A Book of American Martyrs(203)

How strange, how incongruous—there were streaks of crimson and green in Dunphy’s spiky dark hair. On the biceps of both her arms were lurid tattoos.

Naomi felt a sharp visceral dislike of Dunphy. What she most hated was the happiness of the female boxer, what she perceived as Dunphy’s childish gloating in victory.

Dunphy spoke excitedly but uncertainly. She faltered, stammered.

Clearly she was not accustomed to speaking with a microphone extended to her mouth—she was not accustomed to speaking at all. And she was being asked questions by an aggressive (male) interviewer that seemed to intimidate her and so repeatedly she glanced to the side, seeking help from someone off-camera.

“What’re my ‘plans for the future’?—I guess—training real hard—for—maybe—a title fight . . .”

“And when will that be, ‘D.D.’?”

“When? I—I don’t know—it’s up to . . .”

“Which title are you looking to, ‘D.D.’? Midwest Boxing League? World Boxing Association?”

“I d-don’t know . . .”

“Ready for the big time, eh? Atlantic City? Vegas?”

“ . . .d-don’t know . . .”

Naomi observed the TV screen covertly. How pathetic, this interview with “D.D. Dunphy”! She hoped that no one in the pub would notice her interest. Especially she didn’t want the bartender or the men drinking at the bar to note her interest and to draw her into their conversation.

The men murmured together, laughed. In their voices a grudging admiration.

That’s her—Dunphy. Wouldn’t recognize her.

They lived over on Front Street. Luther was a roofer like my dad.

Shit yes. Wouldn’t forget that poor bastard Luther Dunphy.

My brother hung out with her brother—what’s-his-name . . .

Jesus she is homely! But she can hit.

A female boxer, some kind of joke. Make you feel like puking. But there’s some that’re OK—like Muhammad Ali’s daughter.


“’SCUSE ME, MA’AM—”

“Sorry ma’am—”

“Shit! Sorry ma’am—”

Squeezing past her one of them spilled a dark frothy liquid and ice cubes onto her knees out of a giant Styrofoam cup.

“That’s all right”—quickly Naomi dabbed at the corduroy trousers with a tissue, smiling to show that she wasn’t upset or annoyed.

Loud-laughing the gangling young men took their seats. They were not laughing at the lone white girl in a seat on the aisle in the Armory, in an instant they’d forgotten her.

But others had noticed her, with curiosity. Not exactly unfriendly but not smiling.

Naomi Voorhees in her wanly “white” skin! Like exposed bone from which marrow is leaking. And she was alone.

It was a fact: no one else in sight in the cavernous space appeared to be alone. Groups of a dozen or more boxing fans, taking up entire rows.

These were mostly dark-skinned and Hispanic and male. A predominance of males in their twenties, thirties, forties, who’d come to see the major fights of the evening and for whom the female boxers were of very little interest.

The bout in which D.D. Dunphy was fighting Pryde Elka was but number three on a bill of five boxing matches culminating in a heavyweight “contest” (as it was called) between two top-ranked (male) boxers (African-American, Jamaican) who were the stars of the evening.

Not knowing how to dress for the East Cincinnati Armory fight night Naomi had worn dark corduroy trousers, dark pullover sweater, nondescript jacket, boots. Her hair was brushed back from her face. On her head, a khaki-colored rain hat. Her face was pale, plain as if scrubbed: she rarely wore makeup, thus disappointing (she presumed: Madelena had not actually told her this) her stylish and still-beautiful grandmother for whom artfully applied cosmetics were as crucial as the exquisite silver human-hair wig she now wore.

Naomi had hoped to look like the most ordinary of boxing fans but a quick glance informed her that in this festive gathering there was no ordinary.

Everyone in sight was conspicuously well dressed: money had been spent on clothes, shoes, hair, jewelry. Dark-skinned and Hispanic women and girls were lavishly attired, glamorously made up. They might have been models, actresses. They might have been figures in romantic films. Their fingernails were polished and remarkably long. Their hair was spectacular, defying gravity. Their jewelry winked and dazzled even in the gloom of the arena and piercings made their faces glitter. And the men with them were as elaborately dressed, many with gold chains around their necks, stylish shirts open at the throat.

Naomi was grateful to be ignored and grateful that young black men squeezing past her to their seats were not rude or disrespectful but rather lighthearted, gleeful.

“Sorry ma’am—God damn.”

“Sor-ry—”

The eight-hundred-seat arena was scarcely half-filled by the time of the Elka-Dunphy fight at 8:10 P.M. There came virtually no applause for dark-robed D.D. Dunphy hurrying as if abashed down the aisle on the farther side of the ring, and an outburst of enthusiastic applause for Pryde Elka that faded by the time both boxers were in the ring.

Naomi was shocked by the vulgarity of the match—“The Squaw” vs. “The Hammer of Jesus.”

Pryde Elka wore quasi-Indian attire into the ring, an aqua-feathered robe, feathery aqua tassels on her ankle-high shoes. Her hair was very black, as if dyed, in stiff six-inch plaits. Her cheeks appeared to be tattooed in emulation of the savage-painted cheeks of Apache warriors. She was a tight-faced sinewy woman in her early thirties with a deep-tanned skin, close-set eyes, a grim expression about the mouth. She wore dark Spandex shorts to the knee with some sort of advertising logo on them, unless these were Shawnee word-symbols. Her tight-fitting T-shirt was similarly inscribed. Her shoulder and arm muscles were ropy, her dark-tanned legs hard-muscled but desiccated-seeming, like something organic, living wood that has been dehydrated and distilled. Dunphy was wearing plainer attire, black shorts and T-shirt with a sturdy sports bra beneath that did not flatter her body that was thick-set as a heifer’s.