The mat is sweat slicked under my cheek and I'm heaving against it, like my body is trying to force itself to fuse with the floor. My heart bangs hysterically against the bars of my ribcage. Screaming, screaming. Until my ears ring. Even with my eyes closed the room somehow spins.
A drop of- sweat or- something. A drop of something trails slowly down my face. I flick my tongue across the wet patch and a strong tang of iron blossoms across my tastebuds. The body transforms sweat into blood. This is the life.
"Get up," a voice says but my head is still bubbling with an intoxicating mix of pain and adrenaline.
"Charlie?" I open my eyes.
"Meerf," I groan, weakly. Coach laughs. From this angle he looks lopsided, blonde hair and blue eyes a smudge of watercolor on the tanned canvas of his face. The bold white number "6" is stark against his red basketball top. It blurs and multiplies, beckoning the beast.
"I thought we lost you for a second," he jokes. I know it's a joke.
He offers an ungloved hand as a sort of truce for knocking me flat on my feet. Gratefully, I accept it. Upright, coach stands a whole foot taller than me. His features slowly stop swimming, revealing a strong jawline and yellowed teeth between thin pink lips.
"Not a fair fight," I battle through my throbbing jaw.
"You can handle it," he flashes a smile and despite the way I roll my eyes I can’t suppress the way my mouth twitches against a conspiratorial smirk. "You wanna get that checked out?"
Ah. Right. I tongue at my upper lip again and savour the flavour of blood dripping from my nose.
"Nah," I say, trying to sound confident. "Let's go again."
Coach snickers, nodding his head and squeezing his bare fist back into a tight black glove. The Velcro protests pleasantly as he readjusts the wrist. Then his arms are up in front of his face and his blue eyes darken with a kind of hunger that makes my knees weak.
"You're on."
"See you next week Charlie," coach pats me roughly on the back, almost sending me barreling over.
"Seeya," I respond weakly. My nose is still bleeding. Sparring with coach always takes everything out of me. We’re different weight classes so maybe we shouldn’t… but it unravels something in me, waters the dying thistle in my chest. I don’t want the world without boxing. Sometimes, it feels like all I have.
With a sigh, I rip the pink Velcro screaming from my wrists. Tossing my gloves in a duffel bag, I head to the showers.
"Why so late?" mom demands, shuffling towards me as soon as I silently slide through the front door. We live in a small apartment; The door opens to an awkward cross-section leading directly into the kitchen to your right and the bathroom to your left. Two meters down the hallway is my mom’s room, and a further one meter down is mine. All the walls are a dull off-white colour, and photos of mom and I are taped down the hallway at various heights. Yellow light flickers throughout the house, light bulbs straining with age.
"Aiyah, come here, what happen to your face?" she grabs me roughly by the chin and forces my cheek towards the dim kitchen light. The cracking stove, greying oven, flat blue set of drawers, maybe-on-maybe-not fridge, and ditzy microwave all stare at me. Mom keeps me there until I’m hot under the scrutiny. She tsks once.
"Never careful, Lanying," she nods sagely, turning back to the kitchen. "Just like father."
"At least I stuck around," I whisper under my breath. Mom's shoulders tense.
"Come," she insists softly, beckoning me with a closed fist. "I leave food in microwave. Come, come. Eat."
She sets a two-minute timer and the black interior of the machine lights up. It whirs softly as she continues to lecture.
"Boxing no good. Not for girl."
Opening the top drawer, she briefly rummages for a set of metal chopsticks.
"Lanying learn to cook sometime."
Clinks them down on the countertop. Sighs.
"Mama knows. Don't want you to be like father."
"Maybe he would actually love me," I say it like I mean it. Mom freezes for a moment. Turns predatorily.
She slaps me without raising her hand. No warning reel, and that’s how I know I’ve really fucked it up. We stare at each other. My mom at me. Me at my mom. The microwave continues buzzing. A single tear spills down my cheek without my permission. Another. And another. I clench my jaw to keep from crying out. Mom breaks the tension first, turning with a huff and waddling towards her bedroom. She slams the door shut behind her.
After a few moments of stillness, to ensure she isn’t coming back, I lift my head to examine my purpling cheek in the microwave’s reflection. There’s the mild outline of my mother’s red handprint against my pale, bruised face. Dry blood rings my right nostril and my black bangs have dried stuck to my forehead. The microwave dings! And suddenly my eyes are staring back at me through the black screen with a clarity they didn’t have before. Doe-like, deep brown, but frenzied. I decide I look like an animal.
Begrudgingly, I open the microwave door to reveal the overwhelming scent of sweet and sour pork. It’s served with a mountain of rice, and steamed Bok Choy on the side. My favourite. It’s easy to ignore the burn of the hot plate burrowing into my open hands as I drag my feet to the dining room table. Like most nights, I eat alone. This time though it feels like a punishment.
Next week can’t come fast enough. By the time Thursday rolls around I’m jumping out of my skin with the desire to hit something.
“Hey there Charlie,” coach greets me with a wink.
“Hi,” I already sound winded, and I haven’t even put my gloves on. Coach hisses when I turn my head.
“Yeowch. That bruise looks much worse than I thought it would,” he comments with a small frown. I remember how my mother’s palm against my cheek stung more than the fearsome headshot that gave me the mark. “Maybe we’ll just stick to the bags today?”
“There’s a competition on Saturday,” I defend weakly. His blue eyes harden with resolve.
“Wasn’t a suggestion I’m afraid.”
Coach turns away from me and I imagine clocking him viciously in the back of the head. I imagine blood and hair under my nails. Wonder if coach would scream like a girl. If my life was a movie this would be the part where things blow up. But it isn’t, and coach keeps strolling towards a big red sandbag across the gym. He’s wearing black shorts and a loose cream top that sways in the flurry of wind spurting from a fan as he passes it by.
I shove my hands aggressively into pink gloves and pull the Velcro just a little too tight on the wrist. Angrily, I storm after him. When I bring my fists up, I imagine his face on the bag and start beating it. Jab. Jab. Hook, jab, jab. The vague impression of blonde hair and blue eyes against the bag grow darker as sweat trails down my face, making my eyes sting unbearably.
“Time! Five minutes,” coach announces a break. My heart is beating in my hands. Makes them feel a little numb.
I wipe my face with paper towels in the bathrooms. When I return the transforming face on the bag has shifted completely. Soft round cheeks, mildly wrinkled like a slightly overripe peach, complexion a yellowing piece of paper, worn at the edges. Black hair and brown eyes just like me. Dry lips drawn into a pout. I punch the bag harder. On a particularly rough jab I imagine the searing pain that shoots up my arm is my knuckles splitting. The sweat between my gloves and hands becomes blood.
When training concludes coach pulls me aside.
“Great work today,” he says. “Rest up before the competition. Remember to eat and sleep well on game day.”
I nod, silently excusing myself. Removing my gloves reveals angry red lines that snake down my wrists. All ten knuckles are intact.
“Lanying,” mom greets me at the door. I resist the urge to groan. “Coach message me.”
Immediately, this puts me on edge.
“You have competition Saturday?”
Cautiously, I nod. Mom tsks and shakes her head.
“No good,” she says. “No go.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re saying?” I blurt out and I know it’s the wrong thing to say from the way her eyes narrow and her eyebrows knit so tightly they almost look like one.
“Lanying cannot box. It is final.”
The line is so bad it sounds like some crap she stole from the soaps she watches at full volume every evening. I search her eyes desperately, looking for any sense of humor, any indication that this might be a joke. When I find none, I steel myself with a shaky inhale.
“I’m going.”
“Not.”
“You cannot stop me.”
Mom raises her hand as if to slap me. I stare at her. She stares back.
“Hm?” she tilts her head to the side. “You want?”
“You. Can’t. Stop me. Mom.”
She slaps at me but isn’t fast enough against my duck, so the hit is weak against the side of my head. From crouching I launch myself at her mid-section, tackling her to the ground and landing on her legs. Mom yelps in pain and I skitter back on my haunches.
“I kill myself!” she yells, clinging to her shin and rocking back and forth. “You want?”
“Just do it then!” I spit, crawling on my hands and knees, then just my knees, away from her sprawled form and towards my bedroom.
“I calling the police!”
“Fucking call them!” I bellow down the hallway, using my door handle to pull myself onto shaky legs.
“Just like your father!” she screams just before I slam the door shut. Once it’s locked, I flop down onto my bed. And I don’t stay up to hear if she makes it off her ass.
On Friday morning I wake up for school at 6am. Comb my hair into a ponytail and put on my uniform – an ugly white button up shirt under an even uglier blue dress. In the kitchen our rice steamer is already keeping my breakfast warm. Despite that fact, I don’t let myself feel guilty for what I did to my mom. Sullenly, I shove plain rice into my mouth and pretend the evidence of her love doesn’t ease the rage burning inside me. Brush my teeth, pick up my bag. Don’t bother checking my mom’s room. Look at the time. 6:46. Four minutes until the bus.
I fish in my bag for the housekeys but come up empty. Weird. I check the key bowl, I check all my uniform pockets, the washing machine, the uppermost kitchen drawer. I check mom’s slippers for the spare. Still, I find nothing. Look at the time. 7:02. I’ve missed it. With barely concealed annoyance, I drag my feet towards mom’s room. Strangely, upon opening the door I’m greeted by complete darkness. After slowly opening the blinds, her bedsheets reveal one tiny yellow post-it note. Written in fine print: “No school today. Stay home. Work over at 7.”
I call my mom. It goes to voicemail. I call again. Again. Again. Frantically, I search my school email for more information but come up empty. With a growing sense of dread, I hazard a message out to my classmates – lo and behold, no one else’s parents are under the impression that their daughter should stay in.
“Oh my God,” I say it out loud like it makes the situation any easier to stomach.
I’m totally out of my element, the extremism of the punishment extending far beyond anything my mother has pulled off before. It leaves me frantic, flitting around the apartment, trying desperately to find a way out. Tug, tug, I tug at the door a few times. Then I start banging against it. No one is coming to save me, and the claustrophobia gives way to a suffocating anxiety in my chest. I open the windows and despite the security bars I linger over the view, the slight angle I get of our neighbors’ window ledge. If I jumped far enough, I might make it…
Afraid of myself, I slam the window shut, effectively derailing that train of thought. I need to do- do something! To prevent myself from crawling out of my skin. A strand of hair falls from the grip of the elastic and wisps a path down my face. That’s it. I fetch the kitchen scissors and make my way to our small, shared bathroom.
Over the cracking sink paint, I loosen my ponytail and let my hair fall about my shoulders for the last time. Pick up a strand and cut it as close to the skull as you can get. It becomes ritualistic, I repeat the motion until ten years of growing it out are overflowing from the tiny basin. Only when the damage is done does reality dawn on me. In the mirror someone else is staring back at me. We have the same eyes, same face, same neck, but where my hair falls in long, thick strands, hers sticks out all over like a botched buzz cut. Tears spring to my eyes but all I can do is watch in horror as recognition seeps into her features.
I stare at me. She stares back.
In the hours that separate 7am and 9pm I have a lot to think about.
Mostly, I imagine losing my scholarship. Mom has to know I’m not as smart as the other girls in my year. Always the lowest in math and Chinese, never the highest in English. Even the things I’m good at I’m not good at. Boxing is all I have. Coach told me when I was thirteen, “you’re like a machine,” and I heard “you’re nothing without your body”. My body who never betrays me, who is stronger than both mind and spirit. So, I imagine skipping this match and not making it to the national youth quarter finals.
I imagine the stage at graduation, imagine all the girls lining up alphabetically. Pretty, swishy, tulle dresses and tiaras and full faces of makeup. They say our names in order and the sense of trepidation grows steadily overwhelming. When it’s finally my turn the principal opens his mouth and… just skips over me. The next girl, Amanda Yeung, walks right through me. I’m a ghost in my school, a ghost in my city. Losing this match means losing my body, and not showing up means losing as well…
At 4am I get dressed in my boxing gear and tiptoe into my mom’s room. It’s bad, I know, you don’t have to tell me, but I need this win like I need air. When I lift her key from the nightstand it makes a quiet clinking noise, and I freeze. She snores louder but doesn’t stir. I whisper a silent apology into the chilly morning. As soon as the apartment door clicks shut, I’m running for the elevator and repeatedly slamming the down button.
“I want a clean game,” the referee says, clapping her hands. “No crotch-grabbing, no cussing out. Play square, win fair.”
“Aye aye,” my competitor winks at me.
“3…2…1!”
We circle each other for a bit. In this moment I can’t tell if I’m more predator or prey. I want to believe my teeth are sharp tipped and my eyes are hungry for violence. She breaks the short stalemate with a jab at my head. I dodge, throw a hook. She darts right and left. It’s like dancing, this mutual exchange of blows. This is the life. She knicks my ear and my head buzzes with euphoria. I land a solid punch to her right shoulder, dodge her left attempt. I don’t see her other hand coming.
She decks me straight in the face, painting my eyelids white. For a moment, I am perfect. Unbreathing, the clenching of nerves in my nose numbing the future pain for the time between her hands and the mat. Floating, heels barely touching the floor. Finally, a place exists where my body can totally relax. Eyes shut and yet wide open. Blinding light. Like I’m seeing God again, for the first time.
I hit the floor, and my sharp inhale feels like a baby’s first breath. Searing pain in the nose. The freshness of air almost too much to bear. Iron cloying the senses and the unbearable sensation of crawling under my skin.
“Charlie!” someone is yelling. I open my eyes.
All I can see for miles is stars.