Nicola Griffith - Always

“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.