The Other Half of My Heart (4 page)

“Okay,” Mama said, after hanging up the phone. “Let’s see what we have to do to get you girls ready for this pageant.”

The three of them went to Minni and Keira’s bedroom, where Keira had the Black Pearls of America Web site up in a matter of seconds.

The pageant had grown since Mama’s day. They now had one contest for preteens aged eleven and twelve, another for girls thirteen to fifteen, and another for girls sixteen to eighteen, the age Mama had been when she had competed.

The program was only open to active Black Pearls or “legacy members,” which was why Minni and Keira could be considered—because Mama had been a member. There were no state prelims, just the national contests. The applications served as the screening process, although Mama said anyone who met the membership criteria and put down the sponsorship money was basically guaranteed the opportunity to participate.

“Here’s the application.” Keira clicked on a link and a document opened.

Minni pointed to the screen. “This says the deadline has already passed.” She tried not to sound too happy.

“What?” Keira cried. Apparently she hadn’t taken the time to read any details.

“Mother assures me she’s gotten an extension from the director. She said to bring the completed forms with you and she’ll hand-deliver them to the Black Pearls office.”

“Oh,” Minni said.

“Yeah!” Keira printed a copy for each of them. “Maybe the old lady’s not so bad after all.”

Mama’s lips turned down at the corners but she didn’t say anything. Keira picked up the papers from the printer and handed one set to Minni and one to Mama. “What else does it say?”

“Let’s go to the table and work on it together,” Mama said. “Bring some extra paper to write out your answers and then you can copy them onto the application.”

Minni got the extra paper while Keira picked through her pencil holder, obviously searching for the perfect writing implement. She pulled out her purple gel pen.

Minni grabbed a chewed-up, blue ballpoint and followed Keira and Mama to the dining room. Daddy was sitting in the living room watching his favorite TV program—a reality show about fishermen braving the dangers of life aboard a boat in the Arctic Ocean.

At the table, Minni stared at the application. She couldn’t believe she was actually going through with this. She glanced at Daddy, sprawled in the comfy leather chair with his feet on the ottoman. A deal was a deal.

She read the words across the top of the page: “Miss Black Pearl Preteen National Achievement Program.” She knew that firstborns were supposed to be the achievers, and she had won a few things—Student of the Month, the spelling bee, that state award for her poem.

But Keira…Keira was
driven
to succeed. Every time she got another gold medal at a gymnastics competition, or when she sold the most cookies of any Girl Scout in all five states of their region, or when she entered the national fashion design contest and won honorable mention, Minni was convinced all over again that Keira was supposed to have come out first.

She forced herself to look beyond the name of the contest to the information they wanted. Name, address, e-mail, birthday, grade level, school, parents’ names. Basic stuff. She supposed she could fill out that much.

She wrote in her first name—Minni, not Minerva, of course. Then middle—she wrote the whole thing because she liked it okay, even if Eddie Moldanado had found out it was Lunette and told all the boys to call her Minni Lunatic. And finally, her last name, which she wrote in all capital
letters because it was the best part of her name—being the same as Dr. King’s—and because it just seemed to want to be written big and bold like that: KING.

She filled in her address, 1907 Bluff Drive, Port Townsend, Washington, then her e-mail address—[email protected]—and their birthday, June 23. Sixth grade. Crawford Elementary. Gordon and Lizette King.

Her eyes dropped to the next line. Grade average. Her heart thumped a little harder. The application only listed four options—and they weren’t A, B, C, and D. They were A+, A, B+, B. The instructions said to circle one.

What was someone like Keira supposed to do?

It reminded Minni of the form she’d filled out when she tested for the Hi-Cap—or “high capability”—program this spring. The form listed six options for race and told her to choose one. Should she choose black or white? “Other” was an option, but she wasn’t “other.” She was black
and
white. She’d skipped it.

When she’d turned in the form, the woman said, “You missed one,” and pointed to the race question.

“I didn’t know what to put,” Minni said.

The woman glanced at her, then marked “White.”

“But I’m not just white,” Minni said, suddenly hot and flustered.

“It doesn’t really matter. It’s just government stuff.” The woman’s voice turned bright and cheery. “Now, ready for the test?”

Minni focused again on the Miss Black Pearl application and the four grade options listed. She looked to where Keira
and Mama sat side by side. Keira was still on their school name.

“Mama,” she said.

Mama looked up.

Minni turned the application and pointed to the question.

Mama took the paper and read where Minni had pointed. Her lips pulled to the side. She glanced at Keira, then handed back the application. “Go ahead and circle your answer.”

“But what’s Keira going to do?” She had gotten a C average this year.

Keira’s head snapped up. “About what? What’s wrong?”

“It’s not a big deal,” Mama said.

“What’s not a big deal?”

“They want our grade average,” Minni said.

Keira searched the paper for what they were talking about. “Why do they only list four options?”

“I’m not sure,” Mama said. “But don’t worry. Academics is only one criterion they use for judging.”

Keira looked crushed. “What if they have a rule about grades? What if they won’t let me compete?” Her voice rose anxiously.

Minni felt herself getting anxious, too. There was no way she would do this without Keira.

Daddy walked into the room. “How’re my beauty queens?” He kissed the top of Keira’s lamb’s-wool head.

“I’m no queen,” Minni protested. “I’ll always be a
King.”
Even if she ever got married—and that was a big if—she was keeping her last name. Now,
Minerva
, on the other hand…

“You have to have a B average or higher!” Keira wailed.

“What? Is that true?” Daddy looked at Mama.

“If things are still the same as when I participated, they don’t exclude anyone based on grades, but they give extra points to girls with higher ones.”

“But what if you have a learning disability?” Minni asked, feeling suddenly defensive about her sister.

“I don’t know, but let’s not worry about it. For now, we’ll just leave it blank.”

Minni knew what happened when you did that. It
didn’t
make the question go away.

T
hat evening, at Daddy’s insistence, Mama pulled out a box from the bottom of a big stack in the closet. Mama wasn’t one for taking strolls down memory lane. Minni had only seen a few pictures from when she was a girl.

Minni, Keira and Daddy sat on the couch craning to see as Mama leafed through her high school scrapbook. They saw a program from a play in which Mama had played the lead—the famous track athlete Wilma Rudolph, the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics, even though as a young girl she had walked with braces after having polio.

In the picture from Mama’s junior prom, her date, a boy with chocolate-brown skin, wore a tuxedo with an electric-blue bow tie and cummerbund to match her satin dress.

“Do you have a
perm
in your hair?” Keira exclaimed. Minni had always been intrigued by the fact that a “perm” meant opposite things to blacks and whites. For black women, it meant having their hair chemically straightened, while white women got perms to put
in
curls.

“That was before I was liberated,” Mama said. “Your grandmother has always been a devoted chemical user. I got my first perm when I was twelve. Mother saw it as an important ‘rite of passage’ and the key to my future social success.”

Minni pointed to the boy’s head. “Are those your initials shaved into his haircut?”

Mama looked closer. “Oh yeah. I had forgotten all about that.” She flipped the page.

Minni and Keira looked at each other, then busted up.

“Where is the poor guy now?” Daddy asked with a wink. “Probably pining away somewhere, wondering why you dumped him.” He put his arm around Mama and tickled her ribs.

Mama rolled her eyes. “I don’t think so.”

She found the pages with memorabilia from the Miss Black Pearl pageant. There was a program, and a small card that had come with flowers signed, “We are so proud. Mother and Gerald.” Gerald Payne was Mama’s stepfather, a light-skinned black man with wavy salt-and-pepper hair and a huge Adam’s apple. They had only seen him in pictures—never met him. He was as skinny as a stork leg—so skinny that Minni and Keira thought he probably left their grandmother out of fear he’d be crushed if she rolled over on him during the night.

Mama said Grandmother Johnson only married him because he was an orthodontist. His profession plus her status as a teacher all but guaranteed her acceptance into some elite social organization, and, as a bonus, she could get Mama’s crooked teeth straightened out for free. Mama was also convinced her mother had wanted to get herself a hyphenated last name. “More high-class and educated-sounding,” Mama said, “to match her lofty view of herself.”

Technically, their grandmother was still Minerva Johnson-Payne, even though she and Gerald had divorced at least fifteen years ago, but Minni and Keira just called her Grandmother Johnson. Or sometimes, Grandmother Johnson-Payne-in-the-Butt. Strictly between themselves, of course.

“Did you win anything?” Keira asked Mama.

“Miss Congeniality.” Mama chuckled. She pointed to a photo of all the girls together. They stood in rows on risers. “Can you find me?”

Keira leaned over Mama’s arm to get a closer look.

Minni scanned the photo from where she sat. Of course she had known Miss Black Pearl was a competition for African American girls. And because Grandmother Johnson had always talked about Minni’s participation as a given, she had never questioned her right to be included—only her desire.

But now, seeing a photograph of the contestants—row after row of brown faces—it dawned on her.

Would
she be included? How would the other girls see her? As one of them? Or as a white girl?

She tried to hear Mama’s voice telling her she was black, too, but as Minni imagined herself up on a stage with a group of black girls whose blackness wasn’t hidden—wasn’t buried deep in the soil of their souls—well, she knew what would happen.

She would stand out. She would stand out too much.

Minni hated standing out.

What if the pageant people—or worse, the other girls—didn’t think she belonged there?

M
inni lay on her bed, reading the book about Martin Luther King, Jr., that Mama and Daddy had given her for her birthday. Keira had gotten a fashion design activity book that included paper, beads, ribbons and stencils to create a bazillion outfits and accessories. The kit even came with miniature hangers so you could display your finished products. They had both loved their gifts.

Minni gazed at a picture of Dr. King marching arm in arm with other civil rights leaders. All the faces in the photo were brown. What if she had been alive at that time? Would she have marched, too?

She believed she would have, if she had been old enough, but she couldn’t help but wonder again—would she have stood out? How would others have seen her—as one of the black people fighting for their rights, or as a white
person? White people had protested and participated in sit-ins, too. Would she have been counted among them?

Suddenly Minni wondered about Keira. Did Keira feel like she stood out at their mostly white school? In their mostly white hometown? How was it that they had never actually talked about it?

Minni knew from a school report she’d done on the 2000 census that Port Townsend was only point-six percent black, and it didn’t seem to have changed much in the last ten years. There were no black families in their neighborhood—in the entire
town
, as far as Minni was aware. The handful of black children at Crawford Elementary came from interracial families, like her and Keira, or had been adopted by white couples, like Neil Moreland. Keira had been one of two dark-skinned children in their class this past year, and Sandeep was East Indian. Other years, Keira had been the only one.

Keira bounded into the room. She had sectioned the front of her hair into five or six parts, twisted the sections tightly and pinned them down. The rest of her hair flew free, surrounding her head in a curly halo. “Gigi’s here! Let’s go!” She grabbed the shiny red purse off her bed—the one that matched her sparkly red ballet flats—and rushed back out.

If standing out bothered Keira, she sure didn’t show it. Besides, Minni would know if it did, being her twin and best friend and all. In fact, it was just one more way she and Keira were opposites. Minni avoided unwanted attention at all costs, but to Keira, “unwanted attention” was an oxymoron.