Father makes certain that his children don’t make a ruckus when they are playing, and that they know their manners at the table. “Use your knife and fork,” he tells them. “Don’t chew with your mouth open. It’s rude.”
“What?”
“Not what, Grania, pardon.” Grania turns away, her timing split-second. What she can’t see she can’t be expected to understand.
Father’s moustache hangs over his upper lip, and sometimes Grania doesn’t know what he is saying. She peers and strains to see, but when his words are hidden she has to ask Tress what he has said. Father doesn’t like being asked to repeat his words. On certain days, he goes to Grew the barber on the other side of Main Street and along the boardwalk to have his moustache trimmed. On those days Grania understands. But soon, the moustache grows thick and covers his lip again. Even so, Father sometimes says to Grania, “You don’t miss much, my darling.” And that she understands.
Grania dreams about Father standing in the doorway of his office. One of his large Irish hands, the hand with the ring, rests against his watch. Father talks to her in the dream and his face is troubled because he thinks Grania is lost. She sees
him
but he can’t see her. His lips are moving but the moustache hangs over them and she does not understand. She is clenched with fear and runs towards him but he still doesn’t see her. His lips stretch and distort. He gives up on the speaking language and tries to signal with his hands. But
he does not know the hand language—not the one invented by Grania and Tress. And though he looks everywhere, he still can’t see her.
Father loves Grania. She knows this in the dream. But because he is so sure that she is lost, he turns away and goes back inside his office. Grania is desperate now. She shouts after him, the way she shouts at Carlow, but Father does not turn around. Carlow bounds out through the office door and leaps at her, wagging his tail. Carlow always understands Grania’s voice.
A warm night. A soft breeze lifts in from the bay. Hotel guests, the women, are seated on the upstairs veranda only a few feet across the roof from where the sisters lie in their beds. It is long past the supper hour and the women occupy the row of rattan chairs that face the water. Directly below, on the street-level veranda, their husbands keep their own company, drinks in hand, spittoons at their feet. Bernard, the only one of the children old enough to help in the hotel in the evenings, is working at the desk in the lobby.
As soon as Mother says good night and shuts the bedroom door, the hand signal comes from Tress, palm held high for silence. The moment the hand comes down Grania slips off the mattress, all the while watching Tress for a sign that will warn her if she is making noise. She tiptoes across the rag rug, sits down and tucks her feet beneath her gown. Father will not return to the house until the last hotel guest is settled for the night. Mother’s whereabouts are not so easy to predict. Sometimes she stays in the downstairs kitchen or parlour; sometimes she is next door in the hotel kitchen, planning or preparing meals for the next day. Mother’s cooking is so good, people come to stay just because of the food.
Tress pulls herself up inch by inch until she is kneeling on the mattress and can peer through the zigzag tear in the blind. Light from the hotel veranda filters through, enough to illuminate her face. Her dark hair is pulled back, tucked behind her ears. Grania
wags her hand, showing her sister which way to shift,
this way, that way
, until the zigzag of light falls across Tress’s lips. She watches the words spill out while a spying Tress describes the row of women known to them only as the
travelling ladies.
Tress elaborates the pleats and folds of a muslin dress, the laced leather boots, the pearl moon brooch, the buckled belt, the cameo, the style and curl of hair. In childish hand language, with words formed by Tress, and with stifled laughter that threatens to expose them, they create fantasy lives for the women they spy upon. Women who have means and leisure. Unsuspecting ladies who do not know themselves to be observed.
Grania, as she watches Tress report on the ladies, is not afraid. Not as long as she can keep her eyes open, not as long as Tress stays awake, not while words spill their shapes into the zigzag of light across her sister’s lips. Not as long as the two of them keep watch side by side against the dark.
Mamo holds the book while Grania inspects the picture. There are four words on this page. A curly-haired boy is straddling the corner of a wooden chair that is too high and too big for him. The curly hair makes her think of long-legged Kenan, their friend who is in Tress’s class at school and who lives with his uncle on Mill Street. Kenan has no mother or father. The boy in the picture wears a sailor suit, wide collar, short pants, two buttons on the side of each pantleg. In his left hand he holds an open book that is propped tightly against his chest. In his right hand he holds a partly eaten apple. His eyes are dark and he looks out of the picture and past Grania. The picture and the words are black and white.
“‘HE TAKES A BITE.’”
Mamo points as she pronounces, pausing so that Grania can examine each word and recognize the separations between. “He – takes – a – bite.” Mamo snaps her teeth after the word bite, and laughs at herself.
The boy in the picture is thinking. Maybe he would rather be
reading instead of eating. Maybe he should put the book away before he starts to eat. Maybe he is hanging on to the book for dear life so that no one will yank it away. Maybe, like Grania, it is the only book he has.
“Say the words,” Mamo says. “Watch my lips, watch my throat.”
In her excitement, Grania’s voice runs high. The words dissolve into one another and she feels them drift away.
“Slowly.” Mamo frowns and flaps her fingers in front of her lips. “You’re like a house on fire. Try again but keep your voice close.” Mamo’s palms press against her chest.
Close. Keep the words close.
“House on fire?”
“Means hurry too much. Now try again and then practise upstairs or outside. ‘HE TAKES A BITE.’”
Grania takes the book to Tress, who reads the words silently before she shouts them down the canal of Grania’s ear. “He takes a bite, he takes a bite, this won’t do any good!”
But nothing will stop Grania. When she is alone she stands on tiptoe on the stoop at the back, behind the laundry, and she watches her reflected mouth in the narrow window.
Hetakesabite.
She studies each word separately. She holds her voice as close to herself as she can. It is like pressing a pillow against her chest, the way the boy in the picture presses the book to his sailor suit. Grania keeps her voice close to the front of her body and makes it stay in that one held place.
Night after night, she tiptoes across the rag rug. The rug feels as if it is moving beneath her feet. Something taps at her from behind. She crouches low and wonders if her breathing is loud. Does she dare nudge Tress to inch over? No, Mother will hear, Mother will be angry. Grania waits for a signal from Tress but nothing comes. She sinks all the way to the floor. She falls asleep, shivering, while trying to keep her eyes open to ward off the dark.
Tress finds her in the early morning and heaps blankets on top of
her. When it is time to get dressed for breakfast, she shakes Grania awake. It is Saturday. They fold down the covers and the ribbed spreads, and they air out their beds the way Mamo has taught them. After that, Tress beckons Grania, first to the bureau and then to their shared narrow closet with its rack of wooden pegs. From hooks and shelves Tress pulls stockings, soft belts, under-drawers, scarves. Anything long that can be tied. She puts a finger to her lips, leaves the room and returns with two of Bernard’s old neckties. Grania does not see what all of this will add up to but she helps Tress as she ties together a long and variegated rope. Tress nods, holds it at arm’s length for inspection, and tests the knots. She shoves her dark hair behind her ears while she concentrates. She loops the rope several times between hand and elbow—the way she’s seen Mamo wind her yarn—and hides it at the bottom of her bed, under the covers. She pats the bedspread, and the two go downstairs and through the passageway to the hotel, and into the dining room. Mother is in the hotel kitchen. Father is always in his office by the time the girls come to breakfast.
But Mamo is here. Drinking tea from her china cup and saucer, and teaching the word
Pekoe
to Patrick. Mamo always leaves a little tea in her cup before she gets up from the table; it is bad luck to drink the last half inch from a cold cup.
Patrick pulls at Grania’s sleeve when she sits beside him. He reaches up with small insistent hands and turns her face, forcing her to look at him, to focus on what he wants to say.
Grania reads his lips. “P-Ko,” she says. She likes the word that is Mamo’s tea. Patrick laughs, and Mamo reaches over to stroke Grania’s cheek, and Grania, thinking of the rope upstairs, exchanges looks with Tress.
“Haven’t you two swallowed the canary,” Mamo says. She looks from one to the other.
Grania looks to Tress’s face for information, but Tress is not going to tell. Grania knows this won’t matter to Mamo anyway. Grania and Mamo have secrets of their own. Doesn’t Mamo sometimes
take the burlap bag out of the O’Shaughnessy trunk, and sling it over her shoulder when she takes Grania for a walk?
When things get bad.
All day, Grania wonders.
In the evening she goes upstairs while there is still light in the sky. She pauses at the porthole on the landing and looks far to the left, to the field at the northwest edge of town. The forked tree casts out its quivering shadow. She goes to her room and climbs into bed. She stares at the carefully stitched words in Mother’s sampler. The words say something about God’s eye and God’s ear, and she wonders if Mother learned the words at church. She stares at the yellow daffodils in the frame. She raises a finger in the air and traces the outline of the jug on top of the washstand. She waits and waits and tells her body to be still but it won’t be still. To make the time go faster she pounds her heels into the mattress as fast and hard as she can, but the covers become untucked. Tress comes in and puts her hands on her hips when she sees the mess at the foot of Grania’s bed. She closes the bedroom door and makes the sign for quiet while she tidies Grania’s covers. She slips into her nightgown, kneels to say her prayers, and turns out the light. She reaches under the blankets and pulls out the homemade rope, tosses a looped end to Grania, loops her own end and ties it firmly around one ankle. Grania watches through the shadows and does the same. The rope drops between them, over the side of Tress’s bed, across the oval rug, up and over the end of Grania’s mattress. It disappears between her sheets. From separate beds they kick and move their feet and legs until they are satisfied with the rope’s position.
Now Grania lies stiffly on her back, waiting. But Tress doesn’t move. Grania tries shifting her tied foot and pulls. She feels resistance. Then, two tugs back. She tugs again to be sure.
She is one tug, Tress is two.
She rolls on her side and stretches the rope until it is barely taut,
just enough so that she can feel Tress at the other end. Now the rope name-signs are clear. Now the two create tug patterns, back and forth—patterns that are meaningless, that make them laugh silently to themselves in the dark.
Grania does not think about falling into sound. She dreams the softness of rope secured around an ankle—a scarf, a sock, a tie. She is bound to shore, no longer adrift in the dark. She is not afraid. She sleeps a deep and restful sleep.
Between breakfast and lunch, when the hotel dining room is quiet, Mother walks through the passageway and brings Grania to the kitchen at the back of the house. Mother pours a cup of tea for herself and sets it on the table. There are suds in the cup. Grania wants to tell Mother that suds are lucky. But Mother has heard every one of Mamo’s sayings and will not want to hear them again. Isn’t Mamo Mother’s own mother? This is complicated to think about because it means believing that Mother was once a small girl named Agnes, and she has no picture in her head for that.
“Watch what I’m saying. It is dangerous not to hear,” Mother says. “Especially when you are outside, away from the house. You can be hurt. I want you to listen.” She cups a hand behind her right ear.
Listen.
She has placed a scarf on the kitchen table, and a wide lid that is used to cover the fry pan.
“Stand here.” She positions Grania in the middle of the kitchen and picks up the lid and the scarf. “Listen hard. Do you understand? I am going to cover your eyes. I am going to drop this on the floor.” She feigns dropping the lid but does not release it. “Try to hear. Point where you think it lands—front, behind, this side, that side.”
Grania watches with interest. Mother’s lips are tight, her eyes dark with intent while she folds the scarf to make a narrow band. She has not removed her apron, which is wrapped over her dress like a vest and tied in the middle. The stripes of the apron are as blue
as the inside of the speckled pot hanging from a wall hook behind.
Grania nods. She breathes through her mouth while Mother places the scarf over her eyes and partly over her nose and knots it at the back of her head. She feels hands on her shoulders and she is turned, once, twice, and firmly stopped. Mother’s hands let her know that she is to remain still.
The floor is covered with spider-cracked linoleum. Grania is wearing long white stockings and lace-up shoes. A quiver of vibration enters the right side of her body. She points right. Mother removes the blindfold.
“No,” she says. “But it’s not your fault. Bernard came in and slammed the door. You heard the door, that’s good.”
Bernard looks back as he walks through to the hall. He heads for the heavy curtain draped across the bottom of the stairs. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head, enough so that Grania can see but Mother cannot. He bolts for the stairs and disappears, the movement of the curtain settling behind him. Grania knows that because of Bernard’s bad lung he will be short of breath before he reaches the top. She has seen him upstairs, one hand pressed against his chest, his shoulders rising and falling as he breathes.