The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett

She was too ashamed to tell him the truth: that she’d spent weeks meeting Lonnie in the stables at night. In the dark corner, he’d spread a blanket, prop up a flashlight, call it their secret hideaway. It was too dangerous, meeting in the middle of the day. What if someone saw them? At night, nobody would catch them. They could be truly alone. Didn’t she want that? He wasn’t her boyfriend. A boyfriend would hold her hand, ask about her day. But in the stables, he only touched her, palming her breasts, slipping his fingers up her shorts. In the stables, she swallowed him dripping into her mouth, breathing manure through her nose. But around town, he looked right past her. And yet, she would have kept meeting him each night if she hadn’t been caught by Early. Early hearing her creep out one night, tracking her through the woods, banging on the door until Lonnie, yanking frantically at his pants, shoved her outside. She was crying before she even stepped through the doorway. Early hooked a hand around her arm, unable to look at her. “What’s the matter with you?” he said. “You want a boyfriend, you tell him to come by the house. You don’t go off meetin no boy in the middle of the night.” “He won’t talk to me nowhere else,” she said. She started crying harder, her shoulders shaking, and Early pulled her into his chest. He hadn’t held her like that in years; she hadn’t wanted him to. He wasn’t her father and never would be, a man whose violence had not yet reached her, whose ang...