by Sarah Deming
D-Minus was already up in the ring, basking under the lights. This was the first time she had ever seen him in a suit. It was steel gray and very expensive-looking. All the politicians looked like extras in the movie of his life.
Gravity hesitated at the ring’s perimeter, trying to master her emotions. She yanked down her pencil skirt to conceal the run in her stockings. Even though Melsy had helped her shop for her outfit and do her makeup, she felt like a child at a grown-ups’ party.
D-Minus had replied to none of her texts of condolence, although he had, uncharacteristically, loved her Facebook video about Coach and commented on her Instagram post—a collage of old photos of the three of them training—with a single crying-face emoji, a flexing muscle, and a heart.
She would not cry. She would not. She was so confident about this exciting new opportunity.
D-Minus saw her and called her to him.
She said, “I missed you at the funeral.”
He said, “I don’t do funerals.”
She found it hard to look in his eyes, so she looked over his shoulder at the mural of Coach. “The service was beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said, to her utter astonishment. He draped an arm across her shoulder, turned to the borough president, and said, “This is the next lightweight gold medalist right here.”
She looked at him from beneath his arm, trying to figure out if he was being sarcastic. He gazed at her with such warmth that she blushed and cut her eyes away.
The councilman said, “I heard she just had her first loss!”
Gravity stiffened, but D squeezed her shoulder and replied, “Ever lose an election, Councilman?”
The borough president snickered.
“You gotta lose to learn,” D said. “Coach taught us that. She’ll whip that girl’s ass in Rio.”
Gravity said, “I feel grateful to God and USA Boxing for all the support they have given me.”
After they were done posing, D held the ropes open for her and gave her his arm as they walked down the stairs, and all throughout the terrifying schmoozing that followed, he kept her at his side. Gravity knew this show of favor might just be one of his passing moods, but she accepted it, because it was from him.
Mr. Rizzo had done a great job getting the word out, and the gym was packed. Boca had made it look festive by hanging bunting around the rings, along with little Haitian and American flags. Boo Boo’s mom had brought trays of barbecued chicken, yams, and collard greens. Boo Boo’s dad had brought soda for the kids and a mysterious beverage for the adults called a nutcracker, which Mr. Rizzo pretended not to see. And Kostya, who ran an extermination service, had the roach population down for the count.
The faces came and went with their congratulations and condolences and questions, and Gravity allowed herself to relax into the protective field of D-Minus’s charisma. He carried her through the interviews the way he had so often carried her through sparring. The third time she said, “I feel grateful to God and USA Boxing for all the support they have given me,” he slid his hand down her spine—her blouse had a cutaway back, because Melsy said it flattered her—and let it rest for a moment, cupping her ass. Their backs were to the speed bag wall, so nobody could see. Gravity’s face flushed and she shivered.
Soon thereafter, the press began to disperse, and a delicious impatience rose up inside her. She and D-Minus were going to be together. She knew it, he knew it, and the anticipation was almost unbearable.
Carmen Cruz came to say goodbye, accompanied by Monster. Both of them were sipping nutcrackers and seemed to be hitting it off. Carmen stood between Gravity and D-Minus, putting her arms around them.
“Take our picture, Kimani,” she purred. “Get their coach’s mural in the background.”
“Of course, Carmen,” Monster said.
He reached out to brush a speck of dust off the front of her dress.
“Your magnificent coach is looking down from heaven with great pride,” Carmen said, squeezing them and smiling for the camera. “Two Olympians! What are the odds? We will toast to him with caipirinhas when we dance the samba in Rio.”
She turned to look at the mural of their coach. “It is a wonderful likeness. Who painted it?”
Gravity didn’t know. She had never thought to ask. She looked at D-Minus, aware of a sudden tension in him.
“My brother Tray,” he said. “Lefty did the lettering.”
Gravity looked at the mural again, seeing it with fresh eyes. Of course Lefty had done the graffiti writing; she saw that now. It looked just like how he wrote “$outhpaw.”
But Tray had been a true artist. What she noticed now was how little he had done. In a lot of places, it was just the wall showing through. But the way he painted tricked your mind into filling in the empty spaces.
Carmen said, “Is he here? I would love to interview him.”
“Nah.”
D’s face was unreadable, but Gravity had noticed that Carmen often caught things that escaped other people. She did so now, switching into the past tense: “Your brother painted with his brushes. You paint with your fists.”
Andre Vázquez had wandered over and was listening in on their conversation.
“Funny about the record,” he said, looking at the mural with a know-it-all smirk that reminded Gravity of Paloma Gonzales. “Somewhat ironic for a fighter nicknamed ‘The Truth.’ ”
“What do you mean?” Gravity asked.
Ironic was like at the end of Lefty’s song, when Wilfredo Gómez got high in the Hall of Fame. Coach’s record of 97–12 (80 KOs) wasn’t ironic at all. It was amazing.
“Coach Thomas was a journeyman,” Andre said.
“He was not!” Gravity said, appalled. “He was a top contender. If it hadn’t been for how racist boxing was back then, he would have been a champion!” She turned to Carmen. “Tell him! You wrote about Coach!”
Carmen put a hand on Gravity’s arm. “I printed the record he claimed,” she said softly. “But that may have been his unofficial record.”
“Or his imaginary record,” quipped Andre.
He passed Gravity his phone, opened to Jefferson H. Thomas’s BoxRec page. Gravity stared in disbelief. Coach’s professional record was 20–25. For some reason, she had never looked Coach up on the site. She had just assumed the record on the mural was accurate. She tried to pass the phone to D-Minus.
“Nah, chill,” he said.
Gravity handed the phone back to Andre, who said, “Amazing he still had his faculties, really!”
“Show some respect,” Carmen snapped.
Andre smiled. “I’m a businessman, Carmen. I respect the bottom line.”
Carmen said mysteriously, “Bottom lines have a way of changing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Andre asked.
Carmen just smiled and sipped her nutcracker.
Andre turned to Monster and told him it was time to go, but Monster said he would prefer not to, because he and Carmen had plans to go to the Met and look at the Temple of Dendur. Andre turned very red and reminded Monster that they had trunk fittings that afternoon for his pro debut. Monster said he would not be needing trunks because he was not planning to turn professional but would be pursuing his true passion, photography.
D-Minus snickered. He opened a bag of popcorn and offered some to Gravity.
“Need I remind you that you’re under contract?” Andre said.
“Which contract?” Monster said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out Andre’s five-hundred-dollar gold Montblanc. “The one I didn’t sign yet with your stupid pen?”
Andre looked like smoke was about to come out of his ears.
“It’s such a coincidence,” Monster said, “because I was talking to Carmen about that, and it turns out her daughter is an immigration lawyer. And we showed
her the contract, and guess what she said?”
Carmen threw back her head and laughed. Monster laughed too. Soon they were both laughing so hard that Gravity and D-Minus joined in, even though they didn’t know what they were laughing at. They just knew it was at Andre’s expense, so it felt good.
Monster finally caught his breath and dabbed the tears from his eyes. He put the pen in Andre’s pocket and patted him on the head as if he were a little boy. “She said a horse wouldn’t even sign that!”
Everybody cracked up again.
“I didn’t tell you to show it to a lawyer,” Andre yelled. “I told you to sign it!” He stormed out of the gym.
When he had gone, they stayed there for a moment, looking at the mural of Coach.
He was a journeyman.
Gravity felt that sinking in. She looked at D, but he was posing for Monster now, his suit jacket slung over one shoulder and his hand on a heavy bag. D had the most uncanny ability to take only what he wanted from life. He could probably drink the water out of a bottle of PLASMAFuel and leave the electrolytes behind.
Carmen said, “I think it’s harder to make champions than to be one, Gravity. Do not let this shake your faith. Nothing has changed.”
“But…he called himself ‘The Truth’! He said he could have been like Joe Louis or Muhammad Ali if it weren’t for all the racism and corruption.”
Carmen said, “And that may be true. What is truth, anyway? What is measurement?” She waved her red plastic cup at the mural, teetering in her stilettos. Gravity realized with alarm that Carmen had had one nutcracker too many.
“Hieroglyphics!” she yelled. “Marks scratched in stone tablets and gleaming from electronic screens!” Her dark eyes shone and her musical voice gained force. Even D-Minus stopped posing and listened. Carmen was on a roll.
“When Cassius Clay took the title from Sonny Liston on February twenty-fifth, 1964, afterward embracing the Islamic faith with the name Muhammad Ali, there were as many truths as there were seats in the Miami Beach Convention Hall, leaves of grass in Louisville, verses in the Koran!”
She tossed back the rest of her nutcracker and threw the empty cup in the spit bucket, where it landed with a noxious splash. Monster reached out an enormous hand to steady her.
“Boxing is the dirtiest sport in the world, Gravity. It is also the purest.” Tears were streaming down her face now, but she seemed unashamed. “Fuck Andre Vázquez. Fuck all those…those…suits who think they can buy a ringside ticket to our lives. Truth is not something you know. Truth is something you are.”
She entwined her small hand with Monster’s. “Come on, Kimani, let’s go see the pyramids.”
Gravity had made herself the OTC-prescribed serving of chicken breast and broccoli. She ate it slowly, imagining it was the mofongo Melsy was eating across from her at the table. Gravity loved her new table. She had found it on Craigslist for only twenty-five dollars. It looked like something from an old-school diner.
Melsy was going out dancing tonight and was wearing a fabulous silver romper, but her hair was still up in curlers. She had on fake eyelashes lined with rhinestones, which made it sort of dizzying to look at her. Gravity had tried to explain her outrage about Coach’s fake record, but Melsy, like Carmen, did not seem to think it was a big deal.
“It’s like guys on the internet saying they’re taller than they really are,” Melsy said. “Or girls saying they’re younger. It’s just fake advertising.” She reached for more broth to moisten her plantains. Gravity averted her eyes. There would be plenty of mofongo after Rio.
“Your coach was exactly who he said he was, G. He was your teacher. He needed you to believe in him, so he did what he thought was best.”
“How is it best to lie?” Gravity demanded, growing angry again. She got what Carmen had said, back at the gym, about there being a lot of different perspectives to boxing, but you could take that line of argument too far. Anyway, Carmen had been drunk.
“So you never lied to someone to make them feel better?” Melsy said, an annoying know-it-all tone in her voice. “To make them feel more confident, more protected?”
Gravity followed Melsy’s gaze to where Tyler lay stretched out on his bed. He had fallen asleep in the middle of his fractions homework, the pencil still in his hand. Sugar was curled up in a ball in his armpit.
Gravity scowled. She knew Melsy was talking about those pictures of their dad, how Gravity had lied and told Tyler they were pictures of him.
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” Melsy asked. “No offense, G, but boxers are like children. You all just want to be loved. Your coach knew exactly what he was doing. He wanted you to believe in him, and you did, and it worked. That’s not a lie.”
Gravity chewed her broccoli angrily. Melsy was always ambushing her. She tried to fool you by being a beautiful ring card girl, but then she came out with these deep insights. It was irritating. Gravity’s phone chimed.
It was D-Minus, texting:
g wassup?
She set the phone back down, her heart pounding. They had not spoken or texted since she had left the gym after the press conference that afternoon. She could still feel his hand on her skin, sliding down her back, cupping her ass.
Melsy met her eyes. “How’d it go with D-Licious?” she asked, psychic as always.
Gravity said, “Okay.” The phone chimed again. She glanced at it:
where u at?
She tried to calm her breathing.
“That’s him, isn’t it?” Melsy said. “I can hear you panting from across the table. What’s he say?”
Gravity frowned and passed her the phone.
“Hmph,” Melsy said. “Remember how you told me that there’s two styles of boxing?”
Gravity looked at her, confused. “There’s so many styles of boxing.”
Melsy insisted, “You said there were two. Like Muhammad Ali and what’s his name with the grill.”
Gravity laughed. “George Foreman.” She and Melsy had watched When We Were Kings together a bunch of times back in middle school. Melsy found the African fashions very inspiring. “You’re talking about boxers and punchers. Yeah, Ali was a classic example of a boxer and Foreman was a puncher, like Joe Frazier and Sonny Liston.”
Melsy blinked, flashing her rhinestones. “You also said that sometimes boxers had more heart than punchers.”
“I never said that!” Gravity said, appalled. “Nobody had more heart than Joe Frazier. He would have died in that ring if Eddie Futch hadn’t stopped him.”
Melsy made the adorable face she made when she was concentrating very hard. “But you said something about how much punishment Ali could absorb. And how a lot of the toughest punchers, like Tyson, were actually fragile. Like glass.”
“Chin! Boxers have better chins! I mean, not always, but sometimes.”
Gravity paused, trying to think of how to explain it to Melsy. “Heart is, like, pushing through the pain to show everybody who you are. You can lose with heart, but people will always respect you.” She smiled. Heart was a nice thing to think about. “Chin is different. It’s something physical. Your heart could make you want to keep fighting, but if you have a glass jaw, you’ll go down if someone hits you right.”
“Like Amir Khan,” Melsy said sadly.
Gravity grinned. Amir Kahn was one of the very few fighters whose names Melsy could remember, because she thought he was so handsome. She had actually cried when Danny Garcia stopped him.
“Exactly. But Khan is a boxer, so he’s an exception to the rule. Coach always said that the purest boxers had to have great chins, because they didn’t have the punching power to intimidate the other guy.”
“Don’t overthink it, cuz,” Melsy said. “I’m just trying to make a point about love.” She extended her left arm in a cute imitation of a jab. �
��When it comes to love, I’m the boxer. I’m fast. I try not to let them get too close. I might get rocked, but I always keep it moving.
“You’re the puncher, G. You look tough, but you fall easy. You fell hard for Lefty. You fell for Keeshawn the first time you two met at the track. And I think you straight up fell for that coach, too, the guy with the orange skin. Not sex-wise, but you just gave yourself to him. You’re all in, all the time. It takes a lot of heart, but it’s risky.”
Gravity felt her face burn from the accuracy of this portrait. She had been such a fool to trust Rick Ross. She wished she could be more like Melsy, but maybe love was the same as boxing. It was hard to change your style once it was set.
Melsy went on, “You feel more deeply for Demetrius than you do for any of these boys. He’s got even more power to hurt you. Don’t let him in, cuz. Not until after Rio, when you can afford to get knocked on your ass. Handle your business first.”
Melsy slid Gravity’s phone back to her. Gravity felt a sinking sensation, because she knew her cousin was right. She wanted D. Saying no to him would be way harder than turning down mofongo.
“Aw, poor baby,” Melsy said, patting her hand. “Can’t have that dick till after the Olympics.”
Gravity laughed. “Maybe he won’t be into me, though, if I make him wait.”
Melsy shook her head. “He’ll be more into you. Boys are like dollars: you can never have too many, and when you put them away, they gain interest.”
They both laughed at that.
Tyler woke up and asked what was so funny.
When Gravity’s phone chimed again with another text from D, she turned it off and put it away.
Gravity took a deep breath and made her birthday wish. Monster snapped her picture as she blew on the glove-shaped cake, taking out the ten central candles in the initial attack, getting low to smoke the three on the bottom, then sweeping across the top to kayo the final four. All the gym rats applauded. The time in Colorado Springs had been good for her lung capacity.
“Does anybody have a knife?” Gravity asked.
