Southland

Lois notices the start of the Watts Uprising as the skies darken with smoke and the National Guard is called in: “Before the gunshots, before the looting, before the radio and TV newsmen said they’d better stay inside, Lois knew something awful was happening because the sky was filled with smoke” (216). The destruction is getting closer to Angeles Mesa, and the entire family is on edge. Frank instructs his family to stay indoors while he gathers some provisions and closes the store. Lois wants to go with him because she doesn’t want him to go alone, but he tells her to remain home.

Outside, his racist white neighbor sits on the porch with a gun. Although the neighbor once hated Frank for being “Japanese,” he says he will protect Frank’s family because he now wants to defend his home against Black people, as opposed to the Japanese. When Frank returns, he tells them that things are looking bad and that he had to send the boys home because they wanted to defend the store. Mary says he should’ve let them so that they could at least be good for something. Lois notes how distraught her father is all night, and no one in the family eats as protestors enter their neighborhood. The smell of smoke fills the house.

Lois sits with her dad, and when he asks her if they should leave, she says that she loves the neighborhood like he does. She believes the store will be okay and that they can remain. Frank just mutters seeming nonsense to Lois. He repeats over and over that “a man can’t leave his family” (220), even though Mary wants them to move. The next day, the family is relieved to hear that the authorities are restoring order. However, Kenji Hirano fetches Frank and tells him to get to the store quickly. When he returns, he’s visibly angry and upset, so much so that he curses and shouts about nothing being okay anymore. He doesn’t interact with his family, and Lois is afraid for her father. The next morning, Mary moves to her parents’ home in Gardena with the girls.

Jackie’s been avoiding seeing Laura, though they talk nearly every night. She finally treks over to Laura’s, unsure of what’s going to happen. Laura is overjoyed to see her and tries to initiate intimacy, but she sees that Jackie is clearly uninterested: “When Laura pulled back and brought her mouth up to Jackie’s, the kiss felt like something dead against Jackie’s lips” (222). Jackie finally lays into Laura, asking her why her boss, Manny, isn’t helping the Thai women who are slated to be deported. Laura is shocked and angered that Jackie would accuse her boss of not helping due to political reasons. Jackie believes Manny doesn’t want to get involved because he wants to run for mayor. Jackie eventually storms out, though she secretly wishes Laura would come after her.

Jackie returns home and calls Rebecca, and the two go out and get drunk. Jackie wakes up the next day with a bad hangover. She then remembers that she’s supposed to meet up with Lanier at her apartment, but the place is a mess, and Rebecca is still there. Rebecca refuses to leave and stays to meet Lanier. Rebecca flirts with Lanier, and Jackie “didn’t like it all, and couldn’t figure out who she was jealous of” (229). Eventually, Rebecca leaves. Lanier and Jackie set about looking at the photos from the shoe box. She tells him about the Holiday Bowl photo, and when he inspects it, he doesn’t see Curtis. The picture, however, shows a young version of Alma smiling at the camera. With this discovery, they’re both left wondering just how well Frank knew Alma, and why he has this picture of her.

Curtis begins to identify more with the plight of Black people nationwide in 1963: “There was something about the hoses, his mother’s sad and bitter comment, his father’s description of the foreman, that made Curtis look around him” (233). Where once he thought of injustice on television as something that happened in the South, he now understands injustice at his very doorstep, especially as his mother and father both speak of their own experiences with injustice. He also wonders what will happen to Cory and Jimmy when they grow up. His own brush with racism comes during a track meet at El Segundo high, when he beats two white kids from a rival track team. He’s so elated that he pumps his chest at them as he wins. Later, in the locker room, the opposing team calls him racial slurs and begins roughing him up. Angry, Curtis takes out a knife and counterattacks, cutting one student. Curtis then receives a suspension from the team.

When he’s finally able to return, he and Angela go to the meets, although he can’t run. He suddenly makes the decision to try his luck by going to stores to get something to drink, knowing full well that he’s a Black kid in neighborhoods where he’s not welcome. Angela warns him against the danger, but he’s adamant. She accompanies him, along with a few of his friends: “They were foolish and brave and haphazard and young, not organized and huge in number like the students in the south” (237). One day, Officer Thomas tells him to stop trying to go to prohibited places. When Curtis mentions that Thomas’s son (who also runs track) is allowed into these places, Thomas takes offense at the presumption that Curtis is anything like his son or his family. To Thomas, Curtis is the type of Black person that makes hardworking Black people like himself look bad. Although Thomas intimidates Curtis, Curtis doesn’t relent in his protest, and he feels comfort in the fact that Angela will always be there by his side.

Jackie returns to Holiday Bowl, intent on talking to Kenji Hirano. She again sees the Nakamuras and makes small talk, and they inform her that she should go into the bowling section to meet with Kenji. Jackie does so and finds him bowling with three other men. This is her first time (that she remembers) in the bowling portion, but just like the café section, the groups of bowlers are all a mixture of elderly Japanese American and Black people. When she tries to engage Kenji in conversation, he tells her to bowl. She’s confused, especially as she just wants to ask him questions: “She couldn’t believe it—this was the man that she’d been sent to? What were the Nakamuras thinking? He was nuts” (242). Kenji berates her for not bringing her grandfather’s ball and sends her away to get fitted for shoes. As she dons the shoes and tries to ask him questions, he instructs her on how to bowl properly, while at the same time dropping clues that he knows who she is. He also reminds her that she was in the very same bowling alley with Frank, even though she doesn’t remember.

While bowling, Kenji details how he and Victor met Frank via the store. They both lived close, and they saw him every day that way. On the day of the murders, Kenji saw the white cop out front. When the crisis was over, he called Frank to come to the store because something seemed off: Someone had padlocked the freezer from the outside. When they opened it, they found the four boys huddled together inside. Frank lost it, and he knelt in front of Curtis and mourned. Then they pulled the boys out, and Frank called his wife, saying, “They’re dead. He’s dead, my love. They murdered him” (248).

After getting Kenji’s promise to testify, Jackie leaves and returns to Frank’s old store. She thinks about everything that she’s just heard, and in doing so, realizes that Frank didn’t call his wife Mary with the message of Curtis’s death—he had to have called Alma.