Fight Like a Girl - Sheena Kamal Page 0,12

to expend, or maybe he hated Columbus just as much as we all suspected—whatever the reason, Pammy wasn’t having it.

She booted him out, pressed charges, bought herself a box of wine and a giant-ass container of bubble bath, and deliriously soaked him away. Columbus said she read Wild and Eat Pray Love back-to-back in the cramped, standard-issue co-op tub that we’ve all tried to fold ourselves into, and that was it.

Blonde Lady Epiphany.

After a few days, she changed the locks and started acting like a lesbian, according to Columbus. She even cut her hair and everything. I saw her on a date once, at a sushi restaurant near my gym. Her short hair was spiked up with gel and looked as if it could cut you if you came too close. She had her hand on a be-dreaded man’s arm and he was smiling like all his birthdays had come at once. I don’t know what happened with the man. I never saw him again and never mentioned it to Columbus, because she seemed to not be fully committed to the whole lesbian thing. Plus, guys can’t handle truths about their mothers, no matter how woke they seem. I mean, I can barely manage it with my own. And that was before I started reading the soucouyant book.

After, it was impossible to look her in the eye.

Soucouyants are like this: During the day, they’re fusty old ladies who somehow smell both like feet and lemon disinfectant. At night, they shed their old-lady skin and turn into balls of fire that go flying about in the sky and slip under people’s doorways and then, I dunno, become vampires that suck the blood right out of you.

Ridiculous, right?

Except.

Except I heard this lady talking in Aunty K’s roti shop once and she swore the soucouyant who was biting her father-in-law was the hot chick from the next village over. Her friend agreed that this was possible, you done know, and they got another round of peanut punch to last them through a discussion of how, in some of these stories, the soucouyants are beautiful young women. They’re fluid like that.

Young, beautiful, old, hideous…it doesn’t matter.

The monster is female and she comes for you at night.

The thing about the soucouyant book is that it gave me nothing but the knowledge that monsters live in our heads. Which I already knew, yeah? I skimmed through the rest of the novel looking for…what? Advice? Clues?

But it wasn’t what I needed. It scared me because there’s so much about monsters that we don’t know, that we can never understand.

I would have ignored the book and the roti shop talk, except the funeral happens that same week and everything changes. I see that look Ma shares with Pammy and Aunty K. I remember Ma’s face when she asked why Dad wanted to know about her comings and goings. I remember being in the car the night Dad died, and I start to wonder about Ma.

present day

THE MASTER PLAN:

Get degree in Business Management

Work at a bank

Start saving for retirement

Marry a banker

Use some retirement savings for a mortgage

Pay mortgage for the rest of our lives

Die

IN THE MEANTIME:

Don’t talk about the accident

Work on Muay Thai technique

Win next fight

Win fight after that

Keep my mouth shut

Win more fights

Maybe die

nine

A week after the funeral I turn in my essay on The Great Gatsby, like everybody else. Mr. Abdi can’t hide his disappointment. His hangdog mouth hangs even further and he looks at me with those big blue eyes that look so out of place in his dark face. I mean, geez. What’s with the guilt fest? It’s just an essay.

I hand him back the soucouyant book.

“You didn’t like it?” he asks, trying hard to sound all casual. Failing, because it’s hard to fake casual when you’re almost in tears over an essay. “You could have written about that, how it didn’t resonate.”

“I didn’t finish it,” I say.

This, I think, is even worse. If I let my feelings show on my face like Mr. Abdi does, I’d be even more shit in the ring than I already am.

“I see. I’d hoped it would spark something…well, don’t let this discourage you, Trisha. You write well and I know you enjoy the assigned readings, so I hope you consider pursuing your love for literature in the future. Even as a reader. We need more of those in the world.” He gives me a sad kind of smile and busies himself with the papers on his desk.

I