Southland (22 page)
D
OWNTOWN L.A. seemed incomplete to Jackie. Whenever she saw the skyline from the freeway or a plane, she always felt a bit of a let-down. The several dozen sky-scrapers, the shorter office buildings, were paltry compared to the glass and steel of downtown San Francisco; would fill a single block of midtown Manhattan. To Jackie, they were like the abandoned beginnings of a more vertical city, except Los Angeles had grown sideways instead of up.
Jackie’s new job at Turner, Blake & Weinberg would be downtown, and the Tuesday after she and Lanier visited Angela Broadnax, she skipped her afternoon classes to go there. In the two-hour meeting for all the first-year associates, she learned her official starting date and her payment schedule for the summer, when she’d be studying for the bar. She’d always liked coming down to the firm; seeing all the people dressed in expensive suits, working in big plush offices with beautiful desks and soft, plump leather chairs. She liked to envision herself there. The thought of the paycheck was pleasant, too—her starting salary was $71,000—but it wasn’t the primary attraction. When she started to work here, when she was no longer someone fresh out of law school but a regular part of the landscape, she’d feel like she’d finally become someone, like she had finally arrived.
After chatting with some of the other incoming associates, she took the elevator down, with the intention of going directly back to her car. But when the elevator stopped on the first floor, one level above the garage, she let herself be disgorged with the people who were headed out into the street. She walked east, down the hill, past the museums and City Hall. She watched the faces change from white to black to brown, saw the signs on the buildings go from English to Spanish. At the corner of 1st and Main, right before the New Otani Hotel, she saw her first sign in Japanese. She crossed one street, and then another, and now all the signs were in Japanese, or Japanese and English. She passed a bookstore, several noodle shops, a candy store. All the buildings on the north side of the street were old and cramped together— small storefronts, with apartments above. And the people—there was not a white face here, nor a black or a brown, and somehow Jackie felt more conspicuous on this street, as if everyone could sense how out of place she felt. Two old women, dressed in cardigans and clutching their purses, met and bowed to one another on the sidewalk. Three young men walked by, ties flapping in the wind, talking in loud, cheerful voices about the Lakers. She saw a couple of older men in dark, stiff suits, and something about their manner made Jackie think they were visiting from Japan. She passed a small restaurant, out of which drifted the sweet pungent smell of teriyaki. She thought about stopping—she hadn’t had lunch that day, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten Japanese—but then decided against it, at least for now. There was something that she needed to do.
She walked through an imitation Japanese village and then passed a large Buddhist temple. She saw two thirty-story apartment buildings and learned, from the signs in front, that they were retirement units for Japanese-Americans. Jackie was shocked to see that so many people still lived in this area. Just south were empty warehouses, drug-clogged parks, skid row, but here, Little Tokyo remained.
Going down another block, she found a large bookstore and went inside. Near the magazine section she saw what she was looking for, the English-language versions of the
Asahi Journal,
the
Tokyo Shinbun,
and the
Japan Times.
She picked up a copy of the
Asahi Journal
and looked at each of the articles; most of the reporters’ names were Western. Then she turned back to the masthead, examined it, and returned the paper to its pile. She went through the same procedure with the
Tokyo Shinbun,
and then picked up the
Japan Times.
Finally, on page seven, she saw an article written by Akira Matsumoto. She pulled a pen and paper out of her bag and wrote “Matsumoto” and “Japan Times.” Then she flipped back to the masthead, and found his name under the heading of “contributing reporter.” She copied down his title, and the paper’s address and phone number. Then she walked out of the bookstore, satisfied. Probably, Akira Matsumoto’s parents were still around, and she could get in touch with them. But Lois had been right—there were dozens of Matsumotos in the phone book, and why work so hard to find someone who could lead her to Akira when she could get in touch with him directly herself? And she wanted to talk to him as soon as she could. He was the only living employee of her grandfather’s store, the only other boy with a key, the only other person who might have been there that day, the last day of Curtis’s life.
Feeling proud of herself, and eager to tell Lanier, Jackie walked back through the imitation village. She came out on 1st Street again, at a different angle this time. And as she stood there facing the old wooden storefronts, bits of memory fell into some prepared, waiting place, and something in her mind clicked and whirred. She’d been to Little Tokyo maybe three or four times, most recently a couple of years ago, when Lois had dragged her to the Japanese-American National Museum. But the time she remembered now was from twenty years before, when she’d come to the Nisei Festival with her grandfather. They had stood, the two of them, right here on this corner; Jackie remembered the shape and shadows of the building across the street, the way City Hall loomed in the distance.
She couldn’t move. The traffic light changed from green to red and then back again, while Jackie stood there wondering how that trip had come about. The festival day came back to her in snippets. The children in the crowd, hoisted on shoulders and sitting on curbs, many of them dressed in
kimonos
. The smells and tastes of food—
soba, yakitori
,
donburi
,
sushi, mochi
—that she only came across during events like these, or when she went to her grandparents’ house. The strains of music, plucked and pristine, played on instruments she didn’t recognize. The signs written in two different languages, one business-like, direct, one more flowing and beautiful. And her grandfather! So handsome, so proper, his hair still mostly black, his body still straight-backed and lean. He walked proudly, chin up, hand clasped around his granddaughter’s. They kept running into people whom her grandfather knew. Too young to understand about war or sex, Jackie still registered how people responded to him—the pleasure in the eyes of the women he talked to, the camaraderie and respect of the men. Everyone seemed to look at him, everyone—and as his smile got wider, his stance more erect, Jackie felt a simple, overwhelming pride that she had never felt for her parents.
Jackie walked up 1st Street now, remembering how much bigger Little Tokyo had seemed, how much more vibrant and full of people, when she was younger, and with her grandfather, and still able to be impressed. Both sides of her family had started here, in places she’d never seen. She knew, without knowing how she knew, and realizing it had to be from Frank, that his father, the first Sakai, had stayed in a Little Tokyo boarding house between planting and harvesting seasons. And that her father’s family—one generation longer on American soil, more deeply rooted, wealthier—had owned two boarding houses just off of 1st Street. Jackie’s other grandfather, Thomas, got his degree in landscape architecture from UCLA, and, when the war came and the Ishidas were evacuated to Postom, Arizona, he couldn’t serve in the army because of his clicking knee. When they returned to L.A., Thomas dipped into family money—which had multiplied during the war—and joined up with Greg Miyamoto to start Ishimoto Landscaping, kicking off a business in the one field where their names didn’t hurt them. People’s lust for tasteful lawns and gardens—along with the perception that the Japanese were better with plants—had quickly made both men wealthy. Jackie remembered how uncomfortable Frank always seemed around this other side of her family—how out of place he looked among the Ishidas’ well-dressed friends at the party they threw for her parents’ silver anniversary; how her grandfather Ishida spoke to Frank in the cordial but dismissive tone he always used with the people who worked for him. And everything—the Ishidas’ fortunes, the Sakais’ struggles—had started right here in Little Tokyo, on the tiny piece of land a mile away from where Jackie would spend her future.
The next afternoon, Jackie drove down to Culver City to take Rebecca out for drinks. Rebecca was on the phone when she answered the door; she waved Jackie in and then walked into the kitchen. Jackie shut the door behind her and looked around. The stereo was on, a sad singing woman; when she picked up the open CD case, Jackie saw it was Nina Simone. That week’s reading from their Entertainment Law class was laid out on the couch, half marked up with green and yellow highlighters. There was a small stack of folded laundry on the floor in front of the stereo, next to a basket full of not-yet-folded clothes. Rebecca, in the kitchen, walked back and forth with the phone, taking bites of a microwaved burrito while the other person talked. Jackie sat down on the couch and flipped absently through the reading, which she hadn’t even looked at yet. Finally, her friend got off the phone.
“Hey,” Rebecca said, walking over. She was wearing baggy sweats and a T-shirt, and she looked like she’d just gotten up.
“Hey, you don’t look ready for a drink just yet.”
“Why?” Rebecca asked, sitting down on the floor. “Are you?”
“Very,” Jackie said. She closed Rebecca’s book and tossed it away from her. “I didn’t do the reading for class today, so of course Professor Hinchey calls on me, and I didn’t even know enough to bullshit.”
“God forbid you should ever not be in total control.”
Jackie grabbed a pillow off the couch and threw it at Rebecca’s head. “Fuck you.”
Rebecca blocked the pillow away and grinned up at her. “You’re cute, but no thanks, honey, you’d probably try and run the whole show.”
“I’d
have
to—it’s been so long since you got any you probably don’t remember how to do it.”
“You might be right—but I wouldn’t trust
you
to reacquaint me. God knows what three years with Laura have done to your natural skills.”
“Ooh,” said Jackie, “Ouch.”
“Speaking of such matters,” continued Rebecca, “I think I have a date.”
“Really? Who’s the lucky person?”
Rebecca waved her hand dismissively, but Jackie could tell by the self-consciousness of this gesture that Rebecca was looking forward to it. “Oh, this architect babe I met at a meeting last week. She’s a little older than us, early thirties I think, talkative, cute, seems cool.”
“Is that who you were just talking to?”
Rebecca glanced over at the kitchen, as if some version of herself was still pacing there, telephone glued to her ear. “Yeah,” she said. “Dinner Friday. We’re doing Ethiopian.”
She went into the bedroom to change, and Jackie looked at the television. Chevy trucks were moving in slow motion across the screen and, although the mute was on, her mind filled in the Bob Seger song the ad was shamelessly abusing. She knew even without asking that the architect babe was Asian. Rebecca had found many more gay Asian women than Jackie had known existed—whole organizations full of Chinese and Japanese, Thai and Filipina, Indian and Pakistani dykes. With men, for some reason, she was far less restrictive—she considered all men of color as potentials, and her last relationship had been with a Chicano lawyer. But out of all of these possibilities, nothing. Rebecca was stubbornly single, and as much as she liked to talk about people, check them out, catalog and flirt with them, she didn’t follow up on these looks and flirtations, they were like window-shopping for her, a hobby totally removed from the real task of finding and loving someone. And that she had not been able to do. Jackie wondered, suddenly, who Rebecca was beneath her cauterized, careful exterior. She had the disconcerting feeling that she knew less of Rebecca than Rebecca did of her.
A few minutes later, Rebecca emerged. “Do I look presentable?” she asked.
“Always,” Jackie answered, and she did. She was wearing faded Levi’s, an olive shirt, and black boots. She’d reapplied her make-up, gelled her hair. “You look great,” Jackie said, meaning it; she was almost,
almost
attracted to her. But the Asian qualities of her face—the flatness, the roundness, the slight slant to her eyes—were hurdles she could not clear.
They took Rebecca’s car, the ancient, boat-like Pontiac. They drove down Overland and when they reached Jefferson Boulevard and passed the Tara Estates, Jackie thought about her aunt and all the things she needed to tell her. Rebecca chatted on and on about a paper they had due in their Tax Law class. She continued to talk as they arrived at the El Torito, as they chose a table by the bar, as they were served huge, white, frothy margaritas. Finally, after taking a large sip from her glass and wiping the salt off her lips, Rebecca gave her friend a funny look. “What’s up with you, girl? You’ve been in another world the last few weeks.”
“Have I?” Rebecca gave her a look. “Well, yeah,” Jackie said. “I guess you’re right.” She took a big gulp of her drink and set her glass down. Then, for the next fifteen minutes, Jackie told Rebecca what she had been doing. She stopped and started, drank from her glass, cracked and played with the overdone chips. And while her friend sat there, silent for the duration of the monologue, Jackie watched her face change—the lips parting, then pressing together, the eyebrows lifting, the lines deepening around her eyes and on her forehead. But she listened, she stayed there, and Jackie felt something lift off her; it reminded her of how she felt when she came out to her then-best friend, Michelle, the day after their high school graduation. When Jackie finished with the part about Angela Broadnax, she just stopped; in the silence between them, they heard dance music from the speakers, a college basketball game on TV, the whir of the bartender’s blender. Jackie watched her own fingers twist the stem of her empty glass, and looked across the table uncertainly. Rebecca let out a long breath.