Cold Fury

my reflection in the mirror. Faster, faster, faster! I’d think, watching my hands and arms pumping like pistons, obeying my command.

Willy also taught me the difference between a boxing match and a beating.

He explained that intent was everything, and that when an older, larger, and more experienced fighter invited a younger, smaller one into the ring for a “little sparring,” the other boxer usually intended to treat the newbie like a heavy bag with legs-or, as Willy called it, “fresh meat.” The younger fighter was in there to serve as a moving target for the older one to work out whatever issues he was having with his left jab or right cross, or whatever. When the bell finally rang, if the kid was still standing, he generally looked like his face had lost a violent disagreement with a ketchup bottle. Willy ordered me to never, ever spar with anyone more experienced than me, or without him present.

Now, at age sixteen, I still wonder what the hell eight-year-old me was thinking.

Actually, that’s the problem-I wasn’t.

Instead, I was buzzing with adrenaline after working thirty minutes of whirlwind combinations with Willy. I stood before a sweat- and spit-flecked wall mirror as he showed me how to throw the punches in a smooth, mellifluous way that was like being taught dance moves with arms and hands instead of legs and feet. He slowed me for corrections, and then sped me up as my body caught a groove, eyes found reflective-me in the mirror as an opponent, and then it was like pulling the rope on an outboard motor-jab, jab, punch, hook- Again! — jab, jab, punch, hook-Again! — until my arms shook, hips ached, and I was convinced that a bony eight-year-old with her nose projecting from headgear like a caged toucan could go one-on-one with the world heavyweight champion.

Or, at the very least, a Chicago Silver Gloves winner.

Willy removed his glasses, thumbed sweat from his eyebrows, and told me to jump rope for three rounds while he made phone calls, which was code for his daily afternoon catnap. It was after his office door closed that I heard my name. A kid smiled down from the ring, hanging casually on the ropes with his hands in fat padded gloves, and I said, “Uh-Oh.”

“Hey, Rispol-ita.” He grinned. “You wanna do a little sparring?”

Hector “Uh-Oh” Puno was so nicknamed because when competitors in the twelve-year-old Silver Gloves division saw his fearsome right fist coming, they thought-well, you get the picture. Despite his reputation, he was always friendly and soft-spoken with me, basically a chubby, huggable teddy bear in satin boxing shorts. At that point, after training for two years, I’d been in the ring with only a handful of opponents whom Willy had deemed safe. I was pumped after my lightning combinations, through with being “safe,” and scared of nothing. Willy would be angry if he caught me, but I knew that his drowsy “phone calls” never lasted less than six rounds and I’d be done with Uh-Oh by then. I said, “We’re just moving, right, Uh-Oh? Pitty-pat punches at most? You’ve got me by height and weight like crazy.”

“Come si este loco. Yeah, of course. I just wanna work out a few things with my right.”

I tugged on sparring gloves, Uh-Oh parted the ropes as I climbed into the ring, and the buzzer sounded. For the first several seconds we faced each other, hands high, sidling in a circle like ice-skating on canvas. And then Uh-Oh’s left arm darted like an eel, nipping at my gloves. I turned but he was already there, bouncing before me. Boxing is like ballroom dancing in one respect-who’s going to lead? Even with his back against the rope, a leader moves in a way that forces his opponent to follow, controlling the ebb and flow of a fight. Uh-Oh was in front of me now, and I went after him with a left of my own, which he ducked, smiling. I took a step, jabbed and missed, and trailed him toward the rope. That was when he spun, I pivoted, and now my back was in the corner, and it was only at the last second, hearing the whoosh of an incoming missile, eyes flicking through the headgear, that I saw his right barreling for my face.

It was no pitty-pat punch tossed by a teddy bear.

It was a sledgehammer thrown by a circus strongman.

Being hit squarely like that felt like all of the injustice that has ever existed throughout the history of mankind, in my nose. Red pain spread into my jaws and teeth, clawing my eyes, gnawing my ears, creating a sensation that the entire world was against me. Somehow I stayed on my feet and was about to quit when I saw the animal pinpoints in Uh-Oh’s eyes telling me he’d done it on purpose. I was fresh meat, and something deep in my gut popped and flashed as a tiny, internal flame began to burn cold and blue. Fear, self-pity, outrage-all of those debilitating things faded away, replaced by anger and ice.

Now I realize that moment marked the very first time I experienced the powerful internal phenomenon. At the time, though, all that I felt was a pure sense of invincibility.

A shadow of it must’ve crossed my eyes because Uh-Oh quit grinning and blinked heavily, and in that second of stasis, my outboard motor kicked in-jab, jab, punch, hook! — as he grunted, too late to protect his own nose. My hands were high and I was set to unleash another combination when the blue flame puffed out like a weak birthday candle, the frozen rage going with it. Its sudden appearance and departure was confusing and unnerving, leaving me off balance, and Uh-Oh must’ve seen that, too. He popped his gloves and advanced, and although I felt like plain Sara Jane, there was no way I would run, no way I’d quit, and stood my ground as he unleashed a barrage of punches that felt like a building collapsing on top of me, one cement block at a time.

“Knock it off, right now! Right now, goddamn it!”

We separated and turned to Willy, Uh-Oh bouncing guiltily, me swaying woozily. Willy had sharp words for my opponent but we both knew whose fault it really was. When Uh-Oh was doing his penance of a hundred push-ups, Willy pulled off my headgear, looked at my rapidly swelling nose, and made a tsk noise with his tongue. “Everything I’ve taught you,” he said, handing me an ice pack, “and you still got into the ring with a bigger, better fighter?”

“He’s not that much better,” I pouted.

“Yeah he is. Much.”

“I got my shots in. It was weird, Willy. For a second, something inside calmed me down but made me really mad at the same time,” I said, trying to recapture the feeling of a phenomenon that I’m only now beginning to comprehend.

“Adrenaline or something.” He shrugged. “That’s not the point. The point is, as a fighter, you failed.”

I moved the ice pack from my nose. “I failed because I stuck it out? Because I was brave and didn’t give up and run away? That’s crazy.”

“No, what’s crazy is catching a beating like the one I just saw, and standing there and taking it.”

I shrugged defensively, saying, “I bet my dad wouldn’t have quit when he was boxing.”

Willy huffed out a derisive little laugh. “I’ll tell you one thing about your daddy. Anthony Rispoli was a smart fighter. He ever found himself in a tight corner, he got himself the hell out of there, fast.” He leveled an unblinking gaze at me and said, “Ever happens again, girl, you better run, too.”

“But Willy. .”

“But nothing. Know what they said about Muhammad Ali, the greatest heavyweight of all time? That he could sting like a bee, but first they said something else. . ‘floats like a butterfly.’ Think about it. A butterfly doesn’t punch, doesn’t stand there like a statue getting its brains beat out. That wise little bug flaps its wings and hurries out of trouble. And that’s what a good boxer does, too. . learns to get far away without getting hit. That’s what those brains are for, girl.”

As the years passed and I continued under Willy’s tutelage, he stressed it to me over and over again, along with the other important points of pugilism-that it’s a thinking person’s game rather than a punching person’s, its tried and true rules must be followed at all times, and that respect for one’s opponent lies at the heart of the sport. His opinion was that fighting belonged only in the ring, while using violence to settle a real-life dispute was wrong except in rare circumstances like self-defense. In those cases, where an opponent follows no rules and therefore deserves no respect, it’s every man-or girl-for himself.

It became my opinion too, and he and I became friends. Actually, more than friends-Willy became family. It’s ironic, then, that he taught me what would become the most important skill I possess in trying to find my actual family.

Not just how to fight, but to run for my life, so that I could live to fight another day.