The Other Half of My Heart (9 page)

T
he pink sink, bathtub and toilet—with a fuzzy pink seat cover—huddled together in the tiny mint-green room. A shelf unit on the wall across from the sink held baskets of dusty perfume samples, lipsticks and gold jewelry, and various bottles and cans of things like rubbing alcohol, mouthwash and room deodorizer. Stacks of pink and green towels stood on the middle two shelves.

Minni turned on the water to cover their voices. “She’s so
snotty
. I’m sorry about what she said—about your hair.”

Keira stood next to her in front of the sink. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

Minni looked at her sister in the mirror. Would people in North Carolina be able to tell they were sisters?

Probably no more than at home. All because of eight genes. Eight invisible genes.

“How are we going to deal with her for ten days?” Minni asked.

Keira held out her fist. “Together.”

Minni pressed her knuckles against her sister’s. Yes, together. They had gone through everything together.
Together
was the only way Minni knew how to be.

She washed her hands and face, but Keira just wet a washcloth and hung it on the shower door rail. “I won’t mind if she gets some of my germs.”

Minni opened the door and jumped with surprise. Grandmother Johnson was standing right outside. Had she been listening? She looked over their heads to the wet washcloths, then turned and opened the door to a stairwell. “You will be staying in the attic.”

Minni stepped into the dark hallway, which led to the kitchen at one end (she could see the linoleum floor) and, she was pretty sure, led to their grandmother’s bedroom at the other. She peered up the steep wooden stairs. The attic? That sounded creepy.

Grandmother Johnson started up the steps, which creaked and groaned under her weight. Once in the single upstairs room, she pulled on a string that turned on a lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. The ceiling sloped to meet the walls, but not too sharply or quickly.

“Put your clothes in the dresser—hanging garments can go in the armoire—and then join me in the dining room
with
your applications. We will take them to the Black Pearls office tomorrow.”

She went back down the creaky stairs, which cut through
the center of the room, forming a rectangular hole in the floor that they would need to walk around carefully. There were no guardrails to keep a person from plunging headfirst to certain death below.

Curtainless windows stood over the twin beds on either side of the room. The air was thick and hot. Minni yanked on the window by her bed. “I don’t remember coming up here before,” she said.

“Mom was probably afraid we’d fall down the stairs.”

Yes, Minni remembered now. Mama had banned them from exploring any part of the house where she wasn’t. And they were not to touch anything, even when in a room with her.

The window finally up, Minni sat on the bed to test its firmness and looked around. At the other end of the room, the three square windows she’d seen from outside twinkled with light. They were made of that leaded glass that Mama liked. A bench seat filled the dormer space, making a perfect place to read.

Minni lifted her suitcase onto the gingerbread-colored bedspread. She sniffed the warm breeze. Her senses must have been playing tricks on her. The more she looked at the gingerbread color, the more she smelled the sweet scent of actual gingerbread. She pressed her nose into the quilted cover.

“What are you doing?” Keira had already hung up her blouses and skirts and was lining up her five pairs of shoes in the bottom of the armoire near her bed.

“Something smells like gingerbread. I thought maybe it was the quilt.”

Keira put her nose to her bed and inhaled. Her nose wrinkled. “Yuck. All I smell is bleach.”

They put all their clothes away and headed downstairs. At the bottom, Minni sniffed again. No gingerbread. Just rotting bananas and disinfectant spray.

How silly. She’d actually let a small seed of hope take root that they would find Grandmother Johnson in an apron, a plate of warm gingerbread in one hand, the other extended to welcome them into a grandmotherly embrace.

When they turned the corner to the dining room, the little sprout completely shriveled up and blew away.

Three tall glasses of thickish white liquid.

Buttermilk
.

Minni’s tongue curled, remembering its sour taste.

Grandmother Johnson strode through the kitchen door with a tray of round, plain cookies that looked as if they were made from wood pulp. “You may be seated. I thought you might like a bit of refreshment after your travels.”

Keira sat with her elbows on either side of the glass. She sniffed the milk. “I can’t drink this.”

Grandmother Johnson sat at the head of the table. “Please remove your elbows from the table and refrain from any further canine behavior.”

Keira slumped in her chair.

“And sit
straight
. Young ladies—especially those contending for the title of Miss Black Pearl Preteen of America—must always think of their posture.”

Minni’s eyes darted between Grandmother Johnson
and her sister. Keira’s back got straighter, but her mouth still drooped with disgust.

Grandmother Johnson raised her glass. “Low-fat buttermilk. Excellent for the digestion.” She took a sip. “It’s a miracle drink, really. Kind on the arteries, good for the skin, and so many other health benefits.”

Minni stared at the thick milk.

There was no way out of this except through an empty glass.

She held her breath and took a drink. Then another. And another. She might as well just get it over with. She squeezed her eyes shut and drained her glass.

She let out her breath in a loud gasp as her glass clunked on the table. She tried to keep her face from contorting, but she couldn’t stop her muscles from twitching any more than she could keep her eyes open when she sneezed. A long shiver, like a mini-earthquake, shook her body from the back of her tongue to the base of her spine.

Grandmother Johnson’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared, but she didn’t say anything. She turned her attention to Keira, who sat staring at her full glass.

“Keira.” Grandmother Johnson’s eyebrows pulled together. “Your sister has finished hers—with less gentility than she will employ the
next
time…” She took a sip, eyeing Minni over the rim of her glass, then setting it quietly on the table. “But finished nonetheless.”

Keira lifted her glass. Her nose wrinkled, and she set it back down. The clock on the corner hutch ticked.

“We will not move from here until you have finished.” Grandmother Johnson’s voice was forceful.

Minni gripped the sides of her chair.
Come on, Keira. You can do it
.

Every time the milk got close to her face she gagged and pulled it away. “I can’t. It’s too disgusting.”

Grandmother Johnson’s lips pressed tighter. She was losing patience.

Minni fidgeted. Pressure had built beneath her ribs. It traveled upward—against her breastbone, the back of her throat. All the air she’d gulped along with the buttermilk was struggling to find its way out.

At home if they needed to let out some gas, they just did it. Minni was sure Grandmother Johnson’s house rules did not permit burping at the table, even after gulping a full glass of buttermilk, but maybe this was her chance to get Keira out of the hot seat.

Should she do it?

What would their grandmother do if she did?

Grandmother Johnson would be seriously shocked and appalled, no doubt, but Minni and Keira had already decided: They would only get through this together.

She opened her mouth and belched like a toad.

Keira laughed.

Minni’s relief was instantaneous—until she saw the look on Grandmother Johnson’s face. Her stare pinned Minni to the back of her chair. Perhaps she had underestimated their grandmother’s disdain of the public airing of bodily gases.

“What
was that?”

Surely she knew what a burp was.

“I might expect this kind of behavior from your sister, but never from you…
Minerva.”

Keira’s smile flipped into a frown. She glowered at their grandmother.

“If you need to
do that
, you will cover your mouth with your hand and, most of all, keep your mouth closed.” Grandmother Johnson’s mouth snapped shut, but she wasn’t done talking. “This is exactly why I wanted you here this summer. I knew your mother wasn’t giving you proper home training. You are eleven now. It’s time you learned how to behave properly—like ladies. Don’t ever let me hear you do that again, at the table or anywhere else for that matter.”

Minni was grateful the trapped air hadn’t decided to use the lower escape route. If Grandmother Johnson felt this way about burping, what would she say about letting loose from the other end?

Maybe that was the source of Grandmother Johnson’s foul disposition—all the farts she’d held up inside herself. The gas had to go somewhere, so it had leaked into her blood and turned her sour as her nasty buttermilk.

Minni bit the side of her mouth to keep from smiling. She would tell Keira her theory later, and she’d make sure Keira knew she didn’t agree with Grandmother Johnson one bit—that thing she’d said about her expectations of Keira versus her. How dare she say that? Grandmother Johnson didn’t know Keira. She didn’t know either one of them.

One thing she clearly didn’t know about Keira was how stubborn she was. Keira would stay at this table for their entire visit if she had to. She would sit in front of that buttermilk until it went bad, as if buttermilk could get any worse.

To Minni’s surprise, Keira raised the glass with her first
two fingers and thumb, lifted her pinky in the air and drained the milk without a single gulp, gasp or shudder.

When she was done, she set the glass gently on the table, picked up her cloth napkin and dabbed the corners of her mouth. She looked at Grandmother Johnson with just a hint of defiance.

“Very good,” Grandmother Johnson said, nodding. “Now, let’s talk about the pageant.”

“Yes, let’s. Since that’s the only reason we’re here,” Keira said with more than a little attitude, which Minni hoped somehow their grandmother hadn’t noticed.

Grandmother Johnson’s lips clamped together, revealing the tiny wrinkles around her mouth. She pulled a pair of thin rectangular glasses from her jacket pocket and perched them on the end of her nose. She extended her arm. Her fingernails were well manicured but polish-free. “Your applications?” She took the papers and put Minni’s on top. She murmured her approval as she worked down the page and onto the next.

With their grandmother absorbed in her reading, Minni could observe the woman undetected. Her hair was immaculately pulled back from her chocolate-brown face and gathered into a tight bun at the back. She kept it so straight and slick that if not for its dark color, she might have appeared bald from a distance. She had a perfectly oval face—her hairstyle emphasized the shape—and her skin was amazingly wrinkle-free for a sixty-nine-year-old, although this, too, could have been at least partly the result of her tightly pulled-back hair. Maybe that was why she wore it like that.

Still, she definitely looked older than she had two summers ago. Her cheeks sagged more, pulling the corners of her mouth down even when her lips curled into an occasional smile. The last time they’d seen her, she had come to Port Townsend. It had ended very badly; Minni and Keira never really understood why. Grandmother Johnson had said something to set Mama off, but Minni couldn’t remember what now.

Minni continued her inventory of Grandmother Johnson’s face. It was at least one-third forehead. Her eyes were set evenly on either side of her triangular nose under straight eyebrows that were filled in with a makeup pencil. Her earlobes sagged from years of wearing heavy earrings. All her jewelry was gold—a gold watch, a gold class ring on her right ring finger, a gold necklace with a rectangular gold locket. She wore her glasses for reading only—never in pictures. Mama said she was too vain for that. Instead she posed with them in her hand because it made her look smart. She called herself “full-figured.”
Like Queen Latifah
, Minni thought,
except without any of the glamour or beauty
.

Grandmother Johnson finished reading. She nodded at Minni. “You have done an excellent job. I am especially pleased with your A-plus average.”

Minni glanced at Keira, whose eyes roamed over the ceiling.

“There’s just one thing. You will write in your
full
first name.” Grandmother Johnson went to the desk behind Keira and pulled out a bottle of Wite-Out. She set it, along with the application and a pen, on the table in front of Minni.

She returned to her seat and picked up Keira’s application.
“Purple
ink?” She tsked, then ran her finger down the page. She stopped about halfway. “You forgot to circle your grade average.”

Uh-oh
. Hadn’t Mama told her?

“No, I didn’t.”

Grandmother Johnson cocked her head. “Then why has it been left blank?”

“Because none of the options apply.” Keira looked directly at Grandmother Johnson.

“And what exactly
is
your grade average?”

“C-plus.” Keira’s chin was level, her neck long. She didn’t blink once. “Mom was happy.”

Grandmother Johnson looked as if she’d swallowed a spider. “Your mother doesn’t understand that children rise to the expectations placed upon them.” She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “How is it, exactly, that you have earned no better than a C average?”

Mama hadn’t told her.

“C
-plus
. I have a learning disability.” Keira said it just like that—no shame at all. “Severe dyslexia.”

Minni hadn’t thought she could admire her sister any more than she already did, but as she watched Keira be herself without apology, Minni’s pride swelled like an ocean wave.

Grandmother Johnson didn’t look proud. Her face had grown so tight Minni waited to hear it crack. “Severe dyslexia?”

Keira shrugged. “It’s not that big of a deal.”