Deafening Read Online Free PDF Page A

door but turns and stands in the doorway, trying to see the words that fall from Mamo’s lips.
    “You’re wasting your time, Agnes. If you want to help her, take off her shoes. Let her feel the vibrations through her feet. Send her to special school. Belleville isn’t that far away. It’s small, but it’s a railroad city. It will be easy to get her there and back. The school has been there for more than thirty years—though God knows I’ll miss her if she goes.”
    Mamo does not add that she has been making inquiries, asking around. “She needs to learn to read and write,” she says. “To speak with some of the hand language they teach there. She already uses her hands—her whole body—when she talks to us. She won’t be held back. She’ll learn quickly—you know there’s no one quicker in this family.”
    Mamo’s voice softens as she lays her hand on her daughter’s arm. “Accept her as she is, Aggie. Stop feeling guilty. It isn’t your fault. No matter how hard you try, no matter how much you want to, you’ll never be able to make the child hear.”
    But Mother has turned away. She bangs the lid back onto the fry pan and twists the scarf between her hands. Mother will make her own decisions about what Grania will hear and where she will go. Mother has been the cause of Grania’s deafness, and she will be the one to help her get some of her hearing back.
    Grania and Tress walk through town, away from the bay. Their friends Kenan and Orryn are not around. When the girls come to the schoolyard they head for the edge of a cluster of maples, wherethere are two swings. Grania stares at the summer-empty schoolhouse, the one Bernard used to attend, the one Tress goes to now. The one Patrick will attend when he is older. The one Grania would be allowed to go to if the scarlet fever hadn’t stopped her ears from hearing.
    She climbs onto the swing and pumps her feet. If she swings high enough, the leaves of the tree brush her shoulders just before her body sinks down and up again.
    Two boys Grania has never seen before run into the schoolyard and over to the swings; they push at each other while they wait their turn. Tress knows one boy; his father works behind the desk at the hotel called Deseronto House, which is also on Main Street. The boys look up while Grania swings. They shout a word and then they point and run, looking back, laughing as they pelt across the open schoolyard. Grania laughs too, but she is puzzled. She looks to Tress, who has slowed her own swing and now jumps off. Tress is not laughing. Her lips make three words.
    “Run, Graw! Skunk!”
    Grania leaps. The girls run across the yard and collapse beside the boys. Skunk stink is in the air.
    “Skunk!” Grania yells at the boys, but the skunk has already hurried along the edge of the trees and disappeared.
    “Skunk!” she yells again. But she sees that the word has come out wrong. The boys are laughing at her now.
    “Dummy!” the taller boy yells. “Listen to her. She’s a dummy!”
    Grania reads the word from his lips and sees a shout from Tress. The boys run off.
    Tress places her hands on Grania’s shoulders and makes her look at her lips.
    “Skunk.”
    “Skunk!”
    “No.”
    Why is it wrong? She is saying what she sees. She yanks away from Tress’s grip.
    “Don’t give up,” Tress says. “It won’t work if you give up. Sk! Sk! ” Tress is scowling.
    “Skunk.”
    “Better.” Tress shrugs. She points after the boys, who are far away now. To make Grania feel better she points to the boys again and makes the crazy sign beside her ear— fingers bent, wrist waggling. She heads back towards the swings.
    But Grania wants to stay where she is. She wants to lie on the grass and sleep a long sleep. She has slipped back. She has used what Mamo calls her “weary speech” but she doesn’t care. Not one bit. She feels like yelling out the worst sounds, the difficult, impossible sounds, sk and ch and sh. She feels like mixing