In the rush of the mix, I didn’t know what that meant. Did it mean ‘go straight’ like ‘become a decent human being for once in your life? Do your homework, clean your room, stop running around making trouble?’ Because I’d heard that before.
I was still bashing Jorgensen’s legs enthusiastically with my shins when she kicked me in the face.
The teep, or front kick, is a move you do to keep the other fighter off you. It’s a push-kick. But in Muay Thai, when you teep somebody in the face, that’s an insult, because showing someone the bottom of your foot is symbolically saying ‘I’m stepping on you, dude.’
I got the message. Jorgensen was telling me I was a joke. I’d heard that before, too.
The gum shield had saved my teeth, and I was so high on my own body chemistry that I wasn’t feeling any pain. I charged in with my guard up, punching hard, and again she clinched me.
The first round bell rang.
Then came the moment of truth.
As the ref broke us apart, Jorgensen turned her back on me, but I still had her in my kill sights.
The urge came over me, so strong.
I wanted to push past the ref, jump on Jorgensen’s back, and choke her out. Pay her back for the insult. I wanted to do it so bad.
How could she be so trusting? On the street you’d never turn your back on an enemy.
‘Jade!’ Pook was screaming at me like she could read my mind. ‘Jade, get in corner! Now!’
I passed the test. Stomped over to my corner and flopped down on the stool.
‘Listen, Jade.’ Coat was talking to me now. ‘Forget kicks. She can take every kick you throw, easy. You go straight. Straight in, keep hitting. Overpower her with punches. If she kicks, you catch it. We worked this—remember?’
Yeah, I remembered. You cover up the head against the high round kick, and this leaves an opening at your ribs. So when she kicks you in the ribs—and she will—you catch it and drive her back. It was simple in training.
But this was the fight, and Jorgensen was built like a rhinoceros. How do you drive
that
back?
‘OK,’ I gasped.
Pook said, ‘The chance will come. You will see it. Remember how we trained.’
I wanted to laugh, but I was still getting my breath back. They squirted water on my face. They slapped my shoulders.
The bell rang and we were back in.
The clean hot rush of anger had done something good for my brain. Now I could think. Coat was right. I’d been stupid to try to beat Jorgensen at her own game. She was too tall, too skilled. But I always could hit hard. My dad had trained me to box since I was five. ‘You don’t got to be tall to knock somebody out,’ he used to say to me, and we’d watch old Rocky Marciano fights and try out his style.
Like Marciano, I went in slugging. Coat was right; why worry about the clinch? Jorgensen couldn’t take me down, all she could do was stop me momentarily. I’d just charge in again.
After this happened once, she tried to keep me away with her round kick. I covered up my head and she couldn’t get through, so she went for my ribs and I caught the kick.
So many moves you work in training come to nothing in the ring. But this was sweet. With her leg under my left arm I ran her back, punching her face with my right. Spilled her on the mat and was about to instinctively jump on her when the ref pushed me back.
With a supreme effort, I restrained myself from attacking the ref.
Supreme effort.
I champed on my gum shield and waited for her to get up. My flanks were heaving and the sweat was pouring off me. I was slippery, harder to clinch now.
Up she came again with those ice-blue eyes and I went for that sore lead leg of hers, catching her right on the bruise with a nasty round kick, and for a moment she dropped her guard just an inch or so as she flinched.
And there it was, gleaming like a diamond: the opening. I tasted it. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but for me the moment hung frozen, glinting with possibility. Jorgensen’s head was exposed and lined up for my right hand. She had probably judged herself out of range. But she wasn’t—not for the kind of wild overhand Marciano-style shot that my dad had taught me when I was little. I stepped in deep with my left leg and swung that right overhand from the outside, and maybe it was all those childhood lessons, but now it was like Marciano was in my body for just that split second.
My hand came over the top of Jorgensen’s guard and I felt my fist accelerate through her jawbone and there was a jolt as I hit the resistance point and kept going. Then my hand was flying free through space and sweat was hanging in the air like a bead curtain, flung from Jorgensen’s skin. Her head whipped to the right, and her body paradoxically started staggering left because her middle ear was confused. She was only half-conscious as she reeled and went down.
See that? There goes your champion. Down, baby.
The ref pushed me away and knelt at Jorgensen’s head. It was over, and the entire stadium knew it. The crowd was on its feet. Ladies may be officially unwanted in this sport. We may have to fight last on the card so we don’t make the ring unlucky, but people bet on us and cheer for us and the musicians play their hearts out for us, just the same.
I raised my arms in the air and howled along with the crowd.
We went to a nightclub afterward. Someone gave me a drink. It was the first time I’d had alcohol in months and after a few sips the room was bending and stretching.
Pook stayed close to me. I think she had the idea that I needed protecting, which is pretty funny.
‘I’m not supposed to be happy, but I am happy,’ she said.
I laughed. ‘Why not happy?’
‘My husband died recently.’
I stared at her, shocked. She didn’t meet my eye.
‘I much sorry,’ I blurted. I mean, what? Dude must have keeled over in the run-up to the fight. Why hadn’t she said something? I didn’t know how to respond. My Thai was so terrible that half of what came out of my mouth was probably offensive and the other half just stupid. I knew Pook had left her husband but I didn’t know how she would feel about him
dying
.
‘Don’t be sad for me,’ she said. ‘It could be an opportunity. Remember I asked Coat to visit the farm near Chiang Mai? It belongs to my husband’s family. He hated it there, he took jobs overseas to get away. He left Cake this farm in his will.’
Why was she telling me this. ‘You go back there? Or sell?’
‘I don’t know. If Cake were here he could start a boxing camp up there.’
‘But Cake do engineering degree in America.’
She nodded. ‘Probably we will sell. We don’t have enough money for a camp. You should see it. So beautiful, on the edge of the bamboo forest. A peaceful place. Not like Bangkok.’
She waved her glass around the loud, smelly room.
‘You miss Cake, yes?’
‘Every mother misses her child, Jade.’
That made me feel guilty. What time was it in the Dominican Republic? Should I call?
Just then, Coat pushed his way through the crowd and handed me his phone.
‘For you.’
He was frowning. Had Mom bawled him out? I knew she was worried about me, but—
‘Hello?’
Mr. B said, ‘I need you on a plane back.’
‘Mr. B... hi. Um...What? Why? What happened?’
‘Tommy Zhang is offering you place on fight card for
Klaxxon
.’
‘What?!’
‘You know. His new MMA show. In Vegas.’
‘I know what
Klaxxon
is! Are you sure he wants
me
?’
‘Oh yeah, he wants you. He’s not mad anymore. He likes your skills. He wants to get a piece of your career.’
‘I must be drunk. Are we talking about the same guy?’
‘Jade, don’t ask no questions. I tell him, Tommy, I say—’
‘Tommy? You’re on a first name basis? I thought everybody had to call him Mr. Zhang.’
‘I said, Tommy, my friend, Jade is not interested in fame or money.’
‘I’m not?’
‘Jade is interested in the fight, I tell him. I say, Jade can be a great fighter if somebody gives her a chance. She’s got a big heart, I say. She wants it. He tells me he knows you can’t fight pro yet because of your age, but he’s having a special exhibition match at end of men’s event. He can get around the age rule that way. You’ll be on pay-per-view, second to last event before the final round. He’s getting Gretchen.’
I couldn’t breathe. I was going to fight K-1 star Gretchen Van Der Hoef? On TV? MMA rules?
‘Jade? You still there?’
I tried to talk but only a squeak came out.
‘W-wait. What’s the catch?’
‘Catch? No catch.’
‘But... Mr. B, why’d he change his mind? Did you pay him?’
‘Jade! Bite your tongue. I never pay nobody. I simply go to him with news of your win and what Eva showed me.’
‘Eva? What does she have to do with this?’ Even as the words came out of my mouth, I remembered Eva and her phone behind Mattress World.
‘Eva got video of you and Tommy. I tell Tommy it can be our secret. Eva is gonna be Ring Girl of the Month for
The Cage
this October. Two birds, one stone, right?’
‘Mr. B, you dark horse.’
‘I don’t drive no Hummer for nothing.’
Hungry Ghosts
M
YA SHOT ACROSS
the messy office like a wild animal, half-expecting Kala Sriha to pursue her, hunting her down. She found herself in a hallway. To the right was an emergency exit, to the left a door leading back toward the gym, where music thumped. Opposite her were two doors with male and female symbols. As she stood hesitating, the door with the man’s symbol started to open.
Mya hit the metal bar on the emergency exit and plunged outside, onto a colorless, glaring expanse of asphalt that smelled of diesel and garbage. A blue dumpster loomed to her left, and she ran around behind it. There were concrete buildings and engine noises all around, and the only growing things she could see were a line of weeds sprouting from cracks in the pavement. Planes moved in the bald gray sky. She cringed from the sense of exposure. She flattened herself to the ground like a frightened animal.
There was no green thing anywhere to be seen; no way back to the forest. Only the sickly ficus plant in the office back there; but what if Kala Sriha waited for her? Nothing could make her go back there, not now.
She cut across parking lots and side roads surrounded by gray sidewalk and rectangles of dead bright color. She had to find something that was growing. Cars passed like great, reeking animals. At last she came upon a row of scraggly bushes by the side of a building—not trees, but the closest thing to trees she had seen in this world of pavement and steel. She settled on the dirt and touched their branches. Her heart was racing.
She smelled frying meat. On the other side of the little hedge stood a row of trash bins. Just beyond them a building with a sign she recognized loomed in brilliant yellow. She’d seen the ads on TV: smiling uniformed girls
wai
’ing as they passed out food in paper bags through a window to the sound of pop music. In reality the place was dull, and there was a heavy man in the service window who did not smile, and the cars that drove up to the building were huge and gleaming and their drivers didn’t smile, either.
She remembered what Luck had said about food, and quickly broke into the topmost black bag. Nothing smelled rancid, and there was plenty of brown paper for wrapping scraps of food. She darted into the bushes with her takings and reached with all her senses into leaf, branch, and root, praying that the forest would still be there for her.
D
AYLIGHT HAD COME
to the forest, lush and redolent of happier days in childhood. A warm breeze beat Mya’s face, and swarms of insects speckled the air. Instead of fir trees, bamboo was everywhere. Filtered sunlight made everything glow green.
Kala Sriha was nowhere in evidence.
Mya opened the paper and began to eat the scraps of meat and other unidentified food with her fingers. She wished for rice, but there had been none. She ate carefully. In the prison camp Mya’s mother had taught her children to eat and drink slowly when food was finally presented. She had taught them how to stay quiet and save their energy in the long gaps between meals. She had stroked their hair.
Mya wrapped some of the food for later and set off to find water. Bamboo gave way to mangroves, and there were flowers she’d never seen before. Then, as she parted the huge, spatulate leaves of a plant as tall as herself, Mya came face to face with a great red bird. She gasped and drew back; the creature also recoiled and spread its enormous wings, startling a couple of monkeys and sending them screaming away into the canopy. For a moment Mya was unsure whether the bird would attack or flee. It did neither.
Slowly it lowered its wings and turned side-on so that one emerald-green eye regarded Mya. It opened and closed its beak, and in a flash Mya understood quite clearly that it was hungry.
She opened the paper wrappings enough to remove a scrap of bread, soggy with sweet red sauce. She extended her trembling hand, and the bird bent down and snatched the bread. Then ran.
‘It’s OK,’ Mya said. ‘I won’t hurt you. If you’re hungry, we can share.’
She didn’t know how she was going to get enough food for herself, let alone another creature. The thought of returning to the gray world of Combat Sports Emporium did not appeal to her; but if they had so much food there that they could just throw it away, it would be safer for her than stealing from Mr. Richard’s kitchen.
The bird had not gone far. When Mya made her way to a small stream for a drink, it followed her. Its gait was strange and swaying, and every so often in a flash so brief it seemed imaginary, Mya glimpsed the lower half of a slim girl in a blue sari. Just a flash, and then the red bird was clearly visible.
When Mya bent to drink, the bird drank. Mya offered a little more and this time the creature was less skittish. Finally, when Mya lay down to rest, the bird lay down beside her. Its wing smelled like the most lovely perfume.
Just as Mya was falling asleep, out of the bird rose the ghost of a young woman. In clear Burmese the ghost said, ‘Thank you. That is the first mortal food I’ve had in years. You make me almost feel myself again.’