The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett

Early didn’t believe in beating on women—a man ought to fight fair, and until he met a woman who could match him blow for blow, he’d settle his disputes with them otherwise.

He was twenty then, already a man in the eyes of the law and truth telling, he’d felt like a man since the night his parents left him without saying good-bye. The world worked differently than he’d ever imagined. People you loved could leave and there was nothing you could do about it. Once he’d grasped that, the inevitability of leaving, he became a little older in his own eyes.

She didn’t like talking about Sam to Early, didn’t even want to imagine both men existing within the same expanse of her life. Besides, Jude wasn’t like Sam either. She was, in a way, like Stella. Private, like if she told you anything about herself, she was giving away something she could never get back.

Once, at the swimming pool, she’d stared as her mother started to change in their stall before stopping, midway, when she discovered a fading bruise on her thigh. She quietly put her clothes back on, then told Jude she’d decided to just sit by the pool today and watch her. When they arrived home, her father greeted her mother with a kiss, and Jude realized that if she tried, she could pretend that the bruises came from someplace else. Her relationship with one parent magically untethered to the other. So when she thought of her daddy, he was sprawled beside her on the rug, flipping through the comics. Not dragging her mother by her hair into the bedroom—no, that was some other man. And after the broken glass was swept, the blood wiped off the tile, after her mother retreated into the bathroom, a bag of ice pressed against her face, her real daddy returned, smiling, stroking her cheek.

Maybe he’d been so drunk he wouldn’t even remember kissing her. He’d awakened at home, vaguely recalling that he had done something embarrassing. Or maybe he’d sobered up and regretted it. She was the type of girl that boys only kissed in secret and, after, pretended that they hadn’t.

Marge Hawthorne swore she saw her venture over months ago, Stella ducking her head as she carried a cake in her arms. “Welcoming that woman here, can you believe it?” Marge asked, and nobody did believe her, not at first. Marge was always imagining things; she’d sworn twice that she had seen Warren Beatty at the car wash.

He’d been a shy child, so he never had many friends, colored or otherwise. But he did play with Jimbo, an ugly black rag doll with a plastic head and queer red lips. His father hated his son running around with a doll, a nigger doll at that, but Blake carried him everywhere, whispering all of his secrets into those plastic ears. This was a friend, someone who guarded your feelings behind that frozen red smile. Then one day, he stepped into the yard and saw clumps of cotton scattered all over the grass. On the dirt pathway, there was Jimbo, gutted, arms and legs strewn, his insides spilling out. The dog must’ve got to it, his father told him, but Blake always imagined him tossing that doll into the dog’s snapping jaws. He’d knelt, picking up one of Jimbo’s arms. He’d always wondered what the inside of the doll might look like. For some reason, he’d thought the cotton would be brown.

The twins always received one present apiece, something useful like a new church dress. One year, Stella received a piglet from the Delafosse farm that she named Rosalee. For months, she’d fed Rosalee, running when the pig chased her around the yard. Then Easter Sunday came and her mother killed the pig for supper. “And I ate every single bite,” she told her daughter once.

ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, she leaned against Blake’s chest, watching their daughter squeal and dive into her pile of gifts. A Talking Barbie that spoke when you pulled her cord, a Suzy Homemaker oven set, a red Spyder bicycle. Look at this, look at that, she must have been such a good girl this year! Unlike all those rotten poor children staring at empty trees who must have deserved it, bad because they were poor, poor because they were bad.

“No offense but when I hear your name, I just think about a guy getting shot in the head.”

There were many ways to be alienated from someone, few to actually belong.

Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles. You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.