“Your trainer has requested a prescription for you. When a female is boxing there’s concern for—well, the ‘menstral cycle’ it is called. A female athlete should take precautions so she is always at her peak. I’d hoped to examine you a little more thoroughly but, well—you are obviously in excellent condition. Ernie Beecher has a reputation for working with only the best athletes he can find. So now, miss, if you can cooperate just a little—we can complete these formalities and you can be on your merry way.”
She hadn’t heard much of this. She had not quite heard the shameful words menstral cycle. And merry way—what did that mean?
She could think only first fight. Training hard.
Wheezing Dr. Danks was not going to touch her further, that was all that mattered.
He conferred with the nurse-receptionist, and shuffled out of the room. In a bright cajoling voice of the kind one might employ with a recalcitrant child the woman told D.D. that she could “provide a swab” from between her legs herself, with a cotton Q-stick—“That should be enough, then. Like a ‘Pap smear.’” D.D. was very much embarrassed, but took the little stick from her, and cautiously touched herself with it, between the legs where (she supposed) there was some sticky dampness. Blushing deeply she handed the befouled stick to the nurse-receptionist who took it with gloved fingers. “Thank you!”
Alone in the examination room she lay on the table for a moment unable to move. She had been spared the outrage of a pelvic exam.
Edna Mae would be relieved, and not so disgusted with her.
Never would she forget those words—Training hard. For your first fight. Waves of relief, gratitude, hope swept over her.
“Thank you, Jesus!”
He had not abandoned her after all. But she knew that.
IN THE WAKE of the doctor-visit she was given by her trainer a small plastic container of white pills. One-a-day, each morning.
“What’s this for?”—D.D. was doubtful about taking pills recalling how pills had affected Edna Mae.
These were smaller pills, but also white.
Ernie told her it was to “prevent problems”—“like, once a month”—since she was a “female athlete, who has to take precautions.”
He seemed embarrassed, irritated. As if D.D. should have known what he was talking about.
For a long slow moment D.D. did not comprehend, then a kind of comprehension came over her, like murky water rising.
Near-inaudibly, shamefaced she murmured OK.
The first fight was scheduled that very day.
NOW THERE WAS A DATE, a goal. Now she could measure the days on the calendar until February 11, 2009.
Not wishing to recall the previous times she’d marked calendar dates.
Now she was officially in training, now everyone knew. There was respect for her. In the eyes of the others, except maybe the young women who came to the gym only to “exercise”—there was a new interest, maybe a kind of awe.
That her?—Dunphy?
Christ! That’s a female Tyson.
One day sparring with Eduardo, a lapsed welterweight, formerly one of Ernie’s promising young boxers, D.D. was stunned by a blow to the right temple that seemed to fly out from Eduardo’s right glove. She was dazed, and slipped to one knee; she felt how the ring floor pulled at her, like a magnet; but there came Ernie’s terse command—Get up. Get on him—and she managed to get her balance, and to rush at her opponent with a flurry of blows to his midriff and lower belly, groin—in her desperation, and with a murderous intent, driving him back into the ropes.
“Hey! Fucking Christ! What’re you doing!—” Eduardo was gasping for breath, bent double. Tears shone on his cheeks.
Adrenaline rushed through her veins. So fierce she felt that flames might be oozing through her pores.
Ernie halted the match. Dunphy had hit low, with a vicious intent. He had not seen that in the girl, until this hour. There was something about her pebble-colored eyes and small mean mouth that was frightening to him, but exhilarating.
So then I knew. Dunphy could do it.
You got to be hungry, and to want to kill the opponent.
That’s all. That’s everything.
“MY FIRST FIGHT.”
Spoken aloud these words had almost the resonance of an echo.
“Six weeks from now, my first fight.”
She was beginning to tell people. Co-workers at Target. The supervisor Evelyn who seemed to like her. (But was very surprised to hear her good news.) A neighbor in the apartment building in which she rented a single, ground-floor room overlooking a front yard of mostly concrete.
Shyly, yet boastfully—My first fight. Cleveland. I have a trainer and a manager—yes.
It was a wonder to her, to say so matter-of-factly—I have a trainer. Ernie Beecher is my trainer.
Stranger to say—I have a manager. Mr. Cassidy . . .