Southland - Nina Revoyr

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the way the voices all flowed together and formed something greater than the sum of themselves, a presence as huge and beautiful to Jimmy as the thought of God. He felt the owners of these voices, the grown-ups in the church, could fight off anything, take over the world.

      Jimmy tried to follow the pastor’s words for the first twenty minutes. Then his attention slowly failed him and he watched the congregation. He saw a sea of ladies’ hats, yellow and green and white, decorated with flowers, and sprays of baby’s breath and lace. He saw open faces turned up to the pastor, feeding on what sustenance he offered, and the few people who looked down, refusing to hear, and the others who had drifted off to sleep. He saw the tops of little heads, barely visible over the backs of the pews. He peeked to the left and spied Cory bouncing his knees and twisting his head, dancing to some unheard music. Jimmy started bouncing too, which did not escape Curtis. “It’ll be done soon,” he said, leaning over.

      Outside, Alma stopped to talk to some people she knew—the parents of one of her students, and Miss Vera and Miss Alice, fellow teachers who lived together and didn’t have husbands. The boys hung back and Curtis pointed people out to his brother and cousin. “That lady move and belch like a tractor,” he said about a particularly large woman, who was grunting with the effort of walking. “That man skinny as a turkey bone four o’clock Christmas Day,” he said about a man who made Reverend Greene look fleshy. “That girl got her nose held up so high the birds be flyin into it.” The younger boys giggled, although they tried to stop each time one of the grown-ups looked over. Finally, another man approached Alma, a tall, dark-skinned man in a brown suit and black hat. “’Lo, Alma,” he said, and there was something about the way she took the veil off her smile that made Jimmy know the man was not trying to take something from her, or approaching out of mere obligation.

      “Hello, Victor. Good to see you. How you doing?”

      “Fine, fine. And you? Where’s your husband this morning?”

      “Hmph. Bed, like usual. Didn’t get home till ’round three this morning. Got his sister’s baby here, though.”

      The man was alone, which Jimmy thought strange, and in another moment Mrs. Martindale introduced him as Mr. Conway. “Good to meet you, young man,” he said, bending over and taking Jimmy’s small fingers in his larger ones. He already knew the Martindale boys, and they smiled, looking happy to see him. At the door of the church, the women started to gather; they’d go back inside, cook, trade gossip and recipes, make quilts for the old and the needy. Jimmy wondered why Curtis’s mother didn’t join them, not understanding that Alma didn’t like these group projects and activities; not knowing the other women considered her haughty. And his mother was never a part of groups like this, either; the Laniers were one of the families they made quilts for.

      Alma and Mr. Conway started walking down the street and the three boys fell in step behind them. The sight of her walking beside a man who wasn’t her husband seemed odd to Jimmy. They were two puzzle pieces jammed together forcefully, their edges nowhere near matching up. But he sensed somehow that the man didn’t want them to match; there was nothing sly in his eyes or over-anxious in his step, in the way he smiled and spoke to her. Jimmy couldn’t make out their conversation, but he heard the shining, silvery peals of her laughter, the pulse and reverberation. And this unexpected laughter, Curtis’s jokes, the warm spring weather, made Jimmy feel—despite the heaviness of the sermon and the pinching of his suit—lighter and freer than he had in months.

      A couple of blocks up from Santa Barbara, they saw a man sitting on his porch in a small, plain rocking chair. He was a Japanese man, neither young nor old, and he rocked in his chair and stared out at the street, holding his left arm out straight and making long sweeping motions with his right. Jimmy had seen this man before, wandering around the neighborhood. Sometimes the man seemed perfectly normal. But other times he mumbled under his breath, holding a conversation whose other member was invisible.

      “Morning, Kenji,” Mr. Conway called out. “How you doing this fine morning?”

      “I’m very busy,” the man replied. “Trying to keep the traffic under control.”

      Mr. Conway and Alma both looked at the empty street, then back at the man on the porch. “Don’t look like there’s too much traffic,” Mr. Conway said.

      “On Crenshaw,” the man insisted, pointing. “It’s real busy over on Crenshaw.”

      Jimmy looked at where the man was pointing and saw only a row of houses. Alma smiled.

      “Ain’t been able to see straight through to Crenshaw for ’bout ten years now, Mr. Hirano.”

      “That’s nonsense,” the man said, vehemently. “You’re talking nonsense. And this is God’s day. You all need to get your eyes checked.”

      The boys were right on the heels of the adults now, and Jimmy heard Alma say under her breath, “It must be one of his bad days.”

      Mr. Conway smiled. “All right, Kenji,” he called out. “You have a good afternoon now.”

      But the man had already forgotten them, focusing again on the street.

      When they were out of earshot, Jimmy shook his head. “That man nuttier than a peanut field harvest morning,” he offered, remembering something his mother had once said about a relative. He expected Curtis and Cory to laugh, but instead, Curtis turned and leaned over him, blocking out the sky, face blazing like a too-hot sun.

      “Don’t you talk ’bout him that way.” His voice was low, his cheek muscles working, and Jimmy was so shocked by the anger in his cousin’s face that he just stood there, afraid to move. In the ten months since he’d started spending time with his cousins, Curtis had never so much as raised his voice at him. Curtis stood, rocked back, rocked toward him again. “Don’t you ever let me catch you talkin ’bout Mr. Hirano that way.”

      Jimmy didn’t know what he’d done wrong, or why it had been OK to laugh at the silly people at church but not at this crazy man who couldn’t see the houses in front of him.

      Alma and Mr. Conway, hearing this exchange, stopped and turned around. “He’s a nice man, Jimmy,” Alma said.

      “That’s right,” Curtis agreed. “He’s just got his own ways, is all.”

      Jimmy felt so low now that his eyes began to fill, although he couldn’t tell whether he was upset because of guilt or Curtis’s anger. At least his cousin’s anger, though, unlike his long-gone father’s, had a reason, a set of rules for things to avoid, and didn’t just explode without warning. The boys walked along in silence for several blocks, the grown-ups talking in front of them. Jimmy sniffled and sank deeper into his suit, his chin pressed down into the collar. He wished he could disappear. But just when he thought he was going to cry for real, Curtis took his hand. His heart lifted. He knew, because Curtis still stared ahead and didn’t look at him, that he wasn’t ready to talk to him yet. But he also knew that he would be forgiven.

       1994

      THERE WERE so many questions, which she took out in private, unfolded and examined like secret love letters. For one thing, why had no one in her family ever told her about the freezer? That no one talked about history, the internment, seemed a community decision; the entire Nisei generation might have taken a vow of silence. But this thing, the death of the boys, was much more personal, unique—and so her family’s silence on the matter was more troubling. She had known right away that she’d have to talk to Lois, who was always the best source of family information. Lois, like Rose, didn’t tend to offer things on her own, but at least she’d give them up when she was asked.

      Jackie called her aunt on Tuesday night, as soon as she got home. They talked about the houses that Lois had looked at, and then discussed the will—the official one—which had been read that afternoon. Frank

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