The Other Half of My Heart (2 page)

Some people said it couldn’t be true. How could two babies, one black and one white, come from the same mama? Their story had even appeared on one of those Web sites that tell whether something is a hoax…which of course they weren’t, and the Web site said so. Minni and Keira really existed, and they really were twins, although Minni sometimes wondered herself how it had happened.

She’d asked Mama once, “Am I just white? Or am I black, too?” because when she looked at her pale skin next to her sister’s and Mama’s rich brown, it sure was hard to see how she could be called black.

“Of course you are,” Mama said, not really answering her question. Then she rested her hand on Minni’s cheek. “Your blackness is just hidden a little deeper—like a vein of gold running deep within the soil of your soul.”

Mama was always pointing out that of the millions of genes that made them all human, only seven or eight told their skin what color to be. A minuscule amount, she said. A very small difference.

So that was what Minni chose to believe, even though somewhere deep inside her brain, in a little drawer she rarely let herself open, lived the concern that the difference she’d
been assured didn’t matter actually mattered a lot. That what she’d been told was small might be enormous. Not here, with her family in the sky. Never here. But somewhere. Maybe even everywhere except here.

A tingle ran down Minni’s spine as Daddy dipped the right wing and circled over Forks. She squeezed her sister’s hand and made an early birthday wish:
May nothing ever
, ever
come between Keira and me
. Nothing—
big
or
small
.

M
inni’s mood plummeted as the plane touched down back home. As much as she loved life here in Port Townsend, it was always hard to leave the sky.

Daddy turned the Cessna toward the small airport. Minni’s spirits sank even further when she saw the man with the rough red nose standing in the doorway of their shared hangar. He chewed on the end of his cigar. As usual, his eyes stuck to her family like magnets to metal.

“They both yours?” he’d asked once when Minni and Keira had come with Daddy to fly into Seattle for the day.

“Since the moment they were conceived!” Daddy replied.

“They got the same mama?”

Keira’s hands flew to her hips. “You ever heard of twins coming from different mamas?”

The man’s cigar had practically dropped from his mouth.

Daddy just smiled. Then he took them up into the air where they could be free.

As much as Minni didn’t like the staring, she was used to it. Seemed like people stared at them everywhere they went. The locals all knew them, but Port Townsend was a major tourist destination on the Peninsula, and Minni had seen plenty of gawkers, as if their family was one of the small town’s attractions.

Even in Seattle, where they went to visit the aquarium or ride the ferries and eat greasy fish and chips on the waterfront, people sometimes stared. Mama and Daddy would hold hands, and if there was room on the sidewalk, Minni would grab Mama’s hand and Keira would grab Daddy’s. They’d walk down the street looking like a chessboard row. The inseparable Kings.

Minni knew people were just trying to figure her family out—how they fit together—since they weren’t all the same color like most families. But she still wished there weren’t quite so much staring.

Today she ignored the man with the cigar, grasped her sister’s hand, and swung it all the way to the parking lot.

B
ack in the car, zooming toward home, they belted out “Lean on Me” at the top of their lungs. Minni and Keira took turns leaning into each other—as far as they could with their seat belts on.

They passed the big wooden sign painted in red and light
blue:
WELCOME TO PORT TOWNSEND—VICTORIAN SEAPORT AND ARTS COMMUNITY
. They had lived here all their lives, in this little oceanside town, where it seemed as if half the people were artists and the other half wanted to be.

Mama was no wannabe. She was the real deal. Acrylics, watercolors, even fiber arts. She and twenty-some other artisans operated a collective shop in town called the Water Street Gallery.

“I need to make a quick stop at the food co-op,” Mama said. “We’re out of milk. And we can’t have our birthday cake later tonight without milk!” She smiled over her shoulder.

Daddy pulled into the parking lot and Mama ran in. Her tightly twisted locks bounced with each step. Across the street stood the Family Veterinary Center, which also operated the local animal shelter. Minni had gone in this past week and asked if she could volunteer. She’d be helping feed and care for the animals three times a week once she got trained. She couldn’t wait.

A few minutes later, Mama returned, carton in hand, and they headed for home.

In the kitchen, Minni ignored the blinking light on the answering machine and got herself two cookies from the cookie jar. She climbed into a chair at the kitchen island.

Keira ran straight in and pressed the message button. The recording played. “Lizette, it’s your mother.”

Keira’s lips twisted in disappointment. “As if you wouldn’t recognize
that
voice,” she muttered, taking the milk from Mama and pouring a glass.

Grandmother Johnson’s voice was pointed, like a newly sharpened pencil. “Call me immediately. It’s urgent. And happy birthday to the girls. I assume they got my card.”
Click
.

Mama sighed. “Now what? I swear, that woman should have gone into theater instead of education.” Even after more than twenty years in the Pacific Northwest, Mama’s lilting voice still hinted at the fact that she wasn’t from around there. She sat kitty-corner from Minni and flipped through her new copy of
Art & Design
magazine.

Daddy pulled out the whole package of cookies from the jar and put them on the island. “Aren’t you going to call? She said it was urgent.”

“You know what that means,” Mama said, not looking up from the page.

“Yeah, one of her prize flowers got bugs and she can’t enter it in the biggest show of the century.” Keira grabbed a cookie and dunked it in her milk.

Bugs
had
been the emergency once—as if Mama could do anything about it from four thousand miles away. Or would know what to do if she could. Another time it had been raccoons in the trash. Grandmother Johnson also seemed to have a lot of health issues. Last fall she’d gotten something called gout in her big toe, which had required minor surgery. More recently, it was some kind of intestinal trouble.

“I’ll be in our bedroom, in case anyone
important
calls,” Keira said, heading for the hallway with her milk and cookies.

“Hey, young lady, she’s still your grandmother. Show some respect.” Mama raised her eyes to meet Keira’s.

“A-l-l-l right,” Keira groaned. She disappeared down the hall.

“You’re not exactly walking your talk,” Daddy said.

Mama narrowed her eyes at him, but she didn’t argue. “Little Moon, hand me the phone. Please.”

Minni hopped down and grabbed the phone from its cradle. Mama pushed the buttons slowly, still reading her magazine.

Minni stayed to listen. As snooty as Grandmother Johnson could be, she had a certain mystique. She reminded Minni of Gigi’s antique German clock. The one under the glass dome their other grandmother kept on her mantel. Minni could stand forever and watch that clock’s wheels and sprockets spinning. She wanted to understand how it all fit together—literally, what made it tick—and how it kept time so precisely. If Grandmother Johnson was anything, she was complicated, just like that clock.

“Mother? What’s wrong?”

Grandmother Johnson’s voice pierced the air but Minni couldn’t make out what she was saying.

“No, I suppose you didn’t say something was wrong.” Mama rolled her eyes at Daddy, pressed the phone between her ear and shoulder and went to the sink to fill her glass. “Okay, so what’s urgent?”

Their grandmother was also extremely precise.

Mama put her drink on the counter and grasped the phone with her hand again. She stood silently, looking out
the window over the sink. When she turned, the skin between her eyebrows was wrinkled. She pinched the bridge of her flat, triangular nose, the way she often did when talking to her mom. “We’ve already discussed this. I agreed to let them participate when they turn twelve. They just turned
eleven.”
Mama reached for a cookie. Normally, Mama didn’t eat junk food, but Grandmother Johnson, a large woman who liked to throw her weight around, often drove her to do things she wouldn’t normally do.

“Black Pearls of America is a fine organization. I was a part of it. Yes, I know the girls stand to gain by participating. But why—”

Keira came running down the hall in her socks and slid into the kitchen. “Is she talking about the pageant?” she asked Minni excitedly. She’d pulled her thick, tight curls into two pompons, like Mickey Mouse ears. Afro puffs, they called them in their house.

Minni shrugged. She hoped not. They’d been hearing about Miss Black Pearl Preteen since they were six. From Grandmother Johnson, of course—not Mama so much, although she had competed in Miss Black Pearl of America as a teenager.

“Okay. All right. I’ll think about it and get back to you tomorrow morning. Would you like to talk to the girls?”

Keira and Minni shook their heads vigorously. Minni’s scraggly, wavy hair, which she tended to wear in two low ponytails with wispy bangs, flickered at the corners of her eyes like flames.

“Yes, they heard your message.” Mama paused. “Don’t
worry.
If
I agree to this, and that’s a big if, I’ll tell them all about it.” Another pause. “Oh, they’ll be prepared, all right. Believe me, if there were anything I’d want, it’d be for them to be prepared. Goodbye, Mother.” She turned off the phone and handed it to Keira.

“Is it about the pageant?” Keira asked, handing the phone to Minni. Minni returned the phone to its place.

“Mother says the Black Pearl organization is struggling financially and they may not be able to continue the preteen division of the competition after this year. She wants you to come for this summer’s program so you don’t have to wait until you’re thirteen.”

Minni’s heart sank.

Mama muttered to Daddy, “As if that would be the worst thing in the world.”

In a flash, Keira was at Mama’s side, pulling on the crook of her arm. “Can we please, Mom? Can we, can we?”

“I don’t know if I buy it,” Mama said, leaning against the sink. “Black Pearls of America is an institution in the black community. They’ve been going strong for over sixty years. They say they’re not exclusive, but it’s always been a club of rich, successful families—and social climbers, like Mother. They should be rolling in money. In fact, I seem to recall reading they bought a new headquarters building—some old plantation in Raleigh—just a few years ago.”

“Maybe they overextended themselves,” Daddy suggested.

“Who cares?” Keira cried. “Mom, we
have
to go!”

Minni stood on Mama’s other side. “What about our
camping trip with the troop?” Keira might not have liked camping in general, but even she looked forward to their annual Girl Scout getaway because it meant another opportunity to earn a badge.

“That’s not until August,” Mama said. “The pageant is next month.”

“But—the animal shelter! I’m volunteering there three days a week starting next month. Remember?”

“You’d only be gone ten days,” Mama said. “I’m sure the shelter would let you start when you came back.”

“But I don’t
want
to start when I come back. I don’t want to go anywhere!” Minni slumped against the counter. “Especially not to compete in a dumb pageant.”

Keira rushed to Minni and grabbed her hand. “It’s not just a pageant, Skinny! It’s a
scholarship
program. I’ve looked it up online. You could win money for school!”

Minni’s stomach churned at the thought of having to perform in front of hundreds of strangers. What in the world would she do for a talent? Somehow she didn’t think dog impersonations would go over very well with a bunch of rich, successful people.

She looked at Keira. “You really want to stay with Grandmother Johnson for ten whole days?”

The last and only time they had visited North Carolina they had been six years old. Minni still remembered the sour taste of the buttermilk Grandmother Johnson made her drink when she complained of a stomachache. Minni had been sure their grandmother’s awful cooking had made her sick in the first place, and she didn’t understand in the least
how drinking something even more awful was supposed to make her feel better.

“As long as we’re there together—yes!” Keira lowered her voice. “Come on, Minni. We won’t let her get to us.” She hugged herself and twirled, shouting, “We get to be in a
pa
-geant! We get to be in a
pa
-geant!” She bounced around the kitchen. The Afro puffs bounced along with her.

Minni climbed into her chair and covered her ears.

“Slow down, missy. You seem to be forgetting that you had a previous commitment for this summer as well.” Mama’s hand was on her hip.