Unspeakable

and tangled up and shaking. Oh God. Holly put her arm tightly around her and then she reached over for the bedside lamp.

'What's the matter, pumpkin? What's happened?'

Daisy lifted her head so that her mother could see what she was saying. Her face was pale and her hair was stuck to her forehead. 'I had a horrible dream. I dreamed that I woke up and I couldn't hear anything.'

'Well, shush, don't you worry, that's never going to happen to you.'

'It was like all these people were screaming at me and I couldn't hear anything at all, and they were all angry with me because I couldn't hear. They had black eyes with just holes in them and they kept screaming and screaming.'

Holly gave her a squeeze and then she folded back the white loose-weave bedspread and allowed Daisy to crawl into bed next to her. 'There? you can stay with me for a while. How about a glass of water?'

Daisy shook her head. 'I was so frightened. It was horrible.'

'I know. But it was only a nightmare, wasn't it? And it isn't the end of the world, being deaf. Even if they invented a way of helping me to hear again, I don't think I'd want to try it.'

Daisy fiddled with the ribbons on Holly's nightshirt, tying them into an elaborate knot. 'Tell me when you got deaf.'

'Oh, come on. You know how I got deaf.'

'I know but I like it when you tell me.'

'It's a quarter of three in the morning, sweetheart, and you have your math test tomorrow.'

'But it won't take very long.'

'Daisy?'

'Please,Mommy. If I go back to bed now, all those screaming people with no eyes will come back.'

Holly sighed. 'All right, then. One day when I came home from school I felt hot and I had a headache.'

'No, no. Tell me about the house and the singing lesson and the chicken pie.'

Oh, well, thought Holly, and started to repeat the time-honored version, word for word. 'When I was just about your age I used to live with my daddy and mommy and my brother Tyrone in a tall, thin house on Nob Hill. The house was painted cinnamon red and we had a canary in a cage on the back porch that used to whistle all day. One morning in April I went to school and we had a singing lesson. I used to love singing. We sang 'Green Grow the Rushes-O.' When I came home my mommy had made chicken pie and that was my favorite, but I felt all hot and I had a headache and I couldn't eat more than a mouthful. My mommy took me upstairs to bed and then I was sick.

'I was sick again and again and my headache got so bad that I was screaming. My mommy gave me some Anacin and put me to bed, and that was the last thing that I remembered. When I woke up I was lying in the hospital, and my daddy was sitting in an armchair watching me. I said, 'Daddy, where am I?' and he got up from his chair and sat down next to me and gave me a cuddle and he was crying. I'd never seen my daddy cry before.

'I kept on saying, 'Where am I? Where's Mommy?' but he didn't answer me. It was then that I saw that his lips were moving but no words were coming out. I couldn't hear him talking, and I couldn't hear anybody walking around, and I couldn't even hear the bedsheets rustling. I said, 'Daddy, I can't hear you,' and I couldn't even hear myself saying it.

'It was like my head had filled up with water.'

'You were very sad, weren't you?' said Daisy, prompting her.

'Yes, I was very sad. My daddy and mommy took me to an ear specialist but the ear specialist said that I would be deaf for the rest of my life. No more 'Green Grow the Rushes-O.' No more dogs barking or bells ringing or canary whistling on the back porch. And the strange thing was, I didn't just feel as if I couldn't hear, I feltinvisibletoo. When people found out that I was deaf, they stopped talking to me. They even stoppedlookingat me, as if I had vanished.

'But my mommy didn't allow me to feel sorry for myself. She came from a strong family ofOregon pioneers who always believed that you had to make the best of things, no matterhowlousy your luck.'

Daisy nodded and softly said it with her: 'No matterhowlousy your luck.'

'She took me for a walk along the Wildwood Trail one morning, when the sun was shining through the trees. She brought a picnic, and there was cold chicken pie. She held it up and said 'Chick-en pie,' very slowly and carefully, and pointed to her lips. Then she held up a bottle of Coke and said 'Coke.' I guess I'd already started to lip-read by myself, because I was so desperate to know what people were saying, but it was only then that I realized I couldlearnto lip-read better and better.

'After that I spent hours watching people talking on television, and when I was out shopping with my mother I used to stare at people's lips until they thought I was cracked.

'But one Saturday morning my father came downstairs and I could see him saying 'Where's my slippers, Claudine?' and I said, 'Under the couch.' Well, that was the second time I saw my daddy cry. He just stood in the middle of the living room and he burst into tears.'

One Hell of a Day

The next morning it was raining-heavy, cold curtains which trailed acrossPortland from the northwest. After she had driven Daisy and Daisy's friend Arlo to school, Holly crossed theBurnsideBridge to the Southeast District. Below her, theWillametteRiver had the dull gleam of polished lead, and the tourists who were lining the decks of the sternwheeler paddle-boats were all kitted out in bright yellow slickers.

Holly's windshield wipers flapped wildly from side to side but visibility was down to twenty feet, and like everybody else she had to drive at a crawl. Scarlet brake lights flared through the rain.

The Joseph family lived onNathan Street , a short tract of shabby single-story houses with peeling paint and balding front yards and porches crowded with broken chairs and discarded stoves and sodden rolls of old carpet. As Holly parked her five-year-old Tracker outside the Joseph house, a young woman in a soiled pink bathrobe came out onto the porch of the house next door, smoking.

'Hell of a day,' she said as Holly hurried across the yard.

Holly pressed the doorbell. The screen door had been kicked in and the paintwork around the doorknob was surrounded by a pattern of black fingermarks.

'That guy needs locking up,' the young woman remarked. She had a face the color of unbaked pastry and straggly blond hair and she looked as if she hadn't eaten in a week, or had the appetite to.

'Well,' Holly replied, pressing the doorbell again, 'we try to give him all the help we can.'

'Help? He doesn't need help. He needs locking up. He's a crazy person.'

There was still no answer from Mrs. Joseph, so Holly opened the broken screen door and knocked. 'Mary? Mary? It's Holly Summers!'

The girl blew smoke out of her nostrils. 'Probably dead, from the noise that I heard last night.'

'What kind of noise?'

'You know, noise. Banging, crashing, like somebody was throwing the furniture around and breaking all the dishes. Then screaming.'

Holly knocked at the door again. 'Mary! Can you hear me? It's Holly Summers! Come on, Mary, open up!'

'Probably dead,' the girl repeated.

Holly took out her cell phone and texted Doug at the office:

'No reply at Joseph home. Neighbor reports domestic incident last nite.'

There was a moment's pause and then Doug texted back:

'Check house then call in.'

Holly pulled up the hood of her raincoat and stepped down from the porch. The girl watched her incuriously as she walked around the side of the Joseph house. An old brown armchair stood under the parlor window. Holly climbed up on it, balanced on one of the arms, and tried to peer inside. The gutter just above her was broken and a cascade of cold water clattered onto her hood.

All she could see inside the parlor was a half-open door, a rumpled green rug, and a tipped-over lamp with a fringed shade. There were broken plates, too, and a coffeepot without a handle. No sign of Mrs. Joseph or Daniel.

She stepped down into the seat of the armchair and the springs collapsed, trapping her foot between the cushions and pulling her shoe off. The girl next door shook her head and smiled and blew out smoke. Holly extricated herself, tugged her shoe back on, and then made her way around the back of the house. There was just as much rubbish there as everywhere else: the rusty cab of an old International pickup, a homemade dog kennel, bottles and crates and kitchen chairs with no backs on them. Next door, a huge brindled mongrel suddenly came running across the yard, barking at her. It crashed against the wire-mesh fence, which stopped it, but it continued to bark at her and throw itself against the fence again and again as if it wouldn't stop until it had broken through and gone for her throat.

She stepped up onto the rear patio, negotiating her way around a grease-encrusted K-mart barbecue and two orange-striped sunbeds that were spotted black with mold. The sliding glass doors that led into the kitchen were freckled with raindrops. She wiped them away with her hand and peered into the gloom.

At first she couldn't see anything at all except for the stove with dirty pots on top of it, and the sink heaped with dishes. In the corner, next to the breakfast bench, lay a heap of coats and blankets.

Then she saw movement and realized that somebody was hiding underneath the coats and blankets. She rapped on the glass and shouted, 'Mary! Mary, can you hear me? It's Holly Summers! Mary, if you can hear me, come and open the door!'

There was a long pause. She didn't knock again but waited, so that Mrs. Joseph could see her standing there and