“He said, ‘Earl, I put four hundred dollars on the other fella. If my boy wins, I lose a little. If my boy loses, I will have enough to pay for his surgery.” Earl stood in the doorway of the gym with his cap in his hands, a thick old man with a gap in his teeth, and every word he said went into me like a nail. “Yolanda, I have known Terrence since we were fourteen years old. I have never heard a sadder bet. I told him so. I said, You do not bet against your own flesh and blood. He just shrugged. He said, ‘I am no good luck to that boy. The last time I watched him fight, he got his nose broken.”
I remembered that fight. DeShawn was fifteen, in the Golden Gloves at a rec center on the east side, and his father, who had just come back into our lives after four years in Atlanta, sat in the second row eating peanuts. In the third round, the other boy landed a right hand that sent blood across the canvas. DeShawn finished the fight, and lost, and spent the night in the emergency room with a broken nose and a bag of ice. Terrence stood in the corner of the waiting room with his hands in his pockets the whole time. I had been so angry at him that I had never asked myself what he was thinking.
Earl twisted his cap. “He believes it,” he said. “That he is a curse. His own daddy used to tell him the same thing. You are bad luck, boy. You walk into a room and the roof falls in. Terrence grew up believing it. When DeShawn started winning, he stayed away because he thought if he sat ringside, the boy would lose. He told me, I will love him from the cheap seats. I will watch the highlights. But I will not be in the building.” I put my hand over my mouth. It was the most heartbreaking, ridiculous thing I had ever heard, and it explained eighteen years.
A man who bet four hundred dollars against his own boy could not stand to watch him fight.
“And the money?” I asked. Earl nodded slowly. “Well, he is a gambler, Yolanda. That part is true. He has a problem. He bets on the fights, the ones where he does not know the fighters, so it does not matter. But on that night, he knew. And he put four hundred dollars on the other fella anyway, because he said he could not stand the idea of being completely helpless. He said, if I am going to be bad luck, I will at least be paid for it.” Earl shook his head. “Then your boy knocked that man out in the second round. And Terrence lost every cent. I sat there beside him and watched him stand up and cheer. He cheered so loud they told him to sit down.”
I have never been so furious and so tender at the same time. “Where is he?” I asked. Earl looked at the floor. “In the parking lot. In my truck. He has been sitting there for twenty minutes. He did not have the courage to come in.” I walked straight out the door, past the speed bags and the rows of lockers, into the hot light of the afternoon, and I knocked on the passenger window of an old blue pickup.
He rolled it down. He had gray in his beard now. His eyes were wet. “Yolanda,” he said. I said, “Terrence, get out of the truck.” He climbed down like a man of ninety. We stood on the cracked asphalt facing each other, and I said, “You are not bad luck. You have never been bad luck. You are a frightened man who did not know how to be anything else. But our son is going to fight again in six weeks, and I am going to put a ticket in your hand, and you are going to walk into that building, and you are going to sit in row A. Not for me. For him.”
He shook his head. “Yolanda, I cannot. What if he loses?” I laughed, out loud, in the parking lot. “Then he loses, Terrence! And he will have his father there, and that is worth more than any win!” He stood there with his mouth working, and the heat shimmered off the asphalt, and a pigeon walked by. “I have not stepped inside a ring in twenty years,” he whispered. I said, “DeShawn is inside it every week. Come and see where he works.” He looked back toward the doors of the gym, where I could see my son, shirtless and glistening, hitting the heavy bag in a steady rhythm. Terrence took one step.
DeShawn knew, of course. He had known the moment his father walked in. But he said nothing. He just kept punching, jab, jab, cross, hook, his breathing steady, his eyes on the bag. At the end of the round, he pulled off his gloves, and without a word crossed the floor, and held out his bare hands, palms down. “Wrap them,” he said. Terrence stared. “I do not remember how.” DeShawn said, “Coach Earl will show you.” And Earl did, and my former husband knelt on the floor of that sweaty gym and wrapped the hands of his son, strip by strip, clumsy and slow, with tears dripping off his nose.
Six weeks later, at the Masonic Temple, DeShawn climbed the ropes after a unanimous decision, and pointed once more at row A. This time the seat was occupied. Terrence was standing on his chair in a suit that was two sizes too small, screaming the name of his son over and over until his voice cracked. DeShawn grinned the grin that is half his father and half me. In his corner, Earl was crying into a towel. I sat beside Terrence in the next seat, and I reached up and pulled the back of his jacket until he sat down, and he turned to me, glowing, and said, “Yolanda, I did not bet a dime.”
Afterward, the three of us ate chili dogs at the Coney Island downtown, on a plastic table under a buzzing sign. DeShawn ate four. Terrence ate one and watched his son eat the other four, which I think was the best meal of his life. The waitress asked if we were celebrating, and DeShawn said, with his mouth full, “My dad is here.” That was all. She smiled and brought extra napkins. I watched my son wipe his hands and I thought, there is no curse that love cannot outlast, if somebody finally shows up to the fight.
