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“Yo, yo, yo, what’s up? This is your boy Pretzel coming at you live from Coney Island with the match of the century, the fight of the summer—and it ain’t even really summer yet! Do me a favor and lemme hear you make some noise!!”
“Who d’you think you’re talkin’ to, man?”
“Yeah, nobody’s here but us!”
“I’m just setting the stage—you ever heard’ve dramatic openings?”
It was hot.
Mad hot.
The kinda hot that made the air wet, that crawled its way deep inside Alonda’s skin and, even worse, made her bangs frizz. She couldn’t shake it, couldn’t escape it, and damn, it was only June and already feeling like August. She’d glare at the heat if it had a face to glare at, give it a good cold stare and tell it to eff off or something.
“You gonna call this match or what?”
“Hey, don’t rush me, it’s all a part of the process.”
It was for sure too hot for whoever was making so much noise outside. Alonda stomped over to the window and looked out. If she couldn’t glare at the heat, she could at least glare at them, whoever was disturbing her postschool, pre-Teresa afternoon peace. Teresa was usually home by the time she got home, but if the trains were sucking (as the trains were known to do) it meant Alonda had some time to herself. And she had been reading, sprawled out on the couch in the living room; she especially liked how the late afternoon light hit the window as she read, the peaceful hum of the fridge as it turned on and off scoring the worlds she was visiting in her book, knowing that she wouldn’t be disturbed by any of Teresa’s nonsense—but how was a person supposed to concentrate with all that noise barreling through the window?!
“You know what else is a part of the process? Actually wrestling.”
“Yo, gimme some time! Everybody loves the commentator!”
Being on the fifth floor didn’t help with the heat—the apartment was stifling. She’d felt it as soon as she got home from school, walking up the stairs, the heat getting more and more thick and ominous as she went till she opened the door to her apartment and breathed in the stale, hot air. She’d pulled her thick black hair into a big messy bun as she stomped over to her book, trying to concentrate on the words but using the pages to fan herself every couple of sentences instead.
She pulled up the screen to the window and stuck her head outside it, far as it would go. She could almost trick herself into feeling a breeze that way.
She looked at the playground below—that’s where they were, the disruptors of Alonda’s peace, four of them, all about her age, looked like three guys and a girl, all of them yelling, but two of them in the middle of a wrestling match. Like, full-out pretending to wrestle—the girl, she was short, Black with dark brown skin, her long box braids flying in the air, sun bouncing off the neon pink tank top she wore with baggy denim shorts. She had her arms wrapped around the tallest guy’s waist, pretending to try to flip him over but doing a sloppy job at it.
“Yo, you need to do a tighter grip!” Alonda could hear him say with an eye roll in his voice.
He was really tall, looked like a clear foot taller than the girl, Black with lighter brown skin, and even from the window Alonda could see how toned he was. He wore a tight-fitting gray tank top and gym shorts, looked more prepared for wrestling than the others there.
“All right, here it goes!” the girl said, clearly pretending to try to flip him over, but she was so obviously faking it, her grip was too loose around his waist, and he wasn’t even trying to sell the move, so it didn’t look like he was trapped or struggling to get out of her grip at all. He was just kinda standing there, half-heartedly waving his arms around. Alonda stifled a laugh. He kinda looked like one of those inflatable tubey-looking things that flap their arms around in the wind.
Looked like fun, though.
They were making a ruckus, but nobody around them was really paying attention, everyone going about their business unbothered. Like, Alonda could see Ms. Wong cutting through the park, coming back from the Key Foods probably, worn old Mets cap shielding her face from the sun as she pushed her cart overflowing with grocery bags across the way, Becky from B3 sitting on a bench, purple hair done up in a high ponytail and talking a mile a second into a bedazzled cell phone. It looked like Big Ricky from the apartment downstairs had fallen asleep on a bench that was in a clutch spot of shade, a paper bag in his lap and small boom box whispering out ’90s hip-hop at his feet.
The playground area sat in the center of the public park on the corner next to Alonda’s building. It was fine as playgrounds go, a little janky and usually abandoned, but not now. The wrestlers were all gathered in a spot between the jungle gym and the swings where there was mad padding, perfect for cushioning falls and skinning knees without breaking them. They were real, full-on wrestling—real WWE-style wrestling, not the kind that was in the Olympics and shit—or they were at least trying to. They was pretty sloppy at it.
But it was pretty cool.
Unlike this weather.
Alonda eyed the beat-up portable fan out from the corner of her eye. It was on the coffee table, but it was also Teresa’s, and she had deep feelings about Alonda using what she deemed her stuff, so she didn’t wanna risk it—Teresa could be home any second, and Alonda didn’t wanna count on her having a good day, specially since she never seemed to have a good day on any day that ended with the word day. Only thing that seemed to make her less cranky these days was Jim, and he wasn’t going to be around till the weekend, at least.
Alonda stuck her head farther out the window and tried to take in the view. She forgot how good Coney Island could look sometimes. Shit like that happens when you’re in a spot long enough, and Alonda had been here pretty much her whole life. Seventeen years of the same view, the same crummy wallpaper, the same tired floors. Okay, well, technically not this crummy wallpaper or these tired floors; she hadn’t always lived with Teresa. When Mami was alive, she’d lived on the floor below with her, where Big Ricky lived now, but Alonda could barely remember it. Besides, Mami and Teresa had been over each other’s homes so much, she couldn’t really keep track of where her memories took place. Like, she could remember playing on the crappy linoleum floor with plastic blocks that were chewed around the edges (’cause she used to chew whatever she could chew on), and her mom putting on some salsa and dancing so hard that the neighbors downstairs pounded the ceiling, but Teresa was always there, dancing right alongside her mom, so who knew where it was, downstairs or here. And who knew if that was something that actually happened and not just something she dreamed up—Mami and Teresa both dancing, laughing, and happy.
Alonda shook her head, trying to get the memories to fall out her ears. It wasn’t that she didn’t wanna think about her mom, it was just that sometimes memories had a weight to them that she was too tired to carry right now.
“And King tries to swat the Incredible Lexi off his back—”
Copyright © 2023 by by Gina Femia