What I remember most about my childhood is those outings with Aunt Jessie.

It was formulatic most of the time: she would pick me up from school in days she was in town, and we would go get ice cream, go shopping at Claire’s, and then she would drop me off at home after we did some sightseeing. More importantly, though, I remember the way Aunt Jessie got attention.

A lot of people thought Aunt Jessie was pretty; _really_ pretty, and I happened to agree. She had dark red hair and big, brown eyes. She was tall for a woman and skinny, or at least she appeared to be. Nothing about her body was unproportional or out of place. She was just a naturally attractive person.

That’s why when people noticed her on the streets, they would ask her if she was a model, and she always said no and replied with the same old soliloquy;

“Diamonds are beautiful, but they are also strong.”

Because when the sun set, my aunt became the Diamond Mantis, and all eyes were on her in a different way. In the city, people noticed what they could see on the outside, but in the ring, the way she wrestled with her opponents was beyond compare.

In places where clothes usually masked her, like her legs, for example, you could see that she wasn’t the slim girl of every man’s dreams. Her beautiful eyes were full of ferocity, fire, and fury, instead of resting in a fixed position somewhere in the horizon.

When Aunt Jessie became her wrestler self, it was like nothing else mattered anymore but who won the next fight. “Anyone else’s opinion can be left at the door,” she would say. “Who cares what assumptions people make.”

She never married, never had any kids of her own. Aunt Jessie never needed anyone to tell her what to do or who to be.

Because diamonds might be beautiful, but they are scratched on the surface, too.