"Sometimes, by losing a battle, you find a new way to win the war." - Donald Trump
Violet wasn't used to losing.
After her mom, Cecelia, died, she poured her soul into ballet. She thought that dancing in memory of her mother would make her a better dancer—and it did—for a few months. But once Violet's 12th birthday came up that March, it became almost impossible for her to dance. Every time she held onto the barre, she could hear her mother in her ear, "demi plié, arm to fifth, open to second, elevé..." She burned her pointe shoes in a trashcan a week after her birthday.
She wasn't heartbroken about the change, but her stomach did ache when she thought about her mother watching over her from above. Would she understand? Would she be proud that Violet did what was right for her? Or would she be disappointed that Violet gave up so easily? Was she even really watching from anywhere, or was she just cold in the ground? Was God real? And if He was, where was He when Violet needed him?
Her grandmother was the one that broke the news that her dad, Gabriel, was returning from Brazil to raise Violet and her brother. Violet knew little about her father; her mother told her once of how they met, but she was very young at the time and struggled as a 12 year old to remember the story. He was some sort of fighter, Violet remembered, and he had drunkenly stumbled into one of Cecelia's performances in Rio de Janeiro and forced his way backstage to propose to her. They got married a week later in Brazil and had Violet less than a year later. Someone really should have told them that a marriage built on drunken proposal had little staying power.
Violet remembered that her father was a drunk. Her mom always blamed it on his inability to find work in America, but as Violet got older, she realized it was really because he couldn't fight. When he was around, Gabriel always told Violet stories about how he was a well-known and respected street fighter back in Brazil, and how he free he felt when he was fighting. As she got older, Violet realized her father sacrificed his identity to raise his children in America. Anyone would miss the recognition, the adoration, the feeling of accomplishing something. No wonder he disappeared right after her little brother, Hugo, was born.
But then, the car accident happened. Cecelia's injuries were so bad that she died alone in her hospital room. The thought of her beautiful mother fading away alone in a room full of cold metal and white sheets made Violet's chest collapse, and although Violet knew it was wrong, she had always been thankful for the accidental morphine overdose the nurses gave her. Yes, it eventually came back to haunt her, but if she hadn't been so numb that day, she was sure she would have given up and succumbed to her injuries, following her mother to the grave.
Gabriel reluctantly returned to Virginia to raise his children, but once he moved into the house, the suffocating discomfort set in. Hugo and Violet considered him a stranger, especially since Gabriel was often missing from the house at night, leaving thirteen year old Violet alone to care for her little brother. This man was sleeping in her mom's room. This man was roughly pouring cereal into bowls and leaning against a counter, staring at Violet and Hugo as they ate. This man felt foreign in the house; the only time things felt relatively normal was when he was gone.
But one night, a combination of fearing the worst and being curious consumed Violet's body. She felt possessed as she followed her father that night, like a zombie gunning down its prey, determined to find some answers.
She crept along the side of a dark, dingy gym and crouched next to a window through which she peered just in time to see her father get kicked so hard in the face that one of his teeth flew out. But he kept fighting.
She gasped in shock, immobile, memorized by her father. His strength seemed endless, his determination overflowing, and his focus unmatchable. The kick to his head was hard and knocked him to the ground, but he placed his palms on the floor on either side of his head and used them to push up, landing his foot directly in his opponent's stomach. The other man fell to the ground and hit his head, knocking out. The other men in the room surrounded Gabriel, cheering, and two men in the corner begrudgingly counted money. This is how he's paying for everything, Violet realized. This is how he is affording to raise us.
Violet followed him night after night for months, leaving her sleeping brother alone in the empty house. One night she got there early, having left immediately after her dad, and crouched by the same window and watched as he warmed up. His warm up was an art she never understood, even as an adult. She had watched her mother move but never understood the flow of her body; she admired it, respected it, but it was so rigid, so thought-out, so intentional. Watching her dad move—this time without a fighting partner—was poetry in motion. His body flowed without thought. It moved on its own. It flew. It glided. It was inhuman, unplanned, unintentional, and yet, powerful, bold, graceful, light. His feet glided swiftly over his head, underneath his arms, his back arching and folding as his hips twisted and turned. Totally out of his head, totally under bodily control. Muscles working in accordance with bones and blood and ligaments. This was the body released from the control of the mind. This was stimulus and response.
And although she was only thirteen, Violet understood immediately how her mother fell in love with her father, despite all his flaws. He moved like a god, like the wind that travels around the earth.
Her father disappeared into a hallway, she assumed to prepare for the fight. She moved to the next window, the one that peered into the fighting room, and felt her heart rate kick up. This is going to be an awesome fight, she thought, rubbing her hands together.
But suddenly, a hand cupped underneath her arm and jerked her up so hard and so fast that they felt lightheaded. A small scream escaped her throat, and another hand covered her mouth. Gabriel pulled her away from the alleyway, keeping his head down and moving swiftly.
"Violet, what are you doing here!?" He demanded, refusing to let go of her arm.
She whimpered underneath him, "I wanted to see where you were going..."
"Where is Hugo!?" Did he care about them after all? His eyes seemed to be on fire, his voice low and threatening.
"He's sleeping...at the house..."
"You left your brother alone in the house!?"
Heat bubbled up from Violet's stomach and reminded herself not to be afraid of this man. "No different from what you've been doing," she stated boldly, looking him in the eye.
His posture softened and he stepped back from her, although his voice remained stern, "Don't talk to me that way, Violet."
"I want to do this." The words tumbled out of her mouth uncontrollably.
"What? Sneak around?"
"No," Violet had to resist the urge to stomp her foot like a child. "I want to fight."
"Capoeira?" Gabriel paused. Excitement flashed through his eyes, followed by solemnity. He shook his head. "Don't be ridiculous."
"No, Gabriel..." Violet took his hand, deliberate in her speech. "Dad. I want to do this. I want to learn capoeira. I want to fight."
And that was when he started training her.
They worked night after night in the basement, sweating, panting, bleeding. Violet expected him to start off easy on her, but he refused. "You'll never learn how to win if you never lose," he would tell her as he picked her up off the ground.
But Violet hated losing. She hated the way her dad laughed knowingly at her, the way that sometimes it seemed like he didn't even have to try while fighting her. It made her skin crawl and her muscles in her neck twitch. The only way to stop losing was to start winning. And the only way to start winning was to get good.
So Violet got damn good.
By sixteen, she could keep up with her father. She begged him to let her enter the fight club at the gym, but he told her not until she beat him in every fight for three months in a row. This inspired her to spend more time training on her own, and she decided that by her seventeen birthday, she would be fighting in the gym.
When March rolled around, she had barely managed to maintain her success over her father, but she had succeeded nonetheless. A man of his word, he relented and brought her to the gym to fight for money. The men eyed her like a slab of meat, licking their lips and throwing their heads back in laughter. Violet unzipped her gray track jacket, standing barefoot in a black sports bra and loose black sweatpants, and stepped into the center of the room.
Her opponent, a bald white man with a beard, several neck tattoos, and abs that could have been confused for mountains, shook his head. "Gabe, what the hell is this? I can't beat up your daught—"
Before he could finish the word, Violet had already rotated in a cartwheel on the palms of her hands and connected the heel of her foot with the man's temple. He tumbled sideways and tried to find his footing, but it was too late. Violet had already rotated her hips again, and she swung her legs, kicking his feet out from underneath him and knocking him on his back. Within moments he recovered and was up and swinging at her, but she managed to avoid his punches as she quickly flipped and turned. For a moment, she giggled. Too easy.
And that's when her opponent punched her straight in the eye. The pain was unlike anything she had felt before and she knew immediately that there was extensive damage beyond a black eye. She fell to the ground, her head smacking against the hard concrete, and the man relentlessly kicked her in the ribs. For a moment she looked up at her father and reached out for help. He shook his head and stepped forward to intervene, disappointed, embarrassed, ashamed.
No, something inside of her shouted. You will not lose to this stupid fuck. Get off the goddamn ground and don't ask for your daddy's help. Fight. Win. And with that, she sprung up. Her right ribs were untouched and therefore she could still kick with her right leg.
"Got a little more fight in you than I expected, sweetheart," the man sneered, taking a step back.
"I'm sorry," Violet looked at him through her one good eye, wiping blood from her nose and mouth.
"It's okay. Everyone loses, darling," the man extended his hand to shake, giving her a pathetic frown.
"No," Violet said as she grounded her stance. She spat blood out at his feet and gritted her teeth. "I'm sorry for breaking your nose."
"You didn't—"
And with that, she came at him like a tornado, spinning so fast in rotation that he didn't have time to react. "A quadruple pirouette," Violet could hear her mother whispering, "Spot. Don't look at the ground or that's where you'll end up. Don't push off with more power than you need-your body will fill in the rest." She kicked her opponent in the head four times, and with each time the man's head turned more and more to the side until his entire body spun around and he collapsed on the floor. She had won.
As she stood above his unconscious body, her ribs bruised, eye socket broken, blood running down her face, she knew that, for the first time, she was tasting victory. And that night, she promised to never learn the taste of defeat.
Violet walked home with $2,000 that night because everyone had bet against her. Everyone except for her father.
From that night on, Violet never lost a fight. She was too quick, her kicks were too precise, but most importantly, she had too much pride. It wasn't until her father died when she was 22 that she started losing. Addiction had done a lot of horrible things to Violet's life, but by far the worst was that it robbed her of her ability to fight. She hadn't so much as done a handstand in two years and yet here she was, back in a fighting ring, and this time she was betting her life.
"Yue," the Chinese woman extended her hand to Violet.
It was fighting etiquette to introduce yourself to your opponent, so Violet extended her hand as well, "Violet."
"I'm really sorry about this," Yue said, rotating her arms and warming up.
"Oh?" It took every ounce of self-control not to laugh at Yue's veiled threat. After all, Violet had used to the old "I'm sorry" bit herself, but not since she was seventeen. Act surprised, she counseled herself, or this plan will never work. And if this plan doesn't work, none of us will get out alive.
"Yeah," Yue shrugged and rolled her neck, "I'm a kick boxer. Unless you fight, too. In which case, this should be fun."
Violet pulled her mouth into a straight line and shook her head simply, "I'm a dancer."
"Oh," sadness flashed across Yue's face, followed by a shrug. "Well, I'll try not to injure you too much, okay?"
"Thanks," Violet nodded, looking away to hide her annoyance. "I appreciate that."
"Ladies!" Their captor called from above. His voice rang through the room like church bells. "Let the fight begin!"
And for the first time in her life, Violet stood still and lost a fight. Voluntarily.
And it sucked.
A/N: I'm really sorry for the long hiatus, but I hope this very long chapter will make up for it. Now that I'm done moving and settled in, I'm ready to get back to work on this. Please take time and drop a review if you can. Thanks for reading!