"In a minute," Chenko said. Mrs. Machado was flat on her belly; her legs had almost stopped moving, but one foot was feebly kicking. She didn't have a high-groin kick left in her.
"I guess this has gone far enough," Chenko said to Jack. He knelt beside the wrestlers and put a three-quarter nelson on Emma. "You can't believe how I had to crank on her to get her to let go of that headlock!" he would tell Pavel and Boris that afternoon when he introduced them to Jack's new workout partner.
Mrs. Machado never said a word. By the time the defeated woman left the Bathurst Street gym, which was as soon as she was able to stand up and walk, her throat was so sore that she couldn't speak. Emma did the talking. It may have been lost on Mrs. Machado when Emma called her "not exactly mail-order-bride material," but she understood what Emma meant when Emma called herself "Jack's only workout partner." However this registered with Mrs. Machado, both Krung and Chenko were suitably impressed--albeit a trifle afraid for the boy.
Mr. Bangkok tried to interest Emma in a kickboxing class, but Emma said she would stick to the wrestling. "I only like kicking something when it's on the ground," she told Krung, who ultimately looked relieved, even grateful, that Emma was committed to the mat.
When Pavel and Boris came to the gym to wrestle that afternoon, Emma rolled around with them, too. Jack needed a break by that time. He had a mat burn on his cheek and a sore shoulder--Chenko had shown Emma a fireman's carry, which she had a natural feeling for--and Jack was nursing his first cauliflower ear.
When Emma saw that Pavel and Boris had cauliflower ears that were almost as bad as Chenko's, she insisted that Jack get his cauliflower ear fixed. It was news to Jack that one could fix a cauliflower ear, but although Chenko and the Minskies disapproved of "draining" cauliflower ears, they knew how.
"I'm sorry, baby cakes--this may hurt, but it would be criminal to let you grow up with ears like these poor guys. You're gonna be too good-looking to ruin y
our prospects for the future with dog-turd ears."
Jack could tell that Chenko and Pavel and Boris were offended. Their cauliflower ears were badges of honor, not dog turds! But Emma Oastler had made Jack's future her business, and she was not to be denied.
A so-called cauliflower ear is caused by fluid; when the ear gets rubbed on the mat, or against your opponent's face, it bleeds and swells. When the fluid hardens, you have a lump where you used to have an indentation. The trick is not to let the fluid harden. You drain it with a needle and a syringe. Then you take some gauze, dipped in wet plaster, and press it into the contours of the ear. When the plaster hardens, your ear can't swell--it can't keep filling with fluid. The original shape of the ear is retained.
"It's a little uncomfortable," Chenko forewarned Jack.
"It's better than a sore penis, honey pie." (Even the Minskies agreed with Emma about that.) So Jack went home with a gauze plaster on one ear and a mat burn oozing on the opposite cheek.
"Look at your Jackie, Alice," Leslie Oastler said, when they were eating takeout that night. "Those thugs at the Bathurst Street gym are going to kill him."
"It's better than a sore penis," Jack said.
"Not to mention the language those Russians are teaching him," Mrs. Oastler said.
"Jack, I'll ask you to watch your language," his mother said.
The next night, Emma had a cauliflower ear. Jack and Emma were pretty proud of their matching gauze plasters. He'd caught her in a cross-face cradle, and while he was grinding his right temple against her left ear, she kicked out of the cradle and pinned him with a reverse half nelson.
"You can't cradle someone who's built like her, not if you're built like you," Chenko told Jack.
True enough, but Jack knew that it was good for him to have a workout partner as tough as Emma Oastler. The wrestling turned out to be good for Emma, too. She lost eight pounds in a week. Jack knew that Boris and Pavel had impressed her--if not their ears, at least their diet. The Minskies were disciplined--not only their workouts, but what they ate. "You could have saved your money by sending me to the Bathurst Street gym instead of the fucking fat farm," Emma told her mom.
"I'll ask you to watch your language, too, young lady," Mrs. Oastler said.
"Penis, penis, penis--" Jack chanted.
"That about covers it," Leslie Oastler said.
"Go to your room, Jack," his mom told him.
But Jack didn't care. He wanted to say, "You're making Emma be a miserable boarder and you're sending me to fucking Maine, and you want us to watch our language!" Instead, he said, "Penis, penis, penis," all the way up the stairs.
"That's really mature, Jack!" his mother called.
"Don't be angry with him, Alice--he's just upset about going away to school," Jack heard Leslie Oastler say.
"No shit--that's fucking brilliant," Emma said.
"Go to your room, Emma," Mrs. Oastler told her.
"Enjoy washing the dishes!" Emma said as she stomped upstairs. (Emma was usually the dishwasher.)
Emma and Jack were workout partners in more ways than one. They had at last become true friends--in part because their mothers were separating them. With each mat burn, split lip, black eye, or cauliflower ear that they gave each other, Emma and Jack thoroughly convinced Alice and Mrs. Oastler that the contact between them--whatever it was--wasn't sexual. Jack could get up in the middle of the night and go to Emma's room and get into bed with her--or she could come to his room and get into bed with him. Their mothers said nothing.