by Zoe Whittall
Just as I’m settling into bed, feeling uneasy about my sense of relief, the doorbell rings. I know it’s Della so I don’t answer it. She presses her finger to the worn-in rectangular pad, further smudging the markered arrow directing visitors to the upper level. Again and again. I pull my pink flannel sheets up over my head and groan. My heart is pounding, because I am happy she’s come to me. But my brain is telling me I shouldn’t be so excited. That I should be mad.
If xxxx wasn’t with Isabelle, would she have even bothered coming by? Is Isabelle the only reason we are still somewhat together? I turn up the No Means No on my little black ghetto blaster by the bed. It distorts.
Rachel appears at my door. “I was knocking but I guess you didn’t hear me!” she yells, peeking her head around the corner. She’s wearing flannel pj bottoms and an old Smiths T-shirt. I turn down the volume knob on the ghetto blaster next to my mattress. She walks across my room to look out the front window and turns to face me with her eyebrows raised in points. I note her hair is starting to dread a little from lack of care, some parts have grown out, a mass of cut curls of different lengths. She clicks her tongue against the top of her mouth, exhaling sharply then groaning. “It’s her. What’s her fucking problem?” She kneels down on the window seat and turns to look at me.
I shrug, sitting up. “Sorry, dude.”
“I should really introduce you to some cooler chicks.”
Before Rachel can verbally run through her rolodex of available single queer girls, as she does every time Della “pulls some bullshit,” we are interrupted by the sparkle crash of breaking glass. I run to the door at the top of the stairs, unlock the chain-link and peer around the corner purposefully, suddenly worried that Della split right before the appearance of a deranged psychopath. I walk halfway down the enclosed staircase tentatively, grabbing onto the rubber mallet we keep by the door in case of a break-in. I want to yell that the only thing we have of value is four copies of the same Everything But The Girl cd and a vcr from 1987. The VCR has a soul and refuses to record X-Files episodes.
But it is her.
She has punched in one of the quarter-square panes in the window of the front door.
I slip on my flip-flop sandals, cold and abandoned on the stairs from last summer, grab the broom leaning against the stairwell wall, and run down. When I open the door and the cold rushes in, Della tries unsuccessfully to hide her bleeding fist. It looks like a ripped-up bloodied hibiscus.
I don’t say anything after her muttered string of apologies. I just turn and walk upstairs, hearing her guilt-heavy steps behind mine.
I sweep up the glass and tape up a garbage bag over the hole while Rachel wraps Della’s fist in a clean towel. Della sits on the couch and Rachel sits in the armchair and they glare uncomfortably at each other. The ugly, green wood coffee table acts as a pacifying object. The bleeding slows, stops. We don’t say anything. I busy myself cleaning the dishes off the coffee table, wiping down drips of pie filling and old coffee rings on the wood. It’s been days since anyone ran a cloth over the table, I’m not sure why it’s suddenly imperative that I do this.
On television Jacques Parizeau approaches the microphone. “We have lost, but not by much.”
Rachel says, “Go to Hotel Dieu,” mostly, I suspect, because she wants Della to leave. She snaps her gum, leaning over in the red armchair with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, tapping her fingers against her cheeks, defiant. I love her for this uncomplicated display of certainty. She stares at Della hard, willing her to take some responsibility. Was she trying to be my older sister or was she simply annoyed at constantly having to deal with her in the house? I felt ashamed at my weakness yet devastated at the idea of Della leaving.
“Non, c’est correcte,” Della says, looking at Rachel out of the corner of her eye, vaguely sheepish but too drunk and reticent to put forth a certain air of apology.
We all turn to the TV as Parizeau commits political suicide. “It’s true that we have been beaten. In essence, by what? By money, by the ethnic vote, essentially. And so ...”
Rachel gasps, laughing. What the fuck did he say? She grabs her scruffy hair in both hands, eyebrows raised in disbelief.
“He’s crushed. It’s the weight of failure,” Della offers.
“You understand being a racist prick?” I say, before I can stop myself.
Rachel smiles at me. “Yeah. Exactly.”
Della stands suddenly, braces herself against the wall behind the couch. I feel slightly smug that I may have said something Rachel found insightful.
“I’m just saying, I understand being crushed by failure. This is a big deal, you know. You are all just casual observers, but —”
“How can you say we’re impassive, Della? I’ve thought of nothing else for weeks. You don’t own the emotional weight of the referendum.” Rachel is standing now, facing her, like two lions or gargoyles in a faceoff of belief and position.
Della mumbles, “Tu sais ce que je vais dire ...” before swerving down the hallway towards my bedroom, pushing open my door with an open palm, and crawling under my blankets like a punished child.
I walk in and close the door before whispering, “I should ask you to leave. If I had any sense I’d tell you to fuck off.”
“If you had any sense you’d have told me that a year ago,” emerges from under the blankets like a comic book dialogue bubble.
“You’re going to have to pay for the window.”
“Tell your landlord someone broke in. He’ll have insurance.”
You’re so submissive echoes in my head.
“You’re going to have to pay for the window.”
Nothing.
“I’m serious. You have. To. Pay. For. It.”
“Okay.”
I lie down on top of the blankets and hug her shape to sleep, a cocktail of emotions. I say, I love you like nothing else matters. I go to sleep thinking what a stupid thing to say. Like nothing else matters. It repeats in my head in a loop and I want to say something else, but she is asleep, and I have become a dumb romantic.
I go into the living room and set up shop on the couch, reading until Seven arrives back home carrying giant plastic bags overflowing with costume materials. Tomorrow it will be Halloween and no one seems to care except Seven. He will dress like JoJo, the over-the-top blond drag queen-esque spokeswoman for JoJo’s Psychic Alliance, and I’m going to be the little poodle she carries around like a purse. We will go out dancing. “It’s important to remember, dear Evie, that Halloween is a queer spiritual holiday,” Seven says, pouring two shots of Jägermeister into shot glasses shaped like skulls. When I suggest we are too old to really indulge in much beyond handing out candy, he looks exasperated.
“You have so much to learn about being a good homo,” he says before leaning in to suck on my neck and give me a hickey. “Now, this will make her jealous. When she asks you who gave it to you, just shrug.”
I touch my hand to my neck to feel the slimy hot mark. “Seven, what did you really vote?” I suspected that he voted yes, that his last answer had been posturing, that he was still loyal to how he was raised.
“I voted no,” he says quickly with an unapologetic shrug, before downing the shot of dark green herbal sludge.
“Why?”
“It’s not my revolution. It’s not going to change anything for queers. It might even make everything worse. Plus, it would make my dad too happy, and we can’t have that.”
“No, we can’t have that,” I say, cheersing the air before doing my shot. “Seven, have you ever been in love?”
“Sure. Tons of times. Every Friday night at the bathhouse.”
“No, like real love, like The One. Like the person you’d take a bullet for.”
“Eve, you’re so dramatic! That kind of love is a fiction.”
7
•••
BUNCH OF FUCKING FEMINISTS
DECEMBER 1995
November passes in a blur of coll
ective meetings at the women’s centre at Concordia, where I’ve decided to focus my energy on something positive. Rachel has taken me under her wing. We bike to meetings together, gossip at home about the collective members, spend lots of time at the photocopy place making stickers and posters for our campaigns. Our latest ones say You’re Beautiful! in big letters with It’s society that’s fucked up in a smaller font underneath. We stick them on bathroom mirrors all over school and in restaurants.
Between meetings, work and first-semester classes, I take bags of trail mix and my textbooks to the scratchy blue couch of the women’s centre. Flanked by shelves of feminist books and magazines, interrupted only by the occasional political debate or gossip session, I find myself calming down. I don’t wait for phone calls. I’m not always available for Della. I pour my heart into what really matters — this roughly translates into overthrowing cock rock and ending violence against women. Shaving my head and reading bell hooks, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Sarah Schulman, Cindy Patton.
“Inventing AIDS?” Della picks up the tattered purple paperback I’m reading on the steps outside the centre, where I’ve been gathering up some sun, taking notes and increasing my addiction to coffee and cigarettes. She runs another hand over my newly shaven head.
“Yeah, it’s for my class on women and HIV.”
“Oh yeah, Denise is the TA right?”
Why must every dyke over the age of twenty-five know each other?
“Yeah.”
“I used to date her.”
“Oh yeah.”
“She told me you were in her class when I ran into her the other day.”
“Yeah.” There is no such thing as privacy or teacher-crushes existing in a vacuum. Now every time I write a paper I’m going to picture her and Della doing it.
“Did she say I was smart?”
“She said you were cute, part of this little enclave of eager newbie queers. Very earnest.”
Great. Cute. Earnest. My favorite things to be. Next class I’ll wear a giant pink bow in my hair, if I had hair.
“Are you coming to the action tonight?” I’m part of an organizing committee to memorialize the December 6 massacre.
We’re going to stop traffic on Ste-Catherine Street for fourteen minutes, one minute for each woman killed by Marc Lepine at École Polytechnique in 1989.
“I’m going to try, bébé. I have a painting I’m working on, I’m really into it.”
I nod.
She nods.
We make out like mad until the kids upstairs at the gay and lesbian student group start clapping and yelling, “Ten percent is not enough! Recruit! Recruit! Recruit!” Della gives them the finger.
Shortly after sundown, I’m holding a giant orange megaphone in the middle of rush hour traffic. Pedestrians are swearing. I start nervously saying each name while other women hand out stickers and pamphlets, and most gather in a tight circle around the intersection holding hands and candles. Traffic backs up for blocks and no cops arrive. I expected them to come immediately. I have a lawyer’s number scrawled on my arm and my fingers are frozen, but my heart is full and pounding. I close my eyes, remembering watching the news in grade eight while my mother sat white with horror and shock, trying to explain the significance of what had occurred. To me, it seemed like another freak occurrence of random violence. This was not random, she explained.
As I call the last name, and see some police on horseback approaching through the crowds, my heart races. I remember Della’s baton scars and Jenny being dragged away, and I will myself to stay still and pay tribute properly. Some women are crying, some are looking solemn, others smiling slightly with pride that we’d pulled the action off. Jenny holds Melanie’s hand and they both look at me encouragingly. I laugh to myself that I told Jenny to wear something practical and she arrived in stiletto boots and a fuzzy fake leopard-fur coat. When we disperse, I walk away from the crowd by myself, trying to feign nonchalance, like I’m just some chick carrying a megaphone through the streets. It’s an awkward transition from feeling so insulated by the crowd to my solitary pair of legs. My limbs feel weightless, floating, mechanical.
We’ve arranged to meet at the bar where a girl band from Toronto will be playing and some poets, including Rachel, will be reading. We’re charging a sliding scale admission, giving all the profits to a local women’s shelter. I volunteered to work the door and when I get there Melanie greets me with a thermos filled with whiskey and Coke and a Good job.
Rachel’s poetry silences the room. Even the drunk guys at the back who have no idea what’s going on with all the gay lords stop to listen. I watch her and my heart swells with pride and the knowledge that I am lucky to know her.
Della arrives halfway though the night. I watch her through the glass door of the club from my post at the door where I’m stamping hands with a flourish. She smokes a cigarette, as if she knows she’s being watched. When she pushes through the doors, she leans in to kiss me. I note we are both totally wasted. “Great turnout,” she says in my ear before taking my earlobe in between her teeth gently. “Great job. Sorry I missed the action. I saw it on the news, though. You looked hot. Let me buy you a drink.”
Since the referendum Della has turned into a moody drunken uncle. Boozy, inappropriate and forgetful. The only thing she does — besides berate, drink and rant — is paint. If I want to see her, I have to go to her apartment, where she’s turned the living room into a studio. She started to paint these giant canvas recreations of me. Close-ups of my face while I sleep. An oil painting of Jenny and I at the front of a demonstration against police brutality, perfectly capturing our collective anger and energy. Jenny is wearing a T-shirt that says Help the M.U.C. Police, Beat Yourself Up. Della paints her in such brilliant detail, ripped fishnets under a short camouflage skirt, baby-pink army boots, her diamond labret piercing, the arch of her eyebrows. She paints me looking at Jenny adoringly. It’s perfect.
The paintings make me feel like a celebrity. She’s talking about having another gallery show again. It makes up for the fact that she rarely listens to me or asks me how I am. She’s paying such close attention to the lines in my face and the emotion in my eyes. I forgive her her artistic temperament. I trade my second semester Ceramics class for a second-level French. I conjugate verbs thinking of her. We manage monogamy well. Je vous pardonne, nous pardonne, nos coeurs son lourds.
I worry about her, the way she is not eating much, only working. After sex, she jumps up to sketch. Her eyes are wild and unruly. It’s both attractive and disquieting.
A little mosh pit forms in front of the band and a few girls take their shirts off. Melanie is kissing a shirtless girl with a green mohawk. Jenny’s jock boyfriend arrives to find her locking lips with a butchy dyke in a tie. He looks terrified and uncomfortable so Della puts her arm around him and buys him a shot. Her charm could solve wars. He looks like he might want to marry her. At the end of the night he stands so close to my face and says, “Your life is fascinating, Eve, fucking incredible. Everyone is so honest.” I have a brief flash of him coming out in three months, but then watch as he grabs Jenny’s ass and topples her into a street-side snowbank to make out and think otherwise.
xxxx and Isabelle came to the action, though only xxxx appears at the bar, glued to Della’s side. She’s not so friendly. As if on cue, she selects the hot lead singer of the band from Toronto as her prey and by last call is sitting on her lap. The singer looks amused. I feel like saying, yes, xxxx, we all know you could get anyone you want in the room, even the singer from the band who’s rumoured to have slept with Patti Smith. We get it. Her casual confident beauty looks like something else entirely close up and drunk.
When xxxx slips into the bathroom with the singer, Della rolls her eyes at me and goes outside to smoke joints with Jenny and the Jock. I’m trying to sober up, clutching the tin box of cash from the door sales, making sure I keep everything together when I’m talking to Rachel, making sure she knows she can count on me to get things don
e. Rachel pinches my cheeks. When will people stop doing that? I stand outside trying to hail a cab, watching Rachel bike away. One comes along and xxxx and band girl run up and jump into it, oblivious that we’d been waiting. Della watches them stumble into the cab. I try to detect a bad mood or a jealous intonation to her words, but she is either adept at not showing it or really doesn’t care. She seems concerned with getting me unclothed as soon as possible. Della says she doesn’t get jealous. I tell her this has to be a lie. She laughs every time.
Towards the end of December I go home for a few days to study. I stretch out on the basement couch with my books. My aunt, who has moved into the basement after getting evicted, comes home from work and stares at me highlighting and typing away on typewriter. “Stay in school, baby. And watch how much you drink.” Then she goes upstairs to drink beer with my parents, until my mom escorts her into my old room, tucking her in, before starting into a marathon conversation with my dad about how to save his sister from ruin.
I sleep on the couch like a guest and feel okay about it, my head filled with memorized quotes and theories. I hope I’ll remember the details.
To celebrate after my last exam, I go back to my apartment with clean laundry and a full day ahead of me, spread out with so much promise. I go to the store and buy a bouquet of daisies, bags of assorted fruit, chocolate cake, and a small Christmas tree for Della’s apartment.
When I get home there’s a message on my machine.
“Hey Eve, it’s Della. Listen, I’m spending the day with my grandfather. It’s the anniversary of my mother’s death and we always spend it together.” She exhales into the recording, pauses. “I really miss you though, baby. I hope to see you later tonight. Maybe you could come by? I dunno. I’ll call. Maybe I’ll meet you at the Metro if it’s really late. Okay, I love you.”
