ear-training and melodic dictation. Bring cups of coffee with us, and do our harmonic analyses together at the stereo. I try to get to know her before our music classes start, and when I run into her in the practice rooms at night. I ask her questions about her training, her piano teacher in Poland. She just doesn’t like me. And I don’t know why. It’s as though she can’t wait to get away from me. I annoy her.

In the evenings, after study period ends, I don’t always go back to the hostel. Sometimes I stay in the practice room to do extra work on my playing. I’m rusty. When I sit at the piano, I feel stiff and tense. I can hear Dr. Kalman telling me that I need to relax, but I can’t. I’m worried that I’ve lost my touch, and I won’t ever find it again. Scales don’t come easily to me anymore. My fingers don’t work properly. I can’t remember pieces that I used to play, that I used to have memorized. Katja is ten times the pianist that I am, and she never has to stay late in the practice rooms.

On my way back to my cubie for check-in and lights out, music books pressed against my chest, I have to pass by Katja’s door. I have to listen to the voices of the other scholarship students in her room, talking and laughing. After every study period, all the scholarship girls congregate in Katja’s cubie. They come out to the common room for check-in, but then they go back to her room and stay there long after lights out. I can hear them as I walk to the bathroom to brush my teeth, as I walk back to my cubie to go to sleep. Sometimes I linger outside Katja’s room, trying to work up the courage to knock. Katja likes the other girls. Why doesn’t she like me? I wish that her door would open on its own, magically, and that the girls inside would clear a space for me on the bed.

I’ve looked into Katja’s cubie before – once when she was in the shower, once when she was filling her cup with water from the corridor kettle. Her walls are plastered with maps of Eastern Europe, maps of Poland. There are black and white photos of Katja and a man – her boyfriend, maybe – in dark, heavy coats, holding hands as they stand next to a sign that says solidarnosc. Over her bed, she’s hung a poster of Lech Walesa. For a bedspread she uses a giant Polish flag, its red and white bands lying vertically down the length of her bed. Red and white, just like the Canadian flag.

Shelagh is the one who catches me one night standing outside Katja’s door, my toothbrush in hand.

“Don’t be shy now,” says Shelagh as she leads me into Katja’s cubie. “We’ve been wanting you to join us for days but you’re always off in the music room.”

Maria gets up from the chair beside Katja’s desk, motioning for me to take her seat. As Nikola hands me an empty ceramic cup, Shelagh reaches into Katja’s cupboard for a bottle of Polish vodka tucked under a pile of clothes. Katja and Hannah are stretched out on the bed, both smoking. Shelagh lights a cigarette, and offers me one. I shake my head.

While all of this goes on, the girls keep talking. The conversation never stops. It’s as though nothing has happened. Nothing at all. But I feel my spirits lifting like the smoke from Shelagh’s cigarette.

I don’t actually like vodka much – years ago, when Sophie and I were kids, we tried some of Dad’s vodka. We drank three glasses each before we started throwing up. It makes for a funny story, I think. I’m about to tell it, in fact, when the girls start talking about politics, sharing stories from home, about events that have changed their lives.

Nikola goes first. Her chin trembles as she describes the demolition of the Berlin Wall, the first time she set eyes on her aunts and uncles and cousins from East Berlin.

Katja breaks in, telling us about the last few months in Poland – the rise of the Solidarity party, the introduction of democracy. The celebrations in the streets.

Katja’s eyes are bloodshot. While she talks, she refills her cup with vodka.

“We never thought we’d see them,” says Nikola. “Never in our lifetimes.”

Maria places her tiny hand on Nikola’s arm.

“You’re lucky,” says Maria, playing with the crucifix that hangs around her neck. “My uncle was a member of a local trade union. My father’s brother. He disappeared a few weeks after Pinochet took over the country. We pray for him but –”

Shelagh nods. “I know. You pray and you pray. You wear your bloody knees out praying. And what comes of it? Twelve years ago, two cousins of mine were taken from their homes. ira sympathizers, both of them. They could’ve been my brothers, or my father. A few years later and they could have been my husband. For twelve years, I’ve watched my aunts and uncles pray for my cousins. I’ve listened to them pray. For twelve years. I used to pray with them. Got down on my hands and knees beside them. What good has it done? Let me tell you something: I’m not doing it anymore. I’m not praying anymore. I’ve bloody well had it up to here with prayer.”

Shelagh waves her hand over her head.

Hannah looks down at her hands. “You can’t stop praying. You just can’t. You can’t give up what you believe in, who you are. You’ve got to fight for it.”

“And you’re willing to do it?” says Shelagh. “You’re willing to fight?”

“I’ve got no choice. In Israel, military service is compulsory. For everyone, male and female. When I go back home to Tel Aviv, I’ll spend two years in the army.”

Katja downs the vodka in her cup, pours herself another shot. Her eyes settle on me.

There is silence in Katja’s cubie. Awful silence. Everyone in the room has spoken. Everyone except me. I look down into my cup, swishing the vodka clockwise, counter-clockwise, clockwise. In my mind, I run through my family’s history, searching for something horrible. Some kind of real oppression or injustice. Some tragedy.

If only we were – I don’t know – French Canadian, maybe. Then I could bring up the flq Crisis. If my family were Native then I could talk about self-government, land claims, racism. Reserves. Or if we were Metis. The Metis don’t even have reserves. For a moment, I consider talking about Sister Maria. But her story doesn’t have anything to do with me. I wasn’t there, I didn’t suffer. I can’t talk about Ukrainians in Canada, either, like I did at my scholarship interview. About how my parents had to stop speaking Ukrainian. It would sound silly. They didn’t disappear, or die. They weren’t killed. I have nothing to say. Nothing at all to contribute to the conversation.

Shelagh, I think, can sense my discomfort because she changes the subject. She starts talking about our classes and our teachers. The academic workload at the college. In order to graduate, each of us has to complete a big project, like a thesis. It’s called the Extended Essay, or E2. All of the teachers have been encouraging us to pick our topics early, to get started on our research as soon as possible.

Shelagh asks if anyone has thought about their E2.

As the other girls answer Shelagh’s question, my stomach turns. I don’t know what I’m going to write about. I have no ideas.

Hannah is going to examine the events leading up to the Beijing Massacre in Tiananmen Square, June 4, 1989 – from a feminist perspective.

Maria lets out shriek of approval. For her E2, Maria is going to analyze the role of Nicaraguan women in the Sandinistas.

At the moment, Katja is undecided. Her essay is going to have something to do with the fall of communism in Poland. Maybe an in-depth study of the Catholic church in relation to Solidarity. She’s not sure. Mrs. McBain wants her to write a piece of music instead of an essay. Music students can submit original compositions as Extended Essays. She might go with the music option.

Shelagh is going to analyze ira murals in Belfast. Nikola says they should work together. She wants to focus on the Berlin Wall – specifically, on the graffiti of the Berlin Wall. Graffiti as art, art as politics.

And we’re right back where we started.

“Let’s hear from our Canadian friend, shall we?” says Katja, lifting her cup in my direction. A Polish accent is creeping into her speech now, and she’s slurring her words a little. “You can speak, I assume?” Katja pours more vodka into her cup.

Shelagh touches my leg, gently. “Yes, Colleen. Are you going to do something related to music?”

“Music? Yes, music. Definitely music. Probably Ukrainian music.”

Without thinking, I blurt out the words – the first words that pop into my head – anything to fill the cubie with my voice.

“Really,” says Katja, staring me straight in the eye. “Ukrainian music.”

“You mean, classical music?” says Hannah. “By Ukrainian composers?”

“Sounds fascinating,” says Nikola. “From what perspective?”

“How will you do research?” says Maria.

The questions make me dizzy. Or maybe it’s the vodka. I squirm in my chair, trying to dream up a political angle. I think about Sister Maria’s work. I have all of her transcriptions in a box in my bedroom at home. Maybe I should do something with it. Pick up where she left off. But it would be a lot of work. Sister Maria spent years collecting music and writing it down. I don’t know exactly how she put the transcriptions together. Where would I begin?

“Ukrainian folk music,” I say, gulping down the rest of the vodka in my cup – for courage, to buy time. Ukrainian folk music is easy. Plus I know all about it, so this is safe territory.

“I’m going to study Ukrainian folk music in Canada.” The vodka burns in my throat. “Ukrainian Canadian folk music, I mean. You know. Over the last – well – from the turn of the century, I guess. To the present day.”

Shelagh gives me a nod of encouragement, Maria and Hannah smile. Katja yawns. I continue improvising, gaining momentum as I go.

“I’ll be looking at traditional songs, traditional instruments. Melodies and harmonic structures. Using songbooks. And recordings, to some extent. To understand how the old music has changed in the new world. In Canada, I mean. Under the influence – the oppressive influence – of dominant, Anglo-Canadian culture.”

I sit back in my chair, relieved. Relaxed. Not bad for spur of the moment. Not bad at all.

Katja leans forward.

“And,” she says, “you’ve chosen this topic because – ?”

“Because I’m Ukrainian.”

“Oh.” Katja crosses her arms over her chest. “I thought you were Canadian.”

“Both. I’m both, actually. Ukrainian Canadian.”

“Dual citizenship, two passports,” says Hannah.

I shake my head. “No, I’ve just got one passport. But my grandparents immigrated to Canada from Ukraine. So –”

“So you’re not Ukrainian, then,” says Katja. “Your grandparents are Ukrainian. You are Canadian.”

I feel my face turn bright red. My ears start to burn.

“I’m both. It’s hard to explain.”

“Try.” Katja drinks from her cup, her eyes focused on me.

I clear my throat.

“Come on,” says Katja. “Explain it to us. Explain it to me. Please. I’m wondering what it feels like to be Ukrainian.”

“Well, it feels just like – well, I’m sure it doesn’t feel any different than –”

“Any different than what?” says Katja, interrupting me. “Come on. How does it feel? You said you were Ukrainian. How does it feel?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your people are cowards. Cowards and traitors. They have no conscience. They murder innocent people without a second thought. Tell me. How does it feel to be one of them?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.

But I do. She’s talking about the war. She’s talking about Sister Maria.

“I’m talking about Kiev, 1941. Do you read your own history? Maybe not. It happened a long time ago. When your people were still – how would you say it? – Ukrainian Ukrainian. Before they came to the – what was your phrase? – the new world. To sing songs.”

Katja chuckles.

“What the hell are you on about, Katja?” says Shelagh. “Spit it out, for Christ’s sake.”

“Thirty thousand Jews systematically murdered by the Nazi regime in Kiev,” says Katja, “that’s what I’m on about, and countless Ukrainians who turned their backs on their own people to collaborate with the Nazis. They hunted Jews out of hiding in Ukraine. They did it all over Poland, too. Ukrainian soldiers hunted Ukrainian Jews and Polish Jews, and then they stood by to watch them die.”

“It wasn’t me,” I say, my voice trembling. “I wasn’t there. My grandparents weren’t there. They never lived in Kiev. They were farmers. They moved to Canada before the war, years before. In 1899.”

“Right,” Katja says, nodding her head. “Right. Brave settlers taming the wild west. Stealing land from the –”

“Enough!” Shelagh glares at Katja. “What is up with you?”

“Just as many Polish people settled in Canada,” I say. “Maybe more.”

“No one I know.” Katja shakes her head. “No one from my family. My grandparents didn’t run from the Communists. They stayed. They committed themselves to the –”

“All right, Katja!” Shelagh breaks in. “Jesus Christ, could you shut your bloody trap already and let us talk about something else? Christ.”

But I’m already halfway out the cubie door. Katja pours herself another drink as I go. The other girls – Hannah, Maria, Nikola – keep their eyes on the floor.

“Don’t go, Colleen!” Shelagh follows me up the corridor.

As I fumble with the keys to my cubie door, my eyes blurred with tears, Shelagh places her hand on my shoulder. I shake it away.

“I’m sorry. Really, I am. Katja was way out of line. You didn’t deserve that. No one deserves that. She just had too much to drink. Give her the night to sober up, and tomorrow morning she’ll be apologizing. I’ll make sure of it.”

I close the door of my cubie quickly, and stand for a moment with my back to it before I slide down to the floor, and press my knees to my chest, my head down, crying.

A week passes. Two weeks.

Katja doesn’t apologize. In history class, she won’t even look at me. We don’t say a word to each other in the music room. Shelagh sits with me at breakfast sometimes. She says that Katja is too proud to say she’s sorry. Every so often, two or three of the other girls drop by to visit me. We talk about the weather, our history assignments. No one mentions the incident in Katja’s cubie.

I can’t forget it, though, can’t put it out of my mind. I think about Katja all the time, and the things that she said to me. I think about my grandparents, about Baba and Gido sitting at their old kitchen table in their house in Vegreville, eating their Meals-on-Wheels suppers with shaky hands. I think about Sister Maria. Her music room. The boxes and boxes of unfinished manuscripts stacked in my old bedroom at home.

Finally, after study period one evening, I slip into the college library, diary in hand.

There aren’t many books to choose from. Nearly all of the college history books are devoted to South African history. They’re organized under tiny cardboard headings. Archeology: Rock Paintings. Early History to 1500. Arrival of the Europeans. British Conquest. The Mfecane. The Difaqane. The Great Trek. The Anglo-Boer War. The Establishment of South Africa. Apartheid. The African National Congress. The Anti-Pass Campaign and the Sharpeville Massacre. Black Consciousness and the Soweto Massacre.

Under the World History heading, I find two Polish books. One skinny paperback about the history of Polish aviation and a hardcover biography of Jozef Poniatowski, some eighteenth-century Polish hero. I come across three or four World War II history books, too, and I run my finger down each table of contents, each index, looking for the word Poland or the word Ukraine. I find Auschwitz. Gdansk. Majdanek, Treblinka. Warsaw Uprising. Nothing about Polish people committing injustice. But nothing about Ukrainians committing injustice, either, in 1941, in Kiev. Nothing at all about Ukrainians.

This is stupid, I think, slipping the World War II books back into the shelf. It’s juvenile. Playing into Katja’s hand, stooping to her level. It’s childish. What do I care about events that took place fifty years ago? Nothing. What does any of it have to do with me? Nothing.

That’s when I find something – a book tucked into the bottom of the shelf marked Agriculture and Forestry. Somebody made an error with the book; some librarian miscategorized it. I wouldn’t have noticed it at all, in fact, except that the book is enormous – four inches thick, at least – and there is a drawing of embroidery on its spine. With two hands, I lift it from the shelf, lug it across the library to a carrel. Ukraine: A History. The book is brand new. I must be the first person to open it.

No, not the first. Someone has written on the title page. A donation from E. Shabalala to the students of Waterford Kamhlaba.

Ukraine: A History is a reference book, which means that I’m not permitted to take it out of the library. Three nights in a row, then, during free time before check-in, I sit in the library, leafing through the pages of the book, scribbling notes on the pages of my diary. Some sentences – some entire paragraphs – I take down word for word; some I paraphrase. I record all of the corresponding page numbers, the author’s name, the copyright information – everything. For Katja. So that she can double-check, if she chooses. So that she knows every word is true.

There is more information in Ukraine: A History than I ever dreamed I’d find. When I’ve finished, twelve pages of my diary are covered in my handwriting. I write down dates, facts, names. In my cubie, on loose-leaf paper, I recopy the best parts, neatly, organizing the information chronologically, underlining the words Poland, Polish, and Poles.

History of Ukraine, especially Western Ukraine: marked by centuries of domination by Tsarist Russia; by Austro-Hungarian Empire; by White Russians; by Bolsheviks; by Germany’s Nazi Regime; by Poland.

1340-1366. Polish King Casimir the Great leads Polish forces in the occupation of Galicia and Volhyna.

1500’s. Ukrainian nobles assimilated to Polish culture and religion. Ukrainian language and customs, as well as Orthodox religion, therefore increasingly associated with the lower classes of Ukraine.

1600’s. Five major Cossack/peasant revolts against Polish aristocracy. All revolts brutally suppressed.

November, 1918 - July, 1919. Polish-Ukrainian War. Polish troops (experienced in wwi battle) easily defeat Ukrainian army of volunteers (teenaged boys, mostly, and peasants, without arms, without food, without shoes).

1920. Poland declares that it will protect the rights of Ukrainians and other minority groups living within its borders.

1924. Entente Powers, through League of Nations, declare Poland’s right to Galicia in Western Ukraine. Ethnically “pure” Polish settlers given Ukrainian land. Ukrainian language periodicals abolished. Ukrainian cultural organizations banned. Ukrainian language schools shut down. Laws passed to ban use of Ukrainian language in government agencies

Autumn, 1930. Poland’s “Pacification” or “Pasifikatsia” campaign against Ukrainians in Galicia. Ukrainian buildings and monuments demolished. Ukrainians arrested, beaten, tortured, denied medical care. Hundreds die, hundreds more suffer permanent, debilitating injuries.

1934. Polish government takes back promise made to League of Nations to protect rights of minority groups in Poland. Polish officials establish concentration camp at Bereza Kartazka for Ukrainian nationalists.

It’s past midnight when I make my way to Katja’s cubie, stack of papers in hand, heart beating fast. The corridor is dark and quiet, for the most part. Outside Katja’s room, I can hear hushed voices and smell cigarette smoke. The scholarship girls, like clockwork, have gathered again. For a few minutes, I stand outside Katja’s door, unsure of how to proceed. I could leave the pages outside her door, or slip them under her door, or tack them to her door. I could barge in, making a dramatic, impromptu speech about Katja’s ignorance and her people’s cruelty.

In the end, I settle on knocking. A second later, the cubie door opens and Katja appears. Behind her, I see the other girls – some sitting, some lying – around the room, their eyes wide.

“Katja.”

“Yes?”

“You didn’t do your homework.”

Katja looks puzzled. Katja the brain, the straight-A student. The head of the class. When has Katja ever been caught with her homework not done?

“Tell you what,” I say, handing her the sheets of paper covered in my handwriting.

“You can copy mine.”