Picture Perfidy

Nerves are bundles of fibers that send impulses of sensation to the brain or spinal cord and in turn they send sensation responses to muscles and organs. Nerves are uncontrollable, even though some may argue they are, and you may very well be able to hide your nerve response, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I have been boxing for eight years, with a record of 50-8-2, and before every single one of those fights I was nervous as all hell. I felt tingling sensations in my fingertips, toes, and head that made me fidgety; a boxer’s jump before a fight isn’t to warm up, it’s to pump your adrenaline and rid yourself of any nerves. That’s what I was doing when there was a knock on my dressing room door.

The venue hosting the fight always gave a gift to us boxer’s as a thank you for kicking each other’s ass here so here the Administration was with my gift. This venue decided a slice of chocolate cake was the way to go...were they serious? I will puke in the middle of my fight if I decide to take a bite of that sugar bomb. No thank you. My manager, Tasha, tosses it after the Administration leaves and adds some napkins in so whoever takes out the trash doesn’t see it. Suddenly I hear the crowd roar accompanied with loud music, the cue the fight will commence.

My entrance music is a self made mix of Shawn Michaels theme music with a Linkin Park spin, my two favorite entities and motivation to keep up with my boxing career. Being a female boxer has its pros and cons, but it’s what I love and know. My heart starts to beat a little harder in my chest as I hear my melody. The walk to the ring is when the nerves hit the worst, but as I pass my girl and see her smile, my confidence is refilled. I wink and blow her a kiss as I enter the ring. We put our robes in the corner, tap gloves, and there goes the bell. My challenger quickly throws a couple of 1, 2’s that I dodge. I do not swing back. She comes at me again and connects a body shot and that’s when I return with a right hook that makes full contact with her jaw; I can feel the transfer of energy from fist to face. My opponent stumbles into the ropes and lands on the floor.

Thud!

Crowd goes wild!!!!

I am shocked. My team rushes the ring and lifts me in the air! I am happy for a quick KO, but dang that was fast. After moments of celebration and cheers, my team puts me down and I make my way to the ref so the fight is officially declared. As I make my way, something does not seem right. The other side of the ring has huddled into a circle and my opponent’s team looks concerned. Oh man, I must have busted her jaw or eye socket or something. As I make my way closer, I am stopped and told to wait right there...what is happening? Suddenly a familiar whisper in my ear says, “She’s not waking up.” I whip around to see Tasha with the most worrisome look on her face.

“What do you mean she’s dead?” is all I could get out of my mouth as Laila, my girl, unwrapped my gloves even though I had a million other thoughts.

“She’s dead, Mya. Finito. And they think your hit did it. Now, that’s just speculation until the autopsy is done, but they will be searching both dressing and locker rooms in the meantime.”

“What the … autopsy? … She’s really gone?” I feel so confused that a hit could do such damage and my hit at that. There’s no way I knocked this chick dead and if I did, it was an accident, they would see it was an accident, and there will be no charges. It has to be.

As I am leaving the venue, there is yellow tape everywhere and both rooms are closed off. This can’t be happening, but I didn’t do anything wrong and the only outcome is vindication, right?

I barely slept the night, barely ate, barely got dressed this morning, but I somehow made it to the boxing gym. The reality of the situation and the potential charges hit me like a ton of bricks, but doesn’t everything at 3am? Laila and I do not live together, so she is already at the gym with Tasha waiting for me. The smell of bacon and coffee in the air awakened the sleeping beast in my stomach, uplifting my mood slightly.

“Thank you for the breakfast, it’s the perfect amount of grief grease.” I say slumped spinning in the chair. Laila hasn’t said much, but then again there’s not much you can say in a situation like this.

“Chile, relax. We haven’t heard anything yet so that’s a good sign. If they had anything, we would know by now. They probably figured out this was all some sort of freak accident and gonna call us when the case is closed. Watch…” Tasha states so confidently as her nose is in her phone. “And please clean up after y’all selves, I’m the manager, not the maid or yo momma”

“Yes Mama Tashaaaaa” both Laila and I sing in sync then burst into laughter. It feels good to laugh. I could always count on them to bring me out of sulking.

The day after a fight is usually spent soaking, light therapies like electrical stimulation, massage, resting, and Netflix, but yesterday’s fight ended so quickly, a new record for me and one I will never beat again, that the routine R&R is not necessary. I opted for an hour in the sauna, light sparring, massage, tacos and Netflix. The day was quiet otherwise with not a word about the fight besides the chats we had among ourselves. Today was a good day.

We all slept at the gym as we own a suite inside. Tasha’s phone ringing woke us all up and it was not the first time it rang. I look at mine to check the time, 8:27am, bacon time.

“Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. Yea. Ok. Yea. I understand. We will be there.” Tasha hangs up her call and turns around with cups of coffee. Magic?

“We will be where?” Laila asks as I slurp my coffee.

“The police station.”

I spit out my coffee.

“The where? You buggin”

“Chill Mya, it’s just to ask the usual questions and close everything out like I said. It’s standard procedure. No one has talked to you, or any of us yet, they needed to eventually. We knew that.”

Thirty minutes later we arrived at the police station. My palms are sweaty and my nerves are rattled. We check in at the desk and are instructed to have a seat at the bench, someone will be right with us. Tasha and Laila are on their phones while I count the tiles on the floor. I somewhat understand their lax attitude because none of them made the hit. Their career is not on the line, their life isn’t in jeopardy and that gets me a little angry. I stand up suddenly and say oddly loud,

“Where is the bathroom?”

The clerk points directly to the left. I go splash cold water on my face and say over and over again to myself in the mirror that everything is going to be ok. As I step out the bathroom, I hear a man shout,

“Mya Lugo, Tasha Hill, and Laila Reading please follow me!”

We follow him down the corridor, we make a left and he says,

“Lugo room 2, Hill 5, and Reading 4.”

“Separate rooms?” I say nervously. “Why? I thought this was quick and a together thing.”

“Standard procedure.” he flatly replies.

I’m standing in the room with the desk, two chairs, and mirror wall. Stop watching me and let’s get this over with. 20 minutes pass and finally two investigators enter the room. Both men in black khaki pants with gray button downs, sleeves rolled up, badge in the belt, gun on the side, intimidation in their eyes. Everything is going to be ok.

“Finally.” I sigh.

“Please have a seat. Let’s chat for a sec.”

“I’ll stand.”

“Please sit.”

I sit slowly and not fully on the chair, my back isn’t touching.

“Tell us your version of what happened the night of June 16?” Says the investigator with a slightly less hair line.

“What do you mean by my version? There’s one version. The bell went off, we spared for a few, I made contact, she went down and apparently did not get back up. That’s the only version.”

“What did you do before the fight?”

“Get ready?” I replied puzzled.

Both men sigh, “And what does ‘get ready’ exactly mean?”

“You know, get dressed, get my hair braided, warm up...get in the zone”, I say confused.

“Yea, the zone... did you eat anything?”

“I stop eating 3 hours before a fight. I get queasy. What does this have to do with anything? Anything that happened was an accident. This is boxing…”

“This is boxing?” he cuts me off a bit snarky, “So you expect to knock someone dead?”

“NO! Not at all. I expect injuries and a win or loss. No one thinks of dying.”

“Were you offered anything to eat?”

“No, my team knows not to …” but then I remember, “...wait, the venue offered me a slice of chocolate cake as their gift to the fighters. But I didn’t touch it. It was thrown right in the trash. Sugar is the worst thing I could eat, so I declined. Not in front of the staff, of course. You could…”

“We looked in the trash and found the cake. Here’s the deal Mya, autopsy and investigation is complete and we have the picture of what happened to Margot, your opponent.”

“Thank God” I said, relieved.

“Autopsy did not reveal she died from head trauma or the impact of your hit. In fact, toxicology reports came back that she was poisoned. You see, we went to check for alcohol and other drugs and we got a hit on one: arsenic. There was arsenic in that cake and you didn’t eat it. We must follow all leads so we looked into where the cake came from and the venue denies this mysterious slice of cake. In fact, their policy prohibits giving food to fighters as fighters usually decline food prior to a fight. It didn’t take much for us to check security footage, track down the delivery man, and have everything lead us right back to where we knew we would end up...at you”

“AT ME!?” I point to my own chest.

“Yes, you. The cake was bought as an online order from your phone with your card. We tracked it.”

“THAT IS INSANE! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! I did not do this!” I run for the door when both men grab me and start reading me my rights.

“NO! NO! THIS IS ALL WRONG!! WHY WOULD I KILL HER? I DON’T EVEN KILL ROACHES! Ask Tasha! Ask Laila!!!” I begin to sob. This is a nightmare.

“Oh we did and they confessed to everything. They said you needed this fight in order to enter State and the rest wrote itself. Fortunately for them, their only charge is not reporting a known crime, unfortunately for you it’s murder 1, premediation.”

I fainted.

When I come to my limp body is being dragged down the corridor and as we pass the bathroom, the door swings open and I catch a glimpse of Tasha and Laila making out and feeling each other up on the sink. Was I set up?