Chapter 24: Paid

Gina took the microphone.

Two hundred faces looked up at her.

She cleared her throat, and nothing came out, and the older man by the ropes called, "Go on, Coach!"

"I don't talk much," she said finally.

A ripple of laughter went through the room.

"Most of you know that. But I want to say something, and Sasha has put me in a position where I can't run."

Sasha clapped her hands over her face.

"Nine years ago this gym was going to close."

"Somebody stepped in, and all I could do was put a plate by the door."

She turned the microphone in her hands.

"I never knew who she was. I found out this year. Her name was Florence Whitfield."

I heard my own breath catch.

"She spent everything she had on a gym she had never entered."

"For the sake of a boy who had once been let in the side door."

"Her daughter is the woman who just fought three rounds in my ring."

Heads turned.

Cosima was crying openly, and Sasha was crying and pretending not to.

"I'm not telling you this so you'll clap," Gina said. "I'm telling you so you'll know what this place is."

"It's not mine."

"It's all of ours."

"It's a door that stays open because somebody once held it."

She looked straight at me.

"The plate's coming down tomorrow. I'm putting up a new one."

Then she gave the microphone to the volunteer, stepped down from the apron.

Walked out of the gym through the crowd, and nobody said a word.

I found her in the side hall with her back against the brick and her face in her hands.

"That was awful," she said.

"That was beautiful."

"I'm never doing that again."

"You'd better not."

I held her until the shaking stopped.

The next morning, at seven, the older man by the ropes came with a drill and a ladder.

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