The first time I walked into Bedford-Stuyvesant Boxing Gym, it was like entering another country. This was 1999, before Girlfight and Million Dollar Baby had made women’s boxing trendy. I was the only girl in the gym, and the only white person.
The gym was a funky cave, sweltering in summer, freezing in winter. It had a cracked floor, blood-spattered ring, and murals on the wall of its most famous fighters. I had the luck to meet two of them. I got in the ring with Olympic gold medalist Mark Breland, whose jabs sounded like gunshots, and I joked with eighty-year-old George Washington, a former heavyweight contender with a hundred wins who had sparred Joe Lewis.
Not everyone was so accepting. Some of the fighters would stare or laugh, and I knew they found me ridiculous. Is it because I’m a girl, I wondered, or because I’m white? Or maybe because I’m not very good? Probably it was all the above: a deadly, three-punch combination. Faber, who trained many of the younger fighters, would shake his head when I walked in the door.
“Don’t mind them,” my trainer Mike would say. “Just box.” So I did. I wanted to win the Golden Gloves and I wanted to look good doing it. As I got better, I began to love it at Bed-Stuy. It was still another country, but it felt like home. When I went through the thin glass door, I left behind all my problems. Nothing mattered inside except strength and rhythm.
One day, a girl showed up at the gym and started training with Faber. She was black, eighteen years old, and weighed 106 pounds. I fought at 119. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, noting with dread how quickly she progressed.
About a month later, Faber sauntered across the gym to talk to Mike. I knew what was coming. Mike tossed me my headgear and grinned. “You’re sparring Monet today.”
I had covered the inside of the headgear with affirmations like “If you ain’t the hammer, you’re the nail.” They didn’t help. Fighting with other women terrified me. When you spar a man, it’s practice; when you spar another woman, it’s a fight.
I knew that more was riding on this sparring than normal. Someone had turned the radio off, and people were whispering and pointing at us. I climbed through the ropes and tried to look tough.
We fought so hard that everyone in the gym gathered around the ring. People even came in from off the street, leaning on their bikes, holding their radios. Everyone, except my trainer, was rooting for Monet. Vehemently. Later on this seemed natural. She was the home team, after all. She was also the underdog: smaller and less experienced than me. But it still hurt. Nothing is worse than being punched in the face and hearing a roar of approval.
Monet would eventually become a much better fighter than me, but on that day I won. I did something that was always difficult for me: I punched with bad intentions. I punched to hurt her. Soon the room got quiet, and that made me happy.
After three rounds, Faber stopped the sparring. Monet’s lip was bleeding a little, but we were both fine. We touched gloves like friends, and the people who had been on their feet, fists upraised, went back to their business. It was confusing. I felt that some line had been drawn for those few moments, as clearly as the line on a map that divides two countries. But once the bell rang, it was gone.
It’s been a year since I’ve been to Bed-Stuy. The last time I went there was to give away my gear. I had won the Golden Gloves and I was quitting. It’s hard to quit boxing, and it’s best to get rid of your paraphernalia so you don’t relapse.
On my way out, Faber asked me when I was coming back. I told him that I wasn’t, since I had just turned thirty, and was therefore too old to get punched in the face by teenagers. I also cited my bulging disc, my tricky knees, and the fact that I never, ever want to get on a scale again.
He made a sour face. “You sound like some kind of Yuppie or something.”
I shrugged. If the glove fits, wear it.
What he said next was a far better affirmation than anything written on my headgear: “You ain’t no Yuppie. You’re like one of those people who works for the Post Office, and one day they just go crazy and start shooting people. And everyone says how nice they always seemed. You’re like that.” He nodded. “You’re a big surprise.”
