Deafening

by Frances Itani

  A horse and cutter came into view and there was Fry, next to Colin, who held the reins. Grania quickly pulled on Jim’s jacket and ran outside. Fry waved and had already begun to sign before the cutter stopped. Two women, hotel guests, stepped out and crossed the hotel veranda next door just as Fry jumped down.

  Grania hugged her friend and held her close. She had not missed the shock on Fry’s face when Fry saw her thinness and her short short hair. She detected a faint scent of lavender now, and remembered how her friend had placed crumbled bits of the dried stalks in her bureau drawer at school. The two friends were signing rapidly, Colin too. It was only after a few moments that Grania sensed the two women watching and looked up to see that they had stepped down to the cleared boardwalk and were staring as if the three friends were performing a sideshow. Dulcie frowned when she saw that the travelling ladies disapproved.

  Fry’s hands spoke. “Never mind.” Her hands fell to her sides, hands that were trying to hide. “We’ll talk in the house,” her lips said.

  Where no one will see.

  But Grania’s hands were burning to speak. It had been months since they’d conversed, their bodies leaning towards each other, their hands and fingers bringing forth the news.

  Colin led the horse around the back to the drive shed, and Grania and Fry followed him part way and stood by the side door. Fry was perfectly still, her head tilted down a little, while she waited to go in.

  Grania looked at the face of patience on her beloved friend.

  She has become more tolerant, and I less, she thought. She remembered Fry’s visible frustration when they’d been students, when sign language was being used less and less. “As long as we permit hearing teachers to disapprove of our language,” Fry had once signed—her hands moving rapidly—“we will always be made to feel ashamed.”

  But Fry would not respond to Grania now. She would wait until they were in the house. In private.

  Tress came to the side door and greeted Fry with a hug. “Where’s Colin?”

  “The horse,” Grania replied. With voice. Why did she feel she was betraying Fry by speaking aloud? “The horse had to be taken back.” She pointed in the direction of the drive sheds.

  And fell into the dark pool. The pool that was always there, waiting for the slip between sign and voice. She sank into the memory that had brought her to its edge. Words, always words that weighed like stones. The horse had to be taken back.

  From lips around her when she was a child she had seen and read, taken back, taken aback. Sometimes one, sometimes the other. For a long time she had thought they were the same.

  “I was quite taken aback,” Aunt Maggie had once said to Mother, when Grania was in the room. She had looked offended at the time. Grania, eavesdropping the lips, did not know what the conversation was about.

  Taken aback where? Where had she been taken?

  Grania had never asked. It was one more mystery to add to the others she carried inside her. Years later at school, when the words finally tumbled out, it was Miss Marks who intercepted and explained.

  “Put an a before back and the meaning changes,” she said. “To be taken aback is to be surprised—by something unexpected.”

  One more complication. The language of the hearing was never simple. Language is our battleground, Grania thought. The one over which we fight, but with no desire to be part of the conflict.

  The news brought by Fry and Colin was about Colin’s job. Once again, he had been offered work in a printing office in Toronto, and this time he had decided to accept. He would finish out the school term and Fry, too, would stay at her job until June. But there was bigger news. Fry would not be looking for work in Toronto. They were starting a family. Fry had not wanted to tell Grania by letter, but she signed excitedly to her now. The baby was due in October.

  When it was time for her friends to leave, Grania stood at the door while Colin went back to the drive shed. Before putting on her gloves, Fry cupped a hand and smoothed it down over Grania’s skull and the hair that was slowly growing back. They hugged, and Fry batted away her tears, and Grania stood in the doorway, looking down the street, a long time after the cutter disappeared.

  Chapter 26

  Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching, I spy Kaiser at the door.

  We’ll get a lemon pie and we’ll squish him in the eye, And there won’t be any Kaiser any more.

  Children’s chant

  She expected word of Jim’s arrival any day. Already, it was April. Was she still talking in her sleep? She would ask Mother. If so, it would not be a surprise. Her body was jittery. Every day by three o’clock she wanted to lie down. Instead, she walked through the passageway and helped out in the kitchen or dining room, changing linens or setting tables. Never before had she experienced this kind of fatigue. If Mamo were alive she would say that Grania’s blood was low, and would reach for the blackstrap molasses. But Grania had gagged over it at school, a spoonful every day, and knew she could not stomach it now.

  Grew no longer came to the hotel lobby to read papers across the room, but Grania wished he would. Lately, she had been reading about the after-effects of the Spanish flu. Many people had become deaf after recovering from the illness. The doctor who wrote one article said that most cases would likely be permanent. For people who have lost their hearing, he wrote, it will be like starting their lives over again.

  The way Grania had relearned the language when she was five? And Nola? And Bridie? And Fry, who would always rely on the language of hands? Some children managed voice and some did not. Every one of the deaf children at school had been sent there by parents who hoped that some miracle would prepare them—for what? For a new life that would miraculously be found?

  Grania’s losses were different.

  Mamo.

  But she could not cry.

  Mother came into the room, waving a telegram. Grania had no way of knowing that the boy from the telegraph office had delivered it to the front door. Mother smiled when she put it in her hands and stood beside her for a moment, before she went back to her work.

  Jim would be home the following Friday. He would take the train from Halifax. Grania immediately wrote to Fry and arranged travel to Belleville on the Thursday. She wanted to stay with her friend the night before, but she would meet Jim at the station alone. She would insist on being alone.

  I told you, Grania, I’m coming back.

  I’ve told you all along.

  Early Thursday afternoon, she sat in the parlour and tried to read. She put the paper down; news did not interest her today. She walked to the window and looked out. An auto drove by slowly in the rutted road and turned up Mill Street. There were two men inside. She walked to the hall and checked the clock, but the minute hand hadn’t changed since the last time she looked. She laid her palm on the polished wood and thought of Mamo.

  She had four hours to fill before she could board the train. Her case was packed. Fry would meet her at the station in Belleville. She went through to the back and shoved her feet into a pair of Father’s old boots at the door, and stepped outside. She hugged her arms and stood on the slippery stoop behind the laundry. Although it was windy at the front, here she was in perfect shelter. She looked up to the windows of the hotel, where Bernard had reserved the largest room at the back for her and Jim. She had moved her clothes over the day before. The bed was made—she had changed the linen herself. Unlike Tress and Kenan, she and Jim had no house of their own, and could stay at the hotel as long as they liked. Until they decided what they would do and where they would go. One place they were sure to go was to the sea. In Jim’s letters since the end of the war, he had promised to take her to the coast during the summer. He wanted to show her the island where he had lived and grown up. It’s important for us to go there, he wrote. Soon you will be able to stand on a cliff and face the sea, and feel sand on your bare feet. And I will tell you about the ocean’s roar.

  She turned her face to a spring sky of hazy blues.
Unless clouds moved in, there would be a worthy sunset in the evening. She felt a hand on her shoulder and almost slipped as Mother hauled her back. Mother shook her head, concerned about her being out without a jacket, and Grania didn’t argue.

  But she was still restless.

  Just as she started out to look for Bernard, wondering if he had gone to visit Kay, he came looking for her to say that she was wanted at the door. She was handed a note from Tress, delivered from one end of the street to the other by the Jamieson twins. They were dressed in tweed trousers and knitted sweaters and identical caps, and seemed to merge momentarily in their efforts to become a single messenger. With self-importance, the two thrust the envelope at her and watched her face as she read. The message was grim.

  I can’t pace here another second. Tell Mother you’re coming for tea. I know you’re leaving in a few hours but if you are ready and packed, do you have time to stop in? Kenan has been lying in bed all morning and refuses to get up. He turns away from the window, and won’t even look at the light.

  Back towards the light. Grania thought of Miss Marks at school: To lip read, you must sit with your back towards the light. The light should fall on the speaker’s face. But Miss Marks had never seen Kenan’s half face. Or Tress’s face since Kenan had come home. Maybe the time had come to walk out with the O’Shaughnessy bag, Mamo’s old clock bag with the shoulder strap. When things get bad.

  She crossed the street and tried to hurry, but a sudden weakness in her left leg took her by surprise. Every time she was feeling fit and strong, her body let her know that it would not be hurried in its healing. Her limbs moved, but at a pace of their own. The weight of the burlap bag over her shoulder did not help. She thought of the Sunday book. Toiling through the woods. A boy carried a load of sticks on his shoulder, his knees buckling under the weight. A dog, one paw lifted, seemed to be offering help—or at least encouragement.

  She glanced to the right. Despite the railway tracks and the buildings between the street and the water’s edge, most back alleys afforded a glimpse of the bay. In the afternoon sun, light bounced off its partly frozen, shrinking surface. Uncle Am would soon be scratching a new date into the beam of the tower: Ice out. The boardwalk was damp, the road a mess of spring mud.

  But there was a wildness, an energy in the street. The wind had picked up and was gusting into her face. Though she was slowed by the force of it and by the weight of the bag, she kept on. She gave the strap a little hitch and the contents shifted against her hip and thigh. If Cora were to pass by, her nosiness would get the better of her. But Grania would not tell. “Potatoes,” or “apples,” she might say. Or “It’s a bag full of the red hair that fell out of my head. I’ve saved every strand since fall.”

  She was still going to Grew every Wednesday, escorted by Bernard. Every second week, the first thing Grew did—after pulling down the blinds—was to measure what he declared to be the longest hair on her head. He did this against a piece of string, which he held to her scalp with his thumb and then knotted. He stretched the string alongside a spring tape measure that was kept in a small brass-bound case. He held up the knotted string, and though it seemed to her that there was no new length to measure, the hair always measured an extra eighth of an inch. Grania did not know if the treatments were helping or if the hair would have grown back anyway. “You see,” Grew told her, offering his sad smile, “the treatments are working.” The string was hooked over its own nail beside the mirror. Except for Grania, Bernard, and Grew, no one else knew what it was for. The knot farthest from the end measured more than three inches now. But the hair that had grown back was darker—not as thick as it used to be, and it was a deep auburn instead of the bright red it had once been. But it was growing back. And soft. Softer than it had ever been. When she was alone at home, she sometimes sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her palms over her skull. When she pushed her hand forward, the hair was smooth; when she pushed it back, it was like sliding her fingers the wrong way through velvet. The growth was uneven, the hair slightly longer behind her ears.

  “There is a nerve there somewhere,” Grew had explained, exaggerating his words. “That is why the hair grows faster in those spots.” Around the crown, growth was slow. No matter how much Grew massaged, the hair in that one place balked at coming in.

  After each treatment, Grew still headed for the cupboard the moment she and Bernard were about to go out the door. He was never able to wait. He did not seem intent on being secretive, but he was partly concealed when his head tilted back behind the cupboard door while he drank straight from the bottle. He never looked them in the eye as they stepped out. Grania was passing Grew’s shop now, and she looked in at the photograph of Richard in uniform, still leaning against the window.

  She was wearing her knitted hat and she was warm under her spring jacket, but part of her welcomed the wind knocking against her as she continued towards the far end of Main. If only she had as much energy as the wind. She would shout into it. The wind could scoop up her voice. Unknown to her own ears, her words would disappear into the sky.

  She would shout for Mamo and Mamo’s life.

  She would shout for Grew’s son, Richard

  and Kenan and his wounds

  and Kay’s husband, Lawrence, and their fatherless son

  and Orryn, who marched proudly into Bonn after the cowardly Kaiser fled; and who shot away the helmet-spike, nose and ears from the statue of the Kaiser; and who wrote in a letter to Kenan that a German bystander implored him to blow the head off, too.

  She would shout for Jim’s friend Irish, whom she would never meet.

  And for all of the boys who had died; and for all the people who were sorrowing.

  The wind could have all of that.

  She thought of the soldiers returning, the ones who had been deafened during the war. There were so many in this area of Ontario, classes were being held in the Belleville school, in the same rooms in which she had studied as a child. A lip-reading system had been adapted for them; she did not know who was doing the teaching. Fry wrote that a teacher had been sent to Boston to take the course so that she could come back to teach the soldiers.

  War and flu. Separate causes, similar losses. Deafness, even baldness. On the home front it was clear that hundreds, even thousands of men and women had become bald because of the Spanish flu. Until she read about the search for remedies, she had believed that she was the only one. The only one she knew of in Deseronto—unless others were in hiding. Extreme high fever caused the hair to fall out, or so the experts said. So many bold claims were made for new hair restorers, it had become an embarrassment to read the advertisements. Blend in, that was what the newly bald persons were advised to do. But blending in was something she was already good at. Every deaf person was an expert.

  Except when your hair falls out. What then? Doesn’t that make you rather conspicuous?

  Jim might not recognize me. Jim doesn’t even know I’ve been ill.

  Tress was at the front window of her narrow house, looking out. From the sidewalk, Grania could see the puffiness around her sister’s eyes. She might have splashed cold water over her face but she had not managed to hide her sorrow.

  Grania stepped inside the enclosed porch and set down the burlap bag. She had not been here for several weeks. She slipped out of her shoes and into the slippers she always left here. Tress led her to the parlour, pointed upstairs, pointed to the clock and looked away. Kenan might be listening. Kenan, who had left here dancing. His days of soldiering over. Kenan, who had taken several steps forward but, stuck inside the same nightmare, kept slipping back.

  Grania tried to picture him upstairs in the bedroom. She thought of what Tress called the “dead arm” that had bruised her skin, the arm that lay between them like a corpse in their bed. It wasn’t the arm; it wasn’t even the half face. It was the terror inside him that wouldn’t let go.

  “Put on a jacket,” she said. She didn’t give Tress a chance to blurt out what she
had stored up to tell. “Bundle up. There’s a wind.”

  She returned to the porch and gathered up her outdoor shoes and the bag. She carried them through the house to the back door that faced the bay.

  She put on her shoes again and stepped out to the yard. Tress followed. Grania ignored the sign Why? that flicked off the side of her sister’s temple.

  They were in shelter and could not be seen from houses left or right because of the trees and the shed. Grania had spotted a suitable place, and she pointed to it now. Near the bottom edge of the yard, a striated boulder was perched where the sloping ground descended to the rocky shore. The boulder was three feet high; Grania and Tress had sat there together last spring, their feet tucked under their skirts while they looked out at pleasure boats in the bay. Now, bundled up, they stood in the wind, fifteen feet from the same rock.

  Grania opened the O’Shaughnessy bag and reached in. She probed gingerly and lifted out a pale green cup and handed it to Tress. A chip was missing from the rim.

  “Throw,” she said. She pointed to the rock.

  “Throw? Are you crazy?” Tress made the old crazy sign beside her ear, fingers bent, wrist waggling.

  “No. Not crazy. Mamo and I, we did this sometimes.”

  Dulcie throws a cracked cup against the fence.

  “You and Mamo? Where?”

  “Near the woods. By the bay. Past the old coal shed. Next time we walk there, I’ll show you. When we were finished, we covered the pieces with rocks. Now throw.”

  Grania had a milk-white saucer in her hand. A deep crack was forked across its surface. She positioned it between forefinger and thumb, tilted her body at a slant and let go. She saw but did not hear the saucer hit, and watched the shards fly high. She gave a whoop and flicked out both palms and signed, Wonderful! She reached back into the bag.