Emma-Lou Morgan is blue-black skinned. Born in Boise, Idaho, to a light-skinned mother and a blue-black father, she learns very early on in her life about the intricacies of colorism. Her mother is of European ancestry, and her grandmother is known as a "blue vein", which means that her skin was pale enough to see her veins through it. Emma-Lou's mother believes that having blue-black skin will hold her back in life. Perhaps if she had been a boy it would not have mattered, but being a girl....Emma-Lou hates being a girl when she hears this and wishes she had been born a boy. If she'd been born a boy then she might not have been subjected to the skin lotions, potions, scrubs and dyes that her mother's side of the family put on her skin in an attempt to lighten it; after all, that is what the commercials tell them they will do.
Emma-Lou stands out like a sore thumb, and she is miserable. At home she is too dark. At school she is the only black student amongst a sea of white faces. At graduation she feels self-conscious because of her color and does not feel the sense of accomplishment that she should on the day of her graduation.
Emma-Lou's Uncle Joe believes in his niece's potential and also thinks that rather than Emma-Lou's color holding her back it is her mother's attitude towards her color that is proving hard to overcome. He encourages her to attend the University of Southern California. There will be other black students there and she won't feel so different. He also believes she should study education and then once qualified should go to a larger more southern city to be a teacher. Uncle Joe believes that Boise has a "small town" mentality that is totally wrong for Emma-Lou. Her mother's family are too wrapped up in who is darker than whom, and what the darkness of their color means for them socially. Perhaps if she was in a bigger city, where people have more to occupy their thoughts, things would be different and she could escape this silly prejudice.
Registration Day, and a new start dawns for Emma-Lou. She wants to start off on the right foot, and that includes becoming friendly with the right people. She gravitates towards another student, Hazel Mason, but quickly realizes she is lower class, and not the "right people" at all. Other female students are friendly enough, but nobody really invites Emma-Lou to join them. She is never asked to join anyone for lunch, or to study together. and the sorority doors remain closed to her. Many girls saw her talking to Hazel and are giving her a wide berth because of that. Hazel isn't at school very long before dropping out.
Emma-Lou becomes friendly with a sorority girl named Grace Giles. Grace tells her that she will never make it into the sorority because they only invite lighter skinned girls to join - so much for Uncle Joe's theory. Emma-Lou is beginning to notice that successful men have lighter-skinned wives or girlfriends. She feels imprisoned in her skin, because it is the one thing she cannot change, and the one thing that she sees as preventing her from living the life she is capable of.
Despite coming into contact with many young men at college, it is not until she gets home to Boise that Emma-Lou gets a serious boyfriend. His name is Weldon Taylor, and they meet at a picnic. Despite her promise to herself to find a light-skinned man, she is attracted to Weldon despite the fact he is darker skinned than she would have liked. Emma-Lou thinks she is in love, and sleeps with him. She remains obsessed with him despite his unusual lifestyle' he dropped out of college "temporarily" so that he could work a job or two to earn his next year of tuition. This work involves moving from town to town, and like sailors, Weldon has a girl in every port. When he leaves Boise to take a job as a train porter, Emma-Lou once again thinks her darker skin has impacted her life, theorizing that he would never have left a light skinned girl. She graduates from USC and decides to move to New York.
Emma-Lou is positive that in New York City she won't suffer from the effects of colorism and that she will find success on her own merits. She signs up with an employment agency, padding out her resume to give the appearance of work experience as a stenographer. The owner of the agency, Mrs Blake, sends her out on a couple of interviews, but when Emma-Lou gets there she is told that the job is already earmarked for someone else. Mrs Blake admits that black businessmen prefer to hire pretty, light-skinned girls as their stenographers and assistants. She becomes the second person to recommend that Emma-Lou becomes a teacher, suggesting she attend Columbia Teachers' College and applying for a job in the public school system.
Despite her college degree, Emma-Lou discovers that the only way she can stay in New York City for a little longer is by working as a maid to an actress in a melodrama that she doesn't think is particularly good. The actress, Arline Strange, takes Emma-Lou to her first cabaret show, introduces her to her brother and shows her how to dance. Emma-Lou seems particularly drawn to the dancing and a man from another table invites her up onto the dancefloor.
Later that evening, the man, Alva, and his room-mate, Braxton, are talking about their night out at the cabaret and both conclude that with her having such blue black skin, Alva did her a favor dancing with her.
Emma-Lou sees Alva again, by happenstance, when she goes to a casino one evening. He is pleasant and polite, telling her that he remembers her from the cabaret. He gives her his phone number, and when she calls they make a plan to go out which irritates Braxton, who thinks his friend could do much better than Emma-Lou. Alva tells him she is just as worthy as other girls they know then reminds him that "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice." Despite his protestations, though, it seems as if Alva is ashamed of Emma-Lou. He never takes her out where they might be seen and when he sees his friends he takes a lighter-skinned girl along as his date. He finally relents and takes her to a "rent party" where they get into a heated discussion with other party guests about the differences between a mulatto and a negro, and about colorism.
Emma-Lou returns home drunk and this does not go down well with her landlady who tells her that she has to find somewhere else to live. Emma-Lou begins to remember details about the party, and when she thinks back on her behavior, agrees that her behavior was far below the standard that she should expect for herself. She also starts re-thinking her feelings about Alva. She likes him and he is always kind to her, but she knows he has a reputation for being a ladies man.
Alva is also a manipulator and a bit of a con artist. Braxton moves out of their flat which puts him in a quandry; he has never paid rent - Braxton did that - and now he doesn't have any money. He doesn't want Emma-Lou to move in with him either. When he an Emma-Lou have a big argument, he storms home alone, to find his erstwhile lighter-skinned companion, Geraldine, already lying in his bed. She tells him that she is pregnant and that he is the father.
Fast forward two years; Emma-Lou is still working as a maid, but she is also considered a companion, this time to a retired actress named Clere Sloane. She is married to a white writer, Campbell Kitchen. He is very interested in Harlem and the cultural environment it presents. He is encouraging of Emma-Lou, telling her that education can set her free. The more education she has, the further she could go in life, and achieve her independence financially. Nothing much has changed for Emma-Lou; she still feels lonely and isolated, and doesn't really fit in very well anywhere. Since breaking up with Alva, she hasn't seen him and on the one occasion she went to his home Geraldine answered the door, so Emma-Lou left without saying a word. She has heard that their son was born deformed and that Geraldine blames Alva for the birth defects.
Emma-Lou moves to the Y.W.C.A. and finally begins to make some friends. She is also studying teaching. She begins dating Benson Brown, a man described as a "yaller nigger" whose appearance is enchanting to her. Unfortunately, Emma-Lou is soft hearted and naive and when she learns that Geraldine has dumped her son with Alva and left them both, she goes to check on him and he is able to manipulate her into staying and taking care of the child. She is a good mother to him. She starts a teaching job in Harlem, and does become more financially independent, but she is still not really happy, and knows that if she can leave Alva, she will be making a start at a life that she will find fulfilling. She calls Benson to tell him that she's leaving Alva but learns that he and Emma-Lou's friend, Gwendolyn, have been dating since Emma-Lou went back to Alva, and are now getting married.
This is an epiphany for Emma-Lou. She realizes she has been running away from things all of her life. She decides to stop running. She finally understands that until she learns to accept herself nobody else can accept her either. The first thing she stops running from is her dark colored skin.
