Chapter 4

George opened his eyes when he heard a knock at the door. It took a moment for him to remember where he was. He was in a room. His room, he supposed, though he couldn’t understand why he would be living above a martial arts gym instead of at his father’s cousin’s house. Was it because he wasn’t welcome? All he knew was that it wasn’t his father’s cousin who was at the airport last night, but a total stranger. Scott had given him a ride, helped him carry his things up to the room, and left him there with barely a word to reassure him he was in the right place.

            George looked around his room. It was a storage room, really, with neat piles of boxes and furniture stacked against the far wall. The space was fairly large, and mostly empty. There was a small bed, a table with a chair, a mini fridge, and a microwave. A door near the neat pile held a small bathroom with a shower. There were two large windows that faced out into the parking lot of the outlets.

            There was another knock at the door, and George scrambled to pull on the same clothes he wore the day before and answer the door. When he opened the door, he saw a man a little shorter than he. He had brown skin and dark hair with a dash of gray, and his face looked a little like his father’s.

            “Good morning, you must be George,” the man said. He was smiling.

            George nodded and rubbed his eyes.

            “I’m Ricardo,” the man said. When George reached out to shake his hand, Ricardo pulled him into a hug. It was a firm, friendly hug. George hugged him back, but it felt so unnatural that he was sure it felt awkward to Ricardo. For some reason he felt guilty about that hug. Like it should have been better for the one he got in return.

            “You don’t remember me,” Ricardo said when he let George go, “but I met you when you were just a tiny little guy.”

            George mumbled something about his father telling him a little about him. He knew words weren’t coming out of his mouth the way he’d intended. He wasn’t a morning person.

            “You sound like you could use some breakfast,” Ricardo said. He led George out into the parking lot. At the other end of the outlets there was a New York style deli, where George ordered a breakfast sandwich. Ricardo paid for it.

            Ricardo mostly asked questions about George, and George mostly answered in short sentences. Ricardo asked about how George’s father was doing, how George’s graduation was a few weeks ago, what kinds of things he was into, and other small subjects. George was polite and honest, but he was mostly thinking about other things that he’d noticed.

            The first thing he’d noticed was the weather. It was warm, dry, and sunny. A nearby electronic billboard advertised the temperature as ninety-five, but to George it felt better than any ninety-five degree day he’d ever felt in Virginia. He’d also noticed the people. They were about the same mix of skin colors he was used to back home, though he was delighted to notice that there really was something different about the girls he saw walking around there.

            “So George, I wanted to talk to you about why you’re here,” Said Ricardo. George suddenly snapped out of his people-watching haze. This was, in fact, a question he’d had himself. Why was he here? George never did like arguing with his dad much, so he usually did whatever his dad told him. He stayed out of most trouble that way. So when his father told him he’d be going to California, he grumbled, but he went anyway. He just didn’t really know why.

            “Your father tells me that you don’t have any plans for your future.”

            George’s eyebrows rose. Was this what it was all about? A misunderstanding?

            “No, I’ve got plans,” he said. “I was going to get a job and save up for a car.”

            Ricardo nodded. “That’s a good plan,” he said. George was relieved that he agreed with him. “What about after the car? What do you want to do? Save up for something else?”

            George shrugged. “Maybe,” he answered. He didn’t see why he’d have to plan that far ahead. After all, he figured it would take almost a year or so to save up for the car. Why not plan his next step then?

            “What I was thinking,” Ricardo continued, “was that, since you seem like a really strong, athletic kid, you’d like to train some Jiu-jitsu with me while you think about what you’ll want to do after you get that car. Your dad told me you’d been looking for a wrestling club, since you liked wrestling so much, but if you do Jiu-jitsu with me, I think you’ll like it better.”

            “Did my dad send me here because he thinks I’m not going anywhere with my life?” George asked.

            “Everyone is going somewhere,” Ricardo answered. “But you will find that when a man doesn’t have a direction, he’s always going the same way: backwards.”

            George didn’t say anything to that. His first reaction was to think that Ricardo was being harsh. Then he wondered if it was true. He decided what Ricardo said was over his head. What did that even mean?

            “So what do I need to do?” George asked.

            “That depends on what you want. Do you want to go home? Do you want to have fun? Do you want to learn Jiu-jitsu?” Ricardo asked.

            George picked at the remains of his sandwich. The melted cheese was starting to congeal and cling to the paper wrapper. “I don’t know,” he answered.

            Ricardo nodded. His face wasn’t stern, like his father’s, but it wasn’t indifferent, either. “That’s okay. You don’t need to know right now. Take your time. While you wait, why don’t you come train with me?”

            George nodded, and they walked back together to the academy.

            Ricardo gave George a tour of the place. They started on the training floor, where Ricardo showed him the blue grappling mats and explained that there were many similarities between wrestling and Jiu-jitsu. They looked at some of the training equipment, like the hanging bags and the gloves and the rubber knives. Ricardo even showed him Enemigo, the rubber, armless man torso George noticed the night before. “It helps you get a feel for what it’s like to actually hit a person,” Ricardo explained. Apparently, hitting a punching bag and hitting someone real were different simply because of their shape. George thought this made sense.

            They also saw the Ricardo’s office, where George took a particular interest in the dozens of framed photos depicting professional fighters. George had heard of a few, though most of them he hadn’t. Still, he thought it was one of the coolest offices he’d ever seen. He also saw pictures of his father when he was much younger and still boxing. He asked Ricardo if he could have copies of some of them, and Ricardo smiled and said yes.

            George had more questions about the countless trophies, autographed fight posters, and equipment they still hadn’t talked about yet, but Ricardo assured him they would have plenty of time for all that for later. “Right now, we have to get you ready for your first Jiu-jitsu lesson,” he said.

            Ricardo led the way back up the stairs to George’s room, where he fished a white uniform out of a box against the far wall. “This will fit better after you wash it a few times,” he said.

When George tried it on, he felt like he was wearing stiff a stiff, uncomfortable bath robe. “You guys really wear these for wrestling?” he asked. He was hoping Ricardo would laugh and tell him it was a joke and that he could wear shorts or a singlet. He didn’t. He simply told him that the uniform was called a gi and class started at noon. Before Ricardo left George asked him to help him tie the white belt around his waist.

A few hours later, George came down the stairs to see that he wouldn’t be the only one training at noon. There were about ten other men and two women there, all wearing similar versions of the Jiu-jitsu gis, and all of them older than him. Two of the men looked over forty. George wondered if maybe he was in the wrong place or if he maybe had the wrong time, but Ricardo showed up soon after and reassured him this was the right class.

            Fifty minutes later, George was sweating a river. He was hot and tired. His stiff gi was wet and clung to his body, making him sweat even more. He was struggling to free his arm from his opponent’s hold. The man’s name was Flecher, and he probably hadn’t been nearly as athletic or as strong as George was since he’d been on the other side of thirty. Yet, he was controlling the fight, even while lying on his back with George on top of him. His legs held George in place, while his hips pressed into the back of George’s elbow, threatening to break it at the joint. George tapped out.

            George sat on the floor gasping for breath. He looked at Fletcher and realized he wasn’t breathing hard at all. How was it that this forty-something year old was able to out fight him like this? And how was he able to do it without even breathing hard? George reflected for a moment on his conditioning.

            The beginning of class had been nothing special. They’d warmed up in much the same way George used to warm up for wrestling, only it was easier. There’d been some differences. They practiced strange hip-scooting exercises across the mat, as well as somersaults, bear crawls, and drills for falling or standing up safely. George felt like the movements were sometimes awkward, but they hadn’t tired him out the way he’d been expecting. He thought he could go on forever like that.

            It wasn’t until Ricardo started going over techniques and drills that things began to get hard.

            “Remember,” Ricardo lectured them, “it is not enough to simply put your opponent on the ground. You must control him, conserve your own energy while he uses his, and then you must finish him.”

            George was familiar with the concept of taking an opponent to the floor and controlling him, but had never given much thought to the rest. He drilled sweeps and rolls that seemed simple enough, though some positions felt wrong to him.

            “I don’t know,” he said to Ricardo as he attempted what everyone called an “elevator sweep”, “this is weird trying to do this from my back.”

            Ricardo nodded. “It’s because you’re a wrestler. Going to your back means losing. But Jiu-jitsu practitioners are not afraid to go to their back. In fact, there are many effective ways for you to win a fight there, if you’re in the right position.”

            Then they drilled submissions. Unlike the sweeps, which were only for changing your position to give you better advantage, these were the killing moves. These were techniques that destroyed the human body in the most efficient ways, and upon learning them, George was spellbound. First they learned a choke from behind.

            “This is the rear naked choke, also called the Mata Leao. In Portuguese it means ‘Lion Killer’,” Ricardo explained.

            At first, George thought this was a simple sleeper hold, like he’d seen on professional wrestling. You simply deprive your opponent of oxygen until he can’t hold his breath anymore, but when another student did it to him, he realized he was wrong. As soon as the forearm tightened against his neck, George thought it couldn’t be right, because he could, with some difficulty, still breath. But when the edges of his vision began to go black, he tapped out. He felt dizzy for a few moments afterwards while the blood returned to his brain.

            George thought this was the most beautiful, terrifying thing he’d ever seen.

            After they trained the techniques, they fought. Ricardo called it “rolling”. They were allowed to grapple and fight each other so long as they didn’t throw punches or kicks. Grappling techniques only. That was when George was paired with Flecher, the man so much older than he that George thought he would have no problem catching him in that elegant choke he’d learned earlier.

            Five minutes later, George was exhausted, confused, embarrassed, and nursing a sore elbow. He soon switched to a different partner, Ricardo himself, and began rolling again. The two of them knelt on the padded floor and briefly grasped hands as everyone did before they began.

            Rolling with Ricardo was different than rolling with Flecher. Both men were nearly the same age, but Flecher was not what Ricardo would consider an experienced Jiu-jitsu practitioner. His belt, like George’s, was white, though considerably more worn. Both George and Flecher had a six-inch long black tip at one end of their belts, but Flecher’s had four white stripes on it. “It means he’s had somewhere around eighty classes here,” Ricardo explained when George asked. Ricardo’s belt was black, and the tip was red with nine white stripes across it. To George, looked like the colorful display of a poisonous sea creature.

            The other difference between rolling with Ricardo and rolling with Flecher was that, with Flecher, George was pulled, pushed, and twisted into different positions that gave Flecher his advantages. George had put up a spirited resistance, but Flecher, with some effort, would eventually work George into the positions he intended. Ricardo was from a completely different world, it seemed. Ricardo didn’t seem to push or pull at all. George felt from the first moment he pushed against Ricardo that he was throwing himself out of an open window. George felt his body gently guided into a rolling sweep that propelled him onto his back. There were no jarring motions, no forcing, no fighting. George was not losing a fight to a fighter. He was drowning in water.

            He felt as though a noose had tightened around his neck, so George tapped out. The choke hadn’t been the Mata Leao, but something he never saw nor felt until it was already tight. “Again,” Ricardo said. And so they rolled again. And again. George sometimes saw the submission coming, as though in slow motion, and was powerless to stop it. Sometimes he didn’t. He would simply be struggling for breath under Ricardo’s body weight, and suddenly his arm would straighten, or his collar would tighten, as if on their own. By the end, George was as mystified as he was sore.

            “So that’s Jiu-jitsu,” George said. Ricardo nodded appreciatively.

           

                        George lay on his bed, staring at a blank spot on the wall while he tried to decide whether or not to put on his gi. It had been three days since he’d taken his first Jiu-jitsu class, and though it was far more challenging and intricate than he’d ever guessed, he’d taken classes every day since. He was sore, though he admitted he should continue to exercise, but he was beginning to get bored. He’d done nothing but wake, eat, train, and watch movies on his laptop for days. He needed to get out of this place.

            Instead of pulling on his Jiu-jitsu gi, George put on some shorts and laced up his shoes. He drank some extra water before heading down stairs and hoped no one would notice him leaving. It was foolish to think he wouldn’t be noticed, since class would already be starting and he had to walk past the training floor to get out of the building.

            “George!” shouted Ricardo, “where’s your gi?” he was sitting cross-legged in front of class.

            “Hey,” George answered, feeling as though he’d been caught doing something wrong, though he didn’t really know what was wrong with what he was doing. “I kinda felt like I needed to go for a run.”

            “Is this your nephew?” someone asked. George had not seen him in class before. He was young, like he was, maybe a little older. His gi was worn and covered in interesting patches. Some of them were pictures or symbols, like silhouettes of grenades or rifles or people fighting. Some were logos from fightwear brands. This was interesting because most other people in the class had only one or two patches beside the Brotherhood Jiu-jitsu logo of the snake eating its own tail, and Ricardo didn’t have any patches at all. George thought the patches looked cool.

            “Where are my manners?” Ricardo said. He gestured to George. “Hector, this is George Peligro, my cousin’s son. George, this is Hector Vargas, one of my brown belts. He’s been training here for…what? Forever?”

            Hector laughed. “Six years,” he answered.

            Ricardo slapped Hector on the back. George thought he saw him wince a little. “Hector is a tough guy. You’ll learn a lot from him. Why don’t you go get your gi? We’ll wait for you.”

            “Actually, I really just want to go for a run. I could use the fresh air.” George had been smelling this place for days, the sweat, the mats, and the disinfectant. He was ready to leave.

            “Do you know your way around? You’re not going to get lost, are you?” asked Ricardo.

            “I’ll go with him,” Hector volunteered. “I know a good route. And I’ll be back in time for rolling.”

            Ricardo raised his hands as if to say “I’ve got no complaints”.

            Minutes later George was glad to have some company as he jogged past storefronts and through parking lots with Hector, who was also wearing sneakers and shorts instead of his patchwork gi. George was elated to be outdoors and with people. He felt as though he hadn’t done anything remotely social besides the Jiu-jitsu class for days, which was true.

            They both huffed as they ran and said nothing. Hector appeared to be in great shape, George noticed. His pace was fast and even. George was keeping up fine, though he suspected he might be more shaky and tired by the end of their run than Hector would be.

            Hector led George along a few downtown roads past a grocery store, a courthouse, and another strip of shops. They’d been running for nearly a half an hour when Hector stopped in front of a shop window. George stopped with him.

            They peered in the window and saw another martial arts academy. George knew immediately that this place was very different from Brotherhood Jiu-jitsu for many reasons, but what struck him first was the color. While Brotherhood Jiu-jitsu was mostly blue mats and white walls, this place felt like it’s opposite. The mat that covered the floor was black with red designs, and long, black punching bags from their anchors in the ceiling. The walls were an off-white, but George could hardly see them since they were covered in MMA posters and flaming decals. The place felt aggressive.

            Students were scattered throughout the room at different stations. Some walked up and down the width of the floor in straight lines, swinging their legs in high, wide arcs as they stepped. Others were punching and kicking the long punching bags with incredible force. Others still were squaring off in what looked like a roped-off boxing ring while instructors shouted instructions that George couldn’t hear through the glass.

            “This is Xtreme Impact MMA,” Hector explained. “The owners are Muay Thai fighters. Good ones. The guys here do really well at the local fights. Obviously, they’re mostly strikers. Not like us.”

            George watched as the fighter nearest the window, a black man who was maybe in his thirties, kicked the bag in front of him hard enough to nearly fold it in half. He wondered what it would feel like to be kicked like that.

            “In order to understand Jiu-jitsu, you need to understand what these guys do,” Hector went on. “Everyone’s instinctually a striker. When we get into a fight, we naturally want to start hitting them until we knock them out. Usually whoever’s bigger or stronger will win the fight. Whoever’s the better athlete. Whoever can throw the hardest punches and take the hardest hits. That’s what they’re training to do in there.”

            George cocked his head and looked at Hector. “So how does Jiu-jitsu help? I mean, I haven’t learned how to throw a punch yet.”

            “Jiu-jitsu tries to get around the whole striking problem. You take the guy to the ground, and you get into a position where you can hit him and he can’t hit you back. Or don’t hit him at all. You can choke him or joint lock him. Submit him. Then you don’t have to be bigger or stronger. That’s how it’s supposed to work, anyway. That’s how it started.”

            “How what started? Jiu-jitsu?” George asked. He was staring into the gym again. There must have been a bell or something, because everyone simultaneously stopped what they were doing and started rotating stations. The tall black guy who’d been kicking the bag moved on to the boxing ring.

            “Not all Jiu-jitsu, but the Gracia family’s version of Jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu is old. It goes back to the Samurai. But when Ricardo’s grandfather learned it, he improved it. He taught it to his kids and his grandkids. Then they proved it worked by starting Elite.”

            George grinned. He didn’t know Ricardo’s family started Elite cage fighting. “Am I going to get to see him fight?”

            Hector shook his head. “Ricardo hasn’t competed in MMA for a long time. None of his family has.”

            “Why not?”

            Hector shrugged. “Because the world’s moved on. It takes more to win in those competitions now than just Jiu-jitsu. You gotta do some of this stuff, too.” He looked at George and grinned. “Don’t get me wrong, Jiu-jitsu is awesome. It really does work. So keep training.” Then he looked away, and his smile faded to something George couldn’t quite read.

            “Let’s go,” Hector said. “I want to get back before they finish rolling. I want to see what you’ve got.”

            They didn’t say anything more until they reached the Brotherhood Jiu-jitsu Academy.