Sage Tyrtle

Listen to Sage’s story – read by JP Relph

We walk into Westland Mall, the five of us, and we are laughing so hard that our stomachs hurt, and even then we stop, cut our voices off, go silent as we pass Tim Hortons, the phone repair shop, the bubble tea place. We can’t hear each other anymore over our mothers’ voices. We stand up straighter but we get smaller. Small. The legs of our jeans open as we walk, sew themselves back into long skirts. Our mothers stand behind us pulling our cropped hair from our heads, our mothers pull until our hair is to the small of our backs. Our boots are ballet flats. The food court tables of old men, separated by language but in all other respects the same old men with the same loud laughs that were off limits to us as girls and, somehow, that we can’t summon five years later even though in the car on the way across Canada we swore we would strut through our old neighbourhood like peacocks. And we pass the old men who have turned back to their backgammon games, their shouted opinions, their too-loud video calls, and instead of thinking that Westland Mall has shrunk we compare our eyelines to what they were in grade eleven, grade twelve, the years when we counted the days before we could fly away, counted them with our only drug, bleeding lines on our always-covered arms. We compare and we aren’t even our high school height anymore, we pass the old men like we’re walking down stairs and it isn’t until we are almost running, on hour three trying to pass the Dollarama on tiny legs, our mothers riding us piggyback now, that a little girl sees us and darts away from her mother. She blesses us with her invisible magic wand, touching us on wincing shoulders. She whispers, “Ta da!” and on the strength of her whisper our pants knit back together, our hair zooms back up, our backs unhunch, our mothers scatter like glitter on the wind and we bump our heads on the high ceilings on our way to the exit where we turn, where we bow to the little girl, knowing that she’ll come find us when she can.

Sage Tyrtle’s work is available in New Delta Review, The Offing, Lunch Ticket, and Apex among others. Her words have been featured on NPR, CBC, and PBS and have been taught in schools. Read more at www.tyrtle.com

Read more from Sage:

Isele Magazine – ‘Not Even the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Can Help You Now’
Thimble Literary Magazine – ‘When my Mom’s Ghost Comes to Visit Me’