The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett

In Mallard, nobody married dark. Nobody left either, but Desiree had already done that.

Marrying a dark man and dragging his blueblack child all over town was one step too far.

Lightness, like anything inherited at great cost, was a lonely gift. He’d married a mulatto even lighter than himself. She was pregnant then with their first child,

and he imagined his children’s children’s children, lighter still, like a cup of coffee steadily diluted with cream. A more perfect Negro. Each generation lighter than the one before.

Syl Guillory and Jack Richard arguing in the barber shop about whose wife was fairer, or her mother yelling after her to always wear a hat, or people believing ridiculous things, like drinking coffee or eating chocolate while pregnant might turn a baby dark.

Her father had been so light that, on a cold morning, she could turn his arm over to see the blue of his veins. But none of that mattered when the white men came for him, so how could she care about lightness after that?

“Negroes always love our hometowns,” he said. “Even though we’re always from the worst places. Only white folks got the freedom to hate home.”

“White folks kill you if you want too much, kill you if you want too little.” Willie

Lee shook his head, packing tobacco into his pipe. “You gotta follow they rules but they change ’em when they feel. Devilish, you ask me.”

her, tying pink ribbons around Jude’s braids. Bright

colors looked vulgar against

If nothing could be done about ugliness, you ought to at least look like you were trying to hide it.

“Somebody that gets what she wants.”

“Be white, you mean.”

Just keep it light, breezy. Like a white lady with no worry on her mind.”

People thought that being one of a kind made you special. No, it just made you lonely. What was special was belonging with someone else.

Jude wanted to change and she didn’t see why it should be so hard or why she should have to explain it to anyone. Strangely, she felt that her grandmother might understand, so she handed her the worn ad. Maman stared at it a moment, then passed it back to her.

To be honest about the past meant that he would be considered a liar. The only safety was in hiding.

He respected

the natural order of things but you didn’t have to be cruel about it. As a boy, he’d had a colored nanny named

convince anyone you belonged somewhere if you acted like you did.

“Not if they can’t afford it. Fred told me the man paid for that house in cash. He’s a different breed.”

At first,

passing seemed so simple, she couldn’t understand why her parents hadn’t done it. But she was young then. She hadn’t realized how long it takes to become somebody else, or how lonely it can be living in a world not meant for you.

That she hadn’t meant to betray anyone but she’d just needed to be new. It was her life, why couldn’t she decide if she wanted a new one?

She was grieving for reasons that she could never explain. Like she’d lost Desiree all over again. Blake

She argued about these things even though she had no children and had already secured tenure—she argued even though her advocating wouldn’t benefit her at all. It baffled Stella, protesting out of a sense of duty, or maybe even amusement.

“You frighten him. A woman with a brain. Nothing scares them more.”

By then, she’d learned that being a secretary was a little like being a wife; she memorized his schedule, hung his hat and coat, poured him a Scotch. She brought him lunch, managed his moods, listened to him complain about his father, remembered to

send his mother flowers for her birthday. This was why he’d invited her to Philadelphia, she’d thought, until the final night of the trip when he leaned in at the hotel bar and kissed her.

brought her hot water with lemon, fetched her sandwiches from a nearby diner, ran for Cokes from the lobby vending machine. She always felt foolish, standing outside the dressing room holding a steaming mug of tea, until Kennedy whisked in, breathless and unapologetic.

Was that what it was like to be this girl? An unwise choice earning you sympathy, not scorn, a single moment of doubt forcing a

practical stranger to affirm that you were, in fact, special?

She hated how directly Kennedy looked at her, as if she were daring her to look away.

she’d stood under that eave, wounded. Stella’s mistake had been to think that she could settle anywhere. You had to keep moving or the past would always catch up to you.

But sometimes lying was an act of love. Stella had spent too long lying to tell the truth now, or maybe, there was nothing left to reveal. Maybe this was who she had become.

She’d imagined, more than once, telling her daughter the truth, about Mallard, and Desiree, and New Orleans. How she’d pretended to be someone else because she needed a job, and after a while, pretending became reality. She could tell the truth, she thought, but there was no single truth anymore. She’d lived a life split between two women—each real, each a lie.

Later, Kennedy would realize how often her mother used money to avoid discussing her past, as if poverty were so unthinkable to Kennedy that it could explain everything: why her mother owned no family photographs, why no friends from high school ever called, why they’d never been invited to a single wedding or funeral or reunion.

This was the first time Kennedy realized that her mother was a liar.

“I really wish you’d stop worrying about that,” her mother told her. “You’ll drive yourself crazy. In fact, I’m sure that’s why she said all those things to you.

She’s jealous and wants to get in your head.”

Loving a black man only made her feel whiter than before.

Sure, she was striking in her own way, but a pretty boy like him would never fall for a girl who was difficultly beautiful.

“You consider yourself your most fascinating subject.” She’d always thought everyone felt like a lead character onstage, surrounded by sidekicks and villains and

spite of herself, she felt a little proud. Jude was living the life she said she wanted, years ago. Still loved by the same man, on her way to becoming a doctor. And what did Kennedy have to show for all that time? A basement apartment with a man she barely understood, no college degree, a job serving coffee so that she could belt out songs in a half-empty theater each night.

“I never play the girl next door,” a black guest star told her once. “I guess no one wants to live next door to me.”

She didn’t tell Pam that their friendship had ended when, in a fit of childish rage, she’d called Cindy a nigger. She still cringed

when she remembered Cindy bursting into tears. She had, ridiculously, started crying too and her mother had slapped her—the first and only time she’d ever struck her. The slap confused her less than the kiss after, her mother’s anger and love colliding together so violently. At the time, she’d thought saying nigger was as bad as repeating any swear word; her mother would have been just as upset and embarrassed had she hollered fuck in that cul-de-sac.

Kennedy could see the boys ordering at the bar, and it dawned on her that she hadn’t even told Frantz what she wanted. A small intimacy but still remarkable, Frantz knowing what she wanted before she even asked for it.

“I knew they weren’t your friends,” he said. “What?” “You don’t have black friends,” he said. “You don’t like anybody black but me and we’re not really friends, are we?”