Twilght

by Anna Deavere Smith

and didn’t notify the Fire Department

  that they had vests.

  See, our chief doesn’t want us to wear vests because he claims it will

  telegraph a message to the citizens that Compton is dangerous.

  Bulletproof vests.

  Now, he says that this is our vest—

  our badges.

  You see, you should have a vest, a badge of courage.

  You see, it’s not about courage.

  When you hear gunfire, you know when you see it,

  you’re constantly ruling out individuals that are shot,

  looking at the types of wounds, you know.

  You don’t want to be a part of that.

  You know.

  I have a responsibility to my family to come home.

  I take the dangers that relate to fire and so forth,

  the explosions,

  the chemicals

  that may be inside a building,

  but the gunfire, you know,

  that’s not a part of this.

  To Look Like Girls from Little

  Elvira Evers General worker and cashier, Canteen Corporation

  (A Panamanian woman in a plaid shirt, in an apartment in Compton. Late morning, early afternoon. She has a baby on her lap. The baby has earrings in her ears. Elvira has a gold tooth. There is a four-year-old girl with large braid on top of her head and a big smile who is around throughout the interview. The girl’s name is Nella.)

  So

  everybody was like with things they was takin’,

  like

  a carnival,

  and I say

  to my friend Frances,

  “Frances, you see this?”

  and she said, “Girl, you should see

  that

  it’s getting worst.”

  And I say, “Girl, let me take my butt

  up there before something happen.”

  And, um,

  when somebody throw a bottle

  and I just …

  then

  I felt

  like moist,

  and it was like a tingling sensation—right?—

  and I didn’t like this,

  and it was like itchin’,

  and I say, “Frances, I’m bleedin’.”

  And she walk with me to her house

  And she say, “Lift up your gown, let me see.”

  She say, “Elvira, it’s a bullet!”

  I say, “What?”

  I say, “I didn’t heard nothin’.”

  She say, “Yes, but it’s a bullet.”

  She say, “Lay down there. Let me call St. Francis and tell them that

  you been shot

  and to send an ambulance.”

  And she say,

  “Why you?

  You don’t mess with none of those people.

  Why they have to shoot you?”

  So Frances say the ambulance be here in fifteen minutes.

  I say, “Frances,

  I cannot wait that.”

  I say,

  “I’m gone!”

  So I told my oldest son, I say,

  “Amant, take care your brothers.

  I be right back.”

  Well, by this time he was standing up there, he was crying,

  all of them was crying.

  What I did for them not to see the blood—

  I took the gown and I cover it

  and I didn’t cry.

  That way they didn’t get nervous.

  And I get in the car.

  I was goin’ to drive.

  Frances say, “What you doin’?”

  I said, “I’m drivin’.”

  She say, “No, you’re not!”

  And we take all the back streets

  and she was so supportive,

  because she say, “You all right?

  You feel cold?

  You feel dizzy?

  The baby move?”

  She say, “You nervous?”

  I say, “No, I’m not nervous, I’m just worried about the baby.”

  I say, “I don’t want to lose this baby.”

  She say, “Elvira, everything will be all right.” She say, “Just pray.”

  So there was a lot of cars, we had to be blowing the horn.

  So finally we get to St. Francis

  and Frances told the front-desk office, she say,

  “She been shot!”

  And they say, “What she doin’ walkin’?”

  and I say, “I feel all right.”

  Everybody stop doin’ what they was doin’

  and they took me to the room

  and put the monitor to see if the baby was fine

  and they find the baby heartbeat,

  and as long as I heard the baby heartbeat I calmed down,

  long as I knew whoever it is, boy or girl, it’s all right,

  and

  matter of fact, my doctor, Dr. Thomas, he was there

  at

  the emergency room.

  What a coincidence, right?

  I was just lookin’ for that familiar face,

  and soon as I saw him

  I say, “Well I’m all right now.”

  Right?

  So he bring me this other doctor and then told me,

  “Elvira, we don’t know how deep is the bullet.

  We don’t know where it went. We gonna operate on

  you.

  But since that we gonna operate we gonna take the baby out

  and you don’t have to

  go through all of that.”

  They say, “Do you understand

  what we’re saying?”

  I say, “Yeah!”

  And they say, “Okay, sign here.”

  And I remember them preparing me

  and I don’t remember anything else.

  Nella!

  No.

  (Turns to the side and admonishes the child)

  She likes company.

  And in the background

  I remember Dr. Thomas say, “You have a six-pound-twelve-ounce little

  girl.”

  He told me how much she weigh and her length

  and he

  say, “Um,

  she born,

  she had the bullet in her elbow,

  but when we remove …

  when we clean her up

  we find out that the bullet was still between two joints,

  so

  we did operate on her and your daughter is fine

  and you are fine.”

  (Sound of a little child saying “Mommy”)

  Nella!

  She wants to show the baby.

  Jessica,

  bring the baby.

  (She laughs)

  Yes,

  yes.

  We don’t like to keep the girls without earrings. We like the little

  girls

  to look like girls from little.

  I pierce hers.

  When I get out on Monday,

  by Wednesday I did it,

  so by Monday she was five days,

  she was seven days,

  and I

  pierced her ears

  and the red band is just like for evil eyes.

  We really believe in Panama …

  in English I can’t explain too well.

  And her doctor, he told …

  he explain to me

  that the bullet

  destroyed the placenta

  and went through

  me

  and she caught it in her arms.

  (Here you can hear the baby making noises, and a bell rings)

  If she didn’t caught it in her arm,

  me and her would be dead.

  See?

  So it’s like

  open your eyes,

  watch what is goin’ on.

  (Later in the interview, Nella gave me a bandaid, as a gift.)

  National Guard

  Julio Menjivar Lumbe
r salesman and driver

  (Near South Central, beautiful birds, traffic, hammering. In a kind of patio outside the backyard. A covered patio. Saturday morning. Very sunny. We sit on a bench. His BMW in the background. A man from El Salvador, in his late twenties. Later his mother and grandmother come to be photographed with him.)

  And then,

  a police passed by

  and said,

  that’s fine,

  that’s fine

  that you’re doing that.

  Anyway,

  it’s your neighborhood.

  They were just like laughing or I don’t know—

  LAPD.

  Black and white.

  They just passed by and said it

  in the radio:

  Go for it.

  Go for it,

  it’s your neighborhood.

  I was only standing there

  watching what was

  happening.

  And then

  suddenly

  jeeps came

  from everywhere,

  from all directions,

  to the intersection.

  Trucks

  and

  the National Guard.

  And they threw all of

  the people on the ground.

  They threw

  everybody down

  and I was

  in the middle of

  a group.

  They lifted me by my

  arm like this.

  First he told me to get up.

  He said ugly things to me.

  And as you see,

  I’m a little fat,

  so I couldn’t get up.

  They called me stupid.

  He said, said,

  many ugly things.

  He said,

  “Get up motherfucker, get up. Get up!”

  Then he kicked me in the back.

  He said,

  “Come on, fat fucker,

  get up.”

  Then I heard my wife

  and my father

  calling my name,

  “Julio, Julio, Julio.”

  And then

  my mother

  and my sister and my wife,

  they tried to go to the corner

  and my mother

  They almost shoot

  them, almost shot them.

  They were

  pissed off,

  too angry.

  The National Guard.

  They almost shot

  my mom,

  my wife,

  and my sister

  for try …

  They will ask everybody questions

  and the other guys don’t know how to speak English.

  Then the police don’t like that.

  So slap ’em in the face—

  that guy got slapped three times.

  An RTD bus came

  and parked here

  in the street,

  and they put all of

  us on it.

  They took us to a station,

  Southwest.

  Young people

  that got arrested.

  Uh,

  there was this guy crying and this other guy crying

  because too tight,

  too tight

  the handcuffs.

  And I felt very bad,

  very bad.

  Never never

  in my life have I

  been arrested.

  Never

  in my life.

  Not in El Salvador.

  This is the first time

  I been in jail.

  I was real scared,

  yeah, yeah.

  ’Cause you got all these criminals

  over there.

  I’m not a criminal.

  It’s a lot of crazy people out there,

  too many.

  So I sit down.

  So I barely close my eyes

  and they went back—

  pow pow pow pow pow

  come on come on get up get up

  come on get up,

  and they had us

  on our knees

  for two hours.

  I was praying,

  yeah,

  I was praying, yeah.

  Yeah, that’s true

  I was praying.

  I was thinking of all the

  bad that could happen.

  Yeah.

  Now I have a record.

  Aha, and a two-hundred-fifty-dollar

  fine

  and probation for

  three years.

  That’s Another Story

  Katie Miller Bookkeeper and accountant

  (South Central, September 1992. A very large woman sitting in an armchair. She has a baseball cap on her head. She speaks rapidly with great force and volume.)

  I think this thing

  about the Koreans and the Blacks …

  that wasn’t altogether true,

  and I think that the Korean stores

  that got burned in the Black neighborhood that were Korean-owned,

  it was due to lack of

  gettin’ to know

  the people that come to your store—

  that’s what it is.

  Now,

  they talk about the looting

  in Koreatown … those wasn’t blacks,

  those wasn’t blacks, those was Mexicans

  in Koreatown.

  We wasn’t over there lootin’ over there,

  lootin’ over there,

  but here,

  in this right here.

  The stores that got looted for this one reason

  only is that … know who you goin’ know,

  just know people comin’ to your store, that’s all,

  just respect people comin’ in there—

  give ’em their money

  ’stead of just give me your money and get out of my face.

  And it was the same thing with the ’65 riots,

  same thing.

  And this they kept makin’ a big

  the Blacks and the Koreans.

  I didn’t see that,

  and now see like

  Pep

  Boys that right there …

  I didn’t like the idea of Pep Boys myself,

  I didn’t like the idea of them hittin’ Pep

  Boys.

  Only reason I can think they hit ’em is they too damn high—

  that’s the only reason.

  Other than that

  I think that Pep Boys just

  came, people say

  to hell with Pep boys, Miney Mo and Jack.

  Let me just go in here,

  I’m get me some damn

  whatever the hell they have in there.

  Now, I didn’t loot this time.

  Get that out,

  because in my mind it’s more

  than that,

  you know.

  But I didn’t loot this time.

  I was praising the ones that had,

  you know,

  you oughta burn that sucker down.

  But after it was over,

  we went touring,

  call it touring,

  all around,

  and we went to that Magnin store,

  seein’ people comin’ out of that Magnin store,

  and I was so

  damn mad at that Paul Moyer.

  He’s a damn newscaster.

  He was on Channel 7,

  now that sucker’s on Channel 4,

  makin’ eight million dollars.

  What the hell,

  person can make eight million dollars for readin’ a piece of paper,

  but that’s a different story.

  Highest of any newscaster.

  I don’t know why.

  To read some damn paper.

  I don’t give a damn who tells me the damn news,

  long as they can talk,

  long as I can und
erstand ’em,

  I don’t care,

  but that’s a different story.

  Anyway, we went to Magnin

  and we seen people run in there and looted.

  It’s on Wilshire,

  very exclusive store,

  for very … you know,

  you have to have money to go in there to buy something,

  and the people I seen runnin’ out there that didn’t have money to buy …

  And I turned on the TV

  and here is Mr. Paul Moyer

  saying,

  “Yeah,

  they, they, uh,

  some people looted, uh,

  I. Magnin.

  I remember goin’ to that store when I was a child.”

  What he call ’em?

  He called ’em thugs,

  these thugs goin’ into that store.

  I said, “Hell with you, asshole.”

  That was my, my …

  I said, “Okay, okay for them to run into these other stores,”

  you know,

  “but don’t go in no store

  that I, I grew up on that has …

  that my parents

  took me

  to that is

  expensive—

  these stores,

  they ain’t supposed to be, to be

  looted.

  How dare you loot a store

  that rich people go to?

  I mean, the nerve of them.”

  I found that very offensive.

  Who the hell does he think he is?

  Oh, but that was another story,

  they lootin’ over here,

  but soon they loot this store he went to,

  oh, he was all pissed.

  It just made me sick,

  but that’s another story too.

  Godzilla

  Anonymous Man #2 (Hollywood Agent)

  (Morning. A good looking man in shirt and tie and fine shoes. A chic office in an agency in Beverly Hills. We are sitting in a sofa.)

  There was still the uneasiness that was growing

  when the fuse was still burning,

  but

  it was

  business as usual.

  Basically,

  you got

  such-and-so on line one,

  such-and-so on line two.

  Traffic,

  Wilshire,

  Santa Monica.

  Bunch of us hadda go to lunch at the

  the Grill

  in Beverly Hills.

  Um,

  gain major

  show business dead center business restaurant,

  kinda loud but genteel.

  The … there was an incipient panic—

  you could just feel—

  the tension

  in the

  restaurant

  it

  was palpable,

  it was tangible,

  you could cut it with a knife.

  All anyone was talking

  about, you could hear little bits

  of information—

  did ya hear?

  did ya hear?

  It’s like we were transmitting

  thoughts

  to each other