My Corner of the Ring

by Jesselyn Silva

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Copyright © 2019 by Jesselyn Silva and In This Together Media, LLC.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  Ebook ISBN 9780525518419

  Version_1

  This book is dedicated to my loving family, coach, friends, and everyone who has supported me along the way. Thank you!

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: The Playgound

  Chapter Two: A Different Kind of Fight

  Chapter Three: First Fight with a Girl

  Chapter Four: What Dreams Are Made Of

  Chapter Five: Something Lost, Something Gained

  Chapter Six: The Amazing Invisible Girl

  Chapter Seven: How I Spent Summer Vacation

  Chapter Eight: When Your Feet Stop Moving, Trouble Starts

  Chapter Nine: Saving Face

  Chapter Ten: Growing a Thick Skin

  Chapter Eleven: Playin’ No Games

  Chapter Twelve: Road Trip and the Junior Olympics

  Chapter Thirteen: Being a Girl My Own Way

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  Photo and Art Credits

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE PLAYGROUND

  This is the only blood I want to see from you today.” Then came the yank.

  I stared at the baby tooth Papi had just pulled from my mouth, small and delicate like a little pearl in his large hand, and I thought that pinch of pain was probably nothing compared with what was about to happen.

  “Your mouthpiece should fit better now without that wiggly tooth,” Papi said, tucking it into his jeans pocket for safekeeping. My father was good at keeping calm in moments when he knew I was nervous.

  It was a cool fall day in Edgewater, New Jersey, but inside Jim’s Gym (commonly referred to as The Jim) it was a steam bath. Guys had stopped their training routines to watch “the girl” box. “The girl” . . . as if I were some carnival curiosity.

  “The girl is gonna get trounced,” I heard a teenaged boy say to his friend as I walked to the boxing ring.

  I wanted to make some in-your-face comeback, but I stayed silent. I mean, he was probably right. I’d been training for only two months, and what business did I have fighting a ten-year-old boy when I had so little experience? Plus, I was only seven years old, and because I was tiny for my age, I looked even younger. People told me I was too young, too little to box. But what did they know?

  What they didn’t know was that I’d never shied away from a challenge. In fact, the harder the challenge, the better. Papi said that when I was a baby, whenever anyone tried to help me, I’d say, “No, me, I do it!” It became a joke in the family. I don’t know where bravery comes from. Maybe you’re just born with it. For me, bravery happened because I didn’t like the feeling of being afraid; I much preferred the feeling of being strong, so when I thought something might be scary, I would go after it and tackle it head-on before it got the better of me. I guess if there were actually ever a monster under my bed, that monster would be in trouble.

  For me, bravery happened because I didn’t like the feeling of being afraid; I much preferred the feeling of being strong.

  I remember when I first got into boxing, coming to it with a rush of adrenaline, nervousness, and excitement. Watching two people box was like nothing I’d ever seen before: two people facing their fears and being brave. Maybe that’s why they call the boxing ring “the playground.” Grown men came here to get their noses busted and their egos shattered, but they also came to play with their fears. I knew why most people thought this was no place for a little kid, but to me it was the best playground I’d ever been to in my entire life.

  But when you’re in the ring, facing your opponent, even the toughest person gets the butterflies.

  Another teenaged boy cracked a joke that I couldn’t hear—just the peal of laughter that followed.

  Focus. Focus.

  “They’re just messin’ with your head, Jess.” That was my trainer, Paulie. He was fitting me with the smallest boxing equipment he could find. Paulie was my very first boxing coach. He was this tough middle-aged African American guy with all-white hair and baggy pants. I liked him a lot—even though he cursed a lot.

  “Here. It’s my niece’s headgear.” He placed it loosely over my head. “Can you see okay?” He already knew the answer.

  His niece was fifteen.

  Even when I tucked all of my long brown hair under the helmet, it was still loose.

  “No,” I mumbled. I was barely able to see past the rim.

  “Good!” He gave a firm tap on my head.

  I had watched Ali face off against Frazier in an old fight on TV, and they weren’t wearing headgear. From my angle now, that seemed crazy.

  Paulie hollered to the group of boys, “Jess is ready for a throwdown!” I thought I was ready to take someone down, but judging by my dad’s body language, I could tell he wasn’t so sure. There was a 50 percent chance of a throwdown, 50 percent chance I got between the ropes and forgot everything I had learned.

  I’d never sparred with a boy before, and I’m pretty sure my opponent had never sparred with a girl. Actually, I’d never sparred with anyone before. When you first start training, you shadowbox. At seven years old, that’s all I’d ever done—box my own shadow. A few jabs with the coach, some basic practice rounds with a couple other kids, but nothing close to a one-on-one match.

  The boy I was about to spar with had a funny little cupcake of an Afro and was older by three years, and stronger; he was also much taller than I expected, which meant my uppercuts might not hit exactly where I wanted them to. I’d have to adjust. I’d learn on the fly.

  “Here she is,” I heard his coach say to the boy on the other side of the ring, gesturing in my direction. The boy was pacing back and forth in his corner like a garbage-tipping raccoon, his back to me. Anxious, unsure. He nodded to his coach a few times before looking over. But the moment he saw me, he chuckled in relief. Then something crossed his mind and his face froze. What if he lost to me? A little girl! I guess it would have been harder for him to lose to me than for me to lose to him. Secretly, everybody fears the underdog. I was definitely the underdog.

  Still, he was sweating it. I could see it glistening on his forehead. Or maybe it was just the Vaseline on his face. I figured he was probably wondering how to hit a girl—low and tough, but not too tough. Actually I really had no idea what he was thinking. It looked like we were both a little anxious, but for different reasons. If I won, it would be a shocker, and if he lost, it would be a shocker.

  “Don’t be nervous, Gregie! You got this!” his mother, dressed up for the occasion, cheered below the ropes.

  Papi adjusted my gloves and
slipped in my mouthpiece as I listened to last-minute advice from Paulie: Make sure you bring the punches back to your face, where you can block better, make sure to keep your head constantly moving, don’t be a still target, you wanna be moving and avoid punches. But it went in one ear and out the other. The wobbly headgear made me feel like a bobblehead figurine. And that’s the last thing I wanted to feel like: one solid strike and my head would pop off.

  Paulie called us to the center of the ring for a quick review of basic rules. The boy, Greg, made it to the center of the ring much faster than I did and looked a little smug as he waited for me to meet him. As I got closer to him, I could see that he was much chubbier than I’d expected. Maybe his swings would be slow, I reasoned. Maybe he would be sluggish and flat-footed. Papi had told me to think about my strengths when I boxed. Even if I couldn’t reach his face, maybe my little, fast body was my strength.

  Paulie would be the “ref” for the sparring match. If it were an actual sanctioned match, we’d have an official referee, but he did both jobs as coach and referee with fairness. Paulie finished going over the rules, Greg and I bumped fists—as is the traditional way to start a match—and then we moved back to our corners.

  “Three rounds, one and a half minutes each round. You good with that?”

  Paulie looked at me. He could tell I was a ball of nerves. His face seemed to say, You don’t have to do this, you know.

  It’s hard to talk when you’re wearing a mouthpiece, but loudly so my opponent could hear I managed to get out, “Yeah, three rounds, we’re good with that.”

  Paulie nodded. He knew I was ready.

  “Hey, I hear the boy puked right before he came out here,” Papi said, giving me a big smile. He always had a way of making me laugh. But the truth was, Papi looked nervous, too.

  A few teenaged boys were at the side of the ring making woof-woof sounds to amp up the intensity of the match. I shook my limbs and bounced up and down to warm up. My heart was beating out of my chest. I imagined my little tooth in Papi’s pocket telling me, Time to grow up! Time to grow up!

  I looked over at my father on the other side of the ropes. Maybe there were just ropes between us, but it felt like he was miles away. His mouth was moving silently. He was probably praying, hoping I wouldn’t get hurt. He didn’t want me in this ring. I wanted to be here. He didn’t think I was ready to fight. I did. This was all me, all my doing.

  “You got this,” he called, pumping his fist in the air.

  I got this, I said to myself. I got this. But there had been a quiver and hesitation in his voice that made my stomach sink.

  I GOT THIS.

  Ready, I said to myself, hitting my gloves together, almost panting with anticipation and fear.

  The timer was set for one and a half minutes for the round. I would have thirty seconds of rest between rounds. The green light meant the start of the fight, yellow meant final thirty seconds of the round, red meant the round was over.

  My eyes were trained on the red light. Red light. Red light.

  The bell rang, the red light switched to green, and the woof-woof boys on the side faded into darkness. The timer faded into darkness. Paulie faded into darkness. All I saw was Greg pushing off the ropes and lunging toward me. Then it became real.

  He came out slow, as I expected, but jabbed at me fast and hard. Three quick punches. I wasn’t expecting his hands to be so quick. I covered my face as best I could. Then he threw me some hard overhands. Whoa. Definitely wasn’t expecting that.

  “Work your right,” his coach said. “Hit her hard.”

  In that moment I wasn’t just a girl, but a competitor. I liked the feeling of that. Briefly. Then Greg got one hard punch in and I heard my father yell, “Cover your face, Jess! Keep your hands close to your chin!”

  Fighters say you never forget your first hard hit in the ring against your first opponent. I’m not talking first jabs or light punches—I’m talking the first glove-to-the-face bam! punch of your career that forces you to ask yourself if you really want to do this for the rest of your life. The force caught me off guard, but it didn’t hurt. I had taken my first real punch, and all it did was get me angry. So I started to hit back. Hard and wildly.

  I realized pretty quickly that Greg was too tall for me to get a good punch to land even near his face, and I was frustrated.

  “Good footwork, good footwork,” his coach said as I tried to dodge.

  My strategy that day would need to be more protect than punch, I decided, until I could figure out how to get in closer.

  Greg hit me again.

  My father hollered, then cursed in Spanish.

  Underneath all this padding, I was just his little girl. It was probably weird for him to watch his only daughter, his angel, his sweetheart, enter a situation where her entire face could get smashed in.

  Greg smelled gross. Every now and then he’d step away from me and cough this dry, ugly cough through his gummy mouthpiece, but it still felt too close to me, and his large body was slick with boy sweat, which, for the record, was very different from girl sweat. Boy sweat was like a nasty pee smell. Girl sweat smelled like shampoo—at least that’s how I saw it . . . but of course girls always think boys smell bad, and boys always think girls have cooties. Then between coughs he’d wipe his runny nose into his gloves. I wondered if his intimidation tactic was to be a smelly boy.

  Every boxer uses intimidation tactics. I’d seen intimidation tactics on TV when I watched old boxing matches with Papi and my great-grandfather late at night. Everyone had their “thing.” George Foreman would sneer at his opponents. Mike Tyson would give a killer stare down. Aaron Pryor would point his glove right at his opponent before the bell rang and just stare and stare and stare. Sugar Ray Robinson used his baby face and elegance to mislead his opponents.

  I didn’t have any intimidation tactics. Probably would have been good to think up some fast.

  I tried to concentrate on my breathing and my feet, but, crack, again he hit me, really, really hard this time, and I fell off balance. Maybe the first hard punch had gotten me angry, but now I was starting to feel the pain of his follow-up hits and my body began to react to them—my arms felt weak, and my legs started to shake as I attempted to swing a few more punches. Mentally I stood tough, but physically I was looking for a break.

  The green light turned to yellow and I started to cry a little—muffled whimpers through headgear. The thirty seconds until the yellow light turned to red seemed like a lifetime.

  Don’t do that, I kept telling myself. Whatever you do, don’t be a crybaby.

  Also, let me be perfectly clear here: I wasn’t crying because I was hurt, I was crying because I was frustrated. But I was relieved when Greg backed away and gave me space. I kept my face covered and stood there waiting for the red light. Mostly, I just didn’t want anybody to see that I was crying. When Paulie asked me if I was okay, I nodded that I was fine, but then I burst into tears so hard, my mouthpiece popped out.

  The gentle bell that stopped the round was a little ding like the kind of bell that chimes to say, Your meatball sub is ready for pickup. It seemed out of place for a boxing ring, but I was relieved to hear it.

  I was sobbing big tears before I even returned to my corner.

  “Jesselyn!” My father tried reaching into the ring but was restrained by the ropes.

  “Do you want to quit?” Paulie asked.

  I didn’t know how to answer him. For a second I clung to the ring post, thinking I should leave. Did I want to quit?

  I kind of did, but I already knew that if I quit then, I’d be a quitter for the rest of my life. Was I really going to stop after only a couple of minutes?

  “Here, she needs water,” Papi said.

  The cool water was a relief to my dry mouth.

  “Jess,” Paulie said anxiously. “Should we throw in the towel?”


  I think he was weighing the ramifications of allowing, even encouraging, a newbie seven-year-old girl to spar with a much bigger, much more experienced ten-year-old boy. I would learn through the years that coaches aren’t gods and make bad decisions just as frequently as the athletes they’re coaching.

  I didn’t like my headgear because it was too big on my head and it covered my eyes and made it hard to see punches coming. I hated Greg’s lazy, slow but strong movements. He was too tall for me to reach up and get in a good uppercut to the chin. I didn’t yet know how to lean into my opponent to find fighting space to jab. I didn’t like how he breathed on me, he was so smelly, and I couldn’t always hear what Paulie was saying when I was fighting because he was speaking too quietly. My mouthpiece was uncomfortable and the punches were jarring. So yes, I wanted to quit, but no, I didn’t want to quit.

  “What’s it going to be, Jess? Fifteen seconds before the green light,” said Paulie.

  “No. I’m okay.” I tried to control my tears. “But I can’t get a punch in!” I started crying again anyway.

  “Snap with the jab, don’t punch,” Paulie said coolly.

  Greg had barely taken a break and was already standing and ready to go.

  His proud mother was cheering, “Come on, sweetie! Go, sweetheart!”

  I don’t know why, but hearing Greg’s mom root for him made me angry. I wanted my father to be cheering instead of worrying. I wanted to be the top dog, not the underdog. I wanted to be the kid boxer, not the girl crybaby. And yes, I would have also liked my mother there. But she was living in Florida at the time.

  I figured the only way to feel better was to stop crying and go back in.

  I wiped my tears and was up and ready again. “Let’s go!” I said.

  Coach Paulie shook his head and put in my mouthpiece.

  Red light. Red light. Red light. Bell . . . Green light!