The Comeuppance
No‰l Burch (nburch@wanadoo.fr)
An aiki-jitsu-wise fifteen year cripple old routs her tormentors.


She couldn't have been over fifteen, but somehow seemed to have 
lived much longer. Perhaps it was suffering that had aged her, for as 
she came down the path in the Jardins de Luxembourg, I saw that she 
had a severe limp. The right leg was apparently shorter than the left, 
and with each step, the crippled foot flapped outward, almost at right 
angles to the left. Occasionally she would brush away the jet black 
beng that fell into her eyes as she bobbed along. She was surrounded 
by a group of boys her own age - or rather by two groups. At her side 
walked a trio of young, sensitive-looking, rather thin schoolboys; 
whenever these looked at the girl, it was with a warmth and 
admiration which French male children seldom display so openly.

With their short trousers and cardboard briefcases, they indeed did 
look like children beside this girl with the strangely serious eyes. The 
maturity of  her shapely figure was emphasized by a snug pair of jeans 
which showed off an otherwise shapely figure, and she wore rubber-
soled basket ball shoes which ensured maximum agility. But the 
crippled girl and her "suite" were followed by a pair of older boys - 
they must have been 17 or 18 - who, I realized as the procession drew 
near the bench where I sat, were cruelly taunting the girl about her 
infirmity and her companions for fraying with such a "freak".

As the group came abreast of me, one of the older boys grew even 
bolder and, catching up to the girl who still ignored him, treacherously 
hooked his foot around her ankle and tripped her up. She fell quite 
gracefully, I thought, rolling over in such a way as to scramble to her 
feet almost instantly. Without a word, she stood looking at her 
tormentor, arms folded beneath her budding breasts.

One of her friends, though much slighter than the boy who had 
committed the assault, immediately threw himself at the bully. With 
hard buffet on the ear, he was sent sprawling. He picked himself up as 
quickly as he could but stood rubbing his cut knee and made no 
further attempt to avenge his idol. Up to now, no one had spoken, but 
finally the crippled girl took a limping step towards the bully and said: 
"Think you're pretty tough, don't you?" I'll bet your afraid to take 
on a gimpy girl!"

The older boy was disconcerted at first, then made a magnanimous 
gesture. "I don't fight girls."

"No," came the searing reply, "you just trip them up from behind!"

The bully shrugged his shoulders and turned away. His friend 
whispered something in his ear. He seemed embarrassed. The other 
boys were taunting him : "Fraidy cat! Chicken shit! Scared of a girl"

I was intrigued by this attitude on the part of the crippled girl's 
devoted friends. Why were they encouraging this ridiculously uneven 
combat against an adversary whom they themselves dared not oppose? 
The girl renewed her challenge   

"I dare you to take me on, both of you!"

The older boys laughed at this and finally the bot who had done the 
tripping winked at his friend - the smaller of the two - and pushed him 
forward.

"Go on Jacques, you're more her size, but go easy!"

The boy smiled uneasily, shrugged, and put up his fist's in a parody of 
a boxer's stance."

As the girl started to removed her light suede jacket, she said in a soft 
voice I could only just hear : "That's not very good advice to give a 
friend, buddy, because I play for keeps."

There was such cool sincerity in her voice, such relaxed self-assurance 
in her asymmetrical stance as she handed her jacket to one of her little 
friends and stood there in a tight denim shirt, that her adversary 
suddenly took her seriously, or pretended to. Crouching slight, with 
his arms dagling down like a wrestler's, he shuffled menacingly 
towards his opponent.

I felt that matters had gone far enough; sometimes teen-age boys don't 
know their strength. If I didn't step in with my adult authority, this 
brave but foolish girl was going to get hurt. As I rose to my feet, 
however, I suddenly found one of the girl's allies at my side.

"Don't, mister, Liliane can take care of herself, all right. You just 
watch."

I hesitated. What did the boy mean? How could this crippled girl, who 
must have weighed fifteen pounds less than her male opponent, 
possibly "take care of herself" in this situation? I was soon to find out.

During this time, the boy had been jockeying for a favorable position; 
Liliane had been content to pivot about on her valid foot, so as to keep 
him in her field of vision. Then suddenly he lunged, with such brutal 
force that I couldn't help uttering a cry of warning. But the girl did not 
flinch and at the last minute she side-stepped with uncanny quickness 
so that the boy lurched forward off his balance and as he did so, 
Liliane struck him a smart blow with the edge of her hand in the small 
of his back. The boy let out a shriek of pain and dropped to his knees, 
nursing his aching kidney. Liliane limped quickly around to face him, 
patiently waiting for him to stand up. As he saw her, a look of real 
hatred flashed through his eyes and without warning, he lunged again, 
straight from his kneeling position. 

Taken by surprise, Liliane went down under the boy's superior weight 
and height; now he was trying desperately to pin the lithe little body. 
Oddly enough, the girl made no effort break his grip and merely 
seemed intent in working one small hand between their bodies. 
Suddenly the boy let out a scream, released his little opponent and 
tried to rise. As he did so, I saw that the wily  Liliane was pinching 
between thumb and forefinger, with terrible tenacity, some tendon in 
his arm-pit. The boy kicked and howled and twisted his torso, but all 
to no avail. As soon as her other arm was free, Lilian jabbed stiff 
finger-tips into his throat; coughing and cursing he sprang to his feet 
and the girl was up after him immediately. Now it was the boy who 
was on the defensive ; deftly eluding his flaying arms, she jabbed her 
elbow into his solar plexus and while he was still gasping for breath 
took hold of his right arm and with surprisingly slow, deliberate 
gestures which contrasted with the rapidity of her previous maneuvers, 
twisted it in what I surmised to be some sort of jiu-jitsu hold. The 
leverage force of the grip was such that almost without any effort at 
all she forced the now helpless boy onto his toes, made him lean 
forward until he has off balance and then, with a sudden jerk, threw 
him head over heels onto the gravel path. I winced with his pain.

As he lay writhing on his back, she came up to him - I noted how 
different her limping gait now seemed in the light of the amazing feat 
she had just accomplished - and stood looking down at him.

"Had enough?" she said with a tight smile.

The boy nodded sullenly.

But then one of the other boys shouted a cry of warning. For Jacques' 
chum now came rushing at Liliane from behind, a heavy stick in his 
upraised hand. The girl made short and brutal work of this fresh 
treachery. Parrying the blow expertly with her forearm on his wrist, 
she seemed to just flick the bully's eye with the tips of her limp 
fingers. He howled with pain and his hands flew to his face. With 
those same methodical gestures I had seen her use to dispose of the 
smaller boy, she grasped the lapel of this one's jacket, pivoted rather 
awkwardly on her game foot but had no trouble throwing him across 
her hip. Almost as soon as he hit the ground Liliane was upon him. 
She grabbed his ankles, trapped them under her armpits, locked her 
hands and together across her flat little stomach and. stepped into 
the boy's groin!

I have to admit I was a bit shocked by this, even though I could see it 
was an effective hold and after all it was the girl who had been 
attacked. The boy made one effort to seize her ankle but Liliane 
pressed her heel into his groin and he screamed.
 
"Now," she said in the same quiet, strangely mature voice, "repeat 
after me: I'll never make fun of a cripple again."

As the boy said nothing, she dug in the heel of her basket ball shoe 
once more. Again her prisoner screamed and gave in:

"I'll never. make fun of . a. a cripple. again."

"And if I do, I hope Liliane breaks my leg."

Completely cowed, the boy repeated these words, too. Liliane's 
friends, of course, were in seventh heaven, and the bully's battered 
sidekick could hardly believe his ears. 

When the lesson had been repeated, Liliane pressed down with her 
foot one last time and released his feet. The boy lay doubled up on the 
ground nursing his pain.

"You fight dirty! I'm hurt!" he whined.

Liliane answered in a superior tone : "You'll feel all right in a couple 
of days. Until then, you've got something to remember me by."

And without another word she limped back to join her little friends, 
who all patted her on the back, jumping up and down with excitement. 
She took their enthusiasm calmly enough but as the little group moved 
away, she looked for the first time over towards the bench where I was 
sitting and I thought I saw a little look of satisfaction cross her face as 
she saw the expression of amazement I'm sure I was still wearing. I 
almost went to her. I wanted to ask her how it was that a crippled girl 
had come to be so expert in the art of hand-to-hand combat; I wanted 
to know who had taught her so many devastating tricks; I wanted to 
know the origin of that strange aura of age and authority that 
emanated from this lovely little girl.

But already the group had moved away, and the last I saw of her was 
that head of jet-black hair bobbing up and down among the taller 
boys.
 

(This is the original English version, somewhat revised, of my 
"Liliane". It dates from the fifties and was inspired, believe it or not, 
by "Bad Day at Black Rock", in which crippled Spencer Tracy 
brought Aikido for the first time to the Hollywood screen).