Fight Like a Girl - Sheena Kamal Page 0,50

for real? It’s like you switch off and let them hit you. It’s like…” He pauses here, but he’s come too far to stop now. “I don’t know why Kru doesn’t see it. Why he keeps letting you in the ring. Don’t go to Florida, Trish.”

“He believes in me!”

“He doesn’t even see you.”

But that’s not true. He does. Kru knows I need this more than anything else.

Jason tries to say something else but I’m too angry to listen. I get out of the car this time.

Ma’s door is closed so I shower and go to bed as quietly as I can. Jason calls but I turn off my phone before I’m tempted to answer. I’m still thinking about what he said. It’s not possible that Kru doesn’t see me. Because what else do I have but training and my ma, who’s alone now even though Ravi is around. Ravi obviously doesn’t count. And Ma…who does she have but a neighbour, a sister that lives in another country, and me?

And how else am I supposed to deal with the fact that I’m scared, all the time?

For her…and now…

Now I’m scared of her.

* * *

I go digging through Ravi’s drawers in Ma’s bedroom. She erased Dad from them ages ago and let Ravi keep little bits of himself in the places where Dad used to be. There’s not much there. His work clothes. Heavy jeans and plaid shirts. Belts with makeshift notches in them to keep up with his shrinking waistline.

In the basement, I find his toolbox. I pull away tools sharp enough to break open a back door, a bed of nails, a bed of bolts. I’m about to give up when I see a leather pouch. What a weird place to hide photos, I think, until I look through them.

I’m alert to every sound in the townhouse unit. I feel not like myself, but someone sneakier, someone smarter. An investigative sort of person with nothing to lose, who’s drunk off some kind of need to know.

I’ve never needed to know before, didn’t want to know. But this new person I’ve become is a nosy bitch.

Crouching there like a wild animal, I scatter the photos in front of me and paw these images from the past. They’re faded Polaroids from at least twenty years ago. Ravi as a teenager, at school. In front of a scooter. One at the beach with an arm slung around Ma’s waist, her smiling up at him. The picture must be at least twenty years old because they’re both young and beautiful here. I knew Ma must have always been fine—you can still see it now in her high cheekbones, in her big dark eyes and pouty lips. The figure barely contained by her pinstripe bikini. Ravi, though, I had no idea he used to look like this. Sort of cute. His brashness shines out at me.

I know dudes like this, have trained with them practically every day for years. They’re the junk people, like me, who no one wants and have nowhere to go at the end of the day but the gym because it’s the only place that will have them. This is the rough kind of guy who will spar you and hold nothing back until you’re a puddle of sweat. They’ll egg you on, cast doubt on your technique and try to own you when they hold pads for you but will unleash their full power when you’re the one holding the pads. They’ll try to break your wrists when you hold for them and laugh when a teep sends you flying. They’ll sweep your legs from under you and pummel you at exercises that aren’t even competitions.

When you’re in the ring, though, when the stakes are high, they’re the ones who’ll have your back. But not without you putting in the hours with them first. Not without a price.

So Ravi had her back.

He was there with her in Trinidad, hearing the parrot squawk “Eliza is a whore” and he was in Diego Martin when my dad was attacked. He has her back and his price is that drawer upstairs and the groove in our sofa.

I put the photos back in the order I found them and close up the toolbox.

Ma, I think, what’s the price you make him pay?

But I already know her price. She’s making him disappear.

twenty-eight

Insert training montage. This is the part of the story where the underdog has something to prove to the world, the interlude before