Walking Through the Storm

“I’m Alison”, the women said, offering Brianna her hand. “Please have a seat.”

She gestured towards the chair across from her desk and Brianna sat, her eyes scanning the office. The decor in the room was simple: desk, two office chairs, a few potted plants on the windowsill, a few scattered books on a table in the corner. A large poster hung on the far wall, a silhouette of a muscled woman with the caption “Strong women aren’t simply born. They are made by the storms they walk through.”

“So Brianna, tell me about yourself.”

Brianna smiled “I am one of three sisters, born and raised in Pennsylvania. I have always been active, even as young child our parents would always take us hiking and rock climbing and stuff. “

Alison nodded encouragingly. Brianna continued.

“For most of my adult life I worked in an office where women were expected to be pretty and pleasant. You know, the typical corporate environment. I did well there; I was good at my job. But this…teaching is something I am really passionate about. Something I really believe in. I think it is so powerful for a woman to learn how to be a badass you know? For everyone really.”

Alison looked down at the piece of paper on her desk. “I see that you spent 6 years at that firm, they clearly liked you. “ She paused. “Why did you leave?”

Brianna had expected this question. “It was time to do something else,” she replied. “I gave them proper notice. They would say good things about me I think.” 

Alison nodded again. “Makes sense,” she said. “But it seems there are no other positions listed between then and now. What have you been doing for this past year?”

Brianna paused. She had expected this question too, and was prepared to talk about her passion for women's fitness, her love of the martial arts. But instead she replied simply, “I was learning how to fight.”

11 Months Earlier

Brianna took a slow sip of her wine and nodded at Jonathan, the universal sign that someone is listening. And she was, mostly. She had been listening all evening when he talked about his job (high school math teacher, pretty cool) and his fantasy baseball league (less cool). Jonathan was a nice guy, but there was just no spark there. As she swallowed the last of the liquid in her glass she had to admit to herself that this was yet another date that was going to go nowhere. 

“Do you want another one?” Jonathan raised his hand to signal the waiter.

Brianna shook her head. “Thank you but I am pretty tired. Long day at work.”

Jonathan nodded and asked the waiter for the check instead.

“I will walk you home”, he said.

It was a beautiful fall evening and Brianna’s Brooklyn neighborhood was lively. She let Jonathan place his hand on her arm as they walked, even though she was pretty sure both of them knew that there would not be a second date. When they reached the door to her building she smiled politely.

“Thank you”, she said. “I had a nice time.”

Jonathan smiled back and the hand on her arm slid up towards her hair. “Me too”, he replied. He leaned forward slightly, indicating that he was going to kiss her goodnight. Bri closed her eyes and let it happen. It was easier that way, less awkward.

When they broke apart she reached into her jacket for her keys.

“Well goodnight then,” she said. 

She turned away, assuming he would just leave, so she was surprised when instead she felt his breath on the back of her neck.

“Maybe I’ll come in for awhile.”

It was not a question. 

Jonathan pulled her inside, the entry door to her building closing behind them. Then his lips were on hers, his body pushing her into the wall. 

“Hey!” she protested. “I didn’t…”

“Which apartment is yours?” he asked.

Brianna pulled away, eyes wide. 

“I don’t want to…no…”

He leaned into her again. “That’s fine, we can just do it right here in the hallway.” He unzipped her jacket, moved his hands towards the button of her jeans. 

Brianna tried to move but her back was against the wall. He began kissing her neck, one hand slipping underneath her shirt, the other still fumbling with her zipper.

“Get off of me!” she shouted.

He grinned at her. “I love it when women pretend they aren’t into it,” he said. “Its so hot.”

Brianna watched helplessly as he moved to unzip his own pants. 

“I’m not…” She trailed off. Jonathan was the fifth guy she had dated this month, the evening wasted pretending to laugh at someone’s jokes, pretending to be interested in their stories. The guys were all the same; none had made her feel anything at all.

Jonathan, however, was the first one to try to rape Brianna in her hallway.

“I said get off!” 

Brianna once more attempted to push his hands off of her but he was too strong, too insistent. She was suddenly overcome by a wave of exhaustion. What did it matter if she slept with him or not? He was going to do this no matter what she said. She let her body go limp, her eyes vacant.

Jonathan raised his eyebrows flirtatiously, as if this was still part of a fun game they were playing. 

“I guess you are done pretending you don’t want it”, he said.

Brianna closed her eyes.

“Is everything ok out here?”

Her eyes flew open at the sound of her neighbor’s voice.

“Bri? Are you alright? Do you need help?”

Jonathan flashed her a smile. “Sorry to bother you”, he said with a wink. ‘Date night got a little carried away. We’ll go inside.”

Jessica ignored him, her eyes focused only on Brianna, 

“That’s ok, Jess,” Brianna said, meeting her neighbor’s gaze. “He was just leaving.”

Jessica nodded once, then learned against her door frame, clearly with no intention of going back inside of her apartment. 

“Yup, got it”, she said casually. She then looked right at Jonathan, her eyes narrowed. “You need some help finding the door, buddy?”

Brianna watched as Jonathan shot one more glance at the two women in the hallway, let out a frustrated sigh and reassembled his clothing. 

“Thanks for a really nice evening”, he said to Brianna, still pretending.

Brianna said nothing. She took a deep, shaky breath, her whole body trembling. Only once Jonathan was all the way outside, the heavy door to her building closed and locked behind her, did Brianna turn to her neighbor and burst into tears.

*******************

“I’m sorry.” Alison sighed. “Experiences like yours are part of the reason I opened this place. To help people get stronger.”

Brianna nodded enthusiastically. ‘Exactly! That’s why teaching here would be so great.”

“We’ll get to that,” Alison said, with an almost apologetic smile. She paused, waiting. 

“Yeah so after that, my job was…well, lets just say it was no longer a good fit.”

10 Months Earlier

Brianna was trying, she really was. She got out of bed when her alarm clock went off. She put on professional looking clothing, did her hair and makeup, got on the subway. She even made it to work on time and went through the motions of doing her job. But then one of the men would make a lewd joke, or toss a flirtatious wink at another one of the assistants, and Brianna would feel like smashing things. 

Eventually she decided it was time to move on. She gave her notice on a Friday and two weeks later, she packed up all of the things in her office, went home, and crawled into bed. 

She stayed there all weekend, watching reruns of 90’s sitcoms, only getting up for the occasional snack or bathroom break. Her friends sent concerned text messages, which she replied to with one word answers and emojis. 

On Monday she ran out of coffee. 

She noticed the sign while she was waiting for the bagel shop across the street to make her breakfast: “Kickboxing. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Try a free class today!”

Brianna had never done martial arts before, however, in that moment the idea of punching something sounded brilliant. 

A few days later, she walked back in, slipped off her shoes, and joined the small crowd of students on the mat. Over the next few weeks, she learned how to make a proper fist. She slid on a pair of borrowed boxing gloves that smelled of worn leather and old sweat, and threw three punch combinations while her partner held a pad for her. She learned how to pick up her knee and shove her foot out in a powerful front kick. She learned how to keep her hands up, two twin shields on either side of her head, how to stay light on her feet, when to inhale, when to exhale. 

It was a Wednesday in her third week of classes, that Brianna first tried sparring.

***************

“Was it scary?” Alison asked. “To have people hitting you? You know, after what happened to you.”

Brianna smiled then. “Only at first. After that, it was incredible. It was the most incredible thing I had ever done.”

8 Months Earlier

Everyone had their own pre class ritual; stretching, jumping jacks, shadow boxing in the air. Some people would just sit with their classmates on the mat and chat. Brianna, on the other hand, liked to be alone, quietly wrapping her hands in the corner, her legs spread in a lazy straddle stretch. By the second month, everyone knew her routine and they left that spot of mat free for her. No one seemed to mind that she didn’t join in their conversations; they still smiled when they saw her, gave her a friendly hello. Here in the gym, all that was expected of her was that she work hard and keep her hands up.

Brianna loved sparring. She loved the feel of the gloves on her hands (she had her own pair now, blue ones). She loved the way her throat burned when she was really out of breath, the slap her shinguards made when her kicks connected with her partners body. She even loved the feeling of getting hit back, the way her body absorbed punches as if it was made of sand. 

That last part was hard to explain. “You mean you like that it makes you feel strong?” Her best friend Colleen frowned, confused. Brianna nodded. It was true, she did like how withstanding her opponents blows made her feel invincible. But it was more than that, sometimes the very act of getting hit made her feel alive. 

She had learned that only other fighters understood that part, everyone else looked at her funny.

In her third month she finally got up the courage to try a jiu-jitsu class. Sparring was one thing, but the idea of another person literally sitting on top of her was different. The other woman in the gym kept pushing her though, gently but insistently. “If you think kickboxing is powerful”, Alexis said. ‘Wait until the first time you make someone tap.”

Alexis was small (just a little over five feet) and fierce. She could kick to the head of almost everyone in the room, and had been grappling for just over 5 years. After her first sparring class, Brianna had dragged herself into the changing room, breathless and exhausted, but also lighter, freer. Alexis had taken one look at her face and burst out laughing. “You look like you just had the best orgasm of your life”, she joked. Then her expression turned serious. “But yeah, its like that, fighting. After today, you will never be the same.”

BJJ started with a brief warmup, and then a series of partner drills. Then the last half an hour was rolling, jiu jitsu’s version of sparring. Brianna rolled with Alexis first, laughing as the smaller woman dove past her legs, pinning Brianna to the mat with her arms and her chest in side control, and then climbing over to sit on top of he, grinning. “Don’t worry, it won’t always be so easy”, she promised. “Soon you will learn how to stop me.”

Her second partner was a man named Ben, at least 20 pounds heavier than Brianna. He also passed to side control, his thick muscular chest pressing against hers. One arm was underneath her neck, his shoulder driving forward into her chin, pinning her to the mat. As she struggled to breathe, Brianna felt her eyes fill with tears. She raised her hand to tap, but he had already let go and was eyeing her with concern. Brianna looked away, embarrassed. She was about to walk off the mat when she felt his hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t”, he said.

Brianna glared at him, expecting some kind of lecture about toughness or maybe about how disrespectful it was to leave in the middle of class. Instead he looked her in the eyes, his expression kind. 

“Whatever happened to you”, he said softly. “This will help. Just give it time.”

************************

“How did he know?” Alison asked.

Brianna smiled. “Apparently I am not the first woman like me to walk into that gym,” she said.

She went on. “Not all of the men there were like Ben of course. There were the typical meatheads too, the type to make inappropriate jokes about a woman in a tight shirt, about where she put her legs. BJJ has some pretty interesting positions.”

Both women laughed.

“But most of them were great. They treated us like fighters, like our bodies were instruments not ornaments. And the women..”

Brianna paused, her eyes shining. “The women were incredible.”

Four months earlier

As the months went by, Brianna felt herself change. Her time at the gym became less about being angry, and more simply about the training itself. She loved the way she felt after class, the wrung out emptiness. She loved the athleticism of sparring and rolling, but even more than that, she loved the puzzle of it, the attempt to string moves together, to set traps for her partners,. Brianna had never played chess, but she could see why so many people compared jiu-jitsu to it.

After Brianna had been there for about 8 months, Alexis started a new BJJ class for teenaged girls and asked Brianna to if she wanted to assist with it. 

It was there that she met Kalaya.

Kalaya was 16, with long curly hair and eyes so dark they were almost black. While many of the girls responded to the awkwardness of jiu jitsu with squeals and giggles, Kalaya would just nod quietly, performing each drill with focus and precision. Whenever it was time to roll, she took a few deep breaths and then closed her eyes, allowing her body to just respond instinctively to whatever was happening. The other girls clearly thought she was strange, but they tried to engage her in their banter anyway, attempting to make her laugh, including her in their pre-class chatter. 

One afternoon after class, Kalaya followed Brianna into the changing room.

“Miss Brianna?”

Brianna smiled. Most of the girls just called her Coach Bri but Kalaya always did things her own way.

“Hi Kalaya. What’s up?”

The young woman paused, fidgeting with the straps on her backpack. When she finally looked up, her eyes were shining with tears. 

“Miss Brianna, I just wanted to say thank you. You know, for letting me take this class. For teaching me jiu-jitsu.”

She stopped, took a breath. “I…Something happened to me. In the park. A few years ago…”

Brianna put a gentle hand on her shoulder. 

“It’s ok Kalaya”, she said softly. “It happened to me too.”

*****************

“That’s when I knew I wanted to do this for a living,,” Brianna said. “These past few months I have been temping in an office downtown. But I really just want to be teaching.”

Alison nodded encouragingly and Brianna continued.

“I spent so much time this past year feeling angry and closed off to the world. But joining that gym changed me. It opened me up again, taught me things about myself. What my body was capable of. What I was capable of. 

“I want to do that for other people. And this job will allow me to do that.”

She paused again, shooting Alison a mischievous grin. “By the way, Kalaya is still training. And she is a force to be reckoned with.” 

Alison stood up then, once more offering Brianna her hand.

“Well it was really great meeting you Brianna. I have a few more people to interview, but honestly I can’t imagine any of them being more qualified to teach kickboxing here than you. You should hear from me in a day or two.”

“That’s great to hear, thank you!” Brianna gave Alison a firm handshake and started towards the door.

She was about to leave when she heard Alison’s voice from behind her.

“On and Brianna? That thing that happened to you in the hallway?” Alison’s eyes narrowed. “It happened to me too. Sophomore year of college.

“But I didn’t have someone like you, or a place like this. I had to figure it out all on my own.”

Her gaze fell on the poster hanging on the far wall, the one about strong women.

“It didn’t go so well back then,” Alison said simply. 

Two days later, she called Brianna to offer her the job.