This story is loosely based on my experiences working with a self-defense training program. While the narrator definitely reflects my own voice and perceptions, the rest of the characters and situations are (to the best of my knowledge) fictional.

By the way, I really struggled with a category for this one, so any and all suggestions are welcome.

The Reversal

It was late… too late. I lay sprawled in the dark, fear pounding in my ears. Someone else was there. I could hear him rustling around. Doing things. I wrestled my imagination to keep it from showing me horror films of all the things those noises could be, and focused all of my attention on breathing slowly and evenly. As if feigning sleep would make any difference. It was only a matter of time before he…

Slam!  His fist landed right by my ear. I jumped a little, involuntarily. Fuck, we’re in a whole heap o’ trouble. “Wake up, bitch!”

What do I do? Fake him out. “Bobby, why you yelling at me?”

“Oh, I got me a live one, here…” He had a crazy, singsong voice. He sat down beside me, reached down and started pulling on my hands, prying my arms apart. So he could look at me. Jesus. Just pretend it’s normal. Let’s talk him down and make him worry. The neutral observer in my head speculated as to whether I might be the only person on the planet who talks to themselves in first person plural.

“Bobby, why you?  ... Yelling at me. I thought you were gonna be home by 10.” Hear that, creep? Someone’s coming. Please let him believe someone’s coming…

“Stupid dyke.” He laughed, “I’ve been watching you--” he leered over my face, made his hands into goggles and flapped them ridiculously over his eyes. Is this guy for real?  “There’s no Bobby. No men. You screw girls who look like men, maybe. Fucking pervert.”

I flinched. What now? Denial. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I WATCHED YOU!” he roared. “You and that bitch! Disgusting!” He grabbed my wrists, pulled me towards him, shook me. “I’m gonna teach you.” He threw me back, roughly pushed my legs apart, and moved between them. “I’m gonna teach you all about dick.”

He reached down to unzip. There it was… my opening. Now! I came up on my elbows, pulled my feet up, and bunny-kicked. “NO!” My feet smashed him right where the leg meets the hip.  He crumpled forward. “Umph!”

Fight!  Fight!  Fight! I threw my hands backward behind me, cocked my foot again, and kicked him in the head. “NO!” His head flew back.

“Stop!” he moaned.

I flipped to the other side, hunting him down now. Go! Go! Go! My leg seemed to have developed a mind of its own and slammed into his groin. “NO!”

He rolled away onto his back, whimpering. “Crazy dyke… just like Momma…”

I scuttled over, lined up against his head, and picked my heel up. “Don’t…” he whispered.

Finish it! My leg sprang back. “NO! NO! NO!” Three quick, lethal blows to the head.  His arms flew up and clutched his head. Thank God!

A whistle blew, and the lights came on. Cheers erupted. “Nice work,” Lynne the Lead Instructor chirped, and turned to the line. “How about a hand for our assistant?”

I trotted back to the line, high on adrenaline, high-fiving the clappers. It doesn't matter how many demos I do; they're just as terrifying as they were on my first day as a student. And now I get performance anxiety, too.

Steve the Mugger rolled around comically on the mat and bounced to his feet, waddling airily back to the end of the mat as if his fifty pounds of body armor were weightless, without looking at me. I laughed. Cocky bastard. He was preening. Even if he was a good sport about not dating any students for six months like the rules said, he couldn't help flirting. There was always return interest, too. Women loved a guy who was athletic enough to mug fifteen women twice in one day, tough enough to withstand the hellacious beatings they doled out, and sensitive enough to lavishly and genuinely praise their fighting spirit afterward.

The line was tense. Now that they’d drilled all day and watched a demo, it was their turn to fight through their own reversal scenarios. This was always the most intense class of the full-force self-defense course – to experience an attack lying down, take control of the situation, and emerge triumphant. “Breathe,” Lynne told the students. She came to the top of the line and took the first student’s arm.

“Protected areas?” she asked gently. Physical vulnerabilities that might create injury during a fight were announced and worked around.

“No,” Wendy said through clenched teeth.

Wendy has protected areas, I thought. Childhood sexual abuse, an abusive ex, and one nasty-ass boss. We may not call them out, but the staff is acutely aware of what wounds she’s guarding. And the mugger is going to go right for them. And in the end, she’ll love him for it. Because he’s going to help her hit back.

“No protected areas,” Lynne announced to Jamie, the second mugger about to take the stage. She helped Wendy get into a resting position. “Wendy is ready,” she declared. Wendy shot her a look of pure loathing.

As Jamie knelt by the Wendy’s head, blocking her from the line’s view, I strode down to Steve’s end of the mat, pretending to look for a better viewpoint to watch the fight. “Nice fight,” I whispered to Steve.

Steve winked.  “Thank you, dahling.”

“Wake up, honey,” Jamie's voice floated over from the mat.

“Daddy?” Wendy responded fearfully.

“You know, of course, that I hate that position the most.”

“Yes.” Steve’s eyes glint.

“’Just like Momma?’” I snorted.

“You’re Daddy’s special little girl, aren’t you?” Jamie cajoled from the mat.

Steve shrugged.  “Improv, you know.”

“I don’t want to,” Wendy protested.

“Remind me to talk to your mother sometime,” I nudged Steve.

“She’s too butch for you.”

“It’s how daddies and daughters love each other, sweetie,” Jamie cajoled.

I chuckled, hand over my mouth to conceal any amused expression that might be misunderstood. “Someday we’ll give out awards for some of the characters you guys play. You definitely have the ‘Weirdest’ category all sewn up.”

On the mat, Wendy was crying. “Breathe, stay present,” Lynne urged.

“I’m tired,” Wendy protested, to Jamie.

“That’s my ambition… wanna do dinner with us after class?” Steve whispered.

“Sure.”

I gave him a thumbs’ up and went back to the line. On the mat, Jamie was laying next to Wendy, stroking her hair. I walked slowly behind the bristling line of students, reminding them to breathe. Every one of them was out there with Wendy. They could feel his hands in their hair; they could feel his sickness crawling over their skin. Before the day was done, they would relive each others’ most horrific moments. Twice. Thirty separate assaults, some imaginary, some reenacted.

Jamie waited patiently for Wendy to fight back. He merely lay there next to her, playing with her hair, whispering the well-worn lines of a character with whom we were all entirely too familiar. He could have easily forced her into a physical fight with more action. But he wanted to give her a different victory. So he simply caressed her hair and told her what a good little girl she was. He lay there, wrapped in the persona of a monster, in an act so vulnerable and generous that I could have kissed him.

Jamie’s position made him an easy target for an elbow strike… but Wendy was too upset to see the opening. I could hear Lynne murmuring in her ear. His head is right behind you… he’s open… come up on one arm… reach your hand out towards me…

“I can’t,” Wendy cried.

“It’s not wrong if it feels good, honey,” Jamie pressed.  “You like it, don’t you?”

Bingo. Wendy, sobbing, hoisted herself up on one side, shakily pushed her hand towards Lynne, the relentless coach hunched in front of her. Then she whipped her arm back into an elbow point that hit Jamie’s helmet with a mighty !thunk! As she hit him she screamed, a guttural wordless yell, a killing cry whose momentum carried her right over into fighting position. The warrior emerged full force. And the line, finding release at last in her newly discovered will to fight, screamed with her. Most of them didn't come in with such massive abuse issues - they came to learn to fight -  but they all knew the terror she was battling. Intimately. And Lynne and Steve and Jamie and I, who kept coming back to experience triumphs like these, who spent countless hours every weekend hauling mats and running kicking drills and yelling drills and feedback circles so that the horrors of violence might somehow be transformed on the most personal level, screamed too.

Every fight ends in a knock out. But a knockout doesn’t happen until the Mugger has received what he judges to be a knockout blow. Some of them take longer than others. Some students have to be corralled and wheedled into fighting. Some knockouts (mine, in fact) have happened through injuries. Some knockouts are pretty. Some are messy. Some strip you raw.

Wendy’s reversal knockout happened through tears and screams and curses. When it was over, she strode off the mat and out of the room. I followed her a minute later to see if she was all right. She was in the bathroom, clutching her head.

“That son of a bitch,” she cried. Maybe she meant Jamie, maybe she meant her father, maybe she meant both of them. I didn’t ask.

“Yeah,” I nodded, in a way I hoped was gentle.

Her chest heaved. “Do other people go through things like this?”

What could I tell her?  All the time. You should have seen the one who… “Yes.”

She looked me up and down.  "You?"

I shook my head. "I was mugged. Guy had a knife. Aftere that I couldn't walk down the street without hyperventilating, you know?"

One eyebrow went up. Funny how competitive people can be about their battle scars. Mine didn't count, as far as she was concerned. I sighed. I don't like reliving my terrors any more than the students do. "Then one night a year later I woke up and there was a strange guy in my room, standing right next to my bed. He'd emptied out the house already, so I guess he was trying to figure out what he could do next. I yelled, he ran, so I was lucky. But I decided luck wasn't enough."

She nodded, satisfied. Now I was legitimate. She raised a fluttering hand to her chest and smoothed her hair. Self-conscious.  “Is it worth all the time you put in?”

I smiled.  “I can’t even tell you how much.”

She breathed, and breathed, until she finally caught her breath. Then she stood up with a sigh, and wiped her eyes. “I'm better. I guess we gotta go back in,” she said.

“If you’re ready,” I offered.

She was. And she had a new bounce to her step.

Jamie took my elbow at the doorway and pulled me gently off to the side. He was sweating profusely. “Can I get you some water?” I asked.

“Is she okay?” he fretted.

On the mat, Steve was in full force. “You must’ve left your door open for me on purpose.”

“She’s fine,” I smiled.

“I’d love some water, thanks. Are we doing dinner?”

“You know it.”



 © 2006 Melissa Cross.  All rights reserved.  No part of this piece may be reproduced without the express permission of the author.