Emako Blue (8 page)

After school, I got a ride home with this girl named Jo’nelle who sat behind me in history class. We weren’t really friends, but she lived around the corner from me and her mother sometimes gave me a ride home when my mother and stepfather were out of town. I sat in the backseat while her mother rattled on nonstop.

Let me out of here, I thought.

They dropped me off at the corner and I walked the rest of the way to my house. When I opened the door, Lillie started her dance around my feet, barking. She looked like an overgrown rat with long hair. I locked her in the service porch. If she’s lucky, I thought, I might feed her . . . later.

My mother and stepfather were in Thailand and I was home alone, again. I called Pizza Hut and ordered a large pepperoni pizza. While I waited, I got a Coors out of the refrigerator and took a swallow.

I looked in the small mirror that hung over the sink and toasted myself. Today was my sixteenth birthday.

By the time the pizza came, I had finished two cans of beer and I was high. I stumbled to the door and paid for the pizza.

“Today’s my birthday,” I told the delivery guy. “Keep the change.”

“Hey, thanks,” he said, “and happy birthday.”

I closed the door, went back into the kitchen, and let Lillie out of the service porch. I opened another can of beer and poured some in her empty water bowl. She lapped it up and I started to laugh. I sat down, took out a slice for Lillie and a slice for me. She jumped in my lap and licked my face.

“Happy birthday, Savannah,” I said as I hugged the little dog.

The phone rang and I jumped. I smiled as I picked up the phone, thinking it was my mother. “Hello?”

It was Gina. I wanted to cry. “Hi, Gina.”

“Happy birthday, girl,” she said.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“You don’t sound too happy. What’s up with you? It’s your birthday. Did you get a car?”

“No. My mother and the man are in Thailand.”

“Oh. Maybe they’ll get it for you when they come back,” she said.

I knew she was trying to make me feel good. “Yeah, maybe,” I replied.

“You want me to come over?”

“No, I’m cool.” I didn’t need anyone feeling sorry for me.

There was a long pause. “How’s Jamal?”

“Is that why you really called, to ask about Jamal?”

“I called to say happy birthday. Why you gotta be nasty?”

I took another gulp of beer. “Sorry. Jamal is fine.”

“Oh . . . ,” she said, and hesitated. “Is he gettin’ tight with Emako?”

“Yes.”

“You think I should call him?”

“Do whatever you want, but don’t come cryin’ to me again if he hurts your feelings, okay?”

There was silence.

“I won’t,” she replied. “Bye.”

“Later.”

I was in my room, trying to study for a math test. I had my headphones on and I was listening to the music, staying out of trouble, staying off the streets. Every time you turned around, someone was getting shot in L.A., and I didn’t want my name added to the growing list. There were times when it made me jumpy. Not scared—just jumpy.

It was like you could just be out in your ride with the music bumpin’, thinking you had a bright future as a music producer or something, and then a car rolls by slowly and Bang! Bang! Bang! The lights go out and you ain’t going nowhere except to the emergency room in the back of an ambulance or to the morgue in a zipped-up black body bag. People left standing around talking to the media who claim you were “gang related” when the only thing you were related to were your moms and pops, who now only have your picture to look at for the rest of their lives. It made a young brother tense.

As for me, my life was smooth, and I wanted it to stay that way.

It was 10:15. I had promised to call Emako. I closed the book, took off my headset, and picked up the phone. It rang four times before her little brother answered.

“Hello?” Marcel said.

“Is Emako home?” I asked.

“Yeah, she’s home,” he answered.

“Can I holler at her?”

“Just a minute,” he said, and yelled, “Emako!”

I sat and waited.

“Gimme the phone,” I heard her say. “And get your little butt in the bed. . . .” A pause. “Hello?”

“Hey, Emako,” I said.

“Hey.”

“What you doin’?”

“Nuthin’,” she replied.

“You wanna do somethin’ on Saturday?” I asked.

“Like what?”

“Whatever.”

There was a very long pause. “Jamal?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you really break it off with Gina?”

“Would I lie to you? You wanna do somethin’ on Saturday or not?” I asked.

“Or what . . . you gonna call Gina and ask her?”

“Why you gotta be like that? I told you I’m finished with all that.”

“I got a question for you.”

“Okay.”

“When’s that last time you talked to Gina?”

“Last night.”

“Why you tryin’ to be a player?”

“I’m not tryin’ to be a player no more. I’m just tryin’ to keep it real. Besides, she called me.”

“G’night, Jamal.”

“So, I’ll see you Saturday?”

“Maybe. . . . G’night.”

“G’night.” I hung up the phone, looked one last time at the math book on the floor, and turned off the light. Emako wasn’t the type to sit around and be played, I thought. She just might be the one to make me change my ways. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

“I’m gonna take these braids out this weekend. I’m tired of ’em. I’ve had ’em so long, I forgot what I look like without ’em. I think I’ll get it cut real short and dye it platinum blond like Eve,” Emako said one day after chorus.

I tried to picture it. “That might look dope.”

“Dope? Why don’t you just talk like the square that you are? You worse than that girl on BET slingin’ ghetto slang.”

“Why you always gotta criticize me? Like you’re tryin’ to make me feel bad. I’m gettin’ tired of it.”

“Don’t get all mad,” Emako said.

“That’s what you always say. I’m gettin’ tired of that too.”

“Okay. I’m sorry. Talk any way you wanna talk. Ain’t nuthin’.”

“Besides, I gotta talk like that. You never know. One day it could be me.
106 & Park.
Live from New York,” I said.

“I said sorry.” She looked at me like she was sincere. “You know it could be like that,” she added.

“For real, huh?”

“For real,” she replied.

Her bus came and I watched her hurry away. She turned around and waved at me and I felt better.

My daddy pulled up a few minutes later.

“Your mother has her night class tonight, so I was going to cook,” he said as I crawled in.

“Please don’t.”

“Why?”

“Becuz you can’t cook.”

“I can’t cook?”

“Not really.”

“Well then, maybe you could cook, Monterey.”

“I can’t cook either. Can’t we just stop and get KFC?”

“Okay, but don’t tell your mother. I promised her that I would make you eat healthy food.”

“I won’t tell her.”

“How was school?” he asked.

“It was a’ight.”

He corrected me. “You mean all right.”

“That’s what I said, a’ight.”

He looked at me and shook his head.

As soon as we got home, I loaded up a paper plate with fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and two biscuits. I poured some cold Pepsi into a paper cup.

“We could sit down and eat like a family,” my daddy said.

“That’s okay, maybe tomorrow,” I replied, and went into my room. I locked my door, turned on
TRL,
and got busy with the food.

That’s how my days were, nothing special, no drama. Maybe Emako was right about my perfect life.

I took a bite of chicken.

The phone rang and I picked it up. “Hello?”

It was Emako. “Monterey?”

“Yeah?” Now my food’s going to get cold, I thought.

“You are not going to believe who just called me.”

I picked up the remote and pushed mute. “Who?”

“Gina.”

“Jamal’s Gina?”

“Jamal’s ex-Gina.”

“No she did not! Who gave her your number?”

“I give you one guess.”

“Savannah?”

“Savannah.”

I put down my food. “And?”

“She told me I needed back up off Jamal.”

“What?”

“And I told her that she should be talkin’ to Jamal, not me.”

“And what’d she say then?”

“Somethin’ about me bein’ a ho, and that was when I told her that the conversation was over . . . click, and I hung up the phone.”

“I cannot believe her.”

“Who you tellin’? Like it’s my fault. Plus, ain’t nuthin’ even happened between Jamal and me. At least nuthin’ like what she thinks. The most we ever did was kiss.”

“So what you gonna do?”

“I’m ’bout to call Jamal.”

“Then call me back, okay? And I want the whole story.”

“Later.”

I hung up the phone and picked up my food again. It was still warm.

Twenty minutes later, my phone rang.

“Hey,” Emako said.

“And . . . ?”

“Jamal said he was gonna talk to Gina and tell her not to call me anymore.”

“That’s all?”

“No. He was talkin’ real sweet . . . tryin’ to be smooth.”

“You’re getting into him, huh?” I asked.

“He’s a’ight.”

“I thought you didn’t have time for no mess.”

“I don’t. But he’s kinda fine.”

I agreed, “He is.”

“He asked me to go to Disneyland this weekend.”

“You goin’?”

“I dunno, maybe. . . .” She paused. “I gotta go. I promised to help Marcel with his multiplication b’fore he gets too sleepy. See ya t’morrow.”

“Later,” I replied.

She had never been to Disneyland. Never. I couldn’t believe it. At first she had said she wouldn’t go because of all this drama with Gina. But she finally said okay.

We walked through the gates of the Magic Kingdom and her eyes were all wide like she was a little girl.

I felt like I was opening up the world for her.

I felt like a man.

I took her hand and held it like she was mine.

Emako had taken the braids out of her hair, cut it real short, and dyed it blond. She looked good.

“The first thing I gotta do is buy Marcel and Latrice those Mickey Mouse hats with their names embroidered on ’em. I promised,” she said.

“Wait till we get ready to leave, cuz that way you won’t have to carry ’em around with you all day. That’s one of the big mistakes people make when they come to Disneyland, and then when they go on Space Mountain and all the good rides, they gotta worry ’bout holdin’ on to a bag, worryin’ ’bout stuff fallin’ out,” I said as we walked toward Fantasyland.

“Okay, but don’t let me forget.”

“I promise,” I said, taking her hand.

We stayed from ten o’clock in the morning until eleven o’clock at night. The new Disney adventure, the old Disney adventure, the whole Disney adventure. I was glad when she finally got tired.

The freeway wasn’t crowded and the ride put her to sleep. She looked like a sleeping doll. I stopped the car in front of her house and she woke up, startled. I pulled her to me and kissed her lips. She kissed me back, but I started getting hot and my hands started traveling and she froze.

“Stoppit, Jamal,” she said softly, but I knew she meant it. She opened the car door and got out.

“You mad?” I asked, getting out to walk her to the door.

“I ain’t mad.”

The lights were all out in her house. She put her key in the lock of the rusting security door and turned around.

“Thank you, Jamal . . . for takin’ me to Disneyland. It was fun.”

“Yeah, it was.”

I got back in the car and locked the doors. I was in South L.A. and it was after midnight.

The porch light was on when I got home. I tiptoed in. The house was quiet like the night before Christmas.

I stripped down to my boxers and got between the sheets. I thought about Emako. I had almost stopped noticing the other honeys and I called her every night. Oh, hell, no. I’m in way too deep. I shook my head and closed my eyes. Sleep didn’t take its time finding me.

Finally! I got my early acceptance from Arizona State. Now I was smiling all the time. I couldn’t wait to leave Los Angeles behind me. Sometimes it felt like this city was about to swallow me up whole like a hungry python.

Emako sat down beside me in the cafeteria.

“I got accepted at Arizona State,” I announced.

“Congratulations, Eddie! Arizona State, cool.”

“Yeah,” I said. “My parents are all proud. My dad put up a big sign in his market. I never heard the word
mijo
so much in my life before.”

“
Mijo
?”

“My son,” I translated.

“So you gonna come back and visit us?” she asked.

“Maybe.” She had a strange look in her eyes. “What’s up?” I asked.

“Someone put a knife in my brother Dante, but he ain’t dead.”

“Where is he?”

“Wayside.”

“My brother, Tomas, was there three years ago. Now he’s at Chino. He’s been shot and stabbed so many times that we stopped calling him the cat with nine lives and started calling him the cat with twenty-nine lives. He just keeps on living.”

“Karma,” she said.

“Yeah,” I replied. “All he does is worry my mother. She hardly sleeps. I find her in the morning, curled up on the sofa, the TV on, rosary in her hands, tears in her eyes. Last time I saw him he had tracks on both arms . . . heroin, and I said, ‘Dude, you gonna get HIV.’ He looked like someone had stolen his soul. That was when I decided to try and forget him, but I can’t.”