Twilght

by Anna Deavere Smith

  all across the restaurant,

  we were transmitting thoughts to each other.

  All the,

  frankly, the

  white

  upper class,

  upper middle class—

  whatever your,

  the

  definition is—

  white successful …

  spending too much money,

  too, ya know, too good a restaurant,

  that kinda thing.

  We were just

  getting ourselves into a frenzy,

  which I think a lot of it

  involved

  guilt,

  just generic guilt.

  When we drove back,

  and it’s about a ten-minute drive,

  talking about the need

  for guns

  to protect ourselves,

  it had just gone from there to there.

  But I’m tellin’ you, nothin’ happened!

  I don’t mean somebody in the restaurant

  had a fight

  or somebody screamed at someone—

  nothing, just,

  ya know,

  Caesar salad,

  da-de-da,

  ya know,

  but the whole

  bit

  went

  like that.

  We walked in

  from the underground garage into here and we looked at each other

  and we could see people

  running around

  instead of … like,

  people walk fast in this business

  but now they were, they were like

  running,

  and

  we looked at ourselves—

  “we gotta close the office.”

  So we had gone from

  “I’m a little nervous”

  to “We gotta close the office,

  shut down.”

  This is a business

  we don’t shut down.

  Memo goes

  out saying:

  “Office closed for the day.

  Everyone please leave

  the office.”

  And then

  I remember somebody said:

  “Did you hear?

  They’re burning down

  the Beverly Center.”

  By the way, they …

  No no no, it’s …

  There is no who.

  Whaddya mean, who?

  No, just they.

  That’s fair enough.

  “Did you hear they are burning down the Beverly Center?”

  Oh, okay, they …

  Ya know what I mean?

  It almost didn’t matter who,

  it’s irrelevant.

  Somebody.

  It’s not us!

  That was one of the highlights for me.

  So I’m looking outside

  and the traffic is far worse

  and people were basically fleeing the office

  and we were closing all the blinds

  and this is about,

  um,

  I guess about four o’clock.

  The vision of all these yuppies

  and aging or aged yuppies,

  Armani suits,

  and, you know,

  fleeing like

  wild-eyed …

  All you needed was Godzilla behind them,

  you know,

  like this …

  chasing them out of the building,

  that’s really it.

  Aaah, aaah.

  (He laughs, a very hearty laugh)

  Still,

  still,

  nothing had happened—

  I don’t mean to tell you that bombs were exploding—

  nothing, zero.

  So we,

  I was one of the last to leave,

  as usual,

  and the roads were so packed it

  it must be like

  they were leaving

  Hiroshima

  or something,

  Dresden …

  I’ve never been in a war or …

  just the daily war of …

  (Intercom beeps)

  Who’s that?

  Do you need me?

  One sec. (He leaves, then returns)

  Where was I?

  Yeah.

  What, what was, was

  “I deserve it,”

  you know,

  was I, was I getting

  my …

  when I was fearing

  for

  safety

  or my family or something …

  those moments.

  Because the panic was so high

  that, oh my God,

  I was almost thinking:

  “Did I deserve this,

  do I, do I deserve it?”

  I thought me, personally—no,

  me, generically,

  maybe so.

  Even though I, I …

  what’s provoked it—

  the spark—

  was the verdict,

  which was

  absurd.

  But that was just the spark—

  this had been set

  for years before.

  But maybe,

  not maybe,

  but, uh, the

  system

  plays unequally,

  and the people who were

  the, they,

  who were burning down the Beverly Center

  had been victims of the system.

  Whether well-intentioned or not,

  somebody got the short shrift,

  and they did,

  and I started to

  absorb a little guilt

  and say, uh,

  “I deserve,

  I deserve it!”

  I don’t mean I deserve to get my house burned down.

  The us

  did

  not in …

  not,

  I like to think, not intentionally,

  but

  maybe so,

  there’s just …

  it’s so

  awful out there,

  it was so heartbreaking,

  seeing those …

  the devastation that went on

  and people reduced to burning down their own neighborhoods.

  Burning down our neighborhoods

  I could see.

  But burning down their own—

  that was more dramatic

  to me.

  Kinda Lonely

  The Park Family & Walter Park Store owner, gunshot victim

  (A very pleasant, sunny, high-ceilinged new modern home in Fullerton. There is a winding staircase that comes into a hallway. The furnishings are replicas of Louis XIV. Walter Park, who has had a gunshot through the eye, has a scar on the left side of his face. He is wearing a blue golf shirt, white socks and slippers, and khaki pants. His wife, June, is sitting on a love seat next to him. She is elegantly dressed. She has on a black silk blouse and yellow slacks and a wonderful concha belt with red stones. Chris Oh, her son and Walter’s stepson, is in another chair, perpendicular to them. He is dressed simply and in his stocking feet. Birds and a lawn mower are very present throughout. The lawn mower moves close and then distant and then close. The birds are really beautiful. Piano music of Ravel’s “Death of the Princess” playing on an excellent sound system.

  (The feel of the place is airy but there is a lot of furniture. The love seat is in a sitting area with a sofa and two chairs and a marble table. There is a wooden cart with wheels and porcelain pitcher. The dining room has a cabinet with many porcelain items. Along the wall of the staircase is a long strip of fabric, which is a Korean banner. There is a tree which is real, in the living room, but other plants are silk or artificial. There is a painting of a white woman with a white baby at her breast. I think it was a rendering of Christ and Mary. It’s clear that good taste and a lot of thought and joy went into the design
. At the same time, it is clear it’s an imitation of the European aesthetic.

  (Mr. Park speaks in the rhythm of a person who has full authority and ease, and a person who has all of the facts exactly straight. When he begins talking, his wife and son shake their heads to let me know that he doesn’t know the answer to the question. He is sitting with his arms crossed and legs crossed, also in an easy but confident and authoritative position. From his body position and his rhythm you would think this was the most reasonable, sound response possible. It is, of course, emotionally sound, but there is a gap between the question and the answer. He is heavily sedated, and has been since he was shot.

  (He starts by nodding.)

  I felt kind of

  lonely,

  you know,

  in the store,

  so I said

  well,

  I might need go

  travel somewhere,

  y’know,

  and I said

  well, I’m gonna probably go see

  my mom

  or, you know,

  somebody.

  So I try to go to Korea.

  Then I call a couple guys up

  and, uh,

  “I feel kinda lonely.

  I wanna go Korea,

  see if I can change, uh,

  situation,”

  and they didn’t say nothing.

  (Very passionate, and amazed)

  (Birds and lawn mower closer)

  it’s

  kinda, you know,

  wondering thing,

  and one guy happened to tell me,

  “Why you wanna go Korea

  for?

  You just came out of

  hospital.”

  You know,

  that,

  that makes me wonder too.

  So I came home and

  I told her about it

  and

  she didn’t say nothing.

  Uh,

  it happens to …

  (His voice is much fuller here)

  among the Koreans,

  among Orientals,

  if they really love somebody or they really like somebody,

  they try

  hide certain things

  for different manner,

  and, uh,

  I accepted it as different manner

  that

  that’s the way she loves

  me and it’s fine

  as long as I know

  and I have way to pay her back

  that makes it even.

  And she didn’t say nothing.

  To Drive

  Chris Oh Medical student, stepson of Walter Park

  Besides, you know, being his son,

  I also said I’m a medical student

  and

  I’d like to know

  what the prognosis is

  and I’d like to know

  what you’ve done.

  And, um,

  they didn’t tell me anything

  and so here you are

  and he’s in this condition.

  You don’t know that he’s already had

  a bifrontal

  partial lobectomy.

  It’s,

  well, the bullet

  passed through his temple—

  temple side here—

  and it went through his left eye

  and lodged

  in his frontal lobe.

  And, um,

  the frontal lobe is …

  In the past,

  in the old days,

  they did a lot of frontal lobectomies

  when they just removed

  that part of the brain for people who are very tense and,

  yeah,

  lobotomies.

  That’s where your higher learning skills are,

  your impulsiveness,

  your willingness to do things,

  and your, um,

  I guess

  your basic character.

  (Pause)

  And, um,

  you know what … when you have … when you think and remember how

  things used to be

  and you realize you can’t do those things now,

  you

  look different,

  and

  you can’t drive.

  I know he wants to drive.

  And in My Heart for Him

  Mrs. June Park wife of Waiter Park

  (She cries sometimes as she speaks, a natural flow.)

  He came to United States

  twenty-eight years

  ago.

  He was very high-educated

  and also very nice person to the people.

  And he has business about seven,

  what ten years,

  twenty years,

  so he work very hard

  and he so hard

  and he also

  donated a lot of money to the Compton area.

  And he knows the City Council,

  the policemen, they knows him.

  Then why,

  why he has to get shot?

  You know,

  I don’t know why.

  So really angry, you know.

  Then I cry

  most of my life,

  this is the time I cry lot,

  so

  I go to the hospital and I stay with him.

  Especially ICU room

  is they don’t allow the family to

  stay there,

  but the,

  all the nurses know me,

  and every time I go there I bring some nice doughnuts

  to the nurses and doctors,

  and they find out how much I love him.

  So they just let me in

  and stay with him all day long.

  So I just feed him

  and stay till eight o’clock

  at the night,

  and all day long,

  and I spend all my time

  and in my heart for him.

  Execution Style

  Chris Oh

  When

  he got shot,

  I guess he

  pressed on the accelerator

  and he ran into a telephone pole,

  and at that moment

  there was an African-American lady

  behind

  in her car

  and witnessed

  when it happened

  and it was an Afro-American who shot him.

  A man.

  From

  what I gather,

  from what I heard

  and things.

  The gunman,

  when he was at the stoplight,

  the gunman

  came up to the car and broke

  the driver’s side window

  and, uh,

  it wasn’t one of those distant shots it was a close-range,

  almost execution style.

  The Beverly Hills Hotel

  Elaine Young Real estate agent

  (Saturday, February 1993. A real estate office in the heart of Beverly Hills. She has been in real estate for many years. She sold Sharon Tate the house she was murdered in. Most of her clients are movie stars. She was married to Gig Young. Elaine is a victim of silicone. She had plastic surgery done on her face, to insert cheek implants, and it exploded. She has been written about in several magazines. She is dressed in a bright blue dress with studs and earrings shaped like stars. She has dyed blond hair. She is very outgoing. The phone rings constantly. When her friends call, she puts them on the speakerphone, and I hear the entire conversation.

  So the second day—

  this is what got me in trouble on television and really made me feel

  bad.

  I had a date

  and my date canceled.

  Now, mind you, I’m only three weeks separated and didn’t want to be

  alone

  and my date canceled.

  So now comes Saturday.

>   I had another date

  and I thought if I have to be alone—

  ’cause my housekeeper goes off for the weekend.

  I couldn’t get to my daughter.

  Still the rioting was escalating and it was really bad.

  There were alerts: “Don’t leave your house.”

  And I had a date

  and he lives about twenty minutes away in the Valley and they say,

  “Don’t drive freeway.”

  And I said, “Are you going to see me tonight? ’Cause I don’t want to

  be alone.”

  And he said, “Yes.”

  So he came to pick me up.

  And he got there and I said, “Oh my God, where are we gonna go?

  We can’t eat anywhere. Everything is closed.” And I said,

  “Wait a minute. A hotel wouldn’t be closed. They gotta be

  serving

  food.”

  So I said, “Let’s see if we can go to the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

  So we drove to the hotel, which was a couple of minutes from my

  house,

  and when I got there, much to my shock,

  the whole town, picture-business people,

  had decided to do the same thing.

  Only, unbeknownst to me, they did

  it the night before too.

  So basically what happened the three or four days of the heavy rioting,

  people were going to the hotel,

  and I mean it was mobbed.

  So we would stay there till three or four in the morning. Everybody was

  talking and trying to forget

  what was going on … the rioting … try to … they would talk about it until

  they’d exhausted the subject.

  It would start out horrible,

  scared, and “What was going on?”

  And “How could this happen in California?”

  And “Oh my God, what’s happened to our town?”

  And “These poor people …” and, and, and totally down and down and

  down.

  And then there’s so much you can say.

  In life

  once you’ve hit bottom, there’s no way to go but up.

  So once you’ve talked about the bad and the horrible, you can’t talk

  about it anymore.

  So then you say, “Well, let me put this out of my mind for now and

  go on.”

  So that was the mood at the Polo Lounge

  after they talked about how bad it was

  and maybe they’d come back after an hour

  but then they tried to go on.

  “Here we are

  and we’re still alive,”

  and, you know,

  “we hope there’ll be people alive

  when we come out,”

  but basically,

  they would come there every night.

  And I finally went there for three nights

  and stayed till two or three in the morning

  so I wouldn’t be alone.

  I talked to a lot of people.