Fight Like a Girl Page 7

  But she stands silent behind Ravi and lets him.

  She lets him.

  fifteen

  Proper young lady, my backside. I’ll show him. I start training so hard that, before I know it, I’ve got an injury of my own to deal with. I sprain my right ankle. It hurts like a bitch, but just a little whiny one. I’ve sprained this ankle before, so it’s always a little off. On the floor, I double up on the compression sleeve and am careful to only work my right swing kick on the bag, so that I’m pivoting only on the left leg for now. I make sure the kicks are mid-thigh so that there’s no chance of over-extending and catching a bit of the ankle by mistake.

  “What’s wrong with you?” says Jason, as he walks past. Shirtless. He’s been watching me a lot since I got back, out of the corner of his eye. “You look rusty, Lucky.” But I can still beat him one-on-one, so there’s that. Luckier than him, at least.

  “Yeah, well, you look soft,” I say.

  He grins, passes a hand down his abs. He’s got six of them. I’ve counted. “Soft, huh?”

  Amanda smirks because she’s pure muscle. Noor shakes her head at him in mock pity as he grabs his gear and heads off to the men’s locker room. I wonder, again, if he’s got a girlfriend. If he doesn’t, I may have ruined my chance with him with that soft comment.

  Do I even want a chance with him?

  I never really bother with guys because…okay…I mean…it just never was right or whatever…

  But Jason.

  It’s not really about his abs, because I have some of my own. So. His are nice but they aren’t the deciding factor. Maybe I like that he’s already in college. Am I into mature men?

  Gross.

  It could just be Jason. I think about how good he smells.

  This time I have the good sense to keep these thoughts to myself. Ricky’s not around to tease me, but you never know. He could be hiding behind the weights or whatever, just waiting for an opportunity to jump out and say something annoying. I honestly don’t know what Amanda sees in him.

  When Jason’s gone, we chat for a bit and then we spar.

  It’s beautiful. So beautiful. Nothing like it in the world. We don’t even care that the gym smells like ass today, because we’re all a bit ripe after we’ve been at it for so long. I don’t mind the smell. It may be rank with ass, but it’s our ass. There’s a fresh bruise on my thigh, shining deep purple, aching all the way down to the bone. I pour some bright orange Thai liniment on it and rub the heel of my hand over it until the pain evens out to a steady throb. With my team around me, stretching and slap-sparring with their gear off, I feel pure, whole.

  I never want this moment to end.

  I get back home just before nine so no one can complain. Then I wait till they’re asleep (which is how I think of Ma and Ravi now: them) and rummage through the medicine cabinet. There’s usually a bottle of Advil somewhere. I search the whole bathroom but all I see is four little vials stashed under the sink in a pouch that wasn’t there before. Glass vials with a white label that says fentanyl citrate, clear as day. I get this funny feeling again, like I did at Dad’s funeral, and when Ma brought Ravi home. This is wrong. The vials shouldn’t be here. Aren’t people dying left, right and centre in our hood from fentanyl?

  But here they are.

  Ma doesn’t really talk about her work, and she definitely doesn’t bring it home, so I’m standing there wondering what the hell medication that looks like it’s from the hospital is doing here until someone pounds on the door.

  “Hurry up!” calls Ravi.

  I open the door to find him standing there with his arms crossed. He’s shirtless, quelle surprise.

  (Why, God? Why do you do this to me?)

  So I’m extra careful not to brush past him. Something’s wrong with him; I can see it in his eyes. Like he’s just taken a jab to the face and needs a minute to shake it off. “What you looking at?” he says to me, with a sneer. But it comes slow, like he’s underwater.

  I slide past him, no problem. “Nothing,” I say, as I go to my room. I’m not scared of him, but I can’t help but wonder who put those little vials underneath the sink. I thought my dad was a bad influence on Ma, I really did.

  I think Ravi might be something worse.

  When I creep downstairs the next morning, I see Ravi’s duffel bag on the sofa. He’s nowhere to be found. The bag is open. There’s a phone peeking out. One that looks pretty familiar, an older model…but it can’t be whose I think it is.

  I reach for it and turn it on.

  While I’m waiting for it to boot up, I see a little baggie of pills in the duffel. Each pill is imprinted with the initials TEC. After the vials, it feels wrong, this whole thing, so I put the phone and the baggie back and am about to leave when I hear it.

  The beat of a steel pan coming from Ravi’s bag, playing a very familiar song.

  I recognize that ring tone. That old calypso. It’s “Bassman.”

  I slip the ringing phone into my own bag and leave as quickly as I can. I run all the way to the bus stop. When the bus comes and I get on, I can’t help but look back to see if anyone else is springing down the street after me.

  Then I pull out the phone. It’s Dad’s.

  I don’t recognize the number that called right when I turned it on, but that doesn’t really matter so much because what I do know is that somehow, Ravi had my dad’s phone.

  * * *

  The next day I look for the little vials, but they’re not under the sink anymore. I want to ask Ma where they are, but she’s already gone and there’s no way I’m going to initiate a conversation with Ravi. Besides, I don’t want to let him know what I found, because then he might wonder if I know about the pills in his bag, which I do. According to Ricky, TEC is how you identify bootleg painkillers on the streets. I know he got hurt at his warehouse job, so maybe that’s why he’s got to take pills?

  Speaking of painkillers, there’s still no Advil, so I go to school on an ankle that feels like it’s on fire.

  After class, I’m walking home from the bus stop when a car pulls up beside me. The window rolls down. I start walking faster, but then I hear Columbus’s voice. “Get in!” he shouts, a huge smile on his pimply face. He’s leaning out the window of a silver Honda Civic from about a decade ago.

  “When did you get a car?” I say.

  “Mom bought it for me this afternoon. Paid for the whole thing in cash, like a boss.” The potential sexiness he maybe had for a second disappears. I think about poor Pammy, having to buy his car for him.

  “How much was it?”

  “She wouldn’t let me see. A few Gs, I think. But I’ve got to pay the insurance, she says, so I’m thinking delivery. If you want to chip in, I’ll add you on the policy,” he offers.

  I sense a trap. Besides, how much does insurance cost on an old car like this? But I tell him I’ll think about it as I get in.

  When Ma comes home later, she’s tired but starts to put dinner on anyway, even though I told her I already ate. I’m shocked that she’s cooking. It’s like Dad isn’t even gone. She comes home dead tired and there’s a man to be taken care of. The good thing about Dad was that he was only here for a couple months at a time.

  But Ravi doesn’t go anywhere.

  I disappear upstairs, saying I’ve got too much homework to sit around the table, but in reality I just don’t want to look at Ravi’s smug face a second longer than I have to.

  When they go to bed, I go downstairs for a glass of water and on the way back to my room, pause outside Ma’s bedroom. I can’t think of it as theirs yet. I hear Ravi’s voice. He’s saying something about St. James, the place in Trinidad where Ma grew up. I only hear snatches from him—his voice is too low for anything else—but from what I can make of it he’s talking about an old man’s parrot. The day the old man died in his grocery store, the parrot shout
ed “Eliza is a whore!” over and over until someone came in and discovered the body. No one knew who Eliza was, but it fuelled the village gossip mill for years.

  Ma, when she speaks, I can hear better. Even the exhaustion in her voice. “Yes, Ravi, I remember. I was with you when we got the news. How could I forget?”

  There are shuffling sounds, like someone’s getting out of bed. I’m safely back in my room by the time Ma’s door opens. I’ve heard that parrot story before, and I can’t get over Ma saying she was with Ravi when it happened.

  The only person I can ask about the story is Aunty K. She’s probably asleep now, though. I’ll just have to call her tomorrow.

  sixteen

  Kru is proud of his female fighters. Even me, with my matchstick wrists and my losing streak. The fighters camp is his elite group and there are only a handful of girls in it. He takes me, Noor and Amanda aside today, real serious, and tells us about the tournament in Florida for girls only. We’re too excited to pretend we’re not.

  “Florida?”

  “Where all the old people are?”

  “Is there prize money?”

  “I thought Florida was under water? I mean, not the whole thing, but climate change—”

  “What are the fees?”

  “Don’t people wrestle alligators down there? I hear the Florida dudes are whack.”

  “But, seriously, is there prize money?”

  He puts his hand up and we fall silent. “Florida, in May. You have to sign up now and we start training. There is no prize money. Are you in?”

  We look at each other, at Kru, and then, one by one, nod. He’s asking us if we’re serious. We’ve never been more serious about anything in our lives. The guy fighters at the gym look on, overrun with jealousy. The Montreal tournament got cancelled last minute when one of the organizers absconded with everyone’s fee money. It hurt to lose that much cash but even more to be training for nothing.

  And now, Kru and the female fighters, we have something that’s just ours.

  So hell yeah. I’m going to Florida, where all the whack dudes and old people are.

  Florida is on my mind so much it takes me a couple days to call Aunty K. Her surprise at getting my call doesn’t stop her from talking non-stop for about three minutes before she finally says “Trisha, girl, I was just thinking about you. Want to come up for a week and help out at the store for March Break?”

  Do I want to work for minimum wage during my break, infusing my skin and hair with the smell of curry, or do I want to spend it with Ma and freaking Ravi?

  “Yeah, I can come,” I say, after zero thought.

  After that, she’s in a good mood. So am I, actually. I hadn’t thought about what I was going to do for that week, but at least it’s been sorted. “I’m reading this book on Trinidad and it got me thinking,” I say. “There was a story you told me once about an old man who died and a parrot kept shouting some stuff so that people would open the door and find the body.”

  “Eliza and the parrot? That’s your mom’s story, not mine,” Aunty K replies.

  “Oh, yeah? I couldn’t remember. How long ago did it happen?”

  “Twenty years now? Something like that. Your mommy must have been around sixteen, I think. So listen, give me the dates of your break and I’ll book the ticket for you.”

  “Okay, Aunty,” I say, before letting her continue chatting for another few minutes. She’d decided to ignore my advice on the paint and went with the yellow instead. “Brighter,” she says.

  Yeah, so bright you could go blind from it.

  The next day in World Issues class—

  Why is World Issues a prereq for Business Management, anyway?

  Who the hell actually knows?

  —I start thinking about how the people around me are changing. Ma with Ravi, Aunty K with her expansion. Everyone but Columbus, who’s exactly the same but with a new (old) car.

  Pammy buying him a car in cash, though. That’s something different.

  Ever since her divorce, she’s been teaching Columbus the value of hard work and saving. All that jazz. Her ex was kind of a deadbeat and she wants to make sure Columbus doesn’t become one, too. Plus, she works as a dental hygienist. She does okay, but it’s not like she makes tons of money. I mean, not enough for that car and also to save for his tuition next year—which I know she does.

  I mention the car to Ma later that night at the dinner table, but she changes the subject.

  Ravi talks a bit after that about how single women spoil their children too much and this is why they’re always broke. Ma looks uncomfortable and changes the subject again. I don’t know why. She loves to gossip about Pammy, even though they’re best friends. Pammy’s life is something of a mystery to her, I think. Pammy kicking her ex out the way she did. Putting her foot down the way she did.

  Must sting for Ma because she never had the courage to get rid of Dad. She just kept taking the beats until he died.

  “You’re a wound,” Ravi continues, because I guess he thinks we want to hear what he has to say on the subject. “You women. Press on you just a little and you all just scream. Give everything up.”

  And Ma’s boiling, she’s so furious. Ravi is slow as usual. He doesn’t pick up on it, but I do. The sudden anger. I wait for her to whip something at him, to get up with a burst of energy and shout at him. Every now and then I’d seen her do this with Dad, though she always got in trouble for it later.

  But letting a comment like that pass?

  I’m confused, then I’m frightened because it seems that Jason was right. I’m cursed. I’m doomed. It’s never going to change with her, except I catch a glimpse of something under the table. It’s her hand, clenched around a fork, pressing the tines into her thigh. She sees me looking but doesn’t stop.

  “Ma,” I say. There’s something dangerous about her right now.

  Ravi frowns. “I don’t know what’s wrong with the two of you today.” He leaves the room, pressing his hand into the small of his back like a pregnant lady.

  It’s only after he’s gone that she puts the fork back on the table and massages the imprint she’s made on her thigh.

  Ravi falls asleep on the couch, which is a normal thing now, I guess, and I hear Ma moving about in her bedroom. I think about Dad’s phone in the front pocket of my backpack, where I keep it now, and I want to ask her why it was in Ravi’s bag. Did she give it to him?

  It doesn’t make any sense.

  The questions are there, just waiting to spill out.

  I pause just outside of the room because I can hear her voice now. The door’s closed, but I listen anyway. She’s talking real quiet to Pammy, like always, but this time it’s charged. Something in her voice is so determined and so powerful that I can’t believe she let anybody ever knock her about. That she’d let Ravi talk down to her like that. Maybe this power is new. Maybe my dad’s death is feeding it somehow, because I feel it strong, and feel something in me rise up to meet it.

  The fear, you know, the fear in me doesn’t ever go away.

  seventeen

  “I mean,” Columbus begins, “you sure it’s a good idea to go for a driving test right now?”

  “They said I wasn’t at fault for the accident, okay?”

  “Okay, but the last time you drove, a man died.” Columbus isn’t exactly known for his tact, but still. It’s pretty rude of him to bring it up.

  “Are you going to lend me your junk car or not?”

  “With that kind of attitude…Look, I’m not saying you’re a terrible driver, but you’re a terrible driver and maybe you need some time to not be as terrible as you clearly are.”

  Since we’re already on our way to the test centre, I ignore this. It’s my last test before I get my full licence.

  I’m not nervous until I’m outside waiting for the guy giving the tes
t. He saunters out to the back lot where I’m parked. I take in his baby face, the sparse moustache that’s trying to crawl across his lip but not succeeding, and I know that it’s not going to go well for me.

  I start off okay, up until the ramp to the highway, then the panic sets in. He’s judging everything I do, checking things off with a flick of his pencil. I speed up and put my signal on, see another car coming up fast before I merge…

  I scream and pump the brakes hard.

  We both go slamming forward into our seatbelt then back to the seat.

  “Put on your hazards,” he says. Now he’s looking at me for real, like I just tried to kill him, which I guess is a reasonable position to take.

  We switch seats, and he drives us back to the test centre because I’m a blubbering mess. Columbus is waiting for me in the seating area. The grin on his face dies when he sees me come in with the examiner. I’m still shaking. Columbus pats me awkwardly on the back but, for once, knows better than to say anything.

  * * *

  Word gets out that I’m officially a menace on the road. Nobody’s all that surprised. Aunty K calls to talk to me about it but ends up blaming Dad for everything that went wrong with my life and Ma’s. “That monster. He’s taken so much from your childhood, Trisha, and now he takes this milestone, too.”

  Um. Okay, Aunty.

  Ravi offers to give me driving lessons, but I stare at him so hard that he turns back to the television and continues to ignore me for the rest of the day, until Ma gets home. Then he decides he’s got to be elsewhere, for once.

  Now it’s just the two of us.