The Other Half of My Heart

by Sundee T. Frazier

  “Unneighborly inconsideration is all I hear.” Grandmother Johnson closed the shears on a thick stem with a grunt. Snap! “That woman is single-handedly bringing down the property values of all the homes on this street, with those cornstalks—they attract raccoons, you know—and that disgusting compost pile; her hideous yellowing yard; and the dishes of pet food all over her porch, attracting every kind of mangy mutt and tattered cat to tramp through my perfectly groomed grass. I work hard to keep my yard looking respectable, and I will protect my investment.”

  From the looks of the lush green grass, the only hard work Grandmother Johnson had done was to lift a pen and write a check for someone to come spray a bunch of yucky chemicals. Very environmentally unfriendly chemicals.

  “Next thing you know, she’s going to have vagabonds showing up for handouts. Not to mention she practices voodoo. I’ve seen the shrunken heads in her kitchen window. And she’s always burning candles—probably doing some kind of ancestor worship or séances. She’s going to burn our houses down one of these days.”

  Snip, snip.

  She peered at a flower. “She doesn’t even garden with gloves!”

  Snap!

  “Has she lived here a long time?” Minni asked. She had become more intrigued with each new bit of information.

  A scruffy dog with floppy ears and wiry, matted fur slunk up the woman’s front steps and disappeared.

  “Here as in next door? Only a year or so. But she’s a Raleigh-Durham native, same as me.”

  “Did you know each other growing up?”

  “Our families were friendly, I suppose, but I never liked her. Too brash for my tastes. Spent her whole career at Shaw University—the historically black college here in town—teaching African studies and anthropology. Very strange people, those anthropologists. Why she had to move next door to me of all places, God only knows.”

  The dog appeared on the steps again. He trotted into Grandmother Johnson’s yard. Minni smiled, hoping to make a friend. She held out her hand and tiptoed toward him. He sniffed around the grass, and…he wasn’t about to…was he?

  Grandmother Johnson looked up just as the dog hunched into a position that could only mean one thing. “Don’t you dare do your dirty deed on my grass!” Grandmother Johnson jumped up and ran toward the animal, pumping her fists and bellowing.

  The dog turned to look, but he was smack-dab in the middle of his business, which was to use Grandmother Johnson’s pristine green grass as his own private lavatory.

  “Get!” Grandmother Johnson waved her shears in the air. “Get, I said!”

  Minni watched through her fingers as the dog left three neat little packages—signed, sealed and delivered—on Grandmother Johnson’s TruGreen chemically treated, blemish-free lawn.

  Grandmother Johnson shook her shears. “Shoo!”

  The dog let out a low growl. If the animal attacked, Minni wasn’t at all sure which way she would run. She should probably do something—try to scare him off—but there was a little bit of her heart—a mean part, she knew—that wanted the mutt to frighten the old woman. Payback for how she’d treated Keira last night and again this morning.

  Somehow Grandmother Johnson made herself even taller. She jabbed the shears as if she were a sword fighter.

  The dog bared his teeth and growled again.

  Minni’s heart flopped around her chest like a fish out of water. The ends of her fingers tingled with fear.

  Grandmother Johnson lunged.

  The dog tore across the yard, leaped from the cement wall to the sidewalk and scampered away.

  “What’s going on?” Keira had pulled her hair into two knots—like cinnamon buns—one behind either ear. She’d decorated them with rhinestone bobby pins. The front was still held down with the pink headband.

  Minni grabbed Keira’s arm with shaking fingers. What had happened was so scary and hilarious at the same time that all she could do was laugh. Nervous laughter that bubbled up inside her chest as if she were a glass of Gigi’s sparkling mineral water.

  “What’s so funny? What’d I miss?”

  Grandmother Johnson called out, “Keira, get me a paper sack, second drawer down to the right of the sink!” She stood over the dog’s “dirty deed.” “And bring the hammer and a nail.”

  “Why does she need a hammer and a nail?” Keira asked.

  Minni was afraid to guess.

  “Hurry up, child!”

  Keira looked miffed, then walked back to the house.

  “Minerva, fetch me that trowel from the flower bed.” Grandmother Johnson pointed to an area near the roses.

  Minni had no idea what she was being asked to do.

  “The spade. There. In the dirt.” Grandmother Johnson waved her hand, scowling.

  Minni looked again. All she saw was a small shovel, its sharp point sticking into the ground. She pulled it up by its handle as if she were yanking a weed. “You mean this?” Now that she could see the whole thing, she realized it looked very much like the spades she knew about—the kind on Daddy’s playing cards.

  “You don’t know what a spade is, child? I don’t suppose your mother’s teaching you about tending flowers out there, either.”

  “Mama doesn’t like gardening.” Minni handed Grandmother Johnson the tool. “She just lets whatever shows up grow wherever it wants.”

  Mama always said if something took hold in a particular place, its roots must have found what they needed in that plot of ground, and who was she to remove it? There was a pine tree almost two feet tall in their front yard that had gotten blown there by the wind. Minni had hung tiny ornaments that she made out of Mama’s shiny Mardi Gras necklace on the tree last December.

  Keira returned. She started to hand everything over, but Grandmother Johnson traded her the spade for the hammer and nail. “Now, be a good granddaughter and put it in the bag,” she said, pointing to the ground.

  Keira’s face contorted. Her lips parted and her tongue flew to the back of her teeth. She was about to give Grandmother Johnson a big, fat NO.

  Minni grabbed the shovel. “I’ll do it. I don’t mind.”

  Keira set the open bag on the ground and backed away. “Be my guest.”

  Minni crouched. Grandmother Johnson stood over her muttering. “That woman…putting out food for every stray animal in Wake County…”

  Minni held her breath as she scooped the dog’s excrement, but she really didn’t mind doing it. If she became one of those scientists who observed animals in their natural habitat, tracking their movements and recording everything about their daily activities, including their elimination habits and the contents of what came out, she’d be doing this for a living.

  “…creating a health hazard…should have had a fence built the day she moved in…this time I’m calling Animal Control.”

  Minni closed the bag and stood. “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Follow me.” Grandmother Johnson crossed the boundary between her TruGreen yard and the neighbor’s dry, yellowing one. “Next time I get the lawn treated, she’s getting the bill.”

  Minni held the package by its folded-over top. It could have been a bologna sandwich and some carrot sticks. Looks sure could be deceiving.

  She glanced at Keira, who stayed a couple of steps behind, pinching her nose and looking thoroughly disgusted.

  Grandmother Johnson stomped up the front steps and kicked aside one of the dishes. Pet food scattered everywhere, sounding like hail on a roof. “Hold it up here.” She pointed to the large, heavy-looking door. Wind chimes tinkled and clanked around them.

  Minni and Keira exchanged glances. They didn’t have to be twins to know what the other was thinking. Grandmother Johnson has flipped.

  “What are you going to do?” Minni asked, even though it was more than obvious what Grandmother Johnson intended, standing there holding a hammer and nail.

  Grandmother Johnson raised the tool, a crazed look in her eyes. “It’s time for Laverna Oliphant to g
et potty trained.”

  “You’ll ruin her door,” Minni said, aware that she could no more stop Grandmother Johnson from doing what she pleased than she could hold back a freight train falling over a cliff. But she had to try. The old door was beautiful—painted a dark, shiny purple the color of an eggplant, and topped by three leaded squares of glass.

  “‘An eye for an eye,’ I say. Actually, a small hole is nothing compared to how this crazy woman is ruining our neighborhood.”

  Who was crazy exactly? Making her granddaughters scoop poop and hang it on her neighbor’s door—in skirts and sandals, no less.

  “Hold it up, now!”

  Minni clutched the bag in her sweaty fist.

  “Child, my patience can’t get much thinner.”

  Minni pressed the bag against the door, one hand on either side.

  Grandmother Johnson placed the nail at the top center of the bag. Minni squeezed her eyes shut.

  Bang!

  Minni jumped and her heart took off racing.

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  “What if she’s home?” Keira asked. She cupped her hand around her face and peered into the large front-room window to the left of the door.

  “Then she’ll get it that much quicker.” Grandmother Johnson lowered the hammer.

  Minni let go of the bag. It hung there like a poor man’s door decoration. Her hands felt dirty, not from picking up the poop, but from what she had just helped her grandmother do.

  She listened for the sound of footsteps, expecting any moment to be standing face to face with a very angry, voodoo-practicing neighbor.

  The door remained closed.

  “My first dung-a-gram.” Grandmother Johnson sounded almost gleeful. “Let’s see what the neighborhood wrecker has to say about this ‘welcome home’ surprise.” She slapped the hammer against her palm, looking very satisfied with herself.

  As she spun to leave, she slipped on a round piece of dog food. Her feet fluttered and her arms flailed as she fought to keep herself from falling.

  For sure Grandmother Johnson was being paid back for her meanness this time. Minni knew she probably shouldn’t mess with fate, but she grabbed her grandmother’s flapping arm and held on until the woman had her footing. Even that little bit of her heart that wanted Grandmother Johnson to get it couldn’t let an old lady fall and hurt herself.

  Their grandmother growled, kicking another dish with her pointy-toed shoe. The food went flying. She stomped down the stairs and across the grass.

  “Geez, what got into her?” Keira asked. They stared at Grandmother Johnson as she marched away.

  Minni shrugged, then turned her attention to the mess on Miss Oliphant’s porch. She bit into her bottom lip. “Maybe…” She had started to say they should take the bag down and clean up the kibble, when a long silver-gray car with a peeling black roof and rusty patches on the hood and driver-side door turned into the driveway alongside Miss Oliphant’s house.

  Before the car could get close enough for them to see who was driving, Keira yanked Minni’s arm and they raced down the steps to Grandmother Johnson’s yard.

  Minni’s body buzzed with the fear that they had been seen. Had it been Miss Oliphant behind the wheel? What would she do when she discovered Grandmother Johnson’s surprise package?

  Grandmother Johnson, seeing the car, pushed them in front of her to the garage. “Faster!” she said, clip-clopping up the cement walk. “I’ll retrieve your applications from the house. You get in the car.”

  Minni and Keira climbed into the backseat of a perfectly buffed and shined Cadillac, breathing the smell of disinfectant and waiting to see what their crazy grandmother would make them do next.

  Chapter Twelve

  They drove downtown. Keira made a crack about being chauffeured, but Grandmother Johnson gave her The Eyebrow and that was the end of that.

  They circled the blocky capitol with its spiked crown and passed the fancy, historic Hotel Lamont, where Miss Black Pearl Preteen of America would be held in only eight days. Just looking at the multiple-story white building with the uniformed man standing in front made Minni’s pits sweat.

  “When we arrive at the Black Pearl headquarters, I expect you to be on your best behavior.” Grandmother Johnson eyed Keira in the mirror.

  That sounded pretty strange coming from a woman who had just nailed a bag of dog poop to her neighbor’s door.

  “I want to hear ‘ma’am’ after everything that comes out of your mouth.”

  “Even if we’re talking to a man?” Keira asked. Minni giggled.

  “You know that’s not what I mean.” Grandmother Johnson’s mouth snapped shut like a stingy person’s coin purse.

  Minni pushed out her lips and shushed Keira without sound. Her sister was pressing her luck again.

  Keira made a zipping motion across her mouth and grinned at the back of Grandmother Johnson’s head.

  “The president of the organization is Dr. Billie Hogg-Graff. I’ve met her at several functions here in Raleigh.”

  “Hog as in pig?” Keira’s nose wrinkled.

  Minni hit her sister’s leg.

  Grandmother Johnson glanced in the mirror. “It’s unfortunate, I know. Luckily for her, her maiden name wasn’t Goat.”

  Keira’s eyebrows popped up. “Billie Goat-Graff?”

  The girls looked at each other wide-eyed. Had their grandmother just made a joke?

  Grandmother Johnson looked over her shoulder as she backed the car into a space along the curb. The turned-up corners of her mouth and eyes seemed to be saying she thought what she’d said had been pretty clever.

  Minni peered out the window. They had pulled up in front of a mansion. And Minni didn’t think that just because of the tall second-story windows, or the two chimneys coming out of the flat roof, or even the parapeted tower that rose above the front entrance. A sign in the front yard actually said, BROOKMORE MANSION—1838. Beneath that, it said, HOME OF BLACK PEARLS OF AMERICA, INC. EST. 1946.

  “It used to be a plantation”—Grandmother Johnson nodded toward the big house—“but look who runs the place now!” She let out a sharp laugh.

  Grandmother Johnson slipped on a pair of white gloves, picked up her purse and the folder with their applications and checked her face in the mirror. She turned and looked back and forth between them. “Remember, first impressions are everything. From the moment we step through that front door, the competition has begun.” Just like that, she was all business again.

  The girls lagged behind as long as they could, walking hand in hand. Minni leaned into Keira, whispering. She described Grandmother Johnson’s face when she’d seen that mutt squat in her yard—“I thought her eyeballs were going to shoot from their sockets and explode in a burst of fireworks.” Keira tilted back her head and laughed toward the Easter-egg-blue sky.

  Holding Keira’s hand, being able to make her sister laugh—these were the things that made Minni feel that everything would be okay, no matter what happened with this silly pageant or how crazy Grandmother Johnson got.

  Bells on the door tinkled when they walked in, but no one was behind the front desk.

  Keira zoomed toward the coffee table and snatched up a magazine. She plopped into one of the cream-cushioned wicker chairs and started flipping pages. Essence. She was always begging Mama for a subscription so she could look at the fashions, but Mama said the content was “too mature” for girls their age. Keira tried to use her learning disability to convince Mama she wouldn’t bother trying to read the articles, but Mama hadn’t been swayed.

  Grandmother Johnson picked up a pen and started writing in a visitors’ log.

  The wicker chairs, leafy palm plants and gauze-curtained windows reminded Minni of Gigi’s Caribbean-inspired living room. A ceiling fan created a light breeze, and she thought she smelled coconut. She sniffed the large white candle in the center of the coffee table. Definitely coconut.

  “Tch.” Grandmother Johnson shook a finger at her. “No canine
behavior.” She hung her purse from the crook in her arm and clasped her white gloves in front of her as if she were the Queen of England.

  Minni sat in the chair next to her sister. A container of seashells sat on the glass-topped table between them. She picked out the shells one at a time, noticing each one’s unique beauty. How she would love to be walking barefoot along the beach, letting the water lick her toes and the sea breeze tickle her face.

  Grandmother Johnson pulled out their applications and flipped through them once more. She cleared her throat. She yanked a tissue from the box on the counter and dabbed it against her upper lip. “Where in the world…?” she muttered. “Hel-lo!” No wonder their grandmother had said earlier that her patience couldn’t get much thinner. She hardly had any to stretch.

  Minni looked into the container again. When she saw it, it took her breath away. The shell spiraled into a perfect circle—starting at the outer edge as pearly white and turning browner and browner, curling into a near-black center. It was just like her family—white, brown and black all swirled into one round whole. She pushed it into her skirt pocket, feeling a little guilty about taking it, but on the other hand, hadn’t someone taken the shell from the beach? There were so many in the dish, no one would notice if one went missing.

  “The nerve of these people.” Grandmother Johnson plunked her purse on the counter. She reached over and rattled the doorknob on the divider door.

  “Can I help you?” a woman said.

  So much for making a good first impression.

  Grandmother Johnson pulled back her hand as if she’d been bitten by a snapping turtle. “I should hope so. We’ve been waiting for quite some time.”

  Their grandmother was as sour as the buttermilk she drank. Didn’t matter who she was talking to.

  Whom, Minni heard Grandmother Johnson say in her head. It doesn’t matter to whom I’m talking.

  “I apologize. We were in a meeting.”