Always (40 page)

She nodded grudgingly.

“Practice that one, then. Everyone else, give the pointing a try, then run through each of the other techniques, once each, then swap partners, then come and sit down.”

I went around the circle giving pointers, and then sat as the first few did. Christie and Suze were the last; Christie patiently kept showing Suze how to do the trapping move. As soon as Suze got it halfway right, I clapped and gestured them into the seated circle.

“Some of you think that the things I’m showing you won’t work in the real world. Some of you think I’m throwing too many things at you at once and want me to show you just one thing for each situation, to show you the best. But there is no best. There are literally hundreds of moves I could show you for each situation—”

“Not helpful,” Pauletta said.

“Shut up,” Suze said. Tonya and Nina nodded. Pauletta shut up.

“—in a stranglehold situation, all of them would involve protecting your throat, distracting your attacker, and aiming at a weak point. Today I chose joints.”

Jennifer bit her lip, trying to remember everything.

“There is no best technique. There’s only what’s best for you. Remember the first lesson? Katherine.” She came to attention with a jerk. “Remember how you didn’t like punching but thought kicking was all right?” She nodded. “I’ve been showing you several ways to deal with every situation and, no, of course you don’t need to know them all. But you do need to try them all. I’m showing you so many so that you get some notion of patterns— chin, shin, twist, hiss, as Pauletta would say—but then also you get to find what fits your particular body type and emotional response. For example, my favorite strike is the back fist.” I showed them, the sharp, uncoiling, snakelike back-of-the-knuckle strike that came as naturally to me as turning my face to the sun. “It’s not as powerful as many other strikes. I could tell you it’s a perfect, always-retain-your-balance strike, how it’s unreadable until you do it, how it’s hard for your opponent to catch or trap, and that’s all true, but the real reason is that, to me, it just feels good.”

Funktionslust,
the handy German word for enjoying what you do well. “I showed you four ways to deal with a one-handed front strangle, and you’ll have found that one of those techniques feels better to you than any of the others. Jennifer”—she straightened—“liked the little-finger move.

And Christie was good with the arm trap. Therese also liked the little-finger, but Suze preferred hitting the outside elbow. Sandra, on the other hand, liked coming up inside the elbow. The rest of you probably need to practice all four a few more times until you find the one that works best, the one that will spring instantly to mind if someone wraps his or her hand around your neck.”

Tonya and Christie both touched their necks.

“I could show you two dozen variations on how to deal with a strangle-hold—”

“Which is your favorite?” Christie said.

Information is power. But I’d started this.

“The trap, followed by an elbow drive to their nose or throat.”

“How come?”

“Because it works on a front or back strangle, one- or two-handed. It’s flexible, adaptable. But also . . . because being strangled is personal.” I had a sudden image of Sandra, coming up inside the strangle of a shadowy figure, with that upward strike, putting her face close to her strangler’s. “The pin traps them instantly, so they feel how I just felt.”
Me,
the imaginary Sandra said.
See the face of the one you would hurt. The one who is fighting back. I am real.
“The elbow strike is a very strong blow. It says, you can never do that to me again.”

Sandra paled and her pupils expanded briefly. Fear, lust, hatred? I couldn’t tell.

I tried to remember what I was saying. “No one knows everything. You don’t have to. In these weeks I want you to learn one or two things thoroughly, your own things, not mine. Things that you will practice until they are muscle memory, until someone can touch your throat, even by mistake, and your muscles know instantly what to do. No,” I said, as Katherine opened her mouth, “it doesn’t mean you’ll be attacking your hairstylist by mistake if she touches your neck. It means you’ll know how when you need it, that’s all.”

Kim flicked her nails and Suze frowned.

“It’s like mathematics.”

“Oh, that’s just great,” Pauletta said.

“Yeah,” Suze said. “Math sucks the big fat one.”

“No. It’s part of how you think. It’s automatic. You use arithmetic every day. How many are there of us sitting here? It’s second nature. But do you remember how hard it was when you started in . . .” For a moment my brain stumbled trying to convert to the American educational system “. . . in kindergarten or first grade? Self-defense is like that. You don’t need to learn astral physics, you don’t need non-Euclidean geometry, you just need arithmetic.”

“Or a calculator,” Nina said.

“How many of you need a calculator when you’re in the supermarket? You look at the prices on the meat counter. You know whether you can afford steak or if you have to get hamburger. You know it without laborious calculation, because arithmetic is second nature. Now, on your feet.”

Moans and groans. But they all stood up.

“Partner with someone different. Try all four strangle breaks. Pick your favorite. Practice that three times, swap roles. Fifteen minutes.”

I walked around the practice circle, reminding them about a tucked chin here, an elbow placement there. They were learning. Some, like Therese, were sucking up every physical technique I could throw at her. Some, like Tonya, were beginning to seriously connect the dots, but even those like Jennifer and Pauletta, who thought they knew nothing, were light-years past the place they had been two months ago.

I walked the circle again. Everyone now had their favorite. Six of them liked the little-finger. It didn’t surprise me. It was a small move, a woman’s move, one for which no judge or police officer or spouse would ever blame or fear them if they had to use it against the bogeyman.

After fifteen minutes, we were all sitting again.

“We’ll finish with an item from the list. The last page. Yell fire, not help or rape. Studies have shown that bystanders, neighbors, are far more willing to call for help if they don’t think there’s malice involved. Fire is a natural disaster. They won’t feel as though they’re ‘interfering’ in a domestic dispute if you yell for them to call nine-one-one. Next: be specific. People in groups default to the lowest common denominator.”

“More math!” Nina said, and they all groaned.

When I was ten, Mrs. Russell, the equivalent of my fourth-grade teacher, had marched to the blackboard and written, in very large letters,
The square on the hypotenuse equals the sum of the opposite squares,
then put the chalk back on the lip of the blackboard and waited. No one said anything. After about two minutes of silence, an eternity in the world of ten-year-olds, she said, “Does anyone know what that means?” We were used to Mrs. Russell being kindly and approachable, adapting her explanations to the meanest understanding, but that day she was terrifying. Perhaps she’d had a hard day, perhaps she’d been inspired by some new teaching theory to try an experiment. None of us dared say anything. “Your job,” she said, “is to find out what that means.”

I had responded by writing the sentence carefully in my blue-lined notebook,
The square on the hypotenuse . . .
and then staring at it, as though by focusing my mind I could get beneath the atoms of the paper surface—I had recently encountered the notion of atoms—and swim lusciously in the flow of understanding beneath. But all that eventuated was a headache.

In retrospect, it was clear that Mrs. Russell had wanted to shock us into a state of inquiry, to lead us to the idea of looking things up: to open a dictionary, look up
hypotenuse,
ask her what “sum of ” meant, something, anything, but to just begin, to demonstrate that one of us had a particle of scholar in our blood, that her life had not been a total waste.

Mrs. Russell had been disappointed that day.

“Crowds,” I said. “Think of soccer hooligans, religious mobs, people gawping at car accidents. No one does anything. Why?”

Therese folded her arms. She never liked it when I pointed out unpleasant human traits.

“Groups of people need leaders. It’s a human response; most of us immediately want someone else to take responsibility, particularly in a new or frightening situation. So if you ever get knocked to the ground, or are in a car accident, and a crowd gathers and stares at you moon-faced, you’re going to have to direct them. You don’t say, ‘Someone, get help,’ you say, ‘You—yes, you—in the red shirt, call nine-one-one, and you, in the blue shoes—yes, ma’am, you with the barrette—please bring me a blanket.’ You pick specific people and give them specific tasks. You’ll find that once the crowd stirs to help, others will work out what to do on their own initiative. But don’t discount that initial inertia.”

“You’re saying treat them like children?” Kim said. “Jimmie, carry those dishes to the sink; Junie, wipe the table. Like that?”

“Yes.”

“That I can do,” she said.

For the first time this week, nods all round. “Good. What else? Nothing? ” We had five minutes left. “Stand up. We’ll work a bit more with joint locks.” They got up one by one. I realized it was warm. I went to the air-conditioning unit jammed high in the outside wall and thumped the plug. The fan started to turn reluctantly. “Joint locks are most—”

“The thing on the list I don’t understand,” Sandra said, still sitting, “is the one that says, ‘If they abuse you, make them stop.’ ”

Everyone turned to listen.

“And you say, ‘There is always a choice of some kind, always.’ Are you saying anyone who gets hurt is making a choice, that it’s our fault?”

The air-conditioning now burst into a slow clatter that quickened as the motor warmed.

“ ‘If someone abuses you, make them stop’ is the heart of self-defense.” Hypotenuse, square, sum. They weren’t going to get it in one gulp. “Let’s break it down.”

Suze sighed out loud.

“First of all, by ‘someone’ I mean anyone, everyone: parent, child, friend, relative, spouse, partner, boss, priest, police officer, stranger, casual acquaintance, member of Congress, the queen. Everyone. Anyone. Abuse means the trespassing on our basic rights as human beings. Make them stop means to leave, tell them to stop, or fight. Whichever is the most efficient.”

“Are we talking basic assertiveness-training stuff here?” Nina said, crossing her legs so that her right foot rested sole up on her left thigh. I was always surprised by her hip flexibility. She moved so stiffly in other ways. “You know, you have the right to your own feeling and moods, you have the right to make mistakes, you have the right to change your mind. Blah, blah, blah.”

“Yes.” Assertiveness training. I’d have to look that up. “Anyone else familiar with it?”

Therese, Tonya, and Katherine nodded. Suze made a noise like a horse clearing its nose, and Christie said, “I’ve never even heard of it.”

Nina laughed. “It’s a second-wave thing, honey. Your momma might know. Or maybe your grandmomma. There are seven basics.” She looked at me. I gestured for her to continue. “The three I already said, plus you have the right to say no without explaining, you have the right to go where you want—when, with whom, and wearing whatever—you want. You have the right to refuse responsibility for others—unless it’s your child, of course—and we have the right to act without the approval of others. That last one is tricky. It’ll screw you every time, least until you hit fifty.” She sounded cheerful about it.

“Much of this is tied together,” I said. “For example, one, having the right to wear what you want, even just a thong and stilettos, and go wherever you want, whenever you want, such as a roadside bar at one in the morning, and, two, having the right to make mistakes.”

Half the class laughed.

“Think of it this way,” I said to the other half. “If a richly dressed man walks through a high-crime area late at night with his wallet sticking out of his pocket, is he to blame if he is mugged?”

“Oh,” said Jennifer, “I get it, I get it.”

“The woman in the thong and the man with the wallet would be stupid, making a grave error in judgment, but still the ultimate wrongdoer would be the perpetrator. If you make a mistake—with the clothes or the wallet— it doesn’t mean you asked for it. Or deserve it. You have the right to make the perpetrator stop if they attempt to abuse you.”

Sandra was sitting very still, very erect. “But sometimes the other person is bigger and faster and stronger.”

“Yes.”

“So sometimes we don’t have a choice.”

“No. We always have a choice of some kind, just not always the choices we would like.”

Her smile was light, whipped cream over old and bitter coffee. “The ‘die whimpering or with your head held high’ kind of choice?”

“Usually there are lots of branches on the decision tree before you get to that point.”

“But not always.”

I studied her. This was the Sandra who wanted to break from her cage and run wild and free across the moonlit meadow—but knew, as she knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west, that a hunter would rise from the brush and shoot her.

“No,” I said, “not always.”

AT EIGHT-THIRTY THE NEXT MORNING I WAS SITTING AT THE BEVELED-GLASS
dining table in my suite, before a brand-new laptop. It was downloading Corning’s entire desktop. I’d gone online with the brand-new, empty machine and input her user name and password at the Carbonite website, and answered her security question. It had taken me five minutes on the Web to find out she had attended Lincoln High School.

Once I’d downloaded the software, I hit restore files, and now the hard drive was chattering. The download-in-progress bar read 73 percent. By the time I finished my breakfast, I’d be able to peruse the whole at my leisure.