The First Bad Man

This is nothing. We’ve seen fire and we’ve seen rain, I’d reply, quoting the song.

  Of course, it was more of a preaffair, since we weren’t together yet, at least not in the traditional sense, not in this lifetime. And the fire and rain, that was still to come. Also: no close friends to speak in confidence to. But I held my head up when I saw the postman and I waved at my neighbor—I initiated the wave. I even struck up a conversation with Rick, who was walking around in special shoes that punctured the grass.

  “I’d like to pay you,” I announced, “for all your hard work.” It was lavish, but why not.

  “No, no. Your garden is my payment. I need a place for my green thumb.” He held up his thumb and looked at it fondly, then his expression clouded, as if he’d remembered something awful. He took a deep breath. “I brought your trash cans out last week.”

  “Thank you,” I laughed. “That’s a big help.” It was a big help, I wasn’t even lying. “If you don’t mind, you could do that every week.”

  “I would,” he said quietly, “but I don’t usually work on Tuesdays.” He looked at me with nervous eyes. “Wednesday is trash day. I usually come on Thursdays. If you are in danger, please tell me. I will protect you.”

  Something bad was happening, or had already happened. I picked a blade of grass.

  “Why were you here on a Tuesday?”

  “I asked you if it was okay, if instead of the third Thursday of this month I came on a Tuesday. Do you remember?” He was looking down now, with a red face.

  “Yes.”

  “I had to use the bathroom. I did knock on the back door before I came in but no one heard me. Never mind, it’s your private business.”

  Tuesday. What did we do on Tuesday? Maybe nothing. Maybe he didn’t see anything.

  “Snails,” Rick said.

  Tuesday was the morning she cornered me on the floor. I resisted in a defensive huddle position, my wide butt high in the air.

  “I need snails.” He was trying to switch topics. “For the garden. The African kind—they aerate.”

  If we hadn’t heard him, it could have only been because Clee was yelling verbal harassments.

  “I’m in no danger, Rick. It’s the opposite of what you’re thinking,” I said.

  “Yes, I see that now. She’s your . . . it’s your private business.”

  “No, it’s not private, no, no—”

  He began to trip away, stabbing the grass with his special shoes.

  “It’s a game!” I pleaded, following. “I do it for my health! I see a counselor.” He was scanning the yard, pretending not to hear me.

  “Four or five will be plenty,” he called back.

  “I’ll get seven. Or a dozen. A baker’s dozen—how’s that?” He was shuffling along the side of the house to the sidewalk. “One hundred snails!” I called out. But he was gone.

  SUDDENLY I WAS CLUMSY. WHEN Clee covered my mouth and grabbed my neck in the hallway, I couldn’t fight back because I didn’t want to touch her. Before every raw impulse there was a pause—I saw us through the homeless gardener’s eyes and felt obscene. Being outside society, he didn’t know about adult games; he was like me before I met Ruth-Anne, thinking everything that happened in life was real. The next morning I left the house early, but avoiding her caused other problems. A migraine-level headache blossomed; my throat pulsed threateningly. By noon I was frantically trying to concoct a more clinical way to fight, something organized and respectable, less feverish. Boxing gloves? No, but that gave me another idea.

  I staggered down the block to the warehouse; Kristof helped me dig through our old stock.

  “Do you want VHS?”

  “When did we stop doing scenarios? Was that 2000?”

  “Scenarios?”

  “Like a woman sitting on a park bench and all that. Before self-defense as fitness.”

  “Those are all pre-2002. Are you putting something together for the twentieth anniversary?”

  “Yes?”

  “Here’s a bunch from ’96, ’97—is that good?”

  COMBAT WITH NO BAT (1996) started with an attack simulation called “A Day at the Park.” A woman in espadrilles sits down on a park bench, rubs suntan lotion on her arms, takes a pair of sunglasses out of her purse, and unfolds a newspaper.

  I pushed aside Clee’s purple sleeping bag and perched on the couch, my purse beside me. I pulled out my suntan lotion. Clee watched from the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?”

  I slowly finished rubbing in the lotion and pulled out my sunglasses.

  “You attack right after I take the newspaper out,” I whispered. I opened the newspaper and yawned the way the woman had yawned on the tape, a little theatrically. Her name was Dana something, she used to teach on weekends. She didn’t have the abs or the charisma of her successor, Shamira Tye; I doubt we even paid her. Clee hesitated, then sat down beside me. She put her arm around my shoulder sooner than the attacker on the DVD had, but like him she breast-grabbed, so like Dana I elbow-jabbed, yelling, “No!”

  She tried to pull me to the floor, which wasn’t in this simulation but it was in the next one, so I skipped ahead.

  “No! No! No!” I screamed, pretending to knee her in the groin. I jumped to my feet and ran away. Because there wasn’t far to run I ran in place for a few seconds, facing the wall. And then jogged a little longer to avoid turning around. The whole performance was quite ridiculous. I pulled off the sunglasses and peeked back at her. She handed me the newspaper.

  “Again.”

  We did that one two more times and then I tried to walk us through “Lesson 2: Domestic Traps,” which takes place in a kitchen. I felt silly throwing fake punches but Clee didn’t seem to care that we weren’t really fighting; she sneered and harassed me with a new thuggy swagger. On the DVD Dana’s attacker wore a backward baseball cap and said things like Hey, baby doll, or C’mere, sweetcakes. In “Lesson 3: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Front Door,” he purred, Yum, yum, yum from the shadows. Of course Clee didn’t say any of these things but I could sort of guide her toward his basic blocking with Dana’s flinches and looks of horror, and on a cellular level Clee knew exactly what to do—she’d seen hundreds of demonstrations like this before the age of five.

  After an hour we were exhausted but unbruised. She squeeze-squeezed my hand and gave me a long, strange look before we went our separate ways. I shut the bedroom door and rolled my head. The migraine was gone; my throat was soft. I didn’t feel euphoric, but I knew this could work. If only Rick had seen “Domestic Traps” instead of whatever it was we were doing before. This wasn’t anything, just a re-creation of a simulation of the kind of thing that might happen to a woman if she didn’t keep her wits about her.

  While Clee was at work I learned the rest of Combat with No Bat. “Lesson 4: Fighting from Inside Cars” utilized a couch and set of car keys. “Gang Defense” was too complicated—I skipped it. “Woman Asking Directions” was a quickie; my only line was “Do you know where the nearest drugstore is?” For the wrap-up Dana asked me to call my own answering machine, perform ten maximum-loud nos, and listen back to it: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

  “Yikes!” she said. “Who’s that terrifying woman screaming on your message machine?! That’s you.” I rehearsed not only the kicks and grabs but all the dialogue and staging. Dana really threw herself into the skits; shock, fear, anger—she demonstrated not just what to do but how to feel. My favorite moments were right before the assault—lounging on the park bench, walking casually to the front door. My hair felt long and heavy on my back; I swung my hips a little, knowing I was being watched, hunted even. It was interesting to be this kind of person, so unself-conscious and exposed, so feminine. Dana could have had a career making videos like this for all occasions—waking up, answering the phone, leaving the house; a woman could follow along and learn what to
do when she’s not being attacked, how to feel the rest of the time.

  The last three lessons were slightly disturbing; it was obvious why Open Palm never made a dime from this series. Dana asks the viewer to gather up some household items—a soccer ball, a pillowcase, bungee cord—and fabricate a makeshift head. “When you’re kicking a real head, it won’t bounce as much, but there will be some give and you want to be ready for that. Skulls are softer than you think.” By “Lesson 10: Mercy and Advanced Mercy,” I wondered if any of us had ever watched this video all the way through; Dana seemed to be doing her own thing. With her high heel pressed against the soccer ball she listed the reasons why a person might be allowed to live. “They have little children. They have pets that are unlikely to be adopted—for example, a smelly old dog with no teeth. Are you killing a dog by killing her owner? Maybe ask if they have pets and then ask to see a picture or for a description of the pet’s health level. Lastly: religious reasons. These are personal and fall outside of the scope of this video, but in some people’s religions killing isn’t allowed, even in self-defense. If you’re not sure, you might want to check with a local parish, synagogue, or mosque.”

  The next morning I took a deep breath and approached Clee on the couch. I had a question for her.

  “Do you, um, know where the nearest drugstore is?”

  She blinked, a confused half second. Then her left nostril curled and her eyes hardened.

  “Yes, I do,” she said, slowly rising to stand. Which wasn’t the right line, but close enough.

  I REHEARSED NEW SCENARIOS EVERY afternoon while she was at work and introduced them each morning before she left. For a few days it was exciting to reveal each one as if I’d just dreamed it up with my own very creative mind. But soon it was frustrating when Clee did and said things that were completely inconsistent with Dana’s attacker. It would have been a lot easier if she just watched the DVD and learned her part. On her day off I put Combat with No Bat on the coffee table while she was sleeping. I did it without thinking too hard, got in my car and headed to work. At a red light I drew in all my breath and froze. What had I done? The moment she put the disc in she would know I had practiced moves in front of the TV and memorized lines, as if I really cared about this. My cheeks flamed with embarrassment—now she would see me, see who I really was. A woman whose femininity was just copied from another woman.

  “Feel my forehead,” I said to Jim. “Is it a million degrees?”

  “It’s not hot but it’s clammy. And you look pale.”

  I could see her sitting on the couch and pressing play on the remote. Every gesture, every scream, every glare and growl I’d made for the last week was Dana’s. Who are you? she would rightly ask. Are you Dana? Do you even know who you are? No, I would sob, No, I don’t. Jim brought me the thermometer.

  “It’s the kind you stick in your ear. Or do you want to just go home?”

  “No, no. Can’t go home.” I lay on the floor. At noon Phillip texted a single question mark and a tiny cartoon emoticon of a clock. He’d been waiting for almost two months now. Just two months ago my life had been ordered and peaceful. I rolled onto my stomach and prayed for him to deliver me from this situation I’d gotten myself into. What would be the emoticon for Carry me to your penthouse and tend to me as a husband? Jim laid a wet paper towel on my forehead.

  At seven P.M. Nakako asked me to turn on the alarm when I left. “You do know the code, right?” I pulled myself up off the floor, stumbled out with her, and drove home shivering. I parked in the driveway and forced myself out of the car, braced for ridicule.

  But a funny thing happened on the way to the front door.

  “Yum, yum, yum,” said a voice from the shadows. She swaggered out and put her hand on the small of my back. She was wearing a backward baseball cap.

  “Step away!” I barked, and she hung back for exactly one, two, three seconds before lunging. The next five minutes proved that my neighbors didn’t care if I lived or died.

  When I finally made it to the front door I shut it behind me and smiled, touching my cheeks. Of course there weren’t any actual tears, but I was that moved. She must have practiced all day, rehearsing in front of the TV. Any two foes can fight in anger, but this was something rare. I was reminded of the Christmas Day soccer game between enemies in World War I or II. She still repulsed me, I’d still shoot her in battle the next day, but until dawn we’d play this game.

  The next evening we did the entire DVD, in order. “Gang Defense” was the most confusing because there were two bad men and another man in all denim who didn’t want trouble. “Hey,” he said to the others. “This isn’t cool. Let’s scram.” Clee switched roles between the three men with no warning; I was constantly stopping to reorient myself.

  “What are you doing?” she hissed. “I’m over here.”

  “Which one are you?”

  She hesitated. Until now there had been no overt acknowledgment of the video or that we were anyone but our own angry selves.

  “I’m the first man,” she said.

  “The one in denim?”

  “The first bad man.”

  It was the way she was standing when she said it—her feet planted wide, her big hands waiting in the air. Just like a bad man, the kind that comes to a sleepy town and makes all kinds of trouble before galloping off again. She wasn’t the first bad man ever but the first I’d ever met who had long blond hair and pink velour pants. She snapped her gum impatiently.

  We sailed through the rest of the scene and then repeated it two more times. It was like square dancing or tennis, I told Ruth-Anne the following week. “Once you get the moves down, it’s second nature—a real vacation for the brain.”

  “So you would describe your pleasure as . . . ?”

  “A little theatrical but mostly athletic. And I’m the most surprised of anyone because I’ve never been good at sports.”

  “And for Clee? Do you think her enjoyment is also athletic?”

  “No.” I lowered my eyes. It wasn’t really my business to say.

  “You think it’s something else?”

  “For her it might not be a game, it might be real. She’s a ‘misogynist’ or something. That’s her thing.” I described the wolfish intensity that came over her when she simulated. “Of course this is your department, not mine. Do you think it might be psychological?”

  “Well, that’s a broad term.”

  “But accurate, right?”

  “Sure, okay,” she said begrudgingly. She thought I was trying to get two diagnoses for the price of one.

  “Say no more,” I demurred, holding up the palms of my hands. To change the subject I pointed to the heavy-looking Chinese food cartons lined up on her desk. “Is that all from you?”

  “I drink a lot of water,” she said, and patted her water bottle. “At the end of the day I gather them up and empty them all in the bathroom at once.”

  “The bathroom here or the bathroom at home?”

  “The bathroom here!” she laughed. “Can you imagine? Me driving home a zillion containers of urine and feces? What a mess!”

  She mimed driving a car and we laughed about that. It really was a very funny image. Laughing like friends always emphasized that we weren’t. This wasn’t real like the laughing she did at home.

  She kept driving, and I ponied up another chuckle. Why didn’t she stop?

  “So what if it’s real for her?” she said, suddenly dropping her hands. “Real comes and goes and isn’t very interesting.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Open Palm fundraiser is a big hassle every year and not even very lucrative but I’m always giddy as I get dressed for it, knowing Phillip’s getting dressed too. If this were a movie they would cut back and forth between me pulling up my nylons, Phillip polishing his shoes, me brushing my hair, and so forth. It used to be this was the only time
I saw him outside the office—now I could say He texts me all the time and it wouldn’t be a lie. When he saw me in the new persimmon blouse he might feel embarrassed or ashamed about the texts. “Hey,” I would say. “Look right here.” I’d point to my eyes. “There’s no room for shame in this relationship, okay?” Would he then pull me toward him with the farmer’s market necklace, which I decided to wear again? And then what would happen? Someone else might have to give Clee a ride home, I might not be available. I’d tell her this when she was done showering. Why was she even coming? She hadn’t been to an Open Palm fundraiser since she was a little girl charging around the dance floor.

  I changed my mind when she clomped out of the bathroom; she needed a chaperone. Her top forced a person to look at it even if they didn’t want to. It was just two pieces of black material attached to a giant gold ring—not a street-safe outfit. I could drop her off on my way to Phillip’s if need be.

  “Will there be beverages?” she said on the drive to the Presbyterian Fellowship Hall. Her pungent feet stabbed the dashboard; she’d dug up some very high heels with many crisscrossing straps and buckles.

  “Not alcoholic ones. You won’t think it’s fun.” She’d traded her sweatpants for very, very tight jeans. Jeans reminded me of Kirsten. He wouldn’t dare bring her.

  “That’s okay. Jim’s got something for me.”

  “Jim from Open Palm? He’s bringing you alcohol?”

  “No, something else. You’ll see.”

  We were quiet for the rest of the drive.

  Suzanne and Carl hugged their daughter and Clee surprised me by complying. I stood next to the long three-way hug like a guard or a docent.

  “Cheryl!” Suzanne squawked as they pulled apart. “What happened to your legs?”

  We all looked down at my calves. They were striped with bruises from the old way.

  Phillip wasn’t here yet. The girls from Kick It did a self-defense demonstration to rap music and then the DJ took over. I asked him if he thought the volume might be a little on the loud side.