five
My next fight, a demo fundraiser for the gym’s competition season, the one I specifically begged Kru to put me in, is a disappointment. The girl I’m up against doesn’t even show, so I’ve got to spar in the ring with Jason, a Mexican guy a year older than me. A college boy. He trained at another gym in the city before coming here to take advantage of a week free pass, and then never left. We’re the same height and he thinks he’s the shit but his conditioning is lacking at best. Even though he has abs of steel, apparently they’re just for show. He gets gassed in the first round and I just play him until I land a push kick to his stomach. He goes flying across the ring and Kru steps in with a giddy smile and throws both mine and Jason’s hands up in victory, even though everyone knows I won.
Jason wraps me in celebratory hug. He’s way too happy for a guy who just lost to a girl. I notice for the first time that he smells better than he should for a guy who just finished a fight. And I suddenly wonder how I must smell to him, which is not what I want to be thinking about after my victory.
Thankfully, the crowd is still cheering. I can tell that I made Kru proud.
Kru, with his shinbone like a blade that can slice right through you. Like one of those knives you order off the television, sharp and precise. Truly, I’ve never seen anything like it. Kru could have been a fighter in his own right, a contender, but he had woman troubles. That’s what some people whisper behind his back. Me and the other fighters couldn’t care less about that. The others tend to glare at those people until they shut up, but I mostly just ignore them. Who am I to listen to them, to judge Kru? I’ve got nuff woman troubles of my own.
Kru holds the ropes apart for me so I can slide through. Jason’s already out, so Kru follows me with a hand on my shoulder. He’s beaming and looks so happy that I start to feel happy, too. Maybe he’ll even let me fight next month against that girl from that west-side gym, the one I lost to last year.
Because I’m no Jason. I can handle a hit.
The first time I took a kick to the stomach, full on with my belly relaxed, I thought I was going to die. Noor was the one that did it. It was a teep and the full force of her blow went ramming through me, an anvil of female power like you never knew existed. I dry-heaved over the bin for a good five minutes and she sat with me afterwards, her arm slung around my shoulders, while tears of frustration and pain streamed down my face.
Kru waited for me outside the ladies’ locker room and raised his slim self, corded with lean muscle, to his full height while he peered at me. He’s no more than an inch or so taller than me, so he can’t exactly do the looking down thing he sometimes tries to do. The looking down is implied. “You have to tense, Trish,” he said, rapping his hard belly.
By then I was all cried out. Only fourteen then, a baby. So soft. Pathetic. I nodded and we worked on it for the rest of the year.
Crunch. Medicine ball dropped on my stomach on the flex.
Crunch. Drop. Throw up. Crunch. Drop.
But I learned. In the end, I learned that it could feel so good.
Was this what Ma felt when my father hit her where nobody would see? A flare of pleasure in the pain?
“You let her hurt you too much,” Kru had said after my first fight, which was just after I turned sixteen. It was against a Brazilian chick from Buffalo I had at least five pounds on. I should have crushed her because her right crosses were like feather taps, but she knew how to land her swing kicks, right at the spot where my quads ended and a world of pain began. I lost, by decision. Kru thought I was too hurt to fight back, a girl that small. But he was wrong, wasn’t he? Because, for some reason, I found myself leaning into her blows.
* * *
After the demo I go straight home to study. I’m trying for advanced acceptance to Ryerson University for business management, and I need to have at least a B average. My grades are usually around there, but you never know. And I have to get in. Ever since Kru opened up a new gym in downtown Toronto, I don’t even want to consider the other options.
I don’t expect anyone to be home because Dad is usually out with his friends at all hours of the day and Ma’s working day shift at the hospital, so she isn’t going to be around for sure. When she’s not there, there’s no food, and he’s not going to stick around on an empty belly.
But there he is. On the couch, watching a cricket match on TV. Eating the tamarind balls he brought for me. His phone lights up and plays an old calypso, “Bassman,” but he doesn’t bother to answer the call.
“What?” he says to me, when I stare at him. Or, specifically, the tamarind candy in his hand. “You wasn’t eating them, Missy.”
Because he’s here and he’s hungry I can tell he’s waiting for Ma. It’s in the darkness of his mood. The fact that his rum shop friends are trying to reach him but he doesn’t want to answer them. So I go to the kitchen and fry up some bake, triangles of fluffy dough that I slather with butter and cheese, just the way he likes it. He doesn’t even say thanks, as usual.
“You’re too skinny, girl,” he says, without even looking at me. “You should eat something.”
“Okay.”
This is a standard example of our sparkling conversation.
“You have a boyfriend yet?”
I think about Jason. “No.”
“What about that boy from next door you always with?”
Columbus? Ew. “Definitely not.”
Dad seems as glad about this as I am. “Good. You need to focus on your studies. Where’s your Mommy?”
I hate it when he calls her my Mommy. It’s a Trini thing, but still. There’s no reason to keep everything from the old country. Isn’t that why we came to this new country? To leave behind all the awkward crap? “At work, probably.”
“Probably?”
I shrug. I’m not her keeper. Dad’s phone rings just then, so I’m spared more of this quality bonding time.
“Eat something,” he says before answering the phone and shouting to one of his friends about how cold it is up here. Surprise surprise. You’re in Canada now. Maybe put on a jacket?
There is no way in hell I can eat fried dough post-workout, so I mix a protein shake and gulp it on the way upstairs. About an hour later I hear him leave the house. I go to the kitchen and eat the rest of the tamarind balls.
My phone buzzes. It’s Columbus. Can I come over now? No doubt smelling the fried dough from his house. We do share a wall, after all.
Use your keys, I’m not coming down.
Not sure why Ma first gave Pammy keys, only that her and Columbus have had them hanging in their kitchen for as long as I can remember. Columbus uses them most often to scrounge around for food, but not usually when Dad is here. I guess we’ve both been waiting for Dad to leave, for the reprieve. I hope there’s some to spare for Ma.