Sekules Kate - The Boxers Heart

This edition published in paperback in the United States in 2012 by

Overlook Duckworth, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

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Previously published in 2000 by Villiard Books and in 2002 by Seal Press

Copyright 2000 by Kate Sekules

Afterword copyright 2012 by Kate Sekules

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

ISBN 978-1-46830-178-6

F OR S COTT

All life lies in the movement resulting
from the clash between the two polar forces,
love and conflict.

Empedocles

HELLO my name is: BOXER/HANDLER. That is what my chest reads tonight, the night before Valentines Day 1997. I am not feeling romantic, because in about four hours time Im going to become a professional fighter, the first womanwell, one of a pairto step through the ropes at Philadelphias Blue Horizon. Tonights card is titled the St. Valentines Day Massacre. I hope Im the side with the guns, but I have no idea what arsenal I might be holding, since Ive never done this before. This is not only my professional boxing debut, this is going to be my first fight. Ever. As they slap the decal on my coat, Im having serious and pointless second thoughts. Perhaps I was a little too blithe. Perhaps it wasnt so clever to sign that contract, the one from which one phrase echoes in my brain: I understand and appreciate, it goes, that participation carries a risk to me of serious injury including permanent paralysis or death.

Perhaps my opponent is better than Ive been led to believe. She does, after all, look like a tree. Perhaps I have done something quite stupid in agreeing to fight a six-foot-three Division A basket-ball player with a six-win, three-knockout record. One who weighs twenty-five pounds more than I, is thirteen years younger, and whose reach extends eight inches farther than mine. Ohand whose manager is the St. Valentines Day Massacre promoter.

Such thoughts are crowding in, but I refuse to dwell on them. I cant afford to. Instead, I take refuge in a brand of gallows humor that, fortunately, is coming naturally, with an assist from the surroundings. The Blue Horizon is the oldest prizefighting venue in the land, as its full namethe Legendary Blue Horizonsuggests. Those serious Philadelphia fight fans are legendary, too: they love their boxing, and the bloodier the better. The Blues part of North Philly is never going to be gentrified, I think. Maybe its my circumstances, but all I notice on the drive from the Best Western (by cab, no limo for my corner) is barbed wire, broken glass, and ripped pavement, all bathed in jaundiced streetlight.

I have two handlersmy trainer and my corner. They know me pretty well, the Boxer Me at least, but I wonder if they know exactly how hard Im leaning on them, experts in prefight choreography though they be. My trainer must know, since Ive spent the last ten hours peppering him with questions: Am I ready? Can I handle this? What if Im not mean enough? How do you know Ill know what to do? What if shes better than we think? What if I get really hurt? What if I forget everything/freeze up/cry? Only the other week, there was a dreadful little news item where a well-known heavyweight collapsed in tears on the canvas, and this guy was a veteran with a record as long as his reach. Id have assumed these crazy nerves get blunted over time, but maybe the opposite is true, since every fight shortens the odds of your receiving the punch that counts. Everything thats happening is novel but also familiar, as if my immersion in gym life had prepared me for a night like this one, in which I am an essential player, but in a minor role. I watched Rocky for the first time this week (so thats why everybodys telling me to run up the Art Museum steps), and the temptation to identify with the boxing clich of our time is strong; yet Im resisting.

My dressing room is suitably vile. Ive even had to bring my own makeup and costume guys because the directors provided only a very basic trailer without staff. It is up two flights of creaking mildewed stairs, a roughly partitioned doorless closet furnished with a wooden table. An embarrassed scuffle follows our arrival, as a filthy sheet is procured and secured to protect my modesty, at the orders of the local boxing commissioner, who needs visual evidence that I really am female.

It is four hours until the first fight, and I learn that my bout is scheduled fourth out of nine, a prime place on the undercard, billed thus on account of my opponent, Raging Belle, who has a large dressing room with lackeys and bouquets. Her manager, the promoter, whom my trainer calls the Big-Nose Guy, keeps doing the rounds of the dressing rooms, spending long minutes in hers, bouncing along the row of contenders, finally poking his nose behind my sheet wearing a terribly worried expression and asking if Im okay. Of course Im bloody okay. Shouldnt I be okay? Does he think Im going to back out now? He should save his concern for his skyscraper girl, Raging. Illogically, Raging wants to become a model after shes finished with pugilism, and the Big-Nose Guy is not above exploiting her pretty face for his purposes, billing her as the cover girl of womens boxing, and attempting to preserve her pulchritude by permitting her to fight in headgear. When I signed the contract, he and his sidekick shared a joke: since her face is his fortune, they decided, theyd be sure to stop the fight at the first sign of her blood. I digested that grim information, both sides of itevidently, my face can bleed and bruise all it likes; but all I need do for the TKO (technical knockout) is smash up the Raging Belles nose. Curiously, the shabby treatment feels good tonight. I am comfortable assuming the underdog position, or as comfortable as I can be with a helter-skelter of raging butterflies trapped inside me.

The past two weeks have been the least comfortable of my life. I had no precedent for the scale of those nerves, nerves with teeth and claws that never left me alone except to sleep the sleep of the bravea phrase I suppose I understand nowand to train. The effects of my gym work have alternated between soothing my anxiety and pouring gas on the fires of my fears, depending on whether I had a good day, with everything coming together and my bravado high, or a bad day of imposter syndrome. One of the latter accounted for my busted nose and the pair of black eyes Im still sporting at the Blue, a little faded, but noticeable. When the fight physician examined me this morning at the weigh-in, he paused over those.

Hmmm. Is this discoloration normal for you? he asked.

Yes. I lied. Luckily, Pennsylvania is notorious for its perfunctory medicals. More disturbing to me than my dodgy nose was how a big part of my heart leaped when I had that fleeting shot at disqualification.