left, punch right, dodge low, uppercut, repeat. Hit, move, hit harder, move faster. Hit.
Four thirty A.M. Pitch-black outside. Brutally cold. Definitely night, not day. All over the city, sane, well-adjusted people were snug in their beds, sound asleep.
I stood alone in the middle of a twenty-four-hour gym in Cambridge and pounded the crap out of the heavy bag. I’d been at it a bit. Long enough that my long brown hair was plastered to my head, I’d soaked through my quick- dry gym clothes, and my arms and legs were glazed in sweat. When I landed a particularly forceful blow, perspiration sprayed from my arms onto the blue mat.
I’m not a pretty girl-my figure is too gaunt, my face too harsh these days. But I’m strong, and in the wall of mirrors across from me, I took pride in the muscles rippling across my shoulders, the curve of my biceps, the fierce look on my face. If there were men in the gym right now, working their way through their own regimens, they’d feel a need to comment. Make light of my sweaty form, raise a brow at my go-for-broke style, ask me what his name was and what he did to make me so angry.
Even better reason for me to arrive at four in the morning, running from uneasy dreams and a screwed-up internal clock that wasn’t used to sleeping at night anyway.
Alone, I could hit as hard as I wanted to for as long as I wanted.
Alone, I didn’t have to apologize for being me.
Girls get a raw deal, I think. When boys brawl, tumble, tackle, it’s all boys will be boys. A little girl lashes out, and immediately it’s “Hands are for holding, hands are for hugging.”
Boys are encouraged to grow strong, to inspect their scrawny arms and thin chests for the first sign of muscular bulk. Girls, by the time they’re eight, are already overanalyzing their waistlines, worrying about the dreaded muffin top. We have no concept of gaining muscle, just an enduring aversion to gaining fat.
Girls are complimented on beauty, flexibility, and grace. But what about the upper body strength it takes to scramble up a tree, or the core muscles involved in swinging across the monkey bars? Young girls perform natural feats of strength on parks and playgrounds all across the country. Parents rarely comment, however, and eventually girls spend more and more time trying to look pretty, which does earn them praise.
Until recently, I wasn’t any different.
I had to learn my aggression the hard way. Through practice and repetition and painful reinforcement. By experiencing the cracking neck pain that follows an uppercut to the chin, or the immediate eye-welling sensation of taking a fist to the nose. Pain, I discovered, was fleeting. While the satisfaction of standing my ground, then retaliating fiercely, lasted all afternoon.
I had to learn to go deep inside myself, to a tiny place that had managed to survive all those years with my mother, a place where I could finally stop apologizing and start fighting back.
Around the fourth month of boxing, I happened to catch my reflection in the mirror. I noticed lines in my shoulders, curves on my back. Muscles. From fifty push-ups every morning and every night. From jump roping and heavy bag intervals and speed bag drills. From tripling my daily intake of protein, because for all of my philosophizing, boys are different than girls. They start with more muscle mass, add to it more efficiently, and retain it more effortlessly. Meaning if I wanted to bulk up, I had to eat, eat, eat. Egg whites and chicken sausage, six ounces of boneless chicken breast, six ounces of fish, protein shakes supplemented with peanut butter, plain Greek yogurt supplemented with protein powder.
Eventually my boxing coach moved me on to “tire work.” Big heavy tractor tires. I sledgehammered them, flipped them, jumped on top of them. By the six-month mark, I’d both leaned down and filled out. People stared at my arms when I went out in public. Teenage boys took notice of the way I moved, granted me more space on a crowded subway. Men looked me in the eye with a bit more respect.
And I liked it. Physical pain is nothing, I’ve realized. It’s letting go of your fear, finding your rage, and feeling strong that make the difference.
Unless it’s 2 A.M., and you’re dreaming of a baby who couldn’t have existed, or your homicidal mother who certainly did, or Stan Miller and the iron spikes protruding from his bloody chest.
Did killing someone make me a badass? Or did it take more courage to continue pounding the heavy bag while my own hollowed-out face mocked me in the far mirror?
I worked the bag for another thirty minutes. Next, I hit the weight machines. Then the StairMaster, followed by jump roping. This was it, my final workout before my once-in-a-lifetime main event. The next thirty-eight hours would be spent on rest and recovery. Like a professional athlete, I would take the final two days before the marathon off. Gotta be fresh for 8 P.M. Saturday. Gotta be ready.
Six A.M., people started arriving, beginning their own daily rituals. I left them behind, staggering into the locker room, where I headed straight into a hot, steamy shower.
I stood there a long time, soaking exhausted muscles.
And I wondered, if I was so strong, if I’d made so much progress in the past year, why was I still so terrified of a baby girl named Abigail?
IWALKED HOME FROM THE GYM. Watched my breath puff into the single-digit air. Watched the sun crawl its way over the gloomy gray horizon. I strode past yawning college students and hunch-shouldered morning commuters, all of them heading into the brick sprawl of Harvard Square as I worked my way out.
I kept my hands jammed deep in the pockets of my coat for warmth, while my ears were wrapped in a plain brown scarf. The cold didn’t bother me. It felt refreshing after my time in the gym. I moseyed along, my body finally wrung out and ready to collapse on my bed.
Times like this, I could almost admire the world around me. I could almost feel the tang of a snowflake on the tip of my nose. Appreciate the way the dawn painted the horizon with streaks of pink and orange and made the densely packed buildings glow.
I didn’t want to die.
It came to me, walking fifteen minutes toward my lonely room.
I had regrets. I wasn’t a great person. I’d engineered another man’s death. I’d done something terrible to my own mother. And I’d lost both of my best friends.
Put it in those terms, and why I even cared about what was going to happen at roughly 8 P.M. tomorrow was a mystery. But I wasn’t ready to give up. Maybe my life was one giant fuckup. But I felt…I didn’t know. As if I was on the edge of discovery. Finally realizing the power of my own arms and legs. Finally, twenty-eight years later, learning how to be me.
I wanted more mornings like this one. More rounds with a heavy bag, more crisp winter days. I wanted to walk the dog that was not my dog, smooth my hands over her sweet face. I wanted to run and laugh and, someday, what the hell, fall in love. Have a couple of kids. Raise them in the mountains where everyone would know their business, but also look them in the eye and smile.
I thought of Officer Mackereth. His invitation to brunch. The fact that I’d worked my final shift tonight and probably wouldn’t see him again.
Thirty-seven hours to live.
What was I waiting for? I was who I was. I’d done what I had done. And in a day and a half, what would happen would happen.
No more training. No more planning. No more preparing.
Living. That’s the only thing I had left to do. All thirty-seven hours of it.
I started to think about it. Really, truly consider it.
Then I turned the corner toward my house, and discovered my aunt Nancy standing there.
I HAVE KNOWN MY AUNT for nearly twenty years. She is a practical woman-gets up early, goes to bed late, works hard in between. Life has problems, but none that can’t be quickly identified and properly tackled. Elbow grease resolves most things. If not, perhaps a plate of freshly baked brownies will do the trick.
In our years together, we’ve cried a little, hugged on occasion, but laughed most of all. My aunt believes in laughter; you need it to run a business, especially in the hospitality trade.
I valued that about my aunt. What you see is what you get, which made her one of those people you immediately liked when you walked into a room.
So it was doubly strange to stand awkwardly in front of her now, positioned on the covered front porch of a
