Luck of the Draw

"You're really lucky to have the body to wear that."

"Lucky?" I took another bite of the obscenely large sandwich that I would most likely finish. And the pickle. I would eat the pickle, too.

"Yeah. I can't wear a dress like that."

"But you could. You can wear a dress like this anytime you want. Nobody's stopping you. Except you." More chewing. God, I can't get this sandwich in me fast enough.

"But it wouldn't look the same."

"Do you even know...what I do...during the week? To my body? Like really know?" I started lifting my hem to show her the shins that were peppered with bruises. I started taking my shoes off to display the medical tape wrapped around each foot and a big toe, to show her the jammed up bones and the knotted arches. She stopped me.

"Still, you're lucky."

I tapped at the yellow bruise on my cheekbone, covered by make-up, wondering how this conversation would go if I had a dick dangling somewhere from the middle of my body.

"Hey brah, looking good. Taking care of yourself. Your arms are sick, man."

"Thanks, man. I've been working hard."

"It shows man, it totally shows. Keep it up. Proud of you, buddy."

Fucking lucky...

It's a cultural disease, this thing...this fantasy of luck that follows the female species around. I am lucky that my kids are polite. I am lucky to have a pretty thriving freelance business. I am lucky to be able to play music. I am lucky to have all these opportunities. Because when I was born, God shit charmed glitter all over me and determined that I should be lucky.

Poof.

And I should be grateful for all this luck. Grateful to the universe. What a good life...

"Everything will fall into place, babe. It always does."

My husband has stopped saying this to me. He knows not to say this anymore. The last time he said it, I was marinating in sweat, hallucinating with hunger, bleeding from my knee, and eating unwashed carrots over the sink freaking out about not getting three major checks that were more than a month late.

"Of course it will fall into place," I growled, spitting out hard peels. "Because I always make it fall into place. I work like a burro to make it fall into place. There is no magic wand. I am the fucking wand, man."

I have never said to my little brother, who has no body fat on him and can eat like pork rinds and cupcakes all day and not ever look any different, that he's lucky. It's an insult. He's a tree climber. He literally hoists his own weight all day long up giant gnarly trees. And he suffers for it. Every moment of every day. If I told him he's so lucky to be so lean and muscular he'd flick a lit cigarette at me and tell me to get fucked. Then he'd eat a hot dog and something from a box while limping to his truck.

"You're so lucky to be a freelancer. To work from home."

Yeah? That right? Cause the work just floats to my inbox every day and all I have to do is write the story and voila, the check comes within the week. Like magic. Other writers know. That to make a living doing this, an actual living, you gotta be a hustler. I mean an honest-to-god hustler. Same rules apply. Right down to getting paid.

"You gotta make it rain." That's what I say to the kids when I'm depositing checks at the bank. That I've been waiting on. Some I've had to wrangle like a mob boss--street style. Right as my account is about flatten like a dead balloon. Lucky me.

And the kids. I can't imagine someone saying to a single dad or even a married father, "You're so lucky to have such great kids." Maybe, but I doubt it. Mostly it's "You've done such a great job being a role model to your kids." Or, "look at you, doing your daughter's hair. What a great dad."

You know who's lucky? My kids. Especially my son. HE is lucky that I have watched him like a bear-hawk for most of his formative years, not taking an eye off him even to take a piss. Because seriously, he would have killed his own self. We are talking about jumping THROUGH glass windows, trying to drive cars out of the driveway, multiple knife and choking incidents (I have fished more food out of that child's throat...oysters and cheese still terrify me), jumps off of hay lofts where I have caught him literally by the loose threads of his clothes. When he told me they got a laser cutter for his inventor's club at school I almost fainted.

We, all of us men women boys girls people personas whatever, need to get it out of our heads and our mouths that women are lucky for their success. Or anyone for that matter. I have never equated my hard work with luck. That's a dangerous thing. Because that means I am waiting on chance to get me where I want to be, not my own ability and capability to get shit done. If luck is a major part of my equation, then hope is not.

I can't have that.

Getting an extra nugget in a 6-piece is lucky. Finding $20 in the parking lot is lucky. Winning at roulette is lucky.

Having a strong body and endurance is the result of hours of hard work and pushing through the urge to just give up. On one occasions I distinctly remember whipping my water bottle across the parking lot, which was dangerous because I used to be a pitcher, then sitting in my car after a jiu jitsu class. I threw out every insult about every mother I could find (in French) and swore I was never going back to "that goddamn fucking class" and "I'd like to see them push through a dance routine or keep up with me on the trail and do this training, too. Connard!" It was vicious. And stupid. But I went back. And I still keep going back. It's not luck that drives me to that class.

Luck didn't show up for any of this. There may have been some lucky moments, but I am owning the rest, so I don't lose it. Serious, dig-deep, bitch get your ass out of bed cause you ain't done yet, hard work.

Just one more mile.
Just one more roll.
Just one more punch.
Just one more turn across the floor.
Just one more hard lecture about real respect.
Just one more early morning drive to the school.
Just one more paragraph.
Just one more night burning the midnight oil.
Just one more day where the pain is unbearable.
Just one more turn with the medical tape.
Just one more payment this month.
Just one more lunch to pack.
Just one more trip to the hospital.

I can do this. Luck can't. Luck is a little bitch. But I can.

Aren't you all lucky?

Killer Bikini

We have been on the hunt for a bikini for my 14-year-old daughter. She thinks she has found one. I am trying not to be one of those creepy "virgin protector" parents, and yet, she's my baby and it's hard to watch your baby grow up, no matter how progressive...blah, blah. She doesn't want to draw too much attention to herself but she's proud of how hard she's worked this year. She is a beautiful young woman, athletic, tall, a little clumsy.

"Get a sporty one," I say. "I'll get one like that, too. We can be twinsies."

She gives me a sharp look. As if you are this tall. As if you are this tan, as if you are this young and have the entire universe in front of you to crack open however you see fit. She doesn't say it. She has better manners than that.

She picks a bright aqua.

"It's a perfect color for you," I say. It will be a graduation present for making it through 8th grade. Along with driving lessons in an open field with our old truck (me with my rosary that the pope blessed more than two decades ago; I'm not even a practicing Catholic, but still, you should see how she steers the riding mower).

I went online to order the bikini. It will be a surprise. And an admission that I realize that she is growing up and that I'm cool with that. And that I trust her to make the right choices. And that I think she should be proud of who she is and how hard she trains at soccer, tennis, MMA, school, life. Kid deserves a bikini at the very least.

Image: Valley News Live

Before I click the shopping site (she has it bookmarked, of course), I do my Monday news troll. And the video appears. There is a girl, she's wearing a bright-colored bikini. She has long legs like my daughter, strong shoulders, bare feet. This girl, who could be my girl, is face down in the grass, screaming for her mother, while a barbarian with crazy eyes and a charlatan's uniform jams his knee into her spine while pulling on her thick, rope braids.

I need to stop here, because I can barely think about this. The bile is lurking at the bottom of my throat. I see her lying there, with her head turned, still as death, and I see vividly the girl I taught to swim. The girl I taught to stick up for herself, the girl who is still the most vulnerable child as much as any other child, and I want to kill that man with my hands. I want to crush his wind pipe and kick his face until it sticks to my shoe and he turns to blood-colored dust. In my mind, he will blow away in the fatted wind of injustice with all of the other pigs who wave their guns at children and see the world as dogs see the world.

A few days ago, I took my daughter to a self defense class for women. We have been training in MMA together for 8 months, but even I know that you can't punch the lights out of a 250-lb man intent on doing you harm. I'm an extreme, aggressive, confident woman and even I know this. For a fact. My daughter does not understand.

"Why are we going to a self defense class? We already train? You could kill somebody with your kick."

"Babe, the street isn't a Jackie Chan flick. Besides, you need to know that there are other ways to skin a cat."

She is my partner. We take turns being attacker and attackee. She is definitely a fighter. She is stronger than an ox when I try to move her off of me, like lead. But she is a child horsing around with her mother. I am not a pig with a gun pulling her hair and crushing her spine and her youth.

In my version of the story, I would be there. I would protect her from this vapid evil that keeps her just a little bit more guarded than her classmates and giggly best friends.

I see the bikini, I try to disassociate it with what I have just witnessed as a mother, a human. She will love it. Other mothers are ordering their daughters this same bikini without a care in the world. They see their gleaming young skin and all of the family fun they will have this summer at the pool and the campground and the ice cream shack.

I see the vulnerable patch of brown skin along the spine that is always in danger of being crushed.

Why I Fight

I’m looking at my right index finger, and it is throbbing and stiff at the knuckle, which I have just noticed is pushed down into the joint. Barely a knuckle at all. I knew this would happen.

I need to get wraps, I say to myself mumbling over sugarless coffee that is laced with coconut oil and honey. I have already devoured two nearly raw eggs like a rabid dragon and am still hungry. I will wait another hour, once I have finished my coffee, for “second breakfast”. What you all might refer to as a coffee break. It could be a giant bowl of raw spinach with olive oil and any kind of nut imaginable and more eggs. Maybe some cheese and flash sautéed carrots. I try to make it all count.

But who am I kidding, I’m still shoveling it in like the excavator on Bob the Builder.

Sugar makes me shake a little. Junk food gives me heartburn (always has, but now it’s just a torture not worth even a taste) and booze gives me acute insomnia.

Also, I am usually covered with bruises.

“What in the fuck happened to your elbows?!” That was the general inquisition at Thanksgiving. I hesitated and gave a desperate look to my daughter, who knew exactly what happened. She had similar purple/yellow markings on hers.

“Class.”

“What class?”

“Fight class.”

The disapproval hung in the air just for a second before the turkey came out. It was nothing compared to the tension in the emergency room a few days before Christmas when a doctor with a thick accent told me that not only did I have two ruptured ovarian cysts but also a contusion on the left inner wall of my abdomen that went from my ribs to my…Southern States.

“Do you know what this could be from?” The doctor was really skeptical. Possibly already writing up the abuse report in his head.

“It’s that damn class!” My mother said. Despite numerous “I’m fine, I’m driving myself to the ER, Just wanted to let you know” texts, she was hot on my tail and would not leave the hospital.

“What class?”

“It’s…it’s an MMA class,” I said. “It’s MuayThai-style fighting and a lot of conditioning and…”

“Combat?”

“Yeah. Kickboxing, but more intense. Way more.”

That was the first doctor’s note I ever received with ‘no contact sports or combat situations’ underlined in the first paragraph under the treatment category. I was out for two weeks. It was awful. I should’ve been out for four but who can stay away? I could feel myself getting weaker by the minute. I could feel myself losing the edge that I fought so hard to gain.

Also, my fight partner is my 14-year-old daughter and we are incredibly competitive. The thought of her gaining ground…on top of already being in really good physical condition…na-ah. Wasn’t gonna happen. Especially when the only thing standing between a good ass-kicking from your kid is a giant mountain of pride and maybe a little more speed.

MMA is not for everyone. It hurts. A lot. But for me, what hurts more, is sitting on all of those years where I wish I had known how to fight for real. Or more importantly, how to control the fight inside of me. Because there is always so much of it.

“You should’ve been a lawyer.”

“I should’ve been a judge.”

I’ve been fighting for 38 years, to the day. Some of them were totally unfair rounds where I was too young to even think about defending myself. I try to forget those fights. God and karma will handle those fights with those monsters. They will seem like ants in the ring…

Some fights should not have come to blows. Metaphorical or otherwise. I should’ve been the better woman and walked away or just put my hands in front of my face and recognized that what my partner needed was to throw a couple of punches and be done with it. That I didn’t need to take any swings or kick with my dominant side. I know better now.

The physical price of the training is…well, let’s just say today I’m having trouble managing flights of stairs and using my legs to get up (and down) from a seated position. That includes visits to the bathroom. My toe has a mysterious gash that won’t heal. My feet are so calloused and unfeminine I can barely stand to look at them. My shoulders, which were already wide to begin with, are ropes of muscle around bone. My nose has finally stopped throbbing from the “accidental” contact my daughter made with my face a few weeks ago.

Literally every single bra I own is too big. And I pee all the time because all I do is eat eggs and down water…all day. All night. In fact, it’s dangerous for me, this class. I take a medication for seizures that prevents me from sweating. Do you know what that does to a person in the middle of a brutal conditioning session? I can almost feel the acid taking over my blood. I’d rather sweat to death than wonder if this is gonna be the night I overheat like a 20-year-old Pinto in the middle of Vegas.

Thankfully, my fight partner recognizes the signs and even while she’s kneeing me in the chest she’s asking if I need water. Or a band-aid. Or a break.

“Do you feel sick,” she fusses, in a whisper. “How’s the sweating? Your face is getting white. Maybe you should stop.”

Each time, I tell her I’m fine, and that I really will let her know if I’m not. That is the irony of the bruises, the aching muscles, the cracked skin. I will always finish the fight in there because it’s worth it to me to know that I can do it. It is giving me the grace, slowly of course (because I’m more stubborn than an old jackass, this I’ve been told) to pick my battles once I take the gloves off. Fighting is so hard, gaining ground takes so much effort…it had better be worth it.

With a teenage daughter made out of fire and a son made out of wind, both living under the same roof with a mother made out of timber…it has to be worth it.