by Sheena Kamal
She comes downstairs, her hair still wet from the shower, and makes us some tea. With steaming mugs at our sides, I sit between her legs and let her rub coconut oil into my hair, separating it into sections and working the oil lightly through the strands, the way she used to do all the time when I was a kid. She doesn’t do it as much anymore, so it feels especially nice. Her back is to the window, a stream of sunlight warming her. “Ahh,” she sighs, stretching her fingers up into the light before returning them to me. “Only way to dry your hair is in the sun.”
It never gets old, hearing this.
“We’ll schedule another test soon,” she says, after a moment. “We should have waited a bit, anyway.”
“There’s a fee this time. If you don’t pass and have to take it again.”
“Don’t worry about that, baby.” Her voice as light as the fingertips that graze through my scalp. She pulls my hair into a French braid that snakes down my back. The sun dims around us, the tea cools.
I sink into the feeling, relaxing so much I’m almost asleep when I say: “Do you ever wish you didn’t have me, Ma? How your life would have been?”
For a moment, I’m not sure if she’s heard me. “Never,” she says, breathing into my hair, the stream of air from her nose tickling my scalp. Then she kisses my forehead, just at the edge of my hairline, transferring the warmth she collected from the sunshine to me. I feel like a kid again, but that’s alright, especially after the day I had. “Let’s order some dinner. What do you want?”
“But it’s not the end of the month.”
She laughs. “We can make an exception this one time. Let’s order. Your choice.”
After the Thai food arrives, she transfers some money to me, more than I’ve ever seen in my bank account. More than I need to reschedule the test, anyway. Whatever, I’m not going to complain. There’s end-of-the-month takeout in my belly and we’re still a couple weeks away from that treat. I failed my test and Ma, she’s showing me she’ll take care of me no matter what. The kiss on my forehead is still warm. It spreads through me, warming me throughout the night and as I fall into sleep.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when the nightmares come, though. Shows how stupid I am. The screech of the tires. The thud along the bumper. The darkness. The rain. Dad’s face. A busted lip. A broken back door with the wind whistling through. The sun nowhere to be found.
It’s so cold.
I wake up shivering and feel a roiling in my belly, the heavy meal I ate before bed sitting like a boulder.
If he was a monster, what does that make me?
eighteen
I’m usually out all day but as long as I’m back by 9 p.m., King Ravi can’t say anything.
Training isn’t going great, though I try to be there four to five times a week. Florida is going to be hot and humid, so we have to make sure our conditioning is on point or else we’re chum. My conditioning is tight, but my technique is off. Kru said so last pad session, as rivers of sweat poured off me. He said my head isn’t in the game, shouted it, and I was so embarrassed I didn’t stick around afterwards like I usually do. Every day we’re in, Kru has us on the basics to make sure that no matter how dead we are, we’ll never forget the essentials.
One, two, slip is what I work on today. Over and over, until it feels like it’ll be in my memory forever.
After you come in with the jab and cross, you’ve got to make sure you’re anticipating their next move, their next punch. That’s why the slip is so important. And after you slip, your right cross comes in strong.
That’s the whole point of it.
You slip, you fake, you dodge, you let them think one thing while you’re setting them up for another.
When Dad died, the police should have been on the lookout for a fake, but a car full of distraught women on a rainy night? Please. They didn’t stand a chance. Especially when Pammy came out in hysterics and threw her arms around me and started bawling into my shoulder “Poor baby. Poor, poor baby. Your dad—he’s with the angels now!”
I think even Columbus was shocked when he heard about that part. Pammy in hysterics? Going on about freaking angels? Crazy talk. Except it did happen and I’ve got the beige foundation stains on my jacket to prove it.
* * *
I’m with Columbus in his kitchen, eating takeaway jerk chicken, when Pammy comes in from work in her scrubs. “Good to see you both still have an appetite what with all that homework you’ve got on,” she says, nibbling on a leg Columbus passes to her.
Why wouldn’t we have an appetite?
She sits, eats silently with us and then looks at the hole in the sleeve of my sweater as though she’s never seen anything like it in the world before. “Trisha, how old is this thing?” she exclaims, plucking at the tear with her manicured fingers. “Tell your mom to give you some of that insurance money to buy yourself some new clothes, for God’s sake!”
It takes a few moments for this to sink in.
Columbus looks at me. “What insurance money?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, just to piss him off. But I’m wondering the same thing. I glance over at Pammy, who has gotten up and left the room without another word to us.
“What’s up with your ma?” I ask Columbus.
He frowns, then shrugs. “She’s been weird lately. Did you see her nails?”
I did. Pammy with a manicure. Also with a little flash of diamonds at her ears when she pulls her hair back. Buying a car, even a used one, with cash. When Columbus isn’t looking, I open the cupboard above the kettle again. Still no chamomile tea. And Pammy hasn’t just been weird lately. She’s been weird since the night Dad died. Since the angels comment.
“What are you doing over March Break?” Columbus asks.
“Going to New York to see Aunty K.” Which reminds me. I need to get my passport from Ma.
“Can I come with?”
“There’s no room at her place, and plus, you wouldn’t want to. Trust me.”
Ravi has the weekend off, so I wait until Monday to go into Ma’s room to look for the little fireproof box she keeps in her closet. I need my passport but I’m also wondering about what Pammy said, something about insurance. Ma keeps all the important stuff in that box, so maybe there’s some kind of explanation for Pammy’s comment.
The box isn’t there.
I search everywhere and eventually find it in the basement, under some old clothes. I take the key she gave me for it in case anything happened and open it up. It’s empty. No birth papers, passports, bank documents, nothing. Not even my baby jewellery is in there, the little gold bangles and necklaces with shiny black beads that all Trinidadian Indian babies get from relatives when they’re born. Aunty K bought me mine.
“She probs doesn’t trust Ravi. That’s why she hid the important stuff. My dad does the same thing,” says Amanda the next day.
We’ve all put on a few pounds in the past couple weeks. Florida seems so far away right now. Hard to think about May when we’re still dealing with the February freeze. No fights coming up and food is too good to give it up for nothing. Amanda looks better than me and Noor with the extra weight, though, as it’s all gone to her ass. We’re stuck with face and belly, which reminds me to stop eating so much. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was boobs. At least Noor has boobs.
“For real,” adds Noor. “My parents have a safe they keep things in.”
Why would she be with him if she doesn’t trust him?
“Dick,” whispers Columbus later that night, on the phone. “He gives it to her good.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“What? Why else would a woman like your mom put up with all that crap?”
“What do you mean, a woman like my mom?”
“Trish, your mom is fine. You know that right?”
Of course I do. Ma is the most beautiful w
oman in the world. Her eyes don’t work so good, though. That’s why she always ends up with these losers.
Pushing thoughts of Ravi and Ma from my mind, I close my eyes and picture Jason doing abs today, which even though he was covered in sweat, didn’t seem gross at all. I thought the lunchtime Desis had killed my desire for guys completely. What with their talk of honour killings and getting shipped back if they got caught with a boy. I know one girl who actually did get tossed screaming onto a plane back to India. Everyone at school saw her making out with her boyfriend in the hallways, and someone had ratted her out. She had an army of cousins, who she swore were basically chill, but clearly one of them was not because one day she was moaning with us about some dumb assignment or another and the next she was gone.
No one, not even the cousins, ever heard from her again.
If I got knocked up in high school, I have no doubt Ma would ship me back to live with some obscure relative in Trinidad, no problem, to pay for my mistake. But it’s not something I usually worry about, and plus, I’m not the kind of girl guys at my school usually go for. Not the soft, nice ones. I get looks, sure, but not the kind you’re thinking. My legs are thick as tree trunks and just as hard. They’re monsters. Pure muscle. They can take a swing kick, brace and return in a matter of seconds. Split seconds. The fast-twitch fibres in my calves can catapult me into motion as quick as you can blink, and then I’m on you. One, two, grab, knee, clinch, push, step in, elbow. A matter of seconds, not even.
“You only think it’s gross cuz you never had any dick,” Columbus says, reminding me he’s still on the line. “I know a guy, if you want to find out more?”
“Is he skinny with zits all over his face? Because thanks, no thanks.”
He hangs up, letting me know that yeah, it totally was a skinny guy with acne. Columbus is so obvious sometimes. Am I a desperate Guyanese retail worker at the mall? Please.
* * *
At the gym.
We’re clinching.
I hate it so much even though I get a desperate little thrill whenever I’m in control. Clinching is all about fighting your opponent for the crown of the head, the plum, and pulling it down just as you extend the knee up. Your job is to protect your head while getting a hold on the other guy and kneeing him in the face. Brutal, but this sport ain’t for wusses. Clinching is all about the neck, so to get us stronger, Kru has us put on a leather head mask thingie that makes you look like a character from a horror movie. You’re supposed to strap weights on the bottom and then move your head up and down to make your neck stronger.
“Blow job practice,” says Noor, as she straps herself in.
I wait until my turn and feel like an idiot while I jerk my head up and down. Out of the corner of my eyes, I see Jason watching me from the chin-up station, looking at me like he doesn’t mind my thick legs. So I do it some more, even slower. He watches the whole time. I wonder if his dick is good—
What’s good dick, anyway? Like, specifically?
—even though I’m trying to focus.
A few minutes later our gloves are off and we’re clinching.
It’s only me, Amanda and Noor until Jason joins us to partner me. I guess he thinks he’s helping out, even though he’s actually the worst at clinching. We start slap-sparring until one of us pulls the other in. I feel his arms come around me, not in a clinch, really. His form is terrible, but I don’t care about that right now. And when he sneaks a hand up to my head, it pauses at the base of my neck and brushes the little hairs there. We’re both sweating and as we pull toward each other, I feel him hard against my thigh.
He disengages and walks off the mats to the washroom. I think he’s embarrassed until he sends me a little smile. A little flutter of warmth spreads from my lower stomach and I feel this ache between my legs. Like, it hurts even. I feel full and empty at the same time. What the actual fuck?
I wonder, did he do that on purpose?
Kru leaves for the night, leaving Ricky to lock up. It’s only the fighters left, anyway. Ricky plays a clip from a gym in Thailand, where two fighters are conditioning with blows to the body. No gloves, wraps, wrist or ankle guards. They deliver and take hit after hit, until red splotches show on their brown bodies. So we do a bit of that, too. Jason stays away from me, either because he doesn’t want to hit me like that, or he doesn’t want to repeat what happened in clinching.
We leave, one by one. I wait for him in the parking lot. Noor and Amanda have gone home, both laughing at me before they left because it seems like everyone knows what’s up. Jason sees me from the door and smiles again, but I can tell he’s nervous. He keeps wiping his palms against his jeans. We walk to the train station together.
One moment we’re just talking and the next we’re kissing by the entrance of the station.
His lips are softer than I expected them to be, but I kinda like it. Okay, I more than like it. Here I am, now an eighteen-year-old virgin being kissed by a college boy.
I highly recommend it.
Eventually we say goodbye. I think about Jason all the way home. I’m unable to do my economics homework for the rest of the night. I can’t even think about Florida. That’s how spun I am. I want more, but there’s too much going on to ache this much. Right?
I can’t do homework. I can’t sleep. So I turn Dad’s phone on. I haven’t really wanted to before this. There was so much about Dad’s life he kept from us that I’m just used to him being a bit of a mystery. I plug it into my charger because the battery is low and scroll through his messages. The steel pan blares from it, jarring me into motion. I answer the call quickly, but I don’t say anything.
“Hello?” says a male voice. “Who is this?” He sounds uncertain, his Trini accent like molasses. Like a thick, dark melody, running slow.
I almost hang up the phone, but something crazy in me doesn’t want to just yet. “Trisha. Who is this?”
“Junior.”
It’s a name I’ve heard whispered my whole life. Somebody important in Dad’s world, who I never got to meet. Who Ma never wanted me to.
“Why are you calling? Dad is dead,” I say.
There’s a pause and I start to regret ever picking up the phone. “I know that. I call every so often to hear his voice on the message system. Sometimes I call for you.”
Junior. This person who’s been in Dad’s life for almost as long as I have. I know Ma would be so pissed if she knew I was talking to someone in Dad’s other family. The one he kept down on the island.
This time I do hang up.
I turn off the phone and toss it in my gym bag where nobody in their right mind would ever go looking.
Tonight was a big night for me. I kissed a college boy who can’t fight and I also talked to my half-brother, Dad’s first-born, for the first time in my life.
nineteen
So women are more likely to be murdered by their husbands or boyfriends than anyone else—
But what about the other way around?
—which I learned today in World Issues class, which I also didn’t do my homework for. A test is coming up and I’ve got to do better. If I flunk and it brings down my average…I can’t even imagine what Ma will do to me if she hears.
There’s no time to train this week. So much studying. Dad’s phone is in the locker at my gym now, buried far back, behind all the rank gear I’ve abandoned over the years. I store my half-brother Junior back there, too. I’m not ready to deal with him yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.
On my breaks, I look for the papers missing from the fireproof box everywhere I can but, finally, I have to do it. We’re alone in the kitchen, and it’s Ma’s day off. I don’t know where Ravi is. She looks happy for once, like she’s in a decent mood. Painting her nails, something that she hardly does anymore.
Now or never.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she
asks. “If you’re not busy, you could clean something for once, you know.”
Which is insane, cuz I clean more than she does. If anyone needs to clean more, it’s King Ravi. “I need my passport. Where did you put all our important stuff?”
“What do you need your passport for?”
“To check the expiry date. Going for March Break with Aunty K.”
“She did mention something about that, you know. I think you have at least another year on that passport,” she says, still not looking up.
“Can I just check, Ma?” I try not to sound like a brat, but I do. Besides, she’s always telling me thinking isn’t knowing. So. And I need to know for March Break in a few weeks, but also for Florida. “Aunty K already bought me the plane ticket and I don’t want to let her down.”
Finally, she looks at me. I have her complete attention now. “Alright, alright. Since when do you like going to work at her shop so much, anyway?”
“Since you sent me there at Christmas, Ma.” This comes out a lot angrier than I wanted it to, but there’s nothing I can do about that now.
She frowns, probably not buying that I suddenly developed a love for smelling like curry 24/7. And I’m pretty sure she wants me to say something about her and Ravi, like she’s digging for info on how I feel, but I’m not in the mood. It’s enough having him around. I legit don’t even want to talk about him on top of having to look at his face. “Ma! My passport.”
“Fine. I’ll have to get it for you. We’ll go to the bank later today.”
“The bank?”
“I put everything in a safe deposit box.”
“Since when?” I say.
Just like that her good mood’s gone, too. She challenges me with her stare. “Since I felt like it. You want your passport or not?”
* * *
When we reach the bank, I’m out of the car as soon as it stops. I head into the tiny reception area so she won’t have any excuse to leave me in the car. She mutters the box number 4242 when we get to the front of the line and it takes a few minutes until we’re led to a room in the back. “Shouldn’t I have a key, too?” I ask, as we walk down the narrow hall.