Fight Like a Girl

by Sheena Kamal

  When Kru comes back, he takes me aside and urges me not to fight in the final. Something about it not being the right time with my broken nose and I’m looking weak. Some other stuff in there, too. I watch his mouth move and think about how wrong Jason was. Kru does care. It’s so sweet. I nod and tell him I’ll think about it.

  I sleep for ten hours straight. I’m sharing a bed with Amanda, but I don’t even feel her next to me. I sleep like the dead. Not the cursed or the haunted. I fall into a place where dreams can’t find me. I’m too far away for a ball of fire to shoot across the sky. It’s searching, even I know that, but the distance is too much for that obeah magic to reach. I’m safe. I may look weak, but I’ve never felt stronger. Good thing, too, because I’m going to fight the Brazilian chick from Buffalo in the morning. I can’t lose to her again. It’ll be the last fight of the tournament, and I can’t wait for my chance at that belt.

  There’s nothing else.

  thirty-one

  The ring girl slides between the ropes, all silky-like. Her tits are high and hard-looking, but I’m guessing people dig that because they cheer like she’s just launched a rocket into space or something when all she’s done is hold up a card and twitch her butt. She’s fit enough to maybe be a fighter, with a solid pair of calves, so what’s she doing with this crap? Her self-respect must have fallen somewhere under the waistband of her thong. I hope she can dig it out again.

  She makes a round with the card held over her head, in high heels on a mat that I’ll walk barefoot. Gross. It’s the last fight of the tournament, the fight of the tournament, and it seems like everyone is out here watching. Everyone but Amanda, who lost her fight earlier to a Thai girl from New Jersey. Last I saw her she went for a walk and hasn’t come back. No matter. I’ve got Imelda and Noor, who are in my corner with Kru.

  I turn my back to the ring while Kru adjusts my headgear. Run my tongue around my mouth guard, feeling its familiar bumps and ridges curling under my lips, creating bulges that my mouth can’t quite close over. It’s easy to growl with your mouth guard in; you’re already halfway there.

  The lights over the ring are so bright, like they turned them up just for this moment, to make me squint as I see the pink satin panels of the Brazilian fighter’s Thai skirt whirl as she turns, revealing muscular legs dotted with purpling bruises. Her skirt distracts from them, whereas my plain black shorts with gold piping do nothing to hide the abuse. We’re matched in height and weight, but the veins in her arms are like angry blue rivers, prominent and bursting.

  I’ve replayed the video of our last fight so much that I feel like I know her. I’ve seen some of her other fights, too, and just watched her demolish Noor. She exists in my head, a quick-footed hologram with devastating blows that should be too powerful for her frame. And now she’s put on about five pounds of muscle while I’ve lost about the same. When we touch gloves, she says “back for more?” and slips my jab that comes whipping at her face. She returns for a cross, but I’m ready for her speed and dodge that one.

  She grabs my next swing kick and pushes me into the ropes with my right leg tucked up into her armpit. I feel her going to sweep my left leg under me, so I bend the right and launch the left up on the other side of her waist, which sends her backward under the weight of my body and lets me get my arms around her in a clinch. My feet find the floor. I don’t get the plum, though, her crown just out of reach as she pushes me off. I made her mad with the move off the ropes so she comes at me full power for the rest of the round. I’m so tired from the chase that I need the rest before the bell goes again. Kru’s hands on my shoulders, loosening them. “Points, Lucky. No more fancy stuff.”

  He doesn’t have to worry. The second round is more chase. She gets a hook in to my temple, to the place I got hit once before, where I went plummeting to the mat and felt my head was going to explode. It’s much worse this time, and I’m almost counted out. I wake when the ref shouts “seven” and stagger to my feet by “nine.”

  Something isn’t right. I see little flashes of pink swirling. But I can’t focus. I move away from the pink, just managing to stay out of reach for the rest of the round.

  The bell goes and I’m back with Kru. He takes my head between his hands and looks me in the eye. “Do you want me to stop this?”

  I blink away the sweat from my eyes. Over his shoulder, I see an old woman who looks like someone I used to know. It takes me a moment to realize it could be Ma, maybe is Ma, staring at me with hot lasers for eyes, burning through me. My knees buckle and Kru puts his hands under my shoulders to shore me up. I see him trying to get the ref’s attention but the bell rings. Before he can stop me, I step away from him, turn my back on the woman—

  I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead

  —and make sure my guard is up by the time Pink Skirt comes flying at me with a push kick. I turn to the side with a quick flick of my hip and land a swing kick to the back of her knees. She falls to the mat but is back up in a fraction of a second. The fall shook her, though, because she pulls back, turns mean. I block a punching combo and her movements have us turned away from the ref when she lands an illegal elbow to my broken nose.

  The ref doesn’t see. I hear Kru shouting behind me and the crowd up in arms, but some of them like it because now there’s blood all down my face and, some of them, that’s what they came for—

  I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead I’m dead

  No, but I could be.

  —I can feel her setting up for the hook, her secret weapon that’s not-so-secret to me because I’ve watched her land it over and over on screen, the force of her blow spinning me one-eighty before I crash to the ground. So I slip it and put everything I have into an uppercut into her ribs. She steps back. I follow and pull her into a clinch and this time I do get her head between my gloves, enough to pull her face down into my knee.

  The bell goes.

  She springs away from me. I stand there bloody and confused, my nose flattened to my face. Feel the eyes, always on me and remember, suddenly, Ma’s face in the crowd. I look, but don’t see her. Sway toward the ropes, toward Kru who catches me just as my legs give out.

  The judges are arguing over the illegal elbow, my second of the tournament. One of them saw it, but the others and the ref didn’t. There’s a bit of shouting happening between them—I think one of them is drunk. Somebody screams, “Storm’s coming. Get on with it!” and finally they decide on a tie.

  Noor squirts some water into my mouth from a squeeze-top bottle and Kru pushes me toward the centre of the ring. Pink Skirt and I grip opposite ends of a big black belt. Neither of us smile, but we hold it up. The crowd claps and there are some cheers. Some jeers, too. I search the faces. Blink to clear my vision. The lights, they’re so bright. So hot. Beads of sweat at my temple, and I’m shaking under the weight of the belt. Pink Skirt drops her end and disappears through the ropes.

  The ring girl with decent calves appears from nowhere, wraps an arm around my waist and kisses my cheek for the crowd. She’s holding me up, some kind of angel. I feel ashamed that I had nasty thoughts about her when the match started. “It’s okay, hon, we’ll get you to the doctor,” she says. “Come on. I’ll help you.”

  She helps me down from the ring. I see Rashida the floor manager beckoning me, the doctor right beside her. I turn away from them, away from the chaos of the match. I can’t see her, Ma, but I can feel her, and that’s even worse.

  thirty-two

  Upstairs in the room, I shower quickly and throw everything into my bags. There’s a knock on the door. I pad toward it, bare feet making no sound at all on the carpeted floors. I press my palms against the door and listen. Someone is breathing on the other side. A harsh, ragged breath, uneven.

  This is what I’m thinking: nobody with good intentions
breathes like that at a hotel door.

  Myself, I breathe through my mouth because my nose is too smashed to suck any air in and I think that a fragment of bone must have slid up into my brain because I call out “Who’s there?” in a voice that’s too tiny to be my own. I don’t want to know who’s there; I mean, I already know it. This whole thing starts to feel like something out of a horror film. I try to force myself to look through the peephole in the door, but the fear is too much for me and whatever bit of courage I had a moment ago—

  Calling out who’s there like an idiot

  —disappears. If I put my eye to that little round window, glass will fly out at me, I know it. It will lodge in my brain, along with the shard of bone from my broken nose. I shut my eyes tight and slip into the corner behind the door, waiting with my hands clenched into proper fists.

  I wait.

  She waits.

  The breathing stops or she moves away. I hear someone else coming down the hallway toward my door. Two sets of footsteps, actually, and now I’m thinking this is like a real movie, where the villain gets chased away by some bumbling passerby or something. Except it’s not some bumbling passerby at all. It’s the people I thought had my back.

  Amanda: “…I don’t know.”

  Imelda: “She keeps hitting her head. She’s not right. I saw her punch a wall. She almost fucked up her hand.”

  Amanda: “Something’s not right.”

  (Sound of some rifling. Things being pulled out of bags. Some choice curse words.)

  Amanda: “Her dad just died. I mean, I think we can cut her a break.”

  Imelda: “She probably has a concussion.”

  Amanda: “She probably has five.”

  Imelda: “I thought she hated her dad.”

  Amanda: “Yeah. Always thought she hated her mom, too.”

  Imelda: “Hey, I heard that she actually killed her dad. Like, she was behind the wheel of the car. Ran him right over.”

  (A third set of footsteps joins them.)

  Noor: “Will both of you please shut the hell up?”

  There’s a beep, the slide of a lock releasing and the door opens toward me. I’m already across the room with my headphones on, packing up my stuff. The three of them crowd the doorway.

  “There you are,” says Noor.

  I don’t like the way she’s looking at me, not one bit. With pity, even though there’s no reason to pity me. Out of all of them, I’m the winner. Me.

  “Why did you disappear?” she asks. “There’s a little press thing downstairs. They wanna talk to you.”

  I pull the headphones off my ears. “What?”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  I can’t look at any of them as they stand there, awkward and stupid around me for the first time ever. The fear in me hardens and turns into something mean, but I don’t dare let them see it. Jason implied that I’m brain-dead or something, and much as I want to say everyone’s crazy, what if they’re not?

  “Nah,” I say. “I didn’t hear a thing.”

  * * *

  At the press thing, there are cameras. I ask Amanda what I should say but she just sighs.

  “What?”

  “You know I lost my fight, right?” she says, with an unexpected burst of anger. “I’m not undefeated anymore, Trisha. For the first time in my life I lost, and now you’re here asking me about press? You think I’m invincible or something?”

  She’s taken her braids out and her hair is a dark halo around her head. She looks thinner, tired, less like a legend with every second that passes. I’ve never seen her like this, and I wonder about everything it took for her to be the star at our gym.

  “I guess I never thought…I’m sorry.”

  “If Kru asks, I’m going for another walk,” she says. I watch her leave and it shakes me because I’ve never seen her look so sad.

  The cameras flash. I manage to say a couple things to the almost bored reporters there. They’re not interesting things.

  “Yeah.”

  “It was hard.”

  “I dunno.”

  I find a couple of smiles and they make me feel better when I start, so I smile some more. I forget about the things Amanda and Imelda were saying at the door of our hotel room, forget all the ways I got hit today. I smile and smile and everything is the way I imagined it. Now I know what it feels like to be a winner. For once, I’m in control.

  It’s better than any other feeling in the world.

  * * *

  I try to stay awake on the flight back to Toronto but I’m so tired I fall asleep on Kru’s shoulder. He’s somehow sensed the distance between me and the other girls but thinks it’s because I won a belt and they didn’t. I don’t correct him. I don’t say: It’s because they think I’m crazy and maybe they’re right because there’s a soucouyant living in my house that looks a hell of a lot like my mother.

  You just can’t say stuff like that to Kru.

  I wake when the plane touches down. The force of the landing sucks me back into the seat and I feel that pull in every muscle in my body. When I try to stand to get my bag from the overhead compartment, I realize that all my strength is gone.

  “I’ll get that,” Kru says. He seems sad, even though I won. We won. “Go on ahead.”

  “Thanks, Kru.”

  I turn back in the aisle and watch him grab the belt from above. I take the bag from him, but not the gaudy belt. “That’s for the gym,” I say. On the shelves with the other belts, above the training mats where everyone can see what you’ve earned. How you’ve made Kru proud. Except he doesn’t seem all that proud right now, and I don’t know what to say to him.

  He pats my shoulder and tries to smile at me. I try to smile back, but this only makes him sadder.

  The others look everywhere but at me, and in the airport bathroom, I see why. Coarse strands of hair have escaped my braid and are standing almost on end, fighting their way to the ceiling, but that’s nothing compared to the damage done to my face. The bandages plastered over my nose are covered in droplets of blood. My eyes are pinpricks, shining out from dark hollows, and there’s a cut on my lip that I haven’t seen before. Now I’m aware of it, it starts to throb. I push into it with my fingertips and come away with blood under my nails. I push and push and push until there’s no more blood.

  I leave the airport without saying bye to any of them. I see Kru wave Noor off as he stands in arrivals, looking around for someone. On the bus to the train station, I realize he might have been looking for me, and I feel ashamed because I don’t want to worry Kru. But not so ashamed I turn on my phone to call him.

  By the time I get home, it’s dark. I slip around back, skirting the parking lot. There are too many lights on in our unit, which means that Ma is home. I stand in the dark for so long I’m almost asleep on my feet, and maybe I am, because I don’t hear Columbus calling my name until he’s right in front of me.

  “Holy shit,” he says, pulling me under the streetlight. I flinch and shake him off. “What the fuck happened to your face, Trisha?”

  I grin wide, little firecrackers of pain bursting across my face, sending stars shooting behind my eyes. “I won a belt.”

  “Your mom is going to kill you,” he says, then frowns at the look that crosses my face, the one I can’t help, the one that says I’m so frightened I’d rather stand here in the dead of the night than go inside and face her. Columbus takes my hand and leads me to his house, through the back door and up the stairs and into his bedroom, where he sits me on his bed, takes off my shoes and gives me a glass of water with two Tylenols. He turns off the light so that he doesn’t have to look at me any longer.

  “I think I have a concussion,” I say sleepily.

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  “I won, though, Christopher. I know I did. Wait, maybe it was a tie.”

&
nbsp; “You know it doesn’t matter, right? And stop calling me Christopher. It doesn’t sound like you.”

  “I killed my father.”

  He sighs. “It was an accident, Trish.”

  I try to push myself up on my elbows, try to peer at him in the darkness, but my elbows won’t hold me up. I’m numb all over. I fall back onto the bed and blink up at him.

  “Do you ever miss your dad?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “No. I’m glad he’s gone.”

  “Me too.”

  “Go to sleep,” he says, sounding older than he is. Older than me, which never happens. He pulls the covers over me and lowers his voice to a whisper so low I barely hear it. “You’re my best friend, you know.”

  He hesitates and I think he’s about to say something else, but he doesn’t. He leaves the room. I feel his absence, feel the cold take hold of my body, then I fall asleep.

  thirty-three

  Rain on galvanized roofing. Pansticks on hammered steel. Liquid rhythms so loud that for a moment I think I’m in Trinidad, but I realize I’m in Columbus’s bed and the music is coming from the other side of the wall, in my room.

  Ma. She’s calling to me.

  I’m still numb from painkillers, feeling just fine. I slip downstairs, past Columbus on the couch. I don’t wake him. Pammy is in her kitchen, singing softly to herself, gold glinting at her wrists. There’s no trace of chamomile anywhere because she’s in a boxed-wine kind of mood tonight. She’s turned away from me, doesn’t see me, so I back away and continue my journey down.