Southland

Jackie Ishida’s grandfather, Frank Sakai, has recently passed away. As she drives to the apartment that he shared with his daughter Lois and her longtime boyfriend, Ted, Jackie remembers how uncaring she’s been toward her grandfather. He always wanted to be a part of her life, yet she distanced herself from him as she got older. She feels as though she doesn’t deserve to be sad about his death like those who truly knew him. Her parents are doctors, and they were hardly around when she was growing up, which meant she spent most of her time with Aunt Lois and Frank. Yet life caused her to drift apart from Frank: her parents moved away to Ojai, and Jackie only moved back to Los Angeles three years ago. She doesn’t mind not being close to her parents, however, as they remind her uncomfortably of herself.

Jackie catches up with her aunt, who is trying to find a new house now that Frank has passed. One of the things they talk about is the Northridge earthquake that took place a month before the story begins. Everyone is still rattled by the destruction, and Jackie wonders if her grandfather finally died because of the quake: “Maybe some seam in Frank’s heart had been weakened as well, some internal Faultline which waited two weeks, until the panic had lessened, to write its own smaller disaster” (19).

Later, Lois reveals that she found two boxes in Frank’s room: One contained photos, and another contained $38,000 in cash. In an old, handwritten will, Frank stipulates that his store (which is now gone) should go to Curtis Martindale, but the barely legible will is of questionable validity. Lois deduces that the money came from the store, which technically means that it should go to Curtis. Jackie thinks that Lois should take the money for herself and use it for her new home or invest it (as Jackie’s mother, Rose, would do). However, Lois wants Jackie to uphold Frank’s wishes and find Curtis. They both received cards from many of the people at Frank’s funeral (most of whom are Black and not Japanese American), including one woman who stood out. Lois wants Jackie to contact some of these people for answers. Although Jackie doesn’t want to get involved, especially as she’s too busy and about to start a job with a local law firm, she ruminates on helping while going to Frank’s room and disabling his email. While in his room, she sees his old Dodgers hat and feels nostalgic. Moreover, she realizes that Frank sent many emails to her and other family members but never received replies. When Jackie realizes how lonely his life must’ve been, she offers to help find information on Curtis: “Feeling something strong and definite for the first time since the funeral—shame—she thought that what her aunt wished her to do, while foolish, wasn’t really so hard” (32).

Lois recalls time spent with Jackie and Frank, likening the memories to movie scenes. She thinks about moments that she knows Jackie has forgotten, including “Frank and Jackie in the bowling alley, he encouraging her as she squatted behind the ball” (33). Jackie’s parents were both busy as doctors, and so Lois and Frank often took care of Jackie and tried to show her a better world. Thinking about this, Lois recalls when her family divided. It was in 1963, when she was 12 years old. Her sister, Rose, was in the Japanese Tennis League, and it was Lois’s job to make sure she had her shoes for each match. Lois mistakenly packed Rose’s practice shoes before an important match, thus angering her sister, her mother, and her grandmother. Lois hated going to the meets in Gardena, which meant they had to leave Crenshaw for “stuffy” big houses and equally stuffy people, but Rose loved hanging out with other Japanese American people in “wealthier” society, whereas “steadiness in any form was stifling to [Lois]” (36). During one key match, Rose, along with their mother, blames Lois for Rose’s loss. Frank, however, winks at Lois, reassuring her of his allegiance.

Having spent the day with Lois, Jackie is relieved to be back at her apartment, which is in an old 1920s building that survived the quake with no real damage. Although she dreads it, she listens to messages and hears some from her girlfriend, Laura. They’ve been dating for three years now, but their relationship is at an impasse: “For the last year or so they’d been poised at the edge of something—Jackie didn’t know exactly what” (40). Although Laura’s annoyance increases with each message, Jackie reluctantly calls her but dodges explaining the Curtis situation.

Jackie agrees to meet up but is too worried about contacting Loda Thomas, the Black woman at Frank’s funeral who might have answers for her about Curtis, to fully enjoy the rare time alone with Laura. She recalls how Frank devoted himself to his wife Mary after she fell ill, and Jackie remembers how hard her grandmother Mary’s death hit Frank. Jackie suddenly feels closer to Laura, and the two make love, with Jackie noting that “at least for this one day, she and Laura had almost been happy” (49).

Mary Takaya always feels like her name is really “Invisible Hands” because her family doesn’t acknowledge her hard work. Her family runs a restaurant, and Mary does all the things that no one else wants to. Her sister, Grace, hangs out with friends, while Mary remains the dutiful, quiet daughter. When Mary is 15, the US government sends her family to Manzanar, a concentration camp for Japanese Americans. She lives at the camp for three years and feels like she has lost the best years of her life. On her 16th birthday while in the camp, a handsome guy named Vince Tajiri, whom all the other girls like, singles her out and kisses her. Grace, however, interrupts the kiss and ridicules Mary. Mary never forgives her sister for the slight. After the war, the Takayas reopen their business since Mary’s father had prudently not sold his belongings. Mary’s parents keep promising her that they will let her go to college, but they need her to help. One day, Frank Sakai enters with his mother and “suddenly made her visible” (53). It’s love at first sight for them both, and Mary moves to Angeles Mesa with Frank. Rose and Lois are born, as well as a stillborn son, and then Mary goes back to school to become a teacher. She remains in the neighborhood on Edgehill until the Watts Uprising of 1965.

Jackie asks her friend Rebecca Nakanishi for directions to the Crenshaw district, which Rebecca gives with strings attached. Rebecca is a gorgeous, bisexual woman who is Japanese and Irish American and whom Jackie can only take in small doses. Jackie then visits the Marcus Garvey Community Center to meet with Loda Thomas “and couldn’t recall a time she felt more out of place” (56), as she is the only Asian American in the building. Although Loda can’t recall a Curtis Martindale, she wants to introduce Jackie to James Lanier, who might know something about Curtis.

Lanier oversees the community center’s after-school programs. Jackie’s first impression is that Lanier is a tall, serious, athletic-looking young man who barely fits into his office. He appears very stoic and is “the kind of man that other men loved—strong, understated, dependable” (62). The two size each other up while making small talk. Lanier notes that although Jackie looks like Frank, she seems unsure of herself and her place in the neighborhood. Lanier informs her that he was a child when Frank was in the neighborhood but then further reveals that Curtis was his cousin and is now deceased. Jackie wishes that he told her this over the phone, but then Lanier offers more detail about the circumstances surrounding Curtis’s death: Curtis and three other boys—all Black—died inside a meat locker in Frank’s store during the Watts Uprising. This news hits Jackie hard. Lanier continues, explaining that most people believe a racist white cop named Nick Lawson killed the boys, so the deaths never hit the mainstream news. Others in the neighborhood, who didn’t like the presence of a Japanese American business owner, believed that Frank was guilty. Lanier assures Jackie that anyone who knew Frank knew this wasn’t the case.

At Jackie’s prompting, Lanier also reveals that Curtis has no surviving family members. Lanier has told all of this to Jackie so that she won’t waste time searching, but also because he needed to get it off his chest. He’d wanted to build a case against Lawson, and now that Jackie has surfaced with this information, he’s ready to move forward with accusing him. Lanier isn’t sure if involving Jackie is the right idea, however. Although her legal expertise will help, she’s definitely “not the same kind of person as her grandfather” (67). Yet he feels that someone in her family must know something more. He also isn’t sure how to go about implicating a law enforcement officer when cops are known for closing ranks to protect their own. Jackie is hesitant to get involved, but this information has shed a new light on her family: She now understands why her grandfather closed his shop and left the neighborhood, so she decides to help.