Your House Will Pay

Grace struggles to sleep after learning her mother’s secret, drinking too much whiskey and worrying about her mother in the ICU. She watches the video footage of the murder of Ava Matthews on her phone. It is only 15 seconds long. It is grainy and hard to make out, but she can see Ava Matthews punch her mother and thinks it is self-defense. Jung-Ja Han ducks behind the counter, and Ava turns around to flee. Then, Jung-Ja Han shoots her in the back.

Grace notices that thousands of people have seen the video on YouTube, and wonders how many millions must have seen some version of the footage during her lifetime. She scrolls through the comments. She looks for support for her mother, but notices that any comments supporting her mother tend to coincide with anti-Black sentiments. There is racism toward Koreans in the comments too.

Paul arrives home at 8:00am and gets in the shower. Grace questions him and learns that Yvonne is out of surgery, but they still don’t know if she will recover. Then, Grace tells him that Miriam told her Yvonne’s secret. She starts crying again. Paul gets angry, and tells Grace that she would never understand and to not bring it up with Yvonne. Then, he goes back to the hospital.

Shawn wakes up in a daze the next morning after staying up most of the night drinking with Ray. He has many messages from friends and strangers because the news that Jung-Ja Han was shot spread overnight. Now, there is a Los Angeles Times story about the shooting at Hanin Market, reporting that the victim is in critical condition.

Shawn leaves for work, but by the time he gets to Northridge, he calls to take the day off. He drives to Hanin Market to see it for himself. The market has a Starbucks, realtor, Honey Baked Ham Company, Korean school, food court, nail salon, optometrist, dentist, and Woori Pharmacy. Shawn parks the car and walks around the market until a passerby makes him feel self-conscious. He guesses he must look suspicious because of his tattoos and skin color. Then, he sees the blood stain on the ground, and it takes his breath away. It is proof that justice has caught up with Jung-Ja Han.

Shawn then goes to visit Ava’s grave in Paradise Memorial Park in Santa Fe Springs. Ava doesn’t have a gravestone because bodies were moved around after the cemetery went out of business. Shawn doesn’t know where her body is now, but there is a mass burial site, which is marked by a tombstone. He places a succulent by the tombstone. He remembers that Ava once tricked him into high-fiving a cactus—his earliest memory—and thinks about how much he both hated and loved her growing up.

Shawn knows that Ava was not a genius. She might have graduated high school, or she might not have. She was a talented piano player, but she could never compete with the rich children who got lessons and practiced for hours every day. Ava was not a saint; Shawn is uncertain whether or not she meant to steal the bottle of milk years ago. However, he understands why his Aunt Sheila insists on keeping her memory idealized: If people started thinking of her as flawed, she would be forgotten like so many other Black girls who were wronged. Sheila calls this a “mass grave” too (123).

Unable to cope with her father and the constant memory of her mother’s absence at home, Grace spends some time at Blake and Miriam’s place. She drives to the hospital once a day to visit Yvonne, who has been in a coma. Otherwise, she stays in Miriam’s spare bedroom, avoiding Blake and reading articles about her mother online. In the meantime, Uncle Joseph has been filling in for her at the pharmacy.

The story of Yvonne being shot blew up in the news once people realized who she was. It began trending on social media, strangers started review bombing the pharmacy, and Grace has been receiving messages from journalists (including Jules Searcey) daily. To Grace, these journalists seem like vultures. Searcey wrote an article in The New Yorker that connects Jung-Ja Han to Trevor Warren, Alfonso Curiel’s killer. The article both laments the “mounting unrest in Los Angeles” while adding fuel to the fire (126). Online, every mention of Yvonne seems to minimize her entire life as a single act of pulling the trigger (127).

To clear her head, Grace goes for a walk around the residential area of Silver Lake. During the walk, she runs into a stranger named Evan Harwood who asks if she is Grace Park. He says he works for Action Now and would like to ask her a few questions about her mother. Grace tries to get away from him, but he chases her. While trying to get away from him, she falls and cuts herself. People start to notice her, and Harwood continues to record her on his phone. Grace knows she should walk away and say nothing, but as he continues to ask her questions, she gets angrier and angrier. Finally, she loses control of her emotions and yells into Harwood’s phone. She defends her mother, noting how much bigger Ava Matthews was than her, implying that the shooting was done in self-defense. In her rant, she calls Ava “some high school Shaq” (130).

Detective Neil Maxwell visits Shawn to ask questions about the shooting. He asks if Shawn knew Jung-Ja Han was still in Los Angeles, and Shawn says he didn’t until he heard the news Friday night. Maxwell asks what time he learned the news, and Shawn marks the time with a text message, reluctantly giving up Tramell Thomas’s name as the person who texted him. The detective notes that Shawn didn’t go to work the next day and instead went to the scene of the crime, trying to get a rise out of him. Shawn admits that the news shook him up. He says he was “remembering” (135), and this is why he went to the market and then the cemetery.

Shawn is surprised when Maxwell claims that the Baring Cross Crips are taking credit for the shooting. Maxwell then presses Shawn about his past, asking whether he’s still in touch with Jaleel Prentiss, Kevin Price, and Isaac “Newt” Johnson, all gang members he used to run with before he was arrested. Shawn hasn’t been in touch with any of them, even Newt, who was once his best friend. He reflects that it was a different time and, as he’s gotten older, he hasn’t had to deal with police much either. These days, he is usually with his girlfriend or her daughter, and police are more like to find a lone Black man or a group of Black men suspicious. Shawn believes this is because cops are lazy and unimaginative, rarely thinking beyond first impressions.

Maxwell continues to question Shawn, trying to get a rise out of him. He talks about Shawn’s rap sheet and asks him about Ray Holloway, and Shawn tells him that they are in touch because they are family. Maxwell leans on the image of Shawn as a “Real OG” (136), saying he must have gotten away with murder in the past. He tells Shawn that he probably wanted revenge on Jung-Ja Han, but Shawn doesn’t take the bait. He never killed anyone and admits that while he was, is, angry, he wasn’t involved in the shooting.

The video of Grace yelling at Evan Harwood has gone viral. Feeling ashamed, Grace stops leaving Miriam’s house and stops visiting the hospital. Miriam has taken her phone and deactivated her social media accounts. Days later, Grace is feeling better, but not much better, as this is her first time feeling hated.

Miriam brings Grace some food from a new vegan restaurant nearby. The food is bad, but Miriam improves it with some kimchi from a Korean market and hot sauce. Grace interrogates Miriam about the video. She asks how many people have seen it, and if any of her friends have defended her publicly. She also asks if Miriam thinks she is racist, and why she hasn’t bothered to defend her. Grace starts to cry, and asks why she won’t defend Yvonne.

Miriam has a thoughtful response to this question, something she has been thinking about for a long time. Firstly, she argues that it is better that her friends do not engage at all, and that she does not engage either; to do so would worsen the situation. She also argues that defending terrible acts compromises your own morals. Miriam believes loving someone evil makes you evil too (144). She gives the example of Camille Cosby defending Bill Cosby after rape allegations came out, explaining that doing so contributed to the damaging myth that women go around lying about rape. She explains that defending Yvonne means they must contort themselves to justify murder (145). By cutting her mother off, Miriam believes she has become a worse person too, that they are both worse people because of what their mother did.

Grace does not entirely agree, but she and Miriam do not argue, either. At the end of the conversation, Grace is still angry. Before she goes back to sleep, Paul calls with news that Yvonne woke up from her coma.