Always (53 page)

“It’s very clear.”

“Tell me how to get out of it.”

“Think of first principles.”

They all stared at me. First principles when in their heads they were all about to be anally raped in their own beds?

“First principle: make sure you can breathe. You have time to think, you can keep your head clear enough to think, if you can breathe. Christie”— she seemed to be the least inherently frightened person in the class, perhaps it was a generational thing, “lie facedown on the mat, please.” She did. I sat on top of her. She started to push her hands into the face-protection position. I’d taught her that. She’d absorbed it as naturally as limestone does water. “Very good,” I said, “but let’s pretend for a minute that your arms are trapped down underneath you. Good. Thank you.” I brushed her hair gently out of the way so that I wouldn’t trap it and put my hand on the back of her neck. So small. I felt the sixth vertebra under the web between my thumb and index finger. I knew three different ways to displace it, to sever her spinal cord, to snuff her life between one breath and the next. “If I started to press here, her face would go into the mattress.” I looked at Sandra. “Yes?”

She nodded.

“And your attacker would probably be expecting you to try and lift your head to breathe, yes?”

Again I waited until she nodded.

“So you would do the unexpected. The opposite of lift. What would that be?”

“Tuck,” Nina said. “Chin down, try get your forehead to the matt, mattress, and make an air pocket.”

“Good. Do that, Christie.” And my bright swelling of pride at Christie’s bravery was tinged now with streaks of anger at Sandra. “Now, Sandra, tell me what you’re afraid of in this situation.”

She shrugged.

“Are you afraid your attacker will strangle you to death? Tickle you until you’re crazy? Sing Barry Manilow? No? Then what?”

“What do you think?” Now she was angry, too.

“I have several guesses, but tell me exactly, specifically.”

“Rape,” she said, and something in her voice, some solidity in tone, reminded me of con artists I had met who looked you in the eye and spoke firmly, and I knew she was lying, or at least not telling the whole truth. She was less afraid of rape, something that had probably happened to her dozens of times, than of . . . what? I found I didn’t care enough to force the issue.

Rape was what everyone else was frightened of, so that’s what I would address.

“All right. So if you’re tucking and bending your spine to protect your breathing, it means you’re also reaching down with your hands. Christie, try that please—just bend and reach down. Reaching down means two things. You’ll have extra leverage—you can use your arms as well as your legs to push against the mattress—and you can reach down far enough to protect your anus and vagina. Christie, can you reach down as far as between your legs?”

“Yes,” she said, surprised.

“But he’ll just push the hand away,” Sandra said.

“All right.” I leaned back and reached down. “But see how that shifts my weight? You could find some leverage now.”

“Not if he’s breaking your fingers. You won’t be thinking about leverage if you’re in pain.”

I knew then, as surely as though I’d just watched video, how it would be for her when her spouse started to beat her. She would probably never think of leverage; she would probably not think at all. Maybe she had the first dozen times it happened but now, as with so many people who are habitually abused, she would simply relax when it began because at that instant she could stop waiting, she could stop worrying what form it would take, this time; it would begin, and she would know. It would be a strange kind of relief.

Most of the class were not habitually abused and I addressed them. “For most people, being in this kind of situation usually leads to a huge gush of adrenaline. We’ve talked about this before. You’ll either panic or your automatic pilot takes over. Either way, it’s unlikely you’ll be thinking or feeling much at this point. You’ll be doing, probably unconsciously. You’ll be focused, as both Tonya and Nina have said, on making your attacker stop, get off, get away from you any way you can. Once you commit to that, once you begin, you’ll do almost anything to see it through. He might break one or more of your fingers, yes, but you’ll feel his weight move. You’ll be on that like lightning—”

“Well,
you
might,” Sandra said.

“Yes,” I said. “I would. Christie, I’m leaning back now, to get at your hands, so what can you do?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see which way you’re tilting.”

“Backwards,” Suze said.

“Sshh. Christie, you won’t have anyone to see for you. Feel it, feel where my weight is, which way I’m leaning, feel how easy it would be to tip me one way or another, or to hit me with something.”

“But you’ve got my hands!” she said. I waited. “Oh.” And she kicked up and back with her heels and thumped between my tipping shoulder blades, and as I twisted to grab her ankles, she yanked her hands from between her legs and, weight on her knees and palms, hurled herself backwards and literally sat on me.

“Oh, my God,” she said, leaping up, mortified. “Did I hurt you?”

“You could have. How would you, right now, if you wanted to?”

“Kick,” Katherine said.

“Elbow!” “Knee in the face.” “Stomp her like a snake until she doesn’t move anymore!”

Christie froze.

“Use them all. I’ve fallen back, on my hands, so if you kick at my face or neck, I can’t grab and trap your leg. Pretend to kick. In slow motion.” She did—a tentative
mai-geri
to the chin. I pretended to topple sideways. “Now another kick—slow, slow, make it slow—to my face, then, while I’m choking on my blood, you prepare and deliver an axe kick: spine, preferably, or rib cage. Then you run, leave the house, and call nine-one-one.”

“And your lawyer,” Pauletta said.

“And your lawyer,” I said. “And don’t clean away any blood on you. Don’t change your clothes, even if they’re torn or soiled. Make sure the first thing you mention is not how you learnt to do this in a self-defense class. Now”—before they could think too hard about any of it—“let’s practice. Find your partner. Try the double-hand pin first. Good. Make sure you’re spread out, that you won’t be throwing your partner into someone else.” I said that particularly to Suze, who tended to forget that others might mind having a body hurled in their direction.

We ran through the double-hand pin, then the one-handed strangle. They were tentative at first, then began to toss each other about as children would.

“With both, remember what should come next. Think of your bedroom: when they’re down, what can you hit them with easily? Where’s your clock? Your potted plant? Your baseball bat? Where’s your phone, so you can take it with you when you run? Good. That’s good, Kim, very good,” as she sank her nails into Jennifer’s hands in slow motion.

This was more like it. Even Sandra was mechanically following the plan. Katherine and Tonya were—

Tonya’s nose blossomed red and she shrieked and clapped both hands to her face.

“Sit up, put your head back.” Wail. The whole room focused. Blood in the room. “Tonya. Sit up. Put your head back.”

“Oh, God,” Katherine said, “oh, God, I’m sorry. I just—”

“Tonya, move your hand.” I spoke slowly and very clearly. “Move your hand. Tonya, please, move your hand so I can see.” The initial spill of blood from her nose was already slowing. Her eyes were wide with pain and panic. Everyone in the room was poised to run, as though blood would make the sharks come.

“I’m so sorry,” Katherine was still saying, “I didn’t—”

I tapped the back of one of Tonya’s wrists, then deliberately put both hands behind my back so she knew I wouldn’t be touching her face, and she moved her hands just enough for me to peer at her nose. “It’s not broken. You’ll be fine. The blood’s already slowing. You’re fine. Nice deep breaths. Katherine, are you hurt? No? Good, then I want you and Therese and Kim to help me. Therese, I want you to get me a hot, caffeinated drink with sugar. Kim, your job is to find ice and a soft cloth. Katherine, bring me something to clean the mat before it stains.” Cleaning. Before it stained. Yes. She nodded, followed Therese and Kim like a zombie through the door. “The rest of you, do some stretching, and when you’ve done that, we’ll take it in turns to hit the bag.”

I waited until they’d started their unwilling stretching, then sat by Tonya.

“At least you’re wearing a black T-shirt,” I said. “When the ice comes, put it on your face.”

“It’ll hurt,” Sandra said matter-of-factly, and squatted down on the mat. “But it’ll keep the swelling down. If you take two ibuprofen every four or five hours for a couple of days, you won’t even be able to tell anyone hit you.”

Therese came back with a double mocha latte.

“I don’t drink coffee,” Tonya said in a shaky voice.

“You do now. Caffeine and sugar will help with the shock. It will make you feel better. Sip, good. And another. And why aren’t you all hitting that bag?” They went back to punching. “Ah, here’s the ice.”

After another minute, her shakes began to subside. I helped her up and moved her to the bench.

“Drink more coffee, keep the ice on your face, and if you’re feeling all right in ten minutes, I’ll drive you home.”

“Let me do it,” Katherine said.

“You can clean the mat,” I said, nodding at the cloth in her hand.

“I’ll sit with her,” Sandra said. I nodded, and moved to supervise the punching of the bag, which wasn’t all it could have been.

After another five minutes, Katherine gathered Tonya’s things and they made their way to the door. Everyone watched them leave.

“All right,” I said when the door closed behind them. “Excitement’s over. Let’s get back to pins. This time on your backs with a one-handed strangle.”

They moved like old women, newly aware that they could be hurt. Even Suze was tentative when she put her hand around Christie’s throat.

I kept my tone brisk. “What did we learn about strangles? Tuck your chin—protect your throat. Breathe, if you can.” Slight movement as the supine women tucked their chins. I pretended not to notice. “Distract. And where there’s a joint, there’s a weakness. Watch.”

I lay down and gestured Therese over. She smiled politely and climbed on top of me and laid her left hand lightly on my throat. I tucked my chin and said, in that deep, exaggerated voice it’s impossible to avoid when stretching one’s vocal folds, “I have so many choices here it’s almost embarrassing. Suggestions?”

“Hey,” Christie said, “it’s like—Get off me a sec,” she said to Suze, who obeyed.

“That was easy,” I said. No one laughed, though Nina smiled. I sighed internally; after the blood, we were back at square one. “Saying, Get off me is always worth trying. You never know. So, Christie, you were saying?” She looked blank. “What is it like?”

“Oh. Like last week, the week before I mean, with the one-handed strangle against the wall. You could twist and bash her elbow, or bring her face into the mat like it was a wall, or, well, shit, anything.”

“Exactly.”

I showed them. How I could put my left foot flat on the mat and use that to leverage the same twist into the slam of forearm on inside elbow. How to pull myself down and yank Therese’s face into the mat as though it were a wall. The swing and whole-arm pin of the opposite twist with my right foot on the mat. And they wouldn’t do any of it. They had seen blood and they were afraid: that swinging elbow might connect to a nose, that moving fingernail might graze a cornea, that wrist or shoulder or knuckle might get dislocated.

"Up,” I said. "Everybody up. Let’s get back to the bag. I want to see combinations: fist, elbow, knee, one after the other.”

The bag couldn’t bruise. The bag couldn’t look at you reproachfully if you slipped a little and banged the wrong place. The bag wouldn’t remind you of thin skin and red blood. Even so, they were tentative. “Shout,” I said. “Blam. Kapow. Whap. This is an attacker who is trying to hurt you. Why should you put up with that? Defend yourselves.”

Not much difference.

“They are coming after your children.” The thumps got meatier. “You are not going to let them hurt you, or your family—not you, not your sister, not your mother, not your children. You. It’s up to you. No one else. Come on. Hit it!”

“It’s just a bag,” Nina said.

And that was the problem.

BELLEVUE WAS MORE OF A GENERIC SUBURB THAN A CITY. THE SAME MIDSIZED
office buildings of white concrete and green glass; the smooth six-lane blacktop; the uncrusted, still wet-looking red brick of libraries and schools. Bland, moneyed, characterless. Ideal for Corning, the kind of woman who thought running away made the problem vanish.

In my mind’s eye I saw Kick’s brilliant white smile, the white in the crook of her elbow, her white knuckles as she said,
Lesions. Christ. God.

I checked my phone again. 8:08. No messages.

At almost every stop light, I imagined the fall of her oak hair, her delight as she expounded her theory of everything, her laugh like sun shimmering on water. I began to cut in and out of morning traffic.

Amateur,
she said in my head.

The hotel was efficient and faceless and could have been in Atlanta. I walked through the lobby. No quiet corners. I went back to the car, retrieved Mackie’s cell phone. Texted a message to Corning’s phone: need money now, meet me in parking garage, by elevator, level P2.

Underground parking garages, like the interior of submarines, are malevolent in their ugliness and lack of human comfort, in their machine-oil smell, their lack of natural light, their sense of confinement. I parked on the lowest tier, and walked to the elevator.

I waited twenty minutes. Then the elevator light dinged, and Corning stepped out.