The Perishing, page 8
I cough.
“Daniel was just two months into eighteen. Was caught with a boy a year younger. Statutory rape by an adult of a minor. Got twenty years. Child molestation.”
I know what child molestation means.
“The arresting officers were up in the mountains that night looking for bootleggers. Had planned to give it just an hour and be home to their wives by dinner. Decided to split up; one went east and one west.
“Officer Boyd was the one to first approach the boy’s car, gun drawn and alone, and he didn’t rap on the window. Instead, he shined his torchlight in quickly, then ducked. Nothing. Then again. That time, there was movement inside. And that second time, he stayed and watched. The boys were unaware.
“And Boyd had mistaken Daniel’s long hair and thin frame for a woman and signaled his partner with a flash of his torchlight to come see.
“Months later, his partner distanced himself from Boyd, as did every officer at his station. His partner would testify on the stand at trial that he was called over by the boyish glow of Officer Boyd. The incident would cost Daniel Ford Diaz his freedom and Boyd his career, his manhood, as he saw it. Got reassigned to the jails.
“It was Boyd who stood at the closed door of Daniel Ford Diaz’s cell with me. And through the slit of that door we both saw Daniel’s green eyes, his face still swollen from beatings, and Boyd had a choice. To turn the key with me or not.
“He let him burn.”
I look at the chessboard and pretend I’m thinking about something else now. My next move.
“April 21, 1930, was the worst prison fire in United States history. Three hundred and twenty-two prisoners died. Your move,” he says, and I reconsider the board. It’s just a blur.
“You won’t tell that story, will you? Good,” he says without my answer.
TEN
LOU, 1931
The city of Boyle Heights is not a church but has a congregation of believers who’ve responded to its altar call. It’s the most racially and religiously mixed neighborhood in Los Angeles, and what they believe in is the promise of the American Dream, an idea not limited to race, religion, tribe, or culture, we’re told. Esther’s father built his boxing gym here.
Below us on his canvas floor is heavy breathing and coordinated fists punching through the air; the sound bounces off walls like the patter of bird wings.
Bodies of the fighters are sweat-shiny and chiseled, the hairs on their head shaped into crew cuts. Some boxers are in t-shirts, some with the shirtsleeves ripped off. Guys are hitting the bag. Other guys are inside the ring. Coaches are hanging over the ropes.
They’re not training. Mr. Lee is the only trainer here. “Most trainers,” Esther said, “are veteran fighters who got out of ring just in time, so my dad still has all his faculties.”
Right now, he’s preparing Jones for a sparring session because sparring partners get trainers too. Three rounds.
It rained most of January and February, landslides and flooding, because even our land doesn’t know what to do when water falls from the sky. And nobody knows how to dress for it either. We’re mostly drenched runners, awkwardly moving from door to door—bus doors to school doors, car doors to house doors. But now it’s March and sunny and hot, and me and Esther got her umbrella, which I call her sun-brella because she didn’t put it up to get it wet. “It’s for the sun,” she said, and it’s summer temperatures, head-in-an-oven hot outside.
We’re the only girls allowed in the gym. We sit under the red L in the painted letters in MR. LEE’S BOXING GYM, doing homework, and this is how we finish our school days together.
The big fans in here are only blowing the sweat-wetness around—a stew of body runoff and leather that’ll stay on me till I get home. I’ll smell it again when I start the shower.
We don’t eat the same food anymore. She’s been eating grass. What I call grass. She’s vegetarian now.
Mr. Lee wants Esther to give up acting for college. But she’s talented and she’s got a chance. She’s won costarring roles in every school production since last year, one with her wearing whiteface and a blonde wig. Got a standing ovation, I heard, and her performance kept people laughing. If I would’ve been there, I’d have been the loudest because she’s my best friend, my sister, and nobody is better than she is. Especially on the stage.
Mr. Lee’s in the ring wearing his beanie and jacket even though it’s hot. He’s yelling instructions to Jones: good points, bad points. “You’re moving good,” he yells, “but don’t stay in the pocket too long. Move out of the pocket! You’re staying too close all the time. Use your jab and set him up! Everything comes off the jab. Your whole fight comes off your jab!”
Sometimes I practice their moves. After hours and late at night when they’ve all gone and the lights are low, I’ll make an opponent of the speed bags that hang from the ceiling. I’m not fast and my wrists are weak.
Once Mr. Lee found me that way, practicing. He didn’t see me before turning up the lights, and when he did, he didn’t say a word. He simply walked over, shifted my stance by knocking his foot into mine till my feet inched over, then he lifted my hands and went on.
I was better for it.
Esther untwists the cap from her thermos.
She’s been sipping from it since she disappeared to the bathroom before we started our homework. I thought it was melting ice, but the heat has brought out an aroma of sweet wine. When she comes back, I’m already laughing. “Are you drinking?” I say, and look over my shoulder to see if anybody heard.
“Sometimes,” she says, “your dad is gifted an expensive bottle of wine that he keeps in his office. It’s from a castle in Italy.”
She’s drunk.
“And you think to yourself,” she says, “your dad won’t drink this. Won’t know it’s gone. There are others. So this bottle must be for you, and now is the time to enjoy this bottle. But only one cup. But this is your fourth.”
“Will you stop talking in second person, like you is not you?”
“And because the wine is so perfect,” she continues, “and tastes so much like a real plum, a fruit fly comes out of nowhere and dives in. You cross your eyes to see him in your cup, and you can’t drink anymore.” She eyes the contents of her cup. “You watch him backstroke through your pool of golden sweet liquid, dossing around. You call him a drunk bastard …”
“Maybe he’s not the only one,” I say, laughing through the next bell.
Down on the floor I can tell who’s training for what. If it’s a real sparring session, I can see it from how they’re hitting the bag, how they’re moving around. I can tell the hangers-on too, people just coming to look like fighters, and I can tell the real old-time professionals too—journeymen. They’re so-so fighters used to bring a prospect up. A prospect is a fighter who’s done well, maybe as an Olympian, and is talented and could cross over and get the big money, but for now, the journeyman’s job is to make a prospect look good.
A prospect’s record is twenty wins, no losses. But a journeyman is thirty wins, twenty losses. He’ll have a lot of skill and experience, so you want a prospect coming up to face a journeyman. As time goes on, you put the prospect up against stronger competition. Journeymen will fight him good but not hurt him. Mr. Lee doesn’t want to hurt his prospect. He has a new one. He’s talking to him now—Wilkerson—about the big fight that’s coming. His journeyman steps into the ring and Mr. Lee says, “Let’s go, baby. Put him through the paces.”
The fighters use sixteen-ounce gloves for sparring. They’re bigger gloves than the ones in a match. Can punch hard with sixteen ounces and won’t anybody get hurt. Bruised but not hurt. Some trainers put resin in the gloves because heavier gloves make the hands quicker. Not Mr. Lee.
In a real match, the gloves are twelve ounces. Matches go fifteen rounds. And when it’s over, fighters usually have major cuts under their eyes, bruised lips, closed eyes, cuts around the front of their face where the skin spread and tore. Men fight through concussion. Concussion in the ring means you can see the fighter is off just a little in his step. He doesn’t want to be off.
Some fighters had cartilage surgically removed from their nose before the fight, so they can get hit in the face without getting their noses broken. A trainer will throw in the towel and stop the fight if his fighter is bleeding too badly. Might be from a twelve-ounce-covered fist or the constant butting of heads.
In sparring, a trainer doesn’t want a real injury. Certainly not a knockout. And in practice, the trainer is the one who dictates the day, what the fighter is going to do. But the fighters already have an idea of what’s coming. What he’s willing to give of himself that day. One has a mantra: “Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.”
A trainer with the best fighter can keep him fighting. So fighters have to stay in shape. Might get only a day’s notice of a fight. And sometimes, Mr. Lee will send his fighters to one of the major fighting camps in the outskirts of the city—Ventura, Oxnard, San Bernardino. Vigorous training. Run, breakfast, nap, bag work, sparring, training, dinner. A spartan life, Mr. Lee calls it, because sometimes you have to leave the city to see what you’re made of.
Women and wives aren’t allowed here. Neither is alcohol or cigarettes. It’s potatoes and eggs to keep the weight on, and steak for protein, to stay strong. And no matter their condition, the fighters have to have heart. And if I could choose the kind of heart they’d have, I’d choose one like Henry Armstrong. He’s a fighter who’s been beaten from St. Louis to L.A. but keeps coming back. Didn’t make the Olympic team but went pro anyway, defying naysayers who taunted him about his losing streak. But Armstrong knew the only way he’d truly lose was to believe them, to allow them to keep him caged and incapable of breaking out of who he needed to be for them—a loser. But he wasn’t a loser. And now on the occasions he wins, people will respond not with applause but “I remember the time so-and-so kicked his ass.”
Fighters are a commodity. Boxing is big money. And the American Legion or the Olympic Auditorium is where the big fights happen here. Celebrities from the studios, like Clark Gable, invest in fighters and make money. The mob, their prostitutes, and those “connected” are into the fights too. Sometimes those connected come to the gym to watch the sparring before they bet on the matches.
Wilkerson is out of the ring now and Mr. Lee’s assistant, Aaron, has hold of his hands, taking his gloves off for him, wiping him down. Aaron is new, a white boy who gets in the ring and goes through the paces with fighters and comes out without a single mark on him. They go too easy on him, so now he’s too confident and thinks he can train fighters here. He’s listening to Mr. Lee now, taking it all in while Mr. Lee greases his next fighter’s face, puts on his gloves, and gives him instructions about what to do in the ring. The day might come when Aaron’ll become a main trainer. That’s what assistants hope for: that at the right time, he’ll have his own stable of fighters. But for now he’s a gopher who never interrupts, who wraps hands, makes sure there’s water.
Aaron’s on the canvas warming up a journeyman. He’s slow and uncoordinated, just walked into somebody’s perfect punch, and me and Esther cringe, draw up our shoulders, and cover our mouths. It nearly floors him. On his knees, Aaron reminds me of someone I know. Maybe one of my brothers. A trick of lights.
Mr. Lee is shouting at Aaron now. He’s staying out the ring, but after the fighters spar, his job is to massage them promptly, their arms, their hands, and his job is to know which of the fighters hit the heavy bag first and which now need to go to the speed bag or jump rope. No matter the order of the wind-down, they all end up with his rub-down after the bell dings three times. The bell is the timer. At the end of the timer, both fighters go back to their respective corners, and today it’s clear that both fighters gave it their all. All heart and determination and smarts. And above all, a strong jab.
“Your jab comes off of your lead hand,” Mr. Lee said, and showed me and Esther four times before Esther started drinking today. I imagine it reminded her of her sister. The way he’d trained her. But Esther said she’s always been slower to learn than her sister.
“The lead hand is the hand out front,” Mr. Lee said. “The one closest to your opponent. The one he can see. But your power hand is the one in the back position. When you use it, when you generate your power, use your hips.” To show us how to move our hips, he put both his hands on mine and then Esther’s. The whole gym seemed to stop and look. I was embarrassed. Esther was beet red. “When you get in close,” he said, putting his body near Esther, “generate your power! Use your right hand,” and he shifted his own hips to show us. He swiveled left, then right, then put his hands on our hips again. “See, swivel, left. Right!” We both did. “Power,” he said.
ELEVEN
SARAH, 2102
Power is neither good nor bad. It’s how you use it. Power can be misused, especially by leaders who want compliance, not commitment. Commitment requires shared dreams, connections, mutual respect, earned relationships, valued input, and allowing unique participation. Compliance is “do what I say do”—a dictator.
I’ve seen power throughout my lives. When I see it now, a chill rises up my back from my hips and then rests on my shoulders like a shrug made of ice. I have a reaction. I’m not the only one.
Our old lives reveal themselves through quirks. I’ve still got some of Lou’s. They can come like noticeable ticks and anxieties, sicknesses and fears. My ailments almost always have to do with my wrists, passed down like genetic memory. Except it is my memory.
Once I was institutionalized—insane—wrists chained to my bed till they bled. Once as a prisoner. Once, a slave. This time as an inmate being transported to maximum security.
Once, my wrists were impacted by cancer; the shooting pains began at my elbow.
Once, a lover braided a bracelet of blue beads for me. I wore it even after I married someone else.
I’d tell you my wrists are weak and my injuries are engraved inside of me, but my doctor has said I have carpal tunnel syndrome. He says it’s from holding my hand at the wrong angle for too long, sometimes falling asleep that way. “Stop doing that,” he said, but he doesn’t know better. He doesn’t know how our bodies, our blood, and our veiled memories keep the score. My healing, now, is a matter of reminding my soul to put old postures and symptoms in the past where they belong.
LOU, 1931
“Everything you can do illegally in the United States, you can do legally,” Mr. Lawrence said as he drove me to the bank. When he’s done, he’ll drop me off at school, then drive a block to the middle school where he teaches.
He keeps his money at Freedman Savings Bank. “A bank,” he said, “that once helped freed slaves transition into capitalism, from being capital to becoming capitalists. But American capitalism will always require slaves of some kind. Don’t chose to be one,” he said. The bank lends to coloreds now with two years’ proof of employment and a house to lien. Mr. Lawrence has both, but he said he grew up poorer than poor in Texas. “My life choices were simple. Make money legally or not legal,” he said. “Want to sell drugs? Become a pharmacist. You want to rob a place? Work for a lender.”
“So you could rob people?” I said.
“Naw,” he said. “So the government and corporations can rob me less. And I’ll teach you about money so you won’t be afraid of it. So you’ll learn to give your money permission to take care of you. But also, you need to learn to think critically.”
“Read?” I said.
He looked at me, proud, then repeated, “Yes, read,” and I pretended to be proud, too, a good girl. Told him I was excited to go to Bible study tonight, and Goldie, the preacher’s daughter, was going to pick me up.
Instead, she snuck me and Esther into the Dunbar’s live show an hour ago.
Jazz notes scatter across the floor and through the dark here, some float, and me and Esther are pretending this is our usual. Our under-aged eyes are traced in dark liner, mirroring what we thought other women did in here, but most only wear lipstick that makes ’em look like they’re wearing a plump vagina on their faces.
We walk awkwardly, heels and all, like newborn calves, the same way I move when I’m around Metal Wally. My lower back and legs will feel weak when he’s near, and Esther will tell me I’m rude, tell me to stop teasing or else one day I’ll have children exactly like him. But I’m not teasing and I’m not having children. I don’t want to be a mother.
That Esther isn’t Black isn’t a problem for Goldie. Or for anybody here, because Goldie’s the kind of woman who wakes up in the morning waiting to be offended.
She wants somebody to say something off-putting so she can let ’em have it. And if Goldie didn’t like you, you could be on the verge of a small disaster. That’s what happened to a bar patron who called Esther a bad name. Nobody saw what Goldie did or how she did it—we only heard the thud and turned around to see the man out cold next to the bar stool. And there was Goldie, our chaperone, her large body swaying above his, gloating. “Give me a minute,” she said, smiling. “You gotta lick your teeth when you finish eating.”
Goldie protects us. She’s a decade older than we are—twenty-seven—and since Mr. Lawrence and Mrs. Miriam have misplaced their trust in her as the pastor’s daughter, they’ve given her charge over me, to lead me in the ways of the Lord, and apparently the Lord knows how to party. “My daddy grew up on a potato farm, made potato vodka for the whole family and neighbors and their babies, preaches his Sunday sermons after a fifth. Shit, in my family, you’ve got to be an egg in a really big pickling jar to have a problem with alcohol.”
But alcohol is illegal.
She still always manages to have it, same as the Dunbar. The mob pays good money for police to look the other way, even for Negroes.
