“Lord, I thought I was gon’ have to go in there and get y’all,” Faye says, looking down at her phone while Slim gets in.
“Sorry. I…I had to use the bathroom,” she mumbles back, eyeing the plastic bag I drop in her lap with the Honey Buns inside.
“She ain’t give you any trouble, did she?” Faye asks, looking at me over her glasses.
“Nah.”
Me and Slim glance at each other.
“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 doingexactlywhat 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 nomeal 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’mtryingto trust you.”
“Right.”
