Read Online Deafening by Frances Itani - Free Book Online

Grandfather’s body—around and around. Prayers were said and he was dropped over the side of the ship and buried at sea. Women were wailing, but not Mamo, not Mother. Their grief was silent. “Some grief is so big, it has to be held in,” Mamo has told her. Grandfather is under water now, somewhere in the big ocean.
    When Grania is alone, she goes to the drawer in her closet that holds her cutouts, and she brings out an earless girl who looks the same age as herself. She unfastens the shoulder tabs of the girl’s automobile coat and the waist tabs of a long skirt with large buttons. After that, she finds the remnants of Mr. Eaton’s bruised and cut-up catalogue and searches until she finds a picture she knows is there. It is the only bathing suit for girls or ladies in the entire catalogue. At first, it is hard to tell that it is a bathing suit at all, except for the scene that has been drawn behind the girl who wears it on the page. There are wiggly waves for water, and sand, and tiny figures sitting or playing in front of a sharply drawn horizon.
    Grania cuts off the girl’s head because part of an ear is showing.She trims around the neck, the sailor collar, the short puffed sleeves, the narrow waist. She needs only the bathing suit itself. The bathing skirt reaches down to the knees where it meets the girl’s high black stockings. Grania ignores the stockings and cuts off the girl’s legs. She leaves enough space for tabs at the shoulders, lifts out the suit and fits it perfectly to her own cutout girl.
    Her girl will go to the C-shore. Her girl, without ears. She will play all day if she wants to; she will kneel in the sand and let it run through her fingers; she will wade into the wiggly waves and hold her breath and duck under; she will open her eyes and feel water pressing from above. No one will see her or know where she is. When she wishes to surface, up she will come, popping into sight between waves the way the ladies’ cardboard heads pop through their marten collars.
    Grania moves the girl about and practises the C-word by singing it into the side of the earless cardboard head. After she puts the girl and the bathing suit away in the drawer, she sits on the side of the bed and sings the sea word into the roof of her own mouth. She shapes her cheeks around it. Some day she will be able to say all of the words in the Sunday book. She will learn the breath and movement of each. If she makes a mistake, she will try again. She will try until she knows every sound.
    But words have no sound. Not for Grania. Only feeling, as they form inside her mouth and vibrate against the lining of her throat.
    “You should be at a proper school for deaf children,” Mamo tells her. “You’re losing time. You would learn new things. There is a special school in Belleville.”
    Belleville is the city that is farther west along the bay. Grania travelled there on the steamer last fall when Mother took her and Tress shopping for winter clothes. The steamer left Deseronto in the morning and stopped at Northport and carried on to Belleville. They were on the steamer for two hours.
    “Would I have to sit still? Like in Deseronto school? At my desk?”
    “I don’t suppose your feet will get pins and needles.”
    Did she see the lips correctly? Pins and needles?
    If at special school they put pins and needles in the children’s feet, she will never go. She will run away instead. Like the girl in the Sunday book.
    “ Goodness,” said Mother. “Dulcie seems to have run off. ”
    Grania is playing on the veranda with Patrick and Tress. They have invented a game. They are supposed to shout out a sound and bounce from chair to veranda railing and back to chair. They have to touch the railing; they have to be quick. If they aren’t quick, they’re out. The last one to reach the chair is out. Grania must watch closely. So far, she has not been out.
    Two children come out of the hotel dining room with their parents and hop down