Chapter 10 #3
“She was perfect.” I sit the three dollars on top of the bag in her lap. “Y’all be safe out there.”
I think I hate Kenny.
It ain’t that loud, foolish type of hate you have for some folks sometimes, though.
It’s that low, slow simmering type that hit me as soon as he rolled the gym’s doors up and waved me inside.
One minute, I was watching him take a slurp of his coffee and the next I was thinking about pounding my fist into his fat ass face.
I can’t even remember if I said anything back when he told me, “Good morning,” but I remember thinking, “How could he have a baby as sweet as Slim and never teach her how fucked up men were?” Shit, how could him and Faye let her run off with some kid who couldn’t even keep his fuckin hands to himself?
“That’s good, Rich,” he murmurs from above me, gripping the barbell and setting it back onto the rack.
His stomach pokes out over my head. Its brown, hairy flesh hangs from the bottom of his old, torn Worthing Boxing T-shirt. As soon as I lift up, he pats me on the back like I need praise for doing a basic bench press.
He looks away from me and whistles at one of the neighborhood boys on the other side of the gym. “Off the bag and on the block, Chase! You owe me three miles.”
“Aw, c’mon, Mr. Kenny,” Chase groans, swiping his forearm against the raised scar above his eyebrow. “You said I gotta practice my jab if I wanna be as good as Pup.”
“A jab ain’t gon’ matter if you don’t have no stamina in the ring. Go on out back like I said.”
Chase smacks his lips and yanks his gloves off, stomping toward the open back door.
“You can go ahead and make it four miles if that’s how you feeling this morning!” Kenny yells out behind him.
Worthing is like a boxer’s paradise with its concrete floors, twenty-year-old equipment, and broken air conditioner.
Faye promised I’d love it here, but it’s kind of like a chore coming up here every Saturday to “train” with Kenny.
Everybody in the Bottoms knows Worthing is where street fighters go to die. I’ll never tell her that, though.
She was convinced that this is what I needed all along, and Senior ain’t play about Faye and her beliefs no matter how much he disagreed with them. The motto in our house was to always keep Fayanna smiling—and doing exactly what she asked you to do usually made her smile the biggest.
Music blasts from the dusty speakers mounted on the wall between a stained Ali and Frazier poster.
It’s some tired ass song one of the boys put on while they sparred.
When they aren’t sparring, they’re arguing about who can kick whose ass and showing me their “opps” Instagram pages, even though I don’t know what an “opp” is or understand the point of Instagram.
I’m not allowed to train with the adults and Kenny brushed me off when I asked about it.
“It’s good for the youngins to see a cat like you in the same space as them,” he said without looking me in my eyes.
He thrusts his hand out to me. I take it, and he strains to pull me to my feet. As soon as I stand up, he gives me a fake, close-lipped smile.
I never had a real trainer, so I don’t know if they’re supposed to be as irksome as Kenny is.
The only “trainers” I ever had were Smitty and Senior, and they weren’t shit like him.
There were no meal plans, camps, or cutting weight.
It was always “eat or get ate,” “walk ‘em down,” or my favorite— “make the nigga pay up.” Kenny never said anything when he watched me shadowbox in the ring.
He raises his eyebrows. “How’s the bag work going?”
“It’s straight.” I avoid his stare.
“What about your jaw—”
“It’s handled.”
He sighs, bringing his shirt up to wipe a bead of sweat from his face. “Look, Rich. My wife says I can trust you…and I really believe I can trust you.”
“Okay…”
“At least I’m trying to trust you.”
“Right.”
“But you can’t have one hand in this pot and one hand in that other pot. It just don’t work like that.” He tosses his hands back and forth between two imaginary pots.
“What you mean?”
“You got a black eye and a busted lip and we ain’t even scheduled your first amateur fight yet. Before that, it was a broken jaw. You been coming up here every week looking like this and I can’t ignore it anymore.”
I stare back at him until he sighs.
“I thought we talked about this when Faye brought you to the house?”
We didn’t.
Faye had danced around the subject while I sat at their kitchen table looking around their house at all the memories she made with him.
“This is Rich Lovelace’s son—Pup,” she said, squeezing my shoulders. “I ran into him at the bank and he said he wants to fight…professionally. I told him to stop by so you can take a look at him.”
Afterward, Kenny had dragged his eyes over my body, then asked how I paid my bills. As soon as I sat forward to tell him, Faye pulled me back by my shoulder.
“I told you he was Rich’s boy,” she replied, patting my chest.
“Remember last month when I told you about my buddy, Chico? He says he waited for you all day last Thursday,” Kenny says.
“And remember when I told you I ain’t need a job at no gym?”
“I don’t understand what’s so bad about having a real job.
The pay is decent. The people are friendly.
You can even use their nice equipment for free.
It’s easy work while you train.” His light face turns red.
“How you expect me to train you for a legitimate boxing career if you fighting at that place every Sunday? You gon’ ruin your career before it even starts. ”
“I don’t know what you talking about, Kenny.”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, son. I told you what y’all do down there ain’t right. You need safety and a…a sanctioning body. Hell, at the very least you need rules.”
One time when I talked to Faye on Beatrice’s back porch, she admitted that the one thing she enjoyed most about being with Kenny was that he lived somewhere up in the clouds.
His feet were never fully planted on Earth.
She said it helped to come home to somebody like that after dealing with the big, bad world all day.
It’s probably the reason he’s always “mentoring” the stupid niggas around here trying to outrun what’s in their blood.
I snort out a low laugh, eyeing Chase running past the back door with his arms flailing at his sides.
“Faye said the deal was that I’d meet you here every Saturday morning for training, and you’d put me in somebody’s ring eventually because I had everything you was looking for in a heavyweight.
I ain’t missed a Saturday yet and I ain’t brought no trouble to your doorstep.
I don’t need a mentor or big brother. Faye said I need a boxing coach.
Is you gon’ give me what that mission statement says outside your gym or lecture me? ”
The other boys’ eyes burn holes into the side of my face because I’ve never had this much to say to Kenny. He was always the one following behind me and running his mouth while I watched the digital clock tacked onto the wall above the Ali poster.
He chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck and looking everywhere except my face. “Rich, being somebody’s coach comes with a level of trust and respect.”
“Yeah, I respect you enough to show up here at six every Saturday morning and I trust you enough to teach me those skills you always going on about.”
“That ain’t…that ain’t how this works, son.”
“I ain’t your son.”
“Look, I think we’re going down the wrong path right now. I don’t wanna argue.”
“Good, ‘cause I don’t waste time arguing.”
He holds his hands up like he’s surrendering to the irrational hate I suddenly have for him. It’s the same thing he does with the boys when they throw their teenage temper tantrums, and now I feel like somebody poured a bucket of ice water over my head.
“How ‘bout we just cut today short,” he grumbles. “I gotta go meet Faye, anyway.”
Ever since I’ve been coming here, he’s never rushed home to Faye. Sometimes I even catch him down at Lucky’s holding a personal bottle of whiskey and feeding money into one of the eight-liners in the back of the store after we all leave here.
“She wanna meet for lunch and I can’t miss it. You know how women get when you miss the important things.” He waits for me to agree, but I just stare back because that temptation hugs my fingers again.
Because what about Slim?
He ain’t say shit about her.
Shit, he should be just as obsessed with pleasing her too. She came with Faye. They were a package deal.
Her name sits at the tip of my tongue and all the questions I couldn’t ask her in front of Donovan when we were at Lucky’s the other day come barreling up my throat.
I hold them in even though I need to know if she found that ballplayer yet or if she finally felt brave enough to tell Kenny and Faye what he did to her. It doesn’t feel like she’s done either.
“How ‘bout it?” Kenny asks. “We’ll meet back here next Saturday and try again. How about you hang out here for a while and keep an eye on the boys? Just lock the place up when you’re ready to leave.”
His eyes flutter down to my clenched fist that hangs at my side. “Maybe next month we’ll talk about getting you in some gloves.”