How Smugsy learned to fight.

Smugsy’s older sisters were tough and protective but really it was her older brother who taught Smugsy how to fight.

And good thing, too, because when she was a teenager Smugsy and her best friend M liked to go to bars in Providence.

Once Smugsy drove her mother’s big blue Chrysler and kicked a masked man groping M at the same time.

They had driven into the city in the enormous car they called “O. G.” from Eagleton, the leafy suburb where Smugsy and M grew up.

Parking O. G. in the city at night was tricky because of the car’s size and because Smugsy was 16 and spent time in bars when she wasn’t otherwise working or coasting through high school.

One night after leaving Lupos Heartbreak Hotel, Smugsy and M returned to the small triangular parking lot in Providence where they had squeezed in O. G.

It was dark and creepy.

As she started the engine Smugsy locked her door and told M to do the same.

M’s door wasn’t shut tight so she opened it intending to slam it shut and lock it when suddenly a masked man thrust open M’s door and lunged towards her — groping and grabbing her like a madman -- while M clung to Smugsy’s arm on the long bench seat and fought him off with her feet.

What happened next taught Smugsy a valuable lesson about how to be in the world.

Smugsy began to kick the intruder in the head with her right foot like a kick-boxer and then would hit the gas using the same leg, thrusting O.G. forward in fits and starts. She kicked him and hit the gas. Again and again.

Kick! Stomp on the gas. Kick! Stomp on the gas.

Back and forth the scrum swayed.

The girls screamed. The man pawed and groped and pulled M who held on to Smugsy who clenched the wheel with iron fists.

Kick! Stomp. Lurch.

Scream!

Kick! Stomp. Lurch.

Scream!

There was a rhythm and beauty to the girls’ defense that replays in slow motion in Smugsy’s mind to this day.

O.G. lurched forward bouncing them over the curb — and finally when O. G. caught air, sailed over the sidewalk, and landed with a thud in the city street the attacker let go.

The masked man had met his match.

Smugsy gunned it — tires screeching — down a one way alley the wrong way, her heart racing.

M shut and locked the passenger side door and then fumbled in her bag for a cigarette.

“We should go to the Biltmore,” Smugsy said when the hotel came into view and she saw the valet parkers in their crisp uniforms standing out front like sentinels.

The women’s lounge in the hotel was empty when Smugsy and M went in and the girls were silent for a moment before screaming at the top of their lungs and laughing, tears streaming down their face.

It was a school night, so after a few minutes in the hotel lounge Smugsy and M got back in O.G. and went home.

The lesson from that night is simple and sticks with Smugsy today.

Keep swinging. Keep trying to get ahead. Hold on to your friends.

Fight. Move forward. Laugh.

Repeat.