Emako Blue

by Brenda Woods

  “I’m not rich or nuthin’.”

  She was getting ready to say something when Mama honked the horn. I opened the car door and stuck my head in. “This is Emako and she needs a ride home becuz she missed her bus and she has to be home by four-thirty to baby-sit. I told her it would be okay. Okay?”

  “Okay. Hi, Emako.”

  “Hi, Miz . . .”

  “Hamilton,” I said.

  “Hi, Miz Hamilton,” Emako said, and climbed into the backseat.

  “Where do you live, Emako?”

  “Near Ninety-fifth Street and Dover.”

  “Four o’clock,” Mama said. “We should be able to make it in time.”

  “Thank you, Miz Hamilton,” Emako said.

  “DeeDee, call me DeeDee,” Mama said, and put her foot on the gas.

  Mama drove too fast. She always drove too fast. We rounded the corner and the tires screeched.

  “Emako . . . isn’t that a Japanese name?” Mama asked.

  “Yes,” Emako replied.

  “What’s your last name, Emako?”

  “Blue . . . Emako Blue.”

  “What a beautiful name,” Mama said.

  “Thank you,” Emako replied.

  Oh, no, Mama’s going to keep talking, I thought. I turned on the radio to her oldies station and she started to hum. I took a deep breath and rolled down the window.

  It seemed like magic as we made almost every green light and soon we were on Emako’s street.

  “It’s the house on the corner,” Emako said.

  It was a tiny yellow house with grass that needed cutting. We pulled up to the curb and Mama stopped the car.

  “Thanks, Miz Hamilton.”

  “DeeDee,” Mama reminded her.

  “Thanks, DeeDee,” Emako said as she got out. “Later, Monterey.”

  “Later, Emako.”

  She waved at me from the front door and disappeared inside.

  “She seems nice,” Mama said as we sped away.

  “Yeah, she’s cool,” I replied. “Real cool.”

  The next day I saw Emako at her locker.

  “Monterey is just too much name for one person,” Emako said. She threw her books into her locker and slammed it shut.

  “My little cousin tried to start callin’ me Rey, but my mama said that if she had wanted people to call me Rey, she woulda named me Rey,” I replied as we headed to chorus practice. “Why’d your mama name you Emako? You ain’t Japanese,” I said.

  “Sure I am,” she replied.

  “Sure you are what?”

  “Japanese.”

  “You don’t look Japanese.”

  She laughed loudly and pointed her finger in my face. “You are too square, Monterey.”

  “Come on, be serious,” I insisted.

  “Okay. My mama used to know this Japanese nurse at County Hospital, where she worked before I was born. Her name was Emako and Mama liked her. She said she was real sweet. So Mama named me after her.”

  “I got named Monterey becuz my mama got pregnant with me at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Maybe that’s why I like to sing.” I crossed my eyes.

  Emako laughed again.

  A tall, smooth, dark senior with a shaved head who played football and called himself Reggie H passed us in the hall. “Hey, Miss Emako.”

  “Hey, Reggie.” Emako smiled at him like they had a secret. They watched each other walk away in opposite directions.

  “You know him?” I asked.

  “Yeah. My older brother Dante used to play Pop Warner football with him.”

  “You been with him?”

  “I ain’t been with nobody, yet.”

  “Me neither.”

  We entered the auditorium just as Mr. Santos started handing out sheet music. We were learning to read music.

  Emako whispered into my ear, “This is wastin’ my time. All I gotta do is hear the music once, maybe twice, and I remember the melody. Sometimes I can pick up the harmony.”

  I looked down at the sheet music, and as I took my place, I bumped right into Eddie. The skin on his face was tan. “Excuse me, Monterey,” he said.

  “Hey, Eddie,” I said, trying to keep my mouth closed so that he wouldn’t see my braces. I took a deep breath. Eddie smiled and took his position behind me.

  Emako whispered into my ear, “You like him, huh?”

  “Like who?” I asked.

  “Eddie.”

  “He’s okay.”

  “His eyes are pretty,” Emako said.

  “For real,” I replied.

  Mr. Santos looked at us and cleared his throat.

  “Are we here to talk or to sing, Monterey?” Mr. Santos asked.

  “To sing.”

  Mr. Santos began to play the scales and our voices echoed them back.

  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, wip
ed 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.

  Jamal

  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 fron
t door and called out to my moms but got no answer.

  I changed into a tank top and shorts, and went out to the backyard. I dribbled the ball a little, then turned and shot. The ball made the sweetest sound as it slipped into the net and bounced back to me. I thought about Emako and grinned. Yeah, it was destiny.

  A couple of days passed before I had the chance to get her alone without Gina’s little watchdog Savannah being on my case. It had just started raining as school let out and I saw her waiting for the bus. I took a deep breath and slipped into player mode.

  I touched her on the arm and she turned around.

  “You remember me . . . from piano lessons?” I asked.

  She looked at me hard like she was trying to remember my face. Then the look changed and she smiled. “Praise the Lord!”

  I smiled back. “I could give you a ride home.”

  “Cool,” she replied.

  This was going to be easier than I thought.

  I opened the door for her and she slid into my ride. “Thanks.” She reminded me of chocolate syrup. Brown, sweet, and smooth.

  There was heat trapped inside the car and it warmed me as I turned the key. I put in an Aaliyah CD.

  “Aaliyah . . . she was too sweet.” She turned up the volume.

  I turned on the windshield wipers and made my way out of the parking lot onto the street.

  The weather had driven most folks inside, but on some corners men stood selling oversized black-and-white umbrellas, taking advantage of the rain.

  “You wanna stop at McDonald’s?” I asked.

  “Okay,” she replied.

  We picked up some food at the drive-thru and drove to her house. We stayed in the car, eating double cheese-burgers and french fries, and sharing ketchup.

  “You got a boyfriend?” I finally asked.

  “I got a few that like to come around, but they ain’t about nuthin’. You know. Immature.”

  “So you’re looking for a mature brother?”

  “That’s right. I’m tired of all this juvenile nonsense.”

  “What you think about me?”

  “You’re a’ight,” Emako said, and looked at her watch.