Epic Wrestling of Chicago hired me, and they paired me with a short, thick-chested Romanian guy named Darius, who was impressively agile. We did one move where he would kick at my stomach, I would grab his foot, and from that he’d somehow spring into a backflip. When I pointed out how impressive that was, he made a farting sound with his lips and said, “Please. In Romania, is gymnastics for little gurl. Everyone can do backflip.” Which seemed improbable to me, but who knew—maybe Romania was that kind of place
We were rehearsing in the performance venue, an old ballroom with chandeliers and pink walls and white plaster scrollwork, chipping in places. The wrestling stage rose out of the middle, and it was surrounded by rows of padded chairs. The whole place looked like a fire trap, with the wood floors and rickety lighting display hanging over the stage.
I still hadn’t figured out an arrangement for Pill. I had tried taking her to an elementary school in our neighborhood, but she freaked out. At first she wouldn’t even get out of the car. I went around to her side and opened the door and she came with it, her butt sinking down toward to the concrete, her legs still up in the car. I pried her off the door and led her up the steps and inside the school, but she was trembling and clinging to me the whole time. Which didn’t bode well. And then the school wanted paperwork I didn’t have, immunizations and academic records and stuff.
I looked for a babysitter, someone who could teach her some math and reading at least. There were websites that advertised babysitters, but none of those people seemed to want to take care of Pill, once we got into the details. So I took her with me everywhere I went, which worked barely okay to disastrous, depending on the day. On this particular afternoon, while Darius and I were rehearsing, she was out in the arena running up and down the rows of chairs, counting each one out loud. When we stopped for a break, she stopped also, clambering up onto the stage to join us. She was red-faced and out of breath, her forehead glistening with sweat. Vern was passing out sports drinks, and he opened a bottle and handed it to her. She took a long pull.
“Whew. We needed that!” she said.
“We?” Darius said. “What you mean? You just playing, you not working like me and your brother.”
“I’ve been exercising! I was running up and down every single row. Look at my muscles, Darius.” She pulled back her t-shirt sleeve and flexed her tiny bicep, and he gave it a squeeze.
“Yeah, wow. You very tough. How bout you be my trainer? You watch my work-outs, scream at me that I’m suck, I’m fat-ass.”
“Yessss!” she said. She jumped and spilled some of her drink.
After the break Pill went back to running the rows and Darius and I talked through the routine a final time, which was something he was big on, verbalizing everything before we did it.
“Middle part,” he said. “I gonna be over here, maybe on the ropes, and I gonna call the audience names and taunt the shit out of them, right? And you just be walking around, working them up, hitting your chest or whatever. Audience will help you, trust me. They feed your energy—is so crazy you not gonna believe it. And we do that for a minute, maybe two, and then when I look at you like this—” He shot me a demented smile. “When I give you that look, that’s the signal for supplex sequence, okay? You ready to try?”
I told him I was ready, and we ran it. I strutted around, slapping my chest, feeling like an idiot, but it was a work in progress, my character, and I believed what he said, that the audience would inspire me when the time came. Darius gave me the demented grin, then he charged. I took my fake swing and he ducked and pulled me into a headlock. He squeezed my head once, twice, three times, and then I hoisted him up onto my shoulder. I circled the ring, showing off my prize while he flailed, and then I timbered over backward, both of us crashing down. We were getting ready for the next sequence, a charge and clothesline, when a clangy crash sounded out in the arena.
“The hell was that?” Darius said. Pill came running towards the stage, her hand on her mouth and blood seeping through her fingers. I went out and scooped her up, and her blood slid down over my shoulder.
“Put her here,” Vern said. He thumped a chair and I set her in it. Her eyes were wide and dazed and her chin was covered with blood that was still flowing. Vern rolled up a towel and put it against her mouth. The towel turned red, and he snapped his fingers at me for another one, which I gave him. On the second towel the bleeding slowed, and after a minute it stopped. Her lower lip was starting to swell, and on the inside was a decent-sized gash, where a tooth had pierced it.
“Is she going to need stitches?” I said.
“Eeh, can't say. Get me an ice pack.” I pulled a compress from the cooler and gave it to him, and he set it against her lip. She flinched and swatted away his arm.
“Too cold?” he asked. She nodded. He wrapped the pack in a towel and handed it to her and that worked better---she brought it up very slowly, carefully, and settled it against her mouth.
“Should I take her to a doctor?” I said. Pill shook her head and pleaded with her eyes. She hated going to doctors.
“I think she’s okay,” Vern said. “What do you think, Miss Priscilla? Are you going to be okay?” She nodded. “Took a tumble, huh?”
“I fell off a chair then the chair fell on me,” she said.
“You didn’t cry though,” Vern said.
“Cause she’s a badass, like me,” Darius said. She swung her feet back and forth and smiled up at Darius, glowing with his approval.
Our boss Sandi appeared, sweat in his sideburns, his stomach pushing out.
“She okay?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“Good. But from now on that’s it,” he said. “You can’t bring her to practice no more. I don’t want a lawsuit. She can come to shows but she needs someone watching her.” For a minute no one said anything.
“Maybe April,” Vern suggested.
“This ain’t my problem,” Sandi said. “Just figure it out.”
As we drove home Pill stared out the window, still holding the compress on her mouth.
“Why does someone have to watch me? I can watch myself.” I wanted to point out the obvious: Exhibit A, busted lip. But I didn’t.
“Sandi is the boss and he wants someone watching you. We have to follow his rules.” She was still staring out the window, gold light flicking in her eyes.
“I want to go home. To our old house,” she said.
“I thought you were having fun.” She dropped the compress to her lap and held it there, her hand limp, a blood stain on the white towel. “Pill, we can’t go home right now. But I promise you this will be fun. Don’t you want to see me and Darius do our thing?”
“I have seen it, a thousand times.”
“But in front of a big crowd, and with all the other matches?”
“There’ll be more?”
“A lot more.” She brought the ice pack back to her lip. “Is it hurting?” I asked. She nodded.
“Can April watch me?” she said. And then, when I didn’t respond, she said, “Why don’t you like April? She’s funny and she plays games with me and she buys me—” she stopped.
“She buys you candy? Even though I’ve asked her not to? Can you see why I’m not a fan?”She kicked the dash with her feet. I pulled the car off to the side, parking in a lot before some old brick apartment buildings. “Pill, we can’t go home right now. We just can’t. But if you really want April to watch you, we can ask her. Just this once.”
I didn’t know how disastrous that decision would be. Fateful, Mrs. Cuplenada might have said, though I hope like hell it wasn’t that. If it was fate, if there was some cosmic force dictating what would happen to Pill, then it was a cosmos I wanted no part of.
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