My momma is a professional wrestler. At night, I hear her practicing in her bedroom, stomping around in her sparkly red boots. When I can’t sleep, or all the bumping and grumbling wakes me up, I lie in bed and imagine the matches. In my head, she always wins – jumps into a diving bulldog, then pulls a double-knee armbreaker, and finishes them off with an atomic drop.
There are two types of wrestlers: heels and faces. Faces are the good guys, the real fan favorites. Heels are the villains. They wear metal spikes and do illegal moves. Sometimes someone doesn’t even mean to be a heel, but since the audience doesn’t like him, he becomes one. I think momma is a face because the clothes I sometimes see in her hamper are bright colors and look soft like doll clothes. At least I hope momma is a face.
On school days, I get myself up and dressed. I know wrestling is hard work that goes long and late. When I get home, she’s usually still in her pajamas, cooking eggs and toast like it’s breakfast time, even though I’m already stuffed full of science and gym and rectangular pizza by then. Sometimes I see marks and bruises on her neck or legs, but when I ask about them, she just says they’re from kicking the bed frame or bumping the car door. Says she bruises easy. She’s very humble.
Sometimes she has to go away for the night. She says it’s for meetings in the city, but I know it’s for a big match. I want to watch them on TV, but they cost money, and anyway, I don’t know what name she goes by when she’s wrestling. Those are pretty much the only times I see my dad.
Today she left for the whole weekend. My dad came over to the apartment because he mostly lives in the Motel 6 these days, and momma doesn’t want me bit by those bedbugs. He smokes inside even though she doesn’t like it. Maybe because she doesn’t like it.
“Joseph,” he says between puffs, “you should be a plumber. Plumbers make good money.” He’s always talking about money because he never has any. He’s had a lot of jobs: janitor, cab driver, guitar player, sandwich maker in the airport. None of them stuck, so now he’s a house painter.
Some war movie is on TV. I have to talk loudly over the sounds of landmines that send soldiers flying. “Does momma make good money?”
“If she did, you wouldn’t live in no place like this,” he says, laughing a little. Seems fresh coming from someone who lives in the Motel 6. He drops the butt of the cigarette into an empty glass on the end table. I don’t think the apartment is so bad. A little noisy from the highway and the bathtub always backs up, but it’s the only place that feels like home to me.
“Why does momma have to be gone so long this time?” I pick at the rubber buttons on the TV clicker.
He lights up another smoke. “She has to see the doctor,” he says through the side of his mouth.
My heart booms along with the movie. “Is she sick?”
He jerks his head around me to see the screen. “She’s sick, alright.”
The tip of my nose starts to tingle, and then I’m crying.
“Jesus, kid,” he says, finally looking me in the face. “She’s gonna be just fine.” He digs around in the leather bag next to the chair and holds out a Slim Jim, grumbling something about her own damn fault.
One night I asked him about where she goes in the city. He just winked at me and said she’s doin’ tricks. But calling them tricks doesn’t seem fair. Wrestlers aren’t like magicians, who are more like liars, fooling you into thinking they can cut people in two and put them back together again.
When I told the boys at school about momma they said that wrestling is fake, just like magic.
I push the Slim Jim away. My dad opens it and takes big chomps, cigarette still burning between his fingers. “You stay far away from women like your mother when you get older. Ain’t nothin’ but trouble, trust me,” he says, then turns the volume up on the TV.
If my dad were a wrestler, he’d be a heel.
Momma comes home after dark on Sunday night. “You’re up late, Jojo.” She looks at my dad while she says it. Then she drops her bag and starts pushing open the windows in the living room. She’s wearing stretchy pants and a soft black coat that tickles my nose when I wrap my arms around her.
My dad whispers something in her ear on his way out the door, and she gives him a look like she wants to suplex him. She kisses me on the head and hands me the clicker and says to put on anything I want. I put on a cartoon then follow her into the kitchen. Blue-purple spots on the back of her hand shine under the yellow lights when she scoops a spoonful of coffee into a mug of water and warms it up in the microwave. She also warms up a mug of milk for me.
We watch the cartoon together on the couch. She holds her mug against her belly. “Why are you doing that?” I ask.
She smiles. “Tummy ache,” she says. I hold my mug against my belly, too. Soon, the warmth spreads all over. I put my hand on top of hers and shut my eyes. The tricks might not be real, but the bruises sure are.