Bonnie nodded. Love and pain, those were the only disciplinarians she knew in the ring and in life. But love had died when Nicky did, then again when her sisters turned on each other, and again when Pavel looked at her as though she were a stranger. Which left her with pain. That, she could deliver from the heart.
Round five. Bonnie stayed on her toes the whole time, bouncing a tad wastefully, but her legs were strong and sure. She danced in and out of range, pricking Danya with jabs as straight and accurate as a sewing machine’s needle. She was back. She leaned forward, hands down, goading Danya to lunge at her. Quick as a kite turning directions in the wind, she pivoted backward and slammed him with a left hook. After landing a clean blow, she backed off, moving to the side to reset. It was a tactic she had learned early from Pavel that served the dual purpose of infuriating the other corner and giving her the chance to breathe between attacks. But it was hard with an opponent as quick as Danya. The next time she tried, he caught her with a skull-rattling uppercut. It happened so fast, an ill-timed blink would have missed it. Bonnie shook her head, as if shaking away a bad dream, but she didn’t drop her hands.
Back in her corner after the bell, she glanced over to see Pavel leaning with his face close to Danya’s, intoning seriously. How do you like your boy now? she wanted to yell. But it would be false bravado. She had always secretly feared that Pavel would prefer a male champ anyway. More money, more opportunity. Pavel had never made her feel like anything other than a prize, but now, seeing him with Danya, she felt like the unwanted first daughter of a king.
Round six. She was tired. She was thirsty. She was starting to see black spots in front of her eyes. “Man up,” she muttered to herself. “Man up, Bonnie.” Danya, meanwhile, was getting his second wind. For the first minute, he launched himself at her with vicious speed, never letting her get her bearings. She managed to pivot out of the corner just in time.
“Ground your feet!”
It was the first time Pavel had spoken in the whole six rounds. Bonnie looked over instinctively to see who he was addressing. Pavel had been telling Bonnie to ground her feet for fifteen years. Danya hit her with a jab to the temple the moment she turned her head. It’s the punches fighters don’t see coming that really rock them, and Bonnie did not see this one. Because her eyes were on Pavel. For a long moment they looked at each other and it was as if they were both suspended high above the ring, each watching the other through a multitude of fluttering, tugging currents in the air. They resisted their pull for another second. Then another. His eyes did not leave hers. At last, she fell. She landed on her knees, a momentary prayer, then pinged back up. She managed not to get rocked again for the rest of the round, even landing a couple of nice clean jabs, but the light had gone out in her.
“You did great, Bonnie.”
Felix took a towel and rubbed her neck and shoulders down roughly. He picked up her wrist and began unlacing her gloves.
“He got me off my feet. No one’s ever done that.”
“Lucky shot. You gotta keep your eyes open.”
She shook her head as her hands were freed. Her wraps were drenched in sweat. She looked for Pavel, but she couldn’t see him.
“That wasn’t luck,” she said.
Felix kneeled in front of her and shook out her arms, peering closer at her eye.
“Let’s get some ice on that.” He grinned. “You’ve got a party to go to tonight, muchacha!”
—
If you can’t dance, you can’t box.
Pavel had repeated this ad infinitum to every boxer he ever trained. You need rhythm. You need timing. You need footwork. You need to be able to move your hips. Bonnie had found, over the years, that this came naturally to a lot of boxers, but she had struggled. She was stiff. Her hips were more like ice than water. And she was still a teenager when she started to train, embarrassed by her own body.
She particularly hated shadowboxing, dreaded the eyes of the others on her as she flailed around the ring fighting her imaginary opponent, feeling foolish. But Pavel found a way to help her. After everyone had left for the day, he would turn off all the lights in the gym. Outside, the streetlights cast their amber glow through the window, silhouetting the two of them. He would put on music with rhythm—salsa, Afrobeat, disco—and turn it all the way up on the speakers. Then, they would move.
This was how Bonnie learned to shadowbox: alone in a ring with Pavel, mirroring his movements, no eyes on her but his. Slowly, as if moving through oil, they flowed through combinations. Bonnie would start off rigid, shy as a middle schooler at her first dance, but gradually the music would melt her. Then he would let her go, stepping aside so she could follow her own trancelike rhythm as he followed his. In the gloam, they flitted around the ring like large moths. For the first time in her life, she could feel each part of her body moving as one; her uppercut sprang forward without effort when she bent her knees, her straight right extended farther when she turned her wrist down, her hook hit the mark when she shot from the hip instead of the shoulder. They circled and pivoted around each other, their arms twisting like ribbons of ink in water, and she learned to dance like a boxer.
In honor of this essential tenet of his training regime, Pavel had introduced a yearly tradition where the entire gym would go dancing together for one night every summer. The venue was always the same, a club uptown owned by Pavel’s friend, a former cruiserweight who, upon retiring, pulled a LaMotta and opened his own place, this time without the underage girls. Every year, the mostly male fighters at Golden Ring descended on this small club in Harlem with their friends, families, wives, and girlfriends for a night of music and peacocking on the dance floor. It was a beloved tradition, particularly Pavel’s solo performance every year, which he performed with great gusto to a traditional Russian folk song.
And yet, this year, Bonnie was dreading it.
She returned to the apartment, hoping one of her sisters would be there so they could just make up already, but both Lucky and Avery were out. She tried Lucky, mostly to surreptitiously check she wasn’t at a bar, but she didn’t answer, then thought about calling Avery but decided she was still too mad. Instead, she went to her room and flipped open her small suitcase, staring at its unremarkable contents. She only owned one pair of jeans, and the remainder was workout gear. She pulled the jeans on, wincing as she zipped the fly over the tender parts of her stomach that had been hit by Danya. She would feel even worse tomorrow, she knew, when the delayed onset muscle soreness really kicked in, achy as with any bad bout of flu. But that was tomorrow’s problem; tonight’s was what to wear. What else did she have? She picked up a T-shirt, sniffed its pits, and dropped it back in the pile. Not a lot, it turned out. In the corner of the room were the bags of Nicky’s clothes for donation. Bonnie opened one and rifled through it, pulling out a simple black collared shirt made of silk. She slipped it on, fumbling with the buttons, and looked in the mirror. She looked like her sister.
Nicky was not like the rest of them; she loved makeup and scented candles and bubble baths and beauty treatments. Nothing made her happier than when she got to share these enchantments with her often skeptical sisters. She was the one who took Bonnie for her first pedicure, an experience Bonnie had not repeated since. But she had gladly endured the discomfort of having her feet touched by strangers for the pleasure of being there with Nicky. Bonnie loved witnessing the friendly way she talked with the nail technicians, all of whom knew her by name, the confidence with which she selected her color and advised Bonnie on hers. I’m classic Ballet Slippers but you’re definitely something more fun, like Electric Slide. Bonnie had left the salon with her toes painted a bright cobalt; she didn’t own nail polish remover, so flecks of blue had remained on her big toes for months afterward, a reminder of her younger sister every time she stripped off her socks.
Next, she needed to do something about her eye, which was beginning to turn a deep crimson purple. She sifted through the discard pile until she found Nicky’s makeup bag, stuffed with more lipsticks and eye shadow palettes than any single person could reasonably wear. She found a concealer and dabbed the wand gently under her eye. She had the same coloring as her sister, she noted sadly. She poked the wand too close to the bruise and inhaled sharply. Yes, it hurt. It all hurt. But the physical pain was a relief from its invisible counterpart. That pain had become even more pronounced with her other sisters home, their presence outlining the sheer vastness of Nicky’s absence. Now, the two sensations had started to mingle, the ache of Nicky’s death and the ache in her body, and she found herself sitting before the mirror doubling over with longing.
It was Nicky who helped her hide her first black eye.
I don’t know why you’re looking so pleased with yourself.
She was kneeling in front of Bonnie, dabbing makeup over the fresh bruise so their parents wouldn’t see it. Bonnie was back from a tournament and proud of the shiner, a souvenir from her most recent win, but not proud enough to risk their mother clocking it and banning her from competing. Nicky tutted.
What is it the ref says? Protect yourself at all costs?
It’s not ballroom dancing, said Bonnie. I’m going to get hit.
I don’t like it, Bon. Nicky frowned and twisted the lid back onto the concealer, putting it carefully back inside her beauty box. It was mostly cheap drugstore stuff, but Nicky, proud of her collection, kept it as organized as a military bunk.
Pavel’s not going to let anything happen to me, said Bonnie.
You can’t know that. I read that it’s the most dangerous sport in the world.
Bonnie thought this was pretty unfair considering that it was Nicky who had marched her up to Pavel in the first place and encouraged her to start training at Golden Ring. She couldn’t chicken out now just because of one little black eye, especially since Bonnie was starting to get good. Better than good, according to Pavel. But she didn’t want to pick a fight with her sister. Instead, she plucked up three tangerines she’d pilfered from the kitchen and began spinning them through the air with acrobatic grace. She’d picked up juggling as a kid, but Pavel had instructed her to start doing it regularly again after reading research that it boosted brain development and accelerated the neural connections needed to react faster. It was a skill she prized highly, mostly because she could always make him smile by performing it.
Base jumping, she said, as the orange orbs blurred in front of her.
What? said Nicky.
I’m pretty sure that’s the most dangerous sport in the world.
Is that even a sport?
Without taking her eyes off them, Bonnie tossed the tangerines higher until they were moving in a great looping arc around her.
College football, she said.
They get helmets. Nicky snatched for a tangerine, but Bonnie pivoted deftly away from her.
