Gravity

by Sarah Deming

  Gravity cringed. If she were Svetlana, she wouldn’t want to relive that memory. It had been an all-women’s card in Paloma’s hometown of Sacramento. Gravity had wanted to go too, but Coach nixed it because he said the organizer was a sleazebag who would set her up to lose.

  Paloma looked Svetlana up and down and said, “You always remember the women who beat you but never the ones you beat.”

  Svetlana went pale, and then she said something that took Gravity entirely by surprise: “You’ll remember Gravity Delgado, then. She’s winning this whole thing.” Sveta turned back toward the registration chair, muttering, “You better fuck that bitch up, G.”

  “I will,” Gravity promised.

  Gravity was touched and relieved. This was the first double-elimination tournament either of them had ever competed in. It promised to be the most grueling of their careers and would be easier to get through if they weren’t beefing.

  The kindly old lady in charge of registration told Svetlana that her request for a roommate had been approved and she would be sharing with Wendy Li, a nice middleweight from Long Island. Gravity felt irritated, because she hadn’t known it was possible to request a roommate.

  “Gravity Delgado, we have you with Chantal Thompson,” the old lady said.

  Gravity nodded. Chantal was a flyweight from Cincinnati. They hadn’t spoken much, but she seemed okay.

  Gravity and Svetlana exchanged a brief, awkward hug, and Gravity rode the elevator up to her room. Chantal had already been there and had lined up all her things in neat rows, leaving Gravity half of every shelf. The crisp white sheets of Gravity’s queen bed were tucked so tight she had to wriggle inside them like a worm. She fell asleep immediately and dreamed she was in the ring.

  After breakfast the next morning, Gravity and Fatso elbowed their way to the front of the crowd buzzing around the lobby bulletin boards. The USA Boxing bigwigs had met in a sealed room that morning and conducted the draw for both the Women’s Trials and the Men’s Qualifier. Gravity scanned the sheets until she found the women’s lightweights.

  Number one seed Paloma Gonzales was at the top of the bracket. Aaliyah Williams, seeded second, was at the bottom. Gravity found her name in the middle, and her heart sank when she saw the name next to hers: Svetlana Mamay.

  “It’s a lucky draw,” Fatso said. “You’ll beat Svetlana easy tonight and be fresh for Paloma tomorrow.”

  Gravity sighed. Just a few days ago, she had been so eager to fight her old friend, but Svetlana’s kindness had changed the way she felt.

  “I know,” she told Fatso. “I just wish I didn’t have to.”

  Gravity heard something behind her. She turned around to meet Svetlana’s pale face and wide blue eyes. Gravity could tell from her wounded expression that she had overheard the conversation with Fatso. Sveta spun around, blond braids whirling, and took off toward the elevators.

  Gravity stood frozen, watching her go. She wanted to chase her, to explain. But what could she say?

  Fatso put a heavy hand on Gravity’s shoulder and said, “Fight starts the minute you know who you’re fighting.” He smiled a strange kind of smile that left his eyes cold.

  “Well played!” said a lilting voice.

  They both turned to see a beautiful woman in a skirt suit studying them through tortoiseshell glasses. Gravity was bad at telling adults’ ages, but Carmen Cruz could have been anywhere from thirty to sixty years old. Her long black hair was untouched by gray, but there was a worry line in the middle of her forehead and deep wisdom in her onyx eyes. She held a reporter’s notebook in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other.

  “I’m so happy you’re covering the tournament!” Gravity told her. “Your blog is the best thing on the internet about boxing.”

  “Gracias, boxeadora,” Carmen said, inclining her head. “Perhaps you would consider granting me an interview. Mustafa, hold my drink so I can give the young lady a business card.”

  Gravity looked at Fatso in surprise. She had never heard anyone use his real name before. Even his wife called him Fatso.

  Fatso eyed Carmen’s champagne with distaste—Gravity had heard him deliver many lectures on the evils of alcohol—but he held its stem while Carmen withdrew a card from a silver holder and passed it to Gravity. It was printed in shiny black letters that looked like they came from an old-fashioned typewriter:

  Carmen Cruz

  Independent Journalist

  San Diego, Bogotá, and Beyond

  mobile: (917) 555-0184

  email: carmen@boxingforgirls.com

  Gravity turned the card over and examined the back, which bore a list of all the weight classes in amateur and professional boxing, in both pounds and kilograms. It was really useful! She slipped it carefully into her pocket.

  “What do you think of the draw for my weight?” Gravity asked.

  Carmen spread her hands, and the light from the hotel chandelier sparkled off the large emerald on her finger. “The estimable Mustafa was correct when he said it was a lucky draw. Of course, the draw is less of an issue in double elimination, but one never wants to find oneself in the challengers’ bracket. It is an uphill battle back.” She retrieved her champagne.

  When Carmen spoke, the sentences came out rapidly, in fully formed thoughts, as though they were already written down in her head. It was impressive. “You will beat Svetlana Mamay with ease. Paloma will, of course, defeat poor May Okamura. You and Paloma will have a magnificent semifinal battle for the right to face whoever emerges victorious from the lower half of the bracket, most likely Aaliyah Williams. Fatigue will, as always, be a factor.”

  “I don’t know about that, Carmen!” Fatso said. “That girl Luz is tough. She might mess around and beat Aaliyah Williams.”

  A red-faced older man interrupted with, “Luz Ortega is gonna win this whole gosh-darn thing!”

  Carmen took a sip of her champagne and remained silent, which increased Gravity’s confidence in her predictions. In boxing, it was usually true that the less someone spoke, the more they knew.

  With a ding, the elevator doors slid open and D-Minus and Genya tumbled out, sopping wet from the hotel pool and wearing nothing but underpants and flip-flops. They swaggered over to the bulletin board, but the smiles froze on their faces when they saw Fatso, who grabbed them by the napes of their necks. Gravity tried not to look at D-Minus’s briefs, which were royal blue with red stripes and very form-fitting.

  D-Minus said, “Yo, Fatso, watch the hair. We gotta peep the draw.”

  “Not dressed like that you don’t. Go to your room and put on some clothes.”

  “It is a tough draw for the young men from your club, Mustafa,” Carmen said, gesturing to the billboard. “And, of course, theirs is single elimination, so the draw is vital. I see that Gennady here drew the rising Junior Olympic champion, Jack Riebel, who beat him in their last encounter.”

  “I’ma spank Jack,” Genya said.

  Carmen looked Genya up and down, from his dripping blond fringe to his flip-flops.

  “He’s better than he looks,” Fatso said.

  It was true that Genya did not look intimidating. He had even less muscle definition than his sister and resembled an oversized, pimply Justin Bieber. But it took guts to be the only white boy in their gym, and you couldn’t judge fitness by what someone looked like. When they all did uphill sprint intervals on the treadmill, Genya was the only one who never got gassed.

  Carmen continued, looking over her notes, “Demetrius Saint-Amand comes in fourth seed at bantamweight and has easy prelims, but he will collide with the extremely tough Tiger Biggs in the semifinals, a bout he must win if he is to qualify for Trials. Any comments? Have those two ever fought before?”

  D said, “We fought once.”

  The way he said it, you didn’t need to ask whether he had won or lost.


  “Demetrius was only eleven,” Fatso said. “Finals of the Silver Gloves Nationals. We’re much stronger now.”

  “And was it a stoppage?” Carmen asked, scribbling away.

  D-Minus looked at her with outrage. “Ain’t nobody ever stopped D-Minus.”

  She smiled as she wrote. “I see. And you’re, what, sixteen now?”

  “Yeah,” he said, craning his neck to see what she was writing. “But I date up to forty.”

  “What a character!” Carmen said to Fatso.

  Fatso rolled his eyes. “Tell me about it.”

  The preliminary rounds of the tournament were battled out in a huge, airy sports center about ten miles from the hotel. Three rings ran simultaneously, while boxers, coaches, officials, and family members sat in the bleachers like armies with their banners. Sacred Jones and her fast and flashy Kronk crew mingled with the Cincy Youth, bright in their purple and gold. The D.C. Headbangers were eating peanuts out of the shell as they swapped gossip with the Philadelphians. Gravity saw Miami Cubans, Texan brawlers, Wichita slicksters, and Angelenos in trunks like the Mexican flag.

  The warm-up for Svetlana went smoothly. Gravity had switched off the part of her that remembered all the good times they had shared and how Svetlana had always had her back. She stayed grimly in the present moment.

  Fatso, magnificent in an enormous burgundy-and-cream tracksuit that said “Brooklyn Boxing,” was working the pads with panache. He smacked her gloves harder than usual so that her punches made a louder sound and Svetlana, who was within earshot, would be afraid.

  D-Minus was enjoying the drama of this matchup between teammates. He had a ten-dollar bet riding on Gravity with Genya and had been trying unsuccessfully to get Gravity and Svetlana to pose for a face-off he could Instagram. Failing that, he was running back and forth between the two camps, irritating everyone with obvious lies about the trash Gravity and Svetlana were talking about each other. When he reported that Svetlana had said she was going to send Gravity back to the Dominican Republic in a coffin, Fatso said, “Enough!” and ripped the cell phone out of his hand.

  D-Minus complained loudly. Apparently, he had given the number out to several female flyweights and could not remember which one had invited him to her room.

  “You’ll get it back after the fights,” Fatso said.

  D-Minus accused Fatso of cockblocking and stalked off.

  Gravity watched in silence as the decision was announced for the bout before theirs—Kaylee Miller had won an upset—and then she ducked through the ropes and bowed in turn to each of the judges. Across the ring, Svetlana stood with her back turned so Boca could adjust her headgear. She looked so small and vulnerable that Gravity felt a shiver of pity.

  She gathered her anger like armor, remembering the first time they had sparred, when Svetlana had made her bleed in front of everyone. She willed Svetlana to become every girl who had ever bullied her on the playground or mocked her in the lunchroom for being too skinny, too tall, too poor, too Dominican or not Dominican enough, for her hand-me-down clothes and bad temper and the gap between her two front teeth.

  Fatso pulled her forehead against his and whispered, “She’s already beat mentally.”

  Gravity said, “I know.”

  Girls were crueler than boys. It was a piercing kind of meanness, like a stiff jab. All those sexist men who opposed women’s boxing because they said they didn’t like to see females hurt ought to spend one day as a woman and see how much hurt was involved. Like Gravity’s old rabbi, who had actually called her into his office one day and tried to convince her to quit boxing with some bullshit about Eve being made from Adam’s rib to be protected.

  After that, Gravity quit synagogue. She didn’t need to go to a special building to pray. Nobody had ever protected her in her life, except maybe Coach and Mr. Rizzo. And if God didn’t want her to box, why would He have made her so good?

  She got down on one knee in the blue corner, rested her forehead against the padded post, and recited the Shema. She asked God to protect her and Svetlana from injury, to make the judging fair, and to allow them to perform up to their potential. Gravity never prayed for victory. She didn’t want any unfair advantage, and she figured God had better things to do than interfere in sports.

  Gravity had never given Svetlana her real stare before, and her friend looked startled when they met at center ring. She tried to hold Gravity’s gaze but faltered, blinking and turning away to look at the referee. Gravity felt something click into place inside her.

  When the bell rang, she did not shuffle forward in the boxing stance but sprinted straight at Sveta, trapping her in her own corner. She let fly a lead right so wild that it missed and hit the ropes, but the elbow connected with the padding over Svetlana’s forehead, knocking her back. Since the ref didn’t call it, Gravity kept on punching.

  You fight different ways for different people, and she did not need her best game here, just her toughest. She felt her arms windmilling rather than flying tight and straight, but she pressed on, making it a brawl. Svetlana had never had much heart for that.

  Gravity took a half step back to give herself room. Svetlana’s guard might have seemed tight to someone in the back row of the bleachers, but up close it was a sieve. Gravity saw all the holes in her defense, lit up and sparkling like video game gold.

  When the bell made its triple chime—there were multiple rings, so each ring had its own distinct sound—Gravity was shocked. The three minutes had flown by.

  Ring time was different than real time. Sometimes it seemed to speed up, and sometimes it slowed down. Some fights she could remember afterward in precise detail. Others faded away, leaving behind only isolated impressions: momentum shifts, words spoken in the corner, big scoring blows.

  Gravity waved away the stool and stood up during the one-minute rest. She was too hyped to sit.

  “Good round,” Fatso said.

  He pulled out her mouthpiece and passed it down to D-Minus, who had weaseled his way into her corner, as he often did. You weren’t supposed to be able to corner unless you were a registered coach with USA Boxing, but that didn’t stop D-Minus. He reached out for Gravity’s ankle and said, “Hey, G, throw the lead right, left hook! She wide open when—”

  “Hush!” said Fatso. “She’s doing just fine.”

  He gave her water silently, then laid one of his broad palms against her chest and told her to breathe. Gravity loved that about Fatso. When you were in your zone, he didn’t try to get up in your business.

  Midway through the third and final round, it stopped being about Svetlana at all. It was just something Gravity had to do. That was when she doubled up the straight right hand. The first one was fast. The second snapped back Svetlana’s head and made her eyes widen.

  The referee jumped between them. He turned to face Svetlana and held up a finger.

  “One! Two!”

  Svetlana tried to argue, but he kept counting.

  It was a standing eight! She had hurt Svetlana bad enough for the referee to stop the action and count.

  It was like having all her birthdays at once. It was like all the bad things that had ever happened to her were erased with a big eraser. Gravity bounced from foot to foot in the neutral corner. She wanted to do it again.

  When the referee gave the signal, Gravity leapt out and drilled Svetlana’s nose with another lead right. This time Svetlana did not even argue the eight count but took it, head lowered. Two lines of blood dripped over her upper lip, spattering red stars on the canvas.

  Gravity grinned and smacked her gloves together, but the referee was leading Svetlana to her corner, where he conferred with Boca and the ring doctor.

  It was a third-round stoppage. Gravity knew she should have been happy, but this win was different, because it was against her friend. She felt a kind of dread take hold of her stom
ach as the full weight of what she had done to Svetlana sank in.

  She stood in the center of the ring with the referee, holding his hand. Out in the crowd, she saw D-Minus and Genya having an animated argument. After a while, Svetlana came out of her corner to take the referee’s other hand, refusing to meet Gravity’s eyes. Boca had done a good job of cleaning her face, but there was a streak of blood across her biceps. The referee lifted Gravity’s arm way up high before stepping away and sweeping the two girls together into an awkward, sweaty hug.

  Because of the height difference, Svetlana’s face was pressed to Gravity’s neck. She could hear the hiccups there as her friend tried not to cry.

  As they stepped apart, Gravity murmured, “Good fight,” but Svetlana was already turning her back, golden braids whipping over her shoulder.

  Gravity followed her back to her corner, where she did all the things a good winner does—hugged Boca, held the ropes apart for Svetlana—but she knew that something about their friendship was permanently altered. That first time they had sparred, Svetlana could have been mean, but she hadn’t. She had been kind. And now Gravity had taken all the lessons she had learned and used them to beat her.

  Fatso held her hand as she walked down the ring stairs, her thighs trembling. All at once she felt very tired and very hungry. A few people reached out to shake her gauze-wrapped hand. Genya, having apparently lost the argument, was sulking as he handed D-Minus a ten-dollar bill.

  “That’s grimy,” said Genya. “She’s my sister.”

  “That’s boxing,” said D-Minus.

  At six the next morning, all twenty-four Trials boxers slouched in their rows of folding chairs in the hotel conference room, half awake and awaiting their turn on the scale. Gravity could feel the difference from yesterday morning’s initial weigh-in, when everyone had been more or less on an equal footing. One day in, half of the girls had been shunted to the losers’ brackets. It was a small room to hold all that drama, and the recirculated air was thick with tension.