Art Lessons Read online

  Art Lessons

  Art Lessons

  a novel

  Katherine Koller

  Copyright © 2016 Katherine Koller

  Enfield & Wizenty

  (an imprint of Great Plains Publications)

  233 Garfield Street

  Winnipeg, MB R3G 2M1

  www.greatplains.mb.ca

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or in any means, or stored in a database and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Great Plains Publications, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.

  Great Plains Publications gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided for its publishing program by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund; the Canada Council for the Arts; the Province of Manitoba through the Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Book Publisher Marketing Assistance Program; and the Manitoba Arts Council.

  Design & Typography by Relish New Brand Experience Printed in Canada by Friesens

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Koller, Katherine, 1957-, author Art lessons / Katherine Koller.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-927855-49-2 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-927855-50-8 (epub).--ISBN 978-1-927855-51-5 (mobi)

  I. Title.

  PS8571.O693A89 2016 C813’.54 C2016-902039-8 C2016-902040-1

  Acknowledgements

  Margaret Macpherson and Laurel Sproule, from the beginning, patiently read this novel in pieces. I could not have started or finished without their encouragment and guidance. Zosia Wojcicki graciously provided Polish phrases and spellings. Thoughtful sessions with Betsy Warland were revealing. Joanne Gerber of the Access Copyright Foundation and Helen Humphreys and Margaret Hart at Humber College all provided valuable support. Lisa Moore and the Writing with Style group at The Banff Centre (Fall 2010) gave useful comments, for which I am sincerely grateful. I treasure my discussions about art with artists Nancy Corrigan and Catherine Compston.

  “White Woods,” was first published under the title “Art Lessons” in Alberta Views, September 2011; “Autumn Colours,” was first published as “Colour” in Room 37.1, Spring 2014; “Tree Day” appeared in Room 37.4, Winter 2014; “Hollow Oak” was published in the 2014 National Voices, an anthology by the Canadian Authors Association (Vancouver); and “Trees Entwined” appears as “Polish Wedding” in the Anthology of Canadian-Polish Writing, published by Guernica Editions in 2017.

  With love, always, to my daughters

  Hannah Kristin

  Elfi Katherine

  Monika Starr

  Sophie Mariah

  Vita Larsen

  Rebekah Joy

  Contents

  1Yellow Apple Tree

  2Enchanted Forest

  3Memory Tree

  4Forest of Friends

  5Baby Tree

  6Tree of Heaven

  7Family Tree

  8Lemon Tree

  9Hollow Oak

  10Tree Day

  11Tree of Abundance

  12Evergreen

  13Blossoms

  14Trees Entwined

  15Autumn Colours

  16Late Spring Frost

  17White Woods

  18Heartwood

  19Tree of Possibilities

  To move freely you must be deeply rooted.

  Bella Lewitzky, dancer

  ...enter into the life of the trees. Know your relationship and understand their language, unspoken, unwritten talk....

  So, artist, you too from the deeps of your soul, down among dark and silence, let your roots creep forth, gaining strength.... Rejoice in your own soil, the place that nurtured you when a helpless seed.

  Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands

  Yellow Apple Tree

  I hug Babci’s waist. Her high heels stab the old wood floors and my socks slide, shuffling from her bedroom down the hall to the living room. Laughing, she pulls me off like a piece of thread stuck to her stocking, checking her packing, the gifts she’s taking, her passport, funny Polish money in faded purple, orange and green, her ticket. Her purse has a clear plastic covering over pink and yellow embroidered flowers. At the bottom of that purse there are hard candies with chewy fruit centres wrapped in folded white papers with plums, cherries or limes. I want one. Babci always has Polish candies for me.

  Not now, she says. Babci pinches that purse closed, a sharp, metal click.

  My hand wings back, and knocks a tall wooden spool. It clatters and rolls under the dining room table. Gold thread unravels in the dust balls against the wall. I stoop under the table and wind it slowly and evenly, finding the notch in the wood for the end of the thread, jamming it in tight. The thread breaks. I fit the thread in its slot again. My Babci is in a hurry. To go away. Without me. Click.

  Babci doesn’t even like to be away. She won’t stay overnight at our house because, she says, my angels need me. She keeps candles burning day and night for her angels in her bedroom.

  When I told Daddy, he put a smoke detector in there. Then, also at Auntie Magda’s when Mommy said Auntie Magda almost burned down her condo. A birthday card from Babci: To my pearl Magda, wish you love. It caught fire, at night, from a lit candle. Auntie Magda hoped the angels’ breath in the candle would open Babci’s heart to Auntie Magda’s new boyfriend, who was married before. Instead, it burned a hole in Auntie Magda’s fuchsia fringed scarf.

  Babci zigzag sewed it so you could not see. She blamed the boyfriend.

  He’s second hand clothes, said Babci. Why second hand when you can have brand new?

  Why go to Poland when you can go to the mountains?

  The only time Babci goes anywhere I go, too, to Miette Hot Springs. Puffy Polish ladies soak and yak and watch me dive in the hot pool, then the cool pool, then back to the hot steam. I pretend I’m flying in the steamy air, floating on top of the water, with the tall mountain trees all around. In the eensy log cabin, Babci feeds me cabbage rolls with kapusta and tomato sauce and I tumble into a hide-a-bed that muffles the sad laughter of ladies with little knives and muscley thumbs peeling Babci’s apples.

  The day Babci let me pick the first apple, the lowest one, I bit into it, but it wasn’t really ready yet. It tasted green and sour. I made a face at Babci.

  I go to my sister. Your big Ciocia.

  But she’s not big. We saw her picture. And she’s younger. Your little sister.

  Big Ciocia is your great aunt, says Mom. My auntie. Like Babci’s mother was my Babci. Your big Babci.

  You never even knew your own Babci. How can you let mine go?

  Babci’s only going on a little trip, Mom says.

  Can I go, too?

  Oh, little birdie. Babci’s eyes sparkle. Not you.

  I throw the first apple into the street. Babci shakes her head.

  Nie, nie, she says, like when a dress or a suit doesn’t fit quite right. I watch the apple roll and get smushed by a truck. The apples aren’t even yellow yet! Neither are the leaves. When the apples are sweet, thin-skin buttery yellow, I eat ten a day.

  Daddy and Charlie and Tom pick all the high apples on the ladder. I only get to pick the low ones, and the ones on the ground. Babci and Mom cut and chop them for freezing. Stella squeezes lemon juice on them and stuffs them in plastic bags.

  Mom says even if Babci says yes, she says no.

 
I can miss some of Grade Two! I liked Grade One better. Can’t I go? Mom?

  It’s too far and too long, Cassie.

  Today I bounced in before Babci’s screen door could spank me, and Babci said hello, hello, but no little birdie, no hug, no cheek pinching, no chance for me to ask pretty please can I go, too. And no candies.

  I thought I was one of her angels.

  The first time she showed me, in her bedroom, her little altar covered in doily cloth, her tall candles in jars, she said, I all the time thinking of you.

  This is why she keeps her candles lit, so the angels are always there. Angels keep up your prayer, she says, when your hands are busy.

  Mom uses patterns by Butterick and Simplicity and McCall’s. But Babci’s ladies bring her magazines like People and Life to get the outfit in the pictures. Like a coatdress in the style of Jackie O who used to be Jackie K, Mom says. But I know why Babci can make anything she sees. Because of her angels.

  When I was three I had water wings to hold me up in the pool. But when I do my art, I float by myself. I call it being on a cloud.

  The first time I am four. Stella is a new baby. Mommy is with Stella a lot. I’m drawing at my own table in the sunroom. It feels the same as floating. Mommy sits on the carpet. In a sunbeam. Her blue shirt shines. I draw that sunny sky blue, and her different long hair browns. I use five pencil crayons to make her hair stripeys. And then I have to touch it. She catches me when I come down from my desk.

  Click, she says. I took a picture of you!

  Where’s your camera?

  In my head. Click. In my memory bank.

  I wrap a bracelet of Mommy’s hair smooth and shiny on my arm.

  My arms are lonely for you, she says.

  There’s baby spit on the shoulder of her blue shirt so I curl under her neck spot that still fits my head.

  Under my wingtip, she says.

  Her hand rests on my head. I sniff her baby milk shirt. I love that Mommy smell.

  Now Mom pulls me out from under Babci’s table. I slam the big spool back upright in the middle of the table. Mom keeps my hand and folds her tennis skirt carefully under her on the edge of the couch. She sits me down on her lap because I’m wearing shorts and Babci’s couch feels like dry Bran Flakes. Mom took me out of school after her tennis game while Stella is at playschool so I can say goodbye to Babci to the airport. Mom waits until Babci is running water in the bath for her plants. Then she whispers in my ear.

  Cassie, make sure the candles are O-U-T! Mom and I spell words so Stella and Louis the dog don’t get it. Babci doesn’t spell English words very well, either.

  Babci’s bedroom smells like Jergens. Babci says almonds and cherries but I think it smells like her. I squirt some out. There is one candle still flickering: the red one, in a pickle jar, for Dziadziu, my grandpa in his grave. The huge Jergens bottle always gobs out too much, so I rub the lotion on my knees, except for the scabby parts, and tell Dziadziu to watch over Babci. Or else she might come back with a Polish boyfriend like her friend Gisella, who phones Babci every day. And every day she says the same thing. The boyfriend only married Gisella to come to Canada and open a video store and smoke cigars and argue in Polish with the old men at Christmas parties and then he left her.

  So much for Solidarity, Mom said.

  Babci wants a good husband for Ciocia Magda, one who is handsome, handy and holy, but I wonder if she wants a new one of her own. She laughs and says Ciocia Magda also needs a tall one, to reach the light bulb and the smoke detector, like Daddy.

  Babci wears a navy blue suit, smart like in Vogue. She knows how to make her clothes fit to show her waist and put makeup and jewelry on. Not too many points or it’s gauche, like Mom says. Babci is pink and out of breath in the hallway, the way Auntie Magda is when she’s getting ready for a date.

  I blow out the red Dziadziu candle. I wave my hands in the lacey smoke, except I don’t pray at it in Polish like Babci does. Babci click-steps into the bedroom, hurrying her Polish whispers, then shoos me out and shuts the door quick behind her to keep the angels in there. And Dziadziu.

  When she’s gone back to the kitchen I open the bedroom door a crack so Dziadziu can get out and watch her step. No new boyfriend for Babci! I hardly ever get to see Auntie Magda because she either drives her car selling houses or goes out with boyfriends. But if Auntie Magda ever goes away to find a tall Polish husband who is handsome, handy and holy, I will teach him English. Daddy hung up a big blackboard that fits across a whole wall in our basement, and I teach Stella her animal and insect words with chalk. I draw them and she says them.

  Last year Miss Trepanier taught me French. Each time you answer her French question she comes over and gives you a little touch on your arm or your shoulder or your head, to keep the answer in. Her touches are like sunbeams. She smells like lemonade. She smiles and makes us smile all day.

  Comment-allez vous?

  Très bien, Madamoiselle.

  Moi aussi, parce que je suis chez nous!

  Each afternoon when the children went home, Miss Trepanier closed the Grade One porte to keep the goodness in. I think she meant her goodness. Mom says classroom doors must be closed in case of fire. But every time Miss Trepanier closed the door and hugged me goodbye and limped down the long hallway with Mr. Cane, I stayed behind, and j’ai ouvré la porte encore a teeny bit. So her goodness could get out and I could feel it wherever I go. I even feel it now, just thinking about her, her arm on the back of my neck, her sunny lemon perfume.

  Because Babci’s busy emptying her fridge, I sneak-sit on the coffee table in front of the ouchy couch. The picture on the wall behind is The Last Supper when Jesus says goodbye to his friends. Mom brings in bags and bags of yummy leftovers to take home and I slide onto her lap again.

  Why does Babci have to go?

  Babci was only seventeen when she left Poland, Mom says.

  I’m seven. Seventeen is old.

  Forty years ago. That’s a long time to miss your parents, your sister, your cousins and all the new children in the family, Mom is saying.

  So the candies are for them.

  Babci will be back in forty days. A day for each year she was gone. Right, Cassie?

  Daddy is forty!

  So am I, almost.

  Do you want to go to Poland? Mom?

  She pulls out a pack of gum from her floppy smooth red leather bag.

  Not without you. Or Daddy and the boys and Stella.

  I break the stick of Juicy Fruit gum in half like Daddy always does. Then I try to join the halves together again but I can’t. I bet Freddy could.

  I think I’ll marry Freddy. He’s my best friend from kindergarten. Babci won’t have to go away to Poland to find a husband for me. Freddy likes our house because the boys have lots of Lego. Freddy builds skyreachers and brings his own yellow flag piece for the top. Charlie and Tommy crash through their Lego like waves, but Freddy sharp I-spies what he needs and picks it up quietly while I draw. Once he broke my black crayon trying to write on white Lego. But he right away fixed it with tape. If Freddy talks when we play it’s short.

  Where do you go, Cassie?

  Up. Like your skyreacher.

  On the stairs or an elevator?

  I lift up by myself. I hear your flag flapping.

  And then we get back to our own beeswax.

  Freddy’s mother married a new father and Freddy moved away. One day he will come back and marry me.

  When Babci leaves us at the airport line-up, I make Mom wait. I keep my eyes on Babci in the slow snake of people. I want her to see my arm waving in my quilted yellow jacket she made me, yellow like Freddy’s flag. I even do some pretend whispers to see if she can hear my angel talk: Ch-zy-clk-co szia.

  Mom lifts me up and Babci turns and shakes her white hanky and her eyes smile at me and I wave and wave until Mom pu
lls me away. Outside, I watch her airplane take off. Babci is very brave. It’s her first airplane. But she has her rosary working, praying with her angels.

  I take Mom’s hand so I can bend way back to look up and see the line the airplane makes. Daddy goes in airplanes all the time to work up North. It’s like sitting in your living room, he said to Babci. She came to Canada on a boat. When I draw, I go higher than Freddy’s skyreachers, but not as high as Babci’s airplane.

  Even from the van I can still hear the zoom of the airplane and I hope Babci plugs her ears. I can hear her in my head, Zdrowaś Maryjo, saying her beads. On the ride home, I stare out at the fields, looking for trees watching, waiting for Babci to come back.

  Mom leaves me in the van while she runs to get Stella at playschool. She tells me to look in the glove compartment. There’s a sketchbook with a hard cover, like a real book. It fits in my yellow jacket pocket. There’s a pencil, too, a short one with a still-good eraser that fits in the other pocket. It even has the date pencilled in by Mom: September 6, 1987. This book is my forty-day book. I wear my yellow jacket every one of those days, even when it snows before Halloween.

  I write a story with a picture of Babci and some writing on each page.

  Babci, Come Home

  Light your candles.

  Take the plants out of your bathtub.

  Plug in your tiny TV.

  Fill up your fridge with sour cream and Root Beer.

  Make your sewing machine run speedy and happy.

  Make apple szarlotka, crispy and crumbly.

  Give the extra crumbs to your birds.

  Talk to your angels.

  I colour the pictures with my new pastel set. Mom says the pastels are big girl crayons like oil paint is grownup paint. Only eight colours and they break if you drop them. I use sharp pencil crayons over the words and every letter is a different colour in order of blue, yellow, green, orange, purple and red. Freddy likes colour order, too. He goes from white to black, lightest to darkest, but I like mixing mine.