I promised Pa I wouldn’t say loony bin any more.
Here’s what happened those months that Mo was in the mad house. We kept the house clean and the fridge filled and we ate fresh fruit every day. We got my homework done and the washing washed, which was handy because my car dreams had come screeching back. Most nights we trained like we had the big fight coming. Otis dropped in now and then to keep us on our toes.
‘You need to do some bag work, mate.’
Pa said, ‘Otis, please, I’m all done in.’
I kept on skipping. Tap-tap. Tap-tap. The boxer’s way. Right, right. Left, left.
‘Take it from me, Dom. You need some bag work.’
‘Otis, I haven’t got it in me.’
Couldn’t he see Pa was skinny and ill like Fag Ash Phil at the newspaper kiosk? And those guys from the Aids place. Skeleton. Thin yellow skin just about holding it together.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
Skipping’s cool. Helps you go numb in the head.
‘You don’t know what you’ve got in you, mate, til it comes out. The bag. Two minutes. Starting, now.’
Otis clicked the stopwatch.
Serve him right if Pa keeled over dead.
Pa got his hands up, got his legs into position. Can you believe he still had to watch his feet? Eyed the bag then hit it.
Flump.
‘Focus. Focus, Dom. Come on, mate. Hit it.’
Pa did a combination:
Flump. Flump. Flump.
‘You piss me about, Dom, we start the clock again!’
He didn’t have to be so rude about it.
‘Get your feet in distance!’
Pa shuffled his feet. Otis jabbed his finger. The patio lights pinged on, sent his jagged shadow streaking across the patio.
Flump.
‘Pathetic, Dom. Come on, mate, hit it!’
Flump. Flump.
‘Hit the fucking bag!’
Otis always rucked us. Ruckin, that’s what we boxers call it. Did I tell you Pa caved in, on account of the getting picked on at school, and let Otis teach me boxing? Well, anyway, ruckin’s part of the training. You have to get used to it. Not like this, though.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Pa had done all right by his standards. I didn’t get it.
Flump. Flump. Flump.
Otis grabbed him by the shoulders spun him round, got his face in close and hissed,
‘I Want To See Your Anger, Dominic.’
Spit landed on Pa’s face. Otis spun Pa back and shoved him at the bag. Pa tapped his glove against his nose to get the sweat off, breathed out hard, eyes burning.
‘Do it, mate.’
Yeah, do it. Put one – Bam! – on Otis’s bossy mouth.
Tap-tap.
I could do twenty on one foot and twenty on the other. In case you don’t know anything about skipping, that’s really brilliant.
Pa did it, really did it. Pounded the bag, pounded it, grunted deep as each hard punch went in.
Terrible punches, all power, no technique.
Otis didn’t mind.
‘Not at the man. Through the man,’ he said, like Pa was hitting someone real.
Streetlights crackled and came on.
Otis said, ‘Time up,’ but quietly.
Pa wouldn’t have heard him if he’d screamed it in his face. Pa was in another place, punching harder, harder, harder, punching on and on and on.
I reached one hundred skips and moved on to my stretching exercises.
Pa thrashed and thrashed the bag til he was all thrashed out, then slumped on it, arms wrapped round it, weeping.
Pa wept.
Otis moved towards him, hugged Pa and the bag together, hummed, ‘Let it out, let it go, let it out, mate.’ Pa gulped and sobbed into Otis’s huge chest.
Through his tears Pa whispered something I couldn’t hear on account of the tube train rumbling by. Lights disappeared into the night, then I heard him.
‘It’s the not knowing. The not knowing. The not knowing.’ That’s what he was saying.
I looked again at Pa’s thin hair, his bony shoulders, the flatness where his bum used to be, his skinny legs. It wasn’t Aids. It wasn’t cancer. It was the not knowing that was eating Pa away. I wound my rope up, did it neatly, the special way, how Otis liked it.