Can We Get Along?

The corner of 7th St. and Union Ave., a building is ablaze during the Los Angeles Uprising, 1992; Photo by Ted Soqui, 1992. Courtesy the artist. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Ted Soqui from the California African American Museum exhibit.

Thirty years ago I was a senior in high school and had just turned eighteen. Our choir group took a trip to San Diego for a competition and to visit Sea World, Disneyland, and Knott's Berry Farm. As we drove back home and past Los Angeles, the city quietly awaited the Rodney King verdict. By the time the acquittals sparked the LA uprising, I was back in Bend, Oregon nearly a thousand miles away. 

Now, I call Los Angeles home and on the night of the 30th anniversary, I sat in a soccer stadium near the USC campus watching a women's professional soccer game where almost all of the players took a knee after speaking about their support for racial equality in America. I've been thinking a lot about how much I've changed and how much the world has changed in the past thirty years and how much has remained the same. Here is an excerpt from I Tried: Tales of an Emerging High School Feminist about that day when the news that LA was on fire arrived in Bend. And here is a recent article if you want to learn more about the '92 uprising. 

can we get along?

After that all-night bus trip and a couple of hours of sleep, I make my way into the kitchen where Mom makes oven pancakes for a late-birthday breakfast. She has NPR on, and I hear LA is burning. Rodney King. Police officers acquitted. Riots. Looting. Violence. 

I try to remember LA. Wasn’t I just there, just a few hours ago? No, we were in San Diego, and then we drove up the coast. I can’t recall seeing much of anything I recognized of the valley where Mom’s family lives, or Baldwin Hills where Dad’s brother’s home looks out at the Hollywood sign. Then, I remember the grainy footage of a man being beaten and photos of his swollen, bruised face. I remember the race of the officers (white) and the race of Rodney King (Black), the use of the n-word, and the excuses people gave for why the beating was justified, “He was on drugs,” “He tried to attack them,” “He deserved it.”  

I remember, two summers ago, seeing Do the Right Thing at the mall a few weeks after it’s release. Some theatres didn’t want to screen it. They feared riots in the streets. Now, there is rioting in LA. 

I drive to school beneath clear blue skies, far away from black smoke rising into haze above the Hollywood sign, Dodger Stadium, and the LA skyline. I arrive at school, and no one talks about the uprising. My classmates haven’t heard about it, or they aren’t interested in discussing it, particularly with me. After all, our school already experienced its own loss this week, it’s prom season, and our teachers want to get a few more assignments out of us before senioritis sets in even further. No one mentions that school is cancelled in LA, that people are dying in the streets, and fires burn in neighborhoods a thousand miles away.   

I think about saying something, starting the conversation. After all, everyone already sees me as a liberal, and a feminist, and a woman of color, but as I sit there in Mrs. Hurley’s class, I wonder if any of the personal stands I take change anyone or anything. 

In the fall, as the Atlanta Braves made their post-season run, I told anyone who would listen that doing the tomahawk chop during volleyball matches was super offensive. People still did it. 

When I heard about a new girl who just moved here from Vietnam, I passed by her on the way out of B Hall sitting on the floor by herself, but I said nothing. What could I say? She barely spoke English. 

When rumors spread about a middle school friend being hit by her boyfriend, I did nothing. 

When South Seas rolled around again, I didn’t say how offensive it was to come in black face, and even though Jamal Finley, the junior who replaced Chad Paulson as the only Black kid at Mountain View, hung a sign in the commons asking if he should wear white-face to South Seas, and nothing changed.

When the Wrangler-wearing boys scrawled KKK slogans across their binders, I said nothing. 

When people said, “That’s so gay,” or when the football guys called each other fags, I said nothing. 

When rumors spread about the girl who slept with him, and him, and him, or talked about the girl who threw up in the bathroom everyday at lunch, or the girl who got drunk and had sex with two guys, I never defended them or talked about what was going on. 

I haven’t changed this town at all, and sometimes I didn’t even try. 

On the day of Rodney King uprising, once again, I say nothing, and the disappointment and anger of my silence simmers inside me. I assume my classmates say nothing because they don’t know or don’t care. That is their privilege. They don’t think about race because why would they? Their families chose Bend. They fled cities, just like my parents did, to live in this utopia far away from urban spaces where cops beat Black men and Korean shop owners defend their markets. This is where I sit in my safe classroom, far from streets where cars are upturned and stores are looted. 

Mrs. Hurley turns on a movie, and in the dark, I fold my arms along the cool surface of my desk, and rest my head on my arms. I’m so tired, but when I close my eyes I see Uncle Yosh and Auntie Suma’s house in Baldwin Hills, just above the fray where columns of black smoke rise up outside their picture window. I remember driving down Crenshaw where Mom always got so nervous, as if someone might attack our car as we drove down the street. I imagine the strip mall we drove past when we went to LA for mochi-tsuki. The view of Los Angeles burning has to be unbelievable from Uncle Yosh and Auntie Suma’s back yard.

What about my parents, this interracial couple leaving Southern California: what possessed my Japanese American dad and white mom to pick this mountain town in the middle of nowhere? The story goes that it was skiing. The proximity of this town to Mt. Bachelor saved their marriage, but I wonder if it was also easier for them to be away from their families. When I’m with Mom’s family, with their blonde hair and blue eyes, living near Simi Valley where most of the jurors for this Rodney King trial live, I feel like an outsider, like at any moment a cousin or Grandpa might say something totally offensive about “those Mexicans” or “those Chinks.” What did they say about us when we weren’t around? 

Then, there’s Dad’s family. We are so white in comparison, because we are only half and live in Bend, void of any Asian community at all. Maybe staying in LA would have been much more complicated. 

If our family had stayed in LA, what could have become of us? Maybe we would be closer to our cousins, to Traci on Mom’s side who already has a baby, or Craigor who is in jail. Maybe we would be closer to the cousins on Dad’s side, Ron and Pam, who were band kids, or John and Rich who played tennis. We would never know, because Mom and Dad kept us from these possibilities and raised us a thousand miles away. 

When I get home from school, Mom is watching the news. There is footage from earlier in the day, shop owners in Korea Town, an area I’ve never heard of, holding guns and defending their shops. 

President Bush announces, “Anarchy will not be tolerated,” but the footage tells a different story. 

“Why aren’t they stopping it?” I ask, and Mom shakes her head. 

“I think it’s too big,” she says, but I don’t understand it. How can people go so crazy? Why are they so angry?  

Mom doesn’t understand either. She grew up white, in the valley, far from the streets we’re seeing on TV. 

I’m unable to comprehend the anger and frustration that fills
the TV screen, but I want to. I want to understand what it feels like to be so enraged. My internal clock is ticking. My days in this town are numbered, and I know once I leave and make my way over the mountains and onto a university campus, I will never come back.

To read more about my high school years growing up in Central Oregon, check out I Tried at Bookshop or your local book seller. 

Reading LA: After/Image by Lynell George and the Upcoming Teacher Strike

I have had Lynell George's book After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame, sitting on my coffee table since I read it this summer and we moved to our new house in South LA.

It's a perfect coffee table book. It's pages contain gorgeous images of our city, but the essays also draw you in, make you ignore dinner party guests around you and demand that you enter their world. Then, upon looking up, these words help start a conversation about gentrification or displacement or neighborhood politics.

That is what this book did for me as I packed up our condo of 12 years and made a move from one LA neighborhood to another. 

George’s writing illuminates Los Angeles in many of the complex ways I have come to love and hate this city. It is about the beauty you have to look inside cracks and through buildings to see. It is about the change in this city that comes from power and money and in the name of development and not from the people, the community, the history of this place. 

Last year Colson Whitehead’s quote, “Be kind to everyone, make art, and fight the power” helped me through the year. This year the quote ringing in my ears is from Lynell George:

“How do you protect not just a neighborhood’s unique character, but the people and their imprint, their story, and their struggle. [...] How do you want to contribute to the story of the city? How do you want to influence and shape history?”

As much as moving and this book got me thinking about the history of our city, I couldn't help think about how much of LA's history is tied up in our schools. Los Angeles public schools are some of the only structures that have managed to hold their ground, to refuse to be uprooted and demand the city evolve around them. I teach with teachers who attended my school. I teach kids whose parents went there. And my school, which opened in 1939, isn't even close to one of the oldest public schools in our city. 

But as the teachers of LA ready for a strike, as our public schools endure yet another attack from privatizers, these historical spaces are at risk. Holding onto our communities is about our homes and our streets and our schools. The work educators and public education advocates are doing to save schools that have struggled to serve our neediest students shows their willingness to shape and influence LA's story. 

As we head into the new year, I urge my Angeleno neighbors to read After/Image. Ask yourself some of its hard questions, and then stand with our schools, our city and all of its people this winter. 

The story of our schools and our city waits to be told. What will we say? 

52 Poems: Week 13 Eloise Klein Healy

Eloise Klein Healy is Los Angeles' poet laureate and this past summer, at a house-warming/birthday party with the most delicious ceviche, we visited about her forthcoming book of poetry, A Wild Surmise. She was the founding chair of Antioch where I worked on my mfa. We are part of a community of LA writers.

This week, as I reflect on the early days of Kiara's life, I read this poem and realized I gave up a beloved animal for my child. But I also don't like to be watched while I eat.

Artemis
By Eloise Klein Healy

I am thinking about romance and its purpose.
Children and why I didn't have any.
I would have left the cave and them with it
or I would have tied them to me forever
with my own sad dreams and finicky order.
I've liked young animals better.
I could put their heads in my mouth.
I could lick and clean them like a mother,
but I could not raise a child.
The first thing a child should see
is the pink sunrise of a nipple, not the green wind
of a branch whipping in passing.
I chose to keep animals around me instead
because we are the same. We have habits
and make strange circles before we sleep.
We don't like to be watched while we eat.

Wishing for Snow

MIKE PUTMAN PHOTOGRAPHY

It's been a cold, crisp week in LA and this morning as I drove to work the foothills were dusted with snow. And when I head to Oregon for the holidays, I'll be checking the weather and like the kid in that iPhone 4S commercial, wondering if it will snow. I guess some things never change. Here's an excerpt from Through Eyes Like Mine for anyone else who's ever hoped to wake up to a blanket of white.

Wishing for Snow

A

t sunset, the world grows cold and dark. The red line of the thermometer outside the kitchen window creeps from 34 degrees to 33. I watch the line drop toward the magic numbers: 32 degrees Fahrenheit, 0 Celsius. It hits 32 and then keeps dropping until it rests in the mid-twenties. Now it is certain. Anything that falls from the dark night sky will be snow.

I look up into the starless sky and wish for a couple of white inches to cover the ugly, dead of winter, the naked tree branches, the brown grass, and the frozen asphalt so everything will look fresh and clean again. The clouds will break and the sun will shine through the clear, cold air. The snow will sparkle as if the whole world is sprinkled with diamonds, such a brilliant white that my eyes will hurt and I will be torn between looking out at the perfect snow and wanting to play in it, to cast snow angels and bring snowmen to life. The next night I'll wish for more snow, enough to cover the imperfections we created that day, to fill in the snow angels and bury the snowmen because even they will look more beautiful covered in a new layer of white. 

"Nori, time for bed!"

I've been staring out the window for an hour and still no snow. I head upstairs, climb into my cold bed and shiver until the sheets warm up. I try to fall asleep but since counting sheep never helps I force my mind to wander through starry skies, away from all the things I should have prayed for. I travel past galaxies and planets and into the vast nothingness of a black hole, and if I still haven't fallen asleep, I sit up and look out the window, hoping that instead of darkness, I'll see millions of white flakes falling like stars from the sky, turning my ugly world perfect and white. Most of the time the world remains dark, barren, cold and dry, or just a trace of snow dusts the trees and rooftops. I wake up morning after morning wishing for more.

A Central Oregon Spring Day in LA

We're having an unusually cool start to spring here in Los Angeles with highs in the 50s for the past couple of days. Clear, smog-less skies scattered with cumulus clouds and crisp dry air reminded me of spring in Bend. There have been no snow flurries, no frost on car windows to scrape but when I got home from a long day at the softball field my face felt raw from the relentless wind. I've sneezed at least twenty times today and can't stop my eyes from watering. I love the usual LA spring: cool mornings, afternoons in the seventies, but this week took me back to the tennis matches and baseball games during the clear spring days of my youth. The only thing missing is juniper pollen.

My top 3 LA Food Trucks

It's taken months and months of grueling research, but it was worth it to find a few gems among the food trucks in LA. I still need to track down that shave ice truck and with new trucks starting up all the time this entry will be out of date as soon as I publish it. But here they are: my top three food truck orders as of July 27, 2010 9:50 am. These are the best of the best which means I stalk them on twitter and have to exhibit all sorts of will power not to eat them daily. Seriously. It's a good thing that Kogi line is so long or I might live off those tacos.

1 Kogi BBQ Truck
http://twitter.com/kogibbq
David always gets their Blackjack Quesadilla (that green sauce is so tasty) but I love the tacos. A trio of short rib, chicken and spicy pork por favor! Something about the kim chee, meat and sauce wrapped in a tidy tortilla makes my brain confused and happy at the same time. Oh and their tres leches is a chocolate gooey mess of yum.

2 Buttermilk Truck
http://twitter.com/ButtermilkTruck
Okay, the red velvet chocolate chip pancakes are so good that it's hard for me not to skip right to dessert every time. But the brick (chorizo gravy, cheese, fried egg, choice of bacon or sausage and hash browns) and the breakfast sandwiches (biscuits with an over easy egg, cheese, and bacon or sausage) are so good I haven't even had the chance to try to breakfast sliders yet. The Hawaiian bread french toast is another dessert option that is oh so tasty.

3 Coolhaus
http://twitter.com/COOLHAUS
I love ice cream. I love cookies. I love the Cool Haus's gourmet take on the ice cream sandwich. The only reason they didn't place higher is that I have such a hard time placing my order and I always have sandwich envy both before and after. David loves the snicker doodle with red velvet ice cream and I am a fan of the chocolate cookie with dirty mint ice cream, the chocolate chip cookie with mascarpone balsamic fig ice cream, or the oatmeal cookie with brown butter with candied bacon ice cream. I just saw some new flavors in their site though. Sea salt caramel and coffee toffee will be sandwiched in my mouth soon.

Honorable mention: delicious but easier to resist
http://twitter.com/dogtowndog
The Morning Commute and Fennel Dogs are super tasty.
http://twitter.com/BorderGrill
The carnitas tacos are quite delicious too.

Follow them on twitter or check out their websites for a tasting near you.

"Just a small town girl, livin' in a lonely world" ~Journey

A few weeks ago, I flew back to my hometown for the weekend. As soon as the cabin doors opened on a cool evening in Central Oregon, it smelled like home. The clean dry air carried the scents of damp juniper and a distant thunderstorm. My eyes watered, I sneezed, and that was spring in Bend to me. I hadn't been back to Bend in spring since the year I graduated from high school but that smell brought me right back to tennis tournaments, track meets, graduations and allergies.

I was in town for the town's annual Pole Peddle Paddle race and for the weekend I embraced Bend's small town culture. I skied Bachelor in May and stayed at my old elementary school that has been transformed into a hotel. I visited with friends and family and walked those same streets that were once my entire world. I tried to imagine my life if I moved back to that small town, where I might live and work, what I might do for fun. And even though I love and miss the mountain views, even though I yearn for the familiar rush of the river running through town, I can't picture a life for myself there.

When I was a kid, I struggled to picture my adult self living an adult life. Maybe every kid struggles imagining their future, but my life in Los Angeles is so vastly different from my life in Bend and maybe that's why the future was always blurry; out of focus.

Friends here in LA dream of escaping the city, moving away from all of these people and the noise to a space where there are trees and wildlife. I understand their yearnings because I miss the high desert, the cold, sweet water and the thin air. But the city is my home now and although I like to visit that other world, Los Angeles is where I belong. One gorgeous weekend in Bend confirmed that.

"Hot dog!" ~Jimmy Stewart, It's a Wonderful Life

If you don't like processed meat, well, this isn't the blog post for you. But after sampling Dogtown Dogs last night I began to compare all of the hot dogs I've ever had. Can't quite rank them just like I can't pick a favorite kid (if I had kids): they are all wonderful in their own ways. 71 days before Dodger Stadium opening day but my mouth is already watering. Maybe this year Gantt will actually take me to the game. Favorite hot dogs, people?

Dodger Dogs. (Dodger Stadium) You have to be there and David and I like them with lots of ketchup and onions.

Nathan's Famous. (Coney Island) Yum. Something about that snap of a Nathan's.

The Stand. (LA) http://www.thestandlink.com/
For those of you in LA, there are a couple of locations and after sampling several from their menu, I've liked all of them. My favorite is the one I ate after my testing fast last year, The Big Red Chili Dog, but anything JP brings on hot dog Thursday at Emerson works for me. Their homemade potato chips are delicious too.

Pinks (LA) http://www.pinkshollywood.com/
Waiting in that long line in Hollywood seems to make these dogs even tastier. David swears by the Huwell Howser Dog and I usually go with the chili cheese but I just saw the LA Phil Conductor Gustavo Dudamel Dog which looks all kinds of yummy.

Dogtown Dogs (LA) http://dogtowndog.com/
You have to track down Dogtown on twitter to find out where they are, but it's worth the work. The Morning Commute: bacon-wrapped all-beef dog topped with a fried egg. So tasty tasty. The tater tots are good too.

Oki's Dog (LA)
On Fairfax by LA High, this spot wraps pastrami, chili and hot dogs in a giant tortilla. Uhmazing. The owner is from Okinawa so it's no wonder I like them.

Puka Dog (Kauai) http://www.pukadog.com/
Kauai sucks, but these hot dogs were a perfect snack on the beach between rounds of mai tais. They wrap polish sausages, bake it in a bread bun and top it with fruity relishes and garlic lemon secret sauce. Mmmmm.

I can't wait to try Let's Be Frank... but any other recommendations from anywhere from Portland to China are welcome!

New LA Life: Chapter 3 continued

Auntie Laine was on the phone in the kitchen making some popcorn and I wondered if that was some kind of Yamanaka tradition, to make popcorn and watch tv because Mom used to do that just about every night too. A show was on pause on the tv and Auntie Laine must have been talking with someone from work because she was complaining about being asked to finish some project that shouldn't have officially been her job. Auntie Laine is Elaine Yamanaka at work, an interior designer at a firm in Century City where she caters to people who like that clean, modern, minimal look in their homes.

She held out the bowl of popcorn and motioned for me to sit on the couch. The room was still spotless and there were a bunch of pillows on the couch. I sunk into the leather and I had a sweatshirt on even though it was still hot outside because Auntie Laine liked to keep the air conditioner cranking all night. I pulled my legs up beneath me and soon Auntie Laine was pointing the remote at the tv, "Did your parents let you watch this crazy reality stuff?"

I recognized The Amazing Race and nodded. It was the first time Auntie Laine had really mentioned Mom and Dad. "Yeah, they let us watch this, but not The Bachelor or the reality shows on BET or MTV."

"Oh, yeah, huh. Well, I guess we'll keep that same policy going here." She grabbed a handful of popcorn. "Are there any other little rules your mom and dad had that I should know about?"

I thought about Mom and Dad's no computers in our bedrooms rule even though I'd already broken that one and checked my email on my laptop earlier. But what Auntie Laine didn't know about that one it wouldn't kill her. Mom and Dad had tons of rules, about meeting friends' parent before we could hang out with them and no tv during the week but I didn't want to tell Auntie Laine about any of those rules. Mom and Dad were way too strict anyway.

And there was no way I would be able to tell Auntie Laine how Mom and I had stopped getting along after sixth grade, how we hardly talked anymore, how the house had been dominated by silence, how I'd cried at the funeral but no one knew the real reason because I felt too awful about it. What kind of daughter feels relief when her mom is gone?

But that night I had to think of at least a few things I could tell Auntie Laine so I thought about my phone. "Well, I can't go over my minute limit and I only have 500 texts a month. I'm not allowed to download ring tones or movies or anything like that." I stopped. I didn't think she needed to know that they checked my phone every week to see who I had in my contacts or who I was calling the most. Besides, I was pretty much a good kid so she didn't need to be all up in my business like Mom had been. Besides, living in LA now, I didn't know anyone to call.

"Okay, phone rules. And what about boys? Any rules about dating or makeup?"
I hadn't really gotten into make-up but yes, there were rules Mom and Dad had about boys. I could go out with groups of people but never anywhere with just one boy. And again, they had to meet his parents. I definitely didn't want Auntie Laine to know any of that so I just shook my head and pretended to watch the people on tv getting ready to climb part of the Great Wall of China. "I guess I'm not all that into that stuff yet," I lied even though I sometimes messed around with make-up at Sephora with Nat and I had my first real kiss this past year.

As I sat there pretending to watch tv, words from my mom echoed through my mind. "Erika, there's nothing I hate more than a liar." Maybe that's why I'd felt relief when Mom was gone. I knew I'd let Mom down, that she hated the girl was becoming. But how was I supposed to know how things would end?

"I'm heading to bed," I told Auntie Laine before the end of the show and in my room I buried my head in the foreign smelling sheets of my new bed. Tonight I was a liar and as I lay there, face down on the bed I hated myself. I used to lash out at Mom, had told her more than once that I hated her but now she was gone and there was no one to hate but myself.

New LA Life: Chapter 3

That night at dinner Auntie Laine took me to this little Mexican restaurant and asked me what I wanted to do for the last few weeks of summer while she was at work. I shrugged, but I guess she'd already thought about this so she gave me some suggestions.

"Well, there's a surf camp or junior lifeguard classes at the beach. There is a beach volleyball camp or an all-day sports camp where I guess you can play a bunch of different sports."

I picked at the chips served with my burrito at The Burnt Tortilla.

"Then there is this arts and crafts center where you could hang out,"

I shook my head at the sound of that.

"And then there's a soccer camp."

I looked up. "Yeah, soccer camp." I'd just finished up camp in Portland and loved the idea of another couple weeks of soccer.

"Okay, so I'm going to take tomorrow morning off so I can introduce you to the family where you'll hang out while I'm at work. Then we'll get you signed up for soccer and I'll head off to work."

"Okay," I said and thought about how different this soccer camp would be. Every summer since second grade I'd gone to camp and known every girl and every boy, knew who the best strikers and defenders were, knew which club teams everyone played for and where they went to school. My best friend, Natalie (Nat for short) and I had played together since first grade. Her dad was a coach at University of Portland and we used to go to games together and dream of playing in the soccer final four, winning an NCAA championship together. We both still had that dream even though I now lived a thousand miles away and when I got home from dinner I called her to tell her about camp.

"That's awesome," Nat said.

"I wish you could come with me. I'm not going to know anyone. Who knows who my partner will be or if any of them will be any good." Nat and I had a high standard for soccer and I wondered if the girls here in LA would be as good as we were.

"Well, you'll get the chance to scout out the competition that will end probably end up at UCLA."

"True that, " I said and then it was quite for a second.

"So, how are things with your aunt? Is she cool?"

"Yeah, I mean it's all right. She's okay. She wants me to talk all the time and hang out and she seems a little like she isn't sure what she's doing. She's never had kids or anything so, whatever. I have to wait and see how things go. Have you seen Derrick or Jason?"

"Uh, no. Paris and I went to the mall and the movies yesterday but we didn't see anyone."

I imagined Nat and Paris going on with their lives without me and suddenly felt every single mile that separated us. "Oh well. Maybe you should call him and then they could meet you guys instead of trying to guess where they'll be."

"Oh, yeah, I guess I could do that."

I shook my head at my best friend because I knew she just liked the drama of possibility, possibly seeing her crush or possibly bumping into her enemies.

"Okay, well, I better go," I said, thinking I should see what Auntie Laine was up to before I went to bed and as I hung up the phone I knew more that just soccer camp was going to be completely different. I was leaving Portland, Oregon, the only world I'd known before far, far behind and entering something completely unknown.

New LA Life: Chapter 2

"I have an old surfboard at the house, can get you some lessons, if you want," Auntie Laine told me on the drive to her house. She practically had to shout over noise coming in through the open windows and the old school R & B blasting through the stereo, "Smooth just chillin' on a Sunday afternoon..."

I nodded even though she wasn't looking at me and I wasn't looking at her. I peered out the window and try to guess which street we would to take, which turn off of Redondo Beach Boulevard would take me to this new place called home. I tried to let the mellow grove play like a soundtrack for a my life, of a happy moment, to forget what had brought me here.

A sign welcomed us to Gardena but I didn't see any gardens. All I saw was concrete, asphalt, anemic palm trees rising up from sidewalks and a few trees planted in mini-mall parking lots.

We passed by a Starbucks and an In 'N Out burger and my stomach rumbled again but rather than stopping for lunch we turned right on Harvard Avenue and pulled into the driveway of the house that would be my new home.

The house looked different than the others on the block and I figured it was because she was an interior designer. Most of the homes were older, one story ranch homes, or two story duplexes and they all looked like it they were built in the late seventies. The paint on these homes had faded from day after day of sunshine and the trim was peeling around the edges. Most of the lawns were cut and maintained and had these plants called Birds of Paradise with red flowers pointed like a beak planted around the edges. Auntie Laine's house was once one of those one story ranches, but in a recent remodel the pitched roof became straight and the windows wide with neat white trim. The rest of the house was painted a dark gray and her lawn was perfectly maintained and trimmed with succulents and pointy desert plants. I figured she must hire a gardener because I couldn't imagine her actually mowing this lawn or pulling weeds around the desert plants.

She pulled into the garage and pulled up the parking brake. "Welcome home, Kiddo," and I remembered how Grandpa used to always call me kiddo and both Mom and Auntie Laine must have gotten that from him.

We grabbed my bags and the room grew dark as the garage door slid down behind us. Auntie Laine opened a side door that opened to the kitchen and the first thing I noticed was how clean the house was. I wondered if Auntie Laine had cleaned up for me or if she always kept it so neat. I learned later that the house was always clean on the weekends and during the week dishes might pile up in the sink and mail would fill the woven basket on the kitchen counter but that was as messy as her house got until Friday night when out of habit or some sort of ritual Auntie Laine would clean like crazy until order was restored, the floors shone, dishwasher was loaded and everything placed back where it ought to be.

She glided down the hardwood floors, past the living room where there was a huge tv flanked by two paintings with browns and greens bubbles of color. A mini-grand piano in a deep chocolate color sat in the corner of the room and an acoustic guitar gleamed from a stand next to that. Across from the TV there was a big leather couch a couple of chairs that matched but didn't match perfectly. I followed her down the hall lined with black and white family photographs and recognized one from Mom and Dad's wedding with Auntie Laine as the maid of honor.

"This will be Jem's room when he gets here," Auntie Laine said pointing to a room off to the right, "And this is you," she said as she plopped my bag onto a bed with an icy blue comforter and pillows with big white flowers on them. I hate flowers, but how could she have known that.

"Thanks," I said and my voice sounded quiet even in the completely silent house. I walked around the room and noticed that it was bigger than my room back home. Everything in the room looked new and I hoped Auntie Laine hadn't bought all of this just for me. The walls looked like they'd just been painted a light brown and the trim a clean white. There was a little desk in the corner that had that perfectly distressed look and there was a pile of books on each bedside table. A wide window was covered by a white sheer curtain and there was a full length mirror with a fancy scalloped trim. I was way too tomboy for that room. I was about to sit down on the bed when Auntie Lane asked, "You hungry?"

"Starving."

"Okay, well, take a minute to get settled and then we'll go grab a burger or something."

I thought she was going to leave then but she stopped at the door. All I wanted was to be alone for a minute but she turned and looked back at me. "You're so quiet, Erika, and I understand. This is all so completely crazy, but you can talk to me. Really, you can."

I could tell she wanted me to say something. "Sorry, Auntie Laine. I'm just..." and that was when my voice faded away again and I didn't know what I could say to her. Not yet. I knew I wanted to talk to her but I didn't know what to say. Not yet; not then.

A little more of New LA Life

My sister asked for the next installment of the novel I'm writing for NaNoWriMo, so here it is, for my audience of... ten? twelve maybe?

Auntie Laine parked the car and plugged the meter with a few quarters. Then she took me by the hand and said, "Come on, my favorite niece," (I'm her only niece) and I walked with her down the sidewalk toward the beach. All I really wanted to do was see where I was going to be living for, for, who knows how long, but instead I followed her down a steep sidewalk toward the beach.

Auntie Laine was wearing flip flops, a tank top, and a little skirt that flounced with every step. She belonged here in this world. It had been cloudy and rainy when I'd left Portland so I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt from my soccer league and grey Converse low tops. The sun shining off the ocean looked like glitter scattered across a crinkled of piece of blue construction paper and I couldn't look at it without squinting. I was getting sweaty and wished I had sunglasses.

We reached the sand and Auntie Laine waited for me as I slid off my shoes and socks. Beads of sweat started to drip one by one down my back and the sand was hot on the soles of my feet but Auntie Laine seemed determined to get to a shoreline crowded with sunbathers and kids splashing in the break. The temperature dropped as we got to the water. I stopped and sat on the sand to roll up my jeans so I could dip my toes in the water.

Auntie Laine neared the water. She hadn't noticed I'd stopped following and walked straight into the surf. She must have felt my eyes on her though because she turned and waved for me to join her, ankle deep in the water. I stood up and walked toward her, a feeling rising up as I neared her silhouette against the shimmering wall of water. Maybe it was because she reminded me of mom, standing there in the water, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, reaching back for me.

For a second I wanted to cry but then a breeze blew past and I took a deep breathe of salty, ocean air. I closed my eyes and walked toward my auntie, my mom's sister who was so much like Mom and still completely different. For a minute I stopped worrying about being dressed all wrong for the beach, or that I was thirsty and really wanted a pop with lots of ice or that my stomach was growling. I forgot that I was stuck living here for good, that this wasn't just a summer vacation.

For a second I felt happy and I let the happiness wash over me like the waves rushing across my feet. I let the water pull at some of the heavy weight that I had carried down with me and let it wash out to sea.

Civil Disobedience

This past spring I was arrested for the first time. My perfect record (except for the car accident and tickets from high school and college) now showed an arrest for refusing to disperse.

I did it on purpose. I sat in the street with other teachers to protest class size increases and the district's decision to balance the budget at school sites rather than eliminate superfluous waste at this high rise in downtown Los Angeles. A noble cause, I think.

It's best to travel light when you know you're about to be arrested. No jewelry. No cash. No cards. No cell phone. No keys. Just ID in your pocket and the number of a lawyer written in Sharpie on your arm. But even though I traveled light I still spent ten hours in custody and I felt the heavy power of The State.

They took my ID, my glasses and my shoelaces and in the heat of that afternoon, time moved slowly. It moved strangely as we were cuffed, transported, processed, transported again, held, booked and then finally released.

A former student of mine was one of the arresting officers. When you've taught long enough you never know who you'll run into. By the time I was released he'd already friend-requested me on Facebook.

The LA Times ran a picture of six of us sitting in the street with the police surrounding us so I heard from friends all weekend as I tried to recover physically from my day without food or water or going to the bathroom. I ate Goldfish crackers and drank Gatorade until I could hold down more. Then I slept.

Monday at school colleagues thanked me or teased me, "Where's your ankle alarm, Nakada?" Students with records felt we had something in common and my best-behaved students looked at me with disappointment. "You, Ms. Nakada? You got arrested?"

I tried to place my actions in the context of others like Ghandi, Dr. King, Cesar Chavez but what I did was so small in comparison to freedom fighters who stood up before me, often alone, enduring days, months, or years in jail. They risked being beaten or killed and all I did was spend 10 hours in custody.

At the end of the day when the teacher next door asked me how I was doing I wept. Even though I knew I'd done the right thing it weighed heavily on my heart because my actions changed nothing in terms of the big picture. But it had changed me.

I experienced a little bit of what so many of my students of color must feel when the police stop them, cite them, or arrest them. I knew a little about the pressure, the heavy weight of this system designed to break you. I understood the power of the police state and all that you can lose when you break the law.

I don't know what I expected that Friday morning as I drove through the quiet LA streets to be arrested. Nothing can really prepare you for that kind of experience but I'll never be able to travel like I did that morning with no jewelry, cash or cards, no cell phone or keys. Teachers were still laid off and hundreds of district administrators continue to walk in and out of the high rise where I protested far away from the students I teach everyday.

Now, I carry a new weight with me, no matter how lightly I try to travel.