A Book of American Martyrs(170)

Again.


ON THE SQUAT OLD TV in his office she saw videos.

She would sit on a sagging, stained sofa. She would watch the videos entranced. By the end of a fight she was sitting far forward, her back strained and her eyes dry and unblinking.

Great Fights of the Century. Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, Joe Louis, Jersey Joe Walcott, Rocky Marciano, Floyd Patterson, Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson. Henry Armstrong, Sugar Ray Robinson, Jake LaMotta, Rocky Graziano, Tony Zale. Carmen Basilio, Marvin Hagler, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Durán, Sugar Ray Leonard, Oscar de la Hoya, Bernard Hopkins, Floyd Mayweather . . . Not a woman among these and never would be.

And she saw too how over the decades from the early 1900s boxing had largely shifted from white-skinned to dark-skinned, Hispanic.

She wondered if it was too late for her. The best women boxers were black, Hispanic, Native American.

What had Ernie said—Depends if you’re that hungry. That desperate.


HE HAD NOT TOLD HER no. Not yet.

Eight hours at Target, three hours at the gym.

Day following day, week following week, month following month.

She was losing weight—“soft” weight. Her muscles were hardening, her body was an astonishment to her, a promise.

Her breasts she flattened to her chest as well as she could. She wore a sturdy sports bra and over this a T-shirt that did not fit too loosely or too tightly. She did not like to glance at herself in any mirror and especially if she stood naked after a shower. Even the word naked was shameful—Edna Mae could not ever have uttered such a word.

But if there was steam on a mirror she might lean to the mirror to see a ghost-reflection combing wet hair quickly, impatiently, and then brushing it back from her forehead, flat against her scalp. The bristles of the blue plastic brush Miss Schine had given her were no longer possible to get clean and the handle was cracked but she did not want to replace it with another.

She did not tell her trainer that she had relapses when she ate ravenously those foods she should not eat—French fries, doughnuts, pizzas swimming with pepperoni grease. Still, her weight dropped slowly, steadily. It would stabilize between one-forty-two and one-forty-five which Ernie said was ideal.

“OK. Next step. See what you can do.”

She was allowed to begin sparring. Very cautiously at first, with one of the gym instructors. Then, with whoever Ernie could talk into climbing into the ring with D.D. Dunphy.

Neighborhood kids looking to be boxers. Young guys in their twenties. Older guys who’d begun careers as boxers but had lost their first fights or suffered injuries and dropped out and were hoping to try again. It was not uncommon at the gym that a male boxer might spar with a female—there were only three instructors, and all were male.

These males were reluctant to spar with D.D. Dunphy. They meant to pull their punches—at first. But there came Dunphy in a crouch, graceless, grim-determined, with furrowed forehead and lashless eyes, so hard-hitting, when her wildly flung punches hit, the sparring partners were stunned.

“Hey! Shit, man.”

They backed away, laughing. They kept her off with flurries of blows.

Ernie followed outside the ring. Ernie commanded: “Move in, Dun-phy. Press in. Don’t hold back. Go.”

She obeyed. She tried. Very soon she was panting through her mouth.

“Move in. Use your right. Go.”

Blindly she pressed forward. On her short legs she threw herself forward. Blows struck her exposed face but she did not shrink away.

These early sessions passed in a blur. Adrenaline flooded her, an exhilarating rush. She had no clear idea what she was doing except she must push forward, and she must fight.

For her life, she would fight. She could not turn back.

Of the historic boxers, she identified with Jack Dempsey who could only push forward and who was thwarted by Gene Tunney capable of moving backward even as he fought.

Word in the gym came to be—That girl boxer Beecher is training? She a pitbull.

That Dun-phy some kind of killing machine.

Ernie was amused, she’d wrung from her sparring partners a grudging acknowledgment. He listened to them claiming Had to hold back, could’ve broke her face and sent her into the ropes and onto her ass—you saw it. But that girl one hell of a puncher.


THEN, SHE SPARRED with her first female. The experience was devastating to her.

Never had she struck any female face before. Never the face of a girl. Only just boy-faces leering at her, deserving to be hit.

Can’t do it. Just can’t.

It was a shock to her. She would not have anticipated such a surprise. The new sparring partner was a young neighborhood woman hoping also to be a boxer, five or six years older than D.D. Dunphy, taller by at least two inches, somewhat lean, flat-bodied, with a wan-pretty face like something smudged and straw-colored hair showing dark at the roots. Flaming-heart tattoos were displayed on her bare biceps and on her wrists were bracelet-tattoos. She was lighter than D.D. Dunphy by at least fifteen pounds, just fast enough on her feet to keep out of Dunphy’s flailing punches.

D.D. sank into her crouch, hiding behind upraised gloves. Hairs stirred on the nape of her neck. To see a female face confronting her beneath the safety headgear! It did not seem right. In her fantasies of winning fights, winning titles, she had not envisioned her opponent except as a blur. It would be like hitting Miss Schine! It would be like hitting her sister . . . The males she had no difficulty wishing to hurt for she hated them but she did not hate this young woman and did not want to hurt her.