Deafening

by Frances Itani

  “Good girl. Colour?”

  “Like coal bin. The coal bin.”

  “What else?”

  “Hat is round like Uncle Am’s but with a hole punched in.”

  “I know,” Mamo says, to herself this time—she’s forgetting the game. “He won’t replace it. He’s too proud.” She sits forward. “The fight was a few years back and he won’t buy a new hat.”

  “Fight?”

  “Ah, you read my lips even when I talk to myself. He helped your father get some rowdies out. They came in on the steamer. They weren’t Irish, those rowdies. Well, they did manage to get them out, sure enough.” She leans back again in the rocker. “Someone must have spilled salt that day.”

  “Salt?”

  “Means a fight. Never mind. Look again. Is there a band on the hat?” Mamo’s fingers curl to create the width of a band. More hand signals.

  “Dark.” Grania’s hands instinctively cross in front of her face, semaphore flags. She cannot know that two years later she will be taught the same sign.

  “What is Mr. Conlin doing?”

  This time, Grania doesn’t need a second look. “Wait for Cora to pass because Cora is nosy. Then chew tobacco and go back to post office. The post office.”

  “You’re the one who’s the Nosy Parker.”

  Jack Conlin turns in their direction, and waves.

  At night, Grania tiptoes across the rag rug, counting six steps between beds. She crouches by her sister’s bed, waiting. Tress has told her that the springs creak and will give them both away if Grania climbs in beside her. Mother and Father sleep in the next room and Mother will be listening.

  “No talking,” Mother has warned. “Grania is not to leave her bed.” It was to Tress that she said this when she came to say good night, but Grania saw the frown on Mother’s face and read her lips before she finished speaking.

  There is something else Grania has to consider in the darkness—the walls. Aunt Maggie, who lives with Uncle Am in the tower apartment above the post office, told Grania that the walls have ears. Mamo agreed that this was true, and she and Aunt Maggie smiled while Grania weighed the information. Every night now when Grania goes to bed, she scrunches as far away from the wall as she can because she does not want the wall to hear. She does not want to fall into the place where the wall swallows sound.

  A shadow appears at the front window where the branches of the maple stretch up. Things that move, things that don’t move. The shadow slides across the oval mirror with the reed trim, and across the framed picture of daffodils. It slides past the washstand and jug, and above the bureau and over the sampler Mother stitched when she was fourteen years old, lines from “The Breastplate of Saint Patrick.” God’s eye for my seeing, God’s ear for my hearing.

  The shadow slips out of the room. “Watch for things that move,” Mamo has taught Grania. “Watching will keep you safe.”

  Shadows sometimes take Grania by surprise. Under the moon there are shadows. There are times when she walks outside with Mamo or Bernard in the evening, and electric lights shine out of a window and make not one but two shadows that glide beside her. She is startled by this, and keeps a close watch until the shadows merge again into one.

  From her crouched position on the floor she allows herself to sink to the rag rug. In the same movement—holding back, even as her body leans forward—her shoulder nudges the edge of her sister’s bed. Tress’s hand slides out from beneath the sheets and slips into her own. Tress shifts some of the blankets over the side and bunches them to cover Grania’s shoulders. The two hold hands and sleep, one on, one off the bed, all through the night.

  Mamo takes her by the hand and leads her to the clock in the front hall, the one that was carried in the burlap bag with the wide shoulder strap, the bag stitched by Grandfather O’Shaughnessy himself. He carried the clock all the way from the beautiful land called Ireland, where he and Mamo were born in the same town, and grew up and loved each other and married. When Grandfather died on the ship and was buried at sea near the coast of their new country, it had fallen to Mamo to carry the clock. When they reached Quebec, she and her four children, two daughters and two sons—Grania’s mother, Agnes, the eldest—hoisted the O’Shaughnessy trunk, the bundles, the clock in the burlap bag, and left the ship. They staggered to shore while their legs gave out beneath them. As weak as they were, they were glad to have their feet on land, even though they were facing a second journey. They travelled overland to Mystic, Quebec, where Mamo had a cousin, the only person she knew from the old country. Later, when Mamo’s sons were old enough to work and her daughters to marry, they moved to Deseronto on Lake Ontario. All of this happened before Grania was born.

  Mamo gave the O’Shaughnessy clock to Mother and Father when they were married. The clock is as tall as Grania’s arm is long, fingertip to shoulder, and stands on the pine table in the front hall. It has two short posts that come out at the top, posts that did not snap off during the long sea journey. Mamo gave away the clock but not the burlap bag, which is stored in the trunk along with the small wooden cross she placed there the day her husband was buried at sea.

  Mamo stops the clock and turns it towards her, so that only she can see its face. She places Grania’s hand against its side. The hand accepts smoothness, cool and polished wood.

  “I want you to feel time,” Mamo tells her. “If my hand can feel the chimes and the ticking, so can yours.”

  Grania watches Mamo’s lips and stares into the shadowy end of the hall while her hand accepts the pulse of the clock. She feels the ticking against the base of her fingers and into the joints where fingers meet palm. Mamo stops the pendulum. The pulse stops and Grania looks up to Mamo’s face, and Mamo resets the hands of the clock.

  “Ready? Count. How many chimes?”

  New sensation. Th-th-th—a determined message, arriving through the skin. It stops.

  Grania has been counting. “Five. Five o’clock.”

  “Clever girl. Try again.”

  Mamo signals.

  “Not,” says Grania. “Not sounding.”

  “Good. Now?”

  “Three.” Each chime pushes into her hand more strongly than the chime before.

  Mamo puts a key into the face of the clock and sets it for the last time. She signals, eyes laughing.

  “Twelve,” says Grania, without using her hand.

  “Monkey,” says Mamo. “Now you’re guessing. But you’re right. And being right has nothing to do with your thick sense.”

  Father stays in his hotel office most of the time, because he has business things to do. It is hard work to own a hotel, he says. Everything must run smoothly and the guests have to be satisfied and the food must be good. Mother and her helper, Mrs. Brant, cook the food. Father sits at the head of the family table in the hotel dining room during dinner and supper but he is never there for breakfast. Father calls himself a wine merchant and sometimes he smells like wine, or damp fruit. His smells are different from everyone else’s. He has a moustache that curls at each end and smells like tobacco mixed with wax. He wears a ribbed vest with six buttons that Grania has counted, and a watch on a chain that is hooked through number five buttonhole on the vest. Father has broad thick hands, Irish hands that know how to work, he says. He has wavy hair and he wears a silver ring on the little finger of his right hand. One eyelid droops and he says that it is lazy. He has a brother in town—Uncle Am, the caretaker of the big post office building halfway along Main Street. Father’s town friends are Uncle Am and Jack Conlin, the postmaster.

  Father wears a bow tie, like his own father, Bompa Jack, when Bompa Jack gets dressed up. Father has a new puppy, Carlow, who is allowed to sleep in Father’s office. Carlow has a brown patch that circles his left eye. His legs are white, and his back is brown. Grania is permitted to take Carlow outside at the back of the house, as long as they stay inside the fenced area. Carlow is never permitted upstairs in the bedrooms.

  Grania shouts commands to Carlow. S
he makes up sounds and he obeys. But he does not obey Tress or Bernard or Patrick. It is Grania’s voice that Carlow understands. Grania protects Carlow from the cat that prowls at the back. The cat that lives in the drive sheds.

  Sometimes, when Grania is in the yard, Mrs. Brant opens the loading window at the back of the hotel where she works in the kitchen. If she sees Grania, she slides two raisin cookies across the flat ledge, one for Grania and one for Carlow. Mrs. Brant is a Mohawk woman and she has dark hair and dark eyes and a kind round face. She puts a finger to her lips when she slides the cookies across, and Grania knows that this is a secret between them. Grania loves Mrs. Brant.

  Father makes certain that his children don’t make a ruckus when they are playing, and that they know their manners at the table. “Use your knife and fork,” he tells them. “Don’t chew with your mouth open. It’s rude.”

  “What?”

  “Not what, Grania, pardon.” Grania turns away, her timing split-second. What she can’t see she can’t be expected to understand.

  Father’s moustache hangs over his upper lip, and sometimes Grania doesn’t know what he is saying. She peers and strains to see, but when his words are hidden she has to ask Tress what he has said. Father doesn’t like being asked to repeat his words. On certain days, he goes to Grew the barber on the other side of Main Street and along the boardwalk to have his moustache trimmed. On those days Grania understands. But soon, the moustache grows thick and covers his lip again. Even so, Father sometimes says to Grania, “You don’t miss much, my darling.” And that she understands.

  Grania dreams about Father standing in the doorway of his office. One of his large Irish hands, the hand with the ring, rests against his watch. Father talks to her in the dream and his face is troubled because he thinks Grania is lost. She sees him but he can’t see her. His lips are moving but the moustache hangs over them and she does not understand. She is clenched with fear and runs towards him but he still doesn’t see her. His lips stretch and distort. He gives up on the speaking language and tries to signal with his hands. But he does not know the hand language—not the one invented by Grania and Tress. And though he looks everywhere, he still can’t see her.

  Father loves Grania. She knows this in the dream. But because he is so sure that she is lost, he turns away and goes back inside his office. Grania is desperate now. She shouts after him, the way she shouts at Carlow, but Father does not turn around. Carlow bounds out through the office door and leaps at her, wagging his tail. Carlow always understands Grania’s voice.

  A warm night. A soft breeze lifts in from the bay. Hotel guests, the women, are seated on the upstairs veranda only a few feet across the roof from where the sisters lie in their beds. It is long past the supper hour and the women occupy the row of rattan chairs that face the water. Directly below, on the street-level veranda, their husbands keep their own company, drinks in hand, spittoons at their feet. Bernard, the only one of the children old enough to help in the hotel in the evenings, is working at the desk in the lobby.

  As soon as Mother says good night and shuts the bedroom door, the hand signal comes from Tress, palm held high for silence. The moment the hand comes down Grania slips off the mattress, all the while watching Tress for a sign that will warn her if she is making noise. She tiptoes across the rag rug, sits down and tucks her feet beneath her gown. Father will not return to the house until the last hotel guest is settled for the night. Mother’s whereabouts are not so easy to predict. Sometimes she stays in the downstairs kitchen or parlour; sometimes she is next door in the hotel kitchen, planning or preparing meals for the next day. Mother’s cooking is so good, people come to stay just because of the food.

  Tress pulls herself up inch by inch until she is kneeling on the mattress and can peer through the zigzag tear in the blind. Light from the hotel veranda filters through, enough to illuminate her face. Her dark hair is pulled back, tucked behind her ears. Grania wags her hand, showing her sister which way to shift, this way, that way, until the zigzag of light falls across Tress’s lips. She watches the words spill out while a spying Tress describes the row of women known to them only as the travelling ladies. Tress elaborates the pleats and folds of a muslin dress, the laced leather boots, the pearl moon brooch, the buckled belt, the cameo, the style and curl of hair. In childish hand language, with words formed by Tress, and with stifled laughter that threatens to expose them, they create fantasy lives for the women they spy upon. Women who have means and leisure. Unsuspecting ladies who do not know themselves to be observed.

  Grania, as she watches Tress report on the ladies, is not afraid. Not as long as she can keep her eyes open, not as long as Tress stays awake, not while words spill their shapes into the zigzag of light across her sister’s lips. Not as long as the two of them keep watch side by side against the dark.

  Mamo holds the book while Grania inspects the picture. There are four words on this page. A curly-haired boy is straddling the corner of a wooden chair that is too high and too big for him. The curly hair makes her think of long-legged Kenan, their friend who is in Tress’s class at school and who lives with his uncle on Mill Street. Kenan has no mother or father. The boy in the picture wears a sailor suit, wide collar, short pants, two buttons on the side of each pantleg. In his left hand he holds an open book that is propped tightly against his chest. In his right hand he holds a partly eaten apple. His eyes are dark and he looks out of the picture and past Grania. The picture and the words are black and white.

  “‘HE TAKES A BITE.’”

  Mamo points as she pronounces, pausing so that Grania can examine each word and recognize the separations between. “He – takes – a – bite.” Mamo snaps her teeth after the word bite, and laughs at herself.

  The boy in the picture is thinking. Maybe he would rather be reading instead of eating. Maybe he should put the book away before he starts to eat. Maybe he is hanging on to the book for dear life so that no one will yank it away. Maybe, like Grania, it is the only book he has.

  “Say the words,” Mamo says. “Watch my lips, watch my throat.”

  In her excitement, Grania’s voice runs high. The words dissolve into one another and she feels them drift away.

  “Slowly.” Mamo frowns and flaps her fingers in front of her lips. “You’re like a house on fire. Try again but keep your voice close.” Mamo’s palms press against her chest. Close. Keep the words close.

  “House on fire?”

  “Means hurry too much. Now try again and then practise upstairs or outside. ‘HE TAKES A BITE.’”

  Grania takes the book to Tress, who reads the words silently before she shouts them down the canal of Grania’s ear. “He takes a bite, he takes a bite, this won’t do any good!”

  But nothing will stop Grania. When she is alone she stands on tiptoe on the stoop at the back, behind the laundry, and she watches her reflected mouth in the narrow window. Hetakesabite. She studies each word separately. She holds her voice as close to herself as she can. It is like pressing a pillow against her chest, the way the boy in the picture presses the book to his sailor suit. Grania keeps her voice close to the front of her body and makes it stay in that one held place.

  Night after night, she tiptoes across the rag rug. The rug feels as if it is moving beneath her feet. Something taps at her from behind. She crouches low and wonders if her breathing is loud. Does she dare nudge Tress to inch over? No, Mother will hear, Mother will be angry. Grania waits for a signal from Tress but nothing comes. She sinks all the way to the floor. She falls asleep, shivering, while trying to keep her eyes open to ward off the dark.

  Tress finds her in the early morning and heaps blankets on top of her. When it is time to get dressed for breakfast, she shakes Grania awake. It is Saturday. They fold down the covers and the ribbed spreads, and they air out their beds the way Mamo has taught them. After that, Tress beckons Grania, first to the bureau and then to their shared narrow closet with its rack of wooden pegs. From hooks and shelves Tress pulls sto
ckings, soft belts, under-drawers, scarves. Anything long that can be tied. She puts a finger to her lips, leaves the room and returns with two of Bernard’s old neckties. Grania does not see what all of this will add up to but she helps Tress as she ties together a long and variegated rope. Tress nods, holds it at arm’s length for inspection, and tests the knots. She shoves her dark hair behind her ears while she concentrates. She loops the rope several times between hand and elbow—the way she’s seen Mamo wind her yarn—and hides it at the bottom of her bed, under the covers. She pats the bedspread, and the two go downstairs and through the passageway to the hotel, and into the dining room. Mother is in the hotel kitchen. Father is always in his office by the time the girls come to breakfast.

  But Mamo is here. Drinking tea from her china cup and saucer, and teaching the word Pekoe to Patrick. Mamo always leaves a little tea in her cup before she gets up from the table; it is bad luck to drink the last half inch from a cold cup.

  Patrick pulls at Grania’s sleeve when she sits beside him. He reaches up with small insistent hands and turns her face, forcing her to look at him, to focus on what he wants to say.

  Grania reads his lips. “P-Ko,” she says. She likes the word that is Mamo’s tea. Patrick laughs, and Mamo reaches over to stroke Grania’s cheek, and Grania, thinking of the rope upstairs, exchanges looks with Tress.

  “Haven’t you two swallowed the canary,” Mamo says. She looks from one to the other.

  Grania looks to Tress’s face for information, but Tress is not going to tell. Grania knows this won’t matter to Mamo anyway. Grania and Mamo have secrets of their own. Doesn’t Mamo sometimes take the burlap bag out of the O’Shaughnessy trunk, and sling it over her shoulder when she takes Grania for a walk?

  When things get bad.

  All day, Grania wonders.

  In the evening she goes upstairs while there is still light in the sky. She pauses at the porthole on the landing and looks far to the left, to the field at the northwest edge of town. The forked tree casts out its quivering shadow. She goes to her room and climbs into bed. She stares at the carefully stitched words in Mother’s sampler. The words say something about God’s eye and God’s ear, and she wonders if Mother learned the words at church. She stares at the yellow daffodils in the frame. She raises a finger in the air and traces the outline of the jug on top of the washstand. She waits and waits and tells her body to be still but it won’t be still. To make the time go faster she pounds her heels into the mattress as fast and hard as she can, but the covers become untucked. Tress comes in and puts her hands on her hips when she sees the mess at the foot of Grania’s bed. She closes the bedroom door and makes the sign for quiet while she tidies Grania’s covers. She slips into her nightgown, kneels to say her prayers, and turns out the light. She reaches under the blankets and pulls out the homemade rope, tosses a looped end to Grania, loops her own end and ties it firmly around one ankle. Grania watches through the shadows and does the same. The rope drops between them, over the side of Tress’s bed, across the oval rug, up and over the end of Grania’s mattress. It disappears between her sheets. From separate beds they kick and move their feet and legs until they are satisfied with the rope’s position.