Read Online Deafening by Frances Itani - Free Book Online Page B

string and knots it outside the package.
    Grania accepts the parcel of meat. “Thank you,” she says, but the words stick in her throat and come out wrong. Keep the voice close. It’s good that Mamo isn’t here. Here to hear. Grania smiles, immensely pleased with herself because she knows the difference. Like see and sea. I see the sea in the picture. She thinks of the earless cutout girl, and the C-shore, and Grandfather O’Shaughnessy at the bottom of the ocean, and Mamo telling her that he is at peace. Mamo says that in the beautiful land called Ireland, fresh breezes blow in every day from the sea.
    Mr. Whyte looks at her again and smiles because he thinks she is smiling at him. He picks up a pencil and enters the cost of the meat in the ledger. He bows formally as if he is part of a picture in her Sunday book. Grania wants to get away from the odours in his shop. Dulcie grabbed the package and ran. Unless she can get outside this minute, the smell of animal blood will never come off her clothes. She shoves the push-bar that is nailed diagonally across thescreen door, runs down the short ramp to the boardwalk, and keeps running until she reaches the next block.
    She slows to look around, lifts the package to her chest and presses tightly. Soon the workers will be spilling out of the factories and mills and will be heading home for their supper. She sees Kay, a girl who sits beside Tress at school. Kay smiles and her hand makes a small wave. Kay has a kind face that seems to hold a secret. Her cheeks look as if they are hiding acorns inside. Grania likes Kay, and waves back.
    She reaches the post office corner and is about to step down to the ridges and grooves of dried mud before she crosses the street, but she feels something wet against her skin. She looks down and sees, with horror, that a crimson stain has seeped across the front of her white blouse.
    Trouble. She runs around to the side door of the post office and up the wide staircase, up another flight, up and up, and she bangs on Aunt Maggie’s door. Sometimes when she visits, Uncle Am lets her climb to the clock tower above the apartment, but not today. Uncle Am will be working somewhere in the building.
    Aunt Maggie opens the door, sees the red splotch, sees the package, sees the tears and pulls Grania in by the hand. She sets the meat on the table, unbuttons Grania’s blouse and helps her off with it, her lips making the shape tst-tst as she shakes her head.
    “We’ll have to fix this. Your mother…”
    She wraps Grania in a dressing gown and goes to work, soaking and rinsing the blouse in a bucket of cold water. With each quick rinse and dip, the water becomes red and then pink and pale and finally clear.
    “We’ll have to be quick,” Aunt Maggie says. “Before your mother sends out a posse.” She lifts the irons that are always at the ready on the back of the stove, and exchanges them one by one, pressing the blouse against a towel that she has folded onto a corner of the kitchen table.
    “No time flat,” she says, but Grania misses the words. The blouse is crisp and dry, except for the seams.
    “Can’t be helped,” Aunt Maggie says. She holds it out for Grania to slip into. The blouse sticks to Grania’s skin but the stain is no longer there.
    Grania runs for the door and down the stairs, runs back up again because she’s forgotten the package, holds it away from her blouse and runs the rest of the way home.
    Mother is busy in the dining room when Grania slips through the passageway and into the hotel kitchen. Mrs. Brant is there; she holds a finger to her lips. Grania slides the package onto the pull-out metal surface of the cupboard, and Mrs. Brant slips her a raisin cookie and shoos her back to the house. Mother does not even know that Grania is late.
    The following afternoon, Grania brings a new word to Mamo. A word she has taken from Aunt Maggie’s lips. Paw-C. A little word inside a big one?
    “Who said it? When?” Mamo is