All We Knew But Couldn't Say
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Praise for All We Knew But Couldn’t Say
What you need to know about All We Knew But Couldn’t Say is how brilliantly Joanne Vannicola says what couldn’t be said. She writes about mayhem and emotional violence with such precision that it’s like becoming mesmerized by a tornado moving directly towards you. Becoming an actor may have been Joanne Vannicola’s first step in avoiding the path of destructive forces heading her way — but it’s her writing that feels like a storm contained. This is a story you won’t soon forget.
— David Layton, award-winning author of Motion Sickness
Joanne Vannicola weaves a compelling narrative about hardship, survival, and resilience that reminds all of us about the enduring importance of forgiveness, family acceptance, and love.
— Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO, GLAAD
Stark. Unflinchingly honest and filled with a type of determination that is seen in LGBTQ people who want more than just survival.
— Roland Emmerich, director, producer
Joanne Vannicola’s memoir is shocking, upsetting, and occasionally graphic, yet what sets it apart from other similar accounts is an underlying sense of optimism. Out of despair there has emerged a beautifully written account, where the author has not only come through the tribulations of her early life, but become a leading voice for the overlooked and the marginalized. I cannot recommend it enough.
— Linda Riley, publisher, DIVA Magazine
In this moving memoir, Joanne Vannicola writes herself — and so many of us who have experienced oppression and trauma — onto the page. As a writer, I enjoyed her beautiful, well-paced, and evocative storytelling. As a therapist and survivor, I found myself pausing and nodding as she articulated so well her deep and layered understandings of trauma and marginalization. Throughout, I found myself rooting for and cheering on the young girl, actor, activist, and woman of this story.
— Farzana Doctor, author
This frank, sometimes harrowing, always inspiring memoir should be mandatory reading for all — for those afraid of being true to themselves or anyone who needs a hero that demonstrates what personal courage and determination can do. PLEASE READ THIS BOOK!
— Colin Mochrie, actor, comedian
I am completely gutted by reading Joanne’s beautifully penned heart-wrenching memoir.... Raw, unflinching, brave, and important, it makes me grateful to know that a voice with this power and honesty is sharing her truth with us all.
— Cynthia Dale, actor
From her abusive parents and a harrowingly self-destructive adolescence to against-all-odds success as a performer, we anxiously cheer on that spark of joy in Joanne that not only refuses to be snuffed but flourishes to awareness and grace. I tore through this book in a fury, astounded by her resilience and inspired by her unerring belief in the power of love.
— Wendy Crewson, actor
A story fit for this time and the landscape of our culture, incredibly raw, moving, and honest. Joanne has survived so much and come out triumphant. A book worth reading.
— Denys Arcand, Oscar-winning director
Joanne writes the way she lives, with heart and hope and honesty. A must read.
— Helen Shaver, actor
Copyright © Joanne Vannicola, 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Cover images: Composite by David Drummond. House: istock.com/jenysarwar; Sky: istock.com/Jasmina007; Girl: Shutterstock.com/MariaRoldanPazos
Printer: Webcom, a division of Marquis Book Printing Inc.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: All we knew but couldn’t say / Joanne Vannicola.
Other titles: All we knew but could not say
Names: Vannicola, Joanne, 1968- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190075805 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190075961 | ISBN 9781459744226 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459744233 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459744240 (EPUB)
Subjects: LCSH: Vannicola, Joanne, 1968- | LCSH: Television actors and actresses—Canada—Biography. | LCSH: Motion picture actors and actresses—Canada—Biography. | LCSH: Mothers and daughters—Canada—Biography. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.
Classification: LCC PN2308.V36 A3 2019 | DDC 791.4502/8092—dc23
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We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada.
Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
The publisher is not responsible for websites or their content unless they are owned by the publisher.
Printed and bound in Canada.
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For my siblings.
In memory of Steffin Light and baby Joshua.
For anyone who has ever been hurt or marginalized, has
suffered violence, or has felt like they don’t belong, and for
all survivors of child abuse or systemic violence. This book is
also for all women and LGBTQ2+ people who need an ally
and who need to see themselves in the stories they consume.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART ONE: WALKING THROUGH GLASS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
PART TWO: BROKEN
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
PART THREE: WHAT I KNEW
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
PART FOUR: THE STORIES OUR BODIES TELL
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
/>
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
BOOK CREDITS
PART ONE
Walking Through Glass
CHAPTER ONE
2002 — Princess Margaret Hospital
I NEVER KNOW what condition she’ll be in when I arrive at the hospital — if she’ll be lucid, rambling, awake, sleeping, in an altered state, or maybe even gone. Dead.
I wait, though, finishing my cigarette outside, squatting on the ground. My fingertips yellowed with nicotine. The skin chewed. The sky scattered and uncertain as if the spring sun might disappear and a storm might crash in. I exhale and stroke an exposed patch of grass as if it were the fur of a sleeping cat.
“Are you okay?” asks a woman.
I squint, shield my eyes, and look up from her stiletto heels to her bold red lips. Everything perfect and in place.
“My mother is dying,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” she says softly before walking away.
I stand up, squash my cigarette with my shoe, cross the street, and go through the revolving glass doors of Princess Margaret, Toronto’s renowned cancer hospital. I wait for the elevator, pop peppermint gum into my mouth, fish my shades from my pocket, and push them on, covering the dark circles around my eyes.
The elevator is crammed with gowned patients clutching their IV poles, hospital staff, and fellow visitors. Some are here for those in the beginning stages of the disease, the newly diagnosed who are in treatment or having surgery. Then there are people like me, the dishevelled and overtired, the ones on constant duty, hurrying to the bathroom or stealing away for a quick smoke, afraid to miss the end.
It takes forever to get to the seventeenth floor: the palliative care ward. My sisters are outside our mother’s room talking in whispers. My brother, Diego, is at home sleeping. We’re on rotating shifts. My sisters, Sadie and Lou, have travelled from Montreal and Vancouver to say their goodbyes; yes, even Sadie, who was taken by the Children’s Aid so many years ago, the day the rest of us were inexplicably left behind.
Mother slips in and out of consciousness, almost in a coma, her body bruised from multiple needles and the morphine drip. Her eyes are glassy, hollow. She is uncommunicative, the way my sisters like it. They don’t want to talk or listen; they have never believed a word she said anyway. Lou refused to even come to Toronto unless I was certain Mother was dying.
It was winter when my mother was admitted. I didn’t know then how long was left. Weeks? Months? I only knew she was declining, and unlike my sisters, I had questions that needed answering.
I walk into her room. Her bare feet are exposed, the skin like cracked mud under a hot sun. I should apply cream but am afraid to touch them. I am thirty-three years old, but my insides still revolt when I get close to her. The need to feel separate is so big, so old. So immediate.
I ignore her parched feet, busying myself with the messy counter beside her bed while I formulate the first question.
“Do you want to finally talk?” I stare at her.
“Not yet,” she says and stares back.
I wipe the counter and rearrange the clutter: the box of Kleenex, the water jug, three Styrofoam cups, juice from breakfast. I throw out used tissues. I try again.
“Why did you marry him?” I ask. “Why Dad?”
“Because I had to,” she answers. She grabs the remote and turns on the extendable tiny television that stretches out from the wall like the arm of a crane. “The new kids are so good,” she says after finding a figure-skating competition. “That boy Sandhu, he can dance too.…”
“But why? Was it because you were pregnant with Sadie?”
She pauses as if the answer is lost to her. I’ve seen it before, this vacancy, how she fumbles, makes things up she doesn’t know, avoids reality.
“I think so.…” Mother says, her voice stuck somewhere in her throat.
“You think so or you know so?”
“I don’t know.… I … well, your grandfather wanted me to marry your father.” She turns off the television and shoves it away from her bed.
I actually know the real story, but not from my mother. From Diego, who told me years ago, after he had gone with Mother to a therapy session.
Mother was the youngest girl out of seven children: the “chosen” one, raped by her father. She told people, but no one believed her. I did. The moment Diego told me, I knew it was true. It was the only thing that made sense. A piece of her was broken long before any of us came along.
“And I loved your father,” she interjects before I can say anything more. “I loved him. Isn’t that enough?” She covers herself with the thin green hospital blanket.
It isn’t. Because it isn’t true. It can’t be. He was a brute; she was a girl. What was to love?
When I was young, I obsessively asked her why she married my dad. He was terrifying, and even at the age of eight, I couldn’t understand why she’d married him.
She would always say the same thing: “Because I loved him.” Then she would throw up her arms to shut me up, as if she thought I could believe her. It was the most insane thing I had ever heard.
She interrupts my thoughts. “I want to speak with all my children.” Her demeanour is imperious. “I forgive you all.”
“What did you say?” I turn to her, feeling nauseous, dizzy almost. After everything she has done, she forgives us?
“And what do you forgive your children for? What have your children done to you that requires your forgiveness?” My voice is low, measured.
She stares at me without answering, fidgets with her bedding. Her voice changes, becomes childlike. “Do you forgive me?”
“I don’t really know, but I know I won’t forget.”
I leave then, rush out, trying to stop the flood of memories. The dam breaks and I spend the night spinning backward, through my father’s violence and my mother’s collusion. And through something else, something hard to accept or talk about even now: how my mother touched me, and how I knew, even when I was a little girl, that it was wrong.
But I go back the next day, and she stares at me vulnerably from her bed. “I’m afraid of losing my hair.”
I am sitting as far away from her as I can. The hospital room isn’t big enough for the two of us. No room is big enough for the two of us.
“I don’t know if I can handle seeing it fall out in chunks. I’m scared.”
“Are you?” I ask. I don’t want to take care of her. The very thought inspires rage. She takes up so much space, even physical space, and the room is small, making her seem larger somehow, as if I were still eight. I can’t cope with her fear, so instead I focus on her hair, which will fall out from the last-ditch effort to prolong her life with chemotherapy.
“I can shave your head.”
“Do you think that would help?” She looks at me hopefully, trying to find a way into my heart.
I find a cheap blue plastic razor and hold it up to Mother’s head of curls while she sits up in her hospital bed.
“You’re sure you trust me with this thing?” I ask, ready to shave her.
I hate her vulnerability and recall childhood fantasies when I wished her dead, when I hoped the plane would crash or the car would go off a cliff, her heart would stop or she would slip on the ice some winter night and crack her skull.
But here she is powerless, afraid of losing her long, luscious hair.
My mother always worked so hard on her appearance, trying to compensate for her weight: her 350 to 400 pounds. A gifted seamstress, she made her own clothes: wide tops and dresses in floral patterns, stripes, or paisley, in pinks and purples, blues and greens, in velour or velvet for special events or shows. She manicured her nails, painted her face, and coloured her hair — her beautiful, luscious hair. She permed it, straightened it, blow-dried it, curled it, always trying the newest style. Her hair was her armour, her confidence. It let her go out into the world, hiding her vuln
erability and her monsters.
“I think I need to cut it first. It’s too long to shave.”
We are silent as I put white towels around her neck. I cut her hair, almost taken aback by how soft it is. I apply shaving cream and carefully move her head while the sharp blade scrapes against her scalp.
Shaving her head turns out to be a very intimate act. It is the closest I’ve been to her in over fifteen years. The only sounds come from the hall, where nurses congregate at their station, laughing or complaining, where buzzers sound, where patients shuffle by, where visitors walk, catching glimpses as I angle around earlobes and more of my mother’s flesh becomes visible.
I pat her head dry. She is raw. Exposed. And so am I.
It’s hard to hate when someone is dying.
I didn’t always hate my mother.
Some of my earliest memories are good: tap shows and costumes, music and time steps. I was three years old when the lessons began. Luaus where my sister Lou and I performed Hawaiian dances with bamboo sticks and balls on a string, wearing grass skirts and floral tops. Tap and jazz shows. Trophies and competitions. Gymnastics and figure skating. Roller-skating lessons, partnered with a boy my age, rolling around in circles doing figure eights on wheels under disco balls in roller rinks. My mother wanted something for me. She wanted something for herself.
But in the end, it was the theatre and acting that would take root, where I would excel and live the dreams I thought were mine. They weren’t. They were hers; yet, in the end, she didn’t share in them. For fifteen years I was estranged from my mother, couldn’t bear to be near her. She wasn’t there in 1991 when I won my Emmy for Maggie’s Secret, and she wasn’t there in 1993 when I debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival with Love and Human Remains, directed by legendary Québécois director Denys Arcand. She wasn’t there for most of my triumphs and, God knows, was never there for my disasters, when I needed — really needed — a mother.
CHAPTER TWO