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FOUNDING MEMBER
Emma and Emmanuel, a Marriage
Emmanuel and Emma Pierre at their wedding.
Through the Walls
BY SUSIE DAY
Emmanuella and Emmanuel
Pierre call each other
“Twin.” It makes sense,
since they both have practically
the same fi rst name and were
both born on April 10, 1978, to different
Caribbean immigrant families,
one in Canada; the other in the US.
They met on a Brooklyn playground
when they were ten years old. Emmanuella
– Emma, as she’s known –
remembers:
I was the new kid in sixth grade.
Emmanuel dropped his ball and I
picked it up. He said, “Thanks,” then
he said, “God, you’re skinny. You look
like Olive Oyl.” And ran away. So we
became best friends.
They lost touch in high school but,
incredibly, rediscovered each other by
accident on the Brooklyn Bridge during
the August 2003 NYC blackout.
They’ve been together, in one way or
another, ever since — even after 2005,
when Emmanuel was sentenced to
25-to-life for murder — which, Emma
tells me, is a wrongful conviction.
Four years ago, in a prison ceremony,
they were married.
Emma is a sparkling, upbeat person
— quite a feat, given that Emmanuel’s
fi rst chance for parole isn’t
for another seven years. Emma and
her son Graham live in Brooklyn,
where she works at a fi nancial regulatory
fi rm, volunteers for Release
Aging People in Prison, and waits for
the day when Emmanuel walks free.
Recently, I was talking to Emma on
Zoom about all this. Neither of us
knew that Emmanuel himself would
enter the conversation.
Let’s begin just after Emma talked
about how much fun she and Emmanuel
had every day, after they reconnected
on the Brooklyn Bridge.
They were inseparable for maybe
eight months. Then Emmanuel was
arrested…
EMMA PIERRE: The night they
came for him, he was actually on his
way to my house. And when he was
taken, I felt like somebody had died.
I became like the family liaison,
the paralegal of his case. He had a
girlfriend at the time, so I was really
just helping get everything together.
His parents are Haitian immigrants;
none of us were familiar with what
was going on. I’ve never been in trouble
with the law; he’s never been in
trouble with the law — we were kind
of blind to everything. After he was
convicted, people scattered. But I was
EMMA PIERRE
there from the beginning because I’d
have wanted someone to help mein
that predicament. Also, I’m Catholic,
and Jesus was in jail…
His friends helped me get through
it. I ended up marrying one of his
friends and had my son with him. It
didn’t work out, so I dated for a bit.
Then one day I was single and visiting
Emmanuel in prison. I kind of looked
at him; he kind of looked at me. We
started asking each other, “What do
you think would have happened if
we’d ended up together?”
He said, “I don’t know. I always
saw us getting old together, sitting on
the porch, sipping lemonade.” Next
thing, we kind of dated, then one day
he called and said, “You want to get
married?” I said, “Yeah! Why not?”
We got married at Green Haven Correctional
Facility.
I got fl ak from my family, of course.
My brother and I stopped speaking.
My mother was like, “You married
him, youfi gure it out.” A lot of my
friends still don’t know. I guess the
stigma of being married to an incarcerated
person bothers me. I’m very
protective of what I have with Emmanuel.
➤ PIERRE, continued on p.17
JANUARY 28 - FEBRUARY 10, 2 16 021 | GayCityNews.com
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