The Other Half of My Heart (8 page)

She opened her book. She had been surprised to learn that Martin wasn’t even Dr. King’s real name. It was Michael. Some of his friends called him Mike his entire life. His dad had changed his own name and his firstborn son’s after visiting Germany and learning about some famous church guy named Martin Luther—a man whom he apparently had been very impressed with and wanted his son to be like.

Minni hadn’t been named after anyone famous, just Grandmother Johnson—a woman who, as far as she could tell, she didn’t want to be like at all. As the plane taxied toward the runway, she rested her head on the seat, closed her eyes and tried to think about anything other than where they were headed.

A
few hours after switching planes in Chicago, they bumped to the ground in Raleigh. In the Jetway, the warm, sticky air clung to Minni’s skin, making her feel sluggish and slow.

She shuffled along behind the escort and Keira, who walked with clipped, sure steps and swiveled her bag around small children, a luggage cart and a guide dog with the smooth sophistication of a veteran flight attendant.

Minni found herself staring at people passing in the corridor and waiting for planes—the very thing she disliked having others do to her and her family. But she couldn’t help it. This was
nothing
like Port Townsend, or even Seattle, for that matter. “There are so many more black people than at home,” she whispered to Keira.

“I know. Nice, isn’t it?”

Minni nodded, but she also suddenly felt about as pale as a flounder.

At the baggage claim area, a black man in a white button-down shirt with yellowish stains under his arms held a sign scrawled in black ink.

Drat
.

Her name had been written in all-caps for the entire Raleigh airport to see:

MINERVA AND KEIRA

Keira nudged Minni’s arm. “A hired driver. I always knew she was rich, in spite of her stingy cards.” Grandmother Johnson sent two cards each year—one on their birthday and one on Christmas, with a twenty-dollar bill for them to split.

“You Mrs. Johnson-Payne’s?” the driver asked.

“Unfortunately,” Keira said under her breath.

Minni nodded. They got their bags and followed the driver to the garage.

They sat in the back of the black Town Car with tinted windows. They were being chauffeured for real! Minni eyed the card with their names lying on the seat between them. Keira had asked to save it as a souvenir.

As they left the airport, a sign welcomed them to North Carolina. Minni looked out across the lush green landscape, darkened by the dusky night air. It was as green as where they came from, but in a different sort of way. Bushier and overgrown, like the whole area needed a big buzz cut. There wasn’t a single evergreen—Minni loved those trees for their elegance and streamlined appearance. The trees here were
leafy and full, like the handful of deciduous trees around Port Townsend. They inflated in spring and summer, giving the illusion of being much larger than they actually were. Come winter, they would be stripped of their finery—nothing but spindly wooden skeletons left to shiver in the wind.

The driver exited the freeway near downtown. The Raleigh skyline consisted of eight or ten tall buildings, mostly concrete and brick and very drab. Three buildings outstripped the others in height. They contained more glass, looked more modern, and reflected the twinkling lights around them.

The man drove down a busy main street toward a lit-up, grayish-white stone building—blocky, with lots of columns and, in front, a lighted pillar topped by a statue of a man wearing a broad-brimmed hat and leaning on a rifle.

“Thought you might enjoy seeing the capitol,” the driver said, stopping at an intersection and pointing.

That’s the capitol?
Minni thought. It wasn’t nearly as impressive as theirs in Olympia. The roof was a dull bluish green and the dome on top was minuscule, although it did have an interesting decorative crown around its perimeter.

“It has a reputation for being the most”—he paused dramatically
—“haunted
state capitol in the country.”

Well, that certainly made things a bit more intriguing. Minni took another look, this time with genuine interest.

They turned this way and that until the streets were no longer lined with high-rises and businesses but houses—old houses with pointy roofs and porches and lots of gingerbread-type decoration, painted in colors like light
blue, yellow and mint green. “I see from Mrs. Johnson-Payne’s address that she lives in the old Oakwood neighborhood, where all the well-to-do lived back in the eighteen hundreds.”

Of course they knew this already. Grandmother Johnson liked to point it out. She was a member of the Oakwood Garden Club and sat on the board of the Historic Oakwood Neighborhood Preservation Society.

They turned onto Elm Street. Minni remembered the giant trees at once. They lined the street and reached far above the houses, shading each yard with their branches.

The car pulled up in front of a single-story white house. The porch light was on. A dormer with three square windows stuck up from the green-shingled roof. A green vinyl awning angled down from under the gutter and ran across the entire length of the porch, making it hard to see the front door or the windows on either side.

The house was set back and up from the street. A waist-high retaining wall covered with ivy separated the perfectly groomed front lawn from the sidewalk. Black iron railings on either side of four cement steps led to the front walk and a lighted lamp on a black iron post, also wound about with ivy. At the end of the front walk, another four or five steps led to the porch. The flower beds—front and side—displayed a huge variety of mostly pink, yellow and white blooms.

She didn’t remember the awning. It looked shiny and new—perhaps one of the “improvements” Grandmother Johnson was supposedly always making to her home. Minni
didn’t remember the two-story lavender house next door, either, but then it had been five years since they’d visited, and they’d just been little kids.

The driver opened Minni’s door. “Thank you…sir,” she said, remembering the instructions Mama had given them to use “sir” and “ma’am” when addressing adults. It was the polite, Southern way. She got out and hitched her backpack over her shoulders.

He handed them their dresses and pulled their suitcases from the trunk. He even walked their bags up to the porch and set them by the door. When he came back to where they still stood near the car, he checked the address on a slip of paper. “This is the right place, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And she’s expecting you?”

Minni nodded, but neither she nor Keira moved.

The man raised an eyebrow. “Okay, then…” He waited for another moment, as if he wasn’t sure whether to go. “Enjoy your stay in Raleigh.” He walked to his door, glanced once more over the car’s roof at them and then drove away.

They stood on the sidewalk, looking up at their grandmother’s house. It was as if they were being born all over again. Neither one of them wanted to be first.

Something in the front window of the lavender house caught Minni’s eye—had the curtain moved?

“I guess we should go to the door, huh?” Keira said.

“I guess we should,” Minni replied. They took the cement steps to the front walk together.

Seeing the porch swing hanging from its chains, Minni felt Mama’s hand stroking her hair as she lay, rolled in a ball, with her head in Mama’s lap. The swing was completely silent in the still night air, but Minni could hear it—like the creaking of a dock swaying in the ocean—as she, Mama and Keira rocked back and forth on the warm summer nights of their first and only visit.

Minni looked up at the baby-blue porch ceiling. Yes, she remembered that, too. It had been painted to resemble the sky, and something else…some old wives’ tale their grandmother had told them.

The dead bolt unlocking made a thunk. The front door swung open. Grandmother Johnson appeared behind the screen, filling its frame. “Finally. I was beginning to wonder.” She pushed the screen door toward them.

She wore a navy blue suit jacket and skirt that came to her knees, sheer blue stockings and practical navy blue pumps, which added at least a couple of inches to her already imposing height.

She looked them up and down, stopping at their heads. “I’m pleased to see you are putting more effort into your hair these days, Minerva.”

Minni had noticed her hair in the Town Car’s tinted windows. Thanks to Keira’s ultra-strong hair spray, the elegant updo looked almost exactly the same as when they’d left their house that morning.

Grandmother Johnson’s eyes shifted to Keira. The lines around her lips deepened. “You, on the other hand…”

Keira’s eyes narrowed.

“How can your mother allow you to go out with your hair looking like that?”

Minni started to say that Keira had been the one who put her hair in its fancy style, but Grandmother Johnson waved at them to come in. “Get inside, then. In spite of what my grandmother thought, a blue porch ceiling does
not
keep away flies.”

Keira entered with a huff, jerking her wheelie behind her.

Minni stepped inside and tugged on her suitcase, which seemed to have gotten stuck on the doorjamb. She looked down just in time to see her wheelie bump over one of Grandmother Johnson’s extra-long navy blue pumps. “Sorry,” she said, nearly tripping over her own long feet in her hurry to get inside. So she had Grandmother Johnson to thank for her humongous feet as well as her clunky name.

“I think I’ll survive.” The door shut with a thick
clump
, enclosing them in the stuffy, dimly lit living room. “I keep the curtains closed during the day to help it stay cooler in here.” Grandmother Johnson’s strategy didn’t seem to be working.

Not only was it hot, it smelled like rotting bananas and disinfectant spray. Behind two wingback chairs, a long strip of Oriental rug created a path across the hardwood floor to the dining room through a large opening in the living room wall. The chairs faced a baby grand piano in the front corner of the living room and a fireplace surrounded by a floor-to-ceiling wall of built-in bookcases—stuffed full of books!

Minni suddenly remembered being six and staring up at
the wall of books, filled with awe and a little fear that if she pulled one out they’d all come crashing down. When she’d been alone in the room, she had tried anyway, tugging one free from its tight space. She’d only started to read a couple of years before, and the book she’d pulled down was full of small print and big words, but she sat and read as much as she could anyway. Grandmother Johnson had discovered her there on the floor, and after that, everywhere they went, she bragged to anyone who would listen about her six-year-old granddaughter who read at a college level.

“Your trip was uneventful enough, I expect.”

They both mumbled, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Give me your gowns and I’ll hang them in my closet.”

They handed over the dresses and Grandmother Johnson inspected them through their clear plastic covers. “I see your mother followed my instructions to keep them appropriate.”

Minni and Keira eyed each other. Mama had told them not to let their grandmother know Gigi had taken them shopping. She would say she didn’t like the dresses even if they were fine.

“First things first. Go to the lavatory and wash your hands.” Grandmother Johnson pointed to an opening that led to a hallway on the right. “Airplanes are a bacterium’s paradise. And wash your faces as well. You will see the washcloths on the shelf.”

Lavatory?
She still talked like a teacher, even though she’d been retired for a while now.

“In my teaching career of forty-five years, I encountered every communicable disease known to mankind, and not a single one ever brought me to my knees.” Grandmother Johnson picked up a spray can from a small table by the door and released its contents into the air. “It’s a constant battle, but I know how to keep germs in their place.”

Minni choked back a cough as a cloud formed around her head.

They had entered a war zone, and for the next week and a half, this stern, disinfectant-spraying woman would be their commander in chief.