All We Knew But Couldn't Say

by Joanne Vannicola

  “What do you mean you didn’t recognize her?” Alice asked.

  “My mom had a blank look in her eyes like I didn’t exist, like she was not in there, like she was someone else. It scared me. Please don’t … I don’t want to … I’m going to be sick, I’m going to be sick. Please make it stop.”

  “You’re okay. You’re not there, Joanne. You’re here with me in my office and you are safe and no one is going to hurt you. I promise.”

  My eyes were closed. I had gone back in time. I was five, six, seven, and my mother was exposing herself to me.

  “Joanne, can you hear me?”

  “Yes. My body, it’s numb. I can’t —”

  Everything was melting inside, everything mixing together. I could feel the skin pulling at the corners of my mouth. The crashing memories were loud, like the volume had been turned to high. I couldn’t get any air. I wanted to open my lungs but they were squeezed tight and my mother was trying to choke me.

  “Breathe. Breathe in,” I heard Alice say, sounding as if she were in another room, far away.

  My breath was shallow. I took deep breaths, but I couldn’t get enough oxygen. It was like drowning, and I could hear Alice’s voice again telling me to breathe, to open my eyes.

  “I didn’t hurt her. She hurt me. I had to get away from her,” I said in a whisper.

  “It’s not your fault. You were just a girl, and she shouldn’t have hurt you. She was your mother.”

  “But I … I stopped talking to her, and she went away. She left me alone to take care of myself and told everyone how awful I was for shutting her out, like she did everything she could for me and I was the ungrateful daughter and I couldn’t do anything right. People just hated me and blamed me for hurting her.”

  “You were just trying to survive.”

  “She was the victim, right, the victim of her own children?”

  She had taken so much. I thought of my sisters, who had barely made it out.

  “I’m sorry,” Alice said.

  I looked around the office. My breath had calmed down, and the feeling in my limbs had returned. I shook my arms, trying to feel them again. The office came into view — the window, the pictures on her walls, Alice in her chair looking at me with a type of love, empathy, her eyes locked on mine. I crawled over to her chair and put my head on her lap, gently. Her hands were on top of my head, stroking my hair as she said softly, “It’s okay.”

  After a few moments, I wanted to say her name. “Geneviève Bergeron. Did you see the news? He killed her. He killed so many.”

  For the first time ever, I saw tears forming in Alice’s eyes.

  “Yes, it’s horrible.”

  I thought girls like Geneviève would always be safe, the loved ones, the ones with mothers and fathers and houses and education. It changed everything when you knew it could be any girl, anytime, anywhere.

  “I don’t know how to feel safe anymore,” I said.

  “Just keep fighting. Just take care of you and don’t let them win,” Alice said. I knew she meant it for herself, too.

  “People just die or disappear. They leave.”

  I stayed there for what seemed like forever, without speaking, until I heard her say it was time to go. I slowly stood, trying to get my balance, the room still spinning.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks.”

  “See you next week. If you need me, you can call.”

  “Okay, see you next week. Thank you, Alice.”

  I was writing in my notepad in bed that night, with a cigarette dangling from my lips, the pencil tip between my fingers. I thought of my childhood climbing tree, tall, her twisted branches like brains shooting up into the sky, tangled and full. Nothing could topple her highway of branches and leaves because her roots were buried so deep only an earthquake could bring it down. I would be like her: tall and full and mighty. I would try.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  NEEDING TO SEE women like me, I set out to meet women and lesbians who were taking women’s studies and social sciences at George Brown College. I wanted to make sense out of chaos, to find women who did not apologize or hide or make excuses for violence or deny reality. I also needed to heal.

  I met women of all shapes and sizes, with short hair, no hair, rings that stretched earlobes; middle-class women in suits and young women like me, in their twenties and busting at the seams with a desire to join the women’s revolution. I was naive, but I sought out like-minded comrades.

  I was rough around the edges, wore jeans and leathers, took up space. Women were introducing themselves, women from the suburbs who had left husbands and had children, women who had homemaking careers or worked in social services already, and women who were activists, women I’d seen at marches and rallies. Then I met her. Her name was Elia. She wore jeans torn at the knees and large black combat boots. Her hair was short and black, and she clanked from all the silver bracelets on her arms.

  “… and I’m Spanish. I work at a hostel for homeless women, and I love my job. I love the people I work with … and that’s me,” Elia said, shrugging her shoulders and smiling.

  I couldn’t stop looking at her, the way her hands fell on her lap when she finished speaking, the way her head fell to the side when she smiled.

  I sat with my legs open in class, not closed together or crossed. Even my inflection and vocal cadence changed, though it wasn’t conscious. I wanted to shed parts of myself, be this other woman that no one knew. Becoming her was like trying on a new outfit. When it was my turn to speak, I told everyone I was an actor thinking about a second career. As I spoke, I looked at Elia, who smiled at me.

  Elia and I went for drinks, ordered vodka, and kissed for hours — three hours to be precise. No one cared, not even the server who brought us our drinks and occasionally interrupted us to ask if we wanted another screwdriver. At midnight we left the bar and carried on our public displays of affection.

  “I love making out with someone with the risk of being seen, caught,” Elia said as we continued to kiss in someone’s garage off an alley. We were not very conscious of our safety. She hopped up on an old washing machine and stared at me in the dark, and I moved in to kiss her.

  “I’ve never met anyone like you,” I whispered between kisses a few days later. Elia and I were at my apartment. She made pasta with wine sauce and wore boxers with an open shirt and her bra exposed. She was older, more experienced with women. I was a little out of my element but didn’t want her to feel unwanted or undesired.

  Elia sat on my legs, facing me in the chair, her bracelets clacking as she lightly pulled my head back to kiss me again. I brushed her cheek with my palm. Her large brown eyes looked into mine.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I’ve never been with someone like you.”

  “What does that mean?” I was nervous.

  “You’re just sweet, and I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.

  “You’re sweet, too.”

  “I just know it never works out, baby,” she said.

  “Maybe I’m not who you need. Maybe you need someone older?” I said. Elia was twenty-eight. And while Carla was much older, Elia was more experienced somehow. I tried to make her feel wanted, but inside I was still that little child, learning to ride the bike without training wheels. “Maybe you need someone who is more stable, experienced,” I said.

  “Maybe we can just be friends … with perks,” she responded. I liked that part, the perks.

  “But why are you so sad?” I asked.

  “I’m not.”

  I let my face drop so she couldn’t see into my eyes anymore. I kissed her neck, then rested my face on her shoulder. “Let’s just not describe what we are, maybe? Let’s just hang out and see what happens.” I lifted my face again to look into her eyes.

  She smiled. I ran my hands through her hair and we kissed again. This was more than casual.

  “We can do that,” she said between kiss
es.

  Through the course of the night, her shirt was buttoned, her jeans covered her boxers, and we sat at the table talking. She was beautiful and confusing. So was I, I suppose.

  Our first bottle of wine sat empty on the table, next to an ashtray and dripping wax candle. The second bottle of wine was half full, and we were half drunk. We talked about women, revolution, Spain, and her mother.

  “Did she love you?” I asked, while dragging on a cigarette. I wanted to know how other women were mothered. It helped somehow. I wanted to know what it was like, emotional safety, if I could imitate the feeling, soak it up.

  I was in my apartment working on a paper for school a few days later when the phone rang.

  “You’ve been nominated for an Emmy,” my agent said. “I tried to call you earlier but couldn’t reach you.”

  “Me?” It couldn’t be.

  “Yes, for Maggie’s Secret. Congratulations, Joanne.”

  Al Waxman was nominated, too, as director, as were the very producers who had considered firing me.

  After arriving in Hollywood with my tuxedo in bag and no money to my name, I was picked up in a limo and taken to a friend’s beachfront apartment in Santa Monica, near the pier. I had the couch for a bed.

  In the morning, I walked along the sand and sat under the sun while the gulls and pelicans dived and dipped for fish and other food. The sound of the water mixed with human voices and the singing gulls provided warmth and slowed time. I was excited, preparing for my big night with the television actors, talk-show hosts, news anchors, producers, directors, and all the other stars who came out for the awards. The Emmys were not as popular as the Oscars, but still, it was as exciting as Gay Pride or Christmas. I am nominated for an Emmy. It was exhilarating, and though I tried not to be filled with too much pride, I was proud of myself. I had accomplished something unique as a young Canadian lesbian.

  My excitement turned to near boredom during the awards, which seemed to go on endlessly. I was seated at a large table surrounded by other tables where the women sat draped in expensive gowns and the men wore suits like me. I was the only woman in a suit, and it was awkward. I was a Canadian woman. Also awkward. No one paid attention to me until my name was called, and when I didn’t get up, Al nudged me. “Go, Joanne, go. They said your name.”

  I’d been clapping without realizing that I’d won.

  “Me?”

  I hopped up out of my chair and ran to the stage, clumsily got up, and stood before the microphone, where I thanked Al Waxman and the producers and writers and network. Then I was whisked backstage with my Emmy, where a few snapshots were taken. I noticed people smiling and clapping while I was on stage, but I still felt out of place among the grown-up women in gowns — the Susan Luccis of the world. But the rest of the night was celebratory, with dinner in Hollywood, champagne, interviews, and a moment of recognition between Al and me, one of accomplishment and pride.

  The following day I flew back to Canada with my Emmy in my luggage, anxious to get back to feminist circles, auditions, cracker-and-peanut-butter meals, my small apartment, and Elia.

  Elia wrapped her arms around me as we slow-danced on my living room floor, my Emmy statue on the desk. She had brought over her beat box and tapes. We held each other, slowly turning in circles, kissing.

  “My Emmy-winning actress …”

  “I’m not just an actress,” I said after gently kissing her neck and face.

  “Okay, my little butch,” Elia said with a laugh.

  “Friends with benefits, remember?”

  She could have called me anything, and I would have still kissed her slowly as we turned in circles to Spanish love songs.

  “Te deseo.”

  “I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds good.”

  It was a time of mass protest; post-bathhouse raids; AIDS actions; and legislative decisions around LGBT rights, the right to benefits in common-law relationships, and rights for LGBT people in the workforce. I was filled with all the energy of a youthful protester with a big mouth and always found my way to the streets to stand in solidarity with my brothers and sisters. Eventually, I would give speeches about the right to marry and organize demonstrations, but then I was all guts, a baby dyke in training, a soft butch finding her way in the world outside my career in the arts and in solidarity with my people. I had learned much about the reality of women’s lives globally — about bride burning, dowries, religious persecution, foot binding, how the vote for women was won, female genital mutilation, Roe v. Wade, two-spirited history, and genocide. I would fight in memory of women killed, and for those of us living.

  “We have received a complaint about you both,” said the director of the program at George Brown College. Elia and I were taking some courses together and had both been summoned.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Elia asked as if she already knew why.

  “What for?” I asked.

  “There was a complaint about your kissing in front of the school.”

  “Are you serious?” Elia asked.

  I didn’t say anything. For the first time in my life I had a girlfriend who was demonstrative, who didn’t hide her lesbianism and did not care what other people thought. Fuck them. I had a right to kiss outside like other young lovers did. Being gay was no longer a crime under the law. If we wanted to kiss, that was our choice. The meeting with the director didn’t last long. She knew she had no right to ask us to hide.

  “Let’s have a kiss-in,” Elia said when we were outside again, looking around at all the other students who shared programs with us. “I wonder who the homophobes are?” Elia and I looked for straight couples. Were other people kissing, holding each other? Was someone looking at us with a scowl on his or her face?

  “Kiss me now,” I said to Elia, making sure we were as close to each other as possible, facing each other on the steps in front of the main doors with our hands reaching out to one another. We kissed as if it were our wedding day.

  After a long kiss we walked back inside the school and went to class.

  We made it a rule to kiss as often as we could on campus. Other people would just have to deal with it. We hadn’t committed any crime, and unless kissing was going to be regulated for all students in love, straight and gay, then we would kiss every chance we had.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  I HELD ON TO MY SECRETS about my mother in feminist circles. I had to. No one talked about women who hurt women. I didn’t want to take away from the larger conversations about sexism, racism, or male violence against women, but when I started to ask or mention the idea of women as perpetrators, I was chastised. It kept me out of the circle, unable to speak to it because the space was needed to talk about misogyny. I understood because I felt the same way, except I needed to be silent once again, even though I wanted to fight the women who screamed at me, and on a few occasions I did.

  “It doesn’t mean I hate women because they hurt me. I know what it’s like to be hurt by men.” I wanted to say It’s not my fault. It wasn’t — wasn’t my fault that I carried my mother on my back, all the shame she heaped on my shoulders. I apologized for exposing it when I heard things like “It’s so rare, there aren’t even any stats” or “It’s not the same.”

  I wasn’t comparing, and if it was rare, then I was rare but just as real.

  But it wasn’t healthy to apologize for a history I had no part in making. They could not hold on to my reality while battling sexism; it inspired a rage in others I didn’t know what to do with, so I apologized. Women could not let go of their ideas of the struggling mother or the good mother or the abused wife, and the narrative I presented took away from that focus. But people forgot the context — that men and women who grew up in violence or abuse were not immune to repeating the patterns of abuse simply because they might be female. We hadn’t been able to get the culture to acknowledge that sexism and male violence were at the core of so many of our struggles as women, so to expose the abusive woman, the abusi
ve mother, was just too much for many. Women may live in a misogynist culture, but so, too, do women have power over those more vulnerable: children. We do no one any good by believing we do not have power, or power over. Just as my mother had been an abused girl, had been victimized by the province she grew up in and the rules of her generation, she, too, had power over her children. All of this was true at the same time.

  I couldn’t allow myself to feel invisible, not after surviving both my parents, not after the journey to get to where I had arrived. It had been a lifetime of trying to tell. I could not speak when I was a child, could not find words as an adolescent, had nearly died from starvation while trying to tell the world about my mother and my father, and had almost erased my lesbian identity to keep others safe, to not rock the boat, to fit into the industry. It had been a lifetime of secrets. I could not allow my reality to be dismissed in order to protect someone or something else anymore.

  Every woman I met carried their experiences in their bodies. It was in every face and story shared, even by the most stoic and brave of women, the toughest women or butches, even those who had killed men or had been in prison, whose armour cracked and who shed tears while recounting the wounds of homophobia, hate, rape. I presented an unusual and complex reality without reference for others, which made it difficult to believe and hold. So I found solace in silence again, the safest space.

  Elia and I went our separate ways at the end of the school year. We met for tea one day, and she described herself as a self-saboteur who wanted to be single and date multiple women. She flirted wildly during our goodbye. I would miss her.

  I would also miss seeing lesbians who were fierce, intelligent women, who would not try to pass as heterosexual. I finally saw myself reflected in others; it was like arriving home, but I had to leave. I decided to leave everything, even Toronto. I would give my career a shot in California. I had no idea what was waiting for me around the corner, but after getting my driver’s licence, I thought I was prepared. Hardly. If Toronto had been misogynist and homophobic, Tinseltown was far more extreme.