Emako Blue (3 page)

After practice I asked Emako, “You wanna go to Knott’s Berry Farm for this Halloween thing on Saturday with me and my baby cousin Lynette?”

She looked at me like I had lost my mind. “Let me guess. Your daddy ’n’ mama gonna drive us there and pick us up b’fore midnight like three little Cinderellas? Naw. Sorry. B’sides, I gotta watch my brother and sister till my mama gets home. She gotta work a double shift.”

“You lyin’, Emako.”

“Why you wanna think that, Monterey?” She was wearing orange lip gloss and she smiled without showing any teeth, looking like a brown Mona Lisa.

We went outside to the bus stop.

“I mean, all you havta say is I don’t wanna go,” I said.

“Okay, I don’t wanna go.”

“Why? Becuz you too grown?”

“Yeah, I’m too grown.”

“You too grown to hang with me?”

“Don’t get all mad. It just ain’t my thing. But you and your little cousin have fun,” she said as she climbed the steps onto the bus.

The bus doors closed and it sped away, leaving a trail of dust and fumes.

My phone was ringing when I got home. I made a dive for the bed and picked it up before the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“Hey.” It was Emako. She’d never called me before.

“Hey, Emako.” I tried to say it without feeling.

“You mad, huh?”

“I ain’t mad,” I lied.

“You wanna come to my house on Sunday?” she asked. “I gotta sing in the choir at church in the morning, but I get home about twelve-thirty.”

“Oh, now you wanna be nice.”

“You wanna come or not?”

That Sunday my daddy raised his eyebrows when we turned onto Figueroa. South Central. He had grown up here, but he didn’t like to drive through these streets. When he pulled to a stop at a red light, he checked the doors to make sure they were locked.

A black man crossed the street with two muzzled pit bulls on short leashes.

On one corner there was a motel painted lime green with red doors.

The neon sign blinked.

Vacancy.

He parked the car in front of Emako’s house and ushered me to the door like I was in the fifth grade.

“I’m fifteen, Daddy,” I said.

“Precisely.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“That’s what you want to believe. You will always be my baby.” He rang the doorbell. It didn’t work. He knocked on the rusty white security door.

“It’s open,” said a little girl’s voice from the other side.

Daddy was reaching for the door when I heard Emako’s voice. “Just a minute.” The door opened and Emako smiled.

“Hey, Monterey.”

“Hey, Emako,” I said, and smiled back.

My daddy extended his hand as he followed me into the house. “I’m Monterey’s daddy, Mr. Hamilton.”

Emako shook his hand. The door closed behind us.

Emako’s mother was sitting in an orange vinyl chair too close to the television, wearing a white slip, sipping ice water from a jelly jar. When she saw my daddy, she put down her water, stood up, wiped her damp hand on her slip, and reached for my daddy’s hand.

“Verna Blue,” she introduced herself, holding his hand a little too long.

“Roman Hamilton . . . ,” Daddy said, releasing her hand.

Verna looked me over and said, “You must be Monterey.”

“Yes, Mrs. Blue,” I replied politely.

“No Mrs., just Verna. Gotta have a Mr. to be a Mrs. and I haven’t had no Mr. in a while.” She glanced at my daddy in a funny way.

Emako’s seven-year-old sister, Latrice, ran out the front door, eating a thick slice of ham.

“Latrice! Get your butt back in this house! What’d I tell you?” Verna raised her voice.

Latrice stepped back into the house. “ ’Bout what?”

“ ’Bout eatin’ outside like you ain’t got no table to sit down to.”

Latrice went over to the table with a mouthful of ham and sat down. “And chew with your mouth closed,” Verna added.

“Yeah,” Marcel, Emako’s nine-year-old brother, yelled from the other room.

Emako looked down like she felt ashamed.

“I’ll pick you up at seven, Monterey,” Daddy said as he backed out the door. Something told me that he couldn’t wait to get away from the streets he had once called home. Emako and I followed him outside and stood on the porch.

We watched him turn the corner just as a Regal with tinted windows rolled by slowly, like a hearse. The window was down and a fine caramel-colored brother wearing a black bandana and two gold watches on his left wrist called out to Emako. “What up, baby girl?”

Emako tilted her head to the side. The caramel-colored brother grinned as he drove down the middle of the street, leaving a trail of music behind him.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“No one,” she replied.

“He’s fine.”

“Just got outta CYA . . . California Youth Authority. Like jail.” Emako talked to me like she was giving me an education.

“I know what CYA is,” I replied. “Why you gotta talk to me like I’m a child?”

“Just checking. I just don’t want you to get caught up with no gangbanger. You ain’t about that. That’s part of why I transferred away from Truman. To try to get away from all that. Too much trouble in the classrooms and everywhere else.”

“Were you scared?”

“I ain’t scared of nuthin’, but I got tired of all the nonsense. Every day it was somethin’. School police everywhere. Some brotha all up on me. Some little sista and her clique all in my face becuz her little dude’s tryin’ to get with me. And I wasn’t thinking ’bout none of ’em. You understand what I’m sayin’?”

“I understand.”

We went back inside and Emako locked the door like she was locking out the world. Verna turned up the TV. Emako and I went into the bedroom she shared with Latrice and turned on her PlayStation. Marcel stuck his head in the door.

Emako looked up. “Get outta here b’fore I kick your little butt.”

“Mama! Emako said she’s gonna kick my butt!”

Verna answered from the living room. “Marcel! Leave them girls alone. Can’t y’all give me some peace?”

Marcel stuck out his tongue before he disappeared from the hallway. Emako put on a Mary J. Blige CD and we started to sing along.

After a while Emako stopped singing and said, “I’ll be as big as her . . . you watch. . . . I’ll be livin’ it up. I’ll move my mama away from all this madness and buy her a house with a pool in Malibu that looks out over the ocean, send my little brother and sister to private school in a limo . . . ,” she said, and paused. “You can sing backup while you watch my back.”

“I’m gonna watch your back? You got it all figured out.”

“Yeah, cuz you got a good heart.”

“My mama and daddy want me to go to college, be a veterinarian or something.”

“That what you wanna be, a doggie doctor? I thought you wanted to do the music thing.”

“I dunno. I like animals.”

“Sometimes I think about that,” Emako said.

“About bein’ a doggie doctor?” I asked.

“No, about goin’ to college.”

“To be what?”

“I dunno . . . somethin’. But then I figure God gave me this talent so I could get up outta here.”

Emako reached for the CD player, turned up the volume, and the music took over the tiny room.

For lunch we had ham sandwiches on white bread and 7 UP. Verna watched cable all day. Marcel poked his head in once in a while, getting the same reaction from Emako every time. Latrice spent the afternoon next door.

Everything was cool.

I walked through the doors of the church behind Monterey, but she was so messed up that I don’t think she even noticed me. Monterey and Emako were tight—different, but tight. You know . . . like opposite sides of the same coin. I decided not to speak to her. I didn’t know what to say anyway.

I slid into a pew and spotted Eddie. He nodded and looked away.

I hung my head, trying to find some more tears, but they were all gone. I had cried almost without stopping for three nights straight.

I wanted to scream.

I wanted to break some heads.

I wanted to get the MF who had done this.

But I couldn’t.

I had to leave it to the police or God.

I looked up as the preacher spoke from the pulpit. “ ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ saith the Lord.” It was like he was reading my mind.

Most people don’t know this, but the first time I ever met Emako, she was in the fifth grade. She was this real cute little skinny girl. We were both taking piano lessons from this born-again Christian piano teacher who always said praise the Lord when you walked through the door. Her house always smelled like fried chicken or collard greens, and as soon as I sat down, my mouth would begin to water and all I could think about was my next meal.

My moms was making me take lessons, saying musical talent ran in the family from way back, but I didn’t want the fellas to know because then they would have started to get in my face. So, I kept it quiet.

Emako was ahead of me and the teacher would get mad at her because Emako didn’t want to learn to read music. Emako had told her that all she had to do was watch and listen, like she was some kind of musical genius. I guess the born-again music teacher wasn’t interested in genius because one day Emako wasn’t there and I never saw her again until that day in September when she showed up for chorus. I almost didn’t recognize her. She sure wasn’t a skinny little girl anymore, and when she opened her mouth to sing, I thought to myself, the born-again lady should be here now. Emako had become a mellow songstress with perfect pitch, and her body was bangin’.

I could see it all. I would write the music and produce the tracks. We would be kickin’ it all over the world, concerts, BET, the Grammy Awards, MTV, music videos.

I stared at her hard, trying to make eye contact, but she didn’t seem to see me. I wanted to hand her a bouquet of lavender roses and tell her she had my heart. Crazy love.

When class was over, I was just about to make my move when Savannah interrupted, starting some mess about Gina, and by the time I got Savannah to shut her mouth, Emako was gone. So I just went out to the parking lot, got in my ride, opened the sunroof, and drove off.

I was thinking about Emako’s pretty mouth and little tiny waist when Gina popped back into my mind. Gina was sort of my girlfriend, a girl my moms had introduced me to. She was the daughter of one of the judges that Moms knew from the courthouse, where she worked as a court reporter.

Gina was kinda fly, and once, when her parents were in Las Vegas, she invited me over and we did the thing and now it was like she had a short leash around my neck. She wore honey-colored contact lenses and went to this private girl’s school. I liked Gina, but it wasn’t like I was loving her or anything.

When I got home, I opened the front door and called out to my moms but got no answer.