Gravity

by Sarah Deming

  Gravity grinned; Ms. Laventhol was such a nerd. She replied to her comment, “Yeh but you said Gravity was the weakest of all those forces.” Ms. Laventhol must have been online, because she replied instantly, “Glad to see something sank in during all those naps! ;) Yes, it’s the weakest, but on the planetary level, it’s the only one that matters.”

  As she was hitting Like on that, another comment popped up, making her heart flutter:

  keestothekingdom: I see you, boo. Happy <3 Day. Stay undefeated.

  She liked it and turned off her phone.

  No time for that now, she told herself. Eyes on the prize.

  But the memories flooded in. Keeshawn was the first boy she had ever really kissed. Well, technically the only boy. Not that she hadn’t had other chances, but there was always so much else going on.

  Gravity closed her eyes. Just one time. She would think about it once, because it was Valentine’s Day, and then she would put boys out of her mind.

  She had met Keeshawn at the track in the park by Broadway Junction. The first few times she saw him, they had just nodded and checked out each other’s moves. He was a sprinter who lived uptown but had family in Bushwick. He had long dreadlocks and legs that went on for days. When he hit full speed on the straightaways, Gravity held her breath for joy.

  The first time they had spoken was the day she brought her agility ladder. She had laid it on the grass and gotten lost in the patterns. When she paused, panting, before the third set, she saw him at her elbow. She still remembered what he was wearing: a solar-yellow tank top, little navy shorts, and tube socks that stretched over his powerful calves. He flashed her a million-dollar smile and asked if he could work it with her.

  It had been six months since he moved to Miami with his mom, but he was always leaving little positive affirmations on her workout pics, sometimes with eyeballs or hearts at the end.

  She wallowed in sweetness as she remembered that last workout. The way he had stretched her out at the end. The way he had kissed her, finally, pressed up against a pole in the subway station, waiting for his train to Inwood and hers to Far Rockaway. Many A trains had come and gone while they kissed goodbye. Even though it was her first real kiss, Gravity had known just what to do.

  Before he left, Keeshawn pulled back to look at her, his strong arms still wrapped around her waist. He said, “The way you work is beautiful. It’s like your religion.”

  She had wanted to tell him how beautiful he was too, but her brain was on the ropes. She felt his kisses everywhere in her body.

  His last words to her were: “Don’t mess around with these young boys. They’ll only drag you down.”

  She smiled at that. Kee was only a year older than her.

  Sexy Keeshawn. He gave her sweet dreams.

  Casinos were weird places. They went on and on, and the lighting stayed the same, night and day. The slot machines emitted a constant stream of electronic burbling that floated through the cigarette and vape fumes. Gravity had excellent lung capacity and could hold her breath for the entire two and a half minutes it took to reach the ballroom, but she couldn’t avoid imbibing the misery: All those elderly and obese people, pressing buttons like zombies. The drunks, who made Gravity cringe with shame, thinking of her mother. The craps players, who made her sad, thinking of Tray.

  D-Minus’s brother had gotten killed at a dice game. Boo Boo had told her the story. It was a cee-lo game up in the Bronx, and Tray hadn’t even been the one playing. He had just been hanging on the corner.

  Boo Boo said Tray was more calm than D-Minus, but he had the same zero-tolerance policy toward disrespect. When a gangbanger came swaggering down the sidewalk and walked straight through the dice game, Tray said, “Yo! What’s up with that?”

  Those were his last words. The kid pulled out his gun and shot Tray three times in the chest. Just like that.

  “And the fucked-up thing?” Boo Boo said. “That’s exactly how D’s pops died: three bullets to the heart. Only he got shot by cops.”

  Gravity often thought back to that very first time she had seen D-Minus. He had ridden into the gym on his bike, done a wheelie, and given her that smile like the sun coming out from the clouds. And Tray had died just one week before.

  How could D have smiled like that? It was impossible to know. He had the best game face of anyone she knew.

  When she pushed through the ballroom doors, she spotted him immediately, working pads with Fatso inside a circle of admirers. It was customary to warm up where your opponent’s corner could not watch you and analyze your moves, but D-Minus had stationed himself right next to the Chicago crew, whose stony-faced coaches made a great show of ignoring him.

  His opponent, Tiger Biggs, was shorter than D and had thick legs with veins that popped out of his calves. That made Gravity nervous, because Coach always said power came from the earth and that it was more important to have strong legs than strong arms.

  One of the Chicago coaches, a beefy white man in a tank top that said “Beast Mode,” nodded to her. He gestured at Tiger with his stopwatch.

  “He does the same dynamic warm-up every time,” he announced. “Research shows that consistency breeds confidence.”

  Gravity had never heard a boxing person talk about research before. The man’s booming voice sounded vaguely familiar. His skin was this weird orange color that looked sprayed on.

  “It’s a jungle out there,” he said. “Evolve or die! Journal articles, conferences, seminars, webinars! I’ve listened to over a thousand TED Talks this year!” Without warning, he blew his whistle.

  “Ow!” Gravity clapped a hand to her ear.

  “Pain is weakness leaving the body,” he said.

  Now she realized why his voice sounded familiar! “You’re Rick Ross, aren’t you? ‘Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body’ was the title of one of your podcasts!”

  He lifted his mirrored shades and winked, then reached into his fanny pack and gave her a business card. One side had a glossy photograph of him in a Speedo that made Gravity kind of uncomfortable. The other side said:

  Mr. Rick Ross, B.S., C.P.T., C.S.C.S., R.D.

  Strength and Conditioning Expert

  For Elite Athletes and Celebrities ONLY

  ROSS IS BOSS!!!!!!!!

  Founder and CEO, BeastModeTM, UltraBeastModeTM, BeautyAndTheBeastTM

  Sole Authorized North American Distributor, Mitochondria MilkTM

  ASK ME HOW TO MAKE YOUR JUICE OR SMOOTHIE MIGHTY WITH MITOCHONDRIA MILKTM!!!

  Gravity put the card in her pocket.

  “Just look at them,” Rick Ross said sadly, gesturing with his stopwatch at D-Minus and Fatso. “They probably still do back squats and run in plastic suits. I feel bad for that kid, because you can tell he’s talented, but talent without technique is like a gun without bullets.”

  “What’s wrong with plastic suits?”

  Gravity had run five laps around the casino yesterday in hers. She’d lost a whole pound.

  “If you’re dehydrating this late in the game, you’re not in shape. I’ve had Tiger on weight for two weeks now. His diet is strictly Paleolithic, plus performance-enhancing smoothies.”

  Gravity watched with concern as D-Minus, having worked up a sweat on the pads, emptied the dregs of a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos into his mouth. She said goodbye to Rick and went to join her teammates, who had taken up seats on the first row of bleachers.

  D came out fast at the bell and stood in center ring, glaring at Tiger with hostile glee. Gravity had never seen him look so handsome. The blue NY Metro tank top hung loosely on his lean frame. He wore his trunks low over his cup, “RIP Tray” embroidered in royal blue across the waist. Sweat silvered his shoulders and the high shelves of his calves.

  The two bantamweights began a dangerous game of feints. Tiger flicked his left, and D-Minus slipped
a jab that never came. D-Minus twitched a shoulder, and Tiger tightened his guard. Tiger did a little stutter step, and D-Minus retreated, spooked.

  “Quit playing!” hollered Genya. “Let your hands go!”

  But Gravity loved this part of a boxing match: the delicious tension before the real fight broke out. It started with a corny shoulder feint from Tiger that even Gravity could see through. D-Minus just laughed and stuck out his tongue, and before the referee could reprimand him, he hurled a lead right that connected with the sweet spot at the tip of Tiger’s chin. Tiger’s sturdy legs wobbled. If there had been a hook behind it, he might have gone down.

  Gravity leapt to her feet.

  It was the kind of punch—thrown with contempt and abandon—that changes the whole night. Suddenly D-Minus’s handspeed and timing seemed entirely out of Tiger’s league.

  Gravity screamed, “Body, body!”

  But D was on it. He found a place beneath Tiger’s right floating rib that made the other boy freeze with pain. Before D could follow up, the referee thrust his arm between them.

  It was a standing eight count!

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” yelled Svetlana.

  But the bell rang before D had time to press his advantage. Tiger staggered back to his stool, while D-Minus danced to the corner. Instead of sitting down, he did an Ali shuffle.

  Gravity frowned. They didn’t like showboating in the amateurs. Fatso must have felt the same way, because he pushed D-Minus down onto the stool, where he gripped the sides of his headgear and began yelling angrily. D acted like he was paying attention, but the minute Fatso turned to rinse the mouthpiece, he jumped off his stool and leaned over the ropes toward Carmen Cruz, who sat ringside.

  “Write about that body shot!” he yelled.

  Carmen laughed and yelled back, “The fight is just beginning.”

  She was right. They had worked some kind of magic in Tiger’s corner, because their fighter ran out for the second round on steady legs and fired a strong one-two. D-Minus blocked the jab and slipped the right, but Gravity’s stomach sank. When someone takes your best shot and recovers, it does something bad to your confidence. Gravity could tell that D-Minus and Tiger both felt it. The momentum had shifted.

  The first two times Tiger backed D-Minus to the ring’s edge, D spun off as soon as his calf touched the bottom rope, but the third time, it was the corner, and Tiger cut off the angles. D’s torso was a blue blur as he slipped and rolled, but every tenth punch or so, Tiger would connect. Then the blur would resolve itself into a snapshot of her friend, drops of sweat frozen in the air around him, his handsome face transfixed with concentration and pain. Finally the bell rang, ending what Gravity thought might have been the worst three minutes of her life.

  Fatso leapt into the ring, moving with astonishing speed for a man of his size. He grabbed D beneath the armpits and steered him back to the stool, where Boca emptied an entire bottle of water down his tank top while Fatso knelt on the canvas, frantically rubbing his thighs.

  During the terrible third round, Gravity recalled something Coach had said once, when they were watching Larry Holmes versus Gerry Cooney: “The longer the fight lasts, the more the truth comes out.”

  The truth was that D-Minus was the more beautiful boxer. He switched southpaw and rolled with Tiger’s punches with a desperate grace, the white fringe that ran below the waistband of his trunks always in motion. As she watched, Gravity saw his heart. She also saw all those mornings he had slept in instead of doing roadwork, all the nights he had hung out late. She winced as he ate a big right uppercut that made his head snap back. It got an eight count.

  “That’s all right!” she yelled. “We’ll get it back.”

  Her team had gone silent, as people will when their friend is losing badly. Svetlana wore the stricken expression of someone watching a house burn down. Monster had pulled out his cell phone. Genya and Lefty were snickering and making jokes about muggings, which was just their way of coping. At the final bell, the only ones still cheering were Gravity and the elderly couple from Denny’s.

  When they raised Tiger’s hand, D-Minus acted like he didn’t care. He hugged Tiger and touched gloves with the corner, but he did it like he was sleepwalking. Gravity hated seeing him that way. She rushed to ringside to tell him—well, she wasn’t sure what she would tell him—but he brushed past her like she wasn’t there.

  Gravity left the ballroom and held her breath as she strode between the slot machines and gaming tables. She had at least forty-five minutes before she needed to get warmed up for Aaliyah, and she wanted to clear her mind. When she got to the lobby, she saw the familiar figure of Carmen Cruz, who must have also needed a break from the action. Carmen was standing in front of the mural of the Kalispel Tribe, studying it intensely and scribbling in her little notebook.

  When Gravity came to stand beside her, she did not even say hello, just gestured to a photo of a young Kalispel woman in traditional dress.

  “Look how beautiful,” Carmen said.

  The woman’s eyes were like lasers. Gravity wondered what her life had been like to give her eyes that fierce. Gravity stood beside Carmen and took her time reading the text.

  It talked about the tribe’s history, hunting and fishing across the Pacific Northwest until the whites came and confined the Kalispel to a tiny reservation on the Pend Oreille River. The reservation looked beautiful—there were even buffalo—but poverty, illiteracy, and alcoholism were widespread. The display said the casino money was helping revive the tribe’s dying language, which was called Salish.

  Gravity got so lost in the story that she almost jumped when a voice said, “Well, hello there, ladies!”

  A stout man in a Vision Quest baseball cap stood beside them, twinkling.

  He said, “How do you like our historical display?”

  “It’s wonderful, Francis!” Carmen said. “Very moving.”

  “I wish the other journalists were as interested as you, Carmen,” he said.

  Gravity studied the man. His laughing eyes and round cheeks made her think of Santa Claus, but he didn’t have a beard.

  “Are you one of the Kalispel?” she asked.

  “Francis, tribal elder.” He gave her a warm handshake.

  “Francis has been to all the fights,” Carmen said. “I think we’ve converted him to a boxing fan.”

  “My people have fallen in love with the boxers, especially you young ladies,” he said. “Watching you fight for recognition is very spiritual. The Kalispel love underdogs.”

  Gravity glanced back at the photo of the young woman with the fierce eyes. “Are there Kalispel warriors?”

  Francis laughed. “We’re lovers, not fighters. But things get pretty intense when we play the stick game.”

  He told them some great stories then about a jingle dress, an old canoe, and his first eagle feather. Francis spoke in a way that was very smooth, but he was different from Carmen Cruz, who was smooth because she was always writing things down in her head, or Andre Vázquez, who was smooth because he was always selling something. Francis was smooth like a politician. Not like he was lying or anything, but like he knew that he was representing a lot of people and that Carmen was taking notes.

  “It must have been hard, growing up on the reservation,” Gravity said.

  Francis said, “It was. There was one phone line for the whole tribe. The well water was orange. You could make green Kool-Aid, and it would still come out orange.” He shrugged. “But what do I know, really? I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

  Gravity nodded. That was like growing up without a father. She thought it was hard, but she had nothing to compare it to. Maybe things would have been worse with Dad around. She looked back at the mural and sighed. Everybody had such a sad story. D-Minus. Her opponent tonight, Aaliyah Williams. The Kalispel. She supposed someb
ody might even think her story was sad, if they didn’t understand how boxing fixed everything.

  “I have a question,” Carmen announced. She paused, like a boxer loading up for a power punch. “Your display says that alcoholism has devastated your community.”

  Francis nodded gravely. “I saw many of my friends destroyed.”

  “Then why do you make your living in this way?” Carmen asked, waving her notebook toward the casino.

  Gravity looked at Carmen in surprise. Gravity had wondered the same thing, but she would never have asked Francis, for fear of coming across as rude.

  But he did not seem to take offense. He answered carefully, “At first, when we opened the casino, we did not serve alcohol. The elders who came before me forbade it. There were many conflicts among us, but in the end we needed the profits to help our people.” He spread his hands. “I am not proud of it, but it was a necessary evil.”

  A necessary evil. Gravity thought of what she had done to Svetlana, of what she hoped to do tonight to Aaliyah. Life was hard sometimes. That was one reason she liked boxing: It was like life. You played basketball or football but nobody played boxing.

  She glanced across the lobby at the clock.

  “The young lady has somewhere to be,” Carmen said.

  “I have to fight soon,” she said, feeling a wave of excitement rise up inside her.

  “I have a feeling you’re going to win!” Francis said.

  Gravity laughed. “Me too!”

  He laid a warm hand on her shoulder. “Come, I’ll walk you back.”

  Gravity slid between the ropes of the big ring like she was sliding into a warm bath. A calm had come over her since her talk with Francis and Carmen. All boxers believe in luck, and Gravity felt that her meeting with the tribal elder was a sign. She knelt in prayer and said the Shema. She thanked God for making her a boxer. She thanked Him for letting her get this far. She asked for fair judging and safety for herself and Aaliyah. At the end, she said, “And let it be the fight of the night.”