“Nothing.”
She gives me a knowing look. Even though we’re the same age, she’s always looking at me like that. I’m beyond being offended by it, though, because it’s Amanda, and she’s almost a legend in our gym. She made the Canadian team last year, but a knee injury kept her from competing internationally. Still, everyone was jealous because she came off her injury even better than she was before, and how does that happen? There’s no chance of her not making the team again this year.
“Your dad’s back?” she asks now, out of nowhere.
How did she know?
“Don’t really want to talk about it.” The impact of my next kick sends her a step back.
“You train harder when he’s here. Might be a good thing since you can’t quit losing in the ring.”
My face burns. I’m so embarrassed I can’t look at her. My next few kicks are off, too. Like, I know I’m shit in the ring, but I can’t help it, and I can’t stop from going in there either. “You might as well quit before you get any worse,” she smirks. “Come on, I’ll take the train with you.”
Where we’re from, legends take the train, too.
Before I go, I look over at Kru, who’s doing his own drills on the speed bag. He doesn’t break rhythm but gives us a little nod of the head to say goodbye.
Sometimes I try to tell how old Kru is, but this is almost impossible because of his amazing skin. He could be anywhere between twenty-five and forty-five and you wouldn’t be surprised at either end. Once, between rounds on a pad session, I asked him why he liked Muay Thai so much, being from the Philippines. He just sighed and gave me more push-ups to do. Kru doesn’t have time to explain personal shit to people, so unless you have a question about technique, you’re out of luck. Sometimes, though, he’ll bring pizza to the gym when we’re trying to cut weight the hardest, just to remind us what’s important in life. Cheese and happiness. So we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
I think I’ve loved Kru for years, but not like you’re thinking. I don’t want him to touch me or anything, you perv. I just want to spend most of my waking hours at his gym…but everyone has to go home sometime.
Right?
It’s not parka weather yet, so we’re in our standard sweats as we wait for the train together. Amanda’s wearing her Team Canada gear. I wonder if the situation was reversed whether I’d hold my success over her head. She’s got three belts to her name already and a social media following the rest of us could only dream of. If—in some kind of multiverse where there are an infinite number of mes standing here while the Toronto chill sneaks past the fabric of my clothes and pricks at my skin—if one of them is a champ and one of her isn’t, would that make me feel sorry for her?
I sneak a glance at her. Her eyes are on the tracks. Figures. Champs and almost-champs, they’re always looking ahead. So now I’m doing it, too, and feeling proud of my new focus on the immediate future. We stand there, not just waiting for the train but willing it closer. She doesn’t ask me any more about my dad, and it’s a blessed relief. The thing about the gym is nobody is all that interested in what your life is like outside its walls. It’s just not that important.
* * *
The next few days are brutal. I stand just outside the front door and listen before I walk in on anything. Ma is shouting less than she usually does. I wonder if he’s gone and done it this time, made her into the woman he’s always wanted her to be. That she sometimes tries to be when she gets that look in her eye with him. All soft and sweet, like one of those prim ladies from movies about the fifties who always have the house kept well, dinner ready, and still manage to stay out of everyone’s way. These days she actually tries to avoid him, step around him when he’s there, turn away when she sees him coming. Maybe she’s learning some defence of her own, but I think it just makes him angrier. I don’t mean to sound judgy…it’s just that her footwork needs some fine-tuning.
* * *
Jab, cross, hook, uppercut. One, two, three, four. Bap bap bap bap. It’s about the rhythm, see?
“Come on,” says Ricky, who’s holding pads for me. “Ten swing kicks.” So I give him ten, and we go back to combos.
Knee. Double knee. Push back, swing kick. Do it fifty times, then join conditioning class for some weight training.
I beg Kru to put me on for a demo coming up.
“You sure you’re ready this time?”
“I’m ready, Kru. I want this.”
He sighs. Rubs at the imaginary hairs on his jaw. “I’ll think about it.”
That night, Kru’s ex from last year comes in like it’s nothing and watches us train from the bench. Nobody can focus because we wonder what he’s gonna do about it. She won’t leave, just sits there painting her nails. In a Muay Thai gym. A drip of electric-blue polish falls on the mat and we hope he’s gonna throw down. But he doesn’t. He’s too busy helping us be the best fighters we can be to even notice that basic shit.
This only makes us respect him more. Train harder, even though it’s almost impossible to ignore the presence of this soft woman with her hard face. We want to be the best for Kru. To be ready to drop and give him fifty push-ups at any point in our day. Train harder. Be stronger. Faster. Control our emotions as he does—ignoring the ladies in our lives that make everything difficult.
Be ready for whatever life throws at us.
“You never know what can happen,” Aunty K said recently. She was talking about last year in Trinidad when someone tried to kidnap my dad, which happens to people there all the time, on account of all the drugs and general mayhem. We’d even knocked Colombia off the list for most kidnappings for a while. Congrats to everybody.
Dad had the sense to defend himself and chase his attacker off, but sometimes I wish he wasn’t so very prepared for what life threw at him. I see the transformation in Ma when he’s around. She becomes smaller and fiercer. She cleaves onto me so tight. At these times, I know there’s a difference between smothering and mothering, but I can’t remember what it is.
I have this fantasy, right. Ma will come to see me fight and Kru will be there and they’ll fall in love and I’ll get a free gym membership forever, with a set of hand wraps thrown in.
This is some childish bullshit, I know. But I can’t help it. When I heard Dad almost got taken, that’s what I came back to first. Ma and me, Kru and the gym. Just us. No one else. Dad like a faded photo from the past, shoved into some dark corner where he’ll never bother us again. Like somebody we used to know. Memories fading with the bruises on her body.