“Just tell me, Dawn. In your own words. What gave you the idea of—becoming a boxer . . .”
Naomi smiled encouragingly at Dunphy. She did not hate Dunphy—really. It was Dunphy’s existence that maddened her as, for years, it had been the existence of Luther Dunphy after her father had died, that had maddened her.
Still, Naomi would impersonate a sincere interviewer. In a way, so far as anyone could know, she was that sincere interviewer. Through the night she’d been sleepless with excitement at the possibility of making a documentary film about women boxers, including both D.D. Dunphy and Pryde Elka. Yael Ravel’s words came to her—When you encounter your true subject you will know it.
Was this Naomi’s true subject? She had waited so long.
Dunphy continued to speak in her slow groping way of caution and dread. She was a poor interview subject—surely Pryde Elka would be more interesting.
“The average person has a fear of being hit—a dread of being hit. But you have no fear, it seems.”
Was this a question? Dunphy gnawed at her lower lip, and made no reply.
“You’re not afraid of being hurt?—I mean, seriously hurt?”
Vigorously Dunphy shook her head no.
“And why is that?”
“‘Why?’—” Dunphy looked at the interviewer as if the interviewer had asked a very stupid question, or had to be joking. “ ’Cause I’m too good.”
“You are—‘too good’?”
“My training is to avoid being hurt. Even if I am hit, it doesn’t hurt like it would somebody else.” A slight sneer to somebody else.
Naomi perceived that Dunphy was repeating words told to her. I’m too good. Even if I am hit . . .
“You’ve never been defeated in any fight. That’s very impressive.”
Dunphy shrugged. Very slightly, the swollen lips smiled.
“I did some checking and it’s surprising—some of the champion boxers have lost fights. But you have not.” Naomi paused, waiting for Dunphy to murmur yet.
How expected it was, in such a situation, that the young athlete would murmur yet.
After a moment Naomi continued, in her friendly, frank way:
“Do you make a good living as a boxer? Could you tell us—for instance—how much you’d made on last night’s fight?”—Naomi smiled to soften the rudeness of such a question; but Dunphy did not seem to register an effrontery. Rapidly her swollen eyes were blinking as if she were trying to recall a figure, a sum.
“I guess—I don’t know . . . There’s ‘expenses’ . . .”
“Expenses come out of the boxer’s earnings? I guess that’s the tradition . . . I suppose there are considerable expenses?”
Dunphy nodded grimly. “There’s hotel rooms, and meals, and all kinds of—‘supplies.’ There’s a ‘medical kit.’”
“But you don’t receive a fixed sum? You don’t remember what this fixed sum is?”
Dunphy shook her head no.
“You’ve signed a contract? Yes?”
Warily Dunphy shook her head yes.
“Did you have a lawyer look over the contract before you signed it?”
“L-Lawyer? No . . .” Dunphy frowned, trying to think. “Maybe yah. Maybe I did.”
“A lawyer in Dayton? Your lawyer?”
Dunphy made a vague grunting noise of discomfort. Naomi relented.
“Do you send money home to your family?”
More emphatically, Dunphy nodded yes.
“That’s very generous of you. You are a good daughter.”
(Was this going too far? Would Dunphy register the flattery here, just barely masking contempt? She did not seem to.)
Naomi continued, with convincing concern: “I was reading online that most women boxers are helping to support their families. Some of them have young children . . . Pryde Elka, for instance. Do you know much about her background?”
Dunphy shrugged irritably. As if to say Why the hell would I care about Pryde Elka!
“I think you are still working? At a Target store in Dayton? That must be difficult . . .working at the same time that you’re training as a boxer, and traveling to fights . . .”
Dunphy said, with the air of recalling something both pleasurable and painful, “There was going to be a ‘community sponsor’—sports store—in Dayton—but that fell through. Though—it might happen yet . . . There’s champions that have to work. Can’t live off their boxing.” She paused ruefully. “Women boxers, I mean. Not men.”
“The men make more money?”
Dunphy sneered as if the interviewer had said something meant to be funny. “Yah. The men make more.”
“It seems surprising that a ‘champion’ has to work . . . whether male or female. That would be surprising to many boxing fans.”
The line of questioning was making Dunphy uneasy and irritable. Naomi had never interviewed anyone in her life and was coming to comprehend the subtle but unmistakable adversarial challenge, a kind of bullfighting, with very sharp blades. Whoever wielded the questions wielded the blades.
“How many hours a week do you work, Dawn?”