My Fight / Your Fight (14 page)

I finished practice.

I told Jason what Jim had said.

“
I'm
not going to tell you where to train,” Jason said.

Two days later, I was training at Jason's when Lillie came by. She had an uncomfortable look on her face.

“What's up?” I asked.

Lillie looked down at her Converse.

“It's just with everything with Jim and Jason and all that. We've just been with Jim a long time.” She sounded apologetic.

“I've got your stuff in my car,” she told me.

“You're kicking me out?” I asked.

“We didn't really know how long you were going to stay, and my mom . . .” she trailed off.

“I get it,” I said.

I got my stuff out of her car and brought it into Jason's club. I looked around. I had nowhere else to go and no idea what I was going to do.

When you and everyone around you are immersed in one small community, it is easy to mistake it for the whole world. But once you break away, you realize that no one outside your tiny circle gives a shit about the stupid stuff that was at the center of your little world. When you understand that, you discover there is a much bigger, better world out there.

After Lillie drove away, I dragged my bags into Jason's house.

It was a three-level house. Jason and his wife lived on the third floor. There were a couple of bedrooms on the second floor, with two to three athletes in each room, and then two to three more people crashed in the living room. In the basement was the judo room.

As the newest member of the house, I was assigned to the living room, where I slept on a futon on the floor.

Jason marketed his club as an elite training center. For admittance, you needed high potential (optional) and parents with deep pockets (mandatory). My roommates were a bunch of good-not-quite-elite-enough athletes who wanted to make the Olympic team, but not as much as they wanted to drink, hang out, and hook up. As far as I was concerned they were just a bunch of users. Then again, it seemed like everyone was using someone. Jason and I were certainly using one another—since I was actually winning at the international level my affiliation with his club made him look good and, in exchange, I had a place to live and to train.

I wasn't getting a free ride either. I was receiving a small stipend from the New York Athletic Club, where I was a sponsored member, and an even smaller stipend from USA Judo.

All of the mail went through Jason first. He had a long silver letter opener and opened every letter, addressed to every resident of the house.

“I do it so the envelopes lie flat in the recycling,” Jason explained. “If people rip the envelopes open themselves, then they won't stack flat.”

In the morning, the athletes who lived in the house would race out to get the mail, trying to get to their own letters first. But often, Jason beat us to it. Any checks for me, he took as payment for lodging or other expenses. Jason intercepted and deposited every single one of my checks from USA Judo and the NYAC the entire time I was there. I didn't even know what was coming in or what the cost of anything was. I just had to take everything at his word.

Even worse, I didn't feel myself getting better at Jason's. He wanted every fighter to fight exactly like him—that was his coaching strategy. He does very straight standup judo and little matwork, with an emphasis on timing over strength. I excelled at matwork and used my strength as an asset on the mat. I tried to find a balance between our two approaches, but Jason's style didn't fit my body type, didn't fit my personality, and just didn't fit me.

At Big Jim's, any input I tried to offer was dismissed. At Jason's, my input wasn't just dismissed, it was ridiculed. I was treated like I was fucking stupid.

“What are you doing?” Jason shouted at me one day during practice.

I stopped what I was doing, an
o-goshi
, which is a relatively basic hip throw that worked well for me as a left-handed fighter when I went up against right-handed opponents.

“O-goshi,” I said.

“Ooooh o-goshi,” he said, condescendingly. He adopted a high, lilting voice with a joker-like smile and started waving his hands in the air. “Do o-goshi again. Do it again. Just do o-goshis all day.”

The other fighters laughed.

Fuck all of you
, I thought. I did the throws all day.

At Jason's, I was rarely alone, but I felt incredibly lonely. I hadn't spoken to my mom since I had left home three months earlier. Dick IttyBitty and I were together, but he was one thousand miles away in Chicago. I had Lillie, but things had become strained after her family kicked me out. One of the girls at Jason's club, Bee, had been really nice to me since I had arrived, but she was no Lillie.

My relationship with my housemates was cordial, but not warm. I never really fit in. I was younger than everyone and I was a better, more dedicated athlete, and my success exposed their shortcomings. But the list of clubs I was not welcome at was rapidly growing—Pedros', Hrbek's, home—so Jason's it was.

That May, Dick moved from Chicago to New York to train at Jason's club. I was at a local high school gymnasium where we were setting up mats for the Morris Cup, an annual tournament Jason had named after himself, when Dick walked in. A wave of relief washed over me. A huge smile crossed my face. I felt my cheeks blush.

Dick shared the living room futon with me. He settled right in at Jason's, and became the bridge between me and the other athletes in the house.

A month after Dick arrived, I went to Planned Parenthood to get birth control. A few days later, my phone rang.

“Your test results came back abnormal,” the nurse said.

My face felt hot.

“Are you telling me I have an STD?” I asked. I could hardly get out the words.

“It could be a number of things.”

“Like an STD?”

“We need you to come in for a follow-up exam.”

“Sure,” I said. My hand shook as I jotted down the time and date of my next appointment.

After hanging up the phone, I stormed into the other room. Dick was sitting on the couch.

“Who have you been fucking?” I screamed.

His deer-in-the-headlights look confirmed my worst fear. Rage surged through my body. Every muscle tensed.

“Uh, uh, uh,” he stammered.

“Who. Have. You. Been. Fucking?”

“It was a one time thing. I'm so sorry. It didn't mean anything. It was months ago. Not since I've been here. I'm so sorry.” He was on the verge of hyperventilating.

“Who have you been fucking?” My voice was cold.

“I'm so sorry. Sorry. Oh God, I want to kill myself. I love you so much.”

I was not in the mood to have to repeat myself again.

“Who?” My voice was barely a whisper.

“Bee,” he said.

My mouth suddenly felt dry. My face was burning. My anger mixed with embarrassment.

“Everyone knows about this, don't they?” I asked.

He nodded.

I had to leave the room. I stood in the yard. The last thing I wanted was to go back into that house. But I had nowhere to go. I had burned all my bridges and I was stuck on an island.

For days, Dick begged me to forgive him. I felt like I had no other choice. I felt like he was all I had. Soon we were sharing the futon again like nothing happened. But it was never the same. This time I knew he was no good, and I knew I was lying to myself.

A week later, after my follow-up appointment, I called for my test results.

“Turns out it was nothing,” the nurse said. “Sometimes these tests come back abnormal, then we do them again and it's fine.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I had dodged a bullet, but things in my life were far from fine.

The only reprieve from life at Jason's came when I went to tournaments and training camps. I won the US national championship, Pan American championships, the Rendez-Vous, and the US Open, but winning wasn't making me happy. The low point came when I lost the 2005 world championships in Cairo, Egypt, to an Israeli girl who had no business beating me.

Compounding everything, I was struggling to make weight. I was establishing myself as one of the world's best fighters in my division, but I had grown two inches since making my senior-level debut at sixteen and getting down to sixty-three kilos was getting tougher.

Then one night, as I lay next to Dick, a third roommate stretched out on the nearby couch, his leg dangling over the side, it hit me. I was with a guy who cheated on me in a house full of people who knew about it and said nothing. I was training under a coach I couldn't stand and who was taking my money. I was starving. I was not improving.

“What the fuck am I doing here?” I asked myself out loud.

The next day I called my mom.

“Hello?” I wanted to cry at the familiar sound of my mom's voice. There had been so many times in the intervening eight months that I had wanted to talk to her.

“Hey, Mom,” I said, casually. “It's been a while.”

“Well, I'm sure you've been busy,” my mom said.

Through her network of judo gossips/informants, my mom had been tracking my movements since the day I left home. She had heard about Dick's cheating. She wasn't going to make it easy.

“I was thinking about the holidays,” I said. “The Ontario Open is the day after Thanksgiving, but maybe I could come home after that.”

“You're always welcome here,” my mom said. I wasn't sure if she meant it. Still relief swept through me. I didn't realize how much I'd missed home.

A few weeks later, I won the Ontario Open and caught a flight back to L.A. My mom met me at the airport. I had hoped she would be happy to see me, but instead her brow was furrowed in disapproval.

“Thanks for picking me up,” I said.

“Yeah, Maria had to fly back on the red-eye for work. Jennifer is flying back to San Francisco tonight to go back to college, so I'll get to make the trip again,” she said.

“Fortunately traffic doesn't seem too bad,” I said, in an attempt to make small talk.

“Well, there's noticeably more traffic than when you slip out of the house in the middle of the night and ditch out on your family and head to the airport, but it's not too bad.”

“Look, I feel really bad about that, but it was just something I felt I had to do.”

“Oh, well that makes everything better,” my mom said sarcastically. “Do you know how bad I felt to wake up and find that you had left? Just left everyone? Me. Your sisters. Your cat.”

“Beijing never liked me anyway,” I said, half-joking.

“Maybe she knew you were planning to abandon her,” my mom said, without missing a beat.

At our house, I grabbed my two duffle bags and lugged them to the front door. “I'm home,” I said cheerfully as I threw open the front door.

Silence.

I was hoping my little sister, Julia, would be home. I expected everyone else to be mad at me, but Julia, who was only seven, would be glad I was back.

Jennifer was packing her bag in the living room. She stopped and glared at me.

“You're wearing my shirt, take it off,” she said, coldly.

“Nice to see you too,” I said with a forced laugh.

“Take off my shirt,” Jennifer repeated.

“God, Jen, why do you have to be such a bitch?”

“Well, at least I don't have genital warts!” Jennifer said. My abnormal test results had come to my permanent address and Jen had drawn her own conclusions. She shot me a smug look and something inside me snapped.

“I do not have genital warts!” I shrieked.

Jennifer ran in the only direction she could, to a dead end in the kitchen. I chased her. Jennifer screamed. My mom, who was two steps behind me, coming in the door, grabbed me from behind, catching me in a choke and giving Jennifer enough room out of the kitchen. I threw Mom over my shoulder and chased after my sister. Our longtime housekeeper, Lucia, a small Mexican woman, came in with the laundry. She dropped the basket and blocked me from getting to Jen. Mom caught up to me and tried to restrain me as Jennifer ran up the stairs and locked herself in the bathroom. Mom grabbed my shoulder and shook me.

“What the fuck is your problem?”

“Me? She's the one who started it,” I protested. “Do you know what she said to me?”

“What are you going to do, beat her up? You can't just be attacking people because you don't like what they say.” My mom was irate. “If that was the case, people would be punching people in the face all the time.”

Lucia, looking shell-shocked, picked up the laundry basket.

“I'm sorry, Lucia,” I said as she walked past.

She looked at me, then my mom, then back at me as if to confirm the fight was over.

Later, my mom recounted the events of the afternoon to Dennis. I had never seen him so angry. “You are so lucky Julia was not here to witness that. If that happens again, you can't live here.”

You're right
, I thought.
There's no way I can live here.

That night I texted Dick in Chicago.

“Come here,” he texted back.

“Maybe,” I replied, although my mind was already made up.

Our family was going to St. Louis to visit extended family for Christmas. Two weeks before the trip, I told my mom that I would be flying from St. Louis directly to Chicago.

My mom's brow stayed furrowed in disapproval up until I left for Chicago. But this time leaving felt different. At least, I'd gotten the courage to tell Mom I was leaving even if she didn't want to hear it.

I moved into Dick's parents' house. (I know, one more, huge, blaring, warning sign that I missed: Any guy in his mid-twenties living with his teenage girlfriend in his parents' basement is not the kind of guy you want to date.)

His parents welcomed me with open arms. His mom was a hairdresser and would take me to the salon where she would do my hair. She would do my makeup and dress me up. She was always pulling practical jokes and had a hilariously dirty sense of humor. There wasn't a single day where she didn't try to pants me in the house.