Locke’d

Written by Ai Law

Aunt Connie’s toilet garden

Summer was not any cooler because of the Sacramento River flowing past Locke, California. If it were the 1940s I could slip into the river and swim with salmon larger than a child as my grandfather did when he was a boy. Now it’s only good for boats and birdwatching, not fishing. But that doesn’t stop me from coming to see the small town nestled against the river banks just shy of Walnut Grove.

I don’t remember the first time that I went to Locke because for as long as I can remember, my love for that town has been there. I’ve visited with friends and other relatives, but the town truly breathes whenever my grandfather is present. His stories always bring us back through time, to the years before half the town emptied temporarily in 1942 during the Japanese American Internment.

My grandfather always tells me of the day when all the Japanese in Locke were suddenly gone. He says the Japanese left their land in the care of their Chinese neighbors until they could come back and reclaim it themselves. But when they did come back, none of them stayed. Slowly, they all left Locke, unwilling to live in what had become a painful place. Next, he talks about when he served in Japan. He tells us of their traditions and that he loved Japan and was welcomed there. Sometimes he speaks to us in Japanese. His stories are brief, but he always smiles when he remembers.

Today we are here to greet my Great-Aunt Connie, the town’s appointed mayor. She welcomes us warmly, as she always does, and then leaves us to tour the town as a group until lunch. Each visit is always the same when my grandfather is here. We walk the same streets, visit the same spots, and he tells the same tales, but I never tire of hearing them. Each time there is something a little different that he shares and I can never turn away from listening to him. I know that I will hear something new and that my favorite story is coming.

Per tradition, we head to the end of Main Street. Still unpaved the street is packed; scuffed, and dusty just as it had been when the town was first founded in 1915. ‘The only town built by the Chinese for the Chinese’. We always stop first at the Chinese School where my grandfather attended lessons after going to the brick white school in Walnut Grove. The walls here are faded and yellow, worn and spent from their decades of bleaching in the sun. This time though, my grandfather walks down the first aisle and sits at the same wooden desk he used as a child. I’m shocked when he fits, but even more so when he laughs and smiles. I want to take a picture of him there, a piece of the present pasted onto an image of 1939. I know he won’t let me take one. I no longer ask, but instead, treasure the memories he gives me. I feel this one slide down into the core that makes me Asian, Chinese, Cantonese, descendant, sixth generation.

Everything from his days in that small schoolhouse is still there. Portraits, parade pictures, and dozens of characters decorate the walls. I can’t read them but I always try, unthwarted by the barrier between his education and mine. The strokes are beautiful and even if I cannot understand them, I can still feel the pride in my grandfather’s eyes as he stands beside me and reads them. Once I asked him, ‘What do they say?’ And he told me, ‘History.’ This time when I ask he says, ‘I cannot remember.’

Once we leave the school we walk past a mix of shops and personal residences. They look like sets borrowed from an old western with their false fronts, overshop apartments, and front porches. There are boardwalks placed between the buildings to keep you out of the dust. My grandfather leads us down one. The shadows of plants and hung laundry on his back fill the gaps in his stories and for a moment, I can see him walking home this way to Aunt Connie’s house as a boy, then a young man. The greenery planted along the boardwalk makes it easy to forget what year it is and that we are not cut off from the sky. I don’t look up. Here it is easy to imagine that if I follow the boardwalk, I will arrive in the 1900s when Locke thrived.

Past the shops, antique stores, scattered family houses, abandoned theatre, single bar, and only restaurant, lives my Great-Aunt Connie. Her house is small and tidy for its age, though all the floors creak. It sits between an orchard and her personal garden. There she still grows vegetables and fruits to cook. While my Aunt’s fruit trees and vegetables are beautiful and neat, it is her xeriscape that is the source of my favorite story. On one side of her house, there is a garden favored by cactuses and desert plants settled comfortably in numerous old toilets. The first time I heard the reason why my Aunt is famous for this garden, my grandfather had to translate for me. Now when Connie and my grandfather tell it again, they both speak in a mix of Cantonese and English. It doesn’t matter now how I hear the story. I am a captive audience and they know I will listen to their every word and bind it to me. Again Aunt Connie tells us how when white people moved into Locke they did not want to use the same toilets that the ‘yellow people’ had touched before them. So they threw them out and replaced them with new ones. My aunt took it upon herself to gather up the discarded toilets that had been dumped onto the land she and her people could only rent, not own. She cultivated them all into a garden that has grown and flourished so well, it was featured in the newspaper. The garden is as beautiful as my Aunt’s will; her love and determination for Locke on display for those who know the story. I don’t have to understand her words to know that this is a piece of family history I will always treasure; a memory that will be forever linked to my Aunt Connie and Locke.

After the toilet garden, Connie gathers everyone and we all walk over to Locke’s restaurant for lunch. My Aunt knows the owners; like most of the residents left, she helped them settle here. We share tea, rice, vegetables, and my grandfather’s favorite, duck. Everyone insists I have at least five bites of everything and drink as much. I can barely eat as I sit in silence and listen to them chat and order in Cantonese and Mandarin. There is no English now and it reminds me of the reunions of my childhood before the family grew too large and too apart. I don’t look up, the familiar taste and sounds will be unbearable to part with tonight and I don’t want my ignorance to interrupt.

The sunset is the unwanted reminder to all of us that Locke is starting to shut down for the night and it’s time to head home. It’s only an hour's drive but the trip back always feels longest. Leaving Locke is always hard but today it is excruciating. Or maybe it’s always this way, and I’m just good at forgetting the ache that’s seeping through me now. Every time I visit I want to stay longer. A part of me is always tempted to stay here in Locke, where I can feel my roots the most. My grandfather told me stories of ancestors and it is only in Locke that it is easy to believe that they are present and soaked into the earth we walk on, the trees, air, sky.

How can a place I've never lived in have such a hold on me? I’ve tried to explain it but always fail. I love Locke more dearly than the town I grew up in, and the people I regularly meet. Every time I think or speak of Locke, or the generations, of my predecessors living there, it almost brings me to tears. My heart constantly heals and breaks in Locke. It’s a wound I crave as much as I wish it to heal and bring me peace.

Lately, I’ve begun to wonder what my children will feel when I bring them to visit. Anger? Pride? Hope? Desperation? When will I be able to bring myself to tell them the stories I've known all my life? Today, this town is shielded in layers. Its history has been covered by tourism and niceties in the narrative. There are secrets now that only I will feel when my family walks through these haunted backstreets chased by memories I wouldn't know either if my grandfather and Great-Aunt Connie had not passed them on to me. My only solace now comes in knowing that Locke was a memory they were in favor of not forgetting.

You can view this piece in our Fall 2022 issue titled Trailblazer here.