Deafening

by Frances Itani

  But behind does not exist. Not for her. Behind is the darkness outside of thought. It’s the place where sound gathers, sound that she is not meant to hear.

  “What?” she cries to the circle of children, but her voice only makes them laugh. “When the children taught, fight back,” Mamo has told her.

  “Tell!” Her voice soars.

  They are jeering now. They will never tell. “Dummy!” they cry. “Dummy!”

  Grania pushes herself up, looks around wildly, and they back away. She makes fists but the tears are welling up. Fight back. She charges into one girl but the girl runs away. The children scatter and Grania is suddenly alone. She goes to find Tress. Tress puts both hands on her shoulders and makes her look. “Don’t give up,” her lips say. “Don’t give up.”

  But Grania’s shoulders sag with defeat. She scuffs towards the girls’ entrance and stands there by herself. She waits and watches until the monitor’s wrist swings the bell, up down, up down.

  In their room at home, she refuses to leave Tress alone until Tress shouts in her ear. “SPIT SPIT SPIT.” What does it matter that Grania hears nothing? Some part of her head will hear, even if her ears do not.

  Now it is her turn. “Listen,” she says. “Tell when my voice is wrong.”

  Tell.

  Tress listens for a few moments but she is impatient. She has homework to do.

  “Watch me, Graw. What am I saying?” She faces Grania, moves her lips and pretends to speak. But Grania can tell that her sister is faking. Her throat, her tongue, her cheeks, her breath are not making real words.

  Grania jumps on her, sits on top of her. “You’d better help me,”she says. “Helpmehelpme say it right.”

  But Tress is not in the mood. “Just a minute,” she says. “Wait.” She holds up a palm and looks towards the closed door. “Mother is calling. I’m supposed to tell you to go down.”

  But Mother doesn’t want Grania at all. Tress only wanted to get rid of her.

  Grania goes outside to the backyard. Carlow looks at her as if he’s been waiting. The patch over his eye makes him look like a dog pirate.

  “SPIT!” she shouts, and he comes bounding over.

  “BAD PERSON!” she shouts, and he sits beside her and thumps his tail.

  “GET THE POSSE!” she yells. She climbs the back stoop and he climbs with her. She practises SPIT over and over, and Carlow listens, and stays close, and cocks one ear.

  After supper, Grania goes to the parlour and finds Mamo there alone. “Will you blow in my ear, Mamo?”

  Mamo looks up from her rocker. She doesn’t have to ask what’s wrong.

  “You belong in school,” her lips say. “No matter what happens, you do belong.”

  She pulls Grania to her lap—a big girl now. Doesn’t matter. Mamo slips her fingers beneath Grania’s hair and blows softly into the child’s ear.

  Grania has seen the words fall from Mamo’s lips. She feels Mamo’s soothing breath and chants to herself, Do be long. I do be long.

  But there is something wrong with this.

  Mother says, before she walks down Main Street to shop, “I won’t be long.”

  Then what does Mamo mean? No matter what happens, you do be long.

  By bedtime, Grania is worn out from thinking. She goes upstairs, ties the rope around her ankle and climbs into bed. Tress comes up soon afterwards. Grania waits. As soon as she is sure that her sister is attached at the other end, she gives her leg a vicious yank. She grins to herself in the dark.

  Saturday morning, Mamo lifts the burlap bag from the trunk. She reaches down and runs her fingers over the small wooden cross and says a quick prayer before she closes the lid. She slips the strap of the clock bag over her shoulder and signals to Grania that it is time to go for their walk.

  “What do you and Mamo do on your walks?” Tress wants to know.

  “Pick up stones,” says Grania promptly. “On the shore.”

  And sure enough, she brings back a speckled stone and a piece of coal and sets them on the bedroom sill.

  But Tress thinks she saw lumps in the bag before Mamo and Grania left the house.

  “No,” Grania says. “No.” She remembers what Mamo has told her. It is their secret.

  When things get bad.

  Saturday. It is July first, the Dominion Day holiday. Father’s lazy eye is almost closed against the sun. “Up you go, my darling,” he says. His Irish hands lift Grania into the seat in the wagon but not before the black mare rolls its eye sideways to stare. Grania stares back and the mare flicks its head as if to deny her presence. Uncle Am’s horses are the finest in town, after Father’s. Everyone knows that no one loves horses more than Father. Sometimes Father spends more time with his horses than he does running the hotel. That is what Grania has read from Mother’s lips.

  Tress climbs up beside Grania; Patrick is plunked down beside Uncle Am. Mother and Father and Mamo and Bernard will stay home to look after the guests. The hotel is fully booked for the holiday weekend and Mrs. Brant will be off, but her daughter will come to help Mother peel and prepare vegetables in the hotel kitchen.

  Bernard stands on the steps of the hotel. Bernard has wavy hair, like Father. His mouth shapes “Bye, Grainy,” and he waves his hand. Grania doesn’t have to hear to know that he is a soft speaker.

  She looks at Tress, seated beside her, to make sure she hasn’t missed anything. There isn’t an emotion she can’t read on her sister’s face. Tress makes the sign in their homemade language, the sign they’ve invented for what Mamo calls “no patience at all”—Let’s get going, let’s get going.

  Uncle Am tilts his hat forward to shade his eyes. He signals the horses, and the wheels lurch forward. Grania tightens her hat ribbon under her chin.

  The wheels bump up, down, forward, all at the same time. Grania closes her eyes against the sun and opens them again, remembering that Mamo has instructed her to pass along her greetings and to report what she sees. “I want to hear about your grandfather and that mixed-up Irish family of his,” she said. “Your father must be the only man in the county to have two uncles who are priests and another who rides King Billy’s white horse in the Orangeman’s Parade.” Mamo smiled when she said this, and Grania looked for the up-and-down line between her brows.

  The year before, Grania had watched the Orange parade from the post office roof. She was boosted up the ladder that was lowered out of the hall ceiling, just outside Uncle Am’s apartment. She climbed through the hatch and found herself staring at the flat part of the roof outside the tower clock. Another ladder, inside the parlour, went up into the tower, but this ladder was different; it took her outside. Uncle Am held her by one wrist and Aunt Maggie by the other, so she wouldn’t step too close to the edge and be in danger of falling off the roof. She could see the bunting and the flags waving on the street below. She could not see Tress—who was looking after Patrick—though Tress told her later that they had waved up at her. This year on the twelfth, Grania will again climb to the roof with Uncle Am and Aunt Maggie. Father’s uncle will once more be riding King Billy’s white horse. Last year, Bernard stayed close to the hotel, ready to help when the crowds came to the dining room after the parade. Bernard is the home-stayer. That is what Mother calls him. Bernard never likes to be far from home.

  Uncle Am’s back is responsible and tight as he holds the reins. Horse, eye, sun, rump, hickory at the side of the road. Grania lines up the pictures in her memory so she can describe them to Mamo. Leaves toss inside the maples. The bay is a dark bulge below the town. When they pass the Catholic church, Tress gives her a poke because they are in the exact spot where Mamo crosses herself every time she goes past in the buggy. The two-storey house beside the church looks stark and bare, with empty verandas upstairs and down. At the top of the church steps, one of the double doors is propped open with a board. Father O’Leary, who has a birthmark shaped like a pipe behind his ear, must be inside, letting in the warm air. Mother calls this the changing time of ye
ar, just after summer has begun, when outside is warmer than in. Even though Grania is outside now, she thinks of what the church is like when she is in. Dank and cool, the aroma of burning coals and wax, a solemn heaviness in the air. A place where children have to behave. When everyone else is praying, Grania moves her lips any old way and pretends to know what is going on.

  It will take almost three hours to reach her grandfather’s farm. Because it is a long trip over bumpy, dried-up roads, they are going to stay overnight. Bompa Jack is Uncle Am’s father and Father’s father. Grania tries to arrange the line-up of fathers and brothers and uncles and great-uncles in her head. Tress and Patrick sleep part of the way, but Grania stays awake the entire time. She stores pictures of rocks in the fields, and endless trees that throw off shadows. She knows that Bompa Jack calls the trees bush and not woods. She sees a rabbit hop out of the bush and sit at the edge of the road. The rabbit does not frighten the horses. Uncle Am turns and sees that she is the only one awake and his lips say, “Did you see?” And she nods.

  Grandfather stands outside the farm house, suspenders over his shirt, ready to greet them as they arrive. He has a wide build and a stern face and he is not as tall as his own sons. Grania knows that Bompa Jack hides a smile behind his stern face. She can see his laughter before it happens. He removes his hat and squints up at the girls, holding out his arms. Grania jumps down with no shyness at all, but Tress climbs down from the other side before she goes around to be kissed and hugged. Grania looks at the barn, at the split-rail fence, the conical heap of manure past the first gate, the smooth rock surface on the slope behind the house. She sees the open-sided milk house, the place where Bompa Jack keeps a salt shaker so he can rub a fresh tomato against his shirt, take a bite, add a sprinkle of salt and eat the tomato while he stands. He takes a bite. Grania thinks of the boy in the Sunday book, the partly eaten apple, the open book pressed to his chest. The words of yellow rope are stored in Grania’s head.

  The farm kitchen is filled with visitors, great-uncles and uncles and aunts, all sitting around the long table. They rise from their chairs when Uncle Am and the children come in and everyone is hugged and squeezed. There is a white-and-gold teapot on a trivet at the far end of the table. One of the great-uncles, a priest from Marysville, is dressed in black. Grania sees a word here and there as her glance flits from face to face. It is too difficult to see where conversations start or where they continue. Words and laughter erupt around her and she tries to follow, but she can’t because so many people are talking at once.

  Her grandfather beckons her to the end of the table, where he is seated on a wide chair. He looks directly at her and enlarges the words on his lips. Although he is speaking to her, she can tell that he is also speaking to his sons at the table.

  “Your mother’s memory will always be alive as long as this redhead is around,” he tells them. “Every time I see her she is more like my Sarah. Eyes the same brown. Hair the same red. Look at her arms, look at the shape of her hands.” He takes one of Grania’s hands and stretches her fingers out over his own. “You’re the apple of my eye,” he says. “Are you going to say my name?”

  “Bompa.”

  “Grampa,” he tells her. “Grampa Jack.”

  She watches the J drop from his jaw, the upward clamp of the K.

  “Jack,” she says. “But your real name is John.”

  “The Irish up here on the Ninth are all Joes, Jims and Johns,” he says. “That’s why I’m Jack.”

  “Jack,” she says again. “Bompa Jack.”

  “Good enough for me. You’re as quick as you were before the sickness.” He doesn’t say the word deaf.

  Bompa Jack’s sister, Great-Aunt Martha, is preparing the next meal with the help of the younger aunts. Great-Aunt Martha shares Bompa’s house. She is taller than he is, and wears a close-fitting rimless bonnet inside the house. She is the only person Grania knows who does this, but Mother has told her that Aunt Martha likes the old ways. The bonnet is grey and looks severe, but there are rose-coloured ribbons tied under the chin. Grania stows this picture in her head, so she can report to Mamo.

  There are rhubarb pies with lattice tops lined up along the counter, and Grania stores this, too. Mamo will be sure to say, “And what did the women serve for your supper?”

  The wood stove has been lit and the air in the long kitchen is warm and close with the smell of roasting meat. Bompa is always threatening to find a new husband for Aunt Martha. “There’s still a good leg on the cook,” he says, pointing to her ankles as she walks across the kitchen. “We’ll find her a new husband yet.”

  Laughter erupts again. “He’s an old fool,” Martha says to Grania, looking out from inside the bonnet. “That’s all he is.”

  “And still vain,” he says. “I would like the camera brought out for this occasion.” He looks to Martha as if Martha will know where everything is.

  Grania sees the word camera and thinks she also sees the word school. She looks to Tress to get information, but Tress has turned aside. Sometimes it is not easy to follow Bompa’s speech. Like Grew the barber, who trims Father’s moustache, Bompa tries to help Grania understand by exaggerating his words. But his lips end up distorting, and Grania loses the wholeness of them, and the words end up running all together.

  When the camera is placed in Bompa’s hands, he sends for his shirt. His new one. And his bow tie.

  The new shirt is eight years old but it looks new because it is worn only twice a year—Christmas Day and the anniversary of the day when Grania’s other grandmother died. Grandmother Sarah was burned in the woods in the sugar bush fire, when her long wool skirt caught up some sparks and burst into flames, and no one could save her. Every year in April, on the date of her death, the children tell the story to one another, even though none of them knew her when she was alive. She was burned during what Bompa Jack calls “the maple moon.” She ran to the shallow creek with her skirt in flames and broke through the ice and tried to wet her clothes to put out the fire. But the burns were severe. And though the dressings were tended and changed every day, she died before the week was out.

  Uncle Am disappears upstairs and comes back with Bompa’s crisply ironed shirt and his black bow tie. Bompa slips the suspenders from his shoulders until they droop below his waist. He changes into his new shirt and leaves the shirt-tail hanging over his work pants. He spends a moment knotting the bow tie. He looks like a catalogue version of himself.

  “In 1901, I paid twelve and a half cents for the tie,” he says, looking around at the others. “It was sent to me by T. Eaton, Esquire, himself.” But everyone has heard the story.

  He looks to Grania. “Come out,” his exaggerated lips say. “I want you to use the camera.”

  He places it in her hands and everyone goes outside and he shows her how to hold the black box steady against her waist, how to look down and centre him in the tiny square window, how to press the sunken button. He wants head and shoulders only; his hand paints a frame around himself, through the air. The aunts and uncles stand back, frozen in a semicircle, as if by remaining still they will also be part of the composition. Even though he knows the button has clicked, Bompa maintains his pose: shoulders tight, smile hidden, lips closed to present a firm jaw. When he feels it is prudent to move, he unfastens the bow tie, slips off the new eight-year-old shirt, and puts the work shirt back on. This time, he tucks the worn collar down into his neckline. It is warm out here in the sun. He hauls up his suspenders, and now he looks like Bompa Jack again.

  Another photograph of Bompa is taken, this time in his ordinary clothes, standing with all of the relatives. Everyone has a serious face for the photograph. Grania takes a long breath and steadies the camera and presses it to her body. Her palm shields the tiny window to keep away the sun.

  The last photo is taken by Bompa Jack. It is a photo of Grania and Tress and Patrick, sitting on the rough bench that has been dragged out from under Bompa’s favourite tree.

  The e
vening meal is served early because everyone is hungry and because some of the aunts and uncles have to return to their farms and homes before dark. A lamp that sits on the wide window ledge is now lit. Everyone joins hands around the table while the great-uncle who is a priest says grace. The talking stops while food is passed around. There are potatoes that have been browned in the pan alongside the roast beef. Another pan is filled with gravy that is flecked with dark brown bits that have broken away from the roast. Before supper, when Aunt Martha poured the juices from the pan into the gravy, she looked at Grania as if they were conspirators and her lips said, “We always save the goodness in the pan.” There are new carrots from the garden, and creamed peas, and a pot of fresh tea for the adults, and milk for the children, carried from the milk house and poured into an enamel jug. There are pickled beets and corn relish and, finally, cooled rhubarb pie served with fresh cream.

  After everyone has eaten and beds have been allotted—Tress and Grania will share a narrow room upstairs that has a curtain across the doorway and a pipe hole in the floor—and after the uncles have gone back to their farms with their wives, and after the priest returns to Marysville, Grania sits on the veranda with Bompa Jack and the others. The sun sinks lower and lower until lips can no longer be seen.

  She is glad to let go of the conversation. She is worn out from trying to store the events of the day, from watching eyes and throats and lips and teeth and tongues. She sinks into the warmth and haze of family that surrounds her and she falls asleep. She is carried by tall Aunt Martha upstairs to bed. Tress and Patrick are right behind. They follow the dense odour of kerosene and the flame that darts and flickers while Bompa holds the lamp high and precedes them up the stairs.

  In the early morning, Grania tiptoes down before Tress wakes, and watches Bompa Jack as he stands at the kitchen washstand that has a bucket under its open drain. He lathers his face with his badger-hair shaving brush and shaves his cheeks and throat in long soapy strips. He plunks his hat on his head and sits at the table with Grania, while Great-Aunt Martha makes his tea and prepares breakfast.