The Vanishing Half: A Novel (16 page)

“Nice mornin,” the woman called. She had a slight accent—midwestern, maybe.

“Yes, it is,” Stella said.

She should introduce herself. None of the other neighbors had, but
her house was right across the street—she could practically see into the woman’s living room. Instead, she nudged Kennedy toward the car. She gripped the wheel tightly during the whole drive to school, rewinding the conversation in her head. That woman’s easy smile. Why did she feel so comfortable speaking to Stella in the first place? Did she see something in her, even across the street, that she felt like she could trust?

“I met the neighbor,” she told Blake that night. “The wife.”

“Mmm,” he said, climbing into bed beside her. “Nice, at least?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“It’ll be fine, Stel,” he said. “They’ll keep to themselves, if they know what’s best.”

The room fell dark, the mattress creaking as Blake rolled over to kiss her. Sometimes when he touched her, she saw the man who’d dragged her father onto the porch, the one with the red-gold hair. Tall, gray shirt partially unbuttoned, a scab on his cheek as if he’d nicked himself while shaving. Blake pressed open her thighs and the man with the red-gold hair was on top of her—she could almost smell his sweat, see the freckles on his back. Then it was Blake’s clean Ivory soap again, his voice whispering her name. It was ridiculous—the men looked nothing alike and Blake had never hurt her. But he could, which made her grip him even tighter as she felt him sink
inside.

The new neighbors were Reginald and Loretta Walker, and when the news spread that Sergeant Tommy Taylor himself was moving onto Sycamore Way, even the most belligerent faltered in their protest. Sergeant Taylor was, of course, a beloved character on
Frisk
, the hottest police drama on television. He played the straitlaced partner of the rowdy hero, always nagging him about paperwork and protocol. “File that form!” was his signature phrase, and for months, when Blake spied him across the cul-de-sac, he called it out to him in greeting. Reg Walker, mowing his lawn or plucking a newspaper from the driveway, always started before flashing his trademark smile, shrugging a little, as if he figured it the least offensive thing a white man might holler at him from across the street.

Blake loved it, like they were in on a joke together. He couldn’t see how patiently Reg Walker tolerated him. But it always embarrassed Stella, who hurried him inside. She barely watched television at all beyond the news, and she certainly had no interest in cop shows, so when she’d learned about the Walkers, she didn’t care at all that Reg was on some program that Blake liked. Maybe the husbands would be won over by this; if they had to live next to a Negro, he might as well be a famous one. A trusted one, even, a character they never saw
onscreen out of his uniform. Imagine their surprise when they first saw Reg Walker: tall, lean, his hair picked out in a short natural. He wore green plaid pants with silk shirts that hugged his broad chest. A gold watch glinted on his wrist, bouncing the sunlight as he climbed into his shiny black Cadillac.

“Flashy,” Marge Hawthorne called him, in the same dramatic way she might have said, “Dangerous.”

On Friday nights, Stella watched the Walkers climb into their car, Reg wearing a black suit, Loretta draped in a royal blue dress. On their way to a party, maybe. Crowding with movie stars in a Hollywood Hills mansion, piling into a nightclub on Sunset with ballplayers. For a moment, Stella felt stupid for distrusting them. Bob Hawthorne was a dentist. Tom Pearson owned a Lincoln dealership. Perhaps, to the Walkers, the rest of them seemed like the undeserving neighbors. Glancing down at herself, already in her pajamas, she couldn’t disagree.

“Well?” Cath asked breathlessly, plopping beside her at the next PTA meeting. “What’re they like?”

Stella shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve only seen them once or twice.”

“I heard the husband is all right. But that wife of his is something else.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she’s uppity as I don’t know what. Barb told me that she wants to put her daughter at our school next year. It’s crazy, if you ask me! I mean, there’s perfectly good schools all over the city with plenty of colored children. They have buses and everything.”

Loretta Walker didn’t look like the type to start trouble, but what did Stella know about her at all? She kept her distance, only peeked out at her through the blinds. Reg Walker leaving for early-morning
shoots in his Cadillac, Loretta wrapped in a silky green robe and waving at him from the porch. Loretta returning from the grocery store on Mondays, always Mondays, unloading her trunk. Once a tan Buick pulled into the driveway and three colored ladies piled out, carrying wine and cake. Loretta came down the driveway to greet them, laughing, her head thrown back. A big smile that made Stella smile too. When was the last time she’d seen anyone smile like that?

Through her blinds, she watched the Walkers as if their lives were another program on her television set. But she never saw anything alarming until the morning when she spotted her daughter playing dolls in the cul-de-sac with the Walker girl. There was no time to think. Before she knew it, she’d stormed across the street and grabbed her daughter’s arm, both girls gaping as she dragged Kennedy back into the house. She was shaking, fumbling to lock the door behind her as her daughter whined about the doll she’d left in the street. She already knew she’d overreacted—hadn’t she played with white girls when she was Kennedy’s age? Nobody cared when you were young enough. The twins used to follow their mother to work, playing with the white girl who lived there, until one afternoon the girl’s mother had suddenly yanked her out of their circle. Stella told her daughter the same thing she’d heard that mother say.

“Because we don’t play with niggers,” she said, and maybe it was her harsh tone, or the fact that she’d never said that word to her daughter before, but that was the end of it.

Or at least, she’d thought, until after dinner, when the doorbell rang and she found Loretta Walker on her welcome mat, holding Kennedy’s doll. For a moment, under the soft glow of the porch lights, hugging that blonde doll against her stomach, Loretta almost looked like a girl herself. Then she thrust the doll into Stella’s hands and walked back across the street.

F
OR THREE WEEKS
, Stella avoided Loretta Walker.

Forget spying out of her own curiosity—now she glanced through the blinds before fetching the mail, just to ensure that she wouldn’t run into Loretta. She went to the grocery store on Tuesdays, never Mondays, terrified that they might bump into each other down the milk aisle. So far there’d been only one accidental pileup on Sunday morning, when both couples left for their churches at the same time. The husbands had been pleasant but the wives didn’t even speak, each helping her girl into the car.

“She’s not too friendly,” Blake grumbled, backing out of the driveway, and Stella said nothing, plucking at her gloves.

She had nothing to be embarrassed about, really. She’d behaved exactly as Cath Johansen or Marge Hawthorne might have. Still, she didn’t tell Blake. What if he wondered why she’d overreacted? Or thought she was behaving like the Louisiana swamp trash his mother had always said she was? He believed in a moderate country. What he wanted most, he always said, watching policemen club protesters on the news, was for everyone to get along. So he would be embarrassed, as if she weren’t enough already. Because even though she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong, she still felt sick each time she pictured Loretta standing on her porch, hugging that doll. It would’ve been better if Loretta had sworn at her. Called her a backward, small-minded bigot. But she wouldn’t. She was decent because she had to be, which only made Stella feel more ashamed.

“Did you know that Walker woman sent a letter to the school?” Cath asked her one Sunday, squeezing next to her on the pew.

“A letter?” Stella said. She felt too exhausted to keep up with Cath’s breathless innuendo. Even here, at church, she couldn’t avoid Loretta Walker.

“A legal letter,” Cath said. “From some big lawyer, saying that if they don’t let her girl come here in the fall, she’ll sue. Can you imagine that? A whole lawsuit over that one little girl? I swear, some people just love the attention—”

“She doesn’t seem that way to me,” Stella said.

“And how would you know?” Cath said. She folded her arms across her chest. Stella raised her hands, surrendering.

“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know.”

I
N
J
UNE
, she baked her guilt into a lemon cake with vanilla frosting. The idea arrived suddenly—before she could second-guess, she was tugging a bag of flour out of the cupboard, hunting through the refrigerator for eggs. She would go crazy skulking around her own home, glancing out the window each time she wanted to venture outside. She was tired of her stomach clenching when she imagined the Walker girl abandoned on the sidewalk by the strewn dolls, staring back at her with those big eyes. She had to apologize. She wouldn’t feel better until she did. She’d bake a cake to bring over as a housewarming gift. At least then she could be cordial to the woman. Decent. Hospitality wasn’t the same as friendliness, and if anyone asked, she would say that she’d been raised to be hospitable. Nothing more, nothing less. One lemon cake for her peace of mind felt like an easy trade.

In the afternoon, she let out a deep breath before starting across the street, the cake balanced on a glass platter. The tan Buick was parked in the Walkers’ driveway. Good, Loretta was entertaining. All the easier to bring the cake, apologize, and go.

Loretta answered the door in a shimmery green dress, a golden scarf draped around her neck. Already, Stella felt embarrassed in her ordinary blue dress, holding her slumping cake.

“Hi there, Mrs. Sanders,” Loretta said. She was leaning against the doorway, holding a glass of white wine.

“Hello,” Stella said. “I just wanted to—”

“Why don’t you come in?”

Stella paused, not expecting this. A peal of laughter escaped the living room, and she felt a sharp pang. When was the last time she’d sat around, laughing with girlfriends?

“Oh no, I couldn’t,” she said. “You have company—”

“Nonsense,” Loretta said. “No reason for us to be talkin out here on the porch.”

Stella paused in the entrance, startled by the palatial decor: the living room floor adorned with a white fur rug, a floor lamp topped by a gilded shade, the tiled vase on the mantel. Her own home was simple, a marker of good taste. Only the low class lived like this, furniture covered in gold, knickknacks crowded everywhere. On the long leather couch, three colored women sat drinking wine and listening to Aretha Franklin.

“Ladies, this is Mrs. Sanders,” Loretta said. “She lives across the street.”

“Mrs. Sanders,” one of the women said. “We’ve heard so much about you.”

Stella flushed, knowing, from the women’s smiles exactly what they’d heard. Why had she agreed to come inside? No, why had she brought the cake over in the first place? Why couldn’t she just be like the rest of the neighbors and keep her distance? But it was too late now. Loretta steered her toward the kitchen, where Stella set the cake on the counter.

“Would you like a drink, Mrs. Sanders?” Loretta asked.

“It’s Stella,” she said. “And I couldn’t, I just wanted to stop by and—well, welcome you all to the neighborhood. And also, about what happened—”

She hoped that Loretta might meet her halfway, spare her the shame of repeating the incident. Instead, the woman raised an eyebrow, reaching for an empty wineglass.

“You sure you don’t want a drink?” she said.

“I just wanted to apologize,” Stella said. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m not normally like that.”

“Like what?”

Loretta knew exactly what she meant, but she was having too much fun toying with her. Stella blushed again.

“I mean, I don’t normally—” She paused. “This is all new to me, you see.”

Loretta eyed her for a second, then took a sip of wine.

“You think I wanted to move here?” she said. “But Reg got his mind set on it and by then . . .”

She trailed off, but Stella could fill in the rest. When she’d first passed over, it seemed so easy that she couldn’t believe she’d never done it before. She felt almost angry at her parents for denying it to her. If they’d passed over, if they’d raised her white, everything would have been different. No white men dragging her daddy from the porch. No laundry baskets filling the living room. She could have finished school, graduated top of her class. Maybe she would have ended up at a school like Yale, met Blake there proper. Maybe she could have been the type of girl his mother wanted him to marry. She could have had everything in her life now, but her father and mother and Desiree too.

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.

“Maybe the girls can play some time,” Stella said. “There’s a nice little park one street over.”

“Yes, maybe.” Loretta’s smile lingered a second too long, as if there were more she wanted to say. For a second, Stella wondered if she’d realized her secret. She almost wished Loretta had. It scared her, how badly she wanted to belong to somebody.

“It’s funny,” Loretta finally said.

“What is?”

“I didn’t know what to expect when we moved here,” Loretta said. “But I never imagined no white woman showing up in my kitchen with the most lopsided cake I ever seen.”

L
ORETTA
W
ALKER DID NOT KNOW
how she’d ended up in Los Angeles. That’s how she said it, too, with an exhausted sigh, taking another drag of her cigarette. She sat on the park bench, watching the girls play on the swings. Early summer still, but the morning was already so warm, Stella dabbed at her damp forehead with a handkerchief. She’d been pushing Kennedy on the swings when the little colored girl came running into the park, Loretta trailing behind. The girl eyed Stella warily, reaching for her mother’s hand, and for a moment, Stella thought about leaving. Instead, she took a deep breath and stayed.

Now Loretta gazed up moodily at the cloudless sky.

“All this sun,” she said. “Unnatural. Like being in a picture show all the time.”

She was born in St. Louis, but she’d met Reg at Howard. He was a theater major, obsessed with August Wilson and Tennessee Williams; she studied history, hoped to become a professor someday. Neither had imagined that Reg would become famous for playing a boring police officer. When he’d practiced long soliloquies, impressing Loretta with his elocution, he hadn’t expected that years later, his most well-known line would be “File that form!”

“How’d you like it?” Stella asked. “Howard. It’s a colored school, isn’t it?” As if she hadn’t saved all the college pamphlets Mrs. Belton had given her, cracking the Howard one open so often it fell apart down the center. All those colored students lounging on the lawn, flipping through books. It seemed like a dream to her then.

“Yes,” Loretta said. “I liked it fine.”

“I always wanted to go to college,” Stella said.

“You still could.”

Stella laughed, gesturing around the neighborhood. “Why would I?”

“I don’t know. Because you want to?”

Loretta made it sound so simple, but Blake would laugh. A waste of time and money, he’d tell her. Besides, she’d never even finished high school.