by Fields, MJ
“Ha, you just got her nice side,” he says, tightening my right glove for me. “You should see her at Thanksgiving when she’s going at it with her mom. Pre-fight smack talk’s got nothing on a holiday round between Liv and Angela. Been that way since she was fourteen or so.”
Fourteen.
That’s how old I was when I got a postcard from my real father. The postmark was from Memphis, Tennessee. The picture on the front was of Beale Street just after a rain, the purple sky behind it a perfect match for the neon lights along the roadway. Felt weird for someone I’d decided to hate to send a photo from some place so beautiful.
He signed it Robert Delaney. The handwriting was the same as it was on the note tucked into the blanket that swaddled me on the Fourth Precinct footsteps in Philadelphia, where he’d left me when I was just a few days old. That note explained that my mother had died while giving birth, and he had no business raising a baby. He kept his name a secret then. He didn’t want to be found.
Robert Delaney made it far in fourteen years, but he still said I was better off where I was. In fact, that’s all he wrote on that card—that I was better off. At fourteen, I was positive I knew better, so I ran away from the foster family I’d been living with for a year and slipped onto a bus to Memphis. I didn’t have an address, but I had a street. I went to eleven hotels before someone recognized the name. Everything this man ever owned was bundled up in a box stashed behind a hotel desk, like it was waiting for me. He’d passed away days before from a stroke. I’ve always believed it happened the moment his fingers let the post card fall into the mailbox. The hotel was getting ready to donate his things, and I don’t think they expected a kid to show up to claim them.
An army coat, a proper shaving kit, a diary of everything I’d missed—every wish and regret he had about leaving me—and boxing gloves. They were well worn, scarred from training and battle rounds in the ring. I don’t wear them now, the leather’s brittle and the padding thin. But I did then. I wore them at the police station while I waited for someone from Child Services. I wore them on the airplane they put me on back to Pennsylvania, and I wore them at the group home I stayed at until I was eighteen. Though, as I got older, I kept them in the duffle bag under my bed and only took them out on rare occasions.
I loved those gloves because of the words he’d written during our years apart—honesty poured from pens and pencils—the words sloppily written and often misspelled. He filled pages on my birthdays, and sometimes I could tell he was drunk. He rarely wrote about himself, but when he did, it was as if he’d planned on me finding this book one day. He wrote about his struggles with alcohol, about his abusive father that nearly beat him to death when he was fifteen, and about my mom, a seventeen-year-old he’d lived next door to and ran away with right before their high-school graduation. Their relationship was volatile, and they would lose touch but always come back together. She had her own troubles, it seemed, and during one of those times they met up again, I was created. The timing was wrong all around, neither of them in a place to parent.
For years, I imagined who he was—based on the history he’d chosen to share with me. I decided he’d gone by the name of Memphis, because that’s where I’d found his ghost. I made everyone else call me by this name I’d made up, and on the day I turned eighteen, I took his last name: Delaney.
I couldn’t tell what kind of fighter he was in real life. The only proof I have that he ever fought at all, other than the gloves, was a yellowed scorecard with Archie Valentine’s name written on the back. My father was knocked out in the fifth round in some small time undercard fight in New Orleans. The way I see it, though, he went five rounds with a legend. Leo and Angela don’t remember him. I’m sure he was some nobody to them. But they took me in like family when I finally got the courage to come here to train. Even if he’s just a man I’ve built from my imagination, I’m going to honor him as if it’s all true. The pretend Dad feels a lot better than the one I hated when I was a kid. He’s the truest father I’ve ever had, and that’s where my focus needs to be—on training and winning.
I give everything over to the speed bag until the sweat is sliding down the center of my chest and my last clean T-shirt is clinging to me like a second layer of skin. When Leo calls it quits, I pretend to pack up and then let the door fall closed behind him before I pick back up where we’d left off—dodging and weaving, my breath timed with every punch I throw. I get lost in the rhythm. It’s a vicious cadence, the perpetual thumps of my leather-bound knuckles swinging the bag with each knock until my triceps beg for mercy. I push beyond the pain, working through the fatigue until the euphoria fills my chest. It’s a strange sensation to try to explain to anyone who’s never challenged endurance. I feel it push my heart to extremes and flatten my lungs with desperation, but my hands…my feet…my eyes—they never stop. It’s a sweet victory against my toughest challenger: myself.
With a final blow, I falter back until my numb legs sense the edge of the ring behind me, and I rest on the mat, my neck cradled by the taut rope, my ears pounding as my breath tries to catch up. As tough as this workout was, it’s nothing compared to facing a real man just as intent on exploiting my weaknesses as I am his. I have weaknesses. I have too many.
I pull on the tape around my wrists with my teeth, ripping it away in strings, half wanting to drink four-thousand calories in protein and come right back to this bag and do it all again, and half wanting to run down to Shill’s and pick up a rib-eye and slather it in butter. I decide to do neither when I hear the office door swing open. Music that sounds like it belongs in a retirement home comes streaming out quietly.
“Why Memphis?”
One hand is on her hip, and her ankles are crossed while her weight rests on the inside of the door. I tug at the tape, and only a sliver comes off, so I stand and slide my tired feet over to her, my wrists turned out. When I glance up to meet Liv’s eyes, she jolts the tiniest bit, quickly looking down at my hands.
“Mind?”
She scrunches her shoulders and pushes her hands in her back pockets nervously at first, but eventually breathes out and reaches for my gloves.
“You probably did this a lot when you were a kid, huh?” Her lips twist at both my question, and the stickiness of the tape. She finally grips enough of it in her hand and begins to unravel it from my wrist.
“Not really.” Her eyes flit nervously, darting from her own hands to the wide-open gym off to the side, but never up at mine. The lights are low in the gym, but the bright bulbs from the office ceiling act like a spotlight on her face.
“Your dad didn’t let you watch his fights, huh?” I take over when she frees my right hand, and I begin tugging at the tape on my left.
She steps back, leaning into the doorway again, and her lip pulls up on one side as she scratches at her ear.
“I watched him train, mostly. But Leo did this kinda stuff. We didn’t always live in this place, with the gym right next door. I only really saw my dad when he wasn’t on, ya know? Like when he wasn’t training for a big fight or whatever.” She gives me a short glance then looks down, folding her arms over her chest and rocking on her heels.
“So…Memphis?” She cocks a brow, her eyes sticking to me a little longer. The light brushes her cheek, and I dip my head in response, not wanting to look so long that I notice things. There’s something about Liv that reminds me of home—only I don’t know what home is. I’ve had addresses, but until I started staying with the Valentines, I never had a place that felt like mine. There’s a familiarity here. And I see it in Liv, more than anywhere. Or at least I feel it. It’s like a dull pressure at the center of my chest.
It’s a weakness.
“Didn’t much like the name I was born with, and I like Memphis, so…” I hold out my palms, gloves and tape held in each hand, and force myself to look her in the eyes. Only a second or two passes, but I can tell she’s not buying my lie. It’s the only story I’m giving her, though. You share too much and p
eople start to see all of your baggage.
“Wish I could change mine.” Her eyes are serious when she speaks, and we lock gazes again. As much as I’m lying, Liv is speaking a harsh truth.
I respond with a nod eventually, then lean my weight back in the direction of my locker, falling away from her—from this conversation.
Thing is, even if she did change her name, the world already knows her face. She would never be able to disappear. All I was looking to do was belong. Liv is looking to run. It took me years to find my place, and I’m not leaving it now—no matter how hard it is to keep walking away, to not lick my lips and imagine it’s Liv’s tongue against my skin.
Weaknesses do not belong in the ring, and I need this one to get out of my head.
Three
Liv
It’s been a week of work—the same work I did as a teenager, because helping with the family business was “expected” of me. My mother and I have always been more boss/employee than mother/daughter. When I was in high school, I think maybe I liked doing my family’s books because of the praise. When I found money—discovered an overpaid bill, an underpaid invoice, an overdue account—I was suddenly just as valuable as the broken boys sweating their asses off in the gym just hoping my uncle would pick them out of the crowd and decide to groom them for a real match.
It was the only time I felt valuable. In the Valentine house, money does the talking. Somewhere along the way, though, the only words spoken were lies, and even the money couldn’t compete with that.
There’s no money to be found here now, anyhow. I’ve put more than sixty hours into these ledgers and piles of receipts, and the negative equity in this place is the only thing getting bigger. What’s sad, though, is I don’t even care. I’m not hungry for the praise, and I wrote off inheriting anything worthwhile from my family years ago.
The only thing driving me to the office every morning and into the evening hours is the puzzle that always accompanies messy finances.
That’s a lie.
I enjoy the puzzle, but I feel absolutely no allegiance to this business or my parents or my uncle. I show up because I need the job and a place to hide until I can breathe again. The reason I come in here early and stay late…is pounding his fists against my uncle’s palms, panting and grunting with every swing. Every morning I beg myself not to notice him, and by the end of the day, he’s the only thing I’m paying any attention to at all.
For the last hour, I’ve been staring at blank spreadsheets while zoning out to the heavy whirr of the air conditioning unit just above my head. It’s on its last leg, and that’s an expense my mom is going to have to figure out how to eat when it goes, because she can’t run a boxing club in a place that hits triple-digit temperatures without air. It doesn’t cool like it used to; I think it’s gotten hotter just this week. As warm as I am, though, I won’t leave. I won’t leave because he is still here.
He breaks away from my uncle just as I rest my cheek against my palm, and when he turns to grab his towel, his eyes catch mine briefly. His lips don’t react, no twitch of a smile or acknowledgement that he and I now share the same space for most of our waking hours. It’s been like this—cold, I guess—since I asked him about his name again a few days ago. He suddenly became closed off after that, and I became invisible, which I guess is what I really wanted.
“I hope you don’t think I’m paying you for more than forty hours, just because you’re working late.” My mom’s tone cuts right through the peacefulness. Memphis’s eyes catch mine again, still emotionless, but they linger through my entire breath.
I blink slowly and open my eyes on my mom. She’s dressed like a woman ready for church—her legs covered just below her knees with a long pencil skirt, a silk blouse tucked in perfectly at the waist, adorned with a strand of pearls around her neckline. She’s wearing contacts today. She does that when she wants to look young. She’s here for Memphis, too.
“Speaking of paying me…” I lean back in the chair and tip my chin up in preparation. It takes my mom half of one second to change the subject, and my mouth slides into a sardonic laugh.
“I’m going down to the market. My magazines came out today…”
“You mean tabloids,” I cut in, rolling my eyes.
“That’s what I said,” my mom huffs.
“No,” I stand, stretching my arms high and peering beyond my mom to where Memphis is still resting. My uncle has gone to close up, and he’s standing in the same place he was seconds ago, his eyes down and his hands working on his tape. He’s stalling—eavesdropping.
I look back at my mom, who’s lost in her own world, digging through the purse locked against her chest, searching for keys.
“You read gossip rags, and those are not the same thing as magazines. You shouldn’t insult real journalism that way.”
My voice is snarky, and I push it a little, because I’m annoyed that she’s still here, after she blew right over my mention of payday. My dig at her tabloids fires her up, and she stops sifting through the junk in her purse.
“You really think you’re in the position to serve as moral authority on what constitutes a legitimate career?” Her eyes narrow and my chest tightens. I stepped right into this. “If it weren’t for those magazines, how would I have known my daughter was in trouble?”
“Ummm,” I grab my phone and wallet from the desktop and laugh out a single, painful punch. “Maybe you call her. Maybe…maybe you acknowledge the fact that she’s family, even when it doesn’t benefit you financially.”
I shake my head in disgust and glance to meet Memphis’s eyes again. This time, he looks away. It’s hard to ignore my mother and me when we get started, but I wish he wasn’t here for this. She brings out my ugliest.
“You mean just like you rushed to the phone to tell your father and me we were going to be grandparents?”
And just like that, jagged needles punch through my insides, my chest stinging, and my heart dropping to the depths of my body. My lips part wide. I stare out the glass doorway, wishing it were closed so at least those words weren’t heard by anyone other than me. I keep my back to her and her hate-laced attack meant only to remind me that she’s on top. My mom wins this round in the lowest and most personal way. Without saying a word, I swallow my ever-shrinking pride and leave—my head low as I move past Memphis, my arm shoving against my uncle’s shoulder as he and I pass through the doorway.
“You leaving on time tonight, Liv?”
I mouth uh-huh, but it’s silent. His chuckle echoes behind me, and I hate him for it. I know if he had heard my mom, he wouldn’t laugh. Leo isn’t cruel. He’s just selfish.
Without pause, I rush to my temporary room, gather the few articles of clothes I have from the places they lie on the floor, and I stuff them into a plastic bag I found in Leo’s kitchen. Flipping open his cabinets one at a time, I finally find one with a coffee can tucked in a corner, and I grasp it in my hand, shaking it to make sure I’m right. I hear the change jingle, and I can feel the paper rustle with the coins. It’s enough for laundry, which buys me nearly two hours of solace away from this place and the people who infect it.
Some things never change, and Suds has been open twenty-four hours a day since I was a kid. Even before we moved to the duplexes from the apartment, this is where my mom did our laundry. She liked the patio where she could smoke, or at least she did before she quit. Then she liked to come here to flirt with the men. I would cringe watching her take out her intimates one panty at a time, as if anyone really folds their underwear.
The men at Suds haven’t changed, either. I walk in to leering eyes, some hazed by pot, some by pills and alcohol. Only three or four of the other people in here are actually doing laundry. A woman with thinning hair and poorly wrapped wounds on her arm is stretched out along the row of plastic chairs in the back. For her, this place is home. I would consider trading her for mine right now.
I swing my bag of laundry on top of one of the washers, a single sock fa
lling on the floor from the overstuffed sack. Plastic bags make my belongings seem more plentiful. I smirk at the thought as I bend down to pick it up. A hand slides down the center of my ass, invasively, slapping quickly as a pair of dirty Nikes and tight black pants rush past me. I flinch and lurch into the machine, standing and turning my backside into the machine defensively.
“What the fuck!”
The man blows out a thin line of smoke, the stench of weed strong, and he coughs through his laughter as he strides to the back of the room and sits on a table next to another man, here without a good reason. They mumble to each other, and the other one starts to laugh loudly. I can tell they’re talking about me, and my skin crawls.
Turning my focus to the payment slot on the washer, I breathe in deeply and hold the fullness in my chest for a few long seconds. I clutch the can between my hands and my thumb pries at the plastic lid as I waver on whether or not I’m actually going to stay. When I decide to leave, I press the lid back in place and reach to hook my plastic bag on my thumb. As I turn, though, a very dangerous reason to stay walks through the door and makes eye contact with me.
Memphis nods, politely, then carries his laundry basket to the opposite corner of the room, his back to me. My grip loosens as I watch him open a washer and drop in what looks like a dozen T-shirts and sweatpants. He pulls a wallet from his back pocket and slips out a credit card, and with his face turned to the side, holds the card between his teeth while he puts his wallet away. His eyes glance my way, and I look down quickly, pouring my pathetic wardrobe from the plastic bag into the metal bin of the washer. My heart beats fast under the notion that Memphis is watching me. I don’t glance up again until I slip two dollar bills into the machine and press start.
His back is to me again, and deep down I know he didn’t watch me at all, and I hate that for that moment I imagined he was. Imagining is like wishing, and wishing is like wanting. There is nothing about Memphis that I want. I don’t want anyone. I want independence and a fresh start, and as far as I can tell those things don’t come with fighters. At least not for me. No, that would just be more of the same old thing.