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had been happening for years, but one Saturday morning in 1963, each member of the family had fallen clearly in one direction or the other.
    She was twelve years old, and her older sister was playing for the under-fifteen championship of the Japanese Tennis League. Lois—who was in charge of equipment—had accidentally grabbed Rose’s practice shoes before running out to the car; they looked the same as the ones her sister wore for matches. And later, as they pulled up to the tennis court in Gardena, Lois knew her whole family was mad at her. Rose would hardly look at her, hadn’t spoken since she’d flipped her ponytail in exasperation and cried, “Lo-is! How could you be so dumb!” Her mother had been tight-lipped, informing her, simply, “This is a very important match, Lois. I hope you didn’t ruin it for your sister.” Even her grandmother Sakai, who never yelled at anyone, still added to the general air of disapproval. Only her father had refrained from scolding her, trying instead to mollify his eldest, telling her the practice shoes weren’t really that much older; their traction should be fine on the nice new court.
    Although Lois felt bad about the shoes and wished that someone would talk to her, she wasn’t worried about how her sister would do in the match. She didn’t care much for tennis. She hated the bright white skirts, the pressed blouses, the scrubbed-clean quality of all the girls who played. And she hated leaving Crenshaw to come down to Gardena, where everyone lived in big, bland houses; where all the boys her age were already talking about college and becoming doctors, and all the girls spoke of make-up tips and Barbie dolls. After their father parked the car, Rose ran off to talk to some girls she knew. Their mother’s parents lived here in Gardena now—they’d closed the restaurant in Little Tokyo and opened another one over on Western—and the whole family came down to visit often enough for Rose to make some new friends. Her sister wanted to move here, Lois knew; every weekend her Gardena friends would pick her up in their cars, and Rose always returned from these excursions sighing and sad, looking out the window for hours.
    Lois, her parents, and her grandma Sakai found seats in the shiny aluminum stands. Frank and Mary exchanged pleasantries with some other parents they knew, including Mr. and Mrs. Ikeda, the parents of Stephanie Ikeda, the girl Rose would be facing in the championship. Mary put the red and white cooler of sushi on the bench between herself and Lois, and Lois looked at it, stomach rumbling. The big Japanese-style picnic which followed these matches was the only thing that made them bearable.
    “I wish you would take up tennis,” Mary said. “Or bowling. Something where you’d make some good friends.”
    “I have friends,” Lois replied, thinking of Chris, with the gap where his tooth had been punched out, and Janie, with the always-skinned knees.
    “Yes, but they’re not nice friends.”
    Lois sighed. She’d heard all of this before. At twelve, she was a tomboy, usually outside and almost always dirty. To her, the greatest joy in life was running loose in the neighborhood. She loved the Crenshaw district, and she loved her father’s stories about how much it had changed over the years, since the time it was known as Angeles Mesa. It was filled with houses now, and crowded with all different sorts of families. But Frank described a neighborhood of huge, open spaces; of fewer and heartier people. For Lois, going down to Gardena, which was stiff and all-Japanese, was like going to church—something she knew she should do and appreciate, but which bored her to the point of sleep.
    After an interminable warm-up period, a short man wearing a golf visor introduced the two players and everyone in the crowd clapped politely. The match began. Rose seemed nervous at first, and Lois feared she was distracted by the fit of her shoes, but then she settled in, as she