All We Knew But Couldn't Say

by Joanne Vannicola

  “Will you take your top off so I can see that you can do it?” he asked in a new way.

  “No,” I said and left the room. Of course I can take my top off, fucker, but not for you.

  Whoever said one person can make a difference? No one would know if I got fired or how hard I tried behind closed doors to fight for myself and for other girls. It was futile, but I didn’t know it, wouldn’t know that the struggle would last a very long time for girls and women. But who would fight for me? Who would house me if I couldn’t work?

  I had been working since the age of eight, and it didn’t matter that I had a career, that I was not actually a prostitute: unless I took my top off when old men requested, I would be discarded.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  DRUGS SQUELCHED the rage that had become my normal state of being, so I chased the state of euphoria I found in them, the escape, until I came down, until my skull ached and my limbs hurt. After not receiving the role in the movie, I went on a bender and snorted too much cocaine. I was struggling in the morning when Lou called and woke me up. News was that our mother had disappeared from Montreal, like Houdini, just up and left without telling a soul, not even Lou. She also stole people’s money before her silent exit. I put the phone on my bed, a cigarette dangling from the corner of my mouth. I coughed and held the phone receiver in one hand, grabbed the glass of water from the bedside table with the other hand. I wiped my eyes and licked my dry lips, trying to wake up and take it all in.

  I had turned seventeen and was renting a room in a house with two other tenants in the east end of Toronto. My room was bare, save for the posters of Madonna, Janis Joplin, and Jimmy Dean. Old cinema ticket stubs sat in jars on my dresser, and my clothes were scattered on the floor. My roommates were all double my age. One woman was always perky; she worked in an office and went to bars at night. Another wore Jane Fonda workout clothes — tights, body suits, and leg warmers — around the house, and had long blond hair, feathered like Farrah Fawcett’s in Charlie’s Angels. She was obsessed with the famous twenty-minute workouts. I was the opposite of those women: a dark-haired, no-makeup-wearing, cigarette-smoking tomboy. The owner of the house seemed obsessed with sex and girls.

  I rubbed my legs, hadn’t quite woken up, and tucked my long hair behind my ears so it wouldn’t fall on the lit cigarette. By the end of our conversation, I had decided to move back to Montreal, to get away from this new rental and go back to my hometown, now that my mother was no longer in it. I would be able to write and direct a play in the company. Martha had always left the door open for me to do that work in her theatre; in fact, she often encouraged me to work with them. And I missed Montreal, the mountain, the French language, missed Steffin and my old friends. It wouldn’t take much to move — a van, a few bucks for gas.

  Lou lived in an apartment on Saint Laurent Boulevard, which was busy with cars, bars, and partying at all hours of the night. I slept on a futon in the living room, where the sounds of the street drifted in through the windows. It was the type of distraction I needed; it helped me fall asleep, drowned out my thoughts in the middle of the night. The city noise was a sort of bedtime story; I listened to fights between lovers or the drunks trying to find their way home while the street lights flickered on and off.

  Montreal was still the place of my birth. It had culture and distinct architecture — the winding wrought-iron exterior staircases throughout the city, the narrow cobblestone streets of old Montreal, the solid grey-stone buildings with the river below. But even with the familiar physical landscape and people, something was missing — a sense of belonging. I longed for it, tried to find it with Lou.

  Lou spent a lot of time indoors, reading tarot cards for people and giving advice. She had long curly orange hair and big brown freckles that peppered her face. She wore a red nightgown at home or long hippy skirts with flowing shirts and beads, bright-blue eyeshadow, and thick eyeliner. People loved Lou. She had a way of making people feel like she had the answers to their problems or questions, a mystic. Her visitors were like us, teenagers or young adults trying to survive in an adult world.

  At night, I walked along the streets crowded with markets and swiped goods from local vendors — pepper, powdered garlic, salt, crackers, chocolates, playing cards, small toys. I wore boyish clothes: black jeans, black leather jacket, T-shirts, and sometimes a fedora. If it weren’t for my long hair and girlish face, I would have been mistaken for a guy. I occasionally heard “Excuse me, sir.” I didn’t much care if people thought I was a boy or a man. I liked it; it made me feel different, less vulnerable, almost myself. And then my heart rate would escalate while I walked by the two lesbian bars on Saint Denis Street, as if even looking at them and pondering about who and what was inside might give away my secret and growing desire. I wanted to go inside. There was no shame in this acknowledgement, only fear. I was afraid of being accosted, afraid of how people might think less of me, but I wasn’t ashamed of the feelings, or of my truth. I just hadn’t fully realized it or consciously accepted who I was.

  “Why would an eighteen-year-old girl want a penis?” Lou asked one night after we had smoked up. I told her I liked being mistaken for a man but I didn’t want a penis. I didn’t like anything about penises. She didn’t seem to care one way or the other, only she did seem confused about the anatomy part, or maybe it was I who was confused.

  We drank beer and sat in our rounded orange plastic chairs. They had legs missing, and when we sat in them they swayed and bobbled on the floor like a tipping boat until we could balance them and be still. Our walls held sketches of faceless women, posters of French artists, a man playing the trumpet, and an empty canvas waiting for inspiration. Lou wanted to glue the hair of her dead cat to it.

  We had picked up exactly where we’d left off when I was fourteen. From five hundred kilometres away, Lou had still been the person I called in emergencies. And there had been several.

  “Stop fucking dying on me,” she had screamed numerous times over the phone. “You’re always trying to die. If you are going to die, die! Just do it,” she said once when I was skin and bone.

  I couldn’t blame her. Even before our mother disappeared, we had been motherless girls, and while Lou worked hard at not drowning, I was always trying to sink.

  Lou had spent her childhood suffocating under our mother’s constant comparisons and criticism, and there was little I could do to make up for it.

  But in Montreal as roommates we were very different, having grown into different worlds. She practised musical notes and scales on a keyboard, read tarot, and spent days on end in her apartment, while I spent my time writing a play on a vintage typewriter, snorting far too much cocaine, and venturing out alone at night.

  I finally mustered my courage and would sneak into the lesbian bars in the dark of night, disappeared inside to watch women dance together, watch how they held each other and smiled so comfortably. I loved to watch them kiss, touch. It all looked so natural, felt right, like something I had been missing. These bars were tucked-away places that I grew to love, my secret nightly excursions. I wanted to be like these lesbians, to hold on to a woman without noticing anyone else around, a woman with curves, breasts, and soft skin. I wanted to be on the dance floor, weaving my limbs like a braid with another, swaying to a slow tune.

  Lou noticed the way I was dressing and commented. When we talked, I told her I felt safer dressing like a man. But Lou knew there was more to what was going on with me than my clothes. I was not transgender; just uncomfortable in my skin, my body, and didn’t know how to identify. Lesbian seemed liked the closest word, only I hadn’t come out yet to Lou.

  Lou inhaled and rocked from side to side in her orange chair, all colour coordinated from her red hair to her red robe. We shared a joint while Marianne Faithfull’s “Broken English” played in the background, and we talked about the streets and the safety of women. The candles flickered and cast shadows on the walls as we talked about the differences between genders. I liked
it when it was just the two of us. Lou didn’t pretend to have all the answers to life’s questions. She may have been otherworldly, but she was just my big sister, the one who had braided my hair when I was little, the one I sang songs and shared bedrooms with.

  “I don’t want to be a guy, Lou, I just … I don’t know what I want, who I am.”

  I wanted to be invisible to men, didn’t want reminders of femininity. There was something about the natural occurrence of a body bleeding without violence that both amazed and terrified me. Having periods was the strongest reminder of my gender, the vulnerability. I just hadn’t figured out its power.

  Surely the gods had messed that gendered part up. Being a man could change everything, but I didn’t really want to be a man because I felt like one; it wasn’t that. But how could I be a lesbian and not want to be a woman? What was a woman? How could I want to love women if I didn’t want to be inside my own body? I was confused.

  “Wanna get some cocaine, Lou?” I changed the subject.

  She wanted to know where I would get it and how we could afford it. I didn’t say, only that I knew how and where. “Then hell yeah. Get your ass outta’ here and bring home the powder!” Lou smiled and rolled sideways, falling out of the rolling orange chair. “I gotta pair of socks you could stuff into the crotch of those jeans of yours …”

  I called and met up with Steffin on Sherbrooke Street outside Les Foufounes Électriques, filled with young people all dressed in black, spikes, leathers, heels, with sex in every corner. I went to the girls’ bathroom and met the dealer, Pierre. We squeezed into a tiny stall where he sat on the tank of the toilet with his back against the wall and his feet on the closed seat. We asked him for a loaner on the blow. I stared at the graffiti on the walls — “Frederique loves Denise,” with blue ink hearts around it, and “Put your penis through this hole,” under which there was a drawing of an open mouth.

  Pierre smirked. He had the prettiest long ringleted black hair.

  “I’ve heard this before. What are you going to do for me if you don’t pay me on time?” he asked, looking right at me.

  “Whatever. If you want a blowjob, I’ll give you a blowjob,” I said, to see if it would work.

  Steffin laughed while Pierre tucked his hair under his beret. A long dark coat, lined with baggies of cocaine, covered his skinny frame. He was handsome, young.

  Bang, bang, bang. “Anyone in there? Pierre, you there?”

  “Please?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she’s good for it, especially the blowjob part,” Steff said.

  I looked at Pierre, waiting for an answer.

  “Okay. But remember your promise. No money and …” Pierre grabbed his crotch.

  On the way back to Lou’s, Steffin and I giggled about blowjobs being his domain.

  “Would you even know how, Jo?”

  “I wouldn’t laugh if I were you, cause if we don’t pay up, you’re going to have to do the honours,” I said. But I didn’t think about the danger, or how little self-worth we had, or how simple it was to offer my body as collateral for momentary pleasures like drugs. It was what I knew, what I had always known, that my body could be traded, that I was a commodity. It was the largest lesson I had retained from my childhood, and I was still young and brave in all the wrong ways.

  Back at the apartment, the Talking Heads blasted through the speakers. I bounced on the wooden floor as if it were trampoline, cocaine high, to “Burning Down the House.” Lou and Steffin were in the wobble chairs, singing, with powder on the table and a rolled-up bill sitting on a tiny mirror. Diana Ross came on and we all hopped up in a dancing frenzy. Lou, in her mahogany robe, flailed wildly. Cocaine joy, no inhibitions, just abandon. It went on for hours until not even the city streets were alive with noise. Montreal had fallen asleep when the sun rose, and so had I.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I WAS WRITING a play on an old green typewriter, a play about child sexual abuse for our youth festival. Young people, ages twelve to eighteen, had come from Vancouver, Amsterdam, even Australia, to be part of our theatrical festival. I typed for hours every day and only took breaks to rehearse with the kids.

  The festival was important to me, my link to the city I loved, with the kids, many of whom I had known for years. They were like glue; they helped keep me together somehow. Perhaps it was the familiar, the people who still existed and had not disappeared. I had also become one of the young leaders, directing and casting, and I was responsible for kids younger than me — making sure they were at rehearsals, ate lunch, and had transportation home. There were many kids from Montreal. Some I had seen grow up, like Marc and Geneviève, first loves like Clint and I had been. But they were younger and truly innocent kids who played and danced and sang songs, listening to Kris Kross’s “Jump,” as they tried out their new breakdance moves.

  “Look, Joanne, look at this.” Marc smiled while he showed me how to do the wave and the Michael Jackson moonwalk. Geneviève had a cast on her leg, but sang along as I tried to learn the moves, and they laughed at me after my first attempt at the moonwalk. I let them.

  “How are you two love birdies chirping?” I enjoyed watching them squirm with embarrassment. They’d turn red and laugh, the sweetest kids.

  I had once, five years before, seen Marc lunge out of the elevator. He was terrified, said a man had followed him into the lobby and tried to touch his private parts. I ran and grabbed a baseball bat from our rehearsal hall and tore out of the building. I couldn’t find the pedophile, but I would have done anything for those kids, as if they were my young siblings.

  It was okay if they laughed at me when I attempted the moonwalk. They had nothing on me. “Try this,” I said as I triple-time stepped, as if my tap shoes were on. A dance-off between Marc and me, with Geneviève watching from her chair, moving her crutches like limbs to the beat. We danced until it was time for rehearsal.

  There was also Malcolm, who wore a button-down shirt and often pushed his glasses higher on his nose with one finger while talking. He gave me a copy of the book Malcolm X and told me he was a descendant of the civil rights activist. He was a boy trying to find his way, one who wanted to understand everything. “How can people go about their days and not talk about what they did to our people?” he’d ask, or “What is the meaning of peace?” or “What are we all going to do if they drop a nuclear bomb?”

  I didn’t know who “they” were, only that Malcolm always wanted to talk after rehearsal, that he was an intellectual, full of passion and sadness for a fifteen-year-old. I usually listened, tried to pump up his confidence when I could — as if it might even rub off on me and I might take my own advice. But I rarely did.

  These kids were not like I was. They had bedrooms with posters and matching colours. They had parents and braces and went home to meals on the table. They were not sniffing cocaine, or trying to figure out where to live next or if they could afford to buy food that night. I hid as much of myself as I could to be a role model. I tried anyway.

  There were many children and teenagers who saw me as a mentor or confidante after so many years in the company. My instinct was to protect them. My role meant I could impact their lives, provide a little hope for others even though I still hadn’t learned how to hold on to it myself. Seeing it in the faces of younger kids made it possible, and it provided a deeper purpose other than being a writer, a director, and an actor. I pretended to be mature for the little ones, who would occasionally run up to me for hugs or to tell me about their day or ask for advice. There were even suicidal kids looking for help. I was not qualified, but I did what I could. I could not erase my own pain, but if I could help other kids, it meant healing was possible.

  One evening after getting home from the theatre, I planned to sneak out to a lesbian bar, but the doorbell rang. It was Martha, smoking her Rothmans nervously and pivoting about like a busy ant. “I just thought I would check in on you. Tried to catch you after rehearsal today, but you had left already. Wanted to see if we cou
ld go for a pitcher of beer. My treat. I need to talk with you,” she said with a nervous giggle. It made that old feeling surface, the one that the We need to talk phrase always conjured: dread.

  “Sure. I could use a drink. Was just about to take off, so good timing.”

  I grabbed my fedora and leather jacket and put on my black Doc Martens boots before we walked down Saint Laurent to the local pub. It was hard to say no to Martha, but I would have preferred my secret hideaway with the women. I wondered, maybe, if she wanted to ask me about my identity, about being a lesbian. She had asked me when I was twelve if I thought I liked girls and I remember saying no. I’m not certain why she did that. At the time she said she noticed that I hugged her a lot, that I seemed to want to be close to her. I remember the embarrassment and discomfort. I was a kid in search of affection and love, but she confused that with something sexual: an odd choice. I wore ponytails and overalls, carried a plastic animated figurine in my pocket with waxy perfume in it, and rolled around on roller skates. If I was exploring sexuality at that time, it was with other twelve-year-olds, not adults who had authority like my mother, who crossed boundaries because they had none. But maybe she wanted to ask again. Maybe someone had spotted me at a bar and she wanted to tell me she knew. I would say yes if she asked.

  The nervous tension that followed us from the apartment to the pub ramped up. I sat in a stained old velvet-padded chair at a small wooden table with green felt coasters on it. Jazz from the radio played in the background. Martha paced on the spot at the bar, her face dotted with concern. Or was it fear? It made my insides twist, but I tried to remain calm while Martha stared at me from the bar. She wore a flower-covered skirt and a grey sweater, the one she wore all the time, that slid off of one shoulder. She always smiled at people flirtatiously and would lift her naked shoulder and suck on her cigarette as if it were something far more suggestive. But now she was staring at me and swaying from side to side, extremely anxious. She grabbed the pitcher of beer and sat down across from me.