Tongue-Tied Laces
by: Mariella Elias
The roller rink has so many people tonight—all 20 of them. Middle schoolers move in gendered groups while late 2000s music videos are projected onto one of the far walls. The skating rink was essentially a single-room warehouse that this woman converted back in 2003 on the outskirts of town, so a lot of people don’t even know it exists. But the people who do know, it’s like church to us. I approach the entry counter with a smile.
“Third time this week, Madeleine,” Mrs. Higgins says as she reaches out for my money. Her husband is posted up at the concessions bar, tapping away on his duct-taped laptop.
“You guys should make season passes,” I laugh as I dig a crumpled ten-dollar bill from my jeans pocket and hand it over. She guffaws as the cash drawer bangs open. She passes two one-dollar bills without blinking.
“As if. Yolanda could barely even get our credit card machine working.”
“It still doesn’t!” I add as I head toward the benches near the rental bar. The DJ moves effortlessly through the aisles as he puts clean skates back in their rightful slot. I open my duffle bag and pull out a pair of professional, beaten-up, black quad skates with well-loved purple laces. They were my mom’s. She had left them to me after she died, and that’s how I met Yolanda. I meticulously lace up the skates and leave my stuff in the locker Mrs. Higgins designated for me a few months back.
The disco ball in the center of the rink descends as the crowd whoops. The overall lights start to dim as multiple white spotlights hit the mirrored ball. Fatima pulls off the wooden floor and onto the fresh, colorful carpet.
“Not one for party time?” A bright blonde woman asks as Fatima pulls her helmet off.
“Too many kids. Afraid I’ll hit them,” she says between breaths as the blonde hands her a water bottle. Fatima takes the drink with a smile and opens it. The blonde watches her intently as Fatima gulps half the bottle before shutting it.
“I haven’t found many derby players around here,” the blonde remarks as Fatima skates to the benches and sits. The blonde, not wearing skates, walks over and stands in front of her.
“I moved here from the city. It’s a bit more popular there,” Fatima comments. She bends over and unlaces her brand-new, unmarked black skates, letting the orange laces hang on the sides. They hold themselves upright as she pulls her feet from them and puts her socked feet on the fresh carpet. The Velcro rips loudly as she loosens her pads, but the echo is drowned out by the music.
“It’s what inspired me to open this place,” the blonde sighs and looks around the rink before looking back down at Fatima. “You know, the place is closed on Saturdays, but I could open it up if you wanted to practice.”
Fatima sits upright at the offer and looks at the blonde with hope. “Really? We could try to get a team going.”
“For sure. No skin off my back. I’m Yolanda, by the way.” Yolanda reaches her hand out to Fatima. She quickly takes her fingerless glove off her right hand before taking Yolanda’s.
“Fatima.”
As I roll toward the rink, I pass by a frame and run my fingers along its plaque. It’s a newspaper clipping of my mom and Yolanda embracing with confetti blurred in the background, and the rest of her teammates coming over to the pair. Yolanda’s hair has frizzy, tight blonde curls that encase my mom’s helmet with their volume. My mom’s braid is in the process of swinging back and forth in the picture, a testament to how hard and fast she came to hug Yolanda. I brush my fingers over my mom’s glass-encased face before I head onto the floor. The concrete is smooth with aged derby boundary lines and random spots of spilled paint. I easily bob and weave between the teenagers on first dates and easily avoid the groups of kids barely moving and gossiping.
Every move and turn is second nature. Dodging people is as easy as breathing. My mom was the best jammer in the state, partially thanks to Yolanda. They started our area’s first—and only—roller derby team. Yolanda was the team manager and assistant coach; my mom was the jammer and head coach. They traveled for hours just to go to the lowest-tiered matches. They worked the circuit, learned, improved, and qualified for nationals within the first 3 years. Then my mom met my dad, and 22 years later, I’m here. And she isn’t. She never got to tell me what happened between her and Yolanda, my dad refuses to talk about it, and when Yolanda introduced herself at my mom’s funeral, she reacted like she’d seen a ghost.
I see Yolanda now and again when I’m here. She never wears skates, which makes her seem shorter than she is. Her hair is still vibrantly blonde, like the photos I found when they were younger. Her make-up is light, but 80s colorful, like the dirty carpet, and between her wrinkles, there’s a heaviness to her face. Her smiles are rarely big and genuine, and her shoulders frequently tense up to her ears. Every time she sees me, there’s a brief moment of relief, before she remembers and looks away.
I slow down as I pull off the rink and into the bathroom. I come to a stop in front of the sink and mirror, then take a good look at myself. The sharp slope of my nose, bushy, thick eyebrows, and light brown skin. I hadn’t believed I looked like my mom until I met Yolanda because every time she looks at me, her heart breaks, and then mine does too. A piece of my mother lives within me, and it calls out to Yolanda.
Being on the receiving line is an out-of-body experience. My dad, aunt, grandparents, and I had a viewing the evening before, so now it’s just a family reunion with a dead body. People I haven’t seen in years sob and hug me, whispering reassurances. I pat their backs, thank them, and slowly push them toward my mom’s sister.
Everything freezes the moment Yolanda walks in. A tall, light-skinned woman holds my shoulders tightly while she cries and tells me she’s my mom’s first roommate. Blonde hair bobs behind the roommate’s shoulder, and my eyes attach themselves.
“Thank you, thank you,” I interrupt quickly to the woman in front of me and pull her into a hug. I set my chin on her shoulder and got a better sight of the blonde. Her curly hair is tied into a low ponytail. Her scalp is a little greasy with a few darker blonde roots exposed, and her gray cardigan is tear-stained at the cuffs. The woman pulls out of my arms and moves on to my aunt, and I take a moment to breathe. I search the room for the blonde again, and she’s in line to talk to my mom.
“I’ll be one moment,” my dad whispers to me, and I look at him as I nod. His cheeks are dry, like mine; his eyes are heavy, but he’s clearly too exhausted to keep crying.
Like father, like daughter.
He steps away and sets his hand on the blonde’s shoulder right when she’s next to see Mom. They step away into the lobby, and I follow without a second thought.
Their voices are hushed, and the blonde sounds like she’s crying as I round the corner. A part of me wants to eavesdrop, but before I can think, I hear my own voice.
“Dad? Who’s this?” I ask and immediately regret the accusation in my tone. The blonde turns to look at me with a sharp inhale, and rivers of tears flow down her cheeks. She’s holding a bulky bag that I hadn’t noticed when she came inside.
“Holy shit,” she mutters and Dad steps in.
“This is Yolanda, an old friend of your mom’s,” he turns his head toward Yolanda, his eyes sharpening, “who was just leaving.” Yolanda regains her voice with a sharp breath and holds the bag out toward me.
“Here. Fatima wanted me to give you these when she passed,” Yolanda states quickly and looks down at the floor between us. The bag barely leaves her fingers before she turns and rushes out of the building.
I skate out of the bathroom and to the floor, trying to get more skating time before it’s time for games.
It’s been one year and two months since Mom died. My feet cross over, and I skate slowly around the bend.
It was triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive, uncaring breast cancer.
I glide left to move by a dad and his young daughter. The girl lets out a small giggle as I pass.
The BRCA1 gene increases a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer. It’s hereditary, but by some miracle that made my dad drop to his knees, I don’t have it.
I come to a near stop behind a wall of high school freshmen. I feel myself getting restless waiting for an opening between them.
It had been a routine mammogram. She’d been getting them for the past five years, but this was the first time they’d asked her to come in after. I was at college in town, but she didn’t want me or Dad to go with her.
Once I see my moment, I huff as I pass between the center and a girl in bell-bottom jeans, and it isn’t long before I lap them again.
The cancer had already metastasized, but she said it didn’t matter. They kept telling her numbers, but all she could think about was us. I think the “us” included Yolanda.
After a few more laps, I pull off and lean over the nearby water fountain to waste time waiting for the high-schoolers to take a break.
She made it six more months before she passed.
“You remind me of my friend,” Mom says from her hospital bed. She has an IV in her arm where the chemotherapy enters. She’s bald and shiny, with a smile on her face.
She never stopped smiling.
“Your dad never liked her,” she continues with a small shake of her head. “She’s brash, loud, excitable.” Mom never said she had friends before. She never talked about what she was like before she got married. “I gotta call her.”
I pass my mom her phone as she sits up. She’s breathing heavily, clearly regretting the move, but refuses to stop.
“Can you go grab me some ice chips?” She doesn’t look up from her phone as she taps on the screen and hovers over the call button. I wait for a moment, and she looks up at me. You can’t say no to the woman with cancer.
“Yeah, I’ll be right back.”
The laps start to blur, and the minutes pass by. My hamstrings burn with the perpetual squat I move in. The DJ’s retro music is nothing more than background noise as I focus on the warmth in my chest. My therapist says roller skating is a good way to connect with my mom. I haven’t told her about the feeling in my chest, but I like to assume it’s Mom.
Roller skating is a way to feel like she’s still here. It’s not just me that’s skating, it’s her. Her hair flows by and whips; her laugh echoes at every almost stumble; it’s her smile when I pass by a mirror.
I love my mom, in life or death. And I will always want to make her happy.
The first time I go to the roller rink is the first time I dig through the duffle bag. There were more than just the skates I saw at first glance. I take the skates out and set them next to my feet, then reach further in. A bundle of knee and elbow pads stuck together by their Velcro comes out, followed by loose, solid-colored laces dangling from them.
I drop the pads next to the skates, then pull out a fistful of shoelaces. They’re all different colors of the rainbow, some dirtier than others. I pull one of the yellow laces toward me, and I catch some blue stitching near the aglet. I bring it close to my eyes so I can read the amateur addition to the laces.
Y F
My heart sinks, and I look at the other end of the lace, spotting the same stitching. I go through each shoelace, the same thing stitched at every end with the shoelace’s complementary color.
I bend at my hips and reach down to my skates, carefully undoing and loosening the purple laces. I pull my right foot up and stretch my leg out with a small groan. Kids pass in front of me and set their rental skates on the counter for the attendant while he shuts down the DJ booth. I repeat my actions with my left foot and stand up. I circle my hips, listening to them pop, before I walk over to my locker. I quickly input my code, and the door swings open. I grab my duffle bag that had been haphazardly shoved inside and walk back over to my skates.
A puff of air escapes my chest as I sit back down and see the DJ out of the corner of my eye spraying the insides of the skates. Parents and kids trickle out, and the Higgins couple chat while shutting down the food machines. I don’t see Yolanda anywhere.
I pull my sneakers out of the bag before replacing them with the skates. My sneakers sit next to my feet as I shove my elbow pads down my arms, and then my knee pads down my shins.
“Madeleine?” A small voice whispers near me, and I look up. Yolanda is standing there in her glory. Her hair has been hastily shoved up into a bun, and there are no other patrons around. I quickly stand as if a commanding officer had said my name and look at her with wide eyes. Yolanda is standing there, wringing her hands in front of her. The skates distorted her height more than I remember. She’s a full head taller than me, but her shoulders are hunched in and her knees are knocking. Mrs. Higgins glances our way before shooing her husband off, and both disappear into a back room.
“Yolanda,” I breathe out. I try not to show my nerves, as if this were some schoolyard interaction. I glance down at my shoes and slide my feet into them in the silence.
“How are you?” She asks softly, wide, hazel eyes staring at me with a slight shine to them.
“I-I’m good,” I stutter out. It’s not a complete lie, but they’re the only words that came to mind. “How are you?” She shrugs and takes a step closer. Her eyes dart back and forth as she looks over my face. Her eyes well up as she scans my features, and I notice her hands twitching as if she wants to reach out.
“Your mother had called me a few days before she passed,” Yolanda says instead of answering. A tear slips from her eye and trails a path down her cheek. Her makeup marks the line, and a stuttering breath escapes her lungs. “I had been holding on to her skates ever since she got pregnant in case she ever came back.” My breath shakes, and I feel tears pool at my eyelids, but I don’t interrupt. “She told me she was dying and to give them to you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I gesture down at the skates, then look back at her. I’d started skating at the rink 3 months after Mom died. “I come here 3 times a week and see you every time,” my voice breaks and more tears begin to flow, “why did you wait so long?”
“You look just like your mother,” She half-answers as she begins to cry harder. “Believe me, I wanted to, I just-” Her sobs echo, and she covers her mouth. “I loved your mother, Madeleine, and I still do. And your father knew it. And Fatima knew it too. That’s why I tried to avoid you.”
“Why now?” I choke out and sit down. It’s hard to look at her, so I start putting my pads in the duffle. I ignore the teardrops that fall on the ankle padding of the skates before I zip the bag close. I look back up at her, and she’s blurry from my tears.
“It’s been a year since you started skating. I figured it was time you deserved the clear truth.”
“Did my dad-” My voice stops me, and I’m not certain what I was going to ask.
“No,” she shakes her head and slowly sits next to me. “She loved your father very much.” I swallow a lump in my throat and nod. “Fatima had the biggest heart. She loved you, me, your father,” her voice trails off as she wipes the tears from her cheeks.
I release a sob, and her arm is hesitant as it wraps around my shoulders. Yolanda’s gentle as she brings my face to her shoulder. She’s bonier than my mom was, but I can feel her love as her fingers thread into the ends of my hair. A tidal wave crashes over me as I wrap my arms around her stomach, and her other arm holds me tightly.
Yolanda’s warmth and bits of her hair tickle my forehead as she sets her chin on my head. Time freezes as I release the tension in my shoulders, and a third pair of arms wrap around us.