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 was 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.