Squaw Girl: A Boxer's Battle for Love Read online

  SQUAW GIRL: A BOXER’S BATTLE FOR LOVE

  By

  ABBY MORNING FLOWER

  Text Copyright © 2016 Abby Morning Flower

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  PART I: BUCKBRUSH FALLS MINNESOTA

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  PART II: LAGOS NIGERIA

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  PART III: NORTH STAR NIGERIAN GIRL’S SCHOOL

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  PART IV: BOKO HARAM CAMP

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  EPILOGUE: BUCK BRUSH FALLS SIX MONTHS LATER

  Chapter 45

  PART I: BUCKBRUSH FALLS MINNESOTA

  Chapter 1

  I’m in the corner waiting for the sixth round when I feel a wet finger in my ear. I don’t know how Levi Quinn, my pain-loving, wanna-be boyfriend, got past security but he’s standing on the step behind me.

  I feel his finger move to my sweat soaked neck and slide down between my shoulder blades. Turning, I watch him put his wet finger it in his mouth. “Damn, that tastes good,” he says, smacking his lips and rolling his eyes. “You half-breed squaws taste even better than you look. We’re going to party tonight,” he says. “I’m not letting you out of my sight when the fight’s over.”

  The tears surprise me. After all I’ve been through, “Half-breed” and “Squaw” still hurt. I swipe at them with my right glove and move closer, ready to give him another thing to taste—my left uppercut. “Get your rich, East Side ass back to the seats, pretty boy.” I lunge toward him but Gus gets there first.

  He pulls him down the steps and pushes him into the security guard. “How the hell did he get here. Get him out, now!”

  I watch Levi move back to his seat and blow me a kiss. He’s a townie like me. We went to Buck Brush Falls High school, stayed in town, and are finishing our junior year at North Star College. There are some big differences. He lives in on a hill in a gated community on the ritzy East Side, his dad’s a lawyer and his family has money. I live in a trailer near a swamp next to the reservation, my dad’s in prison, my mom’s disabled from the beating he gave her, and I have to be a human punching bag to make enough money to fit in and get out of here.

  Gus is pissed. He jams the mouth piece between my lips and screams in my ear. “Enough putting on a show for that weirdo. Get inside, and use the right. It will be better for Roxy. Why torture her? Take her out now and end this sham!”

  “Damn strait, uncle. I’ll put her out of her misery . . .” I don’t get a chance to say more because Gus grabs my shoulders and shoves me into the ring.

  I look again at Levi. He’s in the end, second row seat, and stands out from the usual crowd of drunks, gamblers and part-time hookers that come to these unsanctioned Friday night fights in the basement of the casino. He’s fresh, young, and—bait for the pickpockets and muggers—alone and well-dressed.

  I begin the round with a left hook that starts the blood flowing again over her eye. She drops her head and I land a straight right that puts her to her knees in the middle of the ring. The ref steers me into a corner and starts to count Roxie out.

  “Is that what turns you on, frat boy?” I shout at Levi. He can’t hear me over the crowd’s roar but I’m right. His mouth has gone slack, his head’s leaning back, and his eyes are shut. I should be ashamed but putting on a show for the undisputed big man on campus is somehow appealing despite his insults.

  Roxie gets up on the eight count. She lurches toward me and gets me in a clinch. I could push her back, but I let her hold on and scream in her ear. “Just stay down,” I don’t need to hurt you.”

  Her eyes are glazed but her voice is clear. “Need the money . . . Back off . . . Squaw-Girl”

  There it is again. I’m not a boxer, not a woman, just “Squaw-Girl.”

  “Okay, has-been. I’ll dance with you for a while before knocking you on your fat white ass.”

  I push her away and tattoo her with left jabs. Her nose is broken and blood’s dripping from a cut over her right eye. This crowd will mob the ref if he stops it. I can do it anytime—don’t really want to hurt her—but Levi seems like he’s getting closer to an orgasm with each blow and Roxie’s “half-breed” still stings so I keep playing with her.

  I have her in the corner. She’s too tired to keep her hands up so I just stand back and paw her with my left. I move next to ear. “How you like the half-breed squaw girl now?”

  Roxie was world ranked before she was busted for drug dealing and money laundering. She’s not the boxer she was before going to prison. She needs the money and no legitimate promoter will touch her. I’m three weeks from my twenty-first birthday and she’s more than twice my age, slow, and hasn’t managed to kick her habit. I’m six feet one, weigh in at one hundred forty seven pounds, and Gus has kept me in great shape. Roxy’s five ten and a flabby one sixty. The fight is billed as, Squaw Girl Layla Peterson vs. Foxy Roxy Raymond: The battle of youthful power and enthusiasm against the ring knowledge and experience of an old pro.

  I hate the promoter’s degrading hype term, Squaw Girl, almost as much as I hated being called Half-Breed when I was a gangly, shy girl with a scar on her face in Junior High. That was before I got tough and filled out to the extent that boys payed more attention to my figure than my scar or my Ojibwe heritage.

  I push her against the ropes, stand back and wait for her to move. When she comes out, I calmly say, “Time to leave the reservation and head for the retirement home old lady.”

  Tonight I’ve got a shot at a big payday—Roxy’s favored over the lowly college junior Squaw Girl but Gus and I know different and he’s bet heavy on me. For little Buck Brush Falls Casino, there’s some big money at play tonight—Roxy’s drawn a crowd from as far away as Minneapolis and Fargo. These macho gamblers and their painted escorts seem to get a kick out of watching women boxers pound each other. Last week it was midget tag-team wrestlers and the place was only half full of locals and a low-end coke dealer from Duluth.

  Okay, time to end it, no holding back. I throw a fast left jab that opens the cut wider over her eye. Because of what my dad did, I try to resist, but when I draw blood my heart starts pumping faster and I want to attack. I follow with another left, a sharp hook over her ear. She flounders and I end it with a right to her jaw, hard with a snap. She drops like a rock.

  While the referee counts her out, I look at Levi. His eyes are locked shut, he’s leaning back, and his lips are pursed. I can’t hear over the noise but I’d bet on a moan.

  Gus doesn’t slap me on the back as usual. “It’s a prize fight, not a damn torture chamber to entertain your college
boyfriend,” he growls. I watch the crowd grow slack jawed and big eyed as they release their suppressed attraction to violence. Most bet on Roxy and are quiet but I can hear the cheers of the few who took a chance on me.

  There is something very wrong. Roxy Raymond can’t get up. She’s on her back with a vacant look in her eyes. I can’t tell if she’s breathing. A fat, red faced drunk in a dirty Vikings sweatshirt shouts over the silenced crowd, “I think the Indian bitch fucking killed her!”

  I stand in my corner and watch the ring doctor hover over her and shoo away the crowd of trainers and officials. I see the medics arrive and carry her out. I want to throw up but Gus drags me to the locker room where I do it in private.

  Chapter 2

  Levi must have paid off the guard because he’s waiting in the locker room. He ignores Gus, runs up and puts his dry arms around my sweaty neck. I’m not in the mood, still thinking of Roxy stretched out on the canvas and tasting the puke in my throat. “Get your sick arms off me, freak!” I push him hard enough that he stumbles over a bench and crashes into a Locker.

  He looks back with a lopsided smile, licking his lips. The push didn’t hurt him, it turned him on.

  “Get the hell out of here,” yells Gus.

  I should help Gus toss him through the door, but I hear myself say, “It’s okay, let the big man on campus—the frat boy quarterback stay. He seems to like disasters. Why deny him his pleasures?” It feels like someone else is talking but I point to a chair near the shower. “Just sit over there while I get my stuff.”

  Gus takes the tape off my hands while I look in the mirror. No real damage—same face: slightly high cheek bones, ruddy complexion—courtesy of my Ojibwe blood—wide spread, blue eyes that people tell me are “intense”—courtesy of my Danish mother, and slightly crooked nose offset to the left on top—courtesy of a right cross two years ago. The three inch scar that runs from my left eye to my ear that some people politely tell me is sexy, I owe to my father’s drunken rage. My thick dark hair, size, and, what my mother calls a strong chin, must be the result of random genetics.

  I stare back. What did you do to Roxy? How steep is the price to get accepted and get out? I close my eyes, open them and look again. Levi’s reflection from across the room shares the mirror. Who invited you in my picture? Do I even want what you’re offering? The mirror gives no answers.

  Gus turns his back while I take off my chest protector and step out of my groin pad. Levi openly stares and I’m too preoccupied with Roxy to care. He keeps looking while I shower. Gus ignores us both and makes a trip to the betting window. When he comes back I’m sitting on the bench, trying to hide my tears and wearing my street clothes. Levi is wearing a disgusted sneer.

  “What are you sniveling about? You won, right? Beat the crap out of her.”

  “Yeah, I guess I did,” I whisper, slumping lower and studying the dirty tile on the floor.

  Gus gets me up and drives me to the Buck Brush Falls Hospital in his banged up Ford F-150 pick-up. Levi follows in his red BMW convertible.

  We find Mickey, Roxy’s’ boyfriend, in the emergency room waiting area. “I’m not blaming you,” he says. “I told her not to fight. She’s too old and out of shape. She’d never pass a drug test. The regular boxing associations won’t touch her. This underground fight was all she could get.”

  “Why?” I look down at my clenched fists as though I’m holding a pair of clubs.

  “The casino manager called.” Mickey also looks at my hands. “He said because these special fights had no promoter’s cut or betting regulations we could make some quick money. She thought she could beat an unranked college girl. Roxy’s got gambling debts and we’re supporting two of her kids. This was supposed to be a one and done deal—get us started again.”

  “I’m sorry for what happened but we bet on Layla and made enough off your girlfriend’s inflated reputation to pay for Layla’s do-gooder African trip with some left over for her mom,” Says Gus, holding a wad of bills in his right hand.

  I look at the money and see a ticket out of Desperation Hollow. More tears flow as I shake my head and watch my dream crumble again.

  “Give it to him,” I say, working to keep the whine out of my voice.

  “All of it? Why not keep half?”

  “All of it, Gus. Give it to him now.” All four of us are now looking at my clenched fists.

  Gus hands the bills to Mickey. “You’ll need to fight again if you can do it. There’s no other way you can pay for that trip.” He shakes his head and leaves.

  Dr. Mason, my old boyfriend’s dad is on duty. It’s almost midnight when he comes to the waiting room. He gives me an angry look and walks right past me to Mickey. “We won’t know anything until tomorrow. Go home to bed. You can’t do anything here.”

  “I wait until Mickey leaves. “ How is she Doctor? Tell me straight.”

  “Not too good. She’s in a coma thanks to you. Beating people senseless runs in your family. You Black Bear women are as bad as your men. We won’t know what kind of damage you’ve caused until she comes out of it.”

  “If she comes out of it.”

  Yes,” he says, moving away, “If . . .”

  Chapter 3

  I’m standing at the emergency room door, numb, not knowing what to do next when I feel Levi squeeze my hand. He leads me like a beaten dog to where he’s parked his BMW in a space reserved for doctors. He powers out of the lot, turns right and I see the lights of the bridge that crosses the Buck Brush River and leads to the good side of town.

  “You’re going the wrong way. I live in Desperation Hollow, next to the reservation.”

  “I’m going to make good on my promise. We’re going to party but first we’re going swimming.”

  I don’t need a party or a quickie by a pool with Levi tonight. If anything, I need to talk to one of the college chaplains or, maybe Gus’s Ojibwe shaman buddy. Before I can tell him to turn around, I feel his hand slide up the inside of my leg.

  We’re blasting across the bridge at ninety. He’s holding the wheel with one hand, stretching the other across the center panel and doing some finger reconnaissance with the other. I feel an unexpected jolt of erotic energy and am ashamed after what just happened. “We’re going to get killed the way you’re driving. Put both hands on the wheel and slow down. I don’t want my last memory on earth to be your fingers wondering around my crotch.” I snap.

  He puts his hand back on the steering wheel. “One of the things I like about you is the way you always come up with wise ass comments.”

  “You don’t know that much about me. We’ve never hung out.”

  “I’ve had my eye on you for a long time. Some people think I’m strange, but you win that contest. You were the valedictorian of our high school, but never tried to fit in with the other brains. You mostly pissed them off. You were an all-state basketball player and soccer forward but turned down a full scholarship to the University of Minnesota to stay in this Podunk town. You never even went out for the teams at North Star. You lied about your age and have been boxing in that foul basement since you were sixteen. You have a violent streak that scares people. Then, there’s sex—”

  “Sex . . . what about sex?”

  “I can’t read you. You could have had your choice in high school but only had one boyfriend, Andy, and that fizzled our senior year. At North Star you spend a lot of time with Sammy Phillips and that gay math professor, Dr. Shay. Some of us thought you swung that way too.”

  “Us women boxers get that a lot,” I say, remembering the times when mistaken women have tried to put a move on me—a tall scar-faced, half-breed boxer who, therefore, must be a lesbian.

  “I’ve done my homework and know different,” he says, moving his hand back on my leg.

  We’re going slower now and I stop his exploration half way to its goal but I don’t push it away. Why not let him have his fun? I lean back, shut my eyes, try to let my guilt evaporate, and increasingly enjoy the feeling.
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  * * *

  The car stops. I open my eyes and we’re parked in front of a large East Side colonial—only seven miles from my rusted out trailer but in the different universe I long for. Lights are blazing from all the windows. I can hear the throbbing of a base and see a dozen cars parked on the street and the driveway.

  Levi leads me down a flagstone path to an indoor swimming pool behind the house. We stop in a heated shelter where he takes out two tanning pads and lays them side by side. He stares at my shorts which his explorations have left un-hooked and I haven’t bothered to re-fasten. “Swim?” he asks.

  Without waiting for an answer, he kicks off his sandals, slides out of his pants and takes off his shirt. He steps out of his red bikini shorts, kicks them in the air, catches them and flashes me a smile. Dipping a hand in the water he flicks it at me. “Pool’s heated but it’s still kind of cold.”

  Levi’s as beautiful as he’s strange. He’s an exercise science and physical therapy major and keeps himself in superb shape. He’s the starting quarterback on our football team and president of the jock fraternity. He should be a magnet for women but his reputation puts most off and he doesn’t stick with anyone too long.

  He stands in front of me with his legs spread and looks down. “Seems he could use a little cooling off. Get out of those clothes and join us,” he says, jumping in.

  The water’s cold and he does take a slight break. The pool light is on and I watch his body move as he swims two laps. First on his stomach, showing me his well-sculpted ass and the abstract tat across his lower spine, then on his back with “him,” occasionally breaking water.

  Levi comes up to where I’m standing near the shallow end, puts his arms around me and whispers, “Like what you see?”

  I look down in the water. “He does.” It’s obvious to both of us that he’s no longer relaxing.

  I can’t help myself. My reservations are gone and my guilt is temporally suspended. I’m mentally enjoying the distraction, emotionally flattered that the boxing Squaw Girl is in an East Side mansion with the big man on campus, and physically putty in his hands. I’m more than ready to accommodate him when Levi pulls back and slaps my face. Stunned, I don’t react and he hits the other side.