The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Canada Book Fund, and the Province of British Columbia through the B. C. Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit. [...] Her whole life, she’s been told things will make her deaf: walk- man headphones, tractors, thunder, her sister screaming in her ear, Jason screaming in her ear, the attempt she made that one time in the shower to scream in her own ear. [...] They check her over and try very hard not to scream, and carry her — both of them, like firemen in the face of an explosion — to the car, and drive like fire for Saskatoon. [...] He sits with her in the yard, or goes off with her in the car, and comes back and throws things into the trees. [...] She crawled down into the basement all on her own, with her blankets and her clothes and that lizard she likes.