But I try.
* * *
In the ring now and going at Jason hard. He wants fight prep for his tourney in Montreal? I’ll give him fight prep.
“Whoa,” he says, wheezing. Gloved hands on his knees. His pale body is red from my blows, but he’s blocking a lot better. He looks decent. We take our mouthguards out and drink some water. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I always kick your ass.”
“We had one fight!”
“And I won.”
“You Trini?” he asks, out of nowhere.
Here we go.
Soon as a guy hears I’m from Trinidad, it’s all over. Bam. Falls in love. I mean, not with me. With the idea that I can shake my ass better than a Jamaican and, as much as Trinis want to believe this, who can shake their ass better than a Jamaican? As good, yes. Better? This is a matter of serious debate. If he’s looking for a dancehall queen, he better look somewhere else.
I slip my mouthguard in and grunt something in response. Let him only think I’m shaking my ass for him. I kiss my teeth. It doesn’t have the desired effect because of the mouthguard. “Come on,” I say, around the plastic. “Let’s go another round.”
We spar until he lands a swing kick good and proper into my ribs and I go down. Kru calls it then, looking at me all peculiar like. He says he’s closing for the night and, true enough, when I look around we’re the only people left in the gym.
I try not to smell him. Jason. But I still do. He still smells too good to be true.
“You look nice today,” he tells me.
In my ripped tank top and third best pair of Thai shorts? The ones I have to roll down at the waist to get them to fit properly? Wow. Some people have no taste.
As we leave for the night, Jason turns to me and says, all casual, “I don’t know why you lose so much when you fight. You’re really good.” Then he shrugs. “Must be a curse or something, Miss Trini.”
I need this Mexican superstitious bullshit like I needed Mr. Abdi racially profiling me.
A curse.
Yeah, right.
thirteen
The day before Christmas holidays, Ma tells me that I’m going to work with Aunty K in New York for the break.
She barely looks at me when she breaks the news. She doesn’t want to hear any backtalk from me, big surprise. The violence of a couple of nights ago is gone from her eyes, and so am I. In her mind, I’m not there right now. Not pleading to stay or anything. After the last day of class, I don’t even have time to say bye to my lunchtime Desis, or my crew at the gym.
She’s punishing me.
For the disobedience. For the fact that I’ve been nothing but a burden to her for all these years. For the questions that I wasn’t supposed to ask Pammy about what she saw the night Dad died.
She drives me straight to the airport with some kind of Bollywood soundtrack blasting. She looks like something from out of a Bollywood film herself. She’s flat-ironed her hair and put makeup on, dark streaks of eyeliner that should look garish but stop just short of that with a little upward tick, like a checkmark or the Nike logo. She’s tried to teach me how to do this a few times but gives up when I inevitably look like a buff raccoon.
Sitting there beside her, I think about the last time we were in the car together. Even though she’s doing her best to drown it all out with these Hindi songs, the sounds of a language she doesn’t even speak.
Beyond the windshield, on the other side of the hood, is the front bumper and memories of a godawful sickening crunch that I can’t ignore.
But she can.
Inside my suitcase is a packed lunch and snacks for the plane. It’s a short flight and I don’t need to be lugging all this food with me. I can feel her residual anger, but nothing will ever stop her from feeding me until I burst. When she leaves me at a security checkpoint, at the lineup before the gate, I hold her gaze and dump the food in the garbage. Tupperware included.
She doesn’t blink.
Just stares at me until I go through the line and out of her sight. I can feel her eyes on me the whole way. That’s okay with me. Let her look at Ravi like that. I spend the whole plane ride trying to not picture them together in the house while I’m away.
Aunty K starts chatting from the minute she meets me at JFK. It’s like she’s stored up conversations for weeks or something, just for me. “Why are you so quiet?” she keeps asking. On the train to her tiny apartment from the airport. At the apartment. When I’m on the sofa bed in the living room. The next morning when I start work at her cramped roti shop in Brooklyn.
She doesn’t stop talking, doesn’t stop asking. She makes the roti, someone named Mary fills it, and I handle the cash. All the loneliness she must feel living here by herself seems to be gone now with my stellar presence.
I turn my phone on after the first day and it starts buzzing right away.
Where are you? Noor.
Another buzz. Amanda. Sparring 2nite?
Jason, who got my number off the list at fight camp, sends me a photo from the demo where I dropped his ass. Rematch? Fight prep? Where you at?
Got a new gf so don’t cry for me. Columbus.
Haha, I text him back. Make sure you use a bike pump to inflate her or else your jaw’ll get sore.
That’s what she said.
I know. I did.
Then I look at Jason’s text. What do I say? I don’t know, so I just tell him I’m in New York for the holidays. See him when I get back.
He sends me a thumbs-up. It could mean nothing. I mean, it probably means nothing. Right?
I work my ass off for these couple weeks. This is no Foot Locker, I’m telling you that. You think retail is bad? Try working at a roti shop in Brooklyn for less than minimum wage. Ma calls every day, but I refuse to talk to her. She put me here, left me to work under the table, washing dishes and coming back to a lumpy sofa bed every night with shitty soca songs looping in my head and smelling of Grade-B curry. Nothing I do can get the odour out of my hair. Nothing but the garbage that piles up out back when I haul out the restaurant trash. Garbage and curry are my life this break, and I know exactly what got me here.
I should have kept my mouth shut, like Ma told me. I should never have talked to Pammy about the night Dad died.
I feel my muscles slackening, going soft, turning to jelly, so I start running in the mornings. New York is going through the same kind of seasonal madness as Toronto, where there isn’t a flake of snow to be found anywhere. It’s…hot. Thank you, global warming. I go for runs so early the sun isn’t even up yet. Aunty K bought me two rape whistles. Two. Just in case I get attacked and no one comes, I can chuck one at the guy and still have one to spare.