Grew watched from his window as they stomped the snow from their boots. During the epidemic in the fall, he had closed his shop for two weeks. Aunt Maggie said that other public buildings had been forced to shut for a short time: Naylor’s, the library, their own hotel with the Quarantine card in the window. Some of the people in town wore masks while they went about their business. Grania tried to imagine the town coiled in upon itself while Death swept through. Death had taken its place in her room, but it was Mamo and not she who had been swept away. She tried to imagine Mamo’s grave. She had not been taken to visit and would not see it now until spring. She had asked Tress and Bernard, separately, to describe it. When she thought of Mamo, she hated the part of herself that was so well trained she could not cry.
The bench outside the barbershop was piled high with snow. Bernard picked up the broom that leaned into it, banged out the snow and did a last sweep of the bottom of his own and Grania’s boots. He swept the bench with a few flourishes for good measure. Grew was still watching from the window, finishing his lunch where he stood. He swallowed a chunk of bread and bolted the last of his tea as they came through the door.
He’s thinner than ever before, Grania thought. All because of the news that Death brings.
Grew had staggered across the parlour floor and his hands had pounded the keys of the piano. His bony knees popped up because the piano stool was wound low. Finally, he’d permitted Father to take him home
.
He wiped his hands down the front of his drill coat and greeted them by raising a finger in the air as if he were about to conduct a secret meeting. It was as if the three of them had formed a prior conspiracy and now found themselves face to face in the same room. He reached towards the top of the window and tugged down the blind. He turned the Closed sign outward, and lowered the blind on the glass door as well.
A single light hung from the ceiling and created a central glow in the room as if it, too, were part of the secret.
Thumb to the lips—private
. Grew’s finger touched his lips, as if to say
Shhh
.
Light from outside seeped in around the edge of the pulled blinds. Grania’s glance darted at the shadows thrown across the walls, and then back to Grew’s yellow-toned skin. She looked at the skin of her own hands and saw that it too was yellowed by the light. She removed her hat and handed it to Bernard. Under Grew’s inspection, she felt the blood rush to her cheeks.
He shook his head, slowly, deliberately. She could see his tongue. “
Tst tst
. The red hair,” his lips said. “The lovely red hair. Eyebrows, too.”
Bernard had already sat in an empty chair by the window, and now he grinned encouragement. “Go ahead, Grainy.” He pointed to the leather chair. “Sit up there.”
The tray to the side of the chair was lined with clippers, razor, a thin pair of shears. Her fingers grazed the strop hooked under the armrest, and she settled back. Grew pumped the chair and adjusted it so that Grania was facing him. Bottles and jars were stacked close together on the mirror shelf, and sent out odours of pine tar and alcohol. She had already seen the soaps and shaving cakes on a shelf of their own by the sink.
“This is what we do,” said Grew. He exaggerated the words on his lips the way he had always done, believing this helped her to understand. He covered her from the neck down with a weighted apron, and wrapped a warm towel around her throat. The odour of alcohol, she now realized, was coming from him.
He lifted the caps from two small blue bottles. Mamo had taught her the colour. They’d practised the word together the afternoon of her eighth birthday, IN-DEE-GO. Grania had been given an indigo scarf and wrapped it around her neck and paraded around the house, trying to look grown up.
Dulcie’s mother declared that the scarf made her look too old
.
“Glycerine,” Grew’s lips said. “Jaborandi.”
Grania looked over to Bernard, who shrugged and tried, unsuccessfully, to spell the last word with his fingers. Grew watched and waited and smiled as if he’d been permitted to witness communication between members of an exotic tribe.
He held one of the uncapped bottles under her nose, something unidentifiable. Not entirely pleasant.
He turned the chair to face the mirror, and tilted it back before she was able to get a long look at herself. The mixture dripped onto her scalp—she felt the wet pool of it—and Grew’s fingers began to draw circles along her temples and the top of her head. His fingers moved with such pressure and firmness she was forced to relax, and she sank back and closed her eyes. He massaged the contours of her scalp until her head was throbbing, and he applied a small amount to the area where her eyebrows had been, taking care that the mixture did not drip down over her lids. After what seemed a long time, he positioned the chair upright and pushed the towel farther down and massaged the back of her head and the base of her neck. When she checked the wall clock she saw that she had been in the chair only twenty minutes.
Dulcie sat on the barber’s stool surrounded by swirls of hair scattered in a circle about the floor. Never had there been so good a barber
.
“Good?” Grew said. “The circulation—better?”
She smiled for the first time since she’d entered the shop. “Better than goose grease.” It was her voice that had spoken. Her hands moved and the sign flicked off her fingers before she could stop them.
“Ah,” said Grew, “poultice.”
“Not poultice,” said Bernard. “They rubbed goose grease and turpentine on her skin when she was sick. That was only one of the remedies.”
“I heard about the rifle,” said Grew. He tried to smile but the attempt only forced a grimace between his gaunt cheeks.
He took up a second cloth now, and wiped away all traces of oil so that none would come in contact with Grania’s clothing. He
removed the apron that covered her and unwrapped the towel from her neck. She felt lighter, bare. But calm.
“Next Wednesday?” He wrote a note to himself on a jagged scrap of paper and nodded to Bernard. “I’ll add a dash of sage for scent. I’ll make up the mixture ahead. Same time?” This to Grania, the last two words exaggerated.
Grania thanked Grew softly and slipped down and out of the chair. She was still buttoning her coat when Grew walked to the end of the room and reached up to the wall cupboard. He stood by the open door, tilted his head back and drank from a bottle. Tress had told her that Grew was taking Veronal now, along with his drink. Now that the production
and
sale of alcohol were forbidden, no one knew his source. Not Father. Since Mamo’s death, Father had been staying home.
Grania followed Bernard outside, her scalp tingling under the hat. She looked back, but the blinds were tightly pulled and she could not see so much as a shadow inside. Grew had made himself invisible the moment they left.
They crossed the street and passed Cora of the prying eyes, and Grania managed to muster a smile. They passed Meagher’s store, and she looked in and saw Aunt Maggie standing by the counter. She tapped the window and waved, and Aunt Maggie turned and saw her and blew a kiss. Grania allowed herself, in the chill air, to receive it, along with the faintest wisp of hope.
Someone has sprung the question: “Can the deaf think?” Why not ask a few more: “Can the deaf eat?” “Can the deaf sleep?” “Can the deaf breathe?” It strikes us that the fool-killer misses a good many possible swats with his club
.
The Canadian
Saturday morning, she kept going to the window to watch for the horse and cutter that would bring Fry. The road from Belleville was still hard-packed with snow. The thaw had not fully begun though the days were warmer. Most of the day, sunlight streamed through the south-facing windows. Soon, the cutters would be put away in the barns until next winter. This was the season when Patrick, as a boy, had taken an axe and a pick to chop and shape channels through the ice and snow, front and back, to drain water away from the house as the snow melted. Mamo had once leaned out of the upstairs windows with a hoe, poking at and detaching the fattening, dripping icicles that hung from the roof.
Mamo’s rocker had been brought down to the parlour. Grania noticed that no one else used it these days, except herself. While she sat, she felt as if she did not have a plan in her head for the future. There were days when she had the energy to do nothing more than sit in Mamo’s chair and wait for Jim to come home. Sometimes, upstairs, she stared out at the icy waters of the bay. Jim was in England, maybe Wales, she was not sure which. Patrick, too, though they had not met up with each other.
She had just received a letter from her brother. Along with tens of thousands of others, he was waiting for a ship to bring him home. The letter arrived in Canada quickly; it must have gone directly into a mailbag that was put on a departing ship. He wrote that the locals had declared it to be the coldest winter for years. He was in North Wales, a place called Kinmel Park, and there weren’t enough blankets to go around. The men were restless, and anxious to get home. Many had been ill with the deadly influenza when it swept through.
The next stage will be to Liverpool, across the bay, but so far, on the camp bulletin boards, we see no postings for ships about to sail. There was a time when we weren’t getting much food and one of my friends—his name is Victor—and I found our way into a Red Cross hut and sat on the floor in the dark and ate the only thing we could find—plum puddings from Canada that weren’t given out when they should have been, at Christmas. There were hundreds of them on the shelves. I must have eaten a dozen, myself. I lost count. But I paid for my appetite a few hours later, and couldn’t keep a thing in my stomach for two days. It was same with Victor. A week after that, all hell broke loose in the camp. The boys were restless and tired of waiting, and the situation became bad. There were riots, but we stayed clear. We are lying low, staying out of trouble, and plan to do nothing more than sit tight, do what we’re told, and wait for our ship
.
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.