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.”