Mama's Magic Whisper

If you see The Champ in public, you will see him smiling, waving, signing autographs. Yet his pain is always with him. His ability to disguise his pain was a discipline he had been crafting since an early age, and over time it was welded and wrought to near perfection.

The Champ's pain was fired in the dual kilns of pain and success. The pain and success accumulated, side by side, over twelve years in mixed martial arts. A sport that levies violence as both punishment and reward. Each ache, jolt, or throb of pain bookmarking a page in his spectacular, undefeated fight anthology, but also in his personal anthology.

The Champ is retired now, yet it is still nearly impossible for anyone else to see his pain. He has become so adept at overcoming so many different types of pain, like defeating so many different types of opponents.

Until recently.

These days, the Champ's biggest opponent is in his head, and for the first time, The Champ is not in control. For the first time, he is losing.

It was in the last fight of his career, just over a year ago, when the pain of intermittent headaches and recurring fevers stepped into the ring with him.

The injury that started the headaches and fevers came in the final eight seconds of the last round of his unanimous decision victory over Jeremy Lyons.

The injury came when the two fighters simultaenously tried to escape the hold of the other. They spun with a graceful semicircle away from each other, then converged, closing the circle when heir heads crashed into each other with extreme force. The crowd gasped when they heard the sickening crack.

Both fighters collapsed onto the canvas. The final seconds of the fight ticked away as they lay there. Lyons and The Champ had both suffered concussions, but The Champ's was much more severe.

The Champ somehow managed to raise himself up through the fiery haze in his vision, through the pulsing of his brain against his skull, through the taste of blood and metal in his mouth.

He had his hand raised in victory, and he even gave a short interview after the fight, but once he got back to his dressing room, he crumpled to the floor and vomited.

* * * * * * *

This was the severe concussion that brought the headaches. He had been concussed before, but the headaces never persisted. These had been harrying him for a year after the Lyons fight. They were intense and were occasionally accompanied by a fever; sometimes a high fever.

The Champ, who had maintained exquisite, mechanical control of so many opponents in so many fights, had not been able to control his own body temperature nor the intense, chronic pain in his skull.

He tried. He tried with the commitment of a champion.

He tried massage therapy, prescriptions for pain medication in increasingly potent doses, even aromatherapy. But none of what he tried could best the headaches and fevers.

The medication made the pain somewhat bearable, but after several months, The Champ stopped taking the pills and instead relied on his exceptional discipline to try to work, and live, with the pain.

The headaches and fevers were physically and emotionally draining. They made him feel weak - like a sick child. This feeling, of being a sick child, was familiar to The Champ - because he had been a sick child.

* * * * * * *

Before he was The Champ, he was Tommy. He grew up in a small rowhouse - 1804 Strickland Street. As a child, Tommy suffered from a form of Periodic Fever Syndrome, which led to recurring, debilitating headaches and fevers.

The headaches and fevers became so intense that Tommy missed the entire second half of his kindergarten year.

Vivid, tactile memories always accompanied the fevers. Later in life, The Champ came across the term "fever-dreams" and realized that's what he experienced as a child and now, what he was experiencing again, as an adult.

Whenever he was sick, the headaches and fevers pulled him into the heightened, insane landscape of the fever-dreams.

Although he hated the feeling, the fever-dreams brought a stunning, vivid color palette to the world. As the fevers subsided, the colors on the palette slowly faded into the softer tones of normal life.

One of these kaleidescope memories was of his Mama sitting next to him in his childhood bedroom as he lay in bed sweating profusely, in winter, with no blanket or cover on him.

Mama gently wiped his head with a cool washcloth, then folded the washcloth into a neat rectangle and laid it across his pulsing forehead.

She kept a periwinkle plastic basin filled with ice next to the bed because his fever would heat the washcloth up after only a few minutes on his forehead.

"It's hot again Mama." Tommy would whisper. Mama would lift the waschloth off his head and dip it into the melting ice, wring it out, fold it, and place it back on her son's rosy, hot forehead.

"Better?" She would say.

"Better." Tommy whispered.

After more than fifty rinses, wrings, and tender replacements of the washcloth, Mama, exhausted, watched as her son finally drifted off to sleep, the washcloth still folded neatly across his beautiful, pink forehead.

She rose up off the bed, padded across the wooden floor, and closed the door behind her, all without making a single sound.

* * * * * * *

Sometime around three in the morning, Tommy woke up. The washcloth was hot, and his head was painful and swollen. He got up and went into the bathroom.

The ceramic tiles in the small bathroom felt cool on his bare feet as he lifted the toilet seat to pee. He finished, then flushed the toilet and lowered the seat like Mama taught him.

"Don't leave that seat up Tommy. Mama might fall in the TOY-let!" She would say whenever he headed to the bathroom, putting a ludicrous emphasis on the first syllable of "toilet," and they would laugh together hugged by the special, sacred joy shared only between mother and child.

As Tommy turned to walk back to his bedroom, the fever's crushing fatigue stopped him. He sat down on the black and white pinwheel tiles on the bathroom floor. Then he tilted himself over, and lay down on the floor, letting his face rest on the cold ceramic tiles. A glorious coolness dispersed across his head.

He exhaled deeply.

After a few seconds, he raised himself up enough to remove his pajamas and undershirt, lying flat on his bare stomach and chest, turning his head to the side and letting his burning cheek rest on the healing magic of the black and white tiles.

Then Tommy slept.

Mama, rising early the next morning, found her son in the bathroom, and after initial concern, saw that he was sleeping comfortably, the pink flush gone from his cheeks, and she did not wake him.

"Sleep baby. Mama's here."

Mama's whisper slid into his dreams and although his eyes stayed closed, he saw Mama in the doorway, whispering to him.

The Champ had forgotten the way Mama made him feel as a sick child. He knew he had to get back to his past, regain the healing magic of his childhood, and remember what had been forgotten.

He knew he had to go home.

The Champ entered "1804 Strickland Street" into the GPS of his black Chevy Silverado truck and started driving. He was flush with yet another fever and his head was pounding. He felt the truck's air conditioning blowing cold on his face. It felt good, but it did not wake him from this, his latest fever-dream.

He pulled up to an intersection, stopped, and closed his eyes while he waited for the light to change. A memory of Mama came to him.

The worst memory of Mama.

Three months after he knocked out Jalen Jackson to win the championship. He got the call when he was training in California, three thousand miles away.

A grade-5 brain aneursym took Mama quickly. There was no chance for a final embrace.

Or a final kiss.

Or a final "I love you."

A week later, in his hometown, Mama was buried. The Champ was twenty four.

When Mama died, The Champ inherited his childhood home. He paid to have it cleaned regularly, but had only been there once; the week after Mama died.

He drove there alone after the funeral. When he walked into the living room, the memories of Mama came at him first as a gentle mist, but swelled into a deluge that overwhelmed The Champ like no opponent ever could.

He never made it upstairs, or even to the dining room or the kitchen. He turned and walked back out of the house, locking the door behind him.

* * * * * * *

But now, as he turned onto Strickland Street, he knew this time it would be different, adeptly parking the massive truck in a space in front of his childhood home like he parallel parked every day.

"Like riding a bike." He thought to himself, and smiled, getting out of the truck.

Then Mama came to him again. The memory of her teaching him to parallel park when he was sixteen.

He was having trouble consistently parking according to the requirements for his driving test. He would park perfectly, then the next time bump into the curb. If he hit the curb during his driving test, he would fail.

"Keep practicing baby, soon you'll never forget how to parallel park. It'll be like riding a bike."

Her voice echoed, clear in his memory.

"...like riding a bike."

"...like riding a bike."

He heard her voice as he walked up the sidewalk leading to the front door.

He eyes lingered on the black "1804" painted on the white wooden plaque on the wall next to the door. He reached up and touched it.

His head was throbbing as he opened the door to his past, descending deeper into this latest fever-dream.

It was like the memories in the house were waiting for him...like they missed him. They swarmed around him in the living room.

Mama's voice called to him from the kitchen.

"You want a sandwich Tommy?"

This time he controlled the memory, letting it drape over his forehead like the cool washcloth. Although his head hurt terribly and his face was on fire, he smiled.

He walked into the kitchen. He retrieved a large glass bowl from the cupboard and filled it with ice, the periwinkle plastic basin used by Mama for the same purpose all those years ago, now long gone.

He carried the glass bowl up the steps. Although the chilled glass felt good on his hands, his head throbbed with each footfall as he made his way upstairs to his old bedroom.

He was surprised at how small the room looked. It was tiny. The single bed was neatly made up and the room was clean. He put the bowl of ice down on the night table next to the bed and pulled the sheets down.

He got undressed and folded his clothes, putting them on his old dresser, then started to lie down on the bed, eager to descend into the fever-dream of Mama putting the cool washcloth on his head.

The washcloth. He sighed at the inconvenient, untimely delay.

He rose and walked back into the hallway. The bathroom door was closed. He entered this forgotten room without wearing a memory.

He smiled when he saw the old-school white and black pinwheel tiles of the bathroom floor. He opened the closet and found the towels and washcloths.

He took a washcloth and closed the closet door. He turned to go back into his old bedroom, then the forgotten room remembered itself to him. The tiles felt cool again on his bare feet.

He stood for a moment, then turned and put the washcloth on the bathroom sink. He slowly sat down. Then he tilted himself over, lying down on the floor, letting his face rest on the cold ceramic tiles. Their coolness dispersed across his head.

He adjusted his body so that the magic black and white tiles touched as much of his inflamed skin as possible. The familiar coolness flowed through him and his eyes closed. The Champ's body and mind grew still, like a winter pond.

He drifted off to sleep on the black and white pinwheel floor of the forgotten room. The childhood magic wove through him and he felt Mama's whisper slide into his dreams once more.

And though his eyes stayed closed, he saw Mama in the bathroom doorway whispering to him.

"Sleep baby. Mama's here."