Always (4 page)

“Imagine you’re walking into—Tonya, pick a place.”

“Kroger.”

“What time, what day?”

“A weeknight, after work, but late, maybe nine o’clock.”

“So it’s dark outside and bright inside. First thing: park near the entrance, under a light. Don’t unlock your door until you’ve looked around. Keep your eyes open and your hands free. If you have to turn a corner on the way to the door, take it wide.”

“Why?” Therese said.

It took me a moment to realize she was serious, she really didn’t know why. I had planned this lesson meticulously: an orderly progression of building blocks. We had already wandered off the road, out of necessity, and it was clear that sticking to the plan would be like digging a foundation in sand. I let it go. “Because then you’ll see anyone on the other side before they see you.” Therese nodded thoughtfully, filing away the information for further reflection. Suze said, “Huh,” but quietly. Jennifer looked worried. “So now you walk into the supermarket. It’s bright. What do you do?”

“Wait for your eyes to adjust,” Kim said confidently.

Like a sun-struck calf waiting for the hammer. “It would be best to keep moving. Head towards the grocery carts or baskets, and as you do, sweep the place visually. See them before they see you. You’ll grasp things instantly that you don’t consciously know you know. Your subconscious works a lot faster than your conscious mind. So let it do the preliminary work. Swing your gaze slowly from one side of the aisles to the other. If something or someone snags your attention, you can hang a mental tag on it to come back to later. That sweep should take no more than three or four seconds. Whatever you see, don’t stop.” No point spotting a guy in a black hat minding his own business at the other end of the bar if there’s some grinning idiot right next to you swinging an axe. “The trick is to not draw anyone’s attention until you’ve completed the sweep.”

“So what if there is a dangerous person?” Jennifer, for whom Kroger was suddenly looking like a jungle.

“Hey, I know the answer to that one,” Nina said. “Leave, right?”

I nodded.

Jennifer was not convinced. “But what if they follow you?”

“Then you get in your close-by, well-lit car and drive away.”

“But what if you trip or something and he catches you first?”

Suze stirred restlessly. “Then you fucking hit him.”

“Right,” I said to the group as a whole. “So let’s go back to the fist.” I stood and motioned for them to do likewise.

I lined them up, facing me, and held my right hand up, showing them how to make a fist again while I walked along the line, rearranging fingers and thumbs. “Think of your fist as the point of a spear. The forearm is the spear shaft. It has to be strong and straight, no weakness at the wrist. The wrist is where you want all your tension. Good. There are seven basic points to remember when hitting or kicking.” There could just as easily have been six or eight, but human brains find sevens and threes significant. “One, strike from a firm base. The firmer the better, because, two, most of your power comes from the torque generated by your hips. Stand with both feet firmly planted and swivel your hips as you punch—throw that spear forward, don’t push it. You can’t get good movement from a bad base. Three, strike on the out breath, preferably with a good loud yell.”

“Blam?” said Nina.

“Whatever you like.”

“What do you yell?”

“Probably depends,” Suze said to Christie, who giggled.

“Four, strike hard and fast. Power comes more from speed than weight.” More strictly, the greater the mass and acceleration, the greater the force. “Five, strike right through the target. There’s no point stopping on the surface. Six, you almost always need to be closer to the target than you think. Seven, be prepared to strike more than once. Let’s try it. Suze, hold the bag. Jennifer, you’re up.”

It was tempting, watching them flail at the bag one by one, to stop them, to show them how it’s really done, but although I would have enjoyed the whip of power, the hard ram of bone on compact sand, it wouldn’t help. They would try to imitate my stance, my noise, my expression; they would try to learn the lessons I had learnt, not their own.

They watched each other, subconsciously took note of what seemed to work: when Suze took her weight on her back leg, Jennifer, who was holding the bag, moved back a good inch; when Suze stepped into the punch, Jennifer moved five inches. When Nina tapped the bag, then moved closer by half a step and walloped it, they noticed. Gradually, they adjusted their stances, their speed, their noise, feeling out what worked for them and what didn’t. I wanted them to learn something unique to them, that came from them, not an artificial overlay that would evaporate in the first flash of fear adrenaline if they were ever threatened.

“Kim,” I said, the second time she hit the bag, “you can hit it harder than that.”

“I can’t.” She unfolded her fingers and held out her hand, showing me the four perfect crescent-moons on her palm.

“You’ll have a hard time with some of the finger strikes, too.”

“What can I do?”

“Cut your nails.”

“I’ve been growing them two years!”

“Your choice.”

She wasn’t the only one who gave me the withering look so many southern women—of any age, or race, or social standing—learn before puberty: a combination of scorn and the deep existential fear of being the one to stand out in a crowd and risk being pecked to pieces. They seemed surprised when I didn’t wilt.

By now, Suze—and Christie, copying her—were whaling satisfactorily on the bag. Therese had become efficient, and Pauletta and Nina were encouraging each other with whoops and catcalls. In a pinch, all five of them might throw a punch. The other half of the class—Katherine and Tonya, for whom the idea of punching anything induced agonizing embarrassment, or at least blushes and giggles, Jennifer, who looked away whenever she sidled up to the bag to hit it, and Sandra, who could not seem to make a sound—would probably never hit anyone with their fist even if their lives depended upon it.

I clapped my hands. “Some of you will find punching easy—fun, even. Practice when you can: at home, at work, in the garden. Some of you will find that punching doesn’t suit you; don’t worry about it; we’ll find something that will. Punching a person, though, isn’t the same as hitting a bag. Suze, where would you punch an attacker?”

“Right in the fucking nose.”

I nodded. “Noses are full of nerve endings; even a comparatively weak blow will cause pain and tearing. A stronger blow will break the nose. One problem, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Step in front of me. Imagine you’re going to hit me in the nose.” Suze was about five-seven, five inches shorter than me. “You need to be closer.” Clearly she had never hit anyone before.

She moved in another six inches. We were standing almost belly to belly.

“Now, in slow motion, throw the punch.” As her fist neared my nose I said, “Freeze there.” She stopped with her arm fully extended, at an upward angle of about forty degrees. I turned to the rest of the class. “She has to hit up as well as out, which reduces both power and accuracy. A fist strike to the nose of a standing opponent is not efficient when they’re taller than you.”

“What about his chin?” Jennifer said.

“Nearly as high up, and very hard on the knuckles. Never hit bone with bone unless you have to.” How did people survive long enough to reach adulthood without knowing these things?

“So knock him to his knees, then hit him,” Nina said, looking around for laughs.

“Fine. But how? Suze, you can put your arm down.”

“Solar plexus,” Therese said. Not
gut
or
belly
but
solar plexus.
Lots of time with a massage therapist, personal trainer, or individual yoga instruction.

“Good. Come out here and show me. Slow motion, like Suze.” She threw a slow, tidy punch targeted one inch below my xiphoid process. “Freeze it there.” I turned to the rest of the class. “See how she’s thrown the punch beyond the skin so that the fist would end up buried to the wrist? Assuming your assailant doesn’t have abs of steel, that would put them down for at least a minute.”

“One minute?” Pauletta said. “You mean like sixty seconds? That’s it?”

“Kick him in the nuts,” Tonya said, then blushed. Half the class hooted.

“Tonya’s on the right track. If you want a downed opponent to stay down, a kick’s probably the best choice. All right, a volunteer to pretend to be the attacker Therese has just put on the ground and Tonya’s about to kick to death.”

I wasn’t a bit surprised when Tonya looked at Katherine, who stepped forward. Always easier to kick the one you know, however slightly.

“On the floor. Curl up as though you’ve just been hit in the stomach— no, tighter. Where would your hands be? Right, curled around yourself. Now, think: you can’t breathe, so what would you be trying to do?” She struggled in mock weakness to sit up. “Good.” And it was. In my rookie police classes, the women had always been better at role-playing than the men. I made another mental note, to exploit that. “Good,” I said again. “Okay. Stay like that.” I turned to Tonya. “What could you kick?”

Tonya circled the reclining figure dubiously.

“Huh,” Pauletta said, “she’s sitting on her balls.”

A few sniggers at that. “Tonya?”

More circling.

Suze couldn’t stand it anymore. “In the face, right in the fucking face!”

“That would work,” I said. Tonya was no more likely to be able to kick a person in the face than punch them. “Anything else?”

“Lower ribs,” Therese said.

“Good, yes. The floating ribs are easily detached, from front, back or side. Anything else?”

“His spine,” Nina said unexpectedly. “Circle round and get his spine.”

“Or the back of his head,” Kim added.

“Or you could try a combination of spine and head: kick the place where the back of the neck meets the skull.”

Tonya liked that idea much better: he wouldn’t be watching her kick him. She stopped behind Katherine and took a deep breath.

“Slow motion,” I reminded her.

She tried. She would have missed by a couple of inches, she nearly fell over, and she blushed afterwards, but that didn’t matter: she did it, and she didn’t giggle.

“You can get up now,” I said to Katherine. In the next class I’d show them how to break someone’s spine even with bare feet, but right now I didn’t want them getting locked into one type of body weapon. Beginnings are delicate times. “Now we’ll move on to the fingertip.”

“Pretty anticlimactic,” Nina said.

“It’s certainly a different kind of tool,” I said. “Its target—its job, if you like—is different, too. Smaller, more vulnerable, like the fingertip itself. Think of the soft places: the eye, the hollow of the throat, the mouth.”

“The mouth?”

“Are you willing to be a guinea pig?” She lifted her hands, as if to say, How bad could it be? I crossed to her side in one stride, hooked two fingers into her mouth along the cheek, and stepped past her so that she arched back on her heels and my hand was on my shoulder as though carrying a sack.

“Jesus,” someone said.

Nina was wide-eyed and struggling and would have fallen, helpless, if I wasn’t supporting her against my back. “I won’t let you fall,” I said. “Are you all right with this?” She swallowed—her whole face moved—but nodded gamely. “From here I can throw her sideways, backwards, or rip half her face off. Not everything is about hitting.” I turned, eased her upright, and took my fingers out. “Thank you.” I walked to the bench and removed a packet of handiwipes from my jacket pocket.

She flexed her face a few times while I cleaned my hand. “That was . . . It felt so wrong.”

It was an important lesson: shock, the breaking of the social compact, was as difficult to deal with as being hit in the face with a shovel. But we’d go back to that another day.

“You could’ve bit her,” Pauletta said to Nina.

“I could not, not the place she had her fingers. Here, open your mouth—”

“Nah-ah.”

“Do it your own self, then,” Nina said, and for the next thirty seconds they all hooked their mouths with their fingers, like suicidal fish, all except Jennifer, who said loudly, “That’s disgusting!” and Therese, who, when she saw me noting her lack of participation, merely raised her eyebrows and held her hands out as if to say
Not unless I wash them first,
and shook her head. I nodded. I wouldn’t put my hands in my mouth without washing them, either.

“What else?” said Suze. “How do you get the eyes?”

“Like this,” Christie said, “ha!” and did an uncoordinated imitation of Bruce Lee doing
bui tze,
the shooting fingers.

“You could,” I said, “but it’s hard to be accurate with that move.” And if she missed, she’d break her fingers. “There’s an easier way. All of you: point your index finger at me.”

“Left or right?” Katherine.

“Whichever you’d use to point at something. Now bend it down a little. Tuck the tip of your thumb underneath your index finger’s middle joint. Keep your finger and thumb joined together like that and pretend to tap on someone’s window with it. Put some play in the wrist, whip it back and forth—like Jennifer—so your hand looks a bit like a chicken pecking at something.”

They all had it.

“Now peck the center of your palm. Go gently.”

They did, over and over.

“Now imagine what that would do to an eyeball.”

“Like popping gum,” Kim said admiringly.

“Eeeuw.” Jennifer flung both hands away from her. “I couldn’t do that!”

“Anyone else?”

“I’m not sure,” Therese said, troubled.

“I could do it, no problem,” said Suze. “Yeah.”

I considered them. “Self-defense isn’t magic,” I said. “In any kind of real fight, unless you cold-cock someone from behind with a pipe, you will get hurt. No matter how good you are, things go wrong. Adjust to that now: nothing goes to plan, ever. You’ll get hurt, and you’ll have to hurt them. But you mend. And what happens to them isn’t your problem.”