Fight Like a Girl

by Sheena Kamal

  She reels, as though from a blow. If I were to hit her, though, she’d be on the floor. I know that one hundred percent. One hundred percent.

  “Your brother,” she whispers.

  “And his mom, too. Remember you saw her? She came to our house the day of the funeral. And Aunty K sent her away.”

  She goes silent at the mention of Junior’s name, but her nails still grip my arm. I think I’m bleeding, but I don’t tear my eyes away to check.

  Ma looks scared, and I guess that makes me bold. Makes me reckless.

  “Junior saw Ravi, Ma. Back last year when Dad got attacked. He was there and he saw Ravi on the stairs. And Columbus saw Ravi, too. The night Dad died. Ravi was trying to break into the house when he knew me, you and Aunty K were gone and only Dad would be there.”

  I’m sure she can tell I’m lying, she’s looking right at me, but something has come over her. She becomes someone that’s not my ma. Someone I don’t even recognize. Her hair is wild about her face and she bares her sharp teeth and exhales a stream of hot, sickly sweet breath that’s oddly metallic. Like there’s blood in her mouth.

  I’m not sure if it’s an accident, what happens next.

  All I know is that I pull away and she goes with me, with force. Either the wall or the landing breaks my fall, I don’t know, but my arm twists under me and the pain is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I look up at her stark face and it’s not until I feel the tears drip off my chin and onto the floor that I realize we’re both crying.

  For me it’s not sadness, it’s shock.

  I can’t seem to move anything without feeling like I’m being stabbed on my left side.

  Then she’s next to me, pulling me to her. Her soft arms are around me and she whispers “my baby” over and over. “You don’t know,” she says. “You don’t know what I sacrificed for you. My baby.” Her kisses fall on my face, my hair, my closed eyes. There’s a plinging in my head, like a steel pan. I think I hear her whisper “forgive me” but I’m not sure. The steel pan gets louder, filling my ears with a drum beat that falls in tune with my heart.

  My baby

  Forgive me

  You’re mine

  Jamette

  You’re mine

  There’s a spot of blood on my cheek. I must have scraped it when I fell. She’s staring at it, then she licks her dry lips. She lets me go, turns nurse-like. “You smell like salt.”

  From our tears? From the Epsom salt in my bath?

  I watch her as she goes about examining my arm, running her hands along my body to check for other injuries. All business, all work now. “Let’s get you to the ER.”

  She helps me to my feet and keeps her hand on my back to guide me to the door. There’s a cold efficiency to it, a separation of what came before. I remember this is what it was like with my dad, after. After the bruising, the hitting, comes this practicality. Let’s mend now. Let’s take care of you. Wipe away your blood, your tears, and tell you how beautiful you are, how you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, to us, to these shitty lives of ours that we live in this country that is freezing for most of the year and sunk in unbearable heat when the snow melts.

  But what she’s really saying, what he was, is that you’re mine.

  You’re mine.

  twenty-five

  We were told that there’s no operative treatment for an acromioclavicular joint separation and all I can do is wear a sling and take it easy. But my whole arm is useless, itchy under the sling, and I’m completely and totally fucked for the gym now. As soon as I can take pressure on it again, I have to be training to make weight for Florida, which is in less than two months. No reprieve on the school end, either. Because of the injury Ma wouldn’t let me go to New York for March Break, so I was stuck in the house with her and Ravi the whole time, which is what I’d been trying to avoid.

  You have no idea how glad I was when school started up again.

  The one benefit of this whole thing is that I can text just fine with my left hand, something Jason and I discovered when someone from the gym told him about my accident and he blew up my phone asking me what happened. Obviously I couldn’t tell him, because snitches get acromioclavicular joint separations, but it was sweet.

  He’s sweet.

  Jason meets me at Kennedy station after class almost every day for a week. He’s a freshman at the University of Toronto’s downtown campus. Doing political science? Something like that.

  “Girl, he’s in love with you,” says Noor, when Jason leaves on his train going west. It’s one of the rare days when The Fiancé isn’t around to pick her up, so she and Amanda have decided to meet up to harass me. Because they’re here, Jason didn’t kiss me goodbye like he usually does, so I’m a little pissed at them right now for existing. We’re really getting the hang of it now, Jason and me. Every time feels even better than the last, and I try not to wonder if he’s practising with the college girls he’s probably swimming in. Ones who don’t know his abs are just for show. I don’t even mind anymore that his muscles are mostly decorative, so why would they?

  Speaking of muscles. Today I tried to do some weights but Kru wouldn’t let me. He said it was important to “heal” or something. He saw how disappointed I was and tried to pat my shoulder in commiseration, but I wasn’t really having any of it today. I sat in the corner playing chess with a twelve-year-old who was better than me until everyone was done.

  “You fell down the stairs? What an old-lady way to hurt your arm,” says Amanda. She’s training hard for Florida, harder than the rest of us. I’m pretty jealous and, I think, so is Noor. Amanda’s been killing it and she’s even got her videos on the gym social media almost every day. You either want to be her or fight her, and in my current shape, I wouldn’t want to fight her. In my best shape I wouldn’t want to fight her. Or Noor, or Imelda. There’s too much respect. I want nothing more than to spar with them again but I can’t right now and my arm hurts too much for me to even remember why I got hurt in the first place.

  The how I remember, but the why is a mystery.

  At home, I see Ma has been cooking up a storm. Dhalpuri, curry channa and aloo, baigan choka. I dunno, I think she forgot I can only eat with one hand right now and curry maybe isn’t the best thing to give someone who’s gotta be mindful of a bum limb, but I don’t bring it up because we’re not really talking. When she notices what she’s done, she kisses her teeth in that Caribbean way that tells you everything about her mood and takes my plate away to put everything in the roti and fold it up nice and tight. Then she turns her back and I can hear her crying at the sink.

  She hasn’t been able to look at me since it happened, so she looks around me. Near me. I don’t know what to say to her either. She makes sure I take my vitamins and my painkillers but watches me real careful when I do.

  Ravi…well, who knows what to think about Ravi. He’s the one who drove us home from the hospital because I guess Ma hadn’t wanted to be alone with me in the car—

  So Ravi is somehow the peacemaker? Fuckkkkk that.

  —but he keeps disappearing because it seems to get too hot up in the house these days. He does make sure to eat before he goes, because why pass up a good thing?

  He looks different, though. Like, I don’t even know what to say. He falls asleep all the time and when he’s looking at you sometimes, it’s like his pupils are huge in his eye sockets. Huge, dark pits that seem to be keeping something trapped. Every now and then he slurs his speech, like Dad when he was drunk. Except Ravi doesn’t drink, not really. I hardly ever see him crack a beer. So he must be getting faded on something else, which of course makes me think of those vials under the sink and the pills I found in his bag.

  I message Columbus to see what he’s up to. He doesn’t respond. I think maybe he has a new girlfriend or something. Or his mall girl is back in his life. I finish some reading for
World Issues, then I see two messages waiting for me. From Jason.

  I wish your friends weren’t there today.

  We missed our goodbye.

  He means the little make-out sessions we’ve been having. I send him a kiss emoji and he sends me one back. Then a minute later my phone lights up with another text from him.

  Want to come over?

  I drop the phone. What does a panic attack feel like? I think I’m having a panic attack.

  I ask Columbus for advice. He sends an eggplant emoji. So do Noor and Amanda.

  I need to get new friends.

  Jason texts again.???

  Noor asks if I want to go, if I’m ready for that step. She knows you don’t go hang out at a guy’s place UNLESS.

  I think about it for a moment, if I really do want to see Jason tonight. We did miss our goodbye. I mean, I did. I missed it, too. Maybe it’s not too late to have one. Could be the bad arm is doing something to my head because I can’t stop thinking about what happens next.

  * * *

  He lives in residence at U of T. I have butterflies, like they say in those books I used to read when I was thirteen years old. With the rich and handsome duke or whatever, who would sweep some chimney maid into his arms and then (afterwards) discover that she was some other duke’s bastard daughter. But duke spunk is potent as fuck and makes everything okay, so it always turned out fine in the end.

  Anyway, I’m here with Jason in his dorm room and I can’t stop looking at him. He’s got dark hair and eyes, but his skin is kind of pale. Even though it’s perfect and unblemished, I wonder when was the last time he was in Mexico and got any sun. And I wonder, too, if he got into a school like this and is living in res, who the hell is he and what’s he doing at my gym in Scarborough?

  But I don’t ask him about any of that. We talk about books. I tell him about Mr. Abdi being disappointed in my Gatsby essay, but there was nothing he could do about it. The term was over. So he just gave me an A, as per usual, and wrote me off, probably.

  “But you’re doing business management next year?” Jason says.

  “Yeah, I kind of have to.”

  “Why do you have to?”

  I shrug. “Because I’m not going to be a doctor.” Which is the Caribbean expectation. If you’re not a doctor, you’re a banker. So I’ve got to get that business or finance degree before I apply to banks because that’s the way it works.

  “I get it,” he says. “I wanted to go to film school but my parents thought it would be nice to have a poli sci background. They think I could get a government job.”

  All immigrant kids know that a government job is not as good as becoming a doctor, but it’s definitely as good as a banker so it’s still up there. I could see Jason doing it, too. But it doesn’t seem to be what he wants. He doesn’t sound bitter about this at all, just a little sad. “What kind of films would you make?”

  “Horror, but not the gory kind. The kind that’s about what happens when real life goes wrong.”

  Ha. When real life goes wrong? I could tell him some stories.

  “There’s that look on your face,” he says, putting a finger on my forehead.

  “What look?”

  “That one right there. Every time we talk about something other than the gym, you close up.”

  “No, I don’t.” I push his hand away.

  “Yeah, you do. I asked about your dad last week, remember? I mean, he just died. I thought you’d want to talk about it. But you changed the subject.”

  He’s right. “Because it’s been a bit crazy at my house lately. I found out my mom took out an insurance policy on my dad.” Damn. That just slipped out.

  Jason sits back on his bed. “Is that weird?”

  “Yeah, it is. She never told me she did, and then she tried to hide the information from me. Plus, she’s got this new boyfriend, right after Dad dies. She won’t even talk about how they met. It’s like everything is a secret all of a sudden.”

  He goes quiet for a moment. “Sounds messed up.”

  I really don’t want to talk about Dad anymore. But I like that Jason offered. Like I could talk if I wanted to—or was allowed to.

  Jason is just there, across from me on his bed. I’m on the hard, narrow chair by his desk and noticing that he’s one of those guys that gets better looking the longer you look at him. I want him to kiss me and I guess he wants it too because the second I uncross my legs, he leans forward. His lips are on mine and before I know it, I’m under him and on his bed.

  We fool around for a while. I think I’m going to feel like it’s enough soon, and I’ll get up and go. But truthfully, I dead-ass don’t get to the point where it’s enough.

  “You alright?” he asks. Both our shirts are off. He doesn’t seem to mind that I’m wearing a regular sports bra. Whatevs, it’s clean.

  “Yeah.” Still don’t want to go.

  “Do you want to stop?”

  I don’t even have to think about it. “No.”

  Jason knows it’s my first time, so he’s really careful. I watch in fascination as he puts on a condom. When he tries to kiss below my belly button, I clench my thighs together so he can’t open me up, and I only relax when his mouth is back on mine. When he’s inside me and I feel…I don’t know where to start. I’m happy to feel him pressing against me.

  I guess I never thought it was gonna be like this.

  * * *

  After.

  The sex was okay, minus the O. Right away, almost immediately, he asked me if I came. I said yes, because he looked so eager. Then he fell asleep on top of me, so I wiggled out from under him, texted Noor and asked her what coming feels like. I probably could have waited but I felt like I needed to talk to someone. She said, Psshhtt. You would know it when it happens. Where r u? Want me to get Hassan to pick u up?

  I’m good.

  Jason wanted to tag along with me when I left, to at least see me partway home, but I was gone before he could get his clothes on. I kinda like riding the subway at night anyway. It’s empty, quiet.

  He didn’t hurt you, did he? Noor manages to sound mad, even through a text.

  No, I write back. It didn’t hurt, really. Definitely not more than that time Amanda’s elbow caught me on the chin and I went flying into the wall, which was even more painful than my acromioclavicular separation. But it didn’t feel good either.

  What feels good:

  Jason’s body on top of mine. Like clinching, but better. Less sweat, anyway. I liked putting my hands on his back and feeling the muscles there as he moved. That was maybe better than good.

  A sense of closeness to him that I feel now.

  This feeling now, that I’m no longer a virgin.

  The knowledge that I’ve got something over Ma’s head now.

  * * *

  Pammy’s outside smoking when I get back. It’s the middle of the night and she’s in her lawn chair on her tiny porch, wrapped in a blanket, blowing smoke on long exhales. Even with all the smoking and periods of chain-smoking, her lung capacity is enormous, and this I know from the years of listening to her shout at Columbus.

  She looks me up and down. Takes in my mussed hair and smudged mascara. Knows immediately what I’ve been up to, but it’s Pammy and she doesn’t really judge. “I hope you used protection, Trisha. Your sexual health is nothing to play around with. Did you have fun, at least?” she asks.

  I don’t answer. It was…I don’t know yet. She seems to understand this.

  “It can be like that sometimes. Hang on. I’ve got something for you.” She grounds out her cigarette and disappears inside. Two minutes later she comes back out with a book. “How to Find Your Bliss,” she says, handing it to me. “A woman has to be responsible for her own orgasms.”

  “Oh.” There’s no hole in the ground to disappear into, but I still spend some
time looking for one. I’m not sore, like I thought I might be, but I am tired.

  She lights up another cigarette and gives me a small smile. “Just another thing you’ve got to take care of yourself. I keep telling my son, you have to help the woman find her pleasure, but not all mothers do that. Although they should. We women, we’ve got to look out for one another.”

  I get the feeling that she’s not just talking about orgasms, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to ask now.

  “Can you not tell Ma about this?” I ask.

  She stares at me for a moment, then lights another cigarette. “We all have secrets,” she says.

  What the hell does that mean? Is that a yes or a no? But Pammy closes her eyes and leans back in her chair and I don’t feel like pushing her. She’s either going to tell Ma or she isn’t. Nothing I can do about it now.

  I go inside and crawl into the shower. There’s a bruise just below my ear that’s turned red and I try to remember if Jason had put his mouth there. He must have. I press it until I feel the blood rushing back at me to meet my fingertip. There’s that post-gym feeling now where all I want to do is sleep. The house is silent, which I take to mean Ma hasn’t noticed I was gone. Good.

  After the shower, I stand in front of the bathroom mirror and look from the bruise to my face as a whole. I think I see some kind of new knowledge in it. Not orgasmic knowledge, clearly. But it’s something that marks me as a woman now. I’ve had dick and, even though it wasn’t necessarily good in the way it’s supposed to be (from the pictures in Pammy’s book), it must mean something. But I don’t know what.

  twenty-six

  Finally, I can take my sling off. My upper body strength is seriously gone, and I know I’ve got a lot of work to do to get it back. And my shoulder hurts. After the doctor’s office, Ma drops me off at home while she goes to do some errands. I’m glad that she’s not around to hover right now.