by Schow, Ryan
Softly, he says, “Why are you here?”
My hands wipe my eyes, then they cram themselves into my jeans pockets. I can’t look at him. I feel so small.
“I’m here to support a friend.”
“I think there’s more,” he says. His voice is gentle, his presence reassuring. “I think one of our self-defense moves has given rise to feelings you would rather keep buried.”
My eyes finally meet his eyes. There is a strength in them I refuse to ignore. A peacefulness in him that’s contagious. For some reason—and I don’t know why I feel like this—part of me feels I can trust this man, that I can talk to him. The thing that would normally stop me, the instinct that normally tells me to shut my mouth and search for my exit, remains silent. Perfectly still. Inside, I long to trust again. He is helping Netty heal from her past, I tell myself. So I can trust him. But can he help me the way he’s helping Netty?
I want to believe he can, so I tell myself to take this chance.
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out, and then it all comes out. “A man broke into my home, kidnapped my niece and nearly killed me. This wasn’t the first time my life has been threatened, but the third. I have nightmares, and I’m scared.” Then more quietly, “I don’t know how to fix myself. Or my brain.”
“Do you want your life back?” he asks. My breath catches. There is a sincerity about him that holds more promise than therapy.
The answer comes quick and easy. “Yes.”
“These events in your life, they have changed you,” he says. “And so you must now change yourself into something else—you must become someone else—in order to release this unwelcome burden. I can help you with that, if you want.”
I don’t know why, but I nod my head. He seems so wise. So understanding. The same way some people need God to cure them of their social and emotional deficiencies, I think I need this man to cure me of my fear, my weakness, my insecurity. How I deduced this so quickly and immediately, it’s a mystery I might never solve. It doesn’t matter though. There’s a part of me that knows I need him.
“You have only to decide the type of training you want.”
Looking at him, sort of scared for what I am doing, I say, “What do you mean?”
“The yin and yang symbol, a complete circle with separate, coexisting blends of the colors black and white, can be seen as representations of light and dark contained in one entity. One interpretation of this symbol is that there is both light and darkness in all of us.”
“I believe that,” I say, recounting all the questionable things I’ve done in my young life.
“On one hand I am an efficient practitioner of karate. My students enjoy my relaxed teaching style while learning the basics of self-defense. Coexisting inside me, however, is a highly demanding, more effective instructor. I have grown five world champions and seven of my top instructors have left to open successful schools of their own. Their paths were not easy, but they were…effective.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The level of intensity by which I teach and train. With this ancient method, your time with me will be infinitely more difficult, and painful. You will bruise and bleed, but when I’m done, no one will ever lay a hand on you again. The most proficient of masters have all received this level of training. I will offer you this choice. But it is just that, your choice. Which type of instruction would you prefer to learn?”
Do I really have a choice? Three times my life has been threatened: by Gerhard’s scab-eating monster, by the pedophile music producer Demetrius Giardino, and by Gerhard’s crazy associate only days ago.
“The more difficult course.”
“How good do you want to be?” he asks.
The word invincible comes to mind. I speak the word aloud.
He smiles, knowingly, like he doesn’t believe me. “How much time do you have?” There is an inner peace to him, something hypnotic I can’t touch on. A strength I want to embody. Or perhaps he embodies the confidence to no longer know what it means to be afraid.
“Two and a half months before I go back to school. Maybe less.”
He gives me a genial smile. “How much time each day, I mean?”
Thinking about how Maggie shut herself in her room all day, knowing I will do the same if I don’t do something drastic, I say, “You will have whatever time you need.” More emotions flood my brain. More reasons to get stronger, faster, more lethal. Rebecca needs rescuing. Dr. Heim, that prick who dug a hole in my chest and tried to burn me to death, he’s going to get a gallon of gasoline poured down his throat. I’m going to set him on fire from the inside out if it’s the last thing I do.
Reasons.
The words revenge and retribution, they won’t leave my brain.
“Four hours per day, six days per week,” he says. “This should be a good start, but only if you are truly serious.”
I hesitate.
Four hours a day? Six days a week? My brain is like, is this really what you want? Maggie would have killed herself so much sooner if she wasn’t recording her music in the city. And what have I been doing? Sleeping all day. Being that dark cloud, the proverbial black hole. I can’t just stalk Nurse Arabelle and her diabolical child all day. Besides, with all the times I’ve put myself in jeopardy, I really should know how to fight.
“You must think me a masochist,” I say. It’s a weak statement. Sort of. The truth I’ve come to realize is that I am a masochist. There is something about being in pain that strikes me as profoundly satisfying in a scary, dysfunctional sort of way.
“Commit to this and it will change your life. Or you can continue being afraid and never know different.”
“Three times I should have died,” I admit out loud. “Four hours a day, six days a week…that will be fine.”
“Are you sure you are willing to walk this path?”
“Yes.”
“Good, then show up at eight o’clock tomorrow morning and we will begin your training.”
“How much will all this cost?” I ask.
“One thousand dollars a week up front in cash, and you must sign a waiver. Can you handle that?”
“Is a frog’s ass water tight?” I say.
“Indeed it is,” Netty’s sensei replies with a shake of humor in his voice.
4
No smoking hot girl in her right mind would ever do the kind of karate I’m about to do. Which makes me not want to do it. Netty’s sensei said there would be blood and bruising. Breaking a nail or getting a black eye? That’s a foregone conclusion. I almost don’t want to get out of bed.
Ugh…here goes anyway.
I drag my ass to the shower, then blow dry my hair and put it into a ponytail. My eyes are still asleep, but whatevs, this ain’t no beauty contest. Yoga pants, sport bra, dark tank top, black Nike’s. I eat a granola bar, fill my water bottle with Monster energy drink, then go.
All the way to the dojo excuses flood my mind. Then images of Gerhard’s monster intrude on my more dawdling thoughts. That gigantic motherf*cker broke into my room while I was bathing. He peeled a scab off his arm. He dropped it in my bathwater, then that freakasaurus rex plucked it sopping wet out of my bath and ate it.
Turns out I make it to the dojo just fine.
Inside, my sensei is waiting for me. I hand him a check for the entire week, sign a waiver I never read, then leave it on the front desk. On the mat is a white uniform with a white belt, a smallish bucket and hand mop, and two one-gallon bottles of water.
He picks it up the uniform and says, “This is your gi, your karate uniform. Go into the bathroom and put this on.”
“What’s the bucket for?”
“Your puke,” he says, straight-faced. “We stop when the bucket is full.”
“Are you serious?” He can’t be.
“This is the last time you will ask me this. I am nothing but serious.”
For the first hour, Sensei Naygel teaches me the basics of movement. He shows me proper st
ances. He shows me how to punch and kick. He teaches me about respect and the rules of the dojo.
The sweat starts pouring.
My muscles begin to ache. To strain.
“Burpees,” he says. Jump up, drop into push up position, do a push up, jump up again. When I’ve done so many burpees I can’t do push ups with good form, when I can’t jump much more than three inches off the mat, he says, “Walking lunges.”
Okay, this guy’s a sadist.
He points to the end of the dojo. I start lunging. My feet come together in the middle, I pause then go down.
“No pause,” he says. “Just walk.”
Freaking hell.
Ten laps later, my legs are shaking so badly and my stomach is seriously rushing it’s way up my throat. The blood drains from my face. It feels green. Sensei grabs the bucket, hands it to me. The first round of puke hits the bottom of the plastic bucket in a hard, fast splash.
My eyes bulge, my stomach folds into my rib cage and the flush of liquid explodes out of my mouth one violent, gut-clenching seizure at a time. It’s hard not to feel nostalgic.
I almost miss puking.
One look down, however, and my heart sinks. My puke fills only one quarter of the bucket. After wiping the vomit off my mouth and nose, I say, “Three more times and it should be full.”
“Four,” he says.
We start again. I learn to karate walk, I learn to punch with my top two knuckles, I learn to kick with the ball of my foot, with my heel, with the blade edge of my foot, with my big toe.
Then it’s more burpees, more lunges, more push ups.
Sensei Naygel ads planks and mountain climbers then makes me drink water. I’m sweating like crazy, almost as bad as when I did my first transformation. The pain isn’t as bad, though, so I push my way through it.
A third of the bottle of water goes down hard.
“Slow down on the water,” he says.
Then it’s punches, kicks, elbow strikes.
My abs are cramping, my arms feel floppy and useless, I can’t hardly make my hands into fists. My hair is a wreck. It’s hanging in my face.
I feel ugly.
Exhausted.
Then it’s burpees, sit ups, push ups, planks, mountain climbers, walking lunges, kicks, punches.
In a sharp, almost angry voice, Sensei Naygel says, “Stop punching so lazy! Do it how I taught you!”
I bristle at his tone, but dig in anyway. I try harder. I fail. My arms won’t do what I want them to do. What I need them to do. And my legs? Useless.
He motions me to the floor and says, “Planks.”
He says, “Crunches.”
He says, “Mountain climbers.”
That’s when I make my second run for the bucket. My upheaval is every bit as aggressive as the first one, but less mess comes out. I can’t help but groan with disappointment.
“Two more times,” Sensei Naygel says.
When I wipe my mouth, he is there with the bottle of water.
“Thanks,” I mumble, not cheerfully, but not unhappily either. My body hurts, and it’s tired, but I can feel it reviving itself. This must be Gerhard’s regenerative serum at work.
More push ups, more sit ups, more burpees.
On this, my first session, near the bottom of the second hour, Sensei Naygel teaches me blocks, he teaches me the proper way to fall, he teaches me ground maneuvers. My abs burn, they cramp, they ache. By the top of the third hour, my abs are abused slabs of meat. I puke a third time. After the purging of liquid all but drains my belly, after all the yellow bile has been expelled, I appraise my progress with disdain.
Hunched over that bucket, sweat leaking from my skin the way a wet rag drips just before you wring it, the word inadvertently leaves my mouth: the f-word.
Not too loud, but loud enough.
The kick that hammers my ribs sends me skidding sideways down the mat. Something hot and brilliant flares in my side and I can’t breathe. I strain to see what happened, only to find Sensei Naygel standing over me with a face that could shatter cold steel.
“Do not EVER use that word in my dojo again! Do you understand?”
I nod my head, rattled.
Humiliated.
“Yes, Sensei!” he barks. “Show respect!”
“Yes, Sensei,” I force out. My breath is returning, but the pain isn’t fading. I crawl to my feet, which surprises him.
I put an image of Gerhard’s monster in my mind to keep me from crying, from quitting. I picture Demetrius Giardino, Dr. Heim, Rebecca.
Then it’s more mountain climbers, more kicks and punches, more blocks.
“Time to learn how to take a punch,” he says. The warmth in him has all but gone cold. The transformation between who he was last night and who he is now is startling.
“Let your air out,” he says. “Tighten your stomach.” When my air is out, he punches me in the gut. It’s not bad, so I nod for more.
He punches again.
I nod.
“Hit it like you mean it,” I say, confident in my body, in Gerhard’s serum. When he hits me, it’s not in the stomach, but in the solar plexus. He hits me so hard I can’t stand, or breathe. I go stiff, topple over sideways. And that’s when it happens.
This pretty little angel craps in her new white uniform. It just happens.
The humiliation…this is on par with legendary.
“When you hit someone hard enough in their solar plexus,” he says, calmly, “they can’t breathe. Other side effects include dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea and of course, humility. Now it smells as though you got your lesson in humility. You’ll need a new uniform.”
I came here to be strong, to be confident. Is it possible to feel so diminutive?
He goes to his office, then returns with a plastic bag containing a new uniform, and a plastic bag containing underwear about my size. They’re not cute undies. Not at all. We’re talking granny panties. My eyes send signals of revulsion to my brain, which renders my legs and arms even more useless. It’s like I’m just stuck trying to process something that makes no sense.
Slowly my brain registers that not only have I shit my pants, he knows I’ve shit my pants. My eyes turn up at him. They burn with enough hatred to fry him from the inside out.
“Change,” he says.
His order gets me moving. Hot, wet feces smear the insides of my butt cheeks and thighs. The way I walk, like I’m wearing diapers, this is me at rock bottom.
In the bathroom, I bag the soiled pants and my cute, ruined g-string. I wash my crotch with wet paper towels, cursing. I’m near full tantrum. Outside the door, he says, “Hurry up!” and so I dry myself quickly, moving to the pace of my rage. If I didn’t need to defend myself, if I was not decimated by the memories of my near death experiences, I would have given him the middle finger right then and there.
But I asked for this. So I’ll take it.
When I come back out on the floor, he’s waiting with the water. I drink it. He makes me drink more. I do.
Then it’s more of everything. I puke again and when I pull my head out of the bucket, he’s over the top of me saying, “One more time.”
It’s nearly full, but by now I’m all dry heaves and watery eyes.
Three and a half hours pass. One, maybe one and a half more vomit sessions to go. Strangely, in these last hours, as we work the basics over and over again, my embarrassment in shitting myself abates and I find a rhythm.
Sensei Naygel looks at me in awe. Then he pushes me harder. I go harder. The world starts to close in on me as I’m doing burpees and that’s when a cold, unfamiliar sensation washes over me. My senses fold in two. Turn inside out. Then my equilibrium is gone and I’m falling. I’m already out cold by the time my body hits the mat. When I wake up, Sensei is there with more water.
“Drink,” he says.
I drink.
“Stand,” he says.
I stand.
“Punch,” he says
I punch an
d it’s weak. He snaps a punch before me and it whips so hard and loud I feel my body wanting to startle. If only I had the energy.
“Punch!” he snaps.
I punch.
“Snap it back,” he says. “Out fifty miles an hour, in one hundred miles per hour.”
I punch and I whip it back. I do this one hundred times at about three miles per hour tops. My arms feel destroyed. Like blobs of jelly. The muscles in my stomach are just hunks of flop. They’re useless. Just like my legs.
“Last trip to the bucket,” he says, and then he pushes me so hard I practically faint in front of the bucket, push my face into the stink of it, then let the last of my insides heave.
When I pull my face out of the puke, it’s because I’m proud, and it’s because I’m thinking of the puke left to me by Cameron O’Dell two semesters ago. That bitch. Thinking of her, of all the bullying I took, I stand up renewed.
“You are not human,” he says. His voice is frosted steel.
“I’m just driven.”
“Good, now we stretch,” he says.
5
Me stretching and him stretching me are two very different things. I would stretch in front of the television casually, beautifully, not painfully. His form of stretching is pure torture.
My eyes cry silent tears that mix with sweat. My inner voice rails out curse words, every gosh damn one of them. I shake. I wail. And eventually I beg for release.
Then we go to the next limb.
When we’re done, I say, “That’s it?” but not in a disrespectful way. I wanted it to be over so badly. I look at the clock and it’s just after noon.
“Come back tonight after our adult class and we will stretch again. Not as intensely. You’ll feel better in the morning if you do this. If you don’t you won’t be able to move very well, and tomorrow’s class will surely break you.”
I tell him I’ll do this, then after bowing out of class, I stumble to the car and try to drive to Netty’s with rubber legs. Fortunately it’s not far. The minute I hit the bed, I’m done. Asleep in a sticky, exhausted sweat.
