Free Deafening by Frances Itani Page A

has been braided and pinned up by Mother, which makes her look older. She raises her shoulders, lifts her chin and glances around at the other three.
    “I’m going to marry Kenan,” she says. “When I grow up.” She half-turns and her finger writes marry in the air beside her. Grania reads the spacious letters that link up before they disappear.
    Orryn, whose hair is so black it looks as if he has slapped water on it to flatten it down, laughs as if this is preposterous. Orryn likes to laugh and joke. “Is it true?” He wants to hear from Kenan himself.
    Kenan smiles his sweet smile. His curly hair flops over his forehead. “It’s true. But we aren’t going to tell my uncle or Tress’s parents until we grow up.”
    Grania looks from one face to another and wonders if this is something all children decide when they are ten years old.
    When Cora’s daughter, Jewel, marries Mr. Whyte’s son, Tress and Grania walk up St. George Street to the Presbyterian church and lean into the fence and watch the wedding guests spill out and down the steps. This church, with its stone tower, is not like the new Catholic church that was built after the fire. The Catholic church, where Mother prays twice a week and where Grania is taken with the family every Sunday, has a square tower and two sets of double doors. Grania has never been inside the Presbyterian church.
    The guests at the wedding are dressed in fancy clothes and hats; some of the women wear short capes with ruffles around their necks. Mrs. Whyte’s flounced skirt has rows of dark silk banded around the bottom. Grania stows the information to tell Mamo. She and Tress try to get a close-up look at Jewel in her wedding dress. Jewel and Mr. Whyte’s son will be moving to Ottawa, the capital of Canada, after the wedding. A gust of wind catches Jewel as she reaches for the arm of her new husband, and she grimaces as the folds of her dress flap against her hidden legs.
    Cora looks towards the street and, seeing Grania with Tress, says to her husband, “Who will marry that pitiful child when she grows up? She may have a sweet little voice, but no one except her family can understand a word she says. If they don’t find someone deaf and dumb, she’ll end up living with her mother the rest of her days.”
    Grania grabs Tress’s arm and yanks her away from the fence. “That’s what she thinks,” she shouts.
    Tress runs along sideways, trying to keep up. “What? Did you read Cora’s lips? Did she say something mean?”
    Yes, and yes. It is easy to read Cora’s lips. But Grania will not tell.
    Later, she goes to Mamo. “Why does Cora hold her mouth so tight?”
    “That’s the way she is,” says Mamo.
    Mamo continues, this time talking to herself. It’s the way Grania picks up information, watching Mamo’s lips spill extra words into the air. “It’s part of the general burden that must be borne. Cora’s self-righteous ways.”
    “Burden?”
    “Did you see that? Heavy load. Cora is one of the town’s heavy loads.”
    Grania does not understand. “She looks like a crabface to me.” Grania thinks of Cora’s narrow chin, her pointed noise, her thin ankles and feet.
    “You’d better not be saying that in front of Cora.”
    Mother has something else to say. Grania watches Mother’s lips. “I’ve known Cora since before I was married,” she says. “Cora was unlucky enough to grow up without brothers or sisters. If you grow up in a house full of people, you have more than yourself to think about. Cora had only herself and she became selfish. That’s what happens to an only child. That’s all there is to it. She was an only child.”
    Grania is more confused than ever.
    What does Mother mean, “a lonely child”? How does being lonely make Cora selfish?
    Grania does not ask. But she does know that when she grows up, she is not going to live the rest of her days with her mother.
    “Don’t let deafness hold you back,” Mamo tells her. “Don’t let it