Two

At the end of the wedding summer, right before grade nine starts, Simone calls. As usual. Simone always calls this time of year. It’s a tradition in our house, a sign that school is starting again. We only take piano lessons during the school year, from September until June. And every August, Simone makes a new schedule. She calls all of her students to ask which days we would prefer for our piano lessons. First she calls her most senior students, then her intermediate students, and finally her beginners. There is a sort of hierarchy to the days of the week. Senior students generally choose to have their lessons on Fridays. Friday lessons are high status. And beginners have their lessons on Mondays.

For the last two years, Sophie has been Simone’s senior-most student. She’s had Friday lessons. Wes has his lessons on Tuesdays. I go on Thursdays. This year, though, I’m moving into the top spot. I’ve been catching up to Sophie – doing two piano exams each year instead of one – and now we’re in the same grade. Even though Sophie is two years older than me, we’ll both be taking our grade nine piano exam this year. I’ve waited a long time for this day to come, and I’ve worked hard for it. For the first time, Fridays are mine for the taking.

Simone asks to speak to my mother first, so I’m forced to hover around the phone in the kitchen and wait. Sophie is in her bedroom, pretending she doesn’t care that we’re going to have lessons on the same day. I know it bothers her, though. I know she secretly hates the fact that I’m younger than her and better than her. Lately, when she’s practising the piano, and I come into the living room, she quits playing. Even if she just started practising, she stops as soon as I walk into the room. Sometimes she gets angry and bangs the keys before she gets up. Sometimes she gets a sad look on her face, like she’d like to keep playing but something is holding her back.

While Mom and Simone talk, I pace around the kitchen. There are butterflies in my stomach and my palms are sweaty. The thought of talking to Simone makes me nervous. I worry that when it’s my turn to talk, I’ll stutter and stammer. I like Simone so much that I’m afraid of her. She isn’t that much older than Sophie and me. Simone just graduated from high school two years ago. But she’s a pro. Some day, she’s going to be concert pianist. When I’m older, I want to be just like her. I want to smell like cinnamon, I want to wear silver rings on my pinkie fingers. I want to play like Simone, with my back straight, my head tilted slightly to the right, my wrists up. I’m growing my hair out to look just like hers. Long, straight, no bangs.

Before I have a chance to talk to Simone, Mom hangs up the phone.

“Simone,” she says, “is not teaching piano lessons anymore.”

I’m too shocked to speak.

“She called to tell us that she’s moving to Montreal. She’s getting married there. Isn’t that good news?”

Good news? I can’t believe my mother would say such a thing.

“It’s terrible news,” I say. Why is this happening to me? It’s my year for Friday lessons. “Simone can’t be moving.”

Not this year. Not yet. Not now.

My mother doesn’t seem to notice the gravity of the situation. I was going to learn my first Rachmaninoff this year. I was going to play it at the Kiwanis Music Festival. Simone was going to take me. We were going to make a weekend of it, and stay in a hotel, and go shopping together at Gordon Price Music. How could Simone abandon me like this?

“Simone can’t leave me,” I say, my voice shaking.

But it isn’t just that Simone is leaving me. She’s leaving me to get married. Since our trip to Dauphin last summer, I’ve formed a new opinion of men. They’re good-for-nothings, and they can’t be trusted. Except for Dad and Wes, men are all liars and cheats. Why would Simone marry one?

“She doesn’t even have a boyfriend,” I explain to Mom. “How could she be getting married?”

“Well.” Mom pauses. “She has to get married.”

“Why? Why does she have to get married? Nobody has to do anything. This is a free country. Nobody has to –”

And then I get it. It’s written all over Mom’s face, the reason Simone has to get married. The reason she won’t be teaching piano lessons anymore.

“Oh,” I say. “Oh.”

Mom tries to be cheerful. She rattles on as though nothing has happened, as though nothing at all has changed.

“Simone wants you to take her beginner students. All eight of them, including Wes. What a compliment to you! What a wonderful opportunity! Good experience and extra spending money. Simone says that you’ll make fifty dollars a week. Fifty dollars a week! That’s two hundred dollars a month.”

On and on Mom talks. She talks about advertising for more piano students in the St. Paul Journal. She starts an imaginary schedule for the beginners. Four lessons every day after school, twenty students per week; Saturday morning piano recitals in our living room with coffee and doughnuts for the parents. The whole time, she doesn’t even ask if I like beginners, if I want to teach piano lessons. And she doesn’t consider for a second what Sophie is going to think of all this. Sophie is hurt enough that I caught up to her with my playing. How will she feel when she hears that Simone has chosen me to replace her?

“I guess that’s it for me, then,” I say to my mother, tears spilling down my cheeks. “No more piano lessons for me. I was going to have Friday lessons this year. I was going to play my first Rachmaninoff.”

Mom tries to put her arm around me, but I shake it away.

“And what about Sophie? Sophie needs a teacher too. And all the other senior students. Did Simone ever stop to think about us? I hate her! I wish she’d never been my teacher!”

“You can play all the Rachmanoff you want,” says Mom, mispronouncing the name. “We’ll find a new teacher for you. In fact, Simone has suggested someone. Someone well-respected and very qualified. She wouldn’t leave you without a teacher. We just have to make the arrangements.”

“Is it Laurette Côté?” I ask, quietly.

Laurette Côté is one of Simone’s former students. She plays the violin and the piano. One of her eyes wanders a little but she’s nice, and an exceptional pianist. Though I don’t quite understand how she focuses on the keyboard.

Mom shakes her head as she explains that Laurette has all the students she can handle.

“Oh Mom,” I say, “don’t tell me it’s Jablonski. Please, not him.”

Pavel Jablonski is my parents’ age. Actually, he’s Dr. Jablonski. He has a Ph.D. in Music. He’s the organist at the Catholic church in town and the Director of the Polish Catholic Community Choir and the President of the Polish Catholic Cultural Association.

Mom shakes her head again. She says that Jablonski is on sabbatical this year in Poland.

“Good,” I say, smiling a little. “I don’t think I could stand his Polish nationalism. And, I mean, I’m sure he’s a good teacher but he’d probably try to convert me to Catholicism.”

“So who is it?” I ask, starting to cheer up a little. “A teacher in Edmonton? Will we have to drive all that way?”

Mom clears her throat. “No, that wouldn’t be practical.”

“Well who then? Who’s going to be my new teacher?”

Mom clears her throat again.

“Maria Chapdelaine,” she says.

Sophie appears in the kitchen as I’m explaining to Mom that I’d rather quit piano completely than take lessons from Maria Chapdelaine.

She’s a nun. And nuns are old and old-fashioned and mean. Everybody knows it. You can catch a glimpse of the nuns in St. Paul walking around the convent on main street in their habits. They never smile, they’re certainly not friendly, and they only speak French. I’m supposed to take piano lessons in French?

“What kind of woman would marry Jesus?” I ask. “A very creepy one.”

Nuns hit their students’ knuckles with rosaries. It’s a well-known fact. They pray constantly, and when they’re not praying, they’re reading the Bible. They don’t talk like normal people. They don’t eat normal food. They don’t like children, let alone teenagers. They have no sense of humour, they hardly laugh.

I wouldn’t take piano lessons from a nun if she were the last piano teacher on Earth.

For some reason, Sophie disagrees with me. Apparently she’s not at all sad that Simone is quitting, and she’s perfectly happy to take lessons from Sister Maria.

“A lot of nuns these days are modern,” she says. “Some of them are young, and they’re allowed to wear regular clothes. It could be interesting.”

Sophie says that she’ll give Sister Maria a chance.

Of course she will. Because this is her big chance to get ahead of me. No wonder she’s so cheerful about Simone quitting. If I stop taking piano lessons, and she continues, then she won’t have to compete with me anymore.

So I change my mind – on the spot.

“All right,” I say, glaring at Sophie. “Count me in, too.”

“Well,” Mom says, looking down at her hands, then up at the ceiling. “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

Mom looks straight at Sophie as she explains that Sister Maria has room for one student. One student only.

“So,” says Mom, still looking at Sophie, “unless one of you decides that you don’t want to continue with your lessons, then you’re both going to have to audition for Sister Maria, and she’ll make the choice.”

Sophie and Mom stare at each other for a long time before Mom looks away. Something about the expression on Sophie’s face gives me a lump in my throat. It’s not that she looks sad exactly. It’s more like – she looks old. She doesn’t look like Sophie anymore, she looks like a grown-up woman.

“I’m graduating from high school in a couple of years,” she says. “It probably makes more sense if Colleen takes lessons with Sister Maria. She’ll be around longer.”

“Are you sure?”

As Mom asks the question, Sophie nods, getting up from the kitchen table, as though, if she stayed a moment longer, she might change her mind.

•••

Part of me wishes that Sophie had put up a fight, or that Sophie would have been the one Mom chose for Sister Maria. Deep down, I want to keep taking piano lessons, but it’s hard to imagine playing for anyone except Simone. I don’t even know how lessons will work with someone else. I’ve always had Simone. I know the routine with her. We start with scales, chords, arpeggios; then we run through my pieces; and we end with ear training and sight-reading. Is it the same with every teacher?

As Mom drives me to my first piano lesson, I sulk. I stare out the window as we head west down main street, as we pass the turn-off to Simone’s place and approach St. Paul Elementary. Two more blocks, and we’ll be at the convent next to the cathedral. I look down at the books on my lap, books Simone bought for me, books with Simone’s notes in them.

“I don’t want to go.”

“I know,” says Mom.

“I miss Simone.”

“I know.”

“I’ll probably hate Sister Maria.”

“If you don’t like it you can always quit.”

The more Mom agrees with me, the worse I feel. She’s being too sympathetic, too nice. I want to fight with my mother. I want her to tell me I’m being childish so that I can tell her she doesn’t understand anything. It would make me feel better. Instead, she parks the car at the side of the convent and says that she’s proud of me.

“I’m really impressed with you, Colleen. You’re being very mature about this.”

I scowl at her. She smiles back at me.

Sister Maria meets me at the side doors, beside the little plaque on the convent wall that says Les Soeurs de l’Assumption. No smile, no hello.

I look back once more at Mom, waving to her as she pulls away.

“You’re Colleen,” she says. “I’m Maria.” She rolls the r in Maria.

Now I’m alone with her, and there’s no turning back.

Sister Maria is very tall and bone-thin. She’s so thin that when I look at her face it’s as though I’m looking at a skull. On her head, there’s just a small patch of white hair – hardly any, in fact. I’ve never seen a woman with so little hair. And Sophie is right, some nuns don’t wear habits. Sister Maria is dressed in normal clothes. But her sweater is black and stretched out of shape. Her pants are too big, they hang and sag as though they’re about to drop off. Don’t they feed them here?

The first thing Sister Maria does when we get to her music room is motion for me to take a seat on the piano bench. Then, while I wait, she rummages around in her cupboard. Is she getting out her Bible? Do we pray before we play? I wonder if I should tell her, right off the bat, that I’m not Catholic and I don’t intend to become one.

“You’ve been at school all day,” she says. “No one can play music with an empty belly.”

Sister Maria lifts up a bag of chocolate chip cookies. She pulls a chair next to the piano bench.

“You want to eat, you eat. I don’t like my pupils to go hungry.” She definitely has an accent. “Hungry” sounds like “hongry.”

I’d rather not eat any of Sister Maria’s cookies. She needs them much more than I do. But she doesn’t help herself to any cookies. Instead, she keeps offering them to me, thrusting the cookie bag in my face. Really, she’s acting an awful lot like an old baba – insisting that I eat, practically forcing food down my throat. She’s French, though. Chapdelaine is definitely a French name. She has to be French. This is a convent for French Catholic nuns.

I give in, finally, and take a cookie.

“What do you want to play?” she asks.

Should I start with scales? I wonder. I should probably start with scales.

I start to play the A-major scale, two hands, four octaves, ascending and descending, with a cadence at the end to polish it off. But Sister Maria doesn’t look too impressed.

“That’s not really music. What music do you want to play?”

So she wants me to play a piece. I start to open my grade eight Royal Conservatory book to the Chopin waltz I played for my last piano exam. Actually, I can play it off by heart, the music is just for reassurance. It’s my best piece. Simone says I was born to play Chopin. I can really show off with it. But halfway through the waltz, Sister Maria grabs the book and tosses it onto the floor.

“All right,” she says, making a sour face. “That’s enough. Grade eight is finished. Understand? Grade eight is for babies. Let’s move on.”

I open my brand new grade nine book, then, hands trembling. Will I have to sight-read pieces that I’ve never seen before? Grade nine pieces?

Before I have a chance to play anything, Sister Maria pulls the grade nine book off the piano, dropping it onto the grade eight book.

“I don’t like any of these books,” she says, pointing at the floor.

“But I’m supposed to play from the books. For the exam at the end of the year. I have to follow the syllabus.”

“Forget the books. Forget the syllabus. What music do you want to play?”

What do I want to play?

I don’t understand her, I don’t know what she means. I’ve never actually chosen my own pieces. Simone made all the decisions. I liked it that way. And Simone never threw my books around, never made faces. This is it, I think. Sister Maria is going to pull out her rosary right now and let me have it across the knuckles. God, this is worse than I’d imagined.

Sister Maria looks a little exasperated.

“I want you to play music that you love, understand? You tell me what you love and we’ll learn it together, yes? You choose. I don’t baby my students. I don’t choose for you, the book doesn’t choose for you. You choose. Capice?”

She’s Italian! That’s it! I knew the accent wasn’t French. I try to think of some Italian music to impress her so that she’ll stop picking on me. Something by Verdi? Did Verdi write piano music? Puccini. No, he’s opera. Palestrina?

Sister Maria snaps her fingers. “Come on, come on. Say a composer. Give me a name. One name, your favourite. Someone you always wanted to play. Quick, quick. Let’s go!”

“Rachmaninoff!”

I say Rachmaninoff in desperation because I can’t think of a single Italian composer of piano music. It’s not a lie, either. I really do want to learn Rachmaninoff. As soon as I say it, though, I want to take it back. I don’t know how she’ll react. There is a Rachmaninoff piece in the grade nine book. Is it too easy? Is Rachmaninoff for babies?

She is silent for several seconds, while Rachmaninoff hangs in the air between us, suspended, waiting for her judgment. Then she leans back in her chair and smiles. She actually smiles.

She can’t be Russian. There’s no such thing as a Russian nun. Is there?

“You like Russian music?” she asks.

“Sure. I like Russian music. I like it a lot. Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky. Bartók. I’ve always liked Russian music. Well. Of course, Bartók is Hungarian, not Russian.”

I’m rambling now, but there’s no turning back. If I’m lucky, she’ll believe me, and stop her interrogation.

“I like Slavic music in general,” I say. “Like Stravinsky, Dvorák. The Chopin Mazurkas. All of that. I suppose it would be really neat to play music by a Ukrainian composer, if there was such a thing. A Ukrainian composer, I mean. Because I’m Ukrainian myself. I mean, I was born here and everything, but, you know.”

Sister Maria stares at me.

Now why did I go and say that? What’s wrong with me? Ukrainian composers have never once crossed my mind. Never once. And I don’t actually know any Russian music, except for the Rachmaninoff piece that Simone chose for me. I’m so scared of Sister Maria that I’m making things up – lying – blurting out anything that comes to mind. I’m so intimidated that I don’t even know what I’m saying.

“Tell me,” she says. “Tell me about being Ukrainian.”

I’m not sure what to say. No one has ever asked me what it’s like, or what it means, to be Ukrainian. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t know where to begin.

“For starters, I’ve never actually been to the Ukraine.”

“Ukraine,” says Sister Maria.

“Right,” I say. “I wasn’t born in the Ukraine.”

“Just Ukraine. You don’t say ‘the Canada.’ Why would you say ‘the Ukraine’”?

She’s got a point.

“All right,” I continue. “I was born here, and so were my parents. Their parents – I call them –”

“Baba and Gido –”

“Right,” I say. “Baba and Gido. They were born in the – in Ukraine, but they came to Canada when they were very young, just babies, so they don’t remember anything about the Old Country. They were farmers. Actually, my baba and gido on my dad’s side are dead. I just have one baba and one gido left, and they’re too old to –”

“You speak Ukrainian to them?” she asks, cutting in again.

“Not really. Actually, no, I don’t speak Ukrainian to them. I don’t talk to them at all, unless my mom or dad is around to translate. Baba and Gido don’t speak English very well, and I only speak English.”

“Yet your parents, they speak Ukrainian.”

“They do, yes. My mother is the Ukrainian teacher at my school. She teaches me Ukrainian, and my brother and sister. She’s teaching my dad to read and write it at home, too, because he never learned when he was young.”

“So you do speak Ukrainian. All of you.”

I shake my head again. “No. Just my mom and dad. It’s like a secret code for them when they don’t want us kids to know what they’re talking about.”

Sister Maria raises her eyebrows.

“We’re Ukrainian in other ways,” I say.

I want to explain to her that it doesn’t matter if we don’t speak the language.

“Church?” she asks. “You go to church?”

I shake my head. I tell Sister Maria that my parents used to go. “My aunts and uncle go all the time. But we only go once in a while. Like for a wedding or a funeral. My dad doesn’t want us to get brainwashed.”

Sister Maria sits back in her chair, crossing her arms over her chest. I should have left out the last bit, about brainwashing. She is a nun, after all.

Maybe it’s time for me to ask a few questions of my own. Like why Sister Maria is so interested in my background. I’m starting to think that she’s Ukrainian herself. Though it doesn’t make much sense. A Ukrainian Catholic nun in a French Catholic convent?

The problem is that when I try to ask her questions about herself, Sister Maria doesn’t give very clear answers. I ask her if she’s French, and she says that she speaks French. What kind of answer is that? Then I ask her if she’s Russian, and she says that she speaks Russian.

“So are you one or the other?” I ask. “Or both? Or something else?”

But Sister Maria doesn’t answer. In fact, she pretends that she hasn’t even heard the question. She gets up from her chair, pushing me off the piano bench so that I almost fall to the floor. For such a skinny person, she’s surprisingly strong.

“Hold out your hands,” she says.

Here we go. I’m getting it now. The rosary. On the palms of my hands instead of the knuckles. I’ve said something wrong. I’ve said everything wrong. Well, this will be the first and last time she beats me, that’s for sure. If she lays one finger on me, I won’t come back. I probably won’t come back anyway.

But Sister Maria doesn’t pull out her rosary. Instead, she opens the piano bench and from it she gathers a stack of paper into her arms.

“So you think there’s no such thing as a Ukrainian composer?”

One by one, she plops sheet music into my hands, reciting composers’ names as she goes. Dmytro Bortniansky, Kyrylo Stetsenko, Stanyslav Liudkevych.

“You know these names?” she asks.

I shake my head.

Lev Revutsky, Borys Liatoshynsky. More music drops into my hands. Mykola Lysenko. Maksym Berezovsky. Artemii Vedel. Vasyl Barvinsky.

There is silence between us for a moment and then, while I’m still standing with the stack of sheets in my hands, Sister Maria plays for me, by heart, no music in front of her. She plays a song in a minor key, slow and melancholy, her arms outstretched like wings over the piano. From time to time, she leans over the piano, her fingers kneading the keys, her forehead almost touching her hands, as though she means to kiss the keys; then she arches her back and tilts her face upward, eyes closed. As she plays, her room starts to change. The plaster on the walls is cracked and chipping, I know. There is a dented metal filing cabinet in the corner. A yellowed poster of Beethoven hangs crooked by one nail over the piano. On another wall, a funny-looking, faded drawing of three musicians. Everything is drab and worn. Sister Maria’s sleeves are worn, too, not black so much as grey. But when she plays, everything looks different. As though a window has been opened, bathing her in light, like an angel.

She finishes too soon, I think. I don’t want her to stop. I want to hear more. I want to learn it myself – the piece she just played, and all the music that I hold in my arms.

“Can I learn that song?” I ask. “Can I buy the sheet music in Edmonton?”

“You can’t buy the music anywhere. Nowhere at all. It’s not for sale.”

“How did you get it, then? Where did all this music come from?”

Flipping through the stack of sheet music, I see that it’s all handwritten.

“Your mother is waiting for you, I think,” says Sister Maria, her eyes on the clock above the filing cabinet. “Shall we meet again next week?”

It’s dark outside by the time my lesson ends. Mom is outside the convent at six o’clock sharp, listening to the radio in the car. I come out of Sister Maria’s room with gifts from her, a handful of cookies and several brown sheets of music – her piano adaptations of several pieces of music by Ukrainian composers. Before I get into the car, I shove the cookies into my jean jacket pocket. Then I slip the brown sheets under the cover of my grade nine music book. I don’t want Mom asking any questions about my lesson. I decide that what goes on inside the convent is private, it’s between Sister Maria and me.

“So,” says Mom. “Should we call it quits with Mother Superior?” She laughs at her own joke. “Or is she a nice nun, like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music?”

I hardly hear Mom’s questions. I’m staring through the car window and into Sister Maria’s window – trying to catch a glimpse of her as we drive away. I wonder how Sister Maria found her way here, to St. Paul, Alberta. I wonder who she is, and why she lives here. I think that maybe I’ll bake cookies for her before my next lesson, and bring her a Tupperware container full of them. Fresh cookies, soft, still warm.

Mom reaches over to squeeze my hand and, as she pulls away from the convent, she sings – “The hills are alive with the sound of music.” But as we drive home, the melody that Sister Maria played is the melody that I hear, over and over again.