by Katia Rose
My mom lives all the way out in Pointe-Aux-Trembles, long past the end of the metro line. I get on a bus at the end of our street in the Plateau and settle in for the ride, thumbing through songs on my phone until I find the one I’m using for my advanced contemporary class’s routine. I pick the music apart in my head, pairing it with different combos and leaps. A much as I love teaching the younger kids, the freedom of being able to choreograph for the advanced students is always exhilarating, like getting a blank canvas to draw on instead of a paint by numbers.
Summertime means the kids are off school, which means dance camps at the studio, which means more teaching hours for me. During the school year, the Studio de Danse Centrale only offers evening and weekend classes. The pay is above average, but even so, when I finally moved out of my mom’s place and in with Jacinthe, I had to pick up a cashiering job just to come close to making enough to survive. Things are looking better now that I’m living in the tiny two bedroom with Molly, and I can spare a load of groceries for Maman every now and then.
I grew up in Pointe-Aux-Trembles, in an apartment building with hallways that always smelled like smoke and old sweaters. Even now, I’ll catch a whiff of a cigarette, or stop in a fripperie after seeing a pretty vintage coat in the window, and the scents will take me straight back to that one bedroom unit with the window that always got stuck. I can still picture the huge suitcase full of Maman’s cleaning supplies sitting by the door, the ones she used to lug all the way up to Westmount when she had a job cleaning rich English people’s houses.
We moved into a new building after Maman’s fall. Her disability money was enough to help make a small down payment on a condo, one she could move around in easier, but it didn’t leave us with much else. I lived with her until I turned twenty-three last year, when she practically shooed me out of the house and told me to go have my own life.
I buzz myself in and head to her first floor apartment. I hear her wheel herself over and then fiddle with the lock before the door swings open and she greets me with open arms.
“Stéphanie, ma belle!”
I lean down to hug her and then lead the way into the kitchen. After we moved here, my uncle came down from Rimouski and redid some of the cupboards and plumbing, so Maman could do all her cooking herself. I set the overflowing grocery bag I brought down on the counter,and Maman makes the clucking noise she always does when she disapproves of something.
“I told you not to do that anymore, ma belle. You need to eat all this, not me! Look at you. You’re working too hard.”
“Maman, I’m fine. I’m actually gaining weight. Teaching so much is giving me more muscles. My thighs are going to be so solid I’ll look like a man soon. Here, try this.” I grab a cardboard box from the bag and rip it open. “They’re these new protein bars I’m trying. They actually taste good, believe it or not.”
“Stéphanie, things like that are expensive!” she protests, glaring at the foil wrapped bar I offer her like it just said something offensive.
I roll my eyes and peel the foil off myself before forcing her to take it. “Just try it, okay?”
She takes a hesitant bite and agrees with me about the taste.
“How’s work?” I ask her, as I start to put the groceries away. There’s hardly anything in the fridge.
“Comme d’habitude,” she says with a sigh. “Same old, same old. Les connards are as stupid as ever.”
I grin to myself as I set a carton of milk down. The only time my mom ever swears is when she’s talking about her job as a call centre agent. She works from home, giving technical support for customers of a satellite TV company.
“How hard is to find the maudit power button on a maudit remote? If you don’t know what a power button is, you should not own a TV.”
“Did you tell the customer that?” I joke.
“Yes, I said exactly that,” she jokes back. “I said, ‘Madame Brossard, you are an incompetent bimbo and I cannot do anything else for you today. Thank you for calling.’”
“Maman, you did not.”
“You’re right, I did not. I spent twenty minutes helping Madame Brossard find ‘the green button with the circle on it,’ and it brought my average call time up so high my manager had to speak to me about it.”
“Connard,” I sympathize.
Once the groceries are all put away, I follow Maman as she wheels herself into the living room. Her desk is tucked away in a corner, headset resting on her keyboard. She’s probably the only person I know who still uses a desktop computer. Back when I was in junior high, she worked for a pizza delivery call centre. I remember her waving me over to come look at the screen of the big, boxy monitor when anyone ordered something particularly weird.
That was ten years ago, and she’s still taking calls for only seventy-five cents above minimum wage.
“Did you get someone in to fix the bathroom faucet?” I ask her, settling down on the sunken loveseat.
“Not yet,” she answers.
“Maman,” I grumble, as she pretends to be very interested in the last few bites of her protein bar.
“Ouais, ouais, I know.” She waves a hand at me. “It’s just that you almost have to pay a plumber to breathe in your bathroom, never mind actually fix anything, and I’m waiting for my cheque to come in so—”
I dig my fingers into the scratchy fabric of the couch. “You know I can help you out, right? I’m working double the hours I usually do at the studio, and I still pick up a shift every now and then at l’épicerie. All I do with my spare time is dance and go to the AMM. I have more money than I know what to do with. I want to help you.”
“Stéphanie, you help me more than enough just by coming over here. In fact, as much as I love your visits, I think you come here too much. It’s a long way to Pointe-Aux-Trembles, and you’re so busy—”
“Assez!” I interrupt, instantly regretting the disrespect in my tone but forging ahead anyway. “Enough, Maman. You know there’s nothing I would rather be doing.”
After all the hell I put her through in my teenage years, I’m making up for lost time. We’ve finally reached a point where being in the same room doesn’t make us want to cry or scream at each other, and I’m not ruining a perfectly good afternoon fighting over a plumbing issue. I’ll find a plumber myself later if I have to.
“Well, I’m happy to hear that,” Maman answers, letting the subject drop. “How are les petites these days?”
She’s always asking me about my ‘little ones,’ waiting for the next funny story about a ballet class gone wrong. As usual, there’s a lot to tell her about.
“That one six year-old, Brianna, brought candy to class again. I don’t know where she hides it, or if her parents even care that she’s doing it, but somehow she snuck a handful of M&Ms into the studio. She got chocolate all over the bar. When I told her off, she just asked if I wanted some.”
Maman laughs at my exasperation, and then asks about her favourite student, Caroline. She’s heard enough stories about the studio that she actually has a favourite student of mine.
“Caroline’s still doing that thing where she starts spinning and doesn’t know how to stop. She ran into the wall yesterday.”
“Was she all right?” Maman gasps.
“Oh, she was fine. That girl is not coordinated, but she’s a tough one. I’ll give her that.”
“And those parents?” asks Maman. “The ones who were giving you trouble?”
Now I dig my nails into the cushion so hard I can feel the slats in the couch underneath.
“They talked to the manager,” I answer through gritted teeth. “They said they were ‘concerned their daughter isn’t getting the help she needs because of the language barrier.’ The manager told me she knows it’s all bullshit, but she might have to transfer the girl out of my class just to keep them happy.”
“That’s crazy!” Maman exclaims. “You speak great English.”
I don’t speak great English; I speak fucking perfect Englis
h, with a perfect Anglophone accent. Three years of applying myself in language classes totally eliminated my Québécois drawl and makeshift English grammar. I can pronounce the ‘h’ and ‘s’ sounds without a single stutter. I know my verb tenses better than any native speaker I’ve ever met. The only time anyone finds out I’m not a native speaker is when I want them to.
Or when they learn my full name. ‘Stéphanie Cloutier-Hébert’ is a dead giveaway, and one the kind of parents who care about that sort of thing don’t overlook.
“It never used to be a problem until that girl from the studio won ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ and we started getting lots of rich kids,” I rant. “Now we have all these students from English private schools whose parents try to pretend they don’t live in a place where the official language is French. It’s like they think all Francophones do is walk around in raccoon hats, drinking moonshine and yelling about separatism—”
“Stéphanie,” Maman warns, but I’m too worked up to stop.
“They don’t think I have a brain! They don’t care that I can help their kid nail a triple pirouette in an hour. They all see ‘Cloutier-Hébert’ on the studio’s website and—”
“Stéphanie.” Maman pauses to see if I’ll actually stop to listen, and when I just sit there panting, she continues. “I agree that those parents sound like even bigger connards than Madame Brossard, but they are only one set of parents. That’s the first time anyone at the studio has actually—”
“But they’re thinking it!” I exclaim. “Even if they don’t say anything, I know they’re thinking it.”
Maman sighs. “I’m just saying, maybe you’re a little too hard on les anglophones.”
“If I am, it’s because you weren’t hard enough on them.”
The air goes still, the way it does after an explosion, and we both tense up like we’re waiting for another bomb to go off.
I hate myself for bringing it up, hate myself with the clawing kind of self-loathing that’s scratched at my insides way too many times before, but the fuse was lit the second I saw inside her empty fridge, and it just kept on burning the longer I sat inside this bare and tatty condo.
She could have had better. She might not have had better, I know, especially considering the state we lived in even before her fall, but she could have had better. We could have had better, and that’s what’s always made me so angry. The people who caused her accident took so much away from her, and they never had to give anything back.
“Desolé, Maman,” I plead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring it up.”
I trail off when I see the tears in her eyes. They form a shiny film over her pupils but don’t quite spill over.
“I don’t want you to live that kind of life,” she whispers, “so full of hate there’s no point in you feeling. You told me the meditation was helping, that you were happy, but if it’s not—”
“It is!” I’m practically begging. “It is helping. I am happy. I’m so happy. Everyone is always telling me how happy I seem. I was just upset about the plumber thing, that’s all.”
She doesn’t look convinced, and with good reason. All I want to do is shout that there is a point to this hate, and that maybe if she’d let herself feel a bit more of it...
Breathe. Just breathe. You’re here. You’re not there anymore. You’re here.
“Really,” I repeat, sounding a little more believable this time, “I’m happy.”
Maman and I find a fragile kind of peace during the rest of my visit. I leave after we’ve had lunch and looked for a plumber together online. When I fish my bus pass out of my purse, I find she’s stuffed three of the protein bars I bought her inside. I don’t know whether to laugh or shake my head as I sink onto a seat near the front of the bus.
I arrive at the studio almost half an hour before my class starts. The room I’m teaching in is empty, so I hook my phone up to the sound system and stretch for awhile before I try a run-through of the routine.
The song isn’t the style I usually pick for choreography. My students always beg for people like Shawn Mendes or Katy Perry, and I often give in for the sake of maintaining their enthusiasm, but I set this routine to a dreamy, piano-powered track by Jenn Grant, a Canadian artist I only started listening to a few weeks ago.
I strip down to just my sports bra and yoga shorts before pressing play on the stereo.
Then for three minutes and fifty-seven seconds, I just let go.
I melt into the music, like it’s a fire and I’m feeding it with my body and my breath and my mind. I throw everything into the flames, offering up the beads of sweat collecting on my shoulders, the ache in my muscles as I leap into an over-split and stretch my legs as far as they’ll go. I let the fire claim my memories, my emotions—everything that’s happened in the past few days propelling me faster as I dance up and down the length of the room.
The tears in my mom’s eyes, Guita’s humming, the laughter of my girls in beginner ballet: I give it all up, the good and the bad, and twist through a series of roll combos I’ve never nailed all in one go before, barely registering the accomplishment as the music swells. I get ready for a set of pirouettes I hadn’t worked into the choreography, but now realize are perfect for this part of the song.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, the ponytail I started the routine off with long gone, my hair whipping around my shoulders as I prepare myself for the spins.
I close my eyes, and another flash of a memory slips into the fire. This one sparks and spits and sends tendrils of heat shooting through all of my tendons. I spin and I spin until the room is a revolving blur of glass and white brick walls.
When I finally land the move, I’m dizzy enough to have to reach for the bar, but it’s not from all of the pirouettes. I could turn twice as many and not feel lightheaded like this.
No, the reason I’m dizzy is because all I could think about while my body spun itself around like a top were Ace Turner’s eyes locked on mine and the dark lines of those black feathers etched on his perfect chest. All I could think about was how much I wanted to rip his shirt off and see the whole tattoo for myself, trace my fingertips over the raven’s wings and watch Ace shiver under my touch.
I knew I was attracted to him—no matter how much it annoyed me—but this is something stronger. Something darker. This is the part of me I save for dance and dance alone. This is a line I only cross when I have the fixed boundaries of a stage to do it on, a line where attraction turns into fixation, where the whining itch of a want becomes the desperate, demanding ache of a need.
I pull my t-shirt over my sweaty torso and press pause on my phone just as the doorknob turns and three giggling fifteen year-olds trot inside. I smile and wave to my students before turning back to the stereo and scrolling to my warm-up playlist.
My head’s still spinning like a beginner who doesn’t know how to spot her turns. I shake my neck out and press play on a Shawn Mendes song.
You’re here, I tell myself, as I move to the front of the studio. You’re not there anymore. You’re here.
7 Afraid || The Neighbourhood
ACE
I haven’t left my apartment in two days. There’s a greasy pile of pizza boxes sitting on my counter, and not even the open door of the balcony is enough to clear the stale and stagnant air in here, but I can’t leave. Not yet.
I’m almost done writing ‘Nevermore.’
I didn’t sleep that night I came back here instead of going out on Saint-Laurent. I put a Muse album on and lay on top of my mattress, kicking the blanket away as the heat of the night clung to my skin, trying to drown out the sounds of the city with electric guitars and Matt Bellamy’s wails.
It didn’t work. I could still hear all the hungry laughter in my head, still see the shadows of passing headlights grow like monsters on my walls until I was shaking so much there could have been a metro line running right below my head. I knew that even if I did fall asleep, the dreams would be ten times worse than being
awake.
So I got up and sat cross-legged on my floor like the world’s biggest idiot, and I forced myself to breathe. I forced myself to chase that moment in the meditation room—just a few brief seconds of fleeting sensation I’m still not convinced I actually felt—when I understood why people do this. Surrounded by smoke and the rhythmic exhales of the other meditators, I sunk into the kind of nothingness I’ve been chasing for years.
I’ve glimpsed it before, in the height of the high that comes from drugs and good sex, but only music had ever made me able to claim it like that, to find it in myself instead of some exterior stimulus. Only being on stage gives me that single-minded sense of purpose where everything falls into place. You don’t think. You don’t feel. You just are.
I wrote for the rest of the night. I filled up pages and pages of blank paper with scribbled lyrics and chords. Half of it wasn’t even for ‘Nevermore.’ It felt like I was pulling something out of myself—a thorn buried deep in my side—and I couldn’t stop to question what was happening or I’d lose my grip on it forever.
The dawn broke, and I slept for a few hours. When I woke up, I shoved some food in my mouth without even tasting it. Then I started writing again. I shut my phone off, surrounding myself with guitars and banged-up volumes of Edgar Allan Poe. The ideas were all taking shape faster than I could keep up with, growing in that wild and violent way I hadn’t felt in so long.
“Fuck!” I shout, as my pen runs out of ink in the middle of jotting down a set of chords for a potential bass line.
I take a moment to lean back on my elbows where I’m sitting on the floor, blinking at the light filtering in through the window and catching on the swirls of dust in the air.
I have no idea what time it is.
Thinking that I’m probably due for another pizza by now—and hoping it’s late enough in the morning to find a delivery place—I switch my phone back on and instantly regret it. The thing is blowing up. I scan through the texts and missed call notifications and start to draw together a picture of what’s going on.