Deafening

by Frances Itani

  “Mamo?”

  Tress’s face. As if she’s been struck.

  “We couldn’t.” She clenched her teeth hard, and breathed out, and then she looked directly at Grania. “We couldn’t tell you, Graw, not when you were so sick.”

  It was certain, then. What she’d been afraid to ask. Grania’s legs gave out without warning. She felt Tress’s arms tighten around her. Tress half dragged her back to the bed. They sat on the edge.

  “The orange,” Grania said. “I dreamed the juice, squeezed onto my tongue. It was Mamo who looked after me.”

  Tress nodded.

  The empty chair, rocking.

  “The flu?”

  Tress nodded again.

  “When?”

  Watch the lips. Tell.

  “Just as you began to get better, when the fever came down. It was so quick, Graw. The funeral was three weeks ago but Dr. Clark said you couldn’t be told until you were strong and well.”

  She has no recollection of October. It is gone, lost to her. And she is not strong and well. She has only tried to come back for Jim. But she has not thought of Mamo. Somehow she kept believing that Mamo was there. Mamo has always been there, to help her live. Mamo, who wiggled her fingers to show the love moving back and forth between them moments after Grania was born. Now there was nothing but emptiness. Nothing at all.

  Mamo removed every trace of yellow from the room because yellow was the colour of death.

  Mamo was in the rocker all those nights. The scent of Canada Bouquet.

  Mamo nursed her back.

  They held each other, the two sisters. They were so, so tired. They held each other, and though Grania’s body was shaking, and the whites of her eyes were streaked with red, it was Tress who cried and cried and cried.

  Chapter 23

  Resolution: The Deseronto Town Council requests that the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden, demand that the Kaiser, his sons, and members of his staff—civil and military—be brought to the bar of justice in the same manner as any other notorious criminals. And further, that all those of the German people or their allies who may have been in any way responsible for such atrocities as have scandalized the world, be similarly dealt with so that none may escape.

  Minutes of the Regular Meeting

  Jim was safe. Patrick was safe and still in England. Dr. Whalen’s son and Aunt Annie’s son were safe. Letters and papers were scattered about the floor as Grania sat in the rocker and read. She was up more hours in the day now.

  One morning when she was alone in the house, she made her way to Mamo’s room, pausing to lean against the wall to rest along the way. The blinds were pulled. She sat on Mamo’s bed and looked around her in partial darkness, her breath quickening, the old feeling of tightness constricting her chest. She held it in, pressed it close, remembered Mamo telling her that some grief was so big it had to be kept inside. Understanding this was no solace. There was no energy to fight bleakness or despair. Mamo was not there to love or be loved. She was not downstairs, reading in the parlour, or rolling out dough in the hotel kitchen, or sitting at the family table drinking P-Ko tea. Grania could not turn to see her coming through the doorway, to take her arm as she walked back along the hall. Mamo had become ill, and she was gone from Grania’s life, and now there was only emptiness where she had been.

  Grania stood, but before she returned to her own room, she went to the bureau and lifted the stopper of Mamo’s Canada Bouquet. She had to steady herself. She held the small bottle to her nose and breathed in the scent, and tried to keep it with her all the rest of the day. And for days after that, she went back to the room, and inhaled the scent, and sat on the edge of Mamo’s bed.

  During the weeks that followed the November eleventh celebrations, the newspapers had much to say about the end of the war. Pic-ton had held a torchlight parade. Belleville celebrated with fireworks and bonfires and a long torchlight procession. The deaf children at the school wrote about seeing crowds of people who were ringing bells and about men and woman dressed up in funny costumes, parading through the streets. Confetti was thrown, and talcum powder, and children blew whistles, and flags were waved. Men had put the figure of the Kaiser on a wagon and horses had pulled the wagon around the city.

  There was speculation about how and when to get the boys home, and everyone had an opinion. The cowardly Kaiser had run away and the Dutch had let him in. Uncle Am came to tell the family that eight days after the Armistice, the town council passed a resolution that was to be sent to the prime minister, in Ottawa. A thousand copies had been printed. Some ended up in the hotel lobby, and Uncle Am dropped one off in the parlour downstairs.

  The aviation camps, Rathbun and Mohawk, were closing, and the authorities were wasting no time. The engines had been taken out of the aeroplanes, coated with Vaseline, and were stored away. Grania thought of Patrick. She wondered if, when he came home, he would miss the buzz and manoeuvre of aeroplanes around Deseronto’s skies.

  After the Armistice, too, the school paper arrived in the mail. The superintendent had put in a notice about the Spanish influenza being almost eliminated from the school. “All restrictions, all indulgences that resulted from its prevalence, are now removed.” The embargo on the receipt of mail and parcels had also been lifted.

  Of all the papers that came to house and hotel, it was this one, from the Ontario School for the Deaf, The Canadian, that Grania decided to save for Jim. Because this was the one that described the Armistice celebrations in words of sound.

  She thought of Fry. She thought of Colin who had tried so many times to join up but who had never got to the war. She thought of the hundreds of children at the school and how they would have learned about the Armistice from hands and fingers and lips. She thought of the hearing superintendent and the hearing staff at the hospital and the hearing matron and hearing teachers and hearing dorm supervisors, and she thought of Cedric, the hearing editor, who had printed in his paper, for all of the deaf community scattered about the province, the country and the continent to read:

  In the wee sma’ hours the bells in the city of Belleville began to ring, and every work shop, factory or yard that possessed a steam-whistle blew that whistle; and every person that owned a bell rang it; and every train that passed through the city wasted the company’s steam in blowing a continuous shrill whistle that wakened the heaviest sleeper and made every old cow grazing peacefully near the tracks lift her head in wondering surprise. There were church bells, fire bells and dinner bells; steam whistles, horns, bugles, trumpets, fiddles and tin cans; milk pails, tin trays, enamel dishes, old kettles and biscuit boxes. There was noise enough to reach to the furthest planet in the heavens. But who cared? Din? It was music, grandest music, and the very sound of it was life-giving, hope-inspiring, the very best noise we ever expected to hear.

  V

  1919

  Chapter 24

  Princess Hair Tonic

  We do not guarantee that our tonic will grow hair on the back fence, or make long flowing hair with two or three weeks’ use, or cover a bald head with a two-inch growth of hair with a week’s use of our remedy. No, all we claim is that our tonic is the best hair tonic and hair grower ever produced, and if used as directed, will do all any hair tonic can do.

  Wednesday afternoon. The hands showed ten minutes before one on the O’Shaughnessy clock. In the morning, Grania had done nothing more than stand at the porthole on the back landing and watch the birds as they flew in hungrily to pick at seeds and crushed corn she had set out below. Bernard came through the passageway from the hotel, and she met him in the downstairs hall.

  “Grainy? Do you still want to go?”

  She nodded. “Stop worrying. I’m all right.” The last words melded together like a song; she could feel them. She slipped into her coat and covered her bare head with the blue hat Mamo had knitted two winters before, and she wrapped her scarf tightly around her neck. Soft snow was puffed along the veranda railing. The tree branches, too, were
pocked with snow. She was well buttoned up when she crossed the street and walked the short distance to the barbershop, holding tightly to Bernard’s arm. It was no longer snowing, but the clouds were low and heavy and allowed only scant light, even in the middle of the day.

  Grew watched from his window as they stomped the snow from their boots. During the epidemic in the fall, he had closed his shop for two weeks. Aunt Maggie said that other public buildings had been forced to shut for a short time: Naylor’s, the library, their own hotel with the Quarantine card in the window. Some of the people in town wore masks while they went about their business. Grania tried to imagine the town coiled in upon itself while Death swept through. Death had taken its place in her room, but it was Mamo and not she who had been swept away. She tried to imagine Mamo’s grave. She had not been taken to visit and would not see it now until spring. She had asked Tress and Bernard, separately, to describe it. When she thought of Mamo, she hated the part of herself that was so well trained she could not cry.

  The bench outside the barbershop was piled high with snow. Bernard picked up the broom that leaned into it, banged out the snow and did a last sweep of the bottom of his own and Grania’s boots. He swept the bench with a few flourishes for good measure. Grew was still watching from the window, finishing his lunch where he stood. He swallowed a chunk of bread and bolted the last of his tea as they came through the door.

  He’s thinner than ever before, Grania thought. All because of the news that Death brings. Grew had staggered across the parlour floor and his hands had pounded the keys of the piano. His bony knees popped up because the piano stool was wound low. Finally, he’d permitted Father to take him home.

  He wiped his hands down the front of his drill coat and greeted them by raising a finger in the air as if he were about to conduct a secret meeting. It was as if the three of them had formed a prior conspiracy and now found themselves face to face in the same room. He reached towards the top of the window and tugged down the blind. He turned the Closed sign outward, and lowered the blind on the glass door as well.

  A single light hung from the ceiling and created a central glow in the room as if it, too, were part of the secret. Thumb to the lips—private. Grew’s finger touched his lips, as if to say Shhh.

  Light from outside seeped in around the edge of the pulled blinds. Grania’s glance darted at the shadows thrown across the walls, and then back to Grew’s yellow-toned skin. She looked at the skin of her own hands and saw that it too was yellowed by the light. She removed her hat and handed it to Bernard. Under Grew’s inspection, she felt the blood rush to her cheeks.

  He shook his head, slowly, deliberately. She could see his tongue. “Tst tst. The red hair,” his lips said. “The lovely red hair. Eyebrows, too.”

  Bernard had already sat in an empty chair by the window, and now he grinned encouragement. “Go ahead, Grainy.” He pointed to the leather chair. “Sit up there.”

  The tray to the side of the chair was lined with clippers, razor, a thin pair of shears. Her fingers grazed the strop hooked under the armrest, and she settled back. Grew pumped the chair and adjusted it so that Grania was facing him. Bottles and jars were stacked close together on the mirror shelf, and sent out odours of pine tar and alcohol. She had already seen the soaps and shaving cakes on a shelf of their own by the sink.

  “This is what we do,” said Grew. He exaggerated the words on his lips the way he had always done, believing this helped her to understand. He covered her from the neck down with a weighted apron, and wrapped a warm towel around her throat. The odour of alcohol, she now realized, was coming from him.

  He lifted the caps from two small blue bottles. Mamo had taught her the colour. They’d practised the word together the afternoon of her eighth birthday, IN-DEE-GO. Grania had been given an indigo scarf and wrapped it around her neck and paraded around the house, trying to look grown up. Dulcie’s mother declared that the scarf made her look too old.

  “Glycerine,” Grew’s lips said. “Jaborandi.”

  Grania looked over to Bernard, who shrugged and tried, unsuccessfully, to spell the last word with his fingers. Grew watched and waited and smiled as if he’d been permitted to witness communication between members of an exotic tribe.

  He held one of the uncapped bottles under her nose, something unidentifiable. Not entirely pleasant.

  He turned the chair to face the mirror, and tilted it back before she was able to get a long look at herself. The mixture dripped onto her scalp—she felt the wet pool of it—and Grew’s fingers began to draw circles along her temples and the top of her head. His fingers moved with such pressure and firmness she was forced to relax, and she sank back and closed her eyes. He massaged the contours of her scalp until her head was throbbing, and he applied a small amount to the area where her eyebrows had been, taking care that the mixture did not drip down over her lids. After what seemed a long time, he positioned the chair upright and pushed the towel farther down and massaged the back of her head and the base of her neck. When she checked the wall clock she saw that she had been in the chair only twenty minutes. Dulcie sat on the barber’s stool surrounded by swirls of hair scattered in a circle about the floor. Never had there been so good a barber.

  “Good?” Grew said. “The circulation—better?”

  She smiled for the first time since she’d entered the shop. “Better than goose grease.” It was her voice that had spoken. Her hands moved and the sign flicked off her fingers before she could stop them.

  “Ah,” said Grew, “poultice.”

  “Not poultice,” said Bernard. “They rubbed goose grease and turpentine on her skin when she was sick. That was only one of the remedies.”

  “I heard about the rifle,” said Grew. He tried to smile but the attempt only forced a grimace between his gaunt cheeks.

  He took up a second cloth now, and wiped away all traces of oil so that none would come in contact with Grania’s clothing. He removed the apron that covered her and unwrapped the towel from her neck. She felt lighter, bare. But calm.

  “Next Wednesday?” He wrote a note to himself on a jagged scrap of paper and nodded to Bernard. “I’ll add a dash of sage for scent. I’ll make up the mixture ahead. Same time?” This to Grania, the last two words exaggerated.

  Grania thanked Grew softly and slipped down and out of the chair. She was still buttoning her coat when Grew walked to the end of the room and reached up to the wall cupboard. He stood by the open door, tilted his head back and drank from a bottle. Tress had told her that Grew was taking Veronal now, along with his drink. Now that the production and sale of alcohol were forbidden, no one knew his source. Not Father. Since Mamo’s death, Father had been staying home.

  Grania followed Bernard outside, her scalp tingling under the hat. She looked back, but the blinds were tightly pulled and she could not see so much as a shadow inside. Grew had made himself invisible the moment they left.

  They crossed the street and passed Cora of the prying eyes, and Grania managed to muster a smile. They passed Meagher’s store, and she looked in and saw Aunt Maggie standing by the counter. She tapped the window and waved, and Aunt Maggie turned and saw her and blew a kiss. Grania allowed herself, in the chill air, to receive it, along with the faintest wisp of hope.

  Chapter 25

  Someone has sprung the question: “Can the deaf think?” Why not ask a few more: “Can the deaf eat?” “Can the deaf sleep?” “Can the deaf breathe?” It strikes us that the fool-killer misses a good many possible swats with his club.

  The Canadian

  Saturday morning, she kept going to the window to watch for the horse and cutter that would bring Fry. The road from Belleville was still hard-packed with snow. The thaw had not fully begun though the days were warmer. Most of the day, sunlight streamed through the south-facing windows. Soon, the cutters would be put away in the barns until next winter. This was the season when Patrick, as a boy, had taken an axe and a pick to chop and shape channels through the ice and
snow, front and back, to drain water away from the house as the snow melted. Mamo had once leaned out of the upstairs windows with a hoe, poking at and detaching the fattening, dripping icicles that hung from the roof.

  Mamo’s rocker had been brought down to the parlour. Grania noticed that no one else used it these days, except herself. While she sat, she felt as if she did not have a plan in her head for the future. There were days when she had the energy to do nothing more than sit in Mamo’s chair and wait for Jim to come home. Sometimes, upstairs, she stared out at the icy waters of the bay. Jim was in England, maybe Wales, she was not sure which. Patrick, too, though they had not met up with each other.

  She had just received a letter from her brother. Along with tens of thousands of others, he was waiting for a ship to bring him home. The letter arrived in Canada quickly; it must have gone directly into a mailbag that was put on a departing ship. He wrote that the locals had declared it to be the coldest winter for years. He was in North Wales, a place called Kinmel Park, and there weren’t enough blankets to go around. The men were restless, and anxious to get home. Many had been ill with the deadly influenza when it swept through.

  The next stage will be to Liverpool, across the bay, but so far, on the camp bulletin boards, we see no postings for ships about to sail. There was a time when we weren’t getting much food and one of my friends—his name is Victor—and I found our way into a Red Cross hut and sat on the floor in the dark and ate the only thing we could find—plum puddings from Canada that weren’t given out when they should have been, at Christmas. There were hundreds of them on the shelves. I must have eaten a dozen, myself. I lost count. But I paid for my appetite a few hours later, and couldn’t keep a thing in my stomach for two days. It was same with Victor. A week after that, all hell broke loose in the camp. The boys were restless and tired of waiting, and the situation became bad. There were riots, but we stayed clear. We are lying low, staying out of trouble, and plan to do nothing more than sit tight, do what we’re told, and wait for our ship.