The Other Half of My Heart (6 page)

She entered the store and started walking along the rows of gowns, her hand occasionally reaching out to touch the fabrics. Satin…velvet…silk. She only knew their names because of Keira and her passion for fashion.

She reached out and touched a dress’s hot pink taffeta bodice and its full tulle skirt.

Hideous.

With her pale skin and red hair…
No way
. Total Bozo the Ballerina.

The storekeeper, talking on the phone behind the counter, smiled and held up a finger to indicate she’d be with Minni in a moment. Her white teeth stood out against her fake-tan skin. Minni knew fake tan when she saw it. She had once taken Gigi’s tube of the orange-brown stuff and rubbed it on her arms to see if she could get closer to Keira’s shade.

Minni went back to her task, every once in a while pushing back a dress to take a look. The gowns pressed against one another like the books on her overcrowded bookshelf. It wasn’t a bad comparison. Come to think of it, Keira read clothing like Minni read books. Everyone had a personal style statement, Keira said. What they wore spoke volumes.

Keira had dubbed Gigi’s personal style Outlet Chic and Mama’s Mother Africa Artiste. Minni’s was Geek Chic, which Minni thought was funny. Keira had pronounced her own style Tween Haute Couture, which she always followed up with the explanation, “That means trendsetting fashions for preteens in
French.”

The woman hung up the phone and started toward Minni. “Are you looking for something in particular, dear?”

Minni shook her head. She had no idea what she was looking for. She couldn’t imagine herself in anything with sequins, puffy sleeves or a Cinderella skirt. And if she put on
one of these strapless thingies there’d be nothing to keep it from falling around her ankles. If her chest were one of those maps with various colors for different elevations, it’d be all the same color.

She looked across the street to the Burger Barn. Where were Keira and Gigi? They were the experts at this stuff. Set them loose together in a mall and watch out. They approached stores as strategically as a search-and-rescue team, covering every square inch to make sure not one deal was missed. They would pile the clothes so high that they’d exceed the dressing room limit and have to leave most of them outside. Minni’s task became watching the mountain of clothes and having the next ten outfits ready to go.

She pulled out a light turquoise gown that shimmered with a rainbow of colors, like the inside of an oyster. She held it up to herself and ran her hand down the full skirt.

“That would work wonderfully with your coloring.” The woman stood back and looked her up and down. “Definitely. It brings out the blue in your eyes and highlights your lovely red hair.” She reached for the dress. Minni handed it over. “I’ll start a dressing room for you. Are you alone?”

“My grandma and sister are coming.”

The woman nodded and took the dress to the back of the store.

Gigi and Keira came in the front. Keira went straight to the display window and the fire-engine red dress hanging on a mannequin.

Gigi walked toward Minni. “Find anything?”

Minni fingered the satin ribbon on a lime-green dress.
“Gigi, what if I trip and fall? Or forget what I’m supposed to say?” She had started having dreams of herself at the pageant. In one of them, when she tried to talk, all she could do was cluck like a chicken.

Gigi patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, honey. That won’t happen.”

The saleswoman came back. “I’ve started a room for your granddaughter in the back.” She eyed Keira holding up a dress near the front of the store. “Excuse me!” the woman called out. She beelined toward Keira. “I’d rather you didn’t handle the dresses yourself.” She grabbed the gown from Keira’s hands and stuffed it back onto the rack.

The woman might as well have pulled out a gun and shot it into the air. Minni’s heart hammered in her chest. Her face and palms prickled with heat.

“Was she really hurting anything?” Gigi went and stood next to Keira.

“I just prefer that…people…not handle the dresses.” The woman wrung her hands. “Skin oils can ruin the fabrics.”

Minni held her breath.
Say something!
she shouted at herself, but she couldn’t figure out what it should be. Her jaw felt locked in place.

Gigi put her arm around Keira. “Let’s go, girls. I think we’ll take our business elsewhere.”

Keira’s eyes blazed.

The woman’s fake tan couldn’t cover the pink flooding her cheeks.

They turned and headed for the door.

*   *   *

G
igi drove them toward the big indoor mall. “Never mind that rude woman,” she said. “We’ll find the perfect gowns—you’ll see!”

“Yeah, what was up with that lady?” Keira asked. “It’s not like I put the dress on the floor and stomped on it.”

Minni replayed the store scene in her mind. What
had
happened back there?

One thing Minni was certain of—the woman hadn’t realized Keira was her sister. Strangers always thought she and Keira were just friends, and they
never
believed they were twins. When they were alone with their brown-skinned mama, Minni was the “friend,” and when they were with pink-skinned Daddy, it was Keira’s turn.

Still, even if the woman didn’t know they were related, there was no excuse for the way she had treated Keira.

A thought pushed its way into Minni’s mind, even as she fought to keep it out.

She thought you were white
.

So? Lots of people thought that.

She saw Keira as black
.

Minni’s insides tightened and coiled.

That’s why she treated Keira differently
.

Minni felt as though she might get sick.

T
hey didn’t return home until almost seven o’clock. They’d stopped at Fat Smitty’s for cheeseburgers and fries, plus it had taken forever to find shoes. To Minni’s horror,
they’d had to go to the ladies’ department for hers. Her feet were suddenly too big for the girls’ sizes. She plopped on the couch next to Mama, limp with mall fatigue.

Keira hugged her sun-yellow sleeveless chiffon halter dress with a V neckline and buttons up the back, and spun in the center of the room. The double layer of ruffles at the hem floated upward with the breeze. “Don’t you just love how the empire waist is decorated with this chiffon band gathered ever so delicately with pearl clusters?” Her face glowed with excitement. “Isn’t it
breathtaking?”
She gave Gigi a big smooch.

“I told you we’d find just the right thing,” Gigi said.

Keira’s eyes narrowed. “No thanks to that crazy lady at the first store.”

Minni stiffened. Hopefully Mama wouldn’t ask.

“What crazy lady?”

Of course she would.

“All I did was take a dress off the rack to look at it. She practically ripped the thing in half grabbing it out of my hands.”

“She said she didn’t like people touching the dresses,” Gigi said, “and she wasn’t very friendly about it. So we left.”

“She was rude.” Keira’s mouth turned down at the corners. She held the dress up again. “But, whatever, I got a way better dress than I would have found at her dumb store anyhow.”

Mama listened quietly. She put her hand on Minni’s knee. “What about you?”

Minni couldn’t breathe. The shame she’d felt in the store
for not pointing out the lady’s different treatment of her and her sister washed over her again.

“Yeah, where’s your dress?” Daddy came up from behind and squeezed her shoulders.

Minni pointed to the garment bag hanging over the chair by the front door. She had chosen the least frilly dress she could find—an A-line sky-blue silk dress with a straight-across neckline and solid, sturdy straps. No pearl clusters, bows, rhinestones or fussy lace anywhere. A layer of sheer organza covered the skirt, but Minni actually liked how it made the dress shimmer like moonlight on the ocean.

“Well, let’s see it!”

Holding up the dress wasn’t enough. Daddy wanted a fashion show, so they went and put on the gowns. Keira zipped Minni, then found a matching pendant in her ballerina jewelry box and fastened it around Minni’s neck.

Minni hoped Keira wouldn’t ask how the woman had acted before she and Gigi came into the store. Then when she didn’t, Minni almost told her. They never kept
anything
from each other. They were sisters, best friends—as wide open with each other as the ocean to the sky. But she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. She zipped Keira’s dress and they went into the hall.

Keira floated into the living room, stopped to pose at the side table topped by the framed black-and-white photo Daddy had taken of her and Minni on the beach, then whipped around and continued across the floor.

“Go on, girl. Show us what you got,” Mama said.

Mama, Daddy and Gigi clapped. Banjo barked.

Keira swiveled at the opposite wall and raised her arms like a movie starlet. She stood in front of Mama’s huge acrylic painting of purple, orange and red starfish, looking very dramatic. She batted her eyelashes. Even Banjo got a smile.

“Your turn, Little Moon,” Mama said, looking to the doorway, where Minni peered out from behind the wall.

Minni took a few small steps. The sky-blue skirt swished back and forth.

Mama made a sound—sort of a gasp-sigh.
“Beautiful.”

Was she? Minni looked at her pink arms, crossed in front of the dress.

Daddy came and took her hand. He spun her under his arm. “Yes, you are. Both of you.” He took Keira’s hand as well. “Our twin beauties.”

“A
m I black or white or what?” Minni sat in a beach chair next to Mama’s stool on their large back deck, watching her work. She had put on sunscreen today. Keira was at gymnastics and Daddy was up in the air somewhere, giving a flying lesson.

Mama added more carmine to the brown-skinned lady’s dress in her painting. “All of the above, and more.”

“But I don’t
look
black.”

Mama rested her painting hand on her leg. “You don’t?”

Minni rolled her eyes.
“Mama.”

“Where do you think you got those big round eyes?”

Minni knew her eyes were shaped just like Mama’s. “But they’re
blue
. Black people don’t have blue eyes.”

“Hmm…I see….” Mama went back to her painting. “And those nice full lips that your sister’s so jealous of?” She
glanced at Minni from the corner of her eye. “Where’d you get those?”

Minni pulled in her lips and huffed. She looked longingly at Mama’s beautiful kinked twists of hair held back from her face by a bright orange and fuchsia scarf tied at the nape of her neck. “What about this?” Minni held up the floppy end of one of her limp red pigtails. “I don’t exactly have a black person’s hair.”

“Gigi had to get herself in there somewhere.” Gigi loved to point out that she and Minni shared the same color hair, although Gigi only kept hers red with the help of dye. “That Irish pride runs deep and has some strong genes to go with it.”

“Then where are Keira’s Irish genes?”

Mama sucked in her breath, making a light whistling sound. “Don’t ever let Gigi hear you say that. Where do you think Keira gets her feisty spirit? According to Gigi, that fire is pure Celt.”

Minni had heard Gigi say that as many times as she’d pointed out Minni’s hair. “Is that what you think?”

“Your sister’s a lot more fiery than I’ve ever been, that’s for sure.”

Minni didn’t think it very fair that she had gotten the fire hair but not the fire spirit to go with it. Keira was much more like Daddy and Gigi that way—they all laughed loudly, cried openly and expressed affection freely—whereas Minni had Mama’s kind reserve and tendency to worry what others might think. It wasn’t that she and Mama didn’t feel things deeply or love intensely—these things just got
expressed more quietly than they did with Keira and Daddy. She didn’t know what, if anything, they’d gotten from Grandmother Johnson. Except, in Minni’s case, The Name, of course.

Mama wiped her hands on a rag. She reached down and lifted Minni’s face. Their eyes locked. “Where’s all this coming from, anyway?”

Mama’s fingers held steady. Minni shifted her eyes to avoid Mama’s gaze.

A sharp memory pierced her thoughts, sending an aching pain all the way to the soles of her feet. She was sitting on the living room rug in the hollow of Mama’s crossed legs, like a chicken in a soup pot. They were watching
Sesame Street
. Keira sat beside them with her elbow propped on Mama’s knee. Minni felt safe with Mama’s arms draped around her and her warm breath heating the top of her head.

That was when the song came on:

She saw Keira’s brown arm on Mama’s brown leg, and then her own pale skin against them both, and she shrank. She felt as though she was shriveling inside the protective shell of Mama’s body until she was nothing.

“Hey.” Mama shook her shoulder gently, bringing her back to their deck and the smell of the pulp mill on the warm summer air.