For Joe
BY THE TIME MY BROTHER ARRIVES, HE CAN'T GET TO ME.
The cops have barricaded the diner—two blocks in all directions. Blood and worse coats my hair, my face, and my clothes, sticking to me like chunks of blackberry jam. They had to cut me out of my shirt, but since they can't cut me out of my skin, I don't see how I'll ever be clean.
It took me six years to get my black belt.
Two fifty-five-minute classes every Monday and Wednesday after school, plus Friday night sparring and Saturday morning demo-team practice. Two belt tests per year, spring and fall, like a pendulum swinging ever higher.
I memorized the colors, chanted them to myself in bed at night. The walls of the dojang were white except for a section at the front of the room, underneath the Korean and American flags, where a brightly painted chart in the shape of a ladder, one fat brick per color, reached up to the ceiling. As if I'd ever forget.
White belt, yellow belt, orange belt, purple belt, green belt, light blue belt, dark blue belt, red belt, red with black stripe, brown belt, brown with black stripe, black belt.
And guess what black is? Hint: It's not the end. It's not the highest level, not even close. Black belt means now you get to start. Now you get to learn martial arts. You're back at the beginning: first degree. There are twelve degrees, and each one takes years and years to achieve, maybe even a decade. Only like five people in the world are twelfth-degree black belts, and they're ancient and live on top of mountains and stuff.
My instructor, Grandmaster Huan, is a ninth degree. Chief Master Paulson is a fourth degree. I was the first female to earn a black belt at my school, and the youngest.
I've heard that in Korea there are no colors. You start out as a white belt, and then one day your instructor decides you're a black belt. No rhyme, no reason. At least, none that you'd understand. There's no guarantee you'll be good enough, and no set time when they have to promote you. You have to prove yourself. You have to earn it beyond a doubt.
You have to accept that it might never happen.
But when all those Korean masters came to the United States, they added colors in order to teach and make a living, because they knew American kids wouldn't be able to stand working hard without anything to show for it. They knew American kids couldn't handle waiting for something that might never come. Most of all, they knew American parents wanted their monthly checks to translate into evidence that their kid was making progress, that all the yelling and kicking and punching in formation had a point.
My black belt wasn't the end, and it wasn't the beginning.
It doesn't represent six years of hard work, constant practice, anxiety attacks on test day, stacks of certificates, a cabinet full of trophies, sweat, pain, and elation—or Friday nights spent sparring while my friends went to the movies.
My black belt represents everything I could've done and everything I didn't do, the only time it really mattered.
