The Other Half of My Heart (23 page)

“No! Why would they have a phlegmy old white man judge Miss Black Pearl Preteen?”

“Oh, of course. The new arrival. Good ol’ Miss Oliphant. Mother must be thrilled.”

“Why does she dislike her so much?”

“As far as I can tell, plain old-fashioned jealousy. Dr. Oliphant has always gotten a lot of attention for her civil rights activism. The whole ‘neighborhood wrecker’ thing is just a cover-up for Mother’s true feelings.”

Minni stared up at the ceiling. Alisha’s words still rang in her ears. She wished again she weren’t doing this pageant.

“Still there?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve gone serious on me. What’re you working out now?”

“Mama?”

“Yes, daughter.”

“Do I count?”

“Do you
count?”

“Yeah. Do I count?”

“Last time I checked you could count just fine. In fact, you’ve been counting since you were two and I can’t say I’ve heard you miss a number yet.”

“You know that’s not what I mean!”

“What do you mean, then?”

“Do I count as a black person?”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes!”

“Well, then, you do.” Mama paused. “Although even if you said you didn’t want to, I’d still tell you you did.”

Minni sat quietly, thinking about what Mama was saying.

“Daughter of mine, you need to remember something. Especially as you participate in this whole pageant thing.”

“It’s a
program
, remember?” Minni had told Mama about the lady in the office correcting Grandmother Johnson.

“Right. This program. You need to remember that these bodies we’re in are just vehicles. They’re part of who we are, sure. An important part. But what’s riding around inside is a whole lot more important.”

Mama had told them this before. Keira liked to say that
if their bodies were vehicles, then hers was most definitely a Jaguar. Minni had decided on a hybrid—because she was mixed, of course, but also because hybrids were environmentally friendly.

“Many ways to be black, Min. Remember?”

“Okay.”

“Good night, Little Moon.”

“Good night.”

T
he next morning, they headed back to the hotel for rehearsal. Grandmother Johnson delivered her piano recording and Keira’s dance music to the man in charge of sound, then exited the ballroom as instructed. To Minni’s great relief, all parents—and grandparents—were prohibited from watching them practice.

Minni stuck to Keira like a fly on flypaper—being extra careful to avoid Alisha—until Miss Jackie, a petite lady in pink and gray nylon sweats, arrived to teach them the group dance number. She pulled Minni to the back row, right next to Alisha. Keira was put in front.

“We want the tall girls in the back to start, but don’t worry, you’ll all get your chance to be front and center.” Minni was happy to be safely in back, but she didn’t like being separated from her sister. She felt like that naked turtle again.

They went through the routine a few times. Keira was awesome. She had it down after the first go-round. She was clearly a standout in the group.

Alisha was also a natural. She had long legs to match her long lashes. Minni found herself watching Alisha to make sure she was getting the moves right. Unlike Minni, Alisha was graceful and coordinated. She didn’t look as though she was constantly about to trip over her own feet.

“Watch out!” she said under her breath when Minni got a little too close. “You’re crowding me.”

Kick on one. Spin on two. Reach to the side on three. Head tilt on “and.” Slide on four. As long as they were doing it at half speed, Minni could follow, but as soon as the music started and everyone was kicking and spinning and sliding around her, she got totally thrown off.

Miss Jackie stopped the music—a remix of “We Are Family”—and asked Keira to demonstrate the kick, spin, reach and slide, which Keira did so well she could have been practicing it for weeks. Alisha stood with her arms folded and her hip pushed out. She frowned as she watched Keira perform the moves flawlessly.

Minni’s heart swelled with pride. Keira was really good.

“Okay, all together now. Let’s do that sequence again.” Miss Jackie turned on the music.

Minni felt herself slipping behind. She was spinning when she should be kicking. Zigging when she should be zagging.

“One, two, three, and—”

Minni jabbed to the side. Something squished under her finger.

“Ow!” Alisha stumbled backward. Her hand flew to her face.

The music stopped again. Miss Jackie swished over. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Albino girl poked me in the eye!” Alisha pointed to Minni. Her eyelashes fluttered.

Minni’s arms dangled at her side. All eighty-some eyes bored holes into her until she half expected to look down and find that her body looked like Swiss cheese.

“There’ll be no name-calling,” Miss Jackie said. “It’s not in the spirit of Miss Black Pearl.”

“I’m really,
really
sorry.” Minni reached out to touch Alisha’s arm, but the girl jerked away. “It was an accident. Really.” She looked at Miss Jackie, hoping the woman would decide it was better for everyone’s safety that she sit out the opening number. According to the materials in her orientation folder, the group dance wasn’t even a part of the official scoring.

Minni glanced at Keira, who stood in her place up front. She couldn’t tell if her sister looked concerned or just embarrassed. Between having their names announced at the orientation and Alisha spreading the word about “that girl and her white twin sister,” everyone knew they were related.

Miss Jackie put her hand on Alisha’s shoulder and peered into her watering eyes. “I don’t see any broken vessels. You should be fine.” She turned to Minni. “Be more careful next time, and try to keep up, okay?”

Minni nodded, wishing she could melt on the spot and become floor wax.

Miss Jackie returned to the front.

“If you think your light skin’s going to make up for your lack of coordination, it’s not,” Alisha hissed.

Minni stood stiffly, frozen in shock at Alisha’s suggestion. The music started up again and Miss Jackie counted off. Minni kept her legs and arms close to her body, working hard to keep
her
eyes from watering.

A
t lunch, several girls circled Keira, wanting her to show them moves from the dance routine. Minni sat nearby, eating the soggy ham sandwich out of the boxed lunch they’d been given. She hadn’t told Keira about Alisha’s mean remark. Keira would just get angry—maybe even fight the girl—and Minni didn’t want her sister to get kicked out on her account.

She was thankful for Donyelle with the dimpled cheeks, who came and sat next to her—even though she talked the whole time about her one hundred and fifty-seven Barbies.

“They’re all still in their boxes,” she drawled. “It makes them more valuable.”

Minni thought it just made them sound creepy—peering out from their clear plastic windows with their stiff arms and legs and their painted-on smiles. Donyelle’s father had built shelves around her entire room to house the dolls, which was even creepier. How did she sleep with all those dolls watching her? Minni had never gotten into Barbies, but she was genuinely interested to learn that Barbie had been both a marine biologist and a jet pilot, and that they made every
version of Barbie in both white and brown. All Donyelle’s Barbies were brown.

Learning this reminded Minni of the time she and Keira went to the house of a third-grade classmate who had Barbies. The girl had all white Barbies and one brown one and she kept insisting that Keira had to be the brown one because she and the doll had the same color skin. Keira had gotten up and stomped out.

When Minni caught up to Keira on the sidewalk, she was surprised to see tears on her sister’s cheeks. She had felt bad with Keira, even if she hadn’t understood completely what they were feeling bad about. They stopped talking to the girl at school and boycotted her house after that. If the girl noticed, they couldn’t tell. She never invited them back.

After lunch, the girls were told it was time to change into their interview outfits. They would be called on five at a time to meet with one judge each while the rest of the group stayed in the ballroom and practiced the walk across the stage for the formal-wear portion of the competition.

Minni’s stomach flipped. Even though they didn’t have to do the interview in front of a large audience, the thought of being interviewed by a stranger made her feel like she might lose her oatmeal. Maybe she would get Miss Oliphant. That calmed her a little.

When Minni saw that the dressing room was just an open space with a few chairs scattered about, she pulled Keira aside and told her she was headed to the bathroom.

“Why?”

“I don’t want anyone staring at me.”

“Your chest isn’t
that
flat, Skinny.”

“Shhh!” Minni glanced around, hoping no one had heard, even though that wasn’t the reason she wanted to leave. “It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

“I feel like everyone’s staring at me—wondering what I’m doing here. They’re just not saying it like Alisha did.” She glanced around at the girls filling the room. “I don’t look like I belong.”

Keira’s lips twitched. “I guess now you know what it’s like to be me.”

Everything around them—the chattering girls, the four walls, the hotel itself—fell away. There was nothing but her and Keira and the words Keira had just spoken.

Minni’s brain got so quiet, she thought for a moment that it had stopped working. Then she heard her own voice pleading with Mama,
Can’t you try to understand—even for one minute—what it’s like to be me?

“Remember that ‘wrong’ feeling I told you about?” Keira searched Minni’s eyes. “I don’t think it’s something you can really feel or understand…until you experience it yourself. Maybe now you can get it.”

Minni felt as though she were being yanked away, as if by a cosmic-sized rope and pulley. She was already halfway into outer space.

She clambered toward her sister—reaching for words that would fill the chasm growing between them. She started to say that she stood out at Crawford Elementary, too. She had red hair and big feet and the boys called her Ronald McDonald.

But she couldn’t say it, because in spite of all that—when it came down to it—her skin still allowed her to fit in.

Here she was being given an opportunity to feel what Keira felt—in a sense, to be inside her sister’s skin—to get even closer to her…and she didn’t want to. She wanted to go back to the place where her skin didn’t matter. Where she wasn’t preferred or excluded because of it. Where she could just
be
.

Did a place like that even exist? Had it ever?

And what about for her sister? Would Keira ever be able just to
be
where they lived?

An ocean suddenly separated them. It didn’t matter that they were twins or best friends. Even their closeness couldn’t bridge the distance their different colors had created. Minni wanted to grab her sister and hold her close. Instead, she picked up her clothes, slipped behind a rack full of gowns and changed quickly, alone.

M
inni sat in a chair against the wall of the red-carpeted hallway. The four girls waiting alongside her talked in pairs, leaving Minni alone with her thoughts. Soon they’d enter the room where they’d each have a private interview with a judge and be evaluated on their ability to communicate—twenty percent of their final score.

If Minni couldn’t get her teeth to stop chattering—whether from the air-conditioning or her nervousness she couldn’t tell—she’d get a big, fat zero for this part. She wished she had time to call Mama for words of advice or Gigi for a pep talk.

She also couldn’t stop thinking about Keira. She hadn’t known how much looking different bothered her sister. She supposed she
had
heard Keira say things to Mama now and then, but she’d never
really
understood it—Keira’s
frustration—especially when she was the popular one, the outgoing one, the one who made friends so easily. Keira was the sun. People were drawn to her—orbited around her, even. Everyone liked Keira. Or at least lots of people did. Why was she complaining?