Art Lessons

by Katherine Koller

  My tree is...

  Falling down?

  Yeah.

  What kind is it?

  A spruce.

  I don’t say: it makes these huge long cones; it has a squirrel in it, and birds. Or, trees are sacred. Lives depend on them. I have a forest of them in my sketchbooks.

  Darryl listens like he hears me say it all anyway. Then he says, It’s a Husqvarna.

  He spells it for me.

  H-u-s-q-v-a-r-n-a. It’s a superior brand of chainsaw.

  This kid has pitch.

  He guides me away from the school ground without being seen by the office staff. We use the back alleys, then through the corner park and get to my house as the lumberjack guys stop for a coffee break. They actually wear red plaid shirts.

  But the tree. She is bare of her branches, a thick naked length of footholds to her crown. A birdhouse, put up by Dad a long time ago, sprawls broken in peeling pieces on our side of the fence. I painted that birdhouse, red and green, when I was in playschool. I try to fit the pieces back together, but they’ve rotted.

  Then Darryl, bagpipe guy, whistles. I’ve never heard anyone whistle like that. There’s a tune, sad, but somehow triumphant. Louis plunks on the patio, head on paws, but eyes and ears alert like Darryl’s the Pied Piper. And the lumberjacks, smoking, with one side of their orange ear mufflers hanging down, take both sides off to listen. My mom comes outside. Even the old lady next door stumps out in her housedress to her porch to hear it. A goodbye song for the tree. We all stare at the trunk, tall and alive, yet mostly stripped of green. Darryl is giving her a funeral.

  Wish I brought my pipes, Darryl says to the silence when he is done. There is a hush, even from the wind.

  That was amazing, I say, in a small voice.

  He looks up to the squirrel, now silent, front paws in prayer, high in the tree.

  It’s how I practice, he says. On the bagpipes, you have to improvise. There are only nine notes.

  It didn’t sound like only nine.

  That’s because I embellish.

  Do you ever.

  I’m going to be in the army as soon as they’ll take me.

  Why the army?

  For the funerals. I specialize in funeral anthems.

  That was an army song?

  No. That was original. For you. For her. It’s called “Tree Day.”

  Only nine notes. I think about having only nine colours. I couldn’t cope. It would be crippling.

  The lumberjacks rise from their Thermoses of probably black coffee and molasses, ready for the final operation. The skinny guy climbs up to top off the crown. The squirrel, a witness on the tip of the tree till the last moment, barks desperately. We all duck for cover when the crown falls. It lands bigger on the ground than it appears from below. It’s studded with mini-green cones, the new tender growth. I feel a sob thrusting up my throat.

  Mom says, I called the school. I told them it’s a tree day.

  Darryl and I nod.

  Darryl, I told them you were helping Cassie.

  Everyone knows who Darryl is. I thought he only talks to adults because kids aren’t smart enough but also, at school assemblies, he wears kilts.

  Now I know why. He plays bagpipes at school assemblies because it’s his vocation. Auntie Magda has a vocation, too, but not like the nuns. Auntie Magda wants boyfriends, a new one every so often, but not a husband. She says she’d much rather concentrate on her outfits to go out for dinner than put on an apron and cook meals for someone else. Like her, Darryl’s devoted to his vocation, and he wants the look, too: the sergeant stripes, the medals, the hat. He’s already got the kilt. And his nine lonely notes.

  Darryl would rather play music for the dead than talk to girls or play sports. Stella still plays piano. I was allowed to quit when she started. Stella doesn’t mind the long hours practicing. She, like Darryl, likes playing for us, and gives concerts for Louis, who gets a dog cookie after each one. Me, I must be like Auntie Magda, because I make my art for myself.

  The men in red saw sections of the tall trunk on the ground. The nimble one up there works quickly. The squirrel chitters on, pissed right off.

  Darryl stays right beside me. He doesn’t take his eyes off the tree. The climber guy gets closer to the ground, and he signals to us. He doesn’t seem concerned that the great hunks of tree fall close to the fence or his coworkers. Then he flies us a Frisbee. It’s a tree cookie, from the middle, the thickest part of the trunk. I pick it up off the grass and smell the hormones up close. One edge is a bit ragged. I can sand it off later. We move to the shade and count the rings.

  They’re called dendochronology rings, Darryl says.

  He gets fifty-nine and I get sixty-one. We’re not sure if we’re supposed to count the xylem or the phloem.

  You should bring it to Science and ask, says Darryl.

  I wonder how Darryl even knows what’s going on in Science class, because he’s never there. Maybe he does school by correspondence, or he’s already done the work for the year. Probably the teachers give him special projects.

  The workers roll out a red machine on wheels.

  It grinds the stump to dust, Darryl says.

  Do you go to many tree days?

  Actually, I do. I practice my anthems. No one hears, usually, because of the chainsaw, the shredder or the stump grinder.

  How does he block out the sound and the sadness? His brain must have special filters.

  The soldiers at Darryl’s army funerals probably won’t be fifty-nine or sixty-one years old like the grandmother tree, but they’ll have an original anthem, only for them, improvised by Darryl to sing them out. I run my thumb over the lines of years on my tree cookie and imagine the skin of those people. Their different faces against their army uniforms like different colours of wood against green. When Mom bought Crayola Multicultural crayons, I used them for my trees.

  Trees, for me, are like humans. No two exactly the same.

  I must have said that out loud, because Darryl comments.

  Even in your tree cookie, there is diversity.

  What?

  Different colours.

  More than nine, I say.

  And darker in the centre, he says.

  Lunchtime, calls Mom.

  My lunch is in my locker. I should go.

  You can stay. Really, Darryl. We have peanut butter.

  Someone said he only eats three foods at lunch: apples, peanut butter and white bread.

  I only like Squirrel Crunchy, Darryl says. Not Smooth or Skippy or No-name. No jam, no butter, no margarine, no honey. White bread with no crusts, no bran and definitely no seeds. And only Granny Smith apples.

  Oh.

  Besides, I better see what’s going on at school. Enjoy your tree cookie.

  Yeah. Sixty-one rings.

  Fifty-nine. Count again. I’ll tell the office you’ll be back for Science.

  And I am.

  But I don’t bring the tree cookie. I don’t sand it, either, because the rips of wood and bark are part of the sacrifice. I prop it on my inspiration shelf, to help me draw her, the grandmother spruce, over and over again.

  Darryl’s song sticks in my head, and every time he sees me in the halls, he looks down without smiling or saying hi, but whistles the first bit from “Tree Day.” And without stopping or looking at him, I always whistle back a few of my own. To make nine notes.

  Tree of Abundance

  I’m drawing at her dining room table, but gradually I notice Babci running back and forth from her bedroom to the kitchen. She usually spends the whole morning in her sewing room and, if she doesn’t, she often calls me to help her in the kitchen. Going on a holiday to Babci’s now means go with her on the bus to buy the groceries, carry them in, weed and water the garden, do the vacuuming. Stella and I take turns.
But today, Babci leaves me be, gives no orders, so I keep on until the smell of apple cake pulls me down from my drawing. There in the kitchen she’s set a tea party for three.

  Who’s coming?

  Oh. Dr. Kowalewski.

  Why?

  He has something for me.

  Mom calls him Babci’s boyfriend, but I have never met him. He moved in next door after Mrs. Sekula was scooped up by her daughters and plopped in an old folks’ home in Vancouver. The plastic lemons and limes are long gone and her apple tree is dying without Mrs. Sekula’s praises, but Dr. Kowalewski would not notice. He is almost blind. He never goes outside. But he listens to music. Sorrowful opera music of a woman wailing in Italian. Babci keeps her sewing room window open so she can hear it every day. There used to be chirpy birdsong outside her window, loud enough to be heard over the stitching of the sewing machine. I wonder if the birds listen to the opera, too, or if they get their singing in early before it starts.

  When the doorbell rings, I prance to the door first. Dr. Kowalewski bows slightly. He clutches a bulky parcel, wrapped up in brown paper and string. I wonder what it is.

  Hi.

  Excuse me. My confusion. I am looking for Zofja.

  Babci introduces me as Kasia, moves me aside in a stream of singsong Polish and takes his arm to help him in the door. She hangs his heavy coat on a wooden hanger, smoothing the shoulders and patting it as if she made it herself. Dr. Kowalewski chats back to her in Polish but I listen anyway in case he sometimes uses an English word, like Babci and her ladies do, so I can puzzle out the topic of their talk.

  He taps the coffee table with his cane and lays the package there, then takes Babci’s arm to the kitchen for yellow apple cake. For a nearly blind man, he barely drops a crumb, but this szarlotka turned out especially moist. Babci uses full-fat sour cream. I make my tea white with milk and sugar, but Dr. Kowalewski drinks his steaming and black. He drops his index finger into his tea and checks its temperature before taking a sip. I have three pieces of cake while he and Babci each have a slim one. They don’t talk very much, only short bursts in Polish, and I eat away the rest of the silence.

  Then we go back to the living room. They take the scratchy couch and I sit on the floor to better inspect the package between us. To my surprise, Dr. Kowalewski switches to elegant, European English. He fixes his watery eyes on me.

  I was horribly ill, he says. My son flies from Don Mills, Ontario. He hires cleaners to scour my house. He personally carries bags and bags of journals, my collected magazines and newspapers to the garbage. I block him from my books with my body! My arms, like wings! Framed sketches, created by my dear Jana, his mother, he pulls off the walls!

  You’re blind, for God’s sake! That’s what the only son of mine says.

  Worst of all, he deposits my pillow in the garbage! Then he goes away. Me, eighty years old, a blind man, I go to the back alley and find the garbage bags and put my hand in each one to feel, to find my pillow. The sketches are not there, so I am calmed. Perhaps he took them as a present from his mother to his own sons. She would be pleased. Feeling outside each bag, then inside, my hands are my eyes. I don’t stop until I find it. Imagine, taking the pillow of an old man from under his head! The new one he brings from the store is too puffy, too high. It makes my neck ache. I was not a good father.

  He gestures for me to untie the package.

  This pillow my mama makes for me. Since I was five years old I have had this pillow. It is dirty, yes. I have never washed it. Only its cover.

  In the war, I am in officer prison camp. The first spring Mama sends me my pillow from home. I am happy to have it, but to my sensitive neck it feels different, like something folded hides inside. I wonder, money? I check along the edge, and pull on a red thread. To be sure, I was not blind then! Out comes a little paper. Ah, a lovenote from Mama, I think. I open carefully and inside I find a small amount of seeds. I don’t know what they are, but the next day I search and find behind my barracks a sunny space of dirt one metre square, hidden from guards by the fence. I plant the seeds from Mama. I collect rainwater in an old tin. Every day I water, and that summer I have fresh lettuce, radishes, carrots and five perfect tomatoes from one thin plant. I save seeds for the next summer. Five years I keep that little prison garden. It becomes a garden of hope. Even though I languish, I must water my plants. Every time, I feel loved afterward, for loving them. And tasting the vegetables, sharing with my friends, then we are kings!

  Dr. Kowalewski wants Babci to wash and recover the pillow, which is losing feathers. He wants to pay Babci for the job, but she scatters that thought away with chiding Polish. One white feather sprouts out as I unwrap and I catch it like a flag of honour before it touches the floor. I’ll tuck it into the rough edge of my grandmother tree cookie. A grandfather feather from far away that survived a whole world war!

  Then Dr. Kowalewski, who waves away my help, safely descends the many steps to the front gate and climbs the multiple steep steps to his own door. He bows yet again, in case we are watching him. I call out goodbye to let him know that I am, and he nods.

  Babci gets right to work on the pillow. She selects a similar fabric, sturdy unbleached cotton, for the cover, washes it in steaming soapy water to soften and irons it dry. Then she rips the seams of the old pillow, and has me hold the new casing while she dumps the feathers in. We pick up any strays and add them. But not the one I’d picked out of the air after I heard his story. That one is in my pocket, mine. When we check for stragglers inside the old yellowed fabric, we find a piece of white thread hanging by one stitch, dangling a thin paper packet the size of Babci’s thumbnail!

  Carefully, we pull it away from the seam and unfold it. There are no words written, only an eighth-teaspoon of seeds. We shrill.

  Babci sews up the new pillow and washes it by hand now that the feathers are safe inside. I can’t help thinking that the white feathers are from the snowy eagle on the Polish coat of arms, white on a red background, like on Auntie Magda’s bumper sticker on her latest white convertible. This one’s called Baby, too.

  The next day, the feathers inside the pillow are dry after sunning all afternoon and hanging above the heater all night. Babci fluffs up the pillow in the dryer for five minutes and rewraps it in tissue and places it in a glossy paper gift bag.

  We can hardly wait to visit Dr. Kowalewski. Babci phones him to let him know.

  Old man need a little time, she says.

  Yesterday, why didn’t he speak English right away?

  He talk to me private.

  Like he’s your boyfriend?

  She shakes her head, nie, nie. He is sour with his son.

  What to do about a son who never calls and when he comes it’s only to clear out the house? Like he wants Dr. Kowalewski out of the house. Like he wants the house.

  The house is very clean. Very little furniture, only nail holes on the walls, no rugs, no plants, nothing but a leather couch, a table and two chairs and books. There are shelves and shelves of books, in no particular order.

  Polish.

  French.

  German.

  English.

  Italian.

  Dr. Kowalewski delights in his pillow. He smells it, feels the new fabric, which is not as soft as the old one, but clean and fresh. He smooths it over his cheek.

  Oh, I will sleep like a little child tonight!

  Then Babci explains in Polish about the packet of seeds attached to the white thread. Dr. Kowalewski’s blank eyes get glassier.

  A red thread and a white thread from the old country, he says. From Mama.

  He feels the seeds with his fingers. They are the same, unlike the variety of seeds he found fifty years ago. He doesn’t recognize them by size or shape. Neither does Babci.

  Babci and I have already loaded a bag of garden tools and hung it on the back fence. We guide Dr. Kowalewsk
i outside, and sit him on a chair I’ve carried from the kitchen.

  Where to plant the special seeds? Babci finds a sunny spot near the house, beside the back porch. She makes us fresh sweet lemonade while I pull weeds, overturn the soil and wet it. I plant three short rows. The new flowerbed sits near enough to the ragtaggle fence that Babci can reach to water it from her side with her hose.

  When I am finished, I pass the paper packet to Dr. Kowalewski, and he smells it and refolds it and puts it in his heart pocket. He pats it.

  He gets sick that summer, and never does come out to tend his mama’s seedlings. Babci keeps them watered and I weed. I prune away dead branches from the apple tree to give more sunshine to the plants. The flowers bloom sweetly to the opera music, white and pink and red and lilac. They look like the fabric flowers on the ribboned headband from the Polish dancing costume Babci made for Auntie Magda when she was little.

  Babci only knows the Polish words for flowers, so I search Mom’s seed catalogue to find the English name. Scented Stocks.

  Good for drying, Babci says.

  Dr. Kowalewski’s mama had thought of the need for food, but also beauty, when her son waited out the war as a prisoner. And now, blind, he can at least smell the flowers.

  We cut some and take them to the old man. He sleeps most of the time now. I’m glad he has his pillow back for all that sleeping. A nurse stays day and night. She only lets Babci take in the flowers and hold them near his nose, and makes me stay at the bedroom doorway. The old man murmurs something I can’t hear. Babci takes the bundle of flowers and puts them in his hand. He touches them all over. His eyes do not open. He sucks up the smell of the flowers, like my long lost friend Annie’s baby brother Ben in the wind under the apple tree. The little baby and the old man know what to do.

  Babci holds Dr. Kowalewski’s hand and gently touches his forehead and roots of his hair, the way Mom strokes me when I am sick. She hums a lullaby in Polish, “Lulajze Jezuniu.” I’ve heard it at Christmas before. Mom used to sing “Silent Night” to us year-round, too.