Mulan’s Grandmother Teaches Brazilian Jiu-jitsu

Here at the Lucky Cricket Studio I have to warn you that I dislike criers and people who roll around on the ground whining after a particularly painful hit. If it isn’t dislocated or broken I don’t want to know. Now that the pleasantries are out of the way I want you to stretch your limbs out like they’re being ripped from your body, more, more, more – that’s right! – push yourself to a place of resentment, marinate it, save it for later, store it in your cheeks for me like enraged rodents, and now your bodies are warmed up and holding grudges I want you to prepare for hand-to-hand combat, for grunting and sweat and noses in armpits, because our fight is on the ground – your only job is to force your enemy onto their hands and knees, it almost sounds sensual but it isn’t, it isn’t, once on the ground you can opt for chokeholds or lock your arms around limbs and crush - and that’s the beauty of it because once on the ground, physical strength can be offset via the right grappling techniques, once on the ground your aim is to simply explode at your opponent and act without thinking, just violence, just pure, gleeful flesh and sinew and tendon and this very act requires a certain lack of constraint, which, in of itself, is a serious mental challenge to overcome, which is why, for your very first lesson, your goal is simply to best me. Give it your full-throated efforts - don’t be shy – if your little-girl hands can, somehow, find their way to this old chicken neck you better grip and bear down, go on child, go on child, I’ll have you flat on your back so fast the air will gasp out of you and you will have to lie very still, very alarmed, no, no, don’t back out now, don’t worry about hurting me – you should have seen me in the market a handful of weeks ago, destruction and splintered wood and a cow pierced through the stomach with bent metal shrieking and everyone checking my soft, dimpling skin for cuts and bruises, that was all me, all me, for no reason other than I could, so I did, and some of that cow’s hot blood found its way onto my face and everyone (cow included) screamed and screamed, my granddaughter slick with worry and my daughter-in-law scrambling towards me with her hair dishevelled and I couldn’t help but laugh, raw and real and alive and perceived, cow-blood in my mouth tasting like money and unwashed mah-jong tiles and the entire world upending for me, for me, so like I said, if you see me as formidable - or not even that, but as a body standing across from you, and you decide to throw yourself at me with your rodent-cheeks full of hunger, something to prove, I will crawl on top of you with blood and glee - don’t for one second think you are capable of getting past me, you wouldn’t believe the chaos I have caused.

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PS: If you spotted a typo, no you didn’t.