by Ivy Pochoda
Roger’s black moods make Anneke angrier. Which is why Marella touches her father’s arm again, suggesting he take another bite of curry, keep up the pretense of a regular family meal.
She can see her mother’s jaw tense.
“Leave him alone. Don’t touch him.”
Marella withdraws her hand.
“If he doesn’t eat, he won’t starve.” Anneke takes a deep breath. “Barbara and Glenda both read about your show in the paper. They were impressed.”
Anneke gets most of her news second- or thirdhand from the women in the nursing home in Malibu where she works as an aide and where newspapers, the local news, and board games pass the time.
“They say it’s about the body.” There’s a tightness around Anneke’s mouth as she speaks.
“It’s about women,” Marella says.
“I hope it’s positive,” Anneke says.
“You mean tasteful.”
“There are already so many ugly things in this world.”
“I’ve heard,” Marella says.
“The women at the home have been painting flowers. We have a new still life class.”
“I don’t paint flowers, Mom.”
“I’ve heard,” Anneke replies, giving Marella a wan smile.
Marella learned to not talk about her mother to her friends.
Your mom’s a bitch.
Your mom’s some kind of control freak.
Your mom’s a fucking nightmare.
But they didn’t understand. It was Anneke who helped Marella get into good schools, who would have figured out how to pay for an out-of-state college, too, if Marella had wanted to attend one. It was Anneke who found the summer programs and gave up her weekends to take Marella on adventures far away from Los Angeles. It was Anneke who didn’t blink when Marella declared she was going to study art and then stay for an MFA.
“You never even drew flowers as a kid,” Anneke says. “Always monsters and mazes.”
Marella takes a bite of curry. The chilies burn her tongue. She holds it in her mouth, intensifying the flavor and the pain.
“Too hot,” Anneke says.
Marella’s mouth is on fire and she can’t reply.
The silence that follows is shattered by the front door slamming at Julianna’s house, then the loud rattle as the rusted gate is flung open and bangs back.
“I saw her that day,” Marella says.
“Saw who?”
“Julianna.”
Anneke stops her fork at her lips.
“Did you take them something?”
“Who?” Anneke says.
“Julianna’s parents.”
“Take them what?”
“A casserole. Some cookies?”
“Why?”
“It’s a gesture, Mom. It’s what you’re supposed to do.”
“Cookies aren’t going to help them.”
As a kid, Marella remembers her mind growing blank, then black. She’s not sure what set it off—what flipped the switch. Suddenly everything was wrong. That was the worst part, not knowing why.
Imagine you were a dog and someone insisted on combing your hair the wrong way. Or all your clothes were put on backward, your shoes on the wrong feet. Or there was a high-pitched frequency you couldn’t locate. Something wrong, very wrong.
So she reacted. She threw things, hit things—her toys, her stuffed animals, even her parents in a frantic attempt to bring the world back into line.
It didn’t happen in public. Only at home.
It was her father who reacted, not Anneke. The only things that penetrated Marella’s fugue were the white high-beams of Roger’s panicked eyes and his insistent voice telling her to calm down. Begging her.
But she couldn’t. It was impossible. The hole was too deep. She was sinking. Her father was standing over her, looming out of reach. He was pleading for her to do the thing she couldn’t do. Stop.
Then he would take her to her room for punishment. He’d sit against the door and watch as she tossed her stuffed animals, barring her escape. He was never violent, but the look in his eyes, the desperate need for her to calm down both scared her and made her keep going.
From the hall she could hear her mother crying, begging to be let in to comfort Marella, insisting that she could make it right and make it stop.
Roger never let her in. And Marella raged on, always keeping an eye on her father to figure out what he wanted from her and why. This is how she drew him out and snapped him back to reality, smashing that dumb, placid exterior to make him present.
Just like when she was a child, just like earlier that evening in the gallery, she feels the internal shift, the lights dimming, her eyes losing focus. The next few moments will be out of her control.
She reaches across the table and yanks the headphones from Roger’s ears, tossing them and the geriatric iPod across the room.
It’s not Roger who reacts but Anneke, standing up and smashing her soup bowl to the floor.
“Leave him alone. Leave him alone. Leave—”
Marella is outside when her mind clears. There’s curry on her clothes. She stares inside at her mother, who’s cleaning the crockery, and her father, who’s listening to his war stories again.
4.
“HARDER.” MARELLA IS DOUBLED OVER, PANTING, SWEAT dripping down her forehead. “Harder.”
“Enough, Colwin, step out.”
A martial arts gym on Jefferson that specializes in everything from jujitsu to boxing. You can find them all over Los Angeles but they are particularly common in South L.A. Simple storefronts with a mat on the floor and martial arts equipment. Daytime, kids learn tae kwon do, karate, judo, and self-discipline. The adults come at night.
And some, like the one where Marella is struggling to catch her breath, run illegal free fights after close. It’s Ladies’ Night.
One-minute rounds.
Round robin.
Winner stays on.
You pay to play.
Marella paid thirty bucks. And here she is, losing.
“Harder,” she says once more.
Her opponent is Liz Acevedo, a former pro boxer from Long Beach. She’s lean, streamlined. Like a string bean with muscles. Her face is an oval, her long black hair pulled back into a glossy tail. Her eyes are cold like stones in a river. There’s nothing hulky or brutish about Acevedo. She’s smooth like she’s carved from obsidian. She looks like gloves can’t touch her and if they somehow did she’d bruise golden.
She’s a killer. She always wins.
“Step out, Colwin,” Acevedo says. This is Acevedo’s show. She runs Ladies’ Night. And she dominates it.
There are ten seconds left on the buzzer, but Acevedo has called the round for mercy. Marella is a novice. She shouldn’t even be in the mix. She’s only been boxing for a year and mostly against the bag. But she paid and she’s here.
Before Marella can object again, the buzzer rings.
There are five women at Ladies’ Night. They rarely talk between rounds, they just watch the action in the makeshift ring, pumping themselves up for their next go.
Marella’s only been up once, straightaway against Acevedo, who immediately pinned her to the ropes with a few light jabs to the stomach, nothing painful, before calling time. Bouncing in place to keep her muscles loose, Marella can feel the spots where her opponent’s gloves collided with her abs. But there’s no satisfaction. There wasn’t enough impact. Acevedo held back, kid-gloved her, which only reminded Marella of her own frailty—she remains breakable. And this infuriates her.
She craves the brutality of the attack because when it comes it will be a release. The wait will be over. But in the ring she can control it—decide when it will happen. The pain will be on her own terms.
But Acevedo didn’t let her have it. And now Marella’s all wound up inside, filled with an unsettling energy that only a hard punch to the gut can release.
She keeps bouncing. She’s wearing spandex shorts and a bra top. She
’s the worst, the rookie, the PowderPuff, the one the rest indulge with patty-cake punches and rolled eyes. She’s their breather, their time-out, their guaranteed victory.
Tonight the gym is all talk about the serial killer, making them fight faster and more furiously.
Kill that motherfucker before he laid a hand on me.
It’s not enough to cut them. Got to suffocate them too.
I knew one of them—the Kathy one. Kathy goddamn Sims. Ran with her back before I found the discipline.
Marella keeps her eyes on the ring as she stays warm. Acevedo is up against a woman she knows only as Casper. Casper is black and built like a former professional athlete—bulky muscles and compact power. She punches hard and precise, but her heft curbs her movement and she has trouble dodging the swift blows Acevedo’s whipping at her head. The fight has gone out of her by the time the buzzer sounds.
The room smells of the fight—sweat and spring fresh deodorant and a metallic odor Marella imagines is blood although no one is bleeding. There’s music blasting—power rock, angry thrasher stuff that matches the adrenaline in the small gym.
Acevedo’s making short work of the rest of the women tonight. She’s on a mission and it shows. Normally the women don’t talk when they’re waiting but tonight’s different.
Fuck’s up with the bitch?
Somebody’s motherfucking pissed. Motherfucking hormonal.
Somebody dump Acevedo’s ass?
She on the rag?
They talk different in the gym, bringing in the language of the things they fight against in the real world. Giving voice to the voices they want to beat the shit out of every day.
I’m-a take that bitch down.
I’m gonna take her out.
She don’t own this goddamn ring.
But Acevedo does. Every inch of it. The ring is hers to do with as she pleases. The other women are just toys, Weebles who wobble who keep coming back for more.
They are gasping, trying to recover between rounds, trying to summon the willpower for another bout. Two of them throw in the towel.
Then it’s Marella’s turn again.
You’re up, rookie.
Time for the PowderPuff Girl.
You gonna take her? Watch this, PowderPuff’s gonna take her.
Marella ducks into the ring. She tightens the Velcro on her gloves, backhands her hair off her forehead. She raises her hands over her face, peering out at Acevedo from behind the padding. Acevedo looks bored, like letsgetthisoverwith and givemearealchallenge.
The bell dings.
Suddenly all Marella can hear is the music blasting—the grinding guitars and pounding drums, the death metal shriek. She sees Julianna’s face and Kathy’s face staring at her from the television news reports she saw earlier today.
Whatyouwaitingfor, PowderPuff?
She keeps one glove over her face as she learned in the few kickboxing classes she took, then jabs lamely with her other hand. The punch falls far short of Acevedo, who’s dancing around, running out the clock as if it’s too much trouble even to punch Marella.
Marella steps into Acevedo’s strike zone. She tries a quick combo—jab, cross. Both miss. She gets a soft punch to the gut for her troubles.
Thatallyougot, rookie?
Grandma hits harder than you.
Normally the women on the sidelines are quiet. But Acevedo’s ferocity has them fired up. Since they can’t beat her, they settle for verbally abusing Marella.
Marella tries another combo. Hook, hook, cross. The cross grazes Acevedo’s forearm. She looks up, surprised, a little annoyed. She raises her eyebrows, a dark gleam in her stony stare. She pulls back for a cross. There’s nothing Marella can do to escape it. She braces for impact, turning her head away from the trajectory of the blow. The punch lands, soft on Marella’s jaw, like nothing, like a playful cuff on the chin, like she’s being toyed with.
“Fuck that,” she says. “Fuck that pussy shit.”
Acevedo shrugs.
Marella puts her gloves up and steps to her opponent. She launches into a senseless volley of reckless punches that go nowhere. Acevedo deflects them all, then sends Marella off balance with a mild blow to the shoulder.
“Harder, bitch,” Marella says.
PowderPuff wants it hard.
PowderPuff not getting any dick.
PowderPuff needs a beating.
If they only knew. Each of Acevedo’s lame blows makes Marella crave the real thing even more. Each one is a tease, a taunt. Each one is torture.
“I said, harder, bitch,” Marella spits.
“I heard you,” Acevedo says. She’s barely out of breath, barely working. Cool and even-keeled.
Marella charges with another ill-conceived assault. Acevedo holds up her gloves, then pushes Marella away, sending her tumbling.
She bounces once then lies still. The buzzer goes.
She’s fired up inside with a rage that tastes hot, salty, and bitter like you want to spit it out but also savor it. “I told you to hit harder,” she shouts.
“Saving my strength,” Acevedo says, taking off her gloves and headgear to fix her ponytail.
There’s something in the air—a loose wire spinning freely, a horrible current, a reaction to the violence that’s haunting and hunting on their streets. The women are wild. Acevedo’s wilder. And Marella’s mind is spinning into black.
She springs to her feet. In one swift motion, she pulls back and lands a blow on Acevedo’s temple. A sucker punch that makes her stutter-step. It’s satisfying to connect, to feel flesh and bone and the solidity of Acevedo’s skull through her glove, to sense her brain shudder and shake even a little. But it still doesn’t give Marella the release she craves.
There’s a moment of perfect stillness when Acevedo is frozen, staring at Marella with her dead black eyes, and the women on the sidelines are standing openmouthed, their last words hanging on their lips.
And then everything explodes. A brilliant firework crack to the cheek. A barehanded punch that breaks the skin.
Marella staggers back. She can feel everything flying from her chest—all the pressure and worry, the anxiety and unease. Because it’s happened, the assault, the attack, and she’s still here. She’s still Marella, falling backward, tasting the blood that’s trickling from her busted cheek into her mouth. And she’s laughing, laughing, laughing.
5.
MARELLA’S OUT ON THE STREET, PUNCH-DRUNK AND STAGGERING on Jefferson. Her cheek is bleeding. It’s throbbing. It has its own heartbeat. Her mouth tastes of warm metal. She licks her lips.
She puts her fingers to her cheek, feeling the raised bump and the gash. It’s not big, maybe an inch. Amazing how much can be released through something so small—how much anger and tension and anxiety can escape.
Marella looks up at the smudged sky. She senses the rain before it starts. Another pause, as if Los Angeles is holding its breath, preparing itself. And then comes the deluge—a waterfall that pours from the sky.
She tilts her head, letting the water wash away the blood and sweat from her face. It runs into her eyes, fills her mouth, soaks her through.
The cars on Jefferson and Western all slow at once as if choreographed. Their lights slither and slide in the pools of water slicking up the asphalt.
The rain’s coming in sheets.
Los Angeles is a blur of bright lights wobbling behind the falling water. Marella feels as if she is squinting, but her eyes are wide open.
The gutters are filling. The sewers are rushing. The trash that never gets picked up is swirling, flowing. A river of soda cups, Styrofoam containers, wrappers running along the curb.
Marella is soaked. The rain and sweat chill her. Her wet clothes are like glue.
She can’t go home. The minute she steps through the door the release will be undone. Her bruised, bleeding cheek will be a problem instead of a solution.
She takes Western north across the 10. Beneath her the traffic is arrested as if the rai
n has glued it in place. The taillights heading east are a solid red glow. West, it’s white lights. She passes a twenty-four-hour taco place. It’s freestanding with an enclosed seating area and a large parking lot. There are hot pink and green cartoon illustrations of tacos and burritos on the windows. The scratched glass, the graffiti, the battered plastic tables tell Marella it’s been there for decades. But she’s never seen it before.
She slows as she passes. There’s a machine filled with stuffed toys that you can fish out with a crane if you’re lucky and an old TV with a fuzzy picture. There’s a woman eating alone. Raindrops are suspended on her voluminous black hair. Her large gold earrings sway as she forks a bite of quesadilla into her mouth.
Marella has never been allowed in places like this. She’s not hungry but she steps inside and looks out at the cars on Western sliding past the rain-streaked glass.
Now she thinks she’s seen this place before. She’s sure of it. She takes a seat.
A woman leans through the window where customers order. “No sitting without eating.”
Marella holds up her hand as if to say, I’m only going to be a minute.
“Lady, you can’t sit here without eating. What if every girl on Western came inside just because it’s raining?”
Marella glances at the solitary customer. And then she realizes why she knows this place. Julianna’s photos. Two of them, maybe more, were taken here. Both are of a woman she now recognizes as Katherine Sims from the news reports, with her short, dyed blond curls, laughing like something was killing her.
The woman behind the counter has wedged her torso out. “Lady, don’t make me come out there.”
But Marella is already on her feet and out the door.
She turns left on Washington, heading for the gallery. There’s a bathroom with a small shower in the back where she can get clean, and there’s a sleeping bag that has made do more often than she’d like to admit.
The rain is falling so hard that it can’t do anything but rush away in torrents, creating havoc without bringing relief to the parched earth.
Marella shakes her hair, jumps up and down a few times before unlocking the gallery. She strips at the door and leaves her shoes. Then without turning on the lights she makes a dash for the back. The water in the little shower warms her. She dries herself with one of the small towels and pulls on a clean set of clothes from the laundry bag stashed in the office.
