Nicola Griffith - Always

She blinked.

“You’re threatening Christie with an ice pick. Why? What do you want?”

“Okay, yes. Her money.”

I looked at her polystyrene. She raised it menacingly. “All right. Christie, what did I say about ice picks?”

“Good for stabbing, not cutting or throwing or bludgeoning.”

I smiled. I hadn’t said anything about throwing; she’d come up with that one all on her own. “All of which means your attacker has to be very close indeed to do you any terrible damage. So what would you do?”

“Throw my purse on the ground and run.”

“Good. Why?”

“Because.”

“Think about it.”

“Just because.” I waited. “Because he’s mentioned money?” I nodded. “So throwing the purse would be a distraction?”

“Yes. Excellent. Because even if he wants more than money, you know money is on his mind because he’s mentioned it. If you judge it’s time to act immediately—and this sounds like a situation in which it might be—a distraction is often a good first step. Then you remove yourself from danger. Nine times out of ten that will mean what?”

“Run,” Katherine said.

“It depends,” Tonya said.

“Yes,” I said.

“But which?” Jennifer said. “It can’t be both.”

“It is both. Everything always depends. In the absence of other data, in this imaginary mugger scenario, leaving if you can is a good option. This is an example of a situation where it appears to be a good idea to act immediately, whether by running or engaging. Other examples of times to do that are when you think your attacker plans to put you in an even more dangerous situation, where your options will be narrowed. For example, if he traps you by your car and instead of saying, Give me your keys, he says, Get in the car and drive me.”

“What about, what about if…” Jennifer couldn’t bring herself to say it. She was very pale. The make-believe KA-BAR hung loosely in the hand at her side.

“What if he wants to rape or torture you?”

I think she nodded but her neck was so stiff with tension it was difficult to tell. I’d never had this problem with rookies. I thought for a moment.

“Jennifer, I want you to relax, if you can, and breathe. I’m going to ask you to imagine some bad things, but they’re not real.” I looked at the others.

“We’re all right here,” Nina said, and stood close enough for Jennifer to feel her body heat. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

Suze stepped up, too. “We’d kill the fucker.”

Jennifer smiled tremulously.

“So. Jennifer, you’re planning to rape Therese.” I raised my eyebrows at Therese: Are you all right with this? She nodded and, too late, I remembered that Therese was probably one of those who had answered yes on the have-you-been-assaulted exercise. There again she was confident and contained, she had trained with guns, she had what-iffed. With luck she wouldn’t have a meltdown. “You have a KA-BAR. It’s big, it’s frightening. You have it at Therese’s throat. You want to rape her. She knows that”— again I checked with Therese, who nodded minutely—“and she’s too frightened to do anything but what she’s told. What do you do now?”

“I don’t, I don’t…”

“Rape. What does it involve?”

“Sex.”

“How can you have sex if you’re both fully clothed?”

“Oh. Well. Okay.” She jabbed her polystyrene in Therese’s general direction. “Take your clothes off!”

Therese, also pale now, put her hands to the buttons of her polo shirt.

“See how we’re all staring at that, waiting to see if she’ll actually take off her shirt? Someone who is contemplating rape will be staring, too. His focus will be split now between the weapon he’s holding and the delicious-ness of getting a grown woman to be his puppet. This would be an excellent moment for Therese to act. But let’s say she understands that there will be an even better moment soon. So let’s imagine that she’s taken off all her clothes. Now what?”

“Now I guess I rape her.”

“So will you push her against the wall? Onto the ground? Let’s try the wall.” The class parted like the Red Sea and Therese walked to the wall.

Most stranger rapes are fast and brutal, an overwhelming battering force, with no time to think, only to act immediately. Violence, like love, always happens when you least expect it. But that was not an analogy I wanted to use in a self-defense class.

Therese stood, back against the wall.

Most rapists who preyed on a stranger literally couldn’t face their victim. But this wasn’t a real-life reenactment. This was a lesson.

“So, Jennifer, now what?”

Jennifer swallowed.

“To fuck her from there your dick would have to be about a yard long,” Pauletta said.

Jennifer looked involuntarily at her crotch and everyone grinned.

“Pauletta’s right. You’re going to have to get very close. Let’s… Therese, you step out. I’ll take over.” Therese, stiff-legged with tension, pushed herself away from the wall. “Jennifer, would you like someone else to take over for you?”

She shook her head.

“All right then,” I said to her. “You know I won’t let you hurt me. You know I won’t hurt you.”

She nodded.

“Where’s your knife?” She showed it to me uncertainly. She was going to need some direction. “Put it against my throat.” I turned to the rest of the class. “Now what would he do?”

“Whip out his whanger,” said Nina.

“Can you pretend to do that?” I said as gently as I could to Jennifer.

She looked down again at her crotch.

“At this point he’s distracted again. This would be a good time to take some action.”

“But what if he was strangling you, too?” Katherine said.

Pauletta hooted. “He can’t strangle her, hold a knife at her throat, and pull out his dick at same time. He’s a rapist, not a three-armed superschlong. ”

I could have kissed Pauletta but settled for smiling with everyone else. “That’s absolutely right. So this is an ideal moment to do something. What?” Blank. “Let’s try it. Everyone without a weapon, against the wall. Everyone with a weapon, put it against your partner’s cheek. Closer, Suze, you’re not even touching her face with that ice pick. So, now, those against the wall. He’s fumbling with his zipper—everyone, put your hands on your fly.” No one moved. Southern women. I sighed. “Okay, just hook your thumb into your waistband and let the hand dangle in roughly the right place. Good. Now, remember, a weapon has no power in and of itself. If you knock away the arm holding the weapon, you’ve knocked away the weapon. Give that a try.”

No one moved. “How would you do it?” Katherine said.

I gestured her away from the wall and took her place under Tonya’s bottle. “It’s always best to knock the weapon away from your body, not towards it or across it. So here I would knock her right arm away from me to my left, her right. If she had the bottle on my other cheek,” I tapped Tonya’s wrist and pointed; she shifted the bottle obligingly, “I’d want to knock it away and to my right, her left. Think about that for a minute.” I could see them mentally thinking right, then no, left, no, right. “A forearm block is best. If the bottle is here, on my right cheek, I would use a left forearm block.” I demonstrated in ultra slow motion as I talked. “See how that means I twist to my right, and that moves my right cheek back out of reach of the bottle and at the same time presents less of my body towards my attacker as a target.”

Lots of frowns. Clearly too much information at once.

“Just remember to knock away from your body.” I demonstrated again, very slowly. “Try it.” I gestured Katherine back into place and walked up and down the line of pairs. “Slowly, very slowly. Imagine it’s a game of slow motion. Pivot, bump your forearm into theirs. Yes, good.” It wasn’t, but it would get better. “No, Pauletta, see how that drags the razor right across your face if you knock it across your body and Sandra’s? You want to spin the other way, knock with your left arm, to your right.”