Laces
By Sandra Coffey
July 15, 2023
July 15, 2023
“I like girls.” That’s how she said it. No preface. No lead-in.
“I like them. Girls.”
Tanya was 12 and I was 11.
She had just shown me for the umpteenth time how to loop one lace over the other “just like that” and how to do a double knot “just like that.” I nodded but somehow my fingers couldn’t grasp it. I couldn’t get the laces to twist and turn like she could.
Tanya stayed on her knees in front of me and rested her hands on her thighs. Looking up, she smiled and giggled a little, like someone who had thought of something funny but didn’t want to share it. She was comfortable in that position, telling me the most serious thing I’d ever heard anyone say to anyone.
My friend liked girls. I liked girls too, but this type of liking was different. The way she said it meant so.
“I like to be close to them. How you think about boys, I think that way about girls.”
“I don’t think that much about boys.”
“You don’t?”
“Not really.”
She grinned. I was convinced an insect or maybe even a family of insects had crept into my ear. They had set off a concoction of panic with their running and racing. Was this what real panic felt like? Insects playing a game of tag, their feet beating down on the floor of my thoughts.
How does she know this? I needed to ask her. Without me putting into words, Tanya sensed my question.
“I think you just do. I just do. I know.”
Tanya said it like it was a matter of fact, not open to debate or questioning.
We had sat beside each other in class for the past six years. How does she just know this now? Is this something she woke up knowing? Did she just realise this today? I told myself and my family of insects to pipe down in there, calm down. They did a little. Instead of blurting out the inner details of my jumbled brain and splattering them all over her statement of fact, I thought this was a time to simply listen.
I hated thinking it, but would this matter to me in a few months from now? She was off to an all-girls private school. I was headed for public school. We may not see each other for years.
“I have an idea,” I said.
Now, when I said this, most of my ideas were well ill-conceived. Or “hard to bring to life.” That was what we said for ideas that were just not quite there. Tanya, on the other hand, always had her idea well thought out.
“We could test it,” I said.
“Test it?” Tanya eyes closed tight like she was trying to imagine how this would look.
“Yes. Okay, listen. We could get a boy and a girl and go down the back of the old shed like boys and girls do and test this out. Why not?”
“How would that work, exactly?”
“Well, you would be chatting to both at the same time, obviously, and wait to see how your body reacts?”
“Like seriously? Not your best idea.”
“Ultan! That’s the boy sorted.”
Ultan was one of those students our teachers couldn’t wait to see what he’d be like when he grew up, what he would look like, what he would do. Mothers at the school gates were willing time to go by so they could speak fondly of the time he was in school with their child. He was destined for television. He gave speeches at lunchtime about how we should volunteer to find out about the world, make sure to widen our minds beyond these school walls. He read poetry at our final Christmas show while some of the other boys dressed up and told the most awful jokes or pretended to make things disappear when really, they were just up their sleeves.
Ultan, that’s the boy sorted.
“And the girl?” Tanya asked, right hand on hip.
Okay, as I said I hadn’t thought this through fully, but we began to name potentials.
“Anna?”
“She’s taller than me.”
“Concepta?”
“She’s going to be a nun. She says so all the time.”
“Ah, okay.”
“Geraldine?”
“Now, she’s promising.”
“Angela?”
“No way. Those glasses. How does her nose not collapse under the weight of them?”
We laughed. I was enjoying this.
“Last one. Philippa?”
“Yes. She is so exotic. Her dad is German or French.”
“But, she’s cautious.”
“Yes, cautious. And exact. See how she rules her page?”
“Good point.”
“You would need to have everything planned out. She wouldn’t be one for following someone at the drop of a hat.”
On that point, Tanya began to walk. Moving our legs could be just the thing to help us come up with ideas. Like if the thoughts we had in our minds would travel around our bodies and come back to us changed and better. Better ideas. That’s what we needed.
I looked at my shoes and how she had tightened the laces tight but not too tight, just tight enough. All four laces facing upwards like bouncy curls with dyed highlights of purple and green for me, pink and yellow for her.
Our school was once a stable yard. On the side of the school shed, a plaque gave some details: Patrick Dempsey. Horse Trainer of Maple Sun. Aintree Grand National Winner 1977. That’s all that exists of the previous life of the place. The shed is now one long big shelter used by girls at one end and boys on the other. Horses’ heads peered out in rows along this shed once. What happened that the stables had to close? Even though I’m 11, I still get away with asking these questions, but that doesn’t mean that I get any logical answers.
The school uses it in all their promotional material. Raheeny National School, once home to an Aintree Grand National winner, is today celebrating a Green School Award, A Discover Science plaque and so on. It was a slip of the tongue from a parent that revealed the real reason for its closure. Aintree Grand National winning trainer Patrick Dempsey was found dead of suspected poisoning. He was survived by his heartbroken parents, his many friends, and his dog Jimmy.
The end wall of the playground backed onto a farm, and we watched in fits of giggles the grown men herding sheep in and out of the field. Confused sheep were being chased by grown men who punched the air with anger at the animal’s lack of understanding of the English language. Minutes later, one of them would pet their sheepdog in such a loving and playful way it was like holding a double picture card, flip it one way for one image, tilt it slightly for another.
Teacher Ms. Furey asked us to look at the field and draw what we saw. What did we think Farmer PJ was like? What did we think a farmer did? We all had our own ideas. I pictured him sitting by an open fire, eating his soup and brown bread for his evening tea. He was talking about us to his wife, Mags. He hoped we would someday grow out of our childish ways.
“Farmer PJ is looking forward to retirement and spending lots of time in front of the fire.” I wrote this underneath my picture.
“Looks good, Becky.”
Ultan’s farmer had a long beard and was standing with two other farmers discussing the state of farming in Ireland. Tanya’s farmer was a woman. Patricia-Jane for PJ.
Ms. Furey asked her to explain.
“This is Patricia Jane with Emily who is standing in the kitchen and smiling at her. They are about to ….”
“Oh, how very interesting, Tanya. But I don’t think farmers would wear high heels out on the farm.”
The boys couldn’t put a lid on their giggles, the tops of their bodies, the bits that could be seen above the desk bobbed up and down.
“We are lucky,” teacher said, that we have a farmer “so close by”. “The best way to learn about the seasons is to watch a farmer at work.”
We learnt a lot more than just seasons. I couldn’t sleep the night after I first saw a man without a top on. Farmer PJ hired in men from countries like Bosnia and Slovakia to help with the busy spring season. Lukas waved to us and as he took his shirt off. Our capabilities of turning to utter mush were boundless. We watched him for the guts of a week as he stepped up and down from the tractor and patted the sweat off his face. PJ would come along and shout at him from the gate to come over for the tea. When he stopped showing up for work, we spoke about him being in places like Dingle or Bantry, working the fields there. But, we had no idea where he was. A man like that must have had a girlfriend to get back to.
On a warm April day, we sat on the wall with our lunch boxes on our laps and admired how grass could grow just about anywhere. It was even growing on the wall we sat on.
“So, will we try to do something about it?” I asked.
“About what?”
“About you liking girls?”
“Just leave it, Becky.”
“Well, you said you like girls, yes?”
“Yes.”
“You like them, in the same way, I like boys or should like boys, but I don’t really think I like boys in that way yet.”
“Yes. I guess so.”
“Are you really sure? Like how can you be really sure?”
“I just know. Jesus. Why do you have to keep asking? It’s just knowing something. I can’t even explain it to myself.”
“Okay, okay. Sorry. Well, do you want to do this? My test?”
“Actually, I have another idea?” Tanya said this and moved in closer as if this plan was such a marvelled idea that it needed to get its first public airing in quiet, hushed tones.
“Tell me, what is it?”
“How about we try it on each other? Why do we need anyone else?”
“Really? I don’t think so. I think.”
“Why not?”
“I think it would be better to have people you don’t know? We know each other too well.”
“What would that have to do with it? Would that not be a good thing?”
“I don’t know but I just think it would be better, that’s all.”
“You don’t want to help me? This was all your idea, Becky. I’m just, let’s say, adapting it to our situation here.”
“Okay. Of course, I want to help you. But I’m not comfortable, that’s all. With this I mean, I’m not sure adapting it like this is such a good idea.”
She made the first move. She jumped off the wall and down into the long grass. Her smile meant I should follow and I did. My feet barely landed on the grass when she knocked me over and I fell on my side.
“We are not supposed to be out here.”
“Shusssh.”
She moved closer and I didn’t push her away. I didn’t want to, not in those first few moments.
Now she was lying up against me, side to side, face to face. I could smell her cheese and Tayto breath. She loved Taytos on everything, even on an apple skin. One envelops the other in her mouth and she often pulled me close enough to see right into the back of her mouth to watch the apple and Tayto mushing together.
She leaned over to kiss me. Straight in. Her eyes closed, and her lips came closer and closer, slower and slower. I placed my hand on her chest. She pushed gently forward. In that moment, the whole of her body moved as one and was headed towards me. Just then I turned away and her lips sucked onto my jaw where she kissed me for what felt like a long time but I’m sure was only a matter of seconds.
I opened my eyes before her. Her lips parted in a smile that I thought would grow into a laugh but didn’t. She held it there and rested on it. She let it rest until the moment was long gone and she opened her eyes.
“There. I told you. Girls are amazing!”
“Are you okay?” I asked. I’ve no idea why I was asking her if she was okay. Surely, I should be asked if I was okay? Tanya looked so consumed by what she had just done. Elated even, like something new inside her was bursting through in her smile. She pointed upwards towards the wall and we retook our positions.
We never spoke about that moment. The last weeks of school were filled with exams, preparation for the “big school” and sex education. On our last day, the principal said we were ready. Ready for life.
“Go out there and live the life you want,” he said. We weren’t even teenagers, sure what would we know yet.
We said our goodbyes at 2.55pm on a Friday in mid June. We didn’t plan to meet up that weekend. In fact, it never crossed our minds to arrange it. I boarded the bus and as it drove away I watched her skipping down the road in the rear window. We never saw each other again.
Twenty years went by. There it was in black and white on the front of a national newspaper. She was the talk of our local town and I’m sure plenty of other towns. The papers were stacked on the shop counter and it was there I was attracted to the headline. Two women had married, the first to legally do so in Ireland. So, I picked up the paper. Tanya was one. Marita, her now wife was a physiotherapist, and daughter of Lieutenant Marcus Hollenberg, who served on missions abroad to a host of places. They were both dressed in white, Tanya in a white suit, Marita in a fitted gown with a beaded bodice. They were now looking for a surrogate mother to carry a child for them. I thought about why she hadn’t come looking for me. I don’t know why I thought that but something in me wanted to question why. I’d had three children by then but perhaps she didn’t know that.
The months passed, and I often thought about her. Then the news came. Twin boys born to Ireland’s first gay married couple. Aaron and Marcus Junior Hollenberg weighed 5lbs and 4lbs and mothers and babies were doing very well.
“I like them. Girls.”
Tanya was 12 and I was 11.
She had just shown me for the umpteenth time how to loop one lace over the other “just like that” and how to do a double knot “just like that.” I nodded but somehow my fingers couldn’t grasp it. I couldn’t get the laces to twist and turn like she could.
Tanya stayed on her knees in front of me and rested her hands on her thighs. Looking up, she smiled and giggled a little, like someone who had thought of something funny but didn’t want to share it. She was comfortable in that position, telling me the most serious thing I’d ever heard anyone say to anyone.
My friend liked girls. I liked girls too, but this type of liking was different. The way she said it meant so.
“I like to be close to them. How you think about boys, I think that way about girls.”
“I don’t think that much about boys.”
“You don’t?”
“Not really.”
She grinned. I was convinced an insect or maybe even a family of insects had crept into my ear. They had set off a concoction of panic with their running and racing. Was this what real panic felt like? Insects playing a game of tag, their feet beating down on the floor of my thoughts.
How does she know this? I needed to ask her. Without me putting into words, Tanya sensed my question.
“I think you just do. I just do. I know.”
Tanya said it like it was a matter of fact, not open to debate or questioning.
We had sat beside each other in class for the past six years. How does she just know this now? Is this something she woke up knowing? Did she just realise this today? I told myself and my family of insects to pipe down in there, calm down. They did a little. Instead of blurting out the inner details of my jumbled brain and splattering them all over her statement of fact, I thought this was a time to simply listen.
I hated thinking it, but would this matter to me in a few months from now? She was off to an all-girls private school. I was headed for public school. We may not see each other for years.
“I have an idea,” I said.
Now, when I said this, most of my ideas were well ill-conceived. Or “hard to bring to life.” That was what we said for ideas that were just not quite there. Tanya, on the other hand, always had her idea well thought out.
“We could test it,” I said.
“Test it?” Tanya eyes closed tight like she was trying to imagine how this would look.
“Yes. Okay, listen. We could get a boy and a girl and go down the back of the old shed like boys and girls do and test this out. Why not?”
“How would that work, exactly?”
“Well, you would be chatting to both at the same time, obviously, and wait to see how your body reacts?”
“Like seriously? Not your best idea.”
“Ultan! That’s the boy sorted.”
Ultan was one of those students our teachers couldn’t wait to see what he’d be like when he grew up, what he would look like, what he would do. Mothers at the school gates were willing time to go by so they could speak fondly of the time he was in school with their child. He was destined for television. He gave speeches at lunchtime about how we should volunteer to find out about the world, make sure to widen our minds beyond these school walls. He read poetry at our final Christmas show while some of the other boys dressed up and told the most awful jokes or pretended to make things disappear when really, they were just up their sleeves.
Ultan, that’s the boy sorted.
“And the girl?” Tanya asked, right hand on hip.
Okay, as I said I hadn’t thought this through fully, but we began to name potentials.
“Anna?”
“She’s taller than me.”
“Concepta?”
“She’s going to be a nun. She says so all the time.”
“Ah, okay.”
“Geraldine?”
“Now, she’s promising.”
“Angela?”
“No way. Those glasses. How does her nose not collapse under the weight of them?”
We laughed. I was enjoying this.
“Last one. Philippa?”
“Yes. She is so exotic. Her dad is German or French.”
“But, she’s cautious.”
“Yes, cautious. And exact. See how she rules her page?”
“Good point.”
“You would need to have everything planned out. She wouldn’t be one for following someone at the drop of a hat.”
On that point, Tanya began to walk. Moving our legs could be just the thing to help us come up with ideas. Like if the thoughts we had in our minds would travel around our bodies and come back to us changed and better. Better ideas. That’s what we needed.
I looked at my shoes and how she had tightened the laces tight but not too tight, just tight enough. All four laces facing upwards like bouncy curls with dyed highlights of purple and green for me, pink and yellow for her.
Our school was once a stable yard. On the side of the school shed, a plaque gave some details: Patrick Dempsey. Horse Trainer of Maple Sun. Aintree Grand National Winner 1977. That’s all that exists of the previous life of the place. The shed is now one long big shelter used by girls at one end and boys on the other. Horses’ heads peered out in rows along this shed once. What happened that the stables had to close? Even though I’m 11, I still get away with asking these questions, but that doesn’t mean that I get any logical answers.
The school uses it in all their promotional material. Raheeny National School, once home to an Aintree Grand National winner, is today celebrating a Green School Award, A Discover Science plaque and so on. It was a slip of the tongue from a parent that revealed the real reason for its closure. Aintree Grand National winning trainer Patrick Dempsey was found dead of suspected poisoning. He was survived by his heartbroken parents, his many friends, and his dog Jimmy.
The end wall of the playground backed onto a farm, and we watched in fits of giggles the grown men herding sheep in and out of the field. Confused sheep were being chased by grown men who punched the air with anger at the animal’s lack of understanding of the English language. Minutes later, one of them would pet their sheepdog in such a loving and playful way it was like holding a double picture card, flip it one way for one image, tilt it slightly for another.
Teacher Ms. Furey asked us to look at the field and draw what we saw. What did we think Farmer PJ was like? What did we think a farmer did? We all had our own ideas. I pictured him sitting by an open fire, eating his soup and brown bread for his evening tea. He was talking about us to his wife, Mags. He hoped we would someday grow out of our childish ways.
“Farmer PJ is looking forward to retirement and spending lots of time in front of the fire.” I wrote this underneath my picture.
“Looks good, Becky.”
Ultan’s farmer had a long beard and was standing with two other farmers discussing the state of farming in Ireland. Tanya’s farmer was a woman. Patricia-Jane for PJ.
Ms. Furey asked her to explain.
“This is Patricia Jane with Emily who is standing in the kitchen and smiling at her. They are about to ….”
“Oh, how very interesting, Tanya. But I don’t think farmers would wear high heels out on the farm.”
The boys couldn’t put a lid on their giggles, the tops of their bodies, the bits that could be seen above the desk bobbed up and down.
“We are lucky,” teacher said, that we have a farmer “so close by”. “The best way to learn about the seasons is to watch a farmer at work.”
We learnt a lot more than just seasons. I couldn’t sleep the night after I first saw a man without a top on. Farmer PJ hired in men from countries like Bosnia and Slovakia to help with the busy spring season. Lukas waved to us and as he took his shirt off. Our capabilities of turning to utter mush were boundless. We watched him for the guts of a week as he stepped up and down from the tractor and patted the sweat off his face. PJ would come along and shout at him from the gate to come over for the tea. When he stopped showing up for work, we spoke about him being in places like Dingle or Bantry, working the fields there. But, we had no idea where he was. A man like that must have had a girlfriend to get back to.
On a warm April day, we sat on the wall with our lunch boxes on our laps and admired how grass could grow just about anywhere. It was even growing on the wall we sat on.
“So, will we try to do something about it?” I asked.
“About what?”
“About you liking girls?”
“Just leave it, Becky.”
“Well, you said you like girls, yes?”
“Yes.”
“You like them, in the same way, I like boys or should like boys, but I don’t really think I like boys in that way yet.”
“Yes. I guess so.”
“Are you really sure? Like how can you be really sure?”
“I just know. Jesus. Why do you have to keep asking? It’s just knowing something. I can’t even explain it to myself.”
“Okay, okay. Sorry. Well, do you want to do this? My test?”
“Actually, I have another idea?” Tanya said this and moved in closer as if this plan was such a marvelled idea that it needed to get its first public airing in quiet, hushed tones.
“Tell me, what is it?”
“How about we try it on each other? Why do we need anyone else?”
“Really? I don’t think so. I think.”
“Why not?”
“I think it would be better to have people you don’t know? We know each other too well.”
“What would that have to do with it? Would that not be a good thing?”
“I don’t know but I just think it would be better, that’s all.”
“You don’t want to help me? This was all your idea, Becky. I’m just, let’s say, adapting it to our situation here.”
“Okay. Of course, I want to help you. But I’m not comfortable, that’s all. With this I mean, I’m not sure adapting it like this is such a good idea.”
She made the first move. She jumped off the wall and down into the long grass. Her smile meant I should follow and I did. My feet barely landed on the grass when she knocked me over and I fell on my side.
“We are not supposed to be out here.”
“Shusssh.”
She moved closer and I didn’t push her away. I didn’t want to, not in those first few moments.
Now she was lying up against me, side to side, face to face. I could smell her cheese and Tayto breath. She loved Taytos on everything, even on an apple skin. One envelops the other in her mouth and she often pulled me close enough to see right into the back of her mouth to watch the apple and Tayto mushing together.
She leaned over to kiss me. Straight in. Her eyes closed, and her lips came closer and closer, slower and slower. I placed my hand on her chest. She pushed gently forward. In that moment, the whole of her body moved as one and was headed towards me. Just then I turned away and her lips sucked onto my jaw where she kissed me for what felt like a long time but I’m sure was only a matter of seconds.
I opened my eyes before her. Her lips parted in a smile that I thought would grow into a laugh but didn’t. She held it there and rested on it. She let it rest until the moment was long gone and she opened her eyes.
“There. I told you. Girls are amazing!”
“Are you okay?” I asked. I’ve no idea why I was asking her if she was okay. Surely, I should be asked if I was okay? Tanya looked so consumed by what she had just done. Elated even, like something new inside her was bursting through in her smile. She pointed upwards towards the wall and we retook our positions.
We never spoke about that moment. The last weeks of school were filled with exams, preparation for the “big school” and sex education. On our last day, the principal said we were ready. Ready for life.
“Go out there and live the life you want,” he said. We weren’t even teenagers, sure what would we know yet.
We said our goodbyes at 2.55pm on a Friday in mid June. We didn’t plan to meet up that weekend. In fact, it never crossed our minds to arrange it. I boarded the bus and as it drove away I watched her skipping down the road in the rear window. We never saw each other again.
Twenty years went by. There it was in black and white on the front of a national newspaper. She was the talk of our local town and I’m sure plenty of other towns. The papers were stacked on the shop counter and it was there I was attracted to the headline. Two women had married, the first to legally do so in Ireland. So, I picked up the paper. Tanya was one. Marita, her now wife was a physiotherapist, and daughter of Lieutenant Marcus Hollenberg, who served on missions abroad to a host of places. They were both dressed in white, Tanya in a white suit, Marita in a fitted gown with a beaded bodice. They were now looking for a surrogate mother to carry a child for them. I thought about why she hadn’t come looking for me. I don’t know why I thought that but something in me wanted to question why. I’d had three children by then but perhaps she didn’t know that.
The months passed, and I often thought about her. Then the news came. Twin boys born to Ireland’s first gay married couple. Aaron and Marcus Junior Hollenberg weighed 5lbs and 4lbs and mothers and babies were doing very well.
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Sandra Coffey is a writer from Galway, Ireland. She has been published in Ireland, the UK and the US in publications such as Crannog, Honest Ulsterman, Incubator Magazine and Silver Apples. She has been shortlisted for the Irish Short Story of the Year award. One of her stories was chosen for Around the Farm Gate, a collection of stories published by Ballpoint Press, RTE and the Farmer’s Journal. Sandra is a former journalist who now works as a PR Manager. She also mentors beginner PR professionals starting out in their careers at youcandopr.com
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