Finishing Skills Sarah K. Inman Livingston Press The University of West Alabama CHAPTER ONE BACKSTAGE, WATSON SMEARED my face with petroleum jelly that we’d borrowed from another fighter. Our jar of Vaseline and our corner’s bucket were missing. Where the fuck were they? It was karma for what Jenna, the other pro female from the Academy, did last week; sly, she walked out of Boomtown Casino with a pair of eight-ounce gloves used in one of the bouts. They weren’t even good for sparring, so Jenna gave them to one of the newcomers to work the heavy bags. Jenna’s habit of stealing useless crap filled our gym with odd-sized gloves, cracked mirrors, and a scale that was off by two pounds. Watson had sent Darnel, one of the gym rats, to find our stuff or to borrow what we were missing, Vaseline, gauze, tape, ice; I’d packed my own mouthpiece. “How did Jenna make out?” I didn’t want to ask because I sensed that she’d lost, but I needed to break the silence. Jenna had fought early on the card, and I had been too nervous to poke my head into the crowd at the Pontchartrain Center to watch her. I was making my pro debut at a memorial event fund-raiser, held for two New Orleans police officers who had died in a freak New Year’s Eve explosion. “She had a good fight,” Watson said. His thick moustache perched above his upper lip, like a small animal. I had the sense the thing could sprout little legs and run off on its own. Watson spoke evenly, the essence of calm. “What’s that mean?” I asked. “She lost a split decision.” “She got robbed,” Darnel put in. “A split decision to Sue Eckelston? Sue’s oh and fourteen,” I said. “You mean one and fourteen,” Darnel corrected. He laughed a little and said, “They confused; Sue been fighting men all her life.” A real raging bull dyke, Sue sported fading tattoos and kept her graying hair styled in a crew cut. “Next time we put you in the ring with her,” Watson said to Darnel, breaking his flat tone and smiling. “That is one ugly woman,” Darnel added. To me Watson said, “Sue’s got more experience. She’s been in the ring with Christy Martin. You can learn more from one good opponent than from a lot of easy wins.” “For sure,” Darnel agreed. A man about my age, he often wore sleeveless shirts that exposed his dark, sinewy arms. At the Academy, Darnel went shirtless, showing off the six- pack of muscle he’d developed from consistent training. Darnel loved the fights, and even though he didn’t compete because of a medical condition he rarely discussed, he embraced the boxer’s workout — morning runs and afternoons at the gym. “But fourteen good opponents?” I questioned. Watson resumed his pre fight expression, lips pursed, eyes wide. I had to pee again. The urge to urinate must have overcome me about a dozen times in the last three hours. When I got back from the toilet, Watson helped me into a pair of eight ounce Reyes—the same kind Jenna had stolen from Boomtown Casino. They were small gloves that I knew would hurt more on impact than the twelve ounce ones we used for sparring. Watson held up the mitts and called out punches. “One. One, one, one.” My jab already felt tired, but I knew the feeling of weakness was all in my head. We’d begun tapering my workouts this week so that I’d be fresh for tonight. Still, I worried about other factors like the timing of my menstrual cycle. I was coming off my last period, and I felt that it was better to fight with PMS or while on the rag because, according to a former softball coach, it made me stronger. “One, two. One, two. One, two, three.” Jab, straight-hand right, left hook. Cookie, an obese fight official who had signed off on my hand wraps, came by again, this time to sign the tape around my gloves. I held out my hands while he used a stinky marker to scribble his initials on the tape Watson had used to secure the gloves’ ties. “Good luck,” he said in a gruff voice. His breath was a rotten mixture of hard liquor and cigar smoke. I had to pee again, but with the gloves on there was no turning back. Watson held up the mitts, and I resumed my warm-up. “One, four, three, two.” Jab, uppercut, hook, straight-hand right. “One, four, three, two,” Watson called out again. “Two, two, two. Two, three. Two, three. Two, three. Two, three, four, five, two. Two, three, four, five, two. Okay,” Watson said lowering his hands. He used his teeth to rip the Velcro clasp of the mitt open, then wiped away a bit of sweat from his forehead. “Stay loose.” I began jumping jacks as I did every day in the gym as part of my warm-up. “Shadow box,” Watson said in a serious voice. “When you finish with that, jog in place.” I threw a few jabs, slipped an imaginary punch. Then jab, jab, jab, right hand. Around me were seasoned fighters, doing the same. I jabbed some more then threw combinations. One- four-three-two. I jogged in place, shuffled from one foot to the other, rolled my shoulders up and down. I swiveled from my waist first counterclockwise, then clockwise, slipping fictional punches. Watson grabbed me from behind and clasping my shoulders, he whispered, “Sit down on your two.” Pushing my right shoulder forward and down, he took me through the movement. Then without Watson’s guidance, I repeated the punch several times, making sure to put my weight behind it. “You’re going to go in there,” Watson said. “Relax, throw some jabs, move, then land that right hand. She ain’t nothing special.” All week Watson had been pumping me up with words like that. Occasionally he’d add, “You gonna knock somebody out.” That was what I wanted to hear from him now. Watson stood with his arms crossed over his chest. He wasn’t tall for a man — he had about two inches on me — and compared with the active pugilists, his build wasn’t noticeably impressive. Still, he held court over the backstage area. Watson alternated between watching me and watching the others warm up. Maybe he was scanning the room for my opponent, Kerri Glenn, but this was something he did every day. In the gym, after a sparring session, he’d peel off his equipment and watch people working out, occasionally stopping to correct someone’s form. Watson was always environmentally aware, a practice I supposed he picked up from Orleans Parish Prison. “Stay loose,” Watson said. I jogged in place, and suddenly my mouth went dry. “Can I have some water?” “No.” “My mouth’s dry.” “I know.” He kept his arms crossed over his chest and gave me a look I’d seen him give whiny newcomers who complained of being tired after a couple rounds on the heavy bag. “Just a sip?” I asked. “Just a sip. Then you spit it out. I don’t want you to cramp up.” Guzzling too much water or chowing down between weigh-in and fight time sometimes caused a boxer to do just that. Sure, he could gain up to twenty extra pounds, twenty pounds of punching power, but it wasn’t worth it if he couldn’t function in the ring, if he got a stomach cramp and had to stop moving. I knew I wouldn’t cramp up; if anything, I’d faint from exhaustion. I’d either shit out or thrown up everything I’d eaten in the last forty-eight hours, dropping from 136 to 128 in two days. Darnel squirted some water into my mouth; I swished it around a bit, then spit it into the borrowed bucket. I was hopping and jogging in place, throwing combinations in the hallway when I heard a good beat; it was familiar. It wasn’t coming from the arena where rock anthems boomed between bouts; it was rap, the music sounding from someone’s portable CD player. It wasn’t New Orleans bounce or radio-friendly hip-hop, but it wasn’t twenty-year-old bugaloo either. It had a thumping bass line and slow, enunciated couplets that I eventually recognized as Too Short. “Good song,” I said to Watson. “Who this?” Darnel asked. “Too Short,” I said. “You know, Todd Shaw.” “Mmm huh,” Darnel nodded in agreement, and then said, “Girl, that some nasty things he’s sayin’.” He shook his head in more disbelief than disgust. “Me I like R & B, some hip- hop, nothing too agressive, you know. The way they talk about women, that ain’t right,” he went on. “You old, is all,” Watson said to Darnel. “Old? Who you calling old?” Watson had both of us beat in that department, and it made me wonder if Darnel was younger than I. The rap came from another fighter and his crew, and looking down the cement corridor, I could see the heavyweight who called himself the Black Rhino warming up. His hands were wrapped in gauze and he was shadowing to stay loose. His face was shiny, and crescents of sweat appeared under the arms of his gray t-shirt. His corner man and his trainer stood close by their fighter, much like Watson, with arms folded across chests.