My character in the play was dead, a ghost who had been raped and murdered and was now haunting her killer. I was running on empty, though, playing the dead girl every night, screaming, walking through walls, and “reliving” the rape and murder every night while haunting my killer. My mental health was not improving with the part. Ghost Girl began to seep into my days and it was hard to shake the role.
I went to school after a few days of work. At lunchtime, the entire school was in the theatre room, listening to the theme song from Fame, leaping off windowsills, dancing on tables. I wanted to dance but was too self-conscious, so instead I watched from the corner until Kate came and found me.
“Joanne, we have to talk,” Kate said, ushering me to her office. “I want you to meet someone, a woman I know. She’s a healer.”
“You mean some type of social worker?” I didn’t trust adults who spoke to kids to earn a living; they were the ones who took children away.
“No. She’s a healer, has a private practice, someone people talk with.” Kate and I sat in her office. She was the only adult I wanted to talk to; even talking with people my own age was becoming a challenge. I didn’t want to go to teen parties, to eat chips or pizza while kids guzzled beer in backyards when parents were absent. I had done those things in Montreal. I was not living a child’s life and didn’t need to hide my drug use or hunger. I was on my own.
“I can drive you to meet her, see if you like her,” Ms. Kate said. “Think about it.”
I didn’t want to talk to a healer. The idea terrified me, as if she might discover how fucked up I was. “I don’t have time right now,” I said, which was true. School and the play were more than I could manage.
“Just think about it. There is always time to talk,” she said.
But I still rejected the idea, even after the run of Wolfboy ended and I was back to school, and back to my routines.
The reality of having no home was sinking in. I was falling into a type of lonely madness. Not even Kate could rescue me. She wasn’t my mother, though I fantasized at night sometimes that she was. But I had to be my own mother and I was horrible at the job.
Even hanging out with Jasmine had become strained because I would not eat. She tried to talk about it. “You’re not getting enough calories,” she said one night after we hopped a Greyhound bus.
We rode to Niagara Falls, thinking we could find people to party with — adults, people more exciting than our peers. Her mother worked in the hospital as a nurse all night and wouldn’t know Jasmine had taken off, and I had no one to report to. We disappeared for the night, and the plan was to take the morning bus back to school, with a great story to tell. On the bus to Niagara Falls, we listened to Prince and shared the earphones to my Walkman, and spoke of our lives in half sentences.
“That guy is bugging me about prostitution,” Jasmine said, as if it were the first time I had heard of such things.
“My friend Steff is a prostitute. Don’t do it, Jasmine. You don’t have to do that,” I said.
She was tapping the window from her seat on the mostly empty bus. “He tries to touch me.”
“Did you tell your mother?” I asked.
“No. She works so hard on the night shift for me, so I can go to school. I don’t want her to feel bad.”
I didn’t know what to say, not because I was shocked, but because I had heard it so many times before, because I knew what it was like. We stopped talking after we had shared a few of our secrets. It was dark when we arrived in Niagara. The streets were deserted, and we were left at a bus depot without any money and far from anything with lights or action, lost. We found a park and stayed there all night, trying not to get harassed or jumped. Our adventure was dull, anticlimactic, and it was the last time I would spend intimate time with Jasmine.
We drifted apart after that night. She pulled away from me, and I didn’t fight it. It was as if we had shared too much, knew too much about each other and it wasn’t safe somehow. We were not like the rest, the ones who had driveways and cars at home, Sunday dinners, and parents who bought them Nintendo toys or gave them allowances. I rolled hash oil–covered joints with wild mushrooms and cocaine with young adults I barely knew from grade thirteen. I blotted out for hours on end, no one the wiser but me, and I was a disaster.
I didn’t even want friends. They were unpredictable, unreliable teens inside their cookie-cutter lives, while I lived outside of it, looking in. The world was no oyster; there was no pearl inside, just the sounds of my empty stomach in a shallow wasteland of a city. My body was hungry, my brain deprived. I didn’t want to read Shakespeare or give book reports. I didn’t want to learn fractions or complicated mathematical equations from a boring man who looked as frail as the dying.
“It’s not just math, it’s how we solve problems in our everyday lives, it’s a foundation,” our pale math and science teacher said after I refused to try to answer a problem on the board. I thought he was a simple man, someone who couldn’t possibly understand my life. He was predictable and ate the same sandwich every day with some vegetables, tea, and crackers. There were no math problems that could solve the killing of animals or the bruised bodies of my sisters. No math that I could relate to. So instead I raged. The teachers didn’t understand that my anger was for my parents, not for them.
“You don’t know what the heck you’re talking about,” I blurted out. I tried not to be belligerent, but I just couldn’t stop myself. I was angry with any adult who patronized or preached about the building blocks of life and the purpose of things like fractions or pi. “When you figure out how to stop a man from raping a boy, maybe I’ll believe that math is the foundation for life,” I said, thinking of Steffin and packing up my books. I didn’t get very far before I ended up with another detention.
I sat with Anna from grade thirteen. She wore very low-cut tops so she could expose the red rose tattoo above her breast. “Do you like it?” she asked as she slowly revealed more of it by pulling down her bra. She had long black hair and albino-white skin.
I stared at her breast. “Yes, I love it. It’s beautiful,” I said.
She came closer and passed me her phone number, said I should come out some time and hang out. She was high, I could tell. I couldn’t stop staring at her rose tattoo.
I also despised my drama teacher. I thought her lessons were clueless: improv and stretches and boring plays or monologues that were meant to be “safe” material for teens. I thought it was utter bullshit. “What do you know about acting, about people? Why are you even teaching us with this crap? This isn’t Disney. We aren’t ten-year-olds.” I felt horrible, but did not know how to stop the anger from spilling out. I was so wrapped up in my pain that I didn’t see my teachers as human: people with bills and families and troubles of their own. I was too young — too damaged — to have compassion, but I was old enough to understand they would not help me. They could not. “This play is shit!” I said just before I was thrown out of class. More detentions. Ms. Kate told me I needed to treat the drama teacher with respect, even if I didn’t like what I was doing.
Eventually, I believed that school was just a waste of time. It was tedious and uninspiring. It depressed me. I had thought that once I’d escaped my mother and my past, once I’d found independence, that somehow all my fantasies and dreams would come true. It was all a lie, all a bunch of false information that we ingested from television shows, news, and school, the fallacy of a better tomorrow. Lies.
There would be nothing better, nothing to look forward to. I knew too much. I believed I knew everything there was to know. I believed that kids like me, from violent or broken homes, couldn’t buy in to societal norms. They were lies, imposed concepts — marriage and children, houses, nine-to-five jobs — designed to keep us in line. Lines I had no use for. I lived outside of them. I wanted nothing to do with them. With anything.
I was fifteen and no longer satisfied with just starving. Instead, I wanted to die.
Die replaced th
e old fatso jingle. The word looped around inside my head. Die. Die. Die.
I took twenty-two uppers and thought that would kill me. I walked into the snow near the Riverdale Farm by the forested area where the trees swayed eerily. I sat in the snow. The drugs churned in my belly; chills crept into my bones. I had no gloves or hat. It hadn’t occurred to me that the cold would be uncomfortable. How was I supposed to sleep after taking twenty-two uppers? Stupid. It was quiet. Icicles hung from the branches. I made my way back to my apartment and started to vomit. As the night passed, I kept throwing up, but the vomit turned into blood. I went to St. Mike’s Hospital the following morning.
The doctor’s face was inches from mine inside the cubicle, a small space divided by green curtains that boxed us in. He was a wiry man in a white coat with a stethoscope dangling from his neck. “Why did you take so many pills?” he asked.
“I didn’t mean to.” I had a tube in my nose that made it hard to talk. “My friends at the party were taking pills and I just took a bunch, but I didn’t know I would get sick, that I took too many.”
“You shouldn’t give in to peer pressure.”
“You’re right.” I could get away with saying anything. My acting lessons had paid off.
“We’re going to keep you until tomorrow. Normally we are supposed to send kids like you to psych, so I don’t want to see you here again, okay?”
“Okay.”
The sounds of the hospital and the smell of disease and medicine lingered over me. I stared at the fluorescent lights and stained ceiling tiles.
It didn’t work. I heard the voice inside my head, my companion. You can try again.
I thought of calling someone, but I didn’t know who. So instead I had a conversation with myself. You’re okay. I’m here. I can be who you want me to be.
I want … I want … to stay.
Here? You want to stay in the hospital?
No. Here.
You mean the larger here? What for? No one cares.
You do.
Did you think it would be like this?
I stared at the flickering light above my head. I hadn’t disassociated entirely, was just lonely, and this was my new form of self-comfort, speaking with the voice inside. I needed a friend and it seemed an ingenious way to fill the emptiness.
No. I figured I would tap my way into the hearts of North America, triple-time step with Sammy Davis Junior, or that I’d be a great scientist, maybe even a great actress, I answered.
The buzzers went off and I heard someone running. A police officer was in hot pursuit. I heard the screams of the runner as he was cuffed, shouting about the devil and being held in a tiny box.
Don’t leave me, the voice inside whispered while I held on to myself. You know we can’t stay like this forever.
Who says we can’t?
I don’t want to be crazy.
No one needs to know. You don’t have to talk about me, our secret.
But I know.
You know I’m you, so you’re not crazy.
I didn’t know my purpose, why I was alive. I questioned the importance of being a performer, wondered why I had been born. Was it because I was supposed to be on television or become famous? It just seemed so empty. It wouldn’t matter if I died. What would be left behind? Some old TV shows I was in or photographs in a drawer somewhere?
I covered my ears and hummed myself a lullaby, blocking out the sounds and smells and sights of St. Mike’s, calmed by the voice inside.
The next morning I promised the doctors I wouldn’t do anything harmful and was released. But I kept trying to kill myself — half attempts, full attempts, valium and vodka. I did this a couple of times, intent on killing myself, but each time I would seek help, go to different hospitals. I baited doctors but they did not bite, likely because I lied, expecting that they would discover I was in trouble without my having to tell them. But they didn’t know how to connect the dots.
I tried cutting but I was afraid to cut deep enough. Then I thought I would jump into the Don River, hoping to drown, but I was too good a swimmer and knew I would stop myself unless I was weighted down by a rock or bricks or rope, and I was too afraid to try this method.
I opened the oven door and wondered what it would be like to die like Sylvia Plath. I tried: I turned on the heat but immediately stopped because it was so hot! I didn’t understand how it worked, except that I might burn and who wanted that? Then I learned that it was supposed to be a gas stove, not electric.
I was not successful in the art of dying, but I was gaining a macabre resumé, practising for what I thought was to come. No one who knew me was aware of these attempts; they were mostly secretive, until I needed medical attention, but even then I was not truly seen. It was obvious I was a teen in need of care, but no one stepped in.
Though I wasn’t yet sixteen, I felt like an eighty-year-old. I took seven ludes, sat in a small park near the Bloor Viaduct, and pulled the wrapper off a Skor chocolate bar for my last meal.
I was going to die.
The sky was beautiful, blue and pink under the setting sun. The ludes slowed me down, made me tippy, like a buoy in the ocean. I held on to the cement rail and walked to the centre of the bridge. It was dark out when I looked over the ledge of the viaduct. I saw the headlights of passing cars below. I would certainly die on impact. I imagined the fall, hitting the concrete, how a car would roll over my body. I looked for the best spot to jump from, maybe stalling, maybe not.
I crawled onto the ledge slowly and dangled, with one leg and arm hanging over the edge and one arm and leg hanging over the sidewalk on the bridge, draped over cement like a piece of cloth on a clothesline. It would be as close to instant death as could be, but I was afraid to fall, afraid to die. I went limp and stared at the passing cars flickering like strobe lights below in the night.
I was ripped from the ledge and hit the sidewalk. A woman cradled me on the pavement.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re okay.” She continued to rock me in her arms while cars passed us on the bridge. Eventually, she lifted me up so we could walk toward the pay phone. I gave her Kate’s phone number, as she was the only person I could think of for my strange saviour to call.
I smacked my lips in thirst while the woman spoke to me: “Don’t fall asleep. Open your eyes.”
“Thank you,” I heard Kate say to my bicycle-riding saviour.
“Come on, stand up, Joanne.” I felt Kate’s leg touching mine, a gentle prod. She reached down to help me up. Her husband, Lionel, was behind the wheel, ready to take us to their home.
She made me eat a bagel in the morning before I washed my hair. I was lying over the edge of the tub with my head under the tap. I didn’t want to take a shower. I heard Kate say, “Joanne, the water is running. Do you need me to help you?”
“No.” I lifted my head. I heard Kate and Lionel giggling, and I laughed along with them at myself for a second. I wanted them to adopt me; I wanted to tell them I loved them, would be a good daughter, do my homework, and shower properly. My love fell out of me easily. A warm touch, a place to sleep — it didn’t take much for me to want, to wish again. The drain swallowed my thoughts as I fell forward, the water took the moment, and I couldn’t remember anything, just the slow fog of drugs inside, stealing my memories.
For days I was in a hazy, stoned blur, barely able to keep my eyes open. I slept at Kate and Lionel’s place for three days and they forced me to go to school. My science teacher kicked me out of class after I told him to fuck off. I didn’t want to study dead things, wasn’t interested in the guts of a frog or slicing it open. The only death I was interested in was my own.
I wasn’t dead, wasn’t dead, so I kept trying to lose weight, trying to become so thin I would drop. I hated fat and thought weight loss would eventually kill me. I would die thin and escape this shell I was stuck in. But it was hard to be hungry and ignore my body’s signals. I tried to master new regimes: eating one apple with cheese for dinner, th
en exercising. I drank black coffee with no milk or sugar because of the calories. I allowed myself to eat a muffin with butter at lunchtime. Then I held the butter and just ate the muffin, then I ate only the top of the muffin and left the other half in the wrapper. Then I wouldn’t eat anything at all in the afternoon.
Mind over matter.
I pretended to eat, believed I could go without food and feel full. If I fantasized when I had cravings, I could control the desire to eat. My body was screaming for protein, fibre, vitamins, but I would mime the act of eating with my invisible fork, knife, and mouthful of air.
The tiniest amount of flesh looked like hundreds of pounds of fat; there was no distinction. Soon enough my apple-and-sliced-cheese dinner became half an apple. Then I stopped eating dinner altogether, because I was “fat.” I could not sleep. I was too hungry for sleep, but I would not eat, so I exercised at midnight, 3:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m., any time of day.
I woke up frantically after I dreamed about food one evening. I felt for the bones in my chest, bounced out of bed to turn on the light, and stood in front of the mirror. I removed my T-shirt and felt my ribs, each curve and indent around my bones. My ribs were like the bars of a prison cell, with my organs threatening to escape. I didn’t know that bones could feel so fragile and solid all at the same time, that bones could poke out so awkwardly. They exposed my state of mind without my having to speak.
I pinched my belly and the skin between my fingers and cried because the skin felt like fat and I didn’t know the difference between the two anymore. I fell to the ground and felt the cold, hard surface beneath my body; everything was so cold all the time. My fingers were frozen like ice cubes and I rubbed them up and down my legs, tried to warm them.
All We Knew But Couldn't Say Page 9