After school, Ms. Nelson pulled me aside. “Jess . . . I’m very proud of you. You were wonderful on Saturday!”
“Thank you, Ms. Nelson,” I said quietly.
“I was very impressed that you got into that ring. I certainly couldn’t do anything like that.”
“Yes you could . . . if you set your mind to it.”
Ms. Nelson laughed. “I’m learning a lot from you, Jess. I hope you know that.”
“You are? But you’re the teacher.”
“Yes, and on Saturday, you became my teacher. You taught me about real strength and courage.”
I smiled and hugged her. It was exactly what I needed to hear.
“They say proper preparation prevents poor performance—the five Ps. Trust the process!” I said proudly, repeating the exact words my coach had told me a few days earlier.
“Well, obviously it’s working for you, because you’re a very smart young lady,” she said. “And a very determined young lady. And I hope you keep fighting.” Then she opened her purse. “Here, I got you a little something.”
Ms. Nelson handed me a small gift-wrapped box. Inside was a necklace with a J and a gold boxing glove with faux diamonds around it.
“For me?” I was completely surprised.
Girls do box.
“Do you know how hard it is to find a boxing glove trinket for a necklace?”
Then with a wink she said, “Keep on fighting, Jess, so that in the future it becomes easier to find that kind of charm for other little girl boxers. And you know, with your attitude you’re going to get to the Junior Olympics. I just know you will.”
“Don’t worry, Ms. Nelson. I won’t give up.”
* * *
WHEN I GOT home from school that day, a plastic bin waited for me in the kitchen.
“What’s this?” I said to Papi.
“It’s from the neighbors. They thought you might like it.”
I opened the lid of the bin and found dozens of Barbie dolls in a bunch of frozen poses. Some were pristine, but others had knotty hair, and legs and arms that didn’t bend properly or were completely missing. One even had permanent purple marker all over her face and body.
We looked at each other and chuckled.
That night, on my soft carpeting, my father, brother, and I played with the Barbies. We weren’t very kind to them. Every party turned into a boxing match, and no matter what, it ended with one or more of the Barbies farting and then needing to use the toilet. We laughed hysterically as we mangled their skinny, long limbs together.
Jesiah was holding his side from laughing so hard. “Barbies are fun!”
“Barbies are for farting!” I said, which made Jesiah fall over laughing again.
“All right, you clowns, time to clean up and go to bed,” said Papi.
My brother and I flung the Barbies we were playing with back into the bin. I looked over at my father, who was on his side, relaxed. He was enjoying this moment with us.
“There are Barbie tennis players and Barbie ice skaters, so why aren’t there Barbie boxers?” asked Jesiah.
“Well, boxing isn’t one of those sports that people think of first when it comes to girls,” said Papi.
“Maybe they need to make a boxing Barbie!” I said, whacking my Barbies together.
“Looks like they already have a couple,” Papi said, laughing at the way I was making the dolls wrestle each other dressed in sparkly formal gowns.
When he tucked me in that night, I asked my father if I could talk to him about something. He was always the best listener, and I was lucky I felt comfortable telling my dad anything.
“Papi, I feel like no one is ever going to take me seriously because I’m a girl. No one comes to watch me box. And they all call me the girl boxer, not just, you know, the boxer-boxer . . .”
“Your teammates don’t call you the girl boxer. They get it. They see how hard you work. Plus, fighting for your place in this world builds character. It’s part of the journey. Maybe being a girl boxer is way cooler than being a boy boxer because you have to work that much harder to prove yourself.”
It was true that my teammates and the coaches at the gym were very supportive of me. They saw how much I trained. I wasn’t the little girl coming to throw a few light jabs just to look cute. I loved my teammates for that. Even though they had a bro code, they always included me.
A few weeks after the PAL Night fight, my abuelo called from Florida. His cough sounded worse, and his voice sounded weaker. The cancer had spread to other parts of his body, and he was dying.
“The Women’s National Golden Gloves is coming up, in Dania Beach,” he said. “Not a far drive from my place.” He paused to hold back a cough. “Maybe you should come down for it . . . and visit a dying man, too.”
I begged Papi to go to Florida, of course to see my great-grandfather, but also for the women’s Golden Gloves! My father was hesitant to say yes. It was an expense I didn’t think he could afford, but it also seemed like our last opportunity to visit my great-grandfather while he was still alive.
“I know plane tickets are expensive, Papi, so I understand if we can’t go,” I said at dinner a few nights later.
“Don’t worry about that. Mr. Sweary helped me out.”
Mr. Sweary was an interesting story. His name wasn’t actually Mr. Sweary; that was just a nickname Papi had given him because he swore a lot. The story of Mr. Sweary had started a few months earlier, when Papi met a woman named Gloria at the gym who was a professional home organizer. Papi laughed when he heard that. “That’s a real thing?” he asked.
Gloria explained that it was not only a real thing, but a popular service. “I run a very lucrative business in New York City just organizing people’s homes.”
“Well, you should hire me,” Papi joked. “I have pretty good systems when it comes to organizing my house.”
“Really?” She tilted her head in curiosity.
It was true. My father was obsessive about the littlest things. Like, for example, that little space between the counter and stove that no one but Papi cares about. He hated how all the crumbs would constantly get stuck in that one crack. It drove him nuts cleaning it every week. He would go at it with a toothpick and a sponge, but the crumbs would still build up, so he started putting a piece of tin foil in the crack to prevent it from collecting food. Problem solved.
Gloria hired him on the spot!
The next week he was told he would be starting a large organizing project for an important man who didn’t have time to organize his home life. Turned out the large job was for a wealthy man who lived in New York City and had a kitchen the size of the gym I box in, and a mouth like a sailor. That was Mr. Sweary.
“Every time he opened his mouth, another curse,” my father would say, shaking his head. “I don’t know how he motivates anyone with such a potty mouth!” Jesiah and I laughed and laughed at the thought of it.
When Papi got to Mr. Sweary’s penthouse apartment, he was shown a room with several boxes.
“Organize these,” said Gloria.
“What are ‘these’?” Papi asked.
“The family’s entire life history in photographs.”
“But how can I . . . I don’t even know these people.”
“Figure it out,” Gloria said, and with that, she left the room.
Several brand-new empty photo albums had been left on a bed for him, and Papi spent the entire week piecing together a family’s life story just through photographs. He had to judge people’s relationships and ages based solely on pictures. Holidays, birthday parties, baby showers, weddings, vacations . . . He put a few thousand photos in their place. Often he’d find a group of photos and have to go back and rearrange an entire year. There were stray photos and people who didn’t fit with any particular occasion, but he tried his best to place every
image carefully throughout.
“What a life!” he said one night after a long day at Mr. Sweary’s. I wasn’t sure if he was talking about our life or Mr. Sweary’s.
At the end of the week, Papi got paid a good sum of money for his work. Soon after, we were headed to Florida to make our own family memories. I packed a camera.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HOW I SPENT SUMMER VACATION
Every Sunday, my grandma took Jesiah and me to the Chapel, thirty minutes away in Wayne, New Jersey. It’s a Spanish-speaking Christian church with a Bible school that Jesiah and I also went to twice a week. My grandma had known the pastor there since before I was born, and it had become her community and her sanctuary over time. Papi never came with us—he wasn’t religious, but he was a man of faith. He always said, “Anything that causes division cannot be God. God is love and God is peace.” So Papi did not go to church with us. My grandmother stopped chastising him about it a long time ago—but they did have an unspoken agreement about her taking us every Sunday. Jesiah and I never . . . ever . . . missed Sunday church with our grandmother. I didn’t mind spending the extra time with her. She was always gentle and kind with us. And she was beautiful, too. Wherever we went, people would compliment her on her youthful skin and good looks. Spending time with her, even if it was at church, made up some of my favorite memories.
I hated going to church when I was younger, though. I remember shuffling around in the pew with nervous energy and never listening to anything the minister said. Sermons were boring and confusing—I didn’t get how grown-ups could make sense of any of it. One hour in church seemed like a week.
“I’d rather go to the dentist,” Jesiah would say.
“I’d rather stand in front of a dartboard,” I would say back, and he would laugh.
But as I got older, I started to listen more. I began to like hearing the stories in Spanish, and the music coming from the choir, and I got to know a bunch of cool kids.
On the Sunday morning before we left for Florida to see Abuelo, my grandmother said a prayer out loud: “Please, God, let my granddaughter outgrow her obsession with this boxing thing.” Then she looked at me to see if I was listening. I rolled my eyes. “And if she won’t listen to her wise old grandmother, then please keep her safe in the boxing ring.”
As we walked out of church later that morning, she said, “I don’t understand why you’re traveling all the way down to Florida to watch a boxing tournament instead of spending quality time with your great-grandfather. Why don’t you go to the beach?” We usually didn’t tell my grandmother about boxing tournaments because she tended to worry too much. But my grandmother always found out about them anyway, because Jesiah always spilled the beans.
“Grandma, we’ll go to the beach, too.”
She gave me a look that said she didn’t really believe me.
“But I also want to see a little of this.” And I began to shadowbox as we walked down the street.
“Oh, this fighting you do, Jess . . . I don’t like it. It makes me nervous. It’s not a sport for young ladies.”
“Grandma! That’s such an old-fashioned thing to say.”
“It’s old-fashioned to say girls shouldn’t hit people?”
“Yeah. People don’t talk that way anymore.”
“Well then, tell me, how do people talk these days?”
“You know, like how girls can do anything boys can do, and girl power and that kind of stuff.”
“Oh, all you girls with your ideas of women’s liberation. Let me tell you, it isn’t easy working and raising children.” She looked at my blank expression. “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
“You worked and raised children,” I said to her.
“Yes, and it wasn’t easy! See these gray hairs? Do you remember Ms. Lopez across the street from us? She never married or had children and died with a full head of raven-black hair. And not a wrinkle on her face! You children are hard work.”
“Yeah, well, she probably died of loneliness.”
My grandmother laughed heartily.
I remember Papi telling us stories about how Grandma struggled to balance raising her three sons and working to provide the things they needed the best way she could. When she arrived in the United States from Ecuador at age seventeen, she enrolled in high school and sold clothing on the street to pay for her tiny one-bedroom apartment while she managed to raise her first son all by herself. She was determined to learn English fluently, and spent many late hours learning how to read in English. She knew if she never learned the language, she would never make it in this country. Many days she slept only a few hours before heading to her next job, and other days she’d go without much to eat. It wasn’t easy for my grandmother, and when I thought about her story more, I was in awe of her strength and determination. I also felt a little guilty and privileged for the life I took for granted.
The next morning, we left for Florida and I promised my grandmother I’d spend plenty of time swimming in the ocean.
“Is this the Specific Ocean?” Jesiah said, his face pressed against the airplane window.
“It’s Pacific Ocean, and no, it’s the Atlantic,” I said.
We had been on an airplane a few times before to visit my family in Florida, and every time, Jesiah and I would squeeze our heads together and look out the window at all the mazes and shapes of little and big towns below and wonder who all those people were.
“Just passing by . . . ,” Jesiah would say, and wave.
There were so many people living different lives and telling different stories.
The pretty woman across the aisle asked if we were heading down to Florida for vacation. I said we were heading down to watch the Women’s National Golden Gloves tournament.
I always loved to see people’s reactions when I told them I boxed.
“You mean like kickboxing?” she said.
“No, boxing, fighting, ring, boxer,” I responded proudly.
“Oh, sounds rough. Probably different than male boxing?” the woman asked.
A lot of times people asked me if I thought women fought differently from men. “Yes and no,” I’d say. Women punched just as hard, and were just as good with their footwork and speed, strength, and agility—all the things that men boxers were good at—but women were different in that their passion came from a different place. I could never explain it fully, but it was true. I usually said, “Because we females have to work harder than men.” What I didn’t say is that we work harder because we’ve got to feel like we belong.
“Why did you pick up boxing as a sport?” the nice woman on the plane asked. She seemed genuinely curious.
“Because she likes to punch people,” Jesiah said with a snicker.
“Especially you!” I wrestled him in his seat.
I quickly changed the subject, because I hated answering that question. Boxing for me had gotten past the point of explaining it as “just really fun!” It was something beyond that, but it was hard to put into words. Yes, it was my passion, and yes, I saw it as a lifelong love, but would people understand that coming from a girl? Sometimes I wondered.
When we saw my great-grandfather, he looked frail and sickly. But the minute he saw us in the airport, he lit up. “Come, come give your abuelo a hug!”
I loved being at my great-grandfather’s place in Florida. I especially liked to cook with him. Before my great-grandmother died, he never cooked. But when she got sick, he started doing the cooking to care for her and nourish her. He cooked out of love. His secret ingredient to everything he made: love.
We played cards and talked about boxing a lot, too. My father asked him if going to the Golden Gloves might be too much for him, and he said he wouldn’t miss it for the world!
“I won’t make it to see Jesselyn fight in a Golden Gloves, so I might as well go with you tomorrow and ima
gine her there.”
I hadn’t expected the Women’s National Golden Gloves event to be so huge! It was like I’d left Earth and landed on another planet. There were women fighters everywhere—four hundred female boxers, to be exact—from all parts of the country. In my regular life, it was impossible to find women fighting at all, and here I was in the center of something enormous! There were women from as far away as California, and women of all ages.
The Golden Gloves started in 1927. It’s the biggest amateur boxing tournament in the United States. But until the 1990s, it was only for men.
Many of the female boxers I met had other jobs—really cool jobs like police officer, teen counselor, and military officer. One boxer was a guard for a high-security prison. Another worked for the New York City bomb squad. Several boxers I met were training to go from elite amateur to professional boxer. These women! Where had they been all my life!
The fights were hard-core, and the punches they delivered were explosive. I couldn’t take it all in fast enough. They fought three two-minute rounds scored by five judges, and I tried to learn their moves and study their strategies as much as possible. Toward the final matches I heard one boxer yell from the ring, “I am here and I deserve to be here!” I thought, Yes! Another time I overheard a boxer being interviewed and she said, “You hear the guys saying, ‘Oh, women can’t make it in this sport . . .’ Well, you gotta answer back somehow!” Yes again! These were my people! I think I understood for the first time what women were talking about when they referred to girl power, because it was all right here in this arena.
Toward the end of the day, we were walking around and Papi was getting anxious about keeping Jesiah from running off. My great-grandpa was always teaching me things.
“Did you know that Muhammad Ali won his first Golden Gloves at age fourteen?” he said.
“Really? He was that young?”
“Of course, now you can’t even compete in the Golden Gloves until you’re sixteen . . .”
My Corner of the Ring Page 8
