Southland Page 10

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “Nani? Do shite?”

  “Because we go every Sunday and you’re there every day during the week. I want a day off. I want to stay around here today.”

  His father pressed his lips together and pointed out the door at the car. His fingers were nicked and stained crimson and blue, the marks of harvesting, and handling bleeding berries. “You come,” he said. “You come Little Tokyo.”

  “No.”

  His father let go of the door and approached him. He was wearing the only jacket Frank had ever seen him in and a collapsing black hat. His face was dark brown, wrinkled from years in the fields, like the dry cracked earth from which he’d tried to coax life. Frank swallowed and almost gave in. Although Kazuo was almost sixty now, he was still wire-tough, unbreakable. When his ship arrived in San Francisco in 1903, a gang of white thugs were at the docks to greet it. And as Kazuo and the other men walked down the plank and took their first steps on American soil, the white thugs had surrounded them, yelling “Japs!” and “Yellow perverts!” and “Turn around and go on home!” Two of them picked horse dung off the street and flung it at the new arrivals; one of the fresh, mossy dung cakes struck Kazuo in the jaw. But instead of averting his eyes and scurrying as the other men had done, he bent over, picked up a dung cake, and threw it right back. It hit one of the thugs in the temple and he was so stunned that it took him a moment to start after Kazuo. But Kazuo was ready for him and used the throws and deflections of judo he’d pass on to his son, and soon four of the thugs were lying flat on the ground, holding precious parts of themselves. The rest of them took off running. Frank knew that a man who’d scared off a gang of whites within five minutes of arriving in America would never be intimidated by his own son, regardless of the boy’s half-foot advantage. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to hold his ground. His father stopped right in front of him and looked up into his eyes. “What the hell wrong with you? You come, you be respect.”

  Just then, Frank’s mother came into the room, with his sister Kumiko trailing behind her. She’d heard what had passed between them, and now she approached, laying a hand on her husband’s tense and ready arm. “Papa. Papa. Let him stay,” she said. Then, in Japanese, “He works hard all week, let him play with his friends.”

  His father glared at him, still frowning. “You home when we get back. You don’t go play the football.” Then he, Masako, and Kumiko walked out and shut the door. A few minutes later, Frank heard them drive away.

  His plan was exactly that, of course—to go play the football. He was on the junior varsity at Dorsey High, and on Sunday mornings, after church, his friends would gather at the high school field to play. As soon as the chugging of the car had faded and he could hear the ribbits of frogs again, he changed into a T-shirt, work pants, and a pair of old sneakers, and skipped down out of the house.

  Frank loved his neighborhood. He loved the space of it, the greenery, the view of the mountains, the huge expanse of clear blue sky. There was a scattering of houses, but they were set wide apart, with strawberry fields and walnut groves and marshy lots between them. Just a few blocks away was the swamp where he’d met Victor Conway years before; where the two of them, equipped with Mr. Conway’s shotguns, hunted for ducks, and wild pigs if they were lucky. The Sakais’ apartment in Little Tokyo had been tiny, dirty, dark, but they lived in a bungalow now, with tan stucco and green trim, and they had their own sprawling back yard. Frank knew his mother loved it in Angeles Mesa, too, despite their rocky entrance. Six months after they’d moved in, part of their roof had collapsed in the quake of ’33. And the cold looks and harsh words from neighbors the first few years had not made for an easy adjustment. There was the flooding, too, in the rainy season, water running down from the hills, so much the year before that the milkman had delivered his milk by boat. But all of this was a small price to pay for the space they now had, the lives they led. Masako kept a flower garden in back, with dahlias, sweet peas, snapdragons, sunflowers; she and the children grew most of the vegetables they ate. It was Frank’s father who missed the city, the dirt and noise and people, the restaurants and stores stacked side-to-side. His mother, Frank suspected, could live without these Sunday trips; she’d made several friends in the neighborhood.

  Frank walked over to Crenshaw, up to Rodeo, then a few blocks west to the high school, which had opened two years before, the same year streetlights were installed on the boulevard. His friends were already there—Victor, David Hara, Steve Yamamoto, Don Styles, Barry Hughes. There were a few other boys he knew less well, including a white boy, Andy Riley, who lived in the hills at the end of Vernon where the Olympic Village used to be, the hills where sometimes Frank would go fishing. All the boys were j.v. players, and the nine Negro and Japanese boys who met that Sunday were the only black and Asian players on the team—a small sprinkling within a slightly larger sprinkling of black and Asian kids who were allowed to do extracurriculars; of black and Asian students in the school; of black and Asian families in the neighborhood. As Frank approached the field, Victor spotted him. He yelled out a surprised and exhilarated “Hey!” and heaved the football in Frank’s direction. Frank grinned as the ball spiraled toward him, and he took a few steps up to meet it.

  “We’re just picking teams,” Don informed him. “You make it an even ten.”

  Steve came over, clapped him on the shoulder. “Your mom and dad let you off the hook today, huh?”

  Frank nodded. “Kind of. I think I’m going to pay for it later.”

  Steve fiddled with the reed he was chewing. “I hate Li’l Tokyo. I haven’t been in five years. I’m surprised you’ve put up with going there as long as you have.”

  Frank didn’t reply, thinking his own impatience with Little Tokyo, with his parents and their friends, was very different from Steve’s, who did badly in school, who was drinking already, who was proud not to know Japanese. He turned away from him and listened as Victor and David Hara, the two best players, picked teams. Victor was tall, oak-brown, and handsome—like a movie star, Frank thought, if only movie stars came in his color. He always had girls trailing after him, but restricted himself to one—Janie—who he’d been dating since junior high school. Now Victor chose Frank, and David chose Barry, and all the boys fell in with their teammates. Then the two teams ran to separate ends of the field, and David’s team received. Barry, who was a minister’s son, returned the kick all the way for a touchdown, without anyone laying a hand on him.

  They played for two hours. Frank’s T-shirt and work pants got covered with grass stains and sweat but he didn’t worry about how he’d explain them, knowing his mother would stuff his clothes into the bottom of the laundry and never mention what she knew to his father. Even then, in July, there was a cool breeze coming off of the ocean and they could hear the palm trees rustle after a particularly strong gust of wind. The score was something like 73-60, and just as the boys were discussing whether or not the game was finished, three rabbits hopped onto the grass. They were light brown, with sharp black eyes and white bouncing tails. “Too many men on the field,” Steve announced, and all the boys laughed, taking the rabbits as a sign that they were through. Frank was happy. The laughter, the game, the camaraderie—but even more than that, the breeze, the grass, the palm trees, the rabbits—were why he’d stayed home that day. Nevermind that his old friends in Little Tokyo called him a country boy now; Angeles Mesa was where he belonged.

  The boys parted ways, except for Victor, Frank, and Barry. As they walked to Victor’s house on Chesapeake, Victor asked his two friends what they were doing that afternoon.

  “Nothing,” Frank replied.

  “Going home,” Barry said. “Got some chores I gotta do.” He spat out “chores” like it was a piece of tough gristle.

  “No, you’re not,” Victor informed him.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. You’re going to the beach.”

  “What? The beach? Shut up,” Frank said. “H
ow the hell are we supposed to get there?”

  Victor grinned, reached into his pocket, pulled out a set of keys, and jangled them in front of his friend’s nose. “Got my license yesterday. And my daddy said I could take the car today.”

  Frank stopped and put his fists on his hips. Barry threw his head back and whooped. And the three of them walked down the sidewalk, jostling and colliding, throwing feet out sideways to trip one another, smacking each other open-palmed on the sides of their close-cropped heads. Victor, at first, managed to avoid his friends’ jutting legs and flashing hands. Barry was short but powerful, and when he finally caught up with Victor, he shoved him, like a blocking bag, all the way across the street. Then the two of them came back and picked up Frank, Victor taking his shoulders, Barry his kicking legs, and threw him into a row of bushes. They laughed at, struck, and insulted each other, and the old men who were sitting outside on their stoops thought of friends they hadn’t seen in forty years. The young women who were watching, on the street or through the windows, saw the boys’ smooth faces, bright teeth, and tight hard muscles, and their bodies relaxed and opened, mouths humming wordless tunes of desire.

  The car was parked in the driveway. It was an old Model T that Victor’s parents had driven out from Arkansas in 1926, encountering not a single paved road until they reached the Cajon Pass in eastern California. Victor went around to the passenger side and opened the door with a flourish for his friends, ushering Barry into the backseat and Frank into the front. And they drove, grinning wide and feeling pleased with themselves, through blocks that got longer and longer, and then shorter again, past orange groves, more strawberry fields, and fields of cabbage and lettuce. They went west on Jefferson, up to Pico, then left all the way to Santa Monica. They knew that there’d soon be faster roads to get around on, wide, big roads called freeways; one was already being built between downtown and Pasadena. But the boys were happy to drive along slowly; to feel the sun and wind on their faces; to go someplace they wanted to, and under their own power.

  They smelled the ocean before they saw it. Frank had only been there once, as a tiny child, and now, when it finally came into view, he couldn’t believe its blue-green color, its majestic rolling voice, the way it flowed and folded endlessly into the distance. The three boys whooped again and could hardly wait to get out of the car. Victor managed to park it, somewhat crookedly, in the crowded lot, and they all jumped out, walking quickly toward the beach. Victor was telling the other two how his feet were sensitive to heat so he couldn’t remove his shoes, and Barry was calling him a sissy. But then they stopped, abruptly, because they all saw the sign. It was a dark brown board, attached to a pole that was sunken into the edge of the sand, and it had two arrows painted on it, one pointing right, the other left. Above the left were painted the words, “Whites only.” Above the right were the words, “Colored only.” They all stared at it, unbelievingly. Then they noticed the fence, which started at the parking lot and extended all the way down to the water. Wordlessly, they scanned the beach and saw nothing but black bathers on the right side of the fence and white bathers on the left. Victor and Barry glanced at each other, and then looked at Frank.

  Frank stared. He’d never seen a sign like this, although he’d heard about them in the news, and from Victor’s parents, when they told stories about living in Arkansas. He’d never had to think like this, either—for his first eight years he’d lived in Little Tokyo, and then for his next seven in Angeles Mesa, where there weren’t enough people of any color to legislate such boundaries. If the beach was divided into two distinct sides, on which side did he belong? Just then, a burly whiteman passed by on the way to his car, his chest burned pink and tender. “Japs go over there,” he said helpfully, pointing toward the colored side. His wife swatted him on the forearm. “Oh, honey, no they don’t.” The couple disappeared and the three boys were left standing in uncomfortable silence. Finally, Frank took a deep breath. “Last one to the water has to walk back home,” he said. And then he took off running, to the right.

  CHAPTER NINE

  1994

  THE ENVELOPE that held her family papers was distinct— nine by twelve inches and lime-green—but Jackie couldn’t find it for the life of her. She’d been looking for half an hour and was getting impatient, especially since it was Saturday and she’d cut short her time in bed with Laura in order to come home and keep this date with her family. She hadn’t been in the mood to stay with her anyway—they’d been awakened by an aftershock, the third that week, and it had left them both too jittery to sleep. Finally, she found the envelope, buried beneath her journals in the back of the closet.

  Leaning back against the bed, she poured the contents out onto the rug—the small article about her father being promoted to head of surgery at Cedars-Sinai; a card Lois had given her for her sixteenth birthday; a picture of her optimistic-looking parents and herself as a baby posing in front of the eternal flame at JFK’s grave. This photo always made Jackie pause for a moment—her parents had been teenagers at the time of Kennedy’s death, and had named her after the president’s wife. There was a picture, which seemed about ten years old, of Frank in a coffee shop, wearing a navy blue bowling shirt that said, “Holiday Bowl”; he was sitting next to a man who Jackie recognized but couldn’t place. There was a picture of Jackie’s father as a teenager, standing with his father in their yard in Palos Verdes, among the fog-shrouded bluffs that overlooked both city and ocean. Jackie found also a few postcards, including one from Frank, who’d written her from San Francisco about ten years before, during the only trip she’d ever known him to make. She remembered the trip clearly—he’d gone, quite suddenly, just after he finally retired, not telling anyone until after he’d made the reservation, and not taking Mary along. The postcard was a standard San Francisco shot, a streetcar pulling out of Union Square. Jackie turned it over and read the fading blue ink. “San Francisco is beautiful,” he’d written. His letters were tall and lanky, rightleaning. “I’ve been to Union Square (picture on front), Fisherman’s Wharf, Telegraph Hill, Chinatown, Nihonmachi (Japanese food better in Gardena). I miss LA, though. Not enough space here, and too much fog. See you soon. Love, Grandpa.”

  Jackie finished looking through the pile of family memorabilia, and felt distinctly let down. There was nothing here of value or interest. She picked up an old brown-tinged portrait of Frank, as a baby, with his parents, the only picture of her family from before the war. Her great-grandfather—she didn’t know his name—was wearing a dark suit with his tie pulled out slightly between the lapels of the coat. Her great-grandmother, who was younger, wore a simple white dress. Both of them looked oddly uncomfortable— dressed up, as if for a costume party. She saw elements of Frank in each of them. There, on his father’s face, was Frank’s slender nose, and there, on his mother’s, his generous, gentle eyes and the strong square jaw bequeathed to all the Sakais. But it was the man’s stance that Jackie recognized most clearly—it was humble, unassuming, shaped through habit and years of hard labor. Humility didn’t disguise, however, the resilience and pride beneath it.

  That evening, after she’d read for a few hours and gone for a run, she and Laura drove over to Beverly Hills to have dinner with Laura’s family. Laura’s sister, Sarah, was down from Stanford Business School for the weekend, and so their mother had invited everyone over. Laura had not been looking forward to it—she always grew tense and close-mouthed around her older sister—and the evening turned out to be as difficult as she had feared. Despite the attempts on the part of Laura’s mother to draw Laura out, Sarah hijacked the conversation, telling everyone in excruciating detail about her job offers, her professors, the apartment she and her boyfriend were hoping to buy, only pausing to field a question or to stuff food into her mouth. Every time Jackie looked over at Laura, she seemed to be sinking further down into her chair.

  As they drove back to Fairfax a few hours later, Jackie tried to cheer Laura up. “Hey, come on,” she said, putting a
hand on Laura’s shoulder. “Listen, why don’t we go to The Palms or something? We could have a couple beers and put dinner behind us.”

  Laura shook her head and fought back tears. “I want to go home, but you go on ahead.”

  Jackie gave her a look. “I can’t go there without you.”

  “Sure you can. Just go. I know you want a drink.”

  She did. “Do you want me to come back to your place after?”

  Laura shook her head. They turned the corner onto her block, and she waited until they’d straightened out before she answered. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m going to be very good company tonight.”

  They pulled up in front of the house, behind Laura’s car.

  “OK,” Jackie said. She kissed Laura goodnight and watched Laura disappear inside the house.

  Jackie sighed. She was relieved to be rid of Laura, but also saddened—they used to be so much closer. There’d been a time when a night like this, a hard family scene, would have sent them into a frenzy of lovemaking. But those nights seemed to have occurred in a different life. Jackie started her car, sighing, and drove back to her apartment. But as she approached her building, the darkness in her windows made her unbearably lonely, and she knew she needed to be someplace that was noisy with people. She swung around the block and got back onto Fairfax. At Santa Monica Boulevard, she took a left and drove a mile to The Palms.

  After showing her ID to the butch, overweight bouncer—she’d reached the age where it was a compliment to still get carded—she removed herself from the flow of people streaming in and out, and stood to the side, trying to spot someone she knew. The place was hopping that night. The two bartenders were running back and forth behind the long bar, surrounded by a flurry—which clung to them like rain clouds to a mountain—of glasses, and ice, and bottles of liquor. To the right, in front of the mirrored wall, were a half-dozen tables surrounded by women. At the end of the bar was a small tiled dance floor, full now, on a Saturday, with dancers. Jackie could not make out the individual people, but she could see the way the crowd moved as one gyrating, sexual, strobeight-spotted mass. People were laughing and greeting each other with big, theatrical hugs, and Jackie wondered if this was still the euphoria she’d seen in the month since the earthquake, the uncomplicated relief of being alive. She spotted a few familiar faces, but no one she knew well enough to approach, so she weaved her way through the crowd and up to the bar, and ordered a pint of beer.