Minni giggled. Keira laughed. Mama worked hard to hide her smile.
“Whoops!” Gigi said. “Got ya! But, believe me, he doesn’t kiss just anyone. By any chance, do you wear Marla Ray?”
Grandmother Johnson glared at the dog. She shook her head, breathing heavily.
“I’m going to send you a jar. You’ll love it. Don’t be a stranger now, you hear?” Gigi stepped outside.
“Goodbye, Mama.” Mama hugged her mother. “You going to be all right?”
“I think I’ll survive.” Grandmother Johnson smoothed her hair with her hand.
Mama backed away, and Minni and Keira stepped up.
Their grandmother hugged each of them tightly—real hugs, not awkward ones with too much space between their bodies.
At the motel, Minni and Keira convinced their parents to let them get in the pool, since the night air was still warm and humid. They splashed around, cooling off after the day’s events. Keira didn’t wear her swim cap. She wanted her hair to curl up again.
Minni squatted underwater and Keira climbed on. A shoulder stand was much easier in a pool. They shot from the water and Keira did a backflip. Just like the days in Mama’s womb. Mama and Gigi clapped. Daddy looked up from Around the World in Eighty Days and whistled.
Minni felt for the pendant around her neck to make sure it was still there. Mama had given her and Keira matching necklaces for doing her proud in the Miss Black Pearl Preteen National Achievement Program. The charm she’d given them was a Chinese character that meant “change.” The character was made of the moon and sun—the moon on bottom and the sun on top.
Some sisters might fight to be the one on top, but Minni would always be happy to be the “under-stander.” Minni knew this didn’t make her less important, just different. She was the one whose shoulders provided support. The one Keira could count on to be there. And, when push came to shove, Minni knew, too, that she could always count on Keira to be there for her as well.
Minni clasped her sister’s hands in the water. They intertwined their fingers and circled round and round. Sun and moon.
Pearls of different shades.
Two halves of the same heart.
Acknowledgments
As I type these words of gratitude, our second child could be born any day and our first is a two-year-old who has lived her entire life hearing about two girls named Minni and Keira. I am extremely aware that I never could have written this book without a lot of help.
Thank you to the people who so willingly gave their assistance: my editor, Michelle Poploff, for the seed of the idea that bloomed into this story, and for giving me space and time to let it grow; editorial assistant Rebecca Short, for insightful feedback and a perfect last line; my agent, Regina Brooks, for the pep talks along the way, and for helping me realize that this was a story not of sisters against each other but of sisters against the world; my readers, Fina Arnold (my ofttimes muse), Bethany Hegedus, John Weber, Holly Huckeba, Carla Saulter, J. J. Hansen and especially Anastasia Hansen, an intelligent and generous young lady with a bright future (and maybe some novels of her own ahead); and Courtenay Edelhart, for sharing her personal experience as a biracial twin. Thanks also to Trish Parcell, cover designer extraordinaire, and to the girls at Forest Ridge School in Bellevue, Washington, whose votes and feedback moved the book’s title from a barely considered option to front-runner.
Finally, thank you to my parents, for their unflagging enthusiasm and support (Mom, I truly could not have done this without your babysitting help); to Aunt Kathy, for the dried-apple doll and for telling me there are many ways to be black; and to my husband, Matt, for knowing what I look like deep down, seeing the whole of me and loving so sacrificially. With you, I can truly be myself.
About the Author
SUNDEE T. FRAZIER is the author of Brendan Buckley’s Universe and Everything in It, for which she received the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent award. About her sister characters, she says, “They reflect twin sides of my own heart—the unsure and the bold—or self-doubt and self-acceptance.”
Sundee lives with her husband and two daughters in Washington State, where, as a teen, she was crowned Miss Palouse Empire and first runner-up in the Washington State Junior Miss Program (not pageant). Learn more about her and her books at www.sundeefrazier.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Sundee T. Frazier
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids
Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frazier, Sundee Tucker.
The other half of my heart / Sundee T. Frazier.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Twin daughters of interracial parents, eleven-year-olds Keira and Minni have very different skin tones and personalities, but it is not until their African American grandmother enters them in the Miss Black Pearl Preteen competition in North Carolina that red-haired and pale-skinned Minni realizes what life in their small town in the Pacific Northwest has been like for her more outgoing, darker-skinned sister.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89663-7
[1. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 2. Twins—Fiction. 3. Sisters—Fiction.
4. Identity—Fiction. 5. African Americans—Fiction. 6. Prejudices—Fiction. 7. Beauty
contests—Fiction. 8. Grandmothers—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.F8715Ot 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009013209
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.0
The Other Half of My Heart Page 22