by Nina Revoyr
“I just don’t know how you got this idea in the first place,” Alene continued. “It’s not the kind of thing we’ve ever done.”
Gwen thought wryly that her mother had little idea of what she’d done, but she kept this observation to herself. “Chris and Terry Nelson went on backpacking trips every summer,” she said, remembering her mother’s neighbors.
“Yes, but they’re boys,” Alene replied. She didn’t add—although Gwen knew she thought—and white. “And speaking of boys, are there any men going with you?”
“Yes, three men.”
“Couldn’t one of them carry your things?”
“No, Mom. They’ll have their own backpacks.”
“Well I don’t know what kind of man would let a woman carry so much weight.”
She stayed silent, waiting for her mother to launch into a lecture about Gwen’s nonexistent love life, but she didn’t.
“And is a hotel too expensive?” Alene asked. “Is that why you’re sleeping outside?”
“It’s not that. We want to be outdoors.”
“I really wish you’d do something that would pay you a decent salary.”
And here we go, Gwen thought. Out of nowhere. “I like my job, Mom.”
“You’ve done your part giving back, don’t you think? I just worry about you in that dangerous area, with all those desperate people. You could always go to business school at night, you know. Or even law school. Stuart and I could help you.”
“Thanks. Listen, I have to go. I’ll give you a call before I leave.” Gwen hung up, took a deep breath, and got out of the car.
She never failed to rile her, Gwen’s mother. In the space of five minutes, Alene had managed to denigrate both the white people whose unclean habits Gwen appeared to be emulating, and the black and Latino kids with whom she worked.
Gwen was born when her mother was seventeen. Although no one ever talked about it, it was believed that her father had been the vice-principal at Alene’s school. Alene had dropped out, fallen into the grip of alcohol and God knew what else, and eventually disappeared, so from the time Gwen was three until just after she turned twelve, she had lived with her great-aunt Emmaline in Inglewood. It was Emmaline, a retired mail carrier, who’d come up with Gwen’s name, in honor of the famous poet. And it was Emmaline who’d passed on family stories—of Gwen’s great-grandfather who’d left Alabama for Chicago in the early 1900s; of her ancestor Phillis, who’d escaped from slavery in Tennessee and fled up to Ohio, where she’d given birth to Emmaline’s grandmother. For much of her childhood Gwen only saw her mother two or three times a year, and sometimes not at all.
When Emmaline passed away, Gwen lived with two foster families—first the Grandersons, a black family in Culver City, and then the Weisses, a Jewish family in the Valley. Both families had been kind to her, but by the time Gwen was fifteen, all she wanted was to live with someone who wasn’t paid to take care of her.
And then, almost miraculously, Alene reappeared. She’d sobered up, earned her GED, gone to college. She’d eventually gotten a master’s degree and started a job with a food company. She’d married Stuart Robinson, whom she’d met at their church, and given birth to another child. When Gwen went to live with them soon after her fifteenth birthday, the Alene she met was so different from the one who had left her that it was almost like she’d been placed with another foster family. Her own experience had made Gwen shy away from the idea of having children. There were enough kids in the world already, she thought, too many of them unwanted.
* * *
After telling the receptionist that the girls from Lincoln might drop by, Gwen made her way back to her office. She called up the image of the lake on her computer again and tried to recapture her sense of calm. But the scene was flat now; it had lost all its power. Damn her mother, she thought. Damn her for so swiftly poisoning even this.
She brought her mind back to where she was, the office where she spent so much time that she sometimes inadvertently called it “home.” On the walls there were pictures of her colleagues at various work events, a certificate naming her employee of the year, a framed commendation from the city councilman for her outstanding work with youth. On her bulletin board, there were photos of kids who’d been in her groups, and school portraits of some of her colleagues’ children.
At the corner of the board, closest to her, was a picture of Robert. He was posing on a rock high up on a hiking trail with all of LA spread out behind him. His hands were on his hips and his chin was raised at a jaunty angle, as if he were a conquering hero. He looked beautiful and ridiculous, pleased with himself and with the world. Gwen had taken this picture two weeks before he died.
Robert had been in seventh grade when Gwen first met him; he’d been referred by a therapist at his school. A tall, gangly kid, he’d shown up for group sessions in threadbare clothes, with holes in his worn-out sneakers. But he was unfailingly polite, and he always seemed to speak in complete paragraphs, using words—sustainable, honor-bound, erudite, Darwinian—that were almost comically formal. When Gwen finally asked him what had brought him to group, he answered only, “I was suspended for fighting.”
She couldn’t fathom the idea that this gentle kid was a fighter, and so she tracked down the school therapist. That was how she learned that Robert and his little brother Isaac had bounced around to several homes as their mother fled an abusive relationship. Robert had seen the man hold a gun to his mother’s head; he’d watched him break her arm. He’d gotten into several fights at his new school, the therapist said, while standing up for girls when boys harassed them.
Robert had always been a good student, so he didn’t need help with academics. But he was awkward and shy and down on himself, so Gwen connected him with other activities—Devon’s job prep group, a digital media class, and a group that went on outings, like that hike in the local mountains. He stayed in her youth leadership group through middle school and high school, where he got mostly As and a couple of Bs. In his senior year he applied to UCLA, and when his acceptance letter arrived, there’d been an impromptu celebration at her office—cupcakes and soda and teary speeches from the staff, Robert grinning and embarrassed at the attention. He seemed like the ultimate success story—a black boy from Watts who’d grown up in extreme poverty, and who had made it to a top-notch university.
Then Robert showed up to group one day with a fresh black eye. He wouldn’t talk about what happened. But Trey, another student, told her that some boys had started bugging him again, a couple of the same ones from back in seventh grade. Robert was skinny and nerdy, too into his books—he thought he was something special. He didn’t try to get with girls; there must have been something wrong with him. Gwen went to talk to the principal but he just smiled and nodded absently; he was new to the area, from Maine or Maryland, and he said the boys should “work it out themselves.”
A few days later the boys cornered Robert in the locker room. They stripped off his clothes, knocked him around, and left him there, naked. There was speculation that more might have happened but no one knew for sure. When the school staff questioned Robert, he just shook his head, refusing to talk.
Gwen tried to get him to open up, to no avail. He’ll tell us when he’s ready, she’d thought. He was subdued for several weeks, but then he seemed to turn a corner, and everyone was cautiously relieved. This was a terrible thing, but he’d been through worse, and he’d get past it; he always did. As the school year wound down he grew more cheerful again; he almost seemed at peace. He was talking about plans for the summer, and they’d even gone on that wonderful hike. That was why everyone had been so stunned when Robert hanged himself.
It had happened a little more than a year ago, the second week of June, and Gwen still felt completely undone. All these months later, she still asked that question that people ask and never get an answer to: Why? And even more, particular to her: How could I not have known? It was easy to say in retrospect that she had always sensed Robert�
��s sadness; that there was a stillness in him that she couldn’t touch or understand. And maybe, with his recent troubles, that sadness had tipped over into despair. But mostly what she remembered was his hopefulness. She couldn’t believe that he was not coming back; she kept expecting him to walk through the door of her office.
But then she did believe it, and she believed it still. Robert was gone and he wasn’t returning; he’d chosen to take his life. And besides the feeling of loss that still threatened to swallow her whole, Gwen couldn’t get over the fact that she hadn’t done more to help. She should have made him tell her what had happened; she should have forced that principal to do his job. She should have told Robert that no matter how bad things seemed now, they’d get better; the trouble would pass.
Gwen looked back at the picture and her eyes filled with tears. Robert had overcome so much, and he had everything going for him—good grades, the toughness to survive a difficult home life, a future that was bright and limitless. If he couldn’t find a reason to keep going, what hope was there for the other kids she worked with? Why did she even bother? Why risk her own safety every day for the sake of kids and families who were so deeply mired in problems that they were never going to get better? She didn’t know what to do anymore with her helplessness, her grief. Now her eyes returned to the picture of the lake. Yes, she thought as she looked at it. Yes, she needed to get away from all this.
Chapter Two
Oscar
Oscar Barajas turned left onto York and immediately ran into stopped traffic. There was a line of it, both ways, bumper to bumper, inching slowly through the main corridor of Highland Park.
“Shit,” he said softly, and then he remembered Lily, his four-year-old daughter, who was sitting in back. He glanced up at the rearview mirror but she was staring out the window and hadn’t heard him.
“Papá, can I have a SPAM musubi?” she asked, pointing at the Hawaiian barbecue place that had recently sprung up, along with a Starbucks and a CVS, in what had once been a stretch of dilapidated houses and trash-filled empty lots.
“No, mija. Not today. Grandma’s probably made you dinner. We can get some when I pick you up on Monday, okay? I promise.”
“Oh-kay,” Lily answered, with an exaggerated shrug. Oscar smiled. She was damned cute, his daughter. His mother doted on her too, and he was grateful to her for watching Lily while he went on his backpacking trip, especially since his ex, Tammy—no surprise—had refused to take her for more than her required time. He just wouldn’t tell his mother that Lily liked SPAM—and red curry from the local Thai place, and of course her mother’s phở—as much as she did her grandmother’s enchiladas.
He inched forward, past the sunglasses store and the graphics shop run out of small converted houses, the check-cashing place, the liquor stores, the hole-in-the-wall taquerías. He couldn’t believe the traffic. When had it gotten to be like this? Five years ago, York had been a drive-through street, a barrio artery, that no one but locals ever stopped on. It was gritty, rough, dirty, all the doors and windows covered with bars, a place where members of the Avenues gang strutted openly down the sidewalk, tagging storefronts and walls in broad daylight. But then real estate had boomed, the Northeast had been “discovered,” and white yuppies who’d been priced out of the Westside came flooding into the hills of Glassell Park and Mount Washington, the quiet streets of Eagle Rock, some even venturing into the flats of Highland Park. Now, young professionals and fedora-wearing hipsters, many in the entertainment industry, were living side by side with Mexican families who’d been there for generations, and with Chevy-driving, blue-collar whites. And a whole new crop of restaurants, shops, and businesses had sprung up in unexpected places, like hearty plants blossoming in what had long been arid, inhospitable soil. Eagle Rock and Colorado boulevards, once full of car repair shops and storefront churches, now boasted several Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly–sanctioned eating establishments, including a sushi joint run out of a converted auto body shop and the best cupcake place in the city.
But the most surprising transformation had been on York itself, which one of Oscar’s realtor colleagues—before the boom—had half-jokingly referred to as “Mexico.” Oscar had come here often when he was a kid, to pick up milk from his mother at the corner bodega or to visit his buddy Reynaldo at the bike repair shop, and the conversations, the store signs, the music wafting through the air, were all in Spanish. It had stayed that way for years.
The first sign of change had been the hipster bar, called simply The Highland. Oscar was driving down York late one Friday a few years ago, heading home from a family-run Mexican place that had been there all his life, and was surprised to see dozens of white people in their twenties and thirties milling around on the sidewalk. At first he thought he’d had too much to drink. But no, they were really there, in front of a brand-new establishment. He peered in through the floor-to-ceiling windows and saw at least a hundred people, an L-shaped bar, and a huge screen airing an old black-and-white movie. The beers were all microbrew, he found when he went in, the salads watercress and arugula. After The Highland came a coffee shop, a few more restaurants, a wine bar, a pilates studio. But while these places gained a foothold, the advance stopped there—the rest of the block remained stubbornly barrio, and really, Oscar was glad; it was hard to see such drastic change hit so close to home, especially since people he’d known for years were getting priced out of the neighborhood.
He had profited, too, from the real estate boom. Truthfully, it had made him. In his early- and midtwenties he had worked for his uncle David, building driveways and brick patios and retaining walls, trying to stabilize all the properties in those unstable hills. But he’d grown tired of the physical work and of spending days in the sun, and ten years ago, at age twenty-seven, he’d gotten his real estate license, just before property values went through the roof and the feeding frenzy began. Little two-bedroom bungalows that had fetched $150,000 before the boom were suddenly selling for five or six hundred thousand, anything three bedrooms or more was up to a million, all this in neighborhoods that were never mentioned—at the time—in any guidebook description of the city. Empty land was going too, to developers building on spec. Sounds of construction echoed through the once-quiet canyons.
At the height of the market, Oscar was making thirty-five, forty grand a month. He bought a BMW, a Rolex, and a four-bedroom house in the hills of Glassell Park. He bought a small Craftsman bungalow for his mother too, down in Highland Park near the apartment building where he and his sister had grown up. And there were women, lots of them, of every color and creed, single women and lonely married women who showed up for open houses and lingered after everyone else had left. He’d dated other agents too, including Lily’s mom, Tammy Ng, who’d represented a buyer to his seller during a particularly drawn-out transaction in Eagle Rock.
But the housing frenzy had come to a halt five years ago. Not sudden, not screeching, but gradual, first fewer clients and properties on the market for weeks, even months, and then the prices started to fall. By the time Oscar realized what was happening, he’d sunk a couple hundred thousand into a string of five houses built on spec in a canyon in Mount Washington. Finished three years ago, the houses stood empty, the gas and electric never hooked up, the connecting road from the main street never completed. All through the hills, houses stood half-built, foundations or retaining walls or septic tank pipes sticking out of the ground, like the remnants of a ghost town that had never been a real one. Now, Oscar was lucky to move a house every other month. Now, his savings were almost gone, and he was barely making his mortgage. He’d defaulted on the loan for the spec houses and the bank had taken them over, but that was the extent of the damage. Thank God he’d put down half the price of his house, and paid his mother’s place off in full.
He turned right onto Avenue 50, which had a new coffee shop on the corner, empty now, at six p.m., as the artists and hipsters who filled it during the day moved a few doors down to Th
e Highland. Two blocks later it was left on Baltimore, past his old elementary school and then to his mother’s place. It was cute, her house, a two-bedroom bungalow placed well above the street, a single-car garage at street level. Oscar had cleared a little seating area on top of the garage, but his mother preferred to sit on the patio, under the overhanging roof, where she could look out at her yard and keep an eye on the neighborhood. She’d lived alone since Oscar’s father died when he was nineteen, and he tried to see her at least once a week. His sister, who worked as an insurance claims adjuster down in Tustin, didn’t make it over as much.
“Grandma! Grandma!” Lily cried out excitedly, as they pulled up in front of the house. From next door, he could hear the strains of music, people laughing on their patio. It was a gorgeous night—warm, but with a breeze, the scent of jasmine and oleander in the air, the clouds turning pink over the San Gabriel Mountains. The night-blooming cactus was preparing to flower, elegant green and purple fingers holding a single white orb, like a hand gently offering an ornament. He reached up to pull the string that undid the gate latch, wishing again that his mother would let him put a lock on it. There’d been a couple of break-ins recently, and the block was home to several members of the Avenues, who’d linger on the sidewalks or drive slowly down the street to remind everyone of their presence. Lily scrambled up the stairs ahead of him and straight to the front porch, where his mother was sitting in her usual spot, in a cheap metal-framed chair with a faded blue cushion.
“Buenas noches, mija!” she exclaimed, arms open wide, and Lily ran straight into them. “Hi, mijo,” she said to Oscar, smiling, and as he mounted the patio stairs, he said, “Hola, Mom. Did you just get home?”
She was still dressed for work, in the gray blouse and skirt issued to the female catering staff at the Hilton Pasadena. Her hair was tucked into a ponytail, with a couple of strands loose. She looked tired, and it pained him to see her this way, pained him that she worked this job at all. He didn’t like that she was on her feet all day, setting up tables and clearing plates, being ignored or worse, yelled at, by the kinds of people who go to hotels for conferences. He didn’t like that people called her by her first name, Dulce, which was printed on the name tag the staff were all required to wear.