Your House Will Pay

Grace Park is meeting her sister Miriam in downtown Los Angeles. They are attending a memorial in front of the courthouse for Alfonso Curiel, a Black high school student in Bakersfield, California, who was recently shot by police despite being unarmed and in his own backyard. Miriam had invited Grace, who only agreed to come because she wants to spend time with her sister. She is upset that Miriam’s white boyfriend Blake decided to come too.

While Grace waits for Miriam, she listens to a pastor give a speech to the crowd. He speaks to the injustice of Curiel’s murder and asks everyone to remember the names of other victims; he lists some names, including Ava Matthews. Grace is moved by the pastor’s call for justice and tears up. She feels like she is in church, and reflects that she has been too quick to ignore all the injustice in the world. The next speaker is Sheila Holloway, Ray Holloway’s mother and the adoptive mother of Shawn and Ava Matthews. As she speaks, Miriam and Blake arrive.

Grace feels overdressed for the occasion and is jealous of Miriam’s casual fashion sense. During the memorial, a group of white counter-protesters gather at the edges of the crowd—the “Western Boys.” They frighten Grace, but she also feels uncomfortable when Blake loudly expresses his disgust at them. She doesn’t like the performative way Blake overcompensates for his whiteness. He loudly proclaims himself a feminist and asks people on social media for recommendations for books by women of color.

After the memorial, Grace, Miriam, and Blake go to a bar in Little Tokyo. They eat, and Grace gets tipsy. Blake shows off by ordering expensive Japanese whiskey, but Grace resists drinking more because she will have to eventually drive back to Granada Hills in the San Fernando Valley. However, Miriam convinces Grace to stay the night with them in Silver Lake. They rarely see each other these days because Grace lives at home, and Miriam hasn’t spoken to their mother Yvonne for two years. Grace does not know why. Meanwhile, an older white man named Jules Searcey shows up and surprises Miriam. He says he has been working on a project about white supremacy and racial violence in California, and wants to ask Miriam some questions about her mother. Miriam brushes him off and avoids explaining the situation to Grace.

Grace, Miriam, and Blake have a good time until the Western Boys show up at the bar. Their presence upsets Miriam and Blake, who try to get the men kicked out. Blake, who has many Twitter followers, uses social media to try and arrange a confrontation. Grace does not like the direction the evening is going, so she declares that she is going home after all. She is mad at her sister for letting Blake take over their evening together. She calls her parents, who come to pick her up.

Shawn waits in the parking lot at the federal prison in Lompoc, California. His cousin Ray is about to be released, and he is waiting with Ray’s wife Laneisha (Nisha) and children Dasha and Darryl. Aunt Sheila is back home in Palmdale making dinner. Ray has been in prison for 10 years. His children are now teenagers, and Shawn has been acting as their father figure in the meantime. He had taught Darryl, who is now 16, how to drive; Darryl drove them today.

Darryl had been to prison, too, for three years in Lancaster, but has been out for a while. Ray is now 44 years old. When he exits the prison, Shawn notes how gray his hair is now and how many new tattoos he has of his family’s names. He reaches the parking lot, hugs his children, and kisses his wife. Shawn takes pictures of the reunion and then they hug, too. Shawn grew up with Ray, and Ray’s family helped rehabilitate him after his own stint in prison. Aunt Sheila and Nisha had become anchors for him at a time when he felt “unmoored” (48).

The family drives home to Palmdale, where they relocated while Ray was in prison. Palmdale is a much quieter place than South Central. Shawn reflects that life is boring in Palmdale, but he’s come to love the place as a home. At the Holloway house, Ray is reunited with his mother Sheila. He meets Shawn’s girlfriend Jasmine and Jazz’s daughter Monique. There is enough food for 40 people, both homecooked and, at Shawn’s request, from Domino’s Pizza. Ray, who experienced a revelation in prison, gives a tearful speech and says grace. Everyone is in good spirits.

After dinner, the children clean up while the adults have champagne. Shawn talks to Ray about a job he has lined up for him at Manny’s Movers, where Shawn works for Manny Lopez. He warns him that it is a difficult job all the way in Northridge. Both Ray and Shawn ran with the Baring Cross Crips and, before serving their prison sentences, never worked normal jobs. Ray went to prison because he robbed a bank with a toy gun. As they talk, Darryl walks into the room. He is shy around his father, and Shawn reflects that it will take some time for Ray to get to know him again. Darryl is a gentle boy, but has been caught skipping class recently. Shawn is worried about Darryl because he and Ray started getting in trouble when they were Darryl’s age. Shawn worries that Ray is still nostalgic about those days.

After a long day of work at Woori Pharmacy, Grace helps her father Paul close shop. Grace acts the part of a filial daughter, working at the family business. The pharmacy is in Hanin Market, a shopping center in Northridge serving the local Korean population. Paul and Yvonne do bookkeeping, while Grace and Uncle Joseph are the pharmacists. Grace thinks of her parents as hard workers, dedicated to parenting and proud of the life they have built, having made many sacrifices to leave Korea. It is an “unflappable first-generation work ethic” (50) that she and Miriam do not share. Grace finds work at the pharmacy boring and difficult.

After work, Grace calls Miriam to wish her happy birthday. She asks her father if he would like to wish Miriam a happy birthday, but he says Miriam can call home. Paul didn’t fight with Miriam, but does not have much of a relationship with his daughters except through their mother. In the time since Grace last saw her sister, a grand jury declined to indict Officer Trevor Warren for the shooting of Alfonso Curiel. It was also reported that Curiel had a criminal record and was running from the police, which shifted the media narrative. Still, protests increased, and Miriam recently attended a protest that had to be broken up by the police. Grace’s feelings of personal outrage, on the other hand, have slowly died down.

Despite not speaking to her daughter for two years, Yvonne prepares a traditional dinner for Miriam’s birthday: miyeok-guk, a seaweed soup. To Grace, it seems like offering tribute to a dead person (55). While eating dinner, Paul channel surfs through Korean dramas. On one channel, a news report interrupts with bodycam footage of the shooting of Alfonso Curiel. Grace comments on the story, which makes Yvonne uncomfortable. Paul snaps at her, saying that she doesn’t know the whole story and that “people make mistakes” (60). Grace gets upset and demands that they tell her what happened between them and Miriam. She suspects it has something to do with her parents’ anti-Black sentiments because, at their last dinner together, Miriam brought home a Black man she had been dating.

However, after seeing how hurt her mother looks, Grace apologizes. She knows she grew up sheltered; her parents never exposed her to the world outside of school, church, and their small community in the Valley. Miriam claims they boxed them inside “like hot-house orchids” (59), but unlike Miriam, Grace does not want to shatter her family life by letting in the outside world. Afterward, Yvonne offers a piece of melon to Grace. Though embarrassed, she opens her mouth “and received the sweet bite” (81), acquiescing to her mother.

Shawn moves a white couple from Echo Park to Sherman Oaks and then a Mexican family from Boyle heights to Compton, his old neighborhood. Ray quit the job after only three weeks, and his old friend Duncan hired him part-time at his bar. Shawn is disappointed and worried about his cousin, but understands, as being a mover can be demanding and demeaning.

After work, Shawn plans to pick up Sheila, Darryl, and Dasha from Mid-City, where they are staying with another relative. But when he calls ahead, there is a change of plans. Instead, they will spend their weekly family Sunday dinner with Jules Searcey at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. Shawn knows Searcey because he had written the definitive biography of his sister, Farewell Waltz: The Life and Death of Ava Matthews. Searcey is back in touch with the family because he is writing a new book on anti-Black violence in Southern California and will include a chapter on Ava.

At dinner, Darryl shares a story that Ray told him about a fight at Roscoe’s. It is a funny story, but Shawn remembers it differently. In the true story, someone was shot at a McDonald’s. Shawn doesn’t like that Ray is filling his son’s head with stories of their youth and making their childhood sound less dangerous than it was. Dasha announces that she read Searcey’s book about Ava. She wears a Black Lives Matter shirt and is proud of her grandmother’s recent speeches. Darryl and Dash discuss Ava, and Searcey makes connections between Ava and Alfonso Curiel. Shawn reflects that Darryl and Dasha know their family history, but their anger is “inherited, abstract and bearable” (69). They can think about Ava without getting too angry.

Shawn, on the other hand, is getting angry. He doesn’t think Searcey ever cared about Ava except to further his own career, and doesn’t like the way Searcey’s book emphasizes Ava’s music to paint her death as a loss of artist talent rather than as a human being. When Searcey talks about his new book, Shawn interjects by saying, “What’s left to write?” (71). Sheila accuses Shawn of being rude. She argues that they need people like Searcey to keep Ava’s memory alive in the public eye. Shawn relents, but asks to be left out of the project.

As Grace finishes up at the pharmacy, Yvonne encourages her to take her date that night more seriously, telling her what kind of dinner to eat beforehand and fixing her hair. Grace organized the date on a dating app and wants to cancel, but knows it would be rude to cancel so last minute. Meanwhile, Yvonne is planning to spend her weekend making kkakdugi (diced radish kimchi) and goes to the market to pick up ingredients. As they bring groceries to the car, another car drives by slowly with the window down. Yvonne shoves Grace out of the way, and the driver, masked, shoots her in the stomach before driving away. Blood and groceries spill on the ground.

Grace is in shock as people from Hanin Market rush toward her and call an ambulance. They take her to Northridge Hospital Medical Center. Grace calls her father but does not remember what she said to him. Later, in the hospital, Grace feels out of her element. She waits with Miriam in the waiting room while Yvonne is in surgery. She prays for her mother and looks at the others in the waiting room. Grace struggles to think of herself as someone who belongs alongside them, and her thoughts betray a sense of superiority she has about herself. She has lived her whole life shielded from violence until now.

A Detective Neil Maxwell arrives from the LAPD to talk to Grace and Miriam. While Paul is outside smoking a cigarette, Maxwell tells Grace and Miriam that they haven’t caught the shooter yet. He asks if their mother has received any threats. Grace refutes this, but Miriam seems to know something, and the detective mentions that there is a rumor about their mother. They are interrupted by Paul, who tells the detective to leave them alone and tells Miriam to take Grace home.

Miriam spends the night with Grace in Granada Hills. They eat leftover kimchi jjigae (kimchi stew), and Miriam finds some whiskey. Grace asks her sister if she will speak with their mother now, but Miriam replies that Yvonne is “not a good person” (85). They argue about it until, finally, Grace confronts her sister about what happened between them. This time, Miriam explains. She asks Grace how much she knows about the 1992 Los Angeles uprising. Grace knows little and assumes their parents were in the Valley at the time, too far away for their lives to be affected. Then, Miriam explains who Ava Matthews was. She explains that a 16-year-old Black girl in South Central was shot in the back of the head after the shop owner mistakenly accused her of stealing a carton of milk. The shop owner who shot her was a Korean woman.

Shawn is tired after playing with his girlfriend Jazz’s daughter Monique. He reflects on how Friday nights used to be for going out, but now he just likes peace and quiet. He is getting ready for bed when he receives a text from a friend, Tramell, about Jung-Ja Han, a name that hasn’t been in the news in 27 years. Nobody knew where Ava Matthews’s killer moved after the trial. Shawn had looked for her but found nothing. Shawn searches the name again, but still, sees nothing. Then, Duncan texts him: “KARMAS A NASTY BITCH” (91).

Shawn steps outside and calls Duncan. Duncan tells Shawn that Jung-Ja Han was shot; the news is all over Twitter. Someone learned that she changed her name to Yvonne Park and was shot outside her drug store in Northridge. Nobody knows who did it, or if she is dead. Duncan calls it justice. The news hits Shawn hard. He reflects on the way Jung-Ja Han got away with no jail time, by playing the victim even after murdering an unarmed teenager. He had told himself that even though she didn’t go to prison, she would live a hard life far away. But now, he knows she picked up the pieces of her life and has a store in Northridge, where he has worked. She continued living when Ava couldn’t.

Shawn is left trembling. He has a long talk with Jazz. Then, the doorbell rings, just before midnight. It is Ray, who rushed over because Shawn wasn’t picking up his phone. They open beers and double check each other’s alibis. Ray doesn’t have one: He claims he was driving around. Shawn worries about Ray because he’s lost some of his church-boy attitude and hasn’t spent much time with his children. He hopes Ray wasn’t involved in something bad. Shawn asks Ray if he was the shooter. Ray refutes this and asks Shawn the same. Shawn also refutes it.