by Sarah Deming
“Hey, look, Hamza!” she said.
She didn’t usually like photos of herself, but this one was fierce. It was an action shot from her Golden Gloves finals victory. Her body was twisted in full extension from the right cross, sweat flying off her like rays of light. She was baring her mouthpiece at the other girl, who had slipped the right but was about to eat a huge left hook. You could see the hook coming from the way Gravity’s elbow was cocked.
Hamza read the caption aloud in an impressed voice: “ ‘Coney Island Teen Is a Knockout Queen: Gravity Delgado, right, will compete in the Women’s Boxing Olympic Trials next week in Spokane.’ ”
“It’s all about my gym and how we have so many people going to the tournament,” she explained. “There’s me and, you know, Svetlana.” Hamza nodded solemnly. Gravity had complained to him at length about Svetlana’s moving up to 132. “And then there’s four guys trying to qualify for the Men’s Trials. D-Minus, plus three of Boca’s fighters.”
Hamza reached below the counter and put on the Cops ’n Kids cap she had given him a few months ago. “I will wear it when I watch the livestream,” he vowed.
“Thanks, Hamza.”
“I know you will prevail.” He slid another copy of the paper across the counter. “Here. Take an extra for your coach.”
“Thanks!”
She trotted across the street to school, past a pack of boys hanging on the corner in a cloud of skunky smoke, blue do-rags beneath their baseball caps and blue bandannas trailing from their jeans. Gravity stood up to her full 5'9", and they let her pass with one slow whistle. She kept her eyes on her school.
Gravity did not fight in the streets anymore. At her age, street fighting could get you killed, like D-Minus’s big brother, Tray. That second time she had tried to find Cops ’n Kids, when it had been closed for a funeral, had been the day of Tray’s service. Tray wasn’t gang-affiliated, just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She was grateful every day that Tyler got bused to a nice yuppie elementary school in Park Slope. Auntie Rosa had helped Gravity do the research and hook everything up. Ty was really sharp when it came to computers and math, so she wanted him to be in an environment where he could focus. After she won her gold medal, she would send him to a good college and get them a nice house somewhere like Connecticut. She wouldn’t let Mom live with them, but they would go visit her once a month.
Gravity shrugged off her bag and put it in the scanner, nodding hello to the school safety officer. It was a little depressing to have to go through metal detectors, but after that, William Grady High was an okay place. It was a vocational school that was supposed to prepare you for the real world. Gravity liked working with her hands, and she wanted to have a Plan B to support Tyler in case boxing didn’t work out.
Her favorite conditioning guru, Rick Ross, said that Plan B stood for “Plan Bullshit,” and that true warriors should never let the possibility of losing enter their minds. But Rick Ross didn’t have to give Tyler cereal with water in it. A boxer’s career could end at any moment due to injury; Gravity needed something to fall back on. She had tried out computer repair and automotive before settling on culinary. It was a little more interesting, and sometimes you got to take food home.
Culinary lab that morning was torture because she was so hungry. They were making chicken potpie for the teachers’ lunch, and the room was filled with the smell of baking pastry. She waited until the teacher’s back was turned and popped in a piece of sugar-free gum, which she chewed ferociously, imagining it was food. At least she was assigned to the group peeling carrots. Raw carrots were not that tempting.
At lunch, a couple classmates who had seen her picture in the paper came up to congratulate her. There were less girls than boys at Grady, but they had a pretty good women’s basketball team and Gravity always sat with them. Once in a while, they would come out to Cops ’n Kids to cross-train, or she would go to their practice and play a little ball.
She drifted in and out through her afternoon classes, dreaming of being in the ring with Paloma Gonzales, who had won lightweight bronze in London and was considered the favorite to win the Women’s Trials. Gravity could not wait to show all the sportswriters how wrong they were.
Paloma was a boxer-puncher who did everything pretty well, but Gravity didn’t see anything that special about her, except how pretty she was. She got more press than any of the other boxers, including Sacred Jones, and Sacred had won middleweight gold in London. That made Gravity mad.
She tried to hold on to the anger to keep herself awake. It was hard not to fall asleep in school after getting up so early to run. Her favorite teacher, Ms. Laventhol, was especially nice and never said anything when she nodded off in earth science. Once, she had let Gravity sleep through her entire class. When she had woken up, it was a whole different group of students and a whole new teacher.
Today it was easier to stay awake, because Ms. Laventhol was doing a unit on physics, and Gravity kept hearing her name mentioned as one of the four fundamental forces and waking back up.
When the buzzer sounded, ending final period, she felt her heart lift. School was a little like boxing: You did your best to protect yourself at all times and go the distance. In the end, you got saved by the bell.
Gravity listened to Rick Ross’s latest podcast on the hourlong subway ride to the gym. It was about how athletes should try to make themselves into a “luxury brand.” This wasn’t Gravity’s favorite episode; she preferred the stuff about performance, but it was good to learn about the business aspects, too. There was more to boxing than what went on in the ring.
Rick gave a whole example about designer watches. He said that even if you thought you couldn’t afford an expensive watch, really you couldn’t afford not to have one, because people judge a man by his watch. He didn’t say what they judge a woman on.
Gravity frowned. The only fancy thing she owned was her Golden Gloves necklace.
Thinking of those little gold gloves cheered her up, as always. You couldn’t buy them in a store but had to win them. In Gravity’s opinion, that made them better than the most expensive diamonds.
She broke into a trot when she turned onto the dead-end street that sloped downward to Cops ’n Kids. She couldn’t wait to hear Coach’s congratulations about the Daily News article, and she was really hoping he would let her spar.
The gym was hopping when she got there, Boca’s Mexican brass band music blaring out of the speakers, and boxers on every heavy bag. She didn’t see Svetlana, which suited her just fine. Lately, Kostya had been taking her and Genya to Smiley’s Gym more and more.
Gravity made the rounds, shaking hands, starting on Boca’s side of the gym. Nobody did the secret handshake anymore. At some point, D-Minus had announced that secret handshakes were for kids, and everybody had stopped doing them. Gravity kind of missed it.
Boca didn’t seem too happy about the article. Mr. Rizzo had scanned it and posted it on Facebook, but Boca hadn’t liked it or shared it. Probably he wished one of his own fighters had gotten the photo. Gravity made sure to act humble and say that it wasn’t an article about her but about all of them. Boca grunted and asked if she wanted to get a few rounds in with Boo Boo.
“Sure!” she said.
She waved to Boo Boo, who was shadowboxing in a plastic suit and sweats. Boo Boo was 12–0 as a professional now and training for an upcoming bout at the Barclays Center. Boca had made him drop down to super middleweight. This was a constant struggle, because Boo Boo’s mom owned the best soul food restaurant in Brooklyn.
“Hurry up,” Boca told Gravity. “We’ll put you in first, before the boys.”
Monster, who was wearing pink trunks and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer T-shirt, gave her a hug and asked her how she liked the photograph. Something about the way he said it made her take out the paper again and examine the caption. In tiny letters, it said “Photo b
y Kimani Browne, Special to the Daily News.”
“Wow, Kimani!” she said. “It’s my favorite photo ever. You’re getting really good.”
He shrugged. “Andre Vázquez got me this great lens. And you’re easy to photograph. You look so intense when you fight.”
“Thanks, Kimani!”
She was the only one in the gym who called Monster by his real name. She still remembered the day, back when he was Coach’s fighter, that she had asked him to reset the round timer. As he reached a long arm upward, she had remarked that she sure wished she were tall enough to reset the bell without a stool.
“Be careful what you wish for,” he replied.
Later on, while they had shadowboxed in front of the mirror, he told Gravity that sometimes it was hard being so big and dark-skinned. He said that when he got onto a subway car or crowded elevator, he could see the fear in people’s eyes. That was why he always wore pink clothes and T-shirts with friendly things on them.
“I wish everybody would stop calling me Monster,” he had said, throwing a fearsome right hand at his reflection.
“What do you want us to call you?” Gravity asked.
He said shyly, “How about King?”
Boca, who had approached just then to give Monster water—he was already trying to lure him away from Coach—laughed and said, “Yeah. King Kong, maybe.”
Gravity had tried calling him King, but it never took off, so she just called him Kimani. You couldn’t fight gym nicknames. If they stuck, they stuck, and a lot of times they were mean, like the great pad man they called Fatso, or racist, like the kid they called Fósforo, Spanish for “matchstick,” because he was so dark and skinny. All things considered, she was pretty lucky everyone stuck with Gravity.
When she said hello to Lefty, he made her blush by bowing down to her about the newspaper article and teasing her about signing a modeling contract, but D-Minus just touched his fist to hers without comment and kept on shadowboxing.
D was like a cat: he rarely came when you called or gave you love when you wanted it. She watched as he threw a blindingly fast six-punch combination. Today he was wearing one red Adidas boot and one blue one, blue camouflage trunks, and a red beanie with a huge pom-pom. He made it look like the next big thing. Monster had told Gravity that D-Minus was the only person in their gym who looked better photographed in color than in black-and-white.
When she got to Coach, he was busy wrapping the hands of one of the old maintenance men from the building. As he worked, Coach grumbled about Boca’s music and how dirty he had left the gym yesterday. Gravity kissed his soft, wrinkled cheek and waited for him to bring up the article.
The maintenance man asked a question about jabbing form that Coach answered as thoughtfully as if he were talking to a champion. She smiled. Boca never would have done that. He never paid attention to anyone until they started winning. Even if they had won in the past, he would give them the cold shoulder if they slumped. But Coach would train anybody. As long as you listened and didn’t talk back, he gave you everything he knew, for free.
She pulled out the paper and set it on the ring. “I brought you a copy. You know, for your wall?”
She indicated the area over by his locker bank. She wished he would hang a picture of her up there. He had lots of D-Minus’s clippings but nothing about her.
Once again, she admired the mural of Coach as a young boxer. Whoever had painted it had done a really good job. It showed him in gloves and trunks, bare-chested and scowling, with “Jefferson ‘The Truth’ Thomas, Marine Corps Heavyweight Champion” painted across the bottom in cool graffiti lettering next to his record: “97–12 (80 KOs).”
They didn’t make records like that anymore. Coach had been fighting back in the 1950s, when Rocky Marciano ruled the heavyweight division. If you wanted to make Coach mad, all you had to do was bring up Rocky Marciano. He would get a look on his face like he had just sucked a lemon and talk about all the great black heavyweights who could have beaten Marciano in their prime. But boxing was racist, and Coach had retired in disgust after one too many unfair decisions. It made Gravity angry just to think about it.
When Coach made no move to take the newspaper from her, Gravity opened it to the page with her photo, saying, “See? ‘Coney Island Teen Is a Knockout Queen’?”
“I saw it.”
She frowned.
The maintenance man said, “That’s you in the Daily News?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. You look great!”
“Thanks!”
“Go hit the bag,” Coach told him. When he’d gone, he told Gravity, “Fifteen minutes of rope.”
“But I told Boo Boo I would spar him, and Boca said to hurry.”
He gave her a look. “Oh, so is Boca training you now?”
She sighed. “I just thought we could—”
“Keep your goddamn hands up!” Coach bellowed across the gym at D-Minus. He looked back at her and said, “Sit your ass down.”
She sat. He snatched the newspaper off the apron and held it up in front of her. The paper rustled slightly from the trembling in his hands.
“Tell me what you see.”
“I see a picture of me,” she said defensively. “A good one.”
“Why is it good? Because you got your hair done? Because you can see your little muscles?”
The disrespect in his tone hurt. It was true that Gravity liked the way the tips of her braids looked, flying out from under the headgear—Melsy had braided in blue extensions to match the color of her trunks—and she liked the racing stripe of muscle in her calves.
She said, “You can tell I’m winning. That’s why it’s good.”
“Look at your feet,” he said, stabbing a finger at the paper. “Did I teach you to stand with your feet like that?”
She hadn’t really noticed that before. She must have thrown the right hand with such force that she had stepped forward so her two feet were square.
“And look at your left!”
She looked. “I was about to throw a hook. You can tell from the way my shoulder is.”
He snorted. “Shit, everybody in the motherfucking Barclays can tell. Might as well hold a press conference. Ladies and gentlemen: PLASMAFuel Cops ’n Kids is proud to announce that Gravity Delgado is about to throw a left hook!”
D-Minus snickered. He had quit shadowboxing and edged closer to them, in typical catlike fashion. Sweat dripped down the stripy muscles of his abs to disappear into his baby-blue boxers. Gravity looked away. Someone ought to tell him to pull up those trunks. It was distracting.
“And look how low your right is coming back,” Coach went on. “If she’d countered with a good hook, she would’ve knocked you out.”
D-Minus said, “Don’t hook with a hooker, hooker.”
Gravity said, “She didn’t have a good hook, though. And if she did, I would’ve blocked it. Or, you know, adjusted.”
“Hmph. You would have adjusted!” Coach pounded on the arm of his wheelchair. “In here is where we make adjustments. In the gym. You are not a slick boxer. Your game plan can’t be to adjust.”
D-Minus shook his head sadly. “You ain’t slick, G.”
She leapt up and tried to knock off his pom-pom hat, but he slipped, stuck out his tongue, and said, “See?”
Sometimes he made her want to hit below the belt.
“Sit your ass back down,” Coach thundered.
Gravity sat on the apron, her face burning. She looked down at the pink Adidas boots that Mr. Rizzo had given her a year ago. They were starting to get a little hole on one side. She wiggled her pinky toe until it poked through.
Why couldn’t Coach and D give her any credit? Couldn’t they at least act happy for her for one day?
When Coach spoke again, his voice was gentle.
“You can beat those girls in Spokane, Gravity. All of them. I have high hopes. That’s why I’m hard on you. Do you hear?”
For some reason, that made her sad. She looked back up. He was peering at her intently from beneath his bushy eyebrows. Coach had more boxing information inside his skull than there was on all of BoxRec. Gravity felt it all there, behind his bloodshot eyes.
A wave of calm spread through her. How could she have gotten mad at him for expecting the most from her? He was her coach. She didn’t want to be one of those divas who argued with their coaches. Nobody could train alone, not even Floyd Mayweather.
She said, “I’m listening, sir.”
“Good.” He counted off on his gnarled fingers. “You have sharp eyes. You see the openings. You’re not too fast but you have good timing. You have heavy hands and you throw your punches with bad intentions.”
D-Minus said, “You do hit hard. For a girl.” He winked at her. To Gravity’s intense irritation, she felt herself blush.
Coach went on, “The girls from now on will be stronger. Slicker. More experienced. You can’t beat them if you make mistakes.” He picked up the paper and shook it at her. “You can’t beat them fighting like this. You have to rise to your potential.”
“I will,” she promised.
“I know you will.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Remember, you’re not just representing me, you’re representing Brownsville.”
Gravity grinned. She joined D-Minus in reciting the motto of Brownsville, Brooklyn: “Never ran, never will.”
Boo Boo approached in his usual respectful manner. “Coach Thomas? Boca asked for three rolls of the good gauze. He said we’re ready for Gravity, and he wants D for Lefty.”
Coach rooted through his ancient trainer’s bag, grumbling under his breath. He handed the gauze to Boo Boo and said, “Ask him for four rolls of the good tape. Tell him she’ll be right there, and we’re tech sparring only. I don’t want anybody hurt before Spokane.”
Whenever their gym competed in tournaments, Coach and Boca presented a united front. To outsiders, they were all Cops ’n Kids, the winningest team in New York (except when Smiley’s Gym pulled off the occasional upset). But all the boxers knew the truth: The two great coaches always sat at a distance from each other. They communicated through gifts and messengers, like rulers of rival kingdoms.