by Lotta Bangs
However, Alessandra brought in the customers there. I also made up quite fancy certificate formats on my computer.
I was saving to repay Fermina my university fees, but the dojo income exceeded my wildest expectations. I worked long hours there and had to hire shop assistants and additional teachers, retraining them to my standards.
As I would soon be leaving, I sold each of my staff a two per cent share in the dojo, which they could pay for from their earnings over three years. I retained sixty percent and hired a good accountant.
I also carved a two-foot high and three-foot wide oval plaster positive mold of my logo and had it remade by a jeweler in metal and enameled in my colors with gold-dipped accents and outlines.
I optimistically ordered a dozen copies, to be set above the entries to each of my dojos. The first of these was installed two days before I left Buenos Aires.
At last, accompanied by Mrs. Hammond, I was flown out for a reunion with my mother’s very distant cousin who presciently had arranged with my parents to adopt and raise me if anything happened to them.
Chapter 8
Trying to be Normal
Fermina met me at the airport and we played out a little drama for the press. She gushed and tried to hug me. I ducked away, as reporters scattered, and held her off at a distance, as I had been doing with everyone at the embassy.
Mrs. Hammond gave me a very reproachful look. “I’m so sorry ma’am. The girl has been hiding out for a year. There’s no telling what kind of company she kept in that time, nor what she suffered. I’m afraid that she has become a little feral and won’t allow anyone to touch her.”
Fermina settled me into her home and arranged for me to take more university courses mostly by internet. I became the daughter she had never had and she was all that a mother should be to me. I loved her deeply.
Fermina taught me useful feminine skills I never would have picked up otherwise—how to look after a house, to cook, sew, knit, crochet and embroider, even to tat and make bobbin lace. These were all essential for a well-raised Argentinean girl to know for the all-important preparation for marriage and to augment her glory box.
While I lived with her, I had to play that part at least outwardly. I had to have a hope chest full of beautifully decorated napery to show off to guests to prove my expertise before Fermina’s friends could start lining up potential husbands for me.
We had many good laughs together as we tried to define exactly what type of man might suit me.
* * *
Fermina decided that I needed more clothes, so she had her brother-in-law Duarte drive us to a larger city with better shopping. There, I saw my first Galen tower and was enchanted.
It was much taller than the surrounding buildings and oddly shaped. Though sited on a rectangular block, the corners were very rounded and the entire tower was horizontally corrugated with the wall centres bulged out and almost making an angle where the indentations faded away, as they did again at the corners. I could see that this was to deflect wind and prevent turbulence.
The best part was the greenery. The tower was faced in a glass-like material and was like a layered jungle, with the trunks of tall trees visible through three or more floors, many smaller trees fitting into one level and lots of bushes below them. No monkeys or birds, but I did see several cats sunning on tree branches. People sat on benches, reading, others strolled around, some power-walked or jogged. I could see butterflies and beehives, so there must be bees too. Galen was saving the endangered species that had almost been wiped out in England for the second time.
I’d never seen anything more inviting. Shame about the brainwashing.
We bought me nightclothes, playsuits, shorts, slacks, and jeans, tee-shirts, blouses, tailored shirts, jackets and shoes. And we visited the high-class recycling shop and bought more dresses, but with fewer frills and no bows at all this time. We had lunch in a little Italian place and returned.
I noticed the closeness between the two adults. It was nice that Fermina had someone special.
* * *
I gained a good education, largely in Languages, Literature and the Humanities to round out and fill in some gaps.
I continued to provide Fermina with protection as needed, always wearing dark close-fitting garments when guarding her.
Thus nobody would ever identify me with her frilly, bookish, prodigy niece who had arrived in the country months after the occasional bodyguard had appeared.
* * *
The only difficulty we had, was in my having to attend Sunday school.
I had memorized Prayer books and read both the King James Bible and a modern one as soon as I realized this was the basis of Fermina’s religion.
I also read a bunch of commentaries on the Bible and some very opinionated interpretations of it, which mostly twisted the facts around so they meant something nicer than the harsh Bible statements.
The Bible was a very violent, dirty, realistic book, not at all what I had expected.
Two books of approved sermons didn’t improve my opinion of the church.
* * *
At my first Sunday school class, I was placed with another small girl also wearing a frilly dress. All the desks and chairs, except for the teacher’s, were stacked in the back of the room, so we had to sit cross-legged on the carpeted floor of the church-run preschool building.
The class had learnt a prayer the previous week, which every child had to stand up and recite in turn. It was one I already knew so I stood and took a turn too after everyone else.
The teacher praised me for picking it up so quickly. “See class, Alessandra has just demonstrated how the perfect truth of the beautiful words of God spread so quickly through the world.”
I was still standing, so assumed I could answer. “No ma’am, I already knew that prayer, and as it’s a paean in praise of Jesus, it can’t have been composed by God.
“It was written by an ordinary man with a gift for poetry.”
She rallied. “But that gift of poetry was given to him by God, so he could be God’s mouthpiece in this instance.” She smiled tightly and waved me to sit down again.
Then we had a lesson on the Perfect Goodness of Jesus.
After a few minutes of this crap, I put up my hand.
“Yes Alessandra?”
“Ma’am, Jesus was born human; he made mistakes as everybody does.”
“Really! Do enlighten us, Alessandra.”
“He was angry that the priests of the Jews had not immediately welcomed him as the promised Messiah, as he arrogantly assumed they should, even though he allegedly already knew his future.
“And he was a poor environmentalist. He deliberately destroyed a leafy fruitless roadside fig tree, throwing a hissy fit because he was thirsty. Though it provided welcome shade, it didn’t have the fruit he wanted. Probably someone else had gotten to that first.
“Most commentaries interpret this as a prophetic metaphor for the spiritually corrupt condition of the Jews of Jerusalem. As they had rejected him, so they all would be rejected by God in the afterlife.
“That is presumptuous, usurping God’s prerogative. The acceptance of souls into Heaven wasn’t Jesus’ concern, but his Father’s. Certainly not of the priests who wrote the interpretations.
“Jesus had no idea what good things these people may already have done or would do that could earn them a place Upstairs.
“He had no right to condemn them just because they thought he was as fake as all the other pretend-Messiahs who appeared frequently at that time.”
The plump officious Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Burns, was only a parishioner. Like so many Christians, she had never read the Bible, just the expurgated child-friendly Jesus stories.
She was certain I was making up all of this. She was sure Jesus would never kill a tree, especially a fruit tree.
I quoted Matthew 21:18-19; 20-22 and Mark 11:12-14; 20-25.
Flustered but trying hard to show she was being fair, Mrs. Burns
looked up the relevant verses.
“The Bible also says that the devil can quote Scripture to suit his purposes,” she snapped, her face bright red.
“Actually no, ma’am, it doesn’t. Though in Genesis 3 Satan misrecites scripture to tempt Eve, and in Matthew 4 and again in Luke 4 Satan misinterprets scripture to tempt Jesus, that particular saying is a misquote from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, spoken by Antonio:
“Mark you this, Bassanio,
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart:
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!”
That was the end of my Sunday school attendance. Mrs. Burns sent a note to Fermina asking her to keep me home as I was a bad influence on the other children.
* * *
My notoriety spread throughout the local Catholic community, and I was suddenly popular with the small fry. I was invited to many kiddy birthday and pajama parties. As I was older and so much more mature than the other little girls I found these exceedingly tiresome. I wasn’t interested in playing dress-ups and slathering on excessive make-up.
I may have missed the doll play that everyone thinks important, but felt no need to make up for that.
It wasn’t any great favor to be allowed to play with anyone’s latest walking doll or the weeing baby dolls, though I politely thanked the donors for this obvious honor. And Barbie dolls—erkh!!
A few times I managed to use my sewing or knitting skills to make some small garment for some child’s favorite doll, to keep my hands busy and avoid having to play with it.
I challenged an older brother of one the birthday girls to a computer game, showed him lots of tricks he could use in most other games so he wouldn’t feel too humiliated and let him almost beat me twice.
The 12-y-o brother of another girl had some karate trophies in his room. I asked where he took it and discovered there were several local and nearby martial arts schools.
I had taught defense classes at the dojo I owned in Buenos Aires. and had press clippings to prove it, so I joined each school at instructor level, which really inspired the youngest students.
Chapter 9
Branching Out
It didn’t take long to check out the competition. There were two great sites: One was in a large local gym with a heated saltwater pool. There some individual teachers ran a few classes but they weren’t organized.
I approached the gym owner and persuaded him to let me open a proper dojo offering a range of martial arts and employing the other teachers. When I showed him write-ups about my Buenos Aires enterprise and statements from my bank, he was happy to agree.
Again I made the dojo a co-operative and offered shares to the teachers to be paid off over a number of years.
The best place on a corner lot, sixty miles away in a town with a small college, was, a Macdojo run by an aggressive faker with poor business sense and mostly poor quality teachers, paid very little.
I befriended the only competent teacher there and offered him a job working for me at double his current pay.
* * *
The other teachers at the local gym had taught Jiu Jutsu, Hapkido, Aikido, and Shotokan karate in beginner and intermediate levels. I taught those at an advanced class, raising the teachers’ proficiency and qualifications to the highest extents.
I introduced Savate and La Canne, for which I was the only instructor at first, and later Kyokushin and Gōjū-ryū karate, my favorite form.
The La Canne vigny classes became very popular after I placed posters depicting the history of the art in the aerobics room and ladies’ change rooms. These all featured tightly corseted Miss Sanderson in her neck to ankle buttoned-up costume.
The originator’s assistant instructor, Miss Sanderson, whom Pierre Vigny later married, taught classes to upper class women and suffragettes over a century back. These delicate ladies learnt to defend themselves with their parasols and umbrellas with six inch steel points.
I ordered hundreds of strong parasols and weighted Malacca canes which sold well, though long steel points were now illegal.
La Canne could also be picked up easily in a dozen or fewer classes, so it was a great confidence builder. Mastery took longer to achieve, but that was true of any art.
Before long my teachers were sufficiently proficient at the two French arts to judge touch bouts and then to examine students.
Savate became even more popular when I challenged a touring French champion to a bout. He had known I was female, but was shocked to see such a small child as his opponent.
The officials whom I had trained as referees and judges, persuaded him of my ability and he finally agreed, trying at first to make it an exhibition match with touches only.
After I stung him a few dozen times without allowing him a touch, Emil realized that I was toying with him and became serious. Despite his greater reach and weight, he couldn’t handle me and the innovations I had developed to cope with such apparently one-sided situations.
“I am indeed fortunate that as a girl, La Tabanita cannot compete in public competitions and take away my title,” Emil joked afterwards. He was quite happy to write me out a letter on official club stationery stating that he had lost the ten-round bout to five-year-old Taj, La Tabanita, who had stung him many times but never once allowed a blow of his to land on her.
Emil’s nickname La Tabanita, the little breeze fly, or horsefly, was most appropriate as only the female Tabanids sting to get blood to make their eggs, but that sting is unforgettable.
Later Emil sent me a copy of the French magazine which printed the story he wrote about our match, and the two following issues which printed mostly derisory, unbelieving letters of comment.
* * *
I always wore an all-white gi, with the cross-over front kimono jacket and a plain black obi tied around the waist, never bothering to display dan markings. Except for Savate and La Canne, when I wore hundred denier opaque black leggings and a tight cherry tee-shirt, which I re-embroidered with my logo, cherry socks and black boots with cherry laces.
The other students wore printed tees until Fermina started an embroidery class to show them how to improve the logos.
I enjoyed the heavy calisthenics and hard workouts again. My body needed them. But I entered no competitions nor exhibitions except with two following French savate champions, in lighter weight divisions, on their world tours.
These two had heard Emil’s story and were eager to prove him too gallant to hit a girl. Again, neither managed to land a blow or kick on me.
This time I noticed the badly acned young photographer. Emil had printed a few pics with his story.
I purchased copies of each photo with Emil and with these two and gave him advice on clearing his skin and improving his diet.
The gym gave me access to other equipment. I ran for miles on the treadmills every day, swam regularly in the larger salt water pool and taught Fermina and a few other people to swim.
I worked out on the various machines, setting them to the heaviest resistance, always carefully moving the plug back to a lighter weight afterwards.
But I avoided pumping weights when others were around. It was too difficult to explain how even a precocious 5-year-old could easily bench press triple her own body weight.
I showed Fermina a series of water aerobics exercises which could be done even by frail old ladies and she became so interested in these, Fermina took over a swimercise class and gathered her own students.
I also persuaded Fermina to work out in other ways occasionally to improve her fitness.
* * *
By this time I had met several of Fermina’s men friends. None of them cared for me at all, though they guardedly didn’t show their animosity. I could see why Fermina was holding them at bay.
Each seemed more interested in getting his hands on her money and
business than in loving her, and believed Fermina should feel honored that he had shown her interest. They were all chauvinists expecting to be waited on and fed a full meal whenever they visited her.
The only man who made her happy was Duarte, the much younger stepbrother of her late husband. I believe they were having an affair, but couldn’t marry because of the close kinship. So Fermina used a series of suitors to cover up the one relationship which mattered to her.
The current one, Fernando, had turned up unexpectedly early one afternoon when Fermina and Duarte had retired for privacy. Living nearby, Duarte had walked, so there was no give-away car parked outside. Fermina had also had an intercom installed, so I could switch it on and any conversation at the door would be heard in the bedroom.
“I wish to see Fermina,” Fernando announced.
“Sorry, she is indisposed and not up to receiving guests. You should call at a better time when we are prepared for visitors.”
“What is wrong with her?” he demanded.
“Fermina has been off-color for several days, and today came down with a vomiting flu. I’ve had to empty the chamber pot twice already as she’s too weak to get to the loo in time.”
“Well then, I’ll just look in on her and leave.”
“You’ll do no such thing. Fermina would never forgive me if I let a lone man into her bedroom. Her reputation would be ruined. Besides, she’s not looking pretty today. She’ll need time to wash up and get some make-up on.”
The fool man tried to force his way past me and ended up on his knees in a quite painful armlock.
“I said it would be best to return another day, Fernando.”
“Let him go, Alessandra. I can’t rest with all this commotion. Is my tea ready?” Fermina, her hair disheveled, face pale, eyes hollowed, wrapped in a fluffy dressing gown, leaned weakly on the door post at the end of the hall.
“Go and sit down and I’ll get it.” She disappeared into the living room.
I had just prepared a tray with peppermint tea and two cups before he arrived, and carried it out. I placed it on the coffee table before her, then sat and drank one instead of rushing to get him a cup.