Fight Like a Girl - Sheena Kamal Page 0,51

Rocky wins the big fight against Apollo Creed and shouts Adrian! into the crowd and slobbers all over her when she arrives at his side. This is what gets him to that point. When Samart Payakaroon’s trainer tells him to work his jabs and teeps before his killer knockout sends Panomtoanlek Hapalang to the ground, choking on his own mouth guard.

This is the part where the coach says: Alright, I’ll train you, ya bum, but you gotta give me one hundred and ten percent. You hear? You hold nothing back and we’ll see what you’re made of.

(You hope you’re made of steel under your skin.)

Skip till you’re cross-eyed, flicking the rope like a whip, crossing it, send it flying in time with your feet.

Work drills and drills and drills.

Spar with the best in the gym, who give you their everything because they can smell the hunger on you and they want to give it to you because everybody knows that there’s nothing else but this.

Where you give Kru your everything because even though he’s got woman troubles, you’re not gonna be part of them.

This is the part where you lose yourself to that hunger and even though they say you gotta give them the whole of what you got, your one-ten, it’s really about taking. You’re taking everything they have so they, all of them in your ratty little eastside gym with the duct tape peeling off every hastily repaired surface, can live for a moment in your glory.

When you come alive in the ring and hear the crowd chant your name.

When you hold that gaudy-ass belt up over your head and know this moment is yours and no one can ever take it away from you.

* * *

Florida is in a couple days and people are definitely noticing the bruises. The ones on my arms and legs are a sinister rainbow of red, purple, yellow, green. Every colour you can imagine is represented somewhere on my body. But I’m looking at the ones on my neck in the gym mirror out on the training floor. Junior’s mom said a soucouyant was biting me, and I can see now why she’d think that, what with the marks on my throat, all angry and red.

Then I turn away, back to the giant tire in the middle of the floor, squat in front of it and lift it, exploding up on my haunches, my shoulders working in sync with my hips to throw it forward. It slams into the mat in front of me and I grin at the sound, moving with it to start all over again.

Jason’s not around. So it’s Ricky who holds mitts for me in the ring to work my precision. We’re grunting through combos until we’re both lathered in sweat and the humidity is rising up from the gym floor to meet the drops of perspiration falling from our brows. “Killer,” he says. “Killer instinct.”

“I think you’re ready, Lucky,” says Kru, who looks over from the floor. I may be banged up, but I look tight and everyone at the gym knows it. I smile so wide you can see all my teeth, which I still have. (Unlike some of the others.) It seems like everyone on the street knows it, too. A group of girls at the train station eye-fuck me and I can tell they’re thinking of starting something. Usually I turn away from girls like that, they’re not worth the trouble, but today I stand and stare at them, daring them closer. The train comes and takes them away, but I saw the look in their eyes, I saw the leader, the big one with the thin hair, think twice.

Ma looks at these bruises on my neck but says nothing. She can’t see the ones on the rest of my body because I’ve taken to wearing sweats inside the house, no matter what the thermostat is set to.

“How is school?” she asks.

“Good.” The teachers have given up on the graduating class. They know we’re not listening to them anymore. If we don’t have it by now, we’ll never get it in these last six weeks before school ends. Homework is a joke, but I still pretend to do it every day to make Ma happy. “I got accepted into Ryerson. The letter came in the mail last week.”

She lights up, grabs me by the shoulders, then remembers my acromioclavicular separation when I wince. “I’m so sorry, baby.” She clutches me to her. “I’m happy