Southland (23 page)
“Damn, Jackie,” she said. “Your poor grandfather.”
“Those poor
kids
.” Jackie waved over their waitress and ordered another round of drinks. “But you’re right,” she continued when the waitress was gone. “I understand a lot more about my grandfather now. And this explains why my family left Crenshaw.”
“It explains some stuff about your mother, too. No wonder she cut herself off from the place.”
Jackie pressed her lips together, feeling a defensiveness about her mother that surprised her. “You may be right, although I’m not sure she ever knew about the murders. My mother was always kind of uncomfortable with my grandfather anyway.”
“Did she hang out at the store when she was growing up?”
“No. And neither did my aunt or my grandmother. It was very much a man’s world, with no girls around, really. Except Angela Broadnax, I guess.”
Rebecca jiggled the basket of chips. “So you think this cop did it? How exactly you going to prove it?”
Jackie sighed. “I don’t know. I have to get in touch with this Sansei guy from the neighborhood who was one of the employees. And Lanier’s trying to track down some cops from that era, to see if anyone will talk about Lawson.”
Rebecca cocked her head and gave Jackie a wicked grin. “You had dinner with him, huh? And Laura saw?”
“Yeah. It was a pretty weird scene. Lanier had no idea who Laura was, and she was acting kind of crazy.”
“What was she worried about? Did she think you were going to fuck him?”
Jackie shrugged. “Lord knows.”
Rebecca leaned forward. “Well, would you?”
“Would I what?”
“Would you fuck him?”
“
No
. Jesus. Of course not. I’m not remotely interested. And I don’t know why Laura was tripping.”
“Well, you don’t need to be interested in
him.
You could just be interested in what he could do for
you
.”
“Hey, come on—you’re the one that’s bi, girl, not me.”
“So what? Guys are useful sometimes, even if you’re not really into them. It’s like masturbating, but better, ’cos you have to do less of the work. Just think of a man as a dildo with a really big base.”
“I know,” Jackie said. “I remember.” She’d dated a few boys in high school, and had even, on a couple of drunken occasions, slept with men in college. But the experiences had been unnoteworthy, pleasant but mechanical, without the shiver and risk, the loss of control, she always felt with women.
“I think you might be missing out.”
“Well,
you
can have him, then,” Jackie snapped, but realized she didn’t really mean it. She started on her second margarita. Her vision was blurry at the edges and the music seemed to press on her head. She wanted to stop talking about Lanier and her recent project, so she looked at her friend now and assumed a cheerful expression. “Anyway, enough about me and my family crap. What’s happening in
your
life, besides the architect babe?”
Rebecca brightened. “Well, I went down to Legal Aid yesterday to meet the other associates and get a feel for the place. It’s nuts in there, but I like it. You can tell the place is running on a shoestring—the office is really bare and the furniture’s falling apart. And they told me, as I feared, that they couldn’t pay me this summer while I study for the bar. So I’m on my own until I start in September, although I might just volunteer—because of what’s happening with the garment workers, they’re really overloaded. I don’t know what I’m going to do to support myself—maybe I’ll have to start waitressing
here
.”
Jackie nodded, feeling fortunate and guilty about being paid for the summer. “What garment workers?” she asked.
Rebecca gave her a look. “The Thai women, the indentured servants,” she said, as if Jackie should know. And she realized she did know, a little. It had been all over the news the last few days. Jackie had gotten the general shape of the story—the INS, acting on a tip, had gone to arrest several illegal Thai immigrants at an apartment complex in Westlake. And what they found were twenty-odd Thai women and girls in front of sewing machines, watched over by a man with a gun. Rebecca told her now that this first raid had led to discoveries of other dark and windowless sweatshops; all in all, the INS found over one hundred Thai women held captive by a group of smugglers who had contracted with a downtown manufacturer. Jackie hadn’t paid much attention to the story and now she felt inadequate, out of touch. But this was always how it was. Rebecca would make sarcastic, pointed comments about something in the news—the Baton Rouge shooting, on Halloween, of an unarmed Japanese boy, and the subsequent acquittal of the killer; the recent bombing of the Japanese-American Community Center in Norwalk. Jackie never followed these things too closely, but Rebecca seemed to take them all personally.
“What’s Legal Aid doing?” Jackie asked. “Are you taking them on as clients?”
“Kind of, but it’s difficult, because we’re trying to figure out who to sue. Probably it’ll be the manufacturers who hired the smugglers in the first place. We might go after the smugglers, too, but it’s not clear what’s going to happen with them—they might get deported and that might be their only punishment. At least the motherfuckers are in jail, though. I wish something bad would happen to them in there and save us the trouble of going to court. Shit, where are corrupt policemen when you need them?”
As Jackie sat there listening, she felt not angry and excited, as Rebecca clearly did, but increasingly ashamed. Although she’d heard about the Thai workers, she hadn’t paid much attention, because their plight hadn’t really concerned her. She made a mental note to follow the news more carefully.
“Anyway,” Rebecca continued, “no matter how the lawsuits turn out, we’re going to make a big stink about what’s happening to the women.”
“What’s happening?”
“Well, this hasn’t really hit the papers yet. The women have gotten a lot of sympathy from the general public, but the ironic thing is, they’re probably being deported.”
“
What
? You’ve got to be kidding me. Why?”
“There are only a few reasons why illegal immigrants are granted asylum, and the INS doesn’t think these women qualify. Religious persecution is a reason for asylum, and political persecution, and physical danger—but not simple, plain-old poverty.”
“But these women were essentially slaves.”
“Yes, but in
America
, not in Thailand. And remember, they were indentured servants—they chose to come here. Now, I personally think that they
do
qualify for asylum and that they should be allowed to stay. But the INS thinks differently, and they’ve been getting a lot of pressure from the mayor and the city council to resolve this as quickly as possible.” Rebecca twisted her glass around a quarter of a turn. “There are a couple of council members who are pushing to let the women stay.” And she mentioned three names, strong Democrats. Laura’s boss was not among them.
“What about Manny Jimenez?” Jackie asked.
Rebecca shrugged. “I don’t know what he thinks about it. He hasn’t said shit. Why don’t you ask the woman who’s got the inside scoop?”
“But I can’t believe he’d stay silent about this. He’s always been a champion of immigrants.”
“
Legal
immigrants,” said Rebecca, “except for Mexicans. And Mexicans don’t really count, he thinks, and he has a point there, since the land once belonged to them anyway.”
“But if the conditions were as bad as you say, the situation seems pretty cut-and-dried.”
Rebecca shrugged again. “One would think. But remember we’re discussing politicians here, not regular human beings. First of all, it’s not exactly the time to be Mr. gung-ho immigration. And the other three council members just got re-elected, so they have nothing at stake. But maybe Manny’s making a statement, because, well, you know. Everyone thinks he’s going to run for mayor.”
“But I don’t see how this would help him. I mean, this case is sympathetic.”
“All the better. It’ll show that he can be tough on the issue and put some distance between him and all the teary-eyed liberals.”
“Jesus,” Jackie said. Looking down, she noticed that her napkin was in shreds. She wondered why Laura hadn’t talked about this, not remembering her own continents of silence. And she realized that they hadn’t been saying much about anything lately, even though they still spent most of their nights together. She looked up at her friend’s face to find that the intensity was gone. Rebecca was grinning widely. “What?” Jackie asked.
“I think you might actually agree with me on this one. What’s the matter, girl? You starting to get a bit soft?”
“I
must
be getting soft—in the head.”
Rebecca continued to grin. But then suddenly, she leaned across the table. She slipped her left hand around Jackie’s neck, cupping the base of her skull, and rubbed her knuckles against the top of Jackie’s head. “It
is
a bit soft,” she said, smiling.
On the drive back up to the Fairfax District, Jackie wondered about Laura, about her job, about the secrets they kept from each other. She realized that she had always kept things from Laura. Little things, like her occasional flirtations with other women; things she should have shared, like her near-constant worries and doubts about their relationship; personal things, like what she thought about her family, and how thrilled she felt over her success at becoming a lawyer. Most of these things she refrained from telling not because she didn’t want Laura to know, but for the simple idea of
having
things that Laura didn’t know. By keeping so much to herself, by having this secret, private storehouse of her own memories and thoughts, she kept Laura outside of her, and made herself safe. And she
wanted
to be safe, or at least she thought she did; she wanted someone to stand at the edges of her and never really enter. But now it occurred to her that Laura had secrets, too.
On Oakwood, Jackie turned right past the newsstand, then passed her own street and kept driving. She drove down to Sierra Bonita and turned left. Laura’s car was parked in front of the house and Jackie pulled up behind it. The lights were on in the house and Jackie could see the way the room changed colors, subtly, reflecting what was showing on the television. Jackie sat there for ten minutes, waiting for the calmness, or courage, to go in and face her girlfriend. Finally, she was startled by headlights in her rearview mirror. It was time to make a move. But she couldn’t muster the energy to deal with Laura now, and so she started her engine up again and drove the six blocks home.
Later, on her couch, as she floated somewhere in the noman’s land between sober and drunk, it wasn’t Laura or their problems she thought of. Her mind went back to something that Rebecca once said—that Jackie’s being gay had saved her. She wasn’t sure what her friend had meant by this, but she knew Rebecca was surprised by, and approving of, Jackie’s sudden new interest in her family. She kept returning, also, to the moment in the restaurant when Rebecca had reached over and rubbed her head. And it wasn’t really her friend’s strange gesture that troubled her. It was that when Rebecca loosened her fist, when she let the still-curled fingers of her now-relaxed hand rest right at Jackie’s hairline, Jackie hadn’t pulled away from her friend’s warm touch, but instead, for just a moment, pressed into it.
(WHAT JACKIE DOESN’T REMEMBER)
F
RANK WAS Brownie leader for the morning. He was standing outside the entrance of a Safeway in Torrance, where five seven-year-old girls from Jackie’s troop were selling Girl Scout cookies. One of the girls was sitting at the card table, which held neat stacks of red, green, and yellow cookie boxes and a gray metal box for cash. Next to the table were much bigger cardboard boxes, which contained the reserve cookie supply. The girl at the table handled people who approached on their own, wisps of brown hair catching in the corner of her mouth as she explained the different kinds, and the other four hit up customers as they entered and left the store. The parents worked in shifts, and Jackie’s mother was supposed to be there, but she’d been called away for an emergency, so Frank had driven over. The other girls had reacted to his presence with interest. “Where did you come from?” one of them asked, when he introduced himself as Jackie’s grandfather.
“Gardena,” he’d replied, and they’d looked at him, confused.
“No, where did you
really
come from?”
That awkward beginning an hour past now, he watched with pleasure as his granddaughter worked, running excitedly to customers in her neat tan uniform, Brownie button shining on her lapel. She was so confident, Jackie, and in her the seriousness of his older daughter met his younger daughter’s capacity for joy. Jackie was his only grandchild, and although he worried about the long hours kept by both of her parents, he was happy about the result—more time with him. He’d missed out on these years with his own daughters—the childish, open years, before self-consciousness or cynicism, when each shade of pleasure or sorrow showed so clearly on their faces. And he was making up for it with Jackie, a fact which hadn’t been lost on his daughters, and was resented a bit, he was almost sure, by Rose. They’d had words a few times about where Frank took Jackie, what he did with her. But he wasn’t trying to shape her, as Lois was. He just took Jackie to the places where he liked to go himself—downtown, bowling, fishing off the pier—and because she lit up like a sunrise when she watched the waves roll in, or sent the bowling ball rumbling down the lane. There was nothing else he’d rather do than what he was doing—watching the child run about, at peace with the world. His reverie was broken by the arrival of Lois, whom he’d enlisted to help him handle the girls.
“You look like a natural,” she said. “You could start your own troop.”
“Well, I’ve had some experience in sales.”
“Aunt Lois!” Jackie shouted, running over and giving her a hug. “I’ve already sold seventeen boxes!”
“That’s great, sweetie.”
“Actually,” Jackie said, looking suddenly grave, “I’ve only sold fifteen, but I knew you and Grandpa would buy a box.”
“Now what would make you think that?” Lois asked. Her question went unheard, though, because all four of the miniature salesgirls had swarmed around a middle-aged couple who had just come out of the store. Through the clamor of childish voices, Frank and Lois heard the woman’s “Oh, my!” The couple looked taken aback, and then delighted. Frank smiled. What a brilliant capitalist organization the Girl Scouts of America was. While the woman reached into her purse, Jackie and one of her troop mates suddenly sprinted to the other exit, where another likely victim was emerging.
“Why didn’t I ever do Brownies or Girl Scouts?” Lois asked.
“You were never interested. Your sister did, though, remember?”
They talked about Rose’s hectic schedule—she’d just started her residency, and so Frank and Lois were taking Jackie more often. Both of them had easier schedules than Rose. Frank was still working a forty-hour week, but he’d been his own boss for the last seven years, since breaking away from Richard Iida, and now he set his own schedule, wiring new restaurants and businesses with lights and electricity, providing them with conduits for life. And Lois, at twenty-five, had finally finished college; she was working part-time as a teacher’s assistant while she tried to figure out her next move. They were discussing what to do with Jackie after the sale was over, suggesting and then deciding against McDonald’s and Chuck E. Cheese.
Then another woman came out of the store. She was darkhaired, wearing a navy blue suit, thirty-five or forty. She had two paper bags of groceries, which she set down on the ground while she fiddled with the strap of her purse. The strap readjusted and her groceries collected, she started to walk away, and Jackie broke ranks with the rest of the Brownies to run over and give her pitch.
“Would…you…like to buy…some…Girl Scout…cookies?” she managed to get out between breaths. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the effort of her sprint, and a few sweaty strands of hair were stuck to her forehead.
The woman wrinkled her nose and looked at Jackie as if she’d just offered to sell her dog shit. “No, I would not,” she said, and she started to turn away, but then another Brownie appeared. And when this other girl made her appeal, the woman put down her bags and bought two boxes of thin mints.
Frank and Lois were stunned. Jackie looked puzzled for a moment, not knowing how she’d been insulted, and then ran back toward the store, unconcerned. But her grandfather stood there, fuming. Lois looked at him incredulously, and his ears were beet red. He didn’t return her look, though, because he was staring at the woman, who was briskly striding out to the parking lot. He clenched and unclenched his fists a few times as the woman moved further away. And then he commenced the slow, deliberate walk of a man who is trying to keep himself from murder.
The woman was getting into a white Volvo station wagon, which was parked back-end first, and she didn’t know that she was being followed. She placed her purse and grocery bags on the passenger seat, buckled her seatbelt, and looked up to find Frank right in front of the car. Frank didn’t know what he intended to do. But when the woman started her engine, he didn’t move. He just glared at her, and finally, after glaring back for a moment, the woman honked her horn. He still didn’t move, but drew himself up and curled his hands into fists. The woman tossed her own hands up in annoyance and disbelief, and then rolled down her window and leaned out.
“Could you move?” she said loudly. The hostility in her voice was sharp and undisguised; it seemed to come from something more than the inconvenience of someone blocking her way.
Then Frank realized what he wanted. “Not until you buy a box of cookies from my granddaughter.”
The woman stared at him, and it took her a moment to make the connection. “You’ve got to be kidding. Get out of my way.”
“You go back there and buy a box of cookies.”
Frank was vaguely aware that normal life carried on around him. A few spaces to his left a car pulled out and drove away. A teenage girl walked by and looked at him quizzically. In the next aisle of cars a store employee was collecting shopping carts, pushing each new one into the collapsing back of the one in front of it. The woman revved the engine a few times, as if firing off warning shots. When Frank still didn’t move, she put the car into gear and inched forward. The car drew closer to him, closer, and he felt the bumper touch his knee. Frank and the woman glared at each other through the windshield, and for a brief moment he thought the woman would run him over. Then, finally, she put the car back into park. She leaned out the window again. “Get out of the way, you idiot, or else I’m going to call the police!”
But there wasn’t a cop in sight, and Frank knew it. Moving again without thought or intention, he pulled his keys out of his pocket and held them up in the air. The sunlight glinted off the metal.
“No,
you
get out,” he said, and his voice was steady. “Get out of the car, go back over there, and buy a box of cookies from my granddaughter.”
The woman laughed. “Or else what? You’re going to jingle your keys at me?”
Frank took the largest key, the one to his office, and held it like a switchblade, and he made a long, deep gash in the hood of the car. He did it slowly, firmly, deliberately, and the sound was excruciating, like fingernails scraping a blackboard.
The woman stared in disbelief. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You go over there and buy a box of cookies.” He stood up straight and picked the paint out from between the teeth of his keys. He felt very calm now. The woman didn’t speak or move, so he leaned over the car again and started making another gash. He could see the silver metal beneath the coat of white paint, and he took pleasure in what he was doing.
“All right, all right,” the woman said, getting out of the car. She walked briskly toward the entrance, and didn’t look at Frank as she went by. Frank followed her from maybe ten feet behind. He saw Lois standing next to the card table, giving him a look like he was crazy—and maybe he was, but he didn’t care. The woman went straight to Jackie, who was flitting about between customers, thrust a five into her hand, and said, “Here.” Then she yanked away two of the boxes Jackie was holding, turned, and started back toward the car. Jackie, who’d missed the whole conflict, and was still nonplussed by the woman’s rudeness, went to the card table to hand over the money. Frank was standing at the edge of the lot, and as the woman passed he gave her a bow. He knew there were things he should worry about—whether the woman would file a complaint; whether the girls had seen what he’d done; what it meant that he’d surrendered to his anger. But right now he didn’t want to consider them, because he felt vindicated and good. After he bowed, though, the woman spun toward him, just as Jackie came up to say hi.
“You fucking asshole!” the woman yelled. “I bought the cookies, all right? I mean, what the hell else do you want from me?”
Frank put his arm around Jackie and looked the woman in the eye. “Please,” he said, “don’t swear in front of my granddaughter.”
