Southland

by Nina Revoyr

  There was something about the hoses, his mother’s sad and bitter comment, his father’s description of the foreman, that made Curtis look around him. He started noticing things that were happening right there in L.A. The demonstrations down at City Hall because Negroes were locked out of city jobs. The protests over the white policeman, unpunished for shooting and killing the Negro minister. The college students integrating the lunch counter at Woolworth’s, right there in his new western city. And things closer to him, too, less definable or documented. His junior high buddies Jason and Ty, who were now doing sentences at detention camp. How much smaller his junior class was than his freshman class had been, as they lost kids to inertia, or jail, or pregnancy, or the lucrative trade on the street. His own incident with Lawson, which in the light of these other events, seemed less random, less a matter of chance.

  “People dropping, just disappearing everywhere,” he said to Angela one day. Then he pointed to Cory and Jimmy, who were playing with a toy truck in the yard. “It’s getting worse. Don’t know what’s gonna happen when they come up.”

  “They got you to look up to,” she replied. “And to keep ’em in line.”

  He recognized the truth in what she said, but suddenly it wasn’t enough. There were so many other kids like Jimmy and Cory—needy and willing, their eyes not yet dulled by the knowledge of what the world had in store for them. Curtis wanted to help them all. He started tutoring at Audubon once a week, he and Angela both, on one of the days he wasn’t working in the store.

  Alma was thrilled. Up until that point, despite her best efforts, her son had remained blissfully ignorant of what was happening around him, the stagnant quality of their acquaintances’ lives. But now, independent of her, he’d suddenly woken up; there was a new air of purpose about him.

  “Mr. Sakai offered me a full-time job after I graduate,” he told her one night at dinner. It was just Alma and the boys—Bruce was still at work, and Curtis tried not to speak of the store when his father was around. “And if I work eight to four, I can go to night school at the City College.”

  Alma looked up from her plate of red beans and rice. “You serious about wanting to run a store?”

  “Yeah. It pays all right, and you can keep an eye on folks.” He didn’t add—although they were both aware of the debt that Curtis owed—that the man who ran the store had probably saved him.

  Alma wasn’t pleased with the plan, but she didn’t try to discourage him. There wasn’t much she could say about his choice of school—she wanted him to go to a four-year college, but his ninth and tenth grade marks had been mediocre, his junior year marks, now, a little better, but still sufficient only for junior college. Besides, she and Bruce didn’t have much money stored up. His plan—full-time work and part-time school—made sense.

  But then, March of his senior year. The big track invitational at El Segundo High, Dorsey and five other schools. The track itself was beautiful, sunken and green, surrounded by a neighborhood of small, neat houses. Five lily-white track teams, including the hosts, and then Dorsey with its mix of all the colors. Curtis placed second in the 200, and then won the 400 going away. He’d beaten two runners from El Segundo to do so, the top two boys in league. And he was so thrilled and surprised by his unexpected win that as he broke the tape, he turned to face the boys behind him—and, running backwards, punched his chest in triumph. They both looked daggers at him, but he didn’t care; there was no feeling better than what he felt, running as fast as he could through the warm spring air swept clean by the breeze off the ocean.

  After he’d cooled down and put his sweatpants on, he climbed into the stands to watch Angela win her races. They sat together for the rest of the meet, cheering on their teammates. Then, as the sun was lowering and the meet drawing to a close, Curtis went to the boys’ locker room to use the restroom. When he walked in, he almost tripped over the feet of an El Segundo runner, one of the boys he had beaten.

  “Well, look what we got here,” the boy said. Then he and another boy slipped between Curtis and the door. Curtis turned around and realized that he was cut off, then turned again and saw half a dozen more El Segundo boys, in various stages of undress.

  “Isn’t that the nigger who taunted you, Kevin?” asked a shirtless boy who was sitting on a bench.

  “That’s the one,” answered the boy he’d almost tripped over. He stepped closer to Curtis, and Curtis could feel the other boys rise and circle him. “You think you’re something else, don’t you, boy?”

  Curtis gave a little laugh. “Come on, man. It’s just a race. Shit. You’ll probably kick my ass the next time.”

  “What makes you think you can come in here and disrespect us like that?” said another voice.

  Curtis looked toward the showers and saw the second boy from the race; he beat his chest now, just as Curtis had done.

  “Aw, man, I’m sorry I celebrated on you. I was just excited, is all. It was stupid.”

  “Stupid isn’t the word for it, you little black punk.”

  A hand shot out from nowhere, striking the side of his head. Then another—a slap, open-fisted but hard, landing just below his right temple. Curtis reeled in one direction and then another. “Hey, come on!” he said. But the world seemed to be closing in on him and his guts curdled with sudden fear.

  Kevin stepped forward and grabbed him by the front of his sweatshirt. “What are you gonna do about it, nigger?”

  Something about this grab, the menace in Kevin’s voice, touched off a memory and a knee-jerk rage he didn’t know was in him. There was no way he was going to take another beating off a whiteman. Without thinking about the consequences, Curtis pulled out the knife he always carried and quickly opened the blade. Kevin stepped back, but Curtis moved toward him, flashing and slicing, not caring if he cut every boy in the room. But the whiteboys scattered like birds at the first shot of a hunter, scrambling all over each other in their effort to escape. One of them passed close by, and Curtis swung, sweeping sideways, aiming for the thick white neck. Fortunately for both of them, he missed, the tip of the blade just opening the front of the whiteboy’s jersey. They were gone in an instant. Curtis sat down on a bench and looked at the open blade, and then his hands shook so badly that he dropped it.

  The next day, the coach from El Segundo filed a complaint. Curtis tried to tell their school’s officials, and his own principal, that he’d been acting in self-defense, but no one believed the word of a black boy who had once vandalized his school. When Alma told Curtis that he was being suspended and dropped from the team, he punched the kitchen door so hard he cracked the wood. Alma had never seen him react to anything with violence, and in another situation she would have scolded him, but she didn’t say anything now because she was so relieved he wasn’t hurt, and because she knew how he felt. If he weren’t there, she’d put a crack in the door herself.

  A week after Curtis was allowed to return to school, he and Angela were sitting in the bleachers at Redondo Union High School after she’d completed her events. Curtis had been moody and irritable for days, and he sat in silence now, staring angrily out at the track he was no longer allowed to compete on, even though he still attended all the meets. Then he turned to Angela and said, “I’m gonna try and find a store.”

  She looked at him. “What?”

  “I’m thirsty. I want a soda. I’m gonna try and find a store.”

  “Come on, Curtis. You know that ain’t what I mean.”

  “You comin with me or what?”

  It was crazy, what he was saying. Redondo Beach was wealthier than El Segundo, and equally as white. And they had never pressed this particular envelope; had never even thought about it, really. But Curtis was looking at Angela as if their entire relationship hinged on her decision. So she zipped up her bag and went with him.

  As they walked out of the gate, she thought of Adam and Eve, taking their first steps out of the familiar confines of Eden and into the wider world. They went a couple of blocks in
silence, and she felt naked, exposed. As they crossed an intersection, a man in a business suit leaned out of his car window. “How you doing?” he asked, but the tone of his voice, the curl of his lips, were nothing close to friendly. Angela fought the urge to grab Curtis’s hand. Further on, they found a market, smaller and not as nice as Mr. Sakai’s. Inside, it was brightly lit and cold. Curtis pulled two Cokes out of the cooler in front and set them up on the counter. The proprietor, a thin, balding man in his thirties, didn’t even look up from the back of the store, where he was sweeping.

  “You got customers,” Curtis informed him, and the man continued to sweep.

  “You got customers,” Curtis repeated, more loudly this time, and now the man stopped sweeping and looked past him.

  “I’m busy,” the man said, slowly, as if Curtis didn’t understand. “You’ll have to wait until I’m through.” And he resumed his sweeping, straw bristles rearranging invisible dirt.

  Curtis glared. The man ignored him. Angela pulled on Curtis’s arm. “Let’s go,” she urged. “Let’s try another store.”

  He shook her hand off and crossed his arms, never taking his eyes off the man. Minutes passed, and Angela looked out the door, watched people walk by on the sidewalk. Finally, almost ten minutes later, the man set his broom against the wall and strolled slowly up to the front. Curtis handed the man a dollar and opened his palm for the change. The man slapped the coins on the counter. They stood frozen like that, Curtis with his hand extended, palm upward, the whiteman’s palm down against the counter. “Thank you,” Curtis spat.

  “Any time,” the man replied.

  They went out into the neighborhood of every school where the team competed. They drew glares, or curses, or refusals of service, from a bookstore in Torrance, from a hamburger joint in Venice, from a market in Beverly Hills. They did this so regularly, with such purpose and care, that the walks after the meets seemed more the point of these trips than the events of the meet itself. Angela wasn’t sure if Curtis was driven by anger or pain or recklessness; she herself was scared with every step they took. But a few of their teammates, noticing, began to come along. Her brother Derek was one of them, taking her left side, always, while Curtis walked along on her right.

  They didn’t tell their parents what they were doing. And they didn’t discuss the walks amongst themselves, except to say, Let’s try this place, or, That chicken stand ain’t open, or, The bus gonna leave in ten minutes. They didn’t talk about the danger they were putting themselves into. They were foolish and brave and haphazard and young, not organized and huge in number like the students in the south. Curtis knew their actions were tiny, even pathetic, in the very different landscape of Southern California. And he didn’t like the idea of angering and maybe provoking so many ignorant whitepeople. He’d be relieved when track season was over, so these excursions could stop, but for now, for reasons he didn’t fully understand, he knew that they had to continue. Then one day when he and Angela were walking home, a squad car cut them off at an intersection. Two Negro officers got out, the younger one, whom they’d never seen before, hanging behind, the older coming up into Curtis’s face.

  “I hear you been causing trouble,” he said, and his voice was low and threatening.

  “Well, you heard wrong,” Angela shot back.

  “What do you mean, officer?” Curtis asked. And he fought the urge to bolt, because he knew that this cop didn’t like him. It was this cop who’d towered over him in the principal’s office until Curtis finally admitted to the break-in. And it was this cop who glared in anger when the boys were let off with just a suspension; this cop who parked outside the store every few months to show Curtis that he knew who he was.

  “You’ve been trying to go places,” Thomas said, “that you got no business showing your face in. My son runs track for University. You got the stores up that way all riled up.” He knew about this punk—the break-in back in junior high, his latest trouble now. Knew, and wouldn’t tolerate it.

  Curtis tried to sound brave, for Angela. “Your boy can go in those places, but we can’t?”

  The cop’s eyes narrowed. “My son’s got nothing in common with you and your two-bit hoodlum friends.” And he believed that he didn’t. Thomas and his wife had worked so hard to get beyond these people, who still had, to him, that stench of poverty and long-ago plantations. They’d been the first black family in their neighborhood in West L.A., and even though they’d had to pose as a white friend’s maid and chauffeur just to get a look at the house; even though a cross was burned on their front lawn the first week they moved in; even though realtors slid flyers under their white neighbors’ doors advising them, “You need to sell now,” they were undeterred, determined to stay. They didn’t worry that no one would talk to them or play with their son and daughter; they would endure anything, everything, to live where they did, and not someplace like Crenshaw or Watts. But the tolerance they’d earned was provisional, and they didn’t need anyone messing it up. Especially not a bunch of young idiots one step away from being hoods.

  “All right,” Curtis said. “I get the message.”

  “You watch yourself, boy.”

  But Curtis didn’t. They had work to do. And no scared-ass Uncle Tom was going to keep them from doing it, no matter how he made Curtis feel. He continued to go to stores, to cause trouble. And Angela was there—despite how much she hated the walks, she went with him every time. She wasn’t going to let Curtis go anywhere without her, especially not into danger.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  1994

  ON TUESDAY morning, Jackie skipped class and drove back down to the Holiday Bowl. She immediately spotted the Nakamuras and walked over to their table. Mrs. Nakamura saw her first and tapped her husband.

  “The granddaughter of Frank Sakai,” he said, as if announcing her at a ball. “Sit, sit.” He pulled a chair over from the table next to them. “How are you doing this morning? Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  “Fine, thanks. I do have a class this morning, but it’s not important if I miss it. And you told me that Kenji Hirano comes here on Tuesdays, right? I wanted to see if I could find him.”

  Nakamura leaned back in his chair and slowly wiped his mouth with a napkin. Jackie looked from him to his wife, who was using a piece of toast to soak up egg from her plate. “Well, he’s here,” said Mrs. Nakamura, “but you missed his breakfast time by a couple of hours. He’s back there bowling now. He’s probably just about finished.”

  “Do you think he’ll stop in here before he leaves?”

  Mrs. Nakamura shrugged. “Maybe. But you should probably just go back there and look for him. He always bowls in lane eight. He’s a big man with white hair, and I think he’s wearing a gray sweater today.” She leaned forward. “Be very polite to him. He’s old, you know. And he’s also a bit…”

  “…odd,” her husband finished.

  Jackie looked at both of them, suddenly wanting not to leave. “Well, thanks. If you’re still here when I finish, I’ll come back and say goodbye.”

  When she went through the doorway and into the bowling alley, the sight before her was so different from where she’d just been that it was as if she’d walked through the wardrobe to Narnia. She stared out at the endless array of lanes, all new-looking and shiny. The brilliance of the lanes contrasted with the antiquated scorers’ tables. These tables, like so many other things here, were straight out of another era; their chairs and lamps predated Jackie by a decade or two. Across the huge tan wall at the end of the lanes were the words “Holiday Bowl,” written in archaic black cursive. Beneath them, the racks of pins broken violently by the hurtling balls were sent scattering backwards and out of sight. Jackie watched wooden arms come down and pull the remaining pins into the blackness, the way a gambler encircles the chips on the table and rakes them into his lap. She looked up at the side walls and saw banners: “Veronica’s Beauty Shop—Ladies’ champions, 1958”; “Crenshaw Motors—Mixed Champions, 19
73”; “Goodyear—Midnight League Champions, 1949.” Hanging over the lanes themselves were newer signs announcing an upcoming tournament. The floor shook from the rolling of the balls.

  And now, looking down, she saw the people. There were swarms of them—every single lane was occupied and the bowlers filled up the scorers’ tables. Behind them, on the raised floor where Jackie now stood, were linoleum tables which held family members and spectators. Jackie noted again the advanced age of the people; how surprisingly mixed the groups were. The noise was already getting to her. After just a couple of minutes here, she was already feeling a headache take root in her neck. She hoped that Kenji Hirano was almost done with his game and that he’d want to go someplace quieter to talk.

  She approached lane eight, where four men stood huddled around their scorers’ table. One of them wore a gray sweater and dark gray pants; his hair, too, was gray, touched with white. His shoes were the most colorful parts of him—bright red and blue, like children’s sneakers. Peering down, she saw that all the men wore them. Jackie walked up to the railing and curled her hands around the iron. She cleared her throat and called out, “Mr. Hirano?”

  Four faces turned toward her, distracted, annoyed, and she suddenly felt very young, a little girl who’d interrupted a meeting. One of the men held a large piece of paper, and she realized they’d been debating the score. The way they turned to her in unison, the way they stood so close to each other despite their momentary quarrel, made her think they’d all been friends for a long time. The man dressed in gray, the only Japanese man, said, “Yes?”

  “Mr. Hirano,” she repeated, standing up on her toes. She recognized him, but didn’t know from where. “I’m Jackie Ishida. I was wondering if I could talk to you about—”

  “Yes,” he said. The three other men turned back to the sheet of paper. Hirano wasn’t looking at it, but neither, Jackie realized, was he planning to move any closer. “Tina told me you were coming. Do you bowl?”