Gravity

by Sarah Deming

  Gravity flashed back to that time when she had found her mother in that unusually happy mood, drinking Bloody Marys and baking challah and reading her old yearbooks. At the time, Gravity had thought it was just Mom trying to pull herself together. She should have known better. She had just been happy about stealing the first check. And she had lied about it to Gravity’s face.

  She ached for that four thousand dollars. There was a nice little studio in Auntie Rosa’s building that was only fifteen hundred dollars a month. She and Tyler could have been moved in by now.

  She stalked from the subway to their apartment in a fog of rage. When she arrived, she found her mother on the couch, watching porn and drinking vodka with Coke, her legs entwined with a new man’s. The guy who looked like a homeless lumberjack had stopped coming around. This new one looked like a homeless leprechaun.

  Gravity noticed certain details of economic prosperity that had escaped her before: the fact that her mother was drinking Grey Goose rather than her usual Popov, her salon-fresh red hair, her manicured hands and feet.

  “Oh look, it’s the boxer!” said the leprechaun. “Hey, don’t beat me up!”

  He and her mother giggled.

  “Wow, I never heard that one before,” Gravity said.

  “Really?” said the leprechaun.

  “No, not really.” Gravity stared him down. “Everyone makes that same stupid joke and it isn’t even funny. You would never say that to a male boxer. You say it to me because you think I can’t do it, but I could if I wanted.”

  Her mother narrowed her eyes dangerously and said, “Watch your mouth.” She turned up the volume on the sex scene they had been watching, in which a woman dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz got gangbanged by the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion.

  Gravity’s hands balled into fists and she began to tremble. The rage that rose up inside her was so endless that it scared her.

  Tyler appeared at her side, crying.

  She looked down at him. She took a breath. Slowly, the anger receded enough that she could unclench her hands. His tear-filled eyes glowed bright in the light of the television, and Gravity wished with all her heart that he could unsee all the bad things that he had seen. She took his little hand in hers.

  Coach always said that some fights were not winnable. Part of being a champion was knowing which ones they were. That four thousand dollars was gone forever. It just about killed her to think about it, but maybe it was a bargain. You could not put a price on freedom.

  She said, “We’re going to Rosa’s, and we’re never coming back.”

  Her mother acted like she had not heard.

  It was cold outside, and they had left without their jackets, but Gravity refused to go back. She hurried Tyler past Luna Park, which was still closed on weekdays this time of year and looked like a ghost town. They stopped to use the public restrooms before the long subway ride uptown, shivering in the cold sea air on the boardwalk.

  Tyler looked so miserable on the subway that Gravity offered to take him back that weekend and go on any of the rides he wanted. She promised to buy him cotton candy and Nathan’s hot dogs, but he called her a liar and began sucking his thumb.

  “You’re getting a little old to suck your thumb, Ty Ty.”

  He took it out of his mouth and said, “I only do it when I’m mad,” then stuck it back in.

  “That’s okay,” she said, ruffling his hair. “I’m mad at Mom too. But we won’t stay with her anymore. We’ll stay with Rosa and Melsy until I go to China.” By then, she would have qualified for Rio, so her stipend would go up. “Then we’ll get our own nice place together where Mom can’t bother us.”

  “I’m not mad at Mom. I’m mad at you.”

  He would not tell her why until they were halfway to Washington Heights. Then he demanded, “Show me the pictures.”

  She pulled them up on her phone, but they did not seem to comfort him the way they usually did. He did not ask any of his cute questions, merely glared at each photo in turn and said “Next,” until she got to the last one, the one of her playing video games with Dad. Then Tyler pointed at the little console in the picture and yelled, “You told me Dad wasn’t cheap. That’s a PS1! If Dad was generous, he never would’ve gotten me that. It would’ve been really really old. So I asked Auntie Rosa about it and she told me that’s you in the picture.” He pushed the phone away.

  “She said that’s you in all the pictures. Dad didn’t love me and take me to the zoo. You lied to me, Gravity. Dad hated me and I hate you!”

  He got up, walked to the other end of the subway car, and sat down, sucking his thumb furiously.

  Gravity walked across the car slowly. She tried to sit next to Tyler, but he got up immediately and moved, this time across from her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He ignored her.

  “Ty Ty, I’m really sorry. I was wrong to lie to you. I was just…”

  She was just trying to make him feel okay. The old wound of longing throbbed inside her. She didn’t want Tyler to hurt the way she hurt whenever she saw a happy father and daughter together. Or when she saw the kids at the gym who came in with their fathers, even when their fathers were hard on them, like Kostya with Svetlana and Genya. At least Kostya showed up.

  Because the truth was, their father didn’t love them. If he did, he would have come back around. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. She wished Lefty were holding her. She wished he would at least text.

  “I was wrong,” she said again.

  Tyler kept ignoring her and took out his cell phone.

  She did a set of pull-ups on the subway handrail, but he just rolled his eyes.

  She said, “I wonder who won between Naruto and Konohamaru.”

  He set his jaw stubbornly.

  “I bet Konohamaru knocked him out.”

  “He could never!” said Tyler, outraged.

  “So Naruto won?”

  Tyler narrowed his eyes at her. “Konohamaru won.”

  “Really?” She sat down next to him. “How did he win? He’s such a wimp compared to Naruto.”

  “Naruto wasn’t paying attention when they explained the rules and he used an illegal jutsu.”

  “Aha! So Konohamaru won by DQ!”

  “What’s DQ?”

  “Disqualification. Like when Tyson bit Holyfield’s ear.”

  “Oh.” He was silent for a second, sucking his thumb. “How come Dad left?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She put her arm around him and they stared at their reflections in the subway window.

  “He was there when I was real little. That’s when those pictures are from. The first time he left I was two or three, so I barely remember anything. Then he came back on my eighth birthday, and he was around for seven weeks. That’s when Mom got pregnant with you, and then he left again.”

  She was quiet for a moment as the train brakes squealed.

  “Mom said he went back to Santo Domingo, but I don’t know why. Maybe he just couldn’t deal with Mom anymore. But sometimes I feel like Rosa is mad at him too. Nobody ever wants to talk about him.” She took a deep breath, aware that Ty was hanging on every word. Their father was always there between them, an unspoken presence in every room. She wished she had more to give. “I don’t remember them fighting. And Mom wasn’t drinking too much back then. Maybe he just came around to make us, and then he had other things to do.”

  Tyler blinked, and two perfectly round tears dropped from his eyes. “Maybe he didn’t love me.”

  “Shh,” she said, hugging him to her. “Everybody loves you.”

  At this hour, the subway car was mostly empty, but an old lady sitting nearby met Gravity’s eyes and smiled. She rose from her seat, holding on to the poles as she teetered across the shaking car an
d pressed a pocket pack of Kleenex into Gravity’s hand.

  “Bless you, child,” she said.

  Some people thought New Yorkers were mean, but when you lived there, you understood they could be the kindest people in the world. Gravity loved traveling for boxing, but the best part of traveling was always coming home.

  When Gravity walked into Smiley’s the next day after school, she saw a familiar figure lounging on one of the massage tables, eating a protein bar.

  “Champ!” exclaimed Rick Ross. “I didn’t know you trained here.”

  “I switched gyms,” she said.

  The conditioning guru looked aggressively fit, gleaming with the unnatural orange hue that accentuated the veins in his neck and arms. He wore mirrored shades and a tank top that said “#GetSwole.”

  “Who trains you?” he said, glancing around the half-full gym. All the coaches were drinking coffee and preparing for the rush at 5:30 p.m., when the white-collar clients rolled in.

  “I’m unattached at the moment.” She tried to sound nonchalant, but it was like admitting you didn’t have a date to prom.

  Rick Ross looked ecstatic. He leapt up from the massage table, draped one rock-hard arm around her shoulder, and said, “Well! You’re with me now.”

  Gravity felt a rush of pride as he led her across the gym floor. All the trainers cast sidelong glances at them, including Tiffany, and Gravity felt Rick’s protection over her register with them. She thought of all the conditioning podcasts she had listened to on the long subway rides to Cops ’n Kids. And now he would be her trainer, right when she needed someone the most! It seemed almost too good to be true.

  He led her to the ring by the back wall, where a tall, muscular brunette in muay thai trunks and an elaborate sports bra was doing plyometric warm-ups. Rick looked at the brunette, then back at Gravity.

  “I’ve got a great idea,” he said. “Why don’t you get warmed up. I’ll be right back.”

  She pulled out her jump rope, in a trance of happiness. Finally something was going right, after all this drama with Coach and Mom and Lefty, who still had not replied to her texts. That afternoon, in an act of horniness and desperation, she had sent Lefty a topless selfie snapped from a stall in her school bathroom. She had never done anything like that before, and she grinned as she thought about her boldness. Hopefully he would invite her over that night.

  She put him out of her mind as she began to skip rope, watching as Rick conferred with the brunette. When he returned to Gravity, he was beaming.

  “Well, this is our lucky day,” he said. “Jenna Petrone came in looking for sparring, and when I told her we had a national champion in the house, she jumped at the chance.”

  Gravity had not been planning on sparring that day. She had barely slept the night before and had jogged five miles in plastics that morning to start cutting weight. But Rick looked so happy about it. The brunette came to the side of the ring and leaned on the ropes.

  “You ready to work?” she asked.

  “Um, sure,” Gravity said. She looked at Rick. “So you coach her, too?”

  “Jenna and I go way back,” he said.

  Jenna laughed.

  “How much do you weigh?” Gravity asked her.

  “I fight at feather,” she said.

  Gravity looked Jenna up and down. She looked a lot bigger than 125. Then the muay thai trunks made her think of something. “Wait, you box at featherweight?”

  “I fight MMA.”

  Gravity didn’t know the weight classes in MMA. “Exactly how much do you weigh?”

  Jenna shrugged. “I didn’t weigh myself today. Probably one forty-seven, give or take.”

  That made Gravity nervous. “I fight at one thirty-two. I’ll spar up to one forty-one if it’s somebody I know.”

  Rick patted her arm soothingly. “Well, we all know each other here.”

  “I just want some tech sparring,” Jenna said. “My strength is ground fighting and I’m going up against a real good striker in my next fight. Rick here said he could get me work against someone with hands.”

  Rick produced a pair of gloves and held them open, looking at Gravity expectantly. She pushed her hands into the gloves, which felt heavy and pillowlike. When he tied off the laces, she saw that they were eighteen ounces.

  “I usually spar in fourteens,” she said.

  “These are good for conditioning.”

  Gravity sighed. She was a puncher. She preferred lighter gloves that let the opponent feel her power. Especially with a new girl she did not know. She studied the other woman. She was almost Gravity’s height but broader-shouldered and thicker through the legs.

  Rick headed over to help Jenna into her gear, then announced, “We’ll go on the next bell.”

  Gravity climbed the ring stairs right before the bell and went to touch up, which was when she noticed that Jenna, in addition to outweighing her, was in fourteen-ounce gloves. She was also, annoyingly, in one of those headgears with the bars across the face, the kind of headgear white-collar clients wore who were afraid to take a face punch. Fighters sometimes wore them if they did not want to get cut before a fight.

  Gravity had been expecting a feeling-out process that led into a light, elegant exchange, but the first punch Jenna threw was a lead right that landed like a club on her temple, sending her staggering toward the ropes. This was not tech sparring.

  Somehow, she got through it. At the round break, she walked dizzily back to Rick Ross, who was holding a phone up to the ring, recording. She stood in front of him, panting and waiting for him to give her water or instructions, but he just kept recording.

  Tiffany, who had come over to watch, jumped onto the apron and said, “Come here, Gravity.” She pulled out her mouthpiece, gave her water, and said, “You have to box. Keep moving. Don’t stand there and punch with a big girl like that.”

  Gravity yelled across at Rick, “Jenna’s in fourteens!” but he had turned the phone on himself and was recording his commentary on the first round. She heard him say her name and that she was the US national lightweight champion, which made her feel good, but she wished he would pay more attention to helping her and less to recording.

  She tried to follow Tiffany’s instructions and stay moving, but her quadriceps still ached from her long run that morning. She kept it going for the first ninety seconds or so, but then Jenna managed to trap her against the ropes and hit her with a heavy jab to the chest that pushed her back. Gravity slipped the right that followed, but Jenna followed through with her elbow, an illegal move that might not have been intentional. It hit Gravity’s eye, and she held on in desperation, her vision blurry. Jenna was borderline dirty in the clinch, too, jumping up and down to dislodge Gravity’s hold and banging the hurt eye with the side of her headgear.

  At the second-round break, Rick Ross put down his phone long enough to give her water. She waited for him to tell her something to do, but he just stood there.

  “What do you see?” she asked in exasperation.

  He said, “We’ll analyze the video later.”

  It was cowardly to quit before at least going three, but Gravity was so exhausted that she gasped, “I think that’s enough for me. I can feel my eye swelling.”

  Rick cocked his head at her and said, “You quitting on me? I told Jenna we’d give her four rounds.”

  Gravity felt a pang inside. She did not want to let Rick down.

  She looked around at the small crowd that had gathered. It was weird sparring somewhere other than Cops ’n Kids. It made her feel very exposed.

  Rick patted her on the headgear and said, “You go out there and show me what you’ve got. Leave it all in the ring.”

  Gravity got back on her legs and boxed. Jenna had an open guard and fought with her chin too high, and Gravity was able to keep her on the end of the jab and catch her w
ith a few good rights, but between the pillowy gloves and the closed-face headgear, it didn’t have much effect.

  Toward the end of the round, Jenna slid close, ducking to evade a hook. Gravity’s left arm had slid behind her neck on the follow-through, leaving her body unguarded, and Jenna dug hard to Gravity’s left floating rib, harder than you were ever supposed to dig in sparring.

  The pain took a moment to hit Gravity’s brain. When it did, she hunched over and crumpled to the canvas, watching the mouthpiece fall from her lips, trailing a line of spit. It was epic pain. It was the worst thing she had ever felt, as though her chest had been turned inside out.

  Bells rang and people murmured and she stayed there on all fours like a dog, too agonized to even feel the shame.

  She heard someone asking, “Are you okay?”

  Tiffany was helping her to her feet, her strong little arm around Gravity’s shoulders.

  Her rib felt weird. She touched her left eye where it was swollen.

  “Here you go, champ!” said Rick Ross, handing her a cold pack.

  Tiffany snatched it from him, glaring. “What were you thinking, putting Gravity in with that bitch?”

  Rick acted blasé. “Gravity can handle herself.”

  “Of course she can handle herself,” Tiffany said. “She’s a champion. But she shouldn’t be having gym wars when she’s got Worlds just around the corner. What’s that supposed to teach her?”

  “Grit,” said Rick.

  Gravity pressed the ice to her left orbital bone. The throbbing cold dispelled some of the pain. She let their voices wash over her. Trainers were always arguing about everything. She was grateful to Tiffany, but maybe Rick was right. Maybe she needed to toughen up.

  Besides, Tiffany had blown her off. Rick was the one who had seen her and wanted her.

  Gravity felt so tired. She just wanted to go lie down in Lefty’s arms and forget about everything and let him make her feel better. He must have seen the sexy selfie by now.

  “I gotta go,” she told Tiffany.