Gravity

by Sarah Deming

  The DJ put on some Marc Anthony.

  Gravity’s body felt so soft all of a sudden. When Lefty hooked a finger through one of the belt loops on her jeans and pulled, she let him. They stood like that for five heartbeats, their bodies almost touching.

  She could smell his cologne beneath the sweet smell of whatever he had in his flask. He took a half step back and, with incredible gentleness, guided her left hand to his shoulder and clasped her right in his. With his other hand on her waist, he began to move her body with the music.

  “You don’t know how to salsa,” he said.

  She tried to pull away, embarrassed, but he wouldn’t let her.

  “Shh. Just follow.”

  It was harder than merengue but not that bad if she looked down and mirrored the motion of his Vans. Lefty counted softly in her ear. She glanced over his shoulder to see if D-Minus or anyone else had noticed, but as soon as she looked around, her feet got messed up.

  Lefty scolded her and pulled her close. He slid his hand from the side of her waist to her hip bone. She slid her hand from his shoulder to the nape of his neck, where his hair was buzzed close. He reached around toward the back pocket of her jeans.

  Maybe he would write a song about her. It would mostly be about boxing, but there would be romance in it too.

  “Here.”

  He slipped something into her hand. She looked down and saw that it was the flask. A bit of liquid sloshed around in the bottom.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Just drink.”

  He had salsaed them off into the darkness and relative quiet at the back of the dance floor. Gravity sniffed at the mouth of the flask. It smelled like dessert. She put it to her lips and sipped. It was delicious.

  “Good, huh?” said Lefty. “Amaretto.”

  “Tray’s drink,” Gravity said.

  “How did you know that?” He looked at her with surprise and sudden sadness.

  Lefty had been best friends with Tray. Boo Boo said he had taken his death really hard, maybe even harder than D.

  “From your tribute song ‘Brother’s Keeper.’ I liked that part where you talk about how, when you were little, you could only afford one pair of gloves, so you wore the left one and he wore the right one, and you sparred inside a chalk square on the stoop. It felt like I was there.” She blushed, remembering the part about how Lefty and Tray would make love to different girls side by side in the same bed.

  “Dang, Gravity. Thanks.”

  His eyes were so dark and sad. Gravity looked down at her flats. She always wore flats, because she was taller than a lot of boys her age. Lefty was exactly her height, though, so they were eye to eye, and she was afraid to gaze at him too long. It was like a staredown in the ring, only something other than a fight was going to break out.

  She wished she could think up an excuse to touch him again. Some girls were so good at that. Melsy was always touching everyone. She would laugh and set her hand gently on your arm in a way that made you feel special. Gravity didn’t know how to do that. She tried to remember how it had started with Keeshawn that one time in the subway.

  She said, “I always wanted to ask you. At the end of your song about Salvador Sánchez, I get this funny feeling in my stomach, thinking about Wilfredo Gómez doing drugs in the bathroom of the Boxing Hall of Fame. It’s, like, kind of funny? But it’s sad at the same—”

  He kissed her. Gravity was so surprised that she tried to back away, but he had her in the corner, so there was no place to go.

  “Irony,” he said. “That’s called irony.”

  A thousand pleasures and a thousand worries battled in her mind—Had she remembered to brush her teeth? What would Fatso think if he knew? What about D-Minus?—but then Lefty moved his hands from her rib cage downward, and she lost all the strength in her legs. She let out a little whimper and reached out for him, and he held her there, pinned to the wall, his knee between her legs and his tongue between her teeth and his warm hands everywhere.

  After a while, she felt a sharp object pressing the seam of her jeans. When she looked down, she saw it was a keycard.

  “Western New England went home,” he whispered. “But their rooms are booked through the end of the tournament.”

  This feels better than boxing, she thought.

  Then she stopped thinking altogether.

  Gravity sighed and rolled onto her side. She pulled a braid across her nostrils and inhaled his cologne, which still lingered in her hair. She reached over onto the nightstand for her gold medal and lay there, just holding it and basking in the quiet and the sunshine coming through the sheer drapes.

  Once they had gotten their clothes off, she’d told him, “You’re prettier than me.”

  He hadn’t argued; she hadn’t minded. Each of his tattoos had a story, and he told her all of them.

  She had told him it was her first time, and he seemed happy about that. It only hurt a little, right at the beginning.

  Putting the medal on so it lay heavy between her breasts, she felt a delicious laziness all over. Coach told his male fighters, “Women weaken legs.” He said if they had sex before a fight, they would go in vulnerable. Gravity wondered if that applied to females, too.

  It was true that something felt loose in her quadriceps. She didn’t feel like fighting or doing roadwork. Rolling out of bed, she padded over to the bathroom mirror.

  She looked just the same, apart from the gold medal. She wasn’t sure what she’d thought would be different. Her eyes maybe. Maybe she should look more sexy or grown. Like a woman, not a girl. But she was still the same old Gravity: the black-brown eyes that were too small and squinty; the gap between her two front teeth; the broad nose that was good for boxing, because it never broke and hardly ever bled. Her hair was fuzzy now at the scalp where it escaped from the braids. High on her left cheekbone was a tiny bruise from the bout against Paloma, and there was a new mark on her right eyebrow from the rematch with Aaliyah.

  She smiled, remembering how Lefty had kissed it and said it looked pretty.

  No, it wasn’t that she looked any different. It was that she felt different. On the inside. More alive.

  As she headed down to the buffet, she was halfway hoping everybody would have already eaten and left. The sight of them lingering over empty cereal bowls set her heart pounding. She had no idea what to expect.

  Would Lefty ignore her and act like nothing had happened? Worse, would he have gossiped? Would they all slut-shame her?

  Everyone was there: D-Minus, sulking; Svetlana, bent over her cell phone; Genya, wearing his own gold medal and holding an ice pack to his neck; Monster, editing photos on the new laptop Andre had given him; Fatso, reading The Book of Five Rings; Boca, reorganizing his trainer’s bag; and, leaning back in his chair with his long legs stretched out, Lefty.

  When he looked up at her with those dark eyes, Gravity felt an ache beneath her gold medal, as though he was squeezing her heart. For all the time they had spent together, she felt like she understood less about him than before. She wanted to learn what made his eyes so sad and what his family was like and where he got the ideas for his songs.

  “Hey, boo,” he said. “I saved you some Cap’n Crunch.”

  He uncrossed his legs and indicated that she should sit in his lap.

  Gravity was stunned. Of all the things he could have done, this was the least expected. She couldn’t help glancing across at D-Minus. He met her eyes with a glare of such intense hatred that she froze momentarily. All the other boys were studiously avoiding her eyes, but Fatso lifted up his tiny reading glasses and studied her, a look of mild distaste on his face. Gravity wanted to turn around and go back to her room, but then Svetlana looked at her and smiled encouragement.

  Gravity crossed the room in a kind of trance and sat down in Lefty’s lap. She tried not to let on ho
w good it made her feel.

  Fatso said sarcastically, “How’d you sleep, champ?”

  “Good.”

  He slid the milk in her direction. Gravity studied Fatso’s face, trying to think of some way to get back whatever status she had lost, but she could not come up with a game plan. Lefty wrapped his hands around her waist.

  She supposed Fatso would get over it. They all would. Everyone had accepted Svetlana and Boo Boo being a couple.

  “Don’t take too much time to celebrate,” Fatso told her. “You have Continentals soon.”

  Gravity shoveled cereal into her mouth, suddenly enormously hungry. “I know. I’m gonna stay on weight.”

  Lefty whispered in her ear: “Eat up. We got that room for three more hours.”

  Gravity stood before her apartment, keys in one hand, luggage in the other. She unzipped her jacket so the gold medal showed. As the national champion, she would get a monthly stipend of two thousand dollars. Her life was going to be better and different from now on.

  She took a deep breath and unlocked her front door. Inside, it was dark, and it smelled bad, like rotting food.

  “Mom? Ty?” she called.

  Gravity went to switch off the television, and that was when she saw her mother, lying on the floor next to the sofa, unmoving. The baby quilt Auntie Rosa had made for Tyler stretched across her face.

  For a moment, blind terror seized Gravity. Then her mother snored.

  “Mom?”

  Gravity shook her gently, then more vigorously.

  “Mom! I’m home! I won!”

  More snores. Gravity glanced around the apartment, noting the empty vodka bottles and Chinese takeout containers scattered across the coffee table. A half-full jug of Gallo burgundy next to her mother’s head held a drowned cockroach.

  Gravity pulled out her phone to text her cousin that she was home. She cracked a window and began to clean, deliberately banging the wine jug down on the counter and letting the cabinet doors slam, but her mother did not stir. She dragged all the trash into the hall, held open the wedge-shaped door of the trash chute, and stared down into it.

  When she was a little girl, that chute had fascinated her. She’d had fantasies of climbing inside it with Tyler and sliding way, way down to land softly in a big pile of trash. And then a truck would come and take them to a boat, and the boat would take them somewhere their mother could never find them.

  She let the chute fall closed and went back inside, where she knelt down to scoop her mother up off the floor. Recoiling at her sour breath, she slid her onto the couch, smoothed her hair back from her face, and tucked the quilt in around her.

  “Well, Mom,” she said bitterly. “I did it. I’m the national champion. See?”

  As she shook her medal in front of her mother’s closed eyes, Gravity was seized with an almost uncontrollable urge to strike her. One sharp smack across that milky skin. Those long, delicate eyelashes snapping open in shock. Paying attention, for one split second, to the fact of Gravity’s existence.

  A lot of moms would feel lucky to have a daughter who was the best in the country at something. Boo Boo’s mom was making Svetlana a whole big barbecue, and she hadn’t even won.

  Gravity stood before the living room window, pulling out the dead leaves in her mother’s spider plants, then went back and forth from the sink to the window until they all got enough water. She stared out the window at the dull courtyard of their apartment, thinking about Sonny Liston.

  One time, when Gravity had complained to Coach about her mother never coming to her fights, Coach had said that if Gravity thought she had it hard, she ought to feel lucky she wasn’t Sonny Liston. Sonny’s dad had twenty-five kids and beat them so hard they got scars. Coach said Sonny had gone to jail and knocked heads for the Mob and that all the pain in Sonny’s heart came out the hammers of his hands.

  Together they had watched the YouTube video of Sonny Liston’s demolition of Floyd Patterson to win the heavyweight championship of the world. The fight was in Chicago in 1962. On the plane home to Philadelphia, Sonny rehearsed the speech he had written for all the people who would be there when he landed to congratulate him. It was a speech about the American dream.

  The plane landed at the airport and Sonny stepped out, ready to address the crowd. Except there was no crowd. The runway was bare. People didn’t want a black heavyweight champion who had been to jail. That wasn’t their American dream.

  When Gravity dropped off her luggage in her bedroom, she saw her empty trophy case. It was bare. All of it was gone: her Silver Gloves trophies, her PAL Nationals cup, even the plaque she had gotten for volunteering every Thanksgiving at the food pantry. For a moment, her vision went starry, and she clutched her gold medal until it dug into the flesh of her hand. When her sight returned, all she could feel was rage.

  She was going to kill her mother.

  She was going to kill her with her bare hands.

  Her phone chirped. It took her a moment to hear it through the pounding of her blood. She pulled it out of her pocket and blinked at it, her hands shaking so badly it was hard to dial in the passcode: 1009, Tyler’s birthday.

  It was Melsy.

  Hey cuz welcome home!!! Come asap we have pizza.

  Gravity had started to reply when another text came in.

  Don’t freak out, we have your trophies. Hurry pizza getting cold.

  Gravity took a long, shaky breath and slid the phone back into her pocket. She walked through the living room, keeping her eyes averted from her mother, and straight out into the night. Past the Cyclone roller coaster and the kiddie rides at Luna Park, she lingered on the boardwalk a moment, breathing in the cold sea air and willing herself to be calm.

  Her phone chirped again. This time it was Lefty, who had gone to Boo Boo’s barbecue and was texting party pictures. She scrolled through them, feeling sorry for herself and jealous of Svetlana, until she got to the last picture and almost dropped the phone. It was a dick pic. It looked like he had taken it in Boo Boo’s bathroom.

  Gravity stared at it, shocked, before deleting it. Then she went to the deleted pictures and stared at it some more. He was holding himself in one hand, hard, while he took the selfie with the other. In the background, you could see Boo Boo’s little brother Nigel’s action figures lined up on the side of the tub. Lefty had added the caption Thinking of you and a heart-eyes emoji.

  Why would he do that?

  She closed her eyes and remembered the smell of it, like baby powder and musk. The feel of it in her hands, surprisingly hard yet so warm and alive. The feeling of it inside her, filling her up. Then she opened her eyes and looked at it again.

  It was just kind of weird-looking. The hottest part, actually, was his hand. Maybe if he’d cropped out the bath mat? Or made it black-and-white? Everything looked better in black-and-white.

  That made her think of what Monster had said, about how all the boxers in her gym looked better in black-and-white except for D-Minus, who could pull off color. She smiled as D’s face came to her imagination: those high cheekbones, those changeable eyes. She knew what Monster meant: D was just drawn in brighter colors than the rest of them. Then she felt embarrassed, because it was weird to think about D-Minus while looking at Lefty’s dick. She emptied the Recently Deleted folder and jogged to the subway.

  Her auntie lived in a tiny, bright one-bedroom in Washington Heights, high up on a winding street by Fort Tryon Park. It was an hour and a half by subway. Totally worth it when she saw what her family had done for her.

  “Surprise!” yelled Melsy.

  “Surprise!” yelled Tyler.

  They leapt from the sofa when they saw her and started blowing noisemakers and jumping up and down. There were homemade banners taped up all around the living room that said “Welcome Home, Champ” with screen grabs printed out from the livestreams of
her fights that showed her landing shots on Svetlana, Paloma, and Aaliyah.

  And “pizza” had been an understatement, because in addition to two enticingly greasy boxes from Como, Gravity saw a stack of pupusas from the Salvadoran place, a roast chicken, yucca with onions, her auntie’s famous coconut rice, a Caesar salad, Krispy Kremes, a platter of cheese cubes and grapes, a butterscotch pie, and a bowl of shrimp cocktail.

  Ty barreled into her so hard that she staggered backward, laughing, and bonked her head on the door. Next came Melsy, smelling of honey and melting into her arms. As her cool, soft cheek pressed against Gravity’s, she murmured, “You can start your diet tomorrow.”

  “Is that pizza?” Gravity said. “It better have black olives and onions!”

  “Ew, gross!” yelled Tyler. He had this thing about black olives looking like cockroaches, and he viewed onions as a personal insult.

  “I got one with black olives and one with sausage,” said Melsy diplomatically. She opened the boxes and slid succulent greasy slices onto paper plates.

  “Why’d you take so long!” Tyler said. “The food got cold and Auntie Rosa fell asleep!”

  “Sorry.” Gravity stroked his hair, which was buzzed on the sides into a subtle Mohawk and felt crisp with styling gel: clearly Melsy’s influence. “I just needed to straighten up a little at home.”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment as they attacked the pizza. Gravity double-fisted her slice with a pupusa while working in occasional cubes of Swiss cheese. All her big talk about staying on weight melted in the face of this onslaught of deliciousness. Tomorrow was another day.

  Midway into Auntie Rosa’s famous coconut rice, Tyler blurted out, “Melsy made me stay here the whole time you were away. It’s a long ride to school.”

  Gravity looked at Melsy, who mimed gulping from a bottle.

  “That was very nice of Melsy and Auntie Rosa to let you stay,” Gravity said.