and didn’t notify the Fire Department
that they had vests.
See, our chief doesn’t want us to wear vests because he claims it will
telegraph a message to the citizens that Compton is dangerous.
Bulletproof vests.
Now, he says that this is our vest—
our badges.
You see, you should have a vest, a badge of courage.
You see, it’s not about courage.
When you hear gunfire, you know when you see it,
you’re constantly ruling out individuals that are shot,
looking at the types of wounds, you know.
You don’t want to be a part of that.
You know.
I have a responsibility to my family to come home.
I take the dangers that relate to fire and so forth,
the explosions,
the chemicals
that may be inside a building,
but the gunfire, you know,
that’s not a part of this.
To Look Like Girls from Little
Elvira Evers General worker and cashier, Canteen Corporation
(A Panamanian woman in a plaid shirt, in an apartment in Compton. Late morning, early afternoon. She has a baby on her lap. The baby has earrings in her ears. Elvira has a gold tooth. There is a four-year-old girl with large braid on top of her head and a big smile who is around throughout the interview. The girl’s name is Nella.)
So
everybody was like with things they was takin’,
like
a carnival,
and I say
to my friend Frances,
“Frances, you see this?”
and she said, “Girl, you should see
that
it’s getting worst.”
And I say, “Girl, let me take my butt
up there before something happen.”
And, um,
when somebody throw a bottle
and I just …
then
I felt
like moist,
and it was like a tingling sensation—right?—
and I didn’t like this,
and it was like itchin’,
and I say, “Frances, I’m bleedin’.”
And she walk with me to her house
And she say, “Lift up your gown, let me see.”
She say, “Elvira, it’s a bullet!”
I say, “What?”
I say, “I didn’t heard nothin’.”
She say, “Yes, but it’s a bullet.”
She say, “Lay down there. Let me call St. Francis and tell them that
you been shot
and to send an ambulance.”
And she say,
“Why you?
You don’t mess with none of those people.
Why they have to shoot you?”
So Frances say the ambulance be here in fifteen minutes.
I say, “Frances,
I cannot wait that.”
I say,
“I’m gone!”
So I told my oldest son, I say,
“Amant, take care your brothers.
I be right back.”
Well, by this time he was standing up there, he was crying,
all of them was crying.
What I did for them not to see the blood—
I took the gown and I cover it
and I didn’t cry.
That way they didn’t get nervous.
And I get in the car.
I was goin’ to drive.
Frances say, “What you doin’?”
I said, “I’m drivin’.”
She say, “No, you’re not!”
And we take all the back streets
and she was so supportive,
because she say, “You all right?
You feel cold?
You feel dizzy?
The baby move?”
She say, “You nervous?”
I say, “No, I’m not nervous, I’m just worried about the baby.”
I say, “I don’t want to lose this baby.”
She say, “Elvira, everything will be all right.” She say, “Just pray.”
So there was a lot of cars, we had to be blowing the horn.
So finally we get to St. Francis
and Frances told the front-desk office, she say,
“She been shot!”
And they say, “What she doin’ walkin’?”
and I say, “I feel all right.”
Everybody stop doin’ what they was doin’
and they took me to the room
and put the monitor to see if the baby was fine
and they find the baby heartbeat,
and as long as I heard the baby heartbeat I calmed down,
long as I knew whoever it is, boy or girl, it’s all right,
and
matter of fact, my doctor, Dr. Thomas, he was there
at
the emergency room.
What a coincidence, right?
I was just lookin’ for that familiar face,
and soon as I saw him
I say, “Well I’m all right now.”
Right?
So he bring me this other doctor and then told me,
“Elvira, we don’t know how deep is the bullet.
We don’t know where it went. We gonna operate on
you.
But since that we gonna operate we gonna take the baby out
and you don’t have to
go through all of that.”
They say, “Do you understand
what we’re saying?”
And they say, “Okay, sign here.”
And I remember them preparing me
and I don’t remember anything else.
Nella!
No.
(Turns to the side and admonishes the child)
She likes company.
And in the background
I remember Dr. Thomas say, “You have a six-pound-twelve-ounce little
girl.”
He told me how much she weigh and her length
and he
say, “Um,
she born,
she had the bullet in her elbow,
but when we remove …
when we clean her up
we find out that the bullet was still between two joints,
so
we did operate on her and your daughter is fine
and you are fine.”
(Sound of a little child saying “Mommy”)
Nella!
She wants to show the baby.
Jessica,
bring the baby.
(She laughs)
Yes,
yes.
We don’t like to keep the girls without earrings. We like the little
girls
to look like girls from little.
I pierce hers.
When I get out on Monday,
by Wednesday I did it,
so by Monday she was five days,
she was seven days,
and I
pierced her ears
and the red band is just like for evil eyes.
We really believe in Panama …
in English I can’t explain too well.
And her doctor, he told …
he explain to me
that the bullet
destroyed the placenta
and went through
me
and she caught it in her arms.
(Here you can hear the baby making noises, and a bell rings)
If she didn’t caught it in her arm,
me and her would be dead.
See?
So it’s like
open your eyes,
watch what is goin’ on.
(Later in the interview, Nella gave me a bandaid, as a gift.)
National Guard
Julio Menjivar Lumbe
r salesman and driver
(Near South Central, beautiful birds, traffic, hammering. In a kind of patio outside the backyard. A covered patio. Saturday morning. Very sunny. We sit on a bench. His BMW in the background. A man from El Salvador, in his late twenties. Later his mother and grandmother come to be photographed with him.)
And then,
a police passed by
and said,
that’s fine,
that’s fine
that you’re doing that.
Anyway,
it’s your neighborhood.
They were just like laughing or I don’t know—
LAPD.
Black and white.
They just passed by and said it
in the radio:
Go for it.
Go for it,
it’s your neighborhood.
I was only standing there
watching what was
happening.
And then
suddenly
jeeps came
from everywhere,
from all directions,
to the intersection.
Trucks
and
the National Guard.
And they threw all of
the people on the ground.
They threw
everybody down
and I was
in the middle of
a group.
They lifted me by my
arm like this.
First he told me to get up.
He said ugly things to me.
And as you see,
I’m a little fat,
so I couldn’t get up.
They called me stupid.
He said, said,
many ugly things.
He said,
“Get up motherfucker, get up. Get up!”
Then he kicked me in the back.
He said,
“Come on, fat fucker,
get up.”
Then I heard my wife
and my father
calling my name,
“Julio, Julio, Julio.”
And then
and my sister and my wife,
they tried to go to the corner
and my mother
They almost shoot
them, almost shot them.
They were
pissed off,
too angry.
The National Guard.
They almost shot
my mom,
my wife,
and my sister
for try …
They will ask everybody questions
and the other guys don’t know how to speak English.
Then the police don’t like that.
So slap ’em in the face—
that guy got slapped three times.
An RTD bus came
and parked here
in the street,
and they put all of
us on it.
They took us to a station,
Southwest.
Young people
that got arrested.
Uh,
there was this guy crying and this other guy crying
because too tight,
too tight
the handcuffs.
And I felt very bad,
very bad.
Never never
in my life have I
been arrested.
Never
in my life.
Not in El Salvador.
This is the first time
I been in jail.
I was real scared,
yeah, yeah.
’Cause you got all these criminals
over there.
I’m not a criminal.
It’s a lot of crazy people out there,
too many.
So I sit down.
So I barely close my eyes
and they went back—
pow pow pow pow pow
come on come on get up get up
come on get up,
and they had us
on our knees
for two hours.
I was praying,
yeah,
I was praying, yeah.
Yeah, that’s true
I was praying.
I was thinking of all the
bad that could happen.
Yeah.
Now I have a record.
Aha, and a two-hundred-fifty-dollar
fine
and probation for
three years.
That’s Another Story
Katie Miller Bookkeeper and accountant
(South Central, September 1992. A very large woman sitting in an armchair. She has a baseball cap on her head. She speaks rapidly with great force and volume.)
I think this thing
about the Koreans and the Blacks …
that wasn’t altogether true,
and I think that the Korean stores
that got burned in the Black neighborhood that were Korean-owned,
it was due to lack of
gettin’ to know
the people that come to your store—
that’s what it is.
Now,
they talk about the looting
in Koreatown … those wasn’t blacks,
those wasn’t blacks, those was Mexicans
in Koreatown.
We wasn’t over there lootin’ over there,
lootin’ over there,
but here,
in this right here.
The stores that got looted for this one reason
only is that … know who you goin’ know,
just know people comin’ to your store, that’s all,
just respect people comin’ in there—
give ’em their money
’stead of just give me your money and get out of my face.
And it was the same thing with the ’65 riots,
same thing.
And this they kept makin’ a big
the Blacks and the Koreans.
I didn’t see that,
and now see like
Pep
Boys that right there …
I didn’t like the idea of Pep Boys myself,
I didn’t like the idea of them hittin’ Pep
Boys.
Only reason I can think they hit ’em is they too damn high—
that’s the only reason.
Other than that
I think that Pep Boys just
came, people say
to hell with Pep boys, Miney Mo and Jack.
Let me just go in here,
I’m get me some damn
whatever the hell they have in there.
Now, I didn’t loot this time.
Get that out,
because in my mind it’s more
than that,
you know.
But I didn’t loot this time.
I was praising the ones that had,
you know,
you oughta burn that sucker down.
But after it was over,
we went touring,
call it touring,
all around,
and we went to that Magnin store,
seein’ people comin’ out of that Magnin store,
and I was so
damn mad at that Paul Moyer.
He’s a damn newscaster.
He was on Channel 7,
now that sucker’s on Channel 4,
makin’ eight million dollars.
What the hell,
person can make eight million dollars for readin’ a piece of paper,
but that’s a different story.
Highest of any newscaster.
I don’t know why.
To read some damn paper.
I don’t give a damn who tells me the damn news,
long as they can talk,
long as I can und
erstand ’em,
I don’t care,
but that’s a different story.
Anyway, we went to Magnin
and we seen people run in there and looted.
It’s on Wilshire,
very exclusive store,
for very … you know,
you have to have money to go in there to buy something,
and the people I seen runnin’ out there that didn’t have money to buy …
And I turned on the TV
and here is Mr. Paul Moyer
saying,
“Yeah,
they, they, uh,
some people looted, uh,
I. Magnin.
I remember goin’ to that store when I was a child.”
What he call ’em?
He called ’em thugs,
these thugs goin’ into that store.
I said, “Hell with you, asshole.”
That was my, my …
I said, “Okay, okay for them to run into these other stores,”
you know,
“but don’t go in no store
that I, I grew up on that has …
that my parents
took me
to that is
expensive—
these stores,
they ain’t supposed to be, to be
looted.
How dare you loot a store
that rich people go to?
I mean, the nerve of them.”
I found that very offensive.
Who the hell does he think he is?
Oh, but that was another story,
they lootin’ over here,
but soon they loot this store he went to,
oh, he was all pissed.
It just made me sick,
but that’s another story too.
Godzilla
Anonymous Man #2 (Hollywood Agent)
(Morning. A good looking man in shirt and tie and fine shoes. A chic office in an agency in Beverly Hills. We are sitting in a sofa.)
There was still the uneasiness that was growing
when the fuse was still burning,
but
it was
business as usual.
Basically,
you got
such-and-so on line one,
such-and-so on line two.
Traffic,
Wilshire,
Santa Monica.
Bunch of us hadda go to lunch at the
the Grill
in Beverly Hills.
Um,
gain major
show business dead center business restaurant,
kinda loud but genteel.
The … there was an incipient panic—
you could just feel—
the tension
in the
restaurant
it
was palpable,
it was tangible,
you could cut it with a knife.
All anyone was talking
about, you could hear little bits
of information—
did ya hear?
did ya hear?
It’s like we were transmitting
thoughts
to each other