The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett

She was thinking, somehow, of Stella—a woman who resembled her just as little but would be a better version of her mother. Stella wouldn’t make Daddy so angry that he beat on her. She wouldn’t wake Jude in the middle of the night and force her onto a train to a little town where other children taunted her. She would keep her word. Stella wouldn’t promise that they would leave Mallard again and again, only to stay. “You gotta watch your mama,” her father had warned her once. “She still like those folks.” “What folks?” She was lying on the rug beside him, watching him catch jacks, his large hands blurring in front of her eyes. “The folks she come from,” he said. “Your mama still got some of that in her. She still think she better than us.” She didn’t understand exactly what he meant, but she liked being part of an us. 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.