The Other Half of My Heart

by Sundee T. Frazier

  Yes, that would make her stand out back home—probably even more than she felt she did already—but at least then she and Keira could stand out in the same way…together. At least then no one would question whether she was really black.

  She looked in the mirror again, taking in the overall effect. If she had been alive when schools were segregated, she would have insisted she go to a black school, even if people tried to make her go to a white one because of how she looked. She had a black mama and a black sister and lots of black relatives. Eight silly little genes weren’t going to keep her from being black, too.

  Why did people have to be so obsessed with this color stuff anyway? It all made her so mad.

  She said good night to Grandmother Johnson and slowly climbed the creaky stairs. Keira lay on her bed, quietly talking on her phone to Mama and Daddy. “Do you want to talk to Minni?” she asked them.

  Minni shook her head. She just didn’t feel like it.

  “She’s too tired,” Keira said. “I love you, too. Bye.” She hung up the phone, got into bed and stuffed her earbuds into her ears.

  Minni put on her pajamas and turned out the light. She slipped under her covers and looked out the window. A full moon shone in the dark night sky. “Keira?” She looked toward her sister.

  Keira took out an earbud. “What?” The sound of her tumbling routine music spilled out.

  “I’m really sorry for all the stupid things you’ve had to deal with…back home. I get it now, I think. How hard it is to look different.”

  Keira turned off the music and rolled toward her. “Do you think you’re better than me?”

  Minni’s heart dropped. She pushed up to her elbow. “What? How could you even—? Why would I think I’m better than you?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Minni.” Keira sat up. “You know, to a lot of people lighter is considered better.”

  “Not to me!”

  “Our grandmother sure seems to think so. And you don’t know how many times I defended you today to girls I heard saying you probably thought you were ‘all that’ because you’re light-skinned. They think you’re stuck up because you didn’t try to talk to anyone. Why didn’t you try to talk to anyone?”

  Girls had been talking behind her back? Panic rose in Minni’s chest. She pushed herself all the way up and looked across the darkness that separated them. “I don’t think I’m better than you.”

  “Maybe you do.”

  “But I want to be darker.” Minni reached out her hands as if Keira could touch them with a magic wand and make them as brown as her own.

  “Not that I have a problem with my color,” Keira said, “but you don’t know what you’re asking for. And it doesn’t mean you couldn’t still think you’re better.”

  “I don’t!”

  “You could. Deep down in your heart. So deep that you don’t even know about it.” Keira leaned against the wall.

  “How can I think it if I don’t even know about it?”

  “Remember what Mom says? People keep secrets—even from themselves. Like Dad and his fear of getting old.”

  That made Minni stop and look at her chest. Buried below the blackness Mama said was hidden in the soil of her soul, could there be something hidden even deeper—something that told her her skin was somehow better than Keira’s? Just thinking about thinking she was better than Keira made her want to cry.

  She rushed to Keira’s side and, in the glowing light of the moon, begged her with her eyes to take her hand, touch her skin. “You know I don’t think I’m better. Tell me you know.”

  Keira kept her hands clasped around her legs and looked out her window.

  Minni collapsed against the wall. The thought that there could be something like that lurking in a shadowy corner of her heart, prowling like a tiger, just waiting to pounce and tear everything apart…

  Keira put her earbuds back in and lay down.

  Minni rose. Her body had never felt so heavy. She lay on top of her blankets, still as a log washed up on the beach, but roiling inside like the ocean during a storm.

  When Keira’s breathing got deep and steady, Minni rose again. She crept across the room to the dormer windows and sat in the window seat. Her heart throbbed with pain. How could her sister doubt her?

  The ceiling suddenly felt low. The air seemed hard to breathe. She needed wide-open space. She wanted so badly to be on the beach hurling stones—and with them, all her worries—into the bottomless sea. The sky was kind of like the sea, inky and mysterious and vast. Maybe she could get closer to it.

  She pulled on one of the dormer windows until it released. She glanced toward Keira’s bed. Her sister hadn’t moved. She stood on the bench seat, then hoisted herself out and shut the window quietly behind her.

  The roof wasn’t too sloped. If she sat still and was careful she’d be fine. She crouched and looked up at the moon, feeling like a wolf…. She wanted to howl out all her sadness—to yell at someone for making her look the way she did. But who? If there really was a God, then wouldn’t he be the one responsible? Was it okay to yell at God?

  She had never really talked to God on her own. Mama had taught them one prayer, and until they were about seven they’d said it every night before they went to bed. “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take…” Minni would always add silently, “But please don’t let me die in my sleep, God, unless Keira does—then I’ll go, too.”

  So God was someone you recited a prayer to before you went to sleep at night, someone you asked not to let you die, but that was it. She didn’t know anything about being angry with God, but if God really was the one who made people, then it was his fault she had this glow-in-the-dark skin—not to mention her five-alarm-fire red hair and circus-grade size-ten feet.

  She didn’t know where to look when talking to someone she couldn’t see, so she focused on the Man in the Moon. “Couldn’t you think of anything more original?”

  She felt funny talking to the sky. She looked down to make sure no one was walking by.

  Then a little louder: “Did you have to go and copy Bozo the Clown?”

  She glanced up and down the street again. Still no one. Keira had her music in her ears. Grandmother Johnson had already started snoring. No one was going to hear.

  Minni opened her mouth and let God have it.

  She yelled at him about her skin, her hair, and her eyes. She moved on to the dress shop lady, the boy at school, the man at the airfield with the cigar. Then to the pageant, Dr. Hogg-Graff, Alisha. How she stood out among the other black girls. How she didn’t look like she belonged with her own mama and sister. Yes, she shared Gigi’s hair color and Daddy’s blue eyes, but would anyone ever see her as black, too?

  If she had come out looking more black, she and Keira would experience the same things, right alongside each other. Neither of them would have to feel as if she were going through this stuff alone. Minni could tell her sister she understood and Keira would believe her.

  And would there be people who thought she thought she was better than them, all because of her light skin, for the rest of her life?

  The complaints rolled out like thunder, getting louder and louder, as the storm that had been brewing inside her moved in and took over.

  Grandmother Johnson would have a heart attack and die on the spot if she heard Minni yelling. Maybe that was why Minni kept on. Maybe she wanted Grandmother Johnson to hear. Not so she would drop dead on the spot, but so she would hear Minni saying loud and clear that she didn’t agree that dark skin was bad, or that her hair was “good” because it wasn’t kinky-curly like Keira’s.

  But Grandmother Johnson was deep asleep. She wasn’t hearing any of this. Was God?

  Minni had no idea, but she had one last thing to say. “You think you’re so perfect? You’re not! Look at me!” She threw her head back and her hands into the air. “Look at the big mistake you made!”

  Silence.r />
  There was no one there.

  Her chest heaved with the effort her ranting had taken.

  “So, you’ll take on the Lord of the Universe but not prickly old Minerva Johnson-Payne?”

  Minni looked across the inky darkness to the lavender house. Miss Oliphant stood on her balcony, wrapped in a shawl.

  “I…I was just…” Minni shut her mouth. She was embarrassed, and yet not. She felt cleansed, like the air after a good, hard rain.

  “No need to explain to me what you were doing. You were calling the Creator to account. There’s not a person on this planet—at least not an honest one—who hasn’t done the same in one fashion or another.”

  Miss Oliphant pointed to the sky. “You see that star up there? The brightest one, just down to the right from the moon?”

  Minni found the star and nodded.

  “That star could have burned out twenty minutes ago, but we wouldn’t know it because what we’re seeing is what that star looked like twenty years ago. Things are not always what they appear, Miss King.”

  Minni continued gazing at the sky.

  “Would you care to join me for some hot chocolate?”

  Minni looked across the darkness again. Grandmother Johnson would be mad if she knew how friendly she and Miss Oliphant were becoming, but then again, who cared?

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ll meet you at the front.” Miss Oliphant disappeared. The darkness was so solid and undisturbed that for a moment Minni wondered if she had imagined the whole conversation.

  A glow came from the downstairs windows.

  It dawned on her that she would be drinking cocoa with one of the judges the night before the competition. If Alisha or Alisha’s grandmother or anyone else found out, they might accuse her of trying to gain an unfair advantage.

  She could be disqualified….

  Perhaps she had finally found a way out of this whole thing.

  Keira’s participation, on the other hand, couldn’t be put in jeopardy. Minni dropped her legs over the edge of the roof, searched with her toes for the porch railing and climbed down to solid ground.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Bright light scattered the darkness around Miss Oliphant’s porch. The bowls of pet food and water sat here and there, filled and waiting. The heavy purple door opened.

  “Welcome.” Miss Oliphant wore a long cotton gown of red, black and green that reminded Minni of the African fabrics Mama sometimes worked into her art. The woman wrapped her winged sleeve around Minni and pulled her inside. The cloth smelled gingery and warm.

  Minni stepped into a living room glowing from at least a dozen candles.

  “I hope you don’t mind the unconventional lighting. Candlelight is easier on my bad eye than electric.”

  “It reminds me of my dad’s bonfires on our beach.”

  “Your beach?”

  “There’s a beach near our town.” Minni felt a pang of homesickness, but something new as well. It was a feeling—no…more than a feeling, it was a knowing—a knowing that Keira would leave Port Townsend as soon as she could, and when she did, Minni would leave, too, and she would never live there again.

  “My grandmother thinks you do séances or something.”

  Miss Oliphant chuckled. “What other mess has she put in your heads?”

  Grandmother Johnson’s charge of voodoo suddenly seemed ridiculous. “Just that you’re bringing down the property values in the neighborhood.”

  “Quite possibly guilty as charged. But then, I’ve always felt money is somewhat overrated. Having what we need is crucial, but always striving to have more than the next person…Greed will do you in.”

  Minni glanced around. There were piles of books and magazines here and there, and a few boxes sitting around. Whether they were filled with junk, as Grandmother Johnson claimed, Minni thought it was hard to say. She sidled up to a box and peered in.

  Fabric scraps. White, woolly stuff. Trinkets, beads and other bric-a-brac.

  “For my dolls,” Miss Oliphant said.

  “Your dolls?” Minni looked up quickly. Had Grandmother Johnson been right after all?

  Miss Oliphant pulled down a doll from the top of a cabinet and held it out to her. Minni saw the wrinkled face and pulled back. This was one of those heads she’d seen hanging in the kitchen! Did Miss Oliphant have a doll in one of these boxes that looked like Grandmother Johnson? “Is it for voodoo?” Minni glanced at Miss Oliphant, then back at the doll.

  “Voo-doo? No!” Miss Oliphant laughed—a hearty belly laugh. “What in the world would make you think I practice voodoo? Oh. Of course. Your grandmother.”

  Minni knew it had been ridiculous. She giggled nervously.

  “It’s a dried apple,” Miss Oliphant said, pointing to the face. She held out the doll again and this time Minni took it.

  “Oh.” The doll wore wire-rimmed glasses and an African-print dress. Her hair was made of white wool. It was parted in a way that made Minni think of Frederick Douglass, and smelled thick and oily, like Mama’s lanolin conditioner. The more Minni looked at the doll’s face, the more real it became. The doll looked as if she knew everything there was to know.

  “They’re my wisdom dolls. I sell them at local boutiques and give them to friends. Her name is Sophie. ‘Sophia’ means ‘wisdom’ in Greek.”

  Minni thought of her own name, Minerva: goddess of wisdom. The meaning had never meant much to her because, although she’d looked up the definition of “wisdom” in her Webster’s dictionary, she didn’t see how having “accumulated philosophic learning” or even “good sense” was all that desirable. She’d much rather have Keira’s outgoingness or MLK’s courage. And she certainly didn’t feel like any kind of goddess.

  “What is wisdom, exactly?” she asked. Miss Oliphant seemed like the kind of person who would know. The kind of person who had a lot of it herself.

  Miss Oliphant led her to the living room and they sat, Minni on the couch, still holding the doll, and Miss Oliphant in an upholstered chair with claw-shaped arms. A deck of large cards sat on the coffee table. Were those the cards Keira had seen her looking at the other night? Minni had to work hard to refocus on what Miss Oliphant was saying.

  “Well, it’s certainly not something you can pick up at the grocery store or in a fast-food drive-through.” Her opal-fogged eye glowed in the candlelight. “It’s not something you gain without a struggle. It’s not going to just drop out of the sky and into your lap.” She sighed. “You might get lucky and have wise parents who help you find the way to wisdom, but even then, it’s not like an inheritance that gets handed down from one generation to the next. Just because you have wise parents doesn’t mean you will end up wise. You’ve got to go down the wisdom path yourself.”

  “How do you find the wisdom path?”

  “Everyone’s wisdom path is different. You’ve got to find your own.”

  “What if I can’t find it?”

  “If you really want to find it and seek it with all your heart, you will.”

  Minni thought about her recent realization that she had been a coward at the worst times—times when she’d had a chance to fight the wrong in the world that threatened to get inside her sister, but she had chickened out instead. “I’d rather have courage.”

  “You need both. Being foolishly bold will get you nowhere but in trouble. Wise people know that ‘what’s essential is invisible to the eye.’ They don’t make rash judgments based only on what they can see.

  “I need to check on the milk heating on the stove. Be back in a moment.” Miss Oliphant went to the kitchen. Minni glanced over her shoulder, then peeked underneath one of the cards. The queen of hearts.

  Playing cards. Minni flushed. How silly they had been to think she was reading fortunes. She probably used bigger cards to be able to see them more easily, like large-print books.

  Miss Oliphant returned. She handed Minni a mug, then picked two cards off the deck and used the one closest to her
as a coaster. “I love these big cards—useful for so many things. Do you play?”

  “We play hearts in my family.”

  “I’m a sucker for solitaire. Can’t tell you how much sleep I’ve lost trying to beat the deck. A friend even told me I needed to look into Solitaire Players Anonymous. Can you believe such a thing exists?”

  Minni raised her eyebrows.

  “Sadly, it does.” Miss Oliphant sat in her chair, picked up her hot chocolate and blew on the surface. “Made with whole milk and real dark chocolate. Heavenly.”

  Minni lifted her mug slowly, considering the old woman. Her skin was almost as pale as Minni’s. But at the orientation she had been called a “pillar of the black community.” So was she black, or white? Or what?

  “Miss Oliphant?”

  “Please, call me Laverna.” The old woman set down her mug again.

  “Miss Laverna…do you consider yourself more black or white?”

  The woman was still. “I contain multitudes.” The corners of her mouth turned up in a small smile like the Mona Lisa painting in one of Mama’s art books. “But I consider myself black.”

  “You do? Why?”

  “Because that’s what fits my soul.” She rested her hands on the chair’s arms. “What about you?” She gazed at Minni intently.

  Was this some kind of trap? Would Miss Oliphant tell Dr. Hogg-Graff Minni’s answer? Not that Minni cared…or did she?

  “If I was hearing you correctly on the balcony—and I’m pretty sure I was because it’s my eyesight that’s going, not my ears—you’re not too crazy about the color of your skin.”

  Minni looked at the white swirls on the surface of her cocoa. “No, ma’am. I guess I’m not.”

  “Miss King, do you know what the body’s largest organ is?”

  “Please call me Minni.”

  “Okay, then, Miss Minni, do you know what your largest organ is?”