Twilght

by Anna Deavere Smith

  to read those kinds of things and I mean, uh, uh, it’s a terribly difficult

  thing to endure

  and when people hear it over and over and over again.

  And I make speeches

  on college campuses all across the country

  and I swear

  I have a group,

  mostly African-Americans,

  and I swear

  I am the symbol

  of police oppression

  in the United States,

  if not the world.

  I am.

  Me!

  And I ask them:

  Who told you this?

  What gave you this idea?

  You don’t know me.

  You don’t have any idea

  what I’ve done.

  Forty-three years in law enforcement,

  no one has said that about me,

  no one.

  And suddenly

  I am the symbol

  of police oppression

  and it’s a tough thing to deal with,

  a very tough thing.

  You know,

  just prior

  to this,

  in a poll

  taken by a legitimate pollster,

  the individual

  with the greatest credibility

  in the state of California—

  I can’t say the state

  of California,

  but the southern

  part of the state of California—

  was me.

  The most popular Republican in Los Angeles

  and Los Angeles County

  was me.

  I got more support

  than

  Ronald Reagan,

  George Deukmejian,

  what other Republicans,

  Pete Wilson.

  I got more support,

  and suddenly!

  suddenly!

  I am the symbol.

  And, you know,

  on the day

  that the Rodney thing [sic],

  thing

  happened,

  the

  President of the United States

  was declaring me a national hero

  for the work that I had done

  in drugs

  and narcotics

  and the work that I had done with kids

  and a lot of those kids were black kids.

  And suddenly,

  suddenly,

  I am the symbol

  of police oppression.

  Just because some officers

  whacked Rodney King

  out in Foothill Division

  while I was in Washington, D.C.

  Human Remains

  Dean Gilmour Lieutenant, Los Angeles County Coroner

  (Afternoon, his office. A middle-aged man. Glasses. Very friendly. Speaks slowly.)

  I been working with a …

  an attorney

  who is trying to have a (aye)

  young lady—

  I think she’s twenty-one years of age—

  declared dead,

  um (a small suck like a soft “t”),

  down at Fifty-eighth and Vermont.

  There was

  a New Guys

  appliance store

  and apparently

  there were some looters inside

  and the place caught fire.

  Two of the looters, uh, was this girl and her boyfriend,

  fiancé.

  Appar …

  from what we understand,

  there were four or five

  other, uh,

  people in the store at the time

  and

  the boyfriend’s the only one that escaped.

  They don’t know what happened to the other three or four people

  but they do know that, um,

  uh …

  Well (quickly),

  the mother of the girl says

  she hasn’t heard from her since (singsong)

  then.

  There’s no insurance policies.

  There’s no reason to believe

  she didn’t perish in that building.

  The boyfriend says,

  “I last saw her over my shoulder,

  but because of the heat and the smoke and the fire

  I didn’t, uh,

  you know, I couldn’t help her”

  (on an exhale, and therefore substantially increased volume,

  like a

  release).

  So that was the best information

  that we had out of all the buildings.

  That there may be human remains

  in there.

  We searched that place

  four times.

  And the fire was so hot

  the ruff [sic, meaning “roof”]

  had totally collapsed.

  Rubble was about like so …

  We couldn’t find any human remains

  and we went in with our forensic

  anthropologist

  and her search teams.

  We went in with, um (“t” sound),

  uhh,

  uh, dogs,

  search dogs that we brought in from Northern California.

  We made four attempts, if I recall correctly.

  We couldn’t find a tooth

  or a finger or anything.

  The family doesn’t have …

  They can’t really get on with their life until they have some

  resolution to it

  (a breath, covering a burp?).

  And that’s the thing about our society is until,

  um,

  until there’s some type of a service,

  whatever it is,

  whether there’s a cremation

  or there’s a burial,

  uh,

  most people just can’t let go

  with their lives

  and then pick up the pieces and start

  from there.

  There has to be some resolution.

  (Pause)

  There were fifty-two deaths.

  We were looking seriously at sixty

  and again there wasn’t a whole

  lot of information.

  Just because somebody died

  during this time frame doesn’t mean it was directly related

  to the riot.

  We were able to look at each individual death.

  If we couldn’t …

  if we didn’t have enough facts to … to

  support it,

  we would say no,

  we can’t definitely call this.

  But again it wasn’t just in South-Central.

  We had one out in the Valley (singsong).

  We had one in Pasadena

  where there was a party

  and the

  police arrived with a helicopter.

  Seems to me it was Pasadena or

  Altadena, up that way,

  and

  some of these … I think the party was being crashed

  by gang members,

  which brought up an interesting point.

  Are all gang shootings during this time riot-related?

  I mean, we have gang shootings every day

  of the year.

  What would set these apart from being riot-related?

  And … and, as I recall, I think someone had shot at a police helicopter

  and one of the people in the neighborhood,

  in the block there,

  was shot.

  So that was one.

  Now,

  was this just a bunch of kids having a party

  who got carried away

  and somebody started shooting at the chopper

  ’cause they were drunk

  or was it because of the riots?

  What was interesting was one of the cases I was looking at was in

  Hollingback Division.

  Hollingback is East LA.
>
  They didn’t have any riot-related deaths

  in East Los Angeles.

  So,

  um,

  one guy was found, um, I can’t remember if he was stabbed or shot

  inside of a drainage pipe,

  and they said no, it was definitely not riot-related.

  I don’t know whether it was a lovers’ quarrel

  or … or a bad dope deal

  or what,

  but they said it definitely didn’t have anything to do with the riots,

  it was just

  another homicide.

  Um, so that’s how we ended up with sixty,

  and oh,

  I think it was by July

  we were able to whittle the number

  down to …

  (a breath)

  And since then we found some human remains

  in some of the rubble,

  several months later.

  That was a riot building,

  um,

  and we were able to identify the person.

  Human remains?

  Human remains

  is what we …

  you and I leave behind.

  We don’t die like this necessarily.

  Uh, we …

  especially in a hot fire

  you’re charred.

  You also, after the fact,

  have animal activity.

  Dogs

  and … and other critters come along

  and will disarticulate

  bodies.

  Uh,

  rats,

  uh,

  all kinds of,

  uh,

  varmints and stuff.

  And once we’re gone

  we … we don’t take very good care of ourselves, know,

  so …

  We have the same thing out in the boonies,

  up here in the mountains or out in the desert.

  Skeletonized bodies

  that have little teeth marks

  where the rats

  have started gnawing the bones,

  because they go after the marrow and stuff.

  You don’t have an entire body necessarily.

  If there’s a tremendous explosion,

  um …

  Let me see if I have those numbers.

  We published some numbers.

  (He is going through his sheets of paper from now until nearly

  the

  end of his talk, flipping over stapled sheets)

  I can’t see real well without my spectacles.

  (He puts on his glasses)

  See if I can find that press release.

  See, the hardest part of this job is the families,

  the survivors, um …

  You know this person’s

  no longer in pain.

  They no longer have to worry about

  the April 15th deadline.

  They don’t have to worry about

  paying their bills

  or … or AIDS

  or any of those other things that

  those of us who are alive worry about.

  But, um,

  I’ve lost …

  My first child was a full-term stillborn.

  My brother was murdered up in Big Bear

  and the guy got four years’ probation.

  Um,

  my sister was killed by a drunk driver,

  leaving three kids

  and a husband

  behind.

  So I can empathize with these families as far as what they’ve gone

  through.

  (still turning pages, now just the sound of the pages)

  Oh, here we go.

  Forty-one gunshot wounds.

  These are the races.

  Okay, but these are not official.

  Some of these are not.

  Twenty-six black,

  Eighteen Hispanic,

  Ten Caucasian,

  Two Asian.

  Uh, types of death.

  Gunshot wounds were forty.

  Uh, traffics were six.

  Four assaults,

  Four arsons and four others.

  Sex were fifty-one males

  and seven females.

  Um,

  there were seven officer-involved fatalities.

  Four involved LAPD,

  One with sheriff,

  One with Compton,

  One with the National Guard.

  So …

  Let’s pray for peace, hunh?

  (Abrupt blackout)

  (Here there should be a musical cue)

  Scenes from the Disturbances

  Twilight

  Long Day’s Journey into Night

  Peter Sellars Director, Los Angeles Festival

  (Sunday morning, February 1993. We are at the Pacific Dining Car restaurant. Peter tells me it’s a place where power breakfasts happen. There are very few people there. It’s an old-fashioned kind of restaurant. Peter gets very emotional while he speaks, almost in tears.)

  Dad … he won’t replace the burnt-out light bulbs.

  You know, he yells at the family for complaining and condemns everyone

  to live in darkness.

  ’Cause he’s too cheap

  to put in some light bulbs.

  That’s what America feels like right now.

  Just asked him for some light bulbs.

  Burned out here and here and here.

  Couldn’t we replace them?

  With brighter ones?

  And … James Tyrone …

  he’s too cheap.

  He rants on and on about everything he’s always done for you.

  How he’s lived his whole life just to support his family.

  But he won’t replace the light bulbs.

  And he’s grew up on a culture of success.

  So the only thing that was of any interest to this man has to be

  success,

  you know,

  which is America.

  Here’s a man who has been a success

  and of course he’s at home with that.

  Right now in America, there isn’t a family …

  We may have a good GNP

  but not a family to come home to.

  Can’t live in our own house.

  That’s what the LA riots is about.

  We can’t live,

  our own house burning.

  This isn’t somebody else’s house,

  it’s our own house.

  This is the city we are living in.

  It’s our house.

  We all live in the same house …

  Right, start a fire in the basement

  and, you know,

  nobody’s gonna be left on the top floor.

  It’s one house.

  And shutting the door in your room,

  it doesn’t matter.

  Fact is, you have a stronger sense of getting incinerated,

  you know, and the task is,

  you know.

  I mean, Eugene O’Neill

  wrote the classic play about

  the American dream.

  I Remember Going …

  Rev. Tom Choi Minister, Westwood Presbyterian Church

  (In a pastor’s office in the church, a church with an affluent congregation. Afternoon, during a rainstorm, winter 1993. He is a tall, slender Chinese-American man. He was educated at Yale Divinity School and labors during the interview to be clear and not to overstate.)

  I remember going out

  finally on Saturday to, um, do some cleanup work.

  And I remember

  very distinctly

  going down there and choosing to wear my clerical collar.

  And I haven’t worn my clerical collar for about seven or eight years,

  you know,

  because, you know, people call me “Father,”

  all this kind of stuff,

  and I didn’t like that identification.

 
; But I remember doing that specifically

  because I was afraid that somebody

  would mistake me for a Korean shop owner

  and … and, um, either berate me physically or beat me up.

  So I remember hiding behind this collar

  for protection.

  The reason why a minister should wear a collar

  is to proclaim …

  to let everybody know who he is and what he is,

  but I’m using it for protection,

  which I, I knew about that

  and I said, “Gee.”

  But I didn’t take it off.

  Anyway, I went down

  and we were asked to go

  and pick up

  stuff from the Price Club

  and so I had to go down to the bank

  and get money

  and I went to the area.

  Also I remember some people complaining

  that Korean-Americans didn’t patronize black businesses.

  So I made sure that I went to black businesses for lunch

  and whatnot, wearing my collar and waiting around for food.

  And I remember just going to people and people just looking at me.

  And … and I usually kind of slump over when I walk, but in this case I

  kind of stood straight and I had my neck high

  and I made sure that everyone saw my collar.

  (Laughs)

  And … and I, I just went to somebody and, um, who was standing

  next in line and I said,

  “How are you doing?”

  Every … every place I went

  I got the same answer:

  “Oh, I’m doing all right.

  How are you?”

  And I said, “Oh, I’m just trying to make it.”

  And there’d be a chuckle.

  And … and agreement.

  And then we just started having this conversation.

  And in every instance,

  you know,

  of these people that quote unquote

  were supposed to be hostile on TV and whatnot,

  there was nothing but warmth,

  nothing but a sense of … of

  “Yeah, we should stick together” and nothing but friendliness

  that I have felt,

  and this was, um, a discovery

  that I had been out of touch with this part of the city.

  After a couple of days

  I stopped wearing the collar

  and I realize that if there’s any protection I needed

  it was just whatever love I had in my heart to share with people that

  proved to be enough,

  the love that God has taught me to share.

  That is what came out in the end for me.

  A Jungian Collective Unconscious

  Paula Weinstein Movie producer

  (On the phone. About 11 P.M. Chicago time. She is at the Four Seasons Hotel in Chicago. She has been on a movie set all day, shooting on location.)

  You know it was odd, we felt—

  Mark and I think—slightly isolated in our world