“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.
At 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.
Chapter Twenty-six
Minni 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 thoug
hts. 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?
That was when Minni started remembering.
The girl with the Barbies.
And that kid in kindergarten who asked Keira why she was so dirty.
Even their teacher this year, who had told Keira she should be the most grateful one in their class for Martin Luther King, Jr., because if he hadn’t done what he did, white and black people might still not go to school together.
And that dumb boy who, after that, told Minni he wished he’d lived in the days when black and white people didn’t go to school together so he wouldn’t have to be in the same class with her sister.
Minni sucked in her breath. She had pushed the boy’s hurtful remark so far out of her mind that letting it back in made her heart race.
She slowly recalled her response. She had stood there, stunned. Completely frozen in disbelief.
And angry.
How could someone say something so horrible about the person she loved more than anyone in the whole world?
But she hadn’t said a word.
A hot wave of shame washed over her. Why hadn’t she put that boy in his place—told him he was wrong to say that about her sister?
And why hadn’t she confronted that dress shop lady with her two-faced treatment?
And why hadn’t she stood up to Grandmother Johnson when she said Keira didn’t need to be getting any darker, as if being dark was a bad thing? Keira’s skin was as gorgeous as her naturally curly hair. Couldn’t their grandmother see that? Keira was beautiful, not in spite of her color, but because of it.
Why didn’t Minni ever speak up?
Because she was scared. Plain and simple. Grandmother Johnson was right. She needed more character.
She rubbed her damp palms against her skirt. Admitting this terrible truth was probably one of the hardest things she’d ever had to do. Harder than finding her gerbil dead in its cage. Harder than telling her parents she’d helped Keira cheat on a test. Maybe even harder than singing in front of a bunch of strangers—she wasn’t sure. But thinking about how cowardly she had been created an even bigger pit in the bottom of her stomach than the thought of performing onstage.
The conference room door opened. “Are you ready, girls?” A smiling lady stepped into the hallway.
Minni shook from head to foot, the same way she had the day that boy said that awful thing.
The other girls rose from their seats and filed into the room.
“Are you all right, dear?” the woman asked.
Minni didn’t move.
“Child, you look terrified.”
Minni looked up into the woman’s smiling face. “Don’t you worry none,” the woman said. “It’ll be easy as pie. The judges are all very friendly people. You’ll see.”
Finally, Minni stood, not entirely sure her trembling legs would hold her. The woman took her by the elbow and led her into the room.
Five tables stood around the room. The other girls had already taken their seats—one per table—and had begun to chat with the judge sitting across from them. One judge sat alone. Miss Oliphant! Thank goodness.
Minni sat, careful to keep her back straight, her knees together and her hands in her lap, just as Grandmother Johnson had instructed.
“You can relax, baby,” Miss Oliphant said. “We’re neighbors, remember.”
Minni smiled then, and the interview began, although it really just felt like a chat with an old friend. The anxiety and remorse she’d been feeling in the hallway ebbed.
Miss Oliphant asked her what subjects she enjoyed in school, what she thought she might want to do when she got older, what concerns she had about the world today and if she had any pets. Minni loved telling her about Bessie Coleman and all the smart things she could do and say.
Then Miss Oliphant asked who her best friend was and why.
“Definitely my sister. Because she’s fun to be with.”
Miss Oliphant nodded. “The best kinds of friends to have.” She eyed Minni thoughtfully. “Is it ever hard…being a twin?”
“Oh no!” Minni said quickly. “It’s wonderful!”
Miss Oliphant squinted and let out a little hum.
“I mean, most of the time. I guess it’s a little annoying when people wonder why we’re never dressed alike—or why we don’t look alike.”
Miss Oliphant nodded again.
“And I suppose sometimes I compare myself to her…but all siblings do that, not just twins.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what do you think when you compare yourself to her?”
Minni glanced at her watch. Wasn’t it almost time for them to be done?
“We still have five minutes,” Miss Oliphant said, again seeming able to read her mind.
The woman’s opal eye mesmerized Minni. She felt an urge to be completely honest. “Well, I guess…I wonder sometimes why I couldn’t have been born with browner skin so people would know we’re sisters.” She paused, waiting for Miss Oliphant to say something, but the woman just nodded as if she understood. “Sometimes I think about how much more confident she is than me, and I wonder, will I ever shine like Keira?”
Miss Oliphant cocked her head. “Why do you need to shine like your sister? Why can’t you shine like yourself?”
“I don’t shine.” Minni looked at her pale, freckled arms. “Unless you count glowing in the dark.”
Miss Oliphant blew out her breath. “Child, everyone shines—just in different ways. Look at the sun and moon. One was made to light the night, the other to light the day.”
“The moon doesn’t shine, either. It just reflects the sun’s light.”
“Now, don’t go getting all scientific and edu-ma-cated on me. Can you see better by the light of a full moon or can’t you?”
Minni nodded grudgingly.
“So one burns hot and the other glows cool. The sun may keep us from freezing to death, but the moon keeps the earth itself from spinning out of orbit. If it weren’t for the moon, the oceans would stop their going in and coming out. Do you know how important those tides are?”
Minni nodded slowly. “Without the tides, all life would eventually come to an end.”
“Exactly. Both bodies are critical for our survival, and they work together to fulfill their joint purpose. Neither one would be able to do what it does without the other. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
She did. She and Keira needed each other.
It was easy to see how she needed Keira, who was always making her laugh or helping her meet new friends or standing up to the boys who made fun of her freckles or big feet or hair. But how did Keira need her? If the moon was just as important as the sun—just in a different way—how was she important?
“Our mama named us for the sun and the moon,” she said.
“I wondered about that. In Ireland, the name Keira means ‘dark’ or ‘dark-haired,’ but in Persian it also means ‘sun,’ and I saw on your application that your middle name is Lunette—‘little moon.’”
“The day we were born the sun and moon were up at the same time. Mama saw it as good luck.”
“Sounds like your mama has grown into one wise woman. I remember he
r as a teenager, before she left Raleigh to pursue her fame and fortune as an artist.” Miss Oliphant smiled, then reached across the table and patted Minni’s hand. “Well, then, my moon child, go on and do your job. Your sister relies on you more than you know. You’ll see.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Minni approached the rows of chairs where everyone sat watching the girl onstage parade around while a lady read from a card about her awards, school and volunteer activities and hobbies.
Why was Keira sitting next to Alisha? Was she actually trying to buddy up to that stuck-up girl? Alisha had told them she’d been doing pageants since she was five years old. Could Keira possibly think she had something to learn from her?
Minni sat in the first empty chair she saw, a couple rows behind her sister. Keira glanced in her direction, then went back to watching the girl onstage. No smile or “How’d it go?” or anything.
Minni crossed her arms. She tried not to let Keira’s brush-off bother her, but it did.
The rehearsal wore on. Every time Minni tried to talk to her sister, she was at the center of a circle of girls, and soon Minni understood.
The ocean she’d felt in the dressing room was still there. And she was floating out in it, in a boat all by herself.
In the car, Grandmother Johnson wanted all the details, but Minni didn’t feel like talking. She only spoke one or two words at a time.
Did they have the opening number down?
Yes.
Had they rehearsed their talents in front of everyone?
No, because the talent portion was optional.
Was the girl Alisha good?
She was okay.
Keira’s mouth was padlocked.
At home, Keira went straight to the attic. Minni went to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. She stared at her big blue eyes in the mirror, then scrutinized her face, trying to decide which of her features were “black” and which were “white.” So she had Mama’s round eyes and fuller lips than Keira. Why couldn’t she have been born with darker skin, brown eyes and dark, curly hair as well?
The Other Half of My Heart Page 17