The Vanishing Half(21)

“Don’t worry,” he’d said. “I’ll send that sonofabitch far away from here.” She must have looked unsure because he said, “Trust me. I won’t give you up.”

But why wouldn’t he? He barely knew her and Sam had offered him good money. What reason did he have to be loyal to her? For weeks, she’d wondered if she and Jude should move on again. If Sam was looking, wouldn’t he eventually find her? Wouldn’t he just travel to Mallard himself? But maybe now, Mallard was the safest place to be. Sam’s hired man told him she wasn’t in Louisiana, and what reason would Sam have to doubt him? Maybe she could trust Early—if he’d wanted to hurt her, Sam would have found her already. But just because she could trust him didn’t mean that he didn’t want anything.

“He just tellin you what you wanna hear,” her mother said one night, handing her a wet plate. “That man don’t know where Stella is any more than you do.”

Desiree sighed, reaching for the dish rag.

“But he knows how to look,” she said. “Why shouldn’t we try?”

“She don’t want to be found. You gotta let her go. Live her life.”

“This ain’t her life!” Desiree said. “None of it woulda happened if I didn’t tell her to take that job. Or drag her to New Orleans, period. That city wasn’t no good for Stella. You was right all along.”

Her mother pursed her lips. “It wasn’t her first time,” she said.

“Ma’am?”

“Bein white,” her mother said. “New Orleans was just her chance to do it for real.”



* * *



—

HERE WAS THE STORY her mother had been keeping:

A week after Stella disappeared into the city, Willie Lee came by the shotgun house, hangdog. He had something to tell Adele—something he should’ve told her weeks before Founder’s Day. One afternoon he’d driven Stella into Opelousas. She helped him around the butcher shop on weekends because she was quick at adding figures in her head. She could eyeball a pound of ground chuck more accurately than him, and whenever he weighed her measurements, she was never off. She was a smart, careful girl, but that last summer, he’d noticed something different about her. She seemed sadder, wrapped up in herself. Because she’d dropped out of school, he figured, although he didn’t quite understand it, having flunked out of ninth grade himself. A girl who could eyeball a pound of ground chuck would do fine in life, college or not. But not everybody was practical minded like him, so when Stella sullenly stood behind the cash register, he figured that she was still disappointed that she wouldn’t be off to Spelman someday like she’d hoped.

So he’d invited her to Opelousas one afternoon. He had to make deliveries and figured, hell, she might want to get out of town for a bit. He’d given her a nickel to buy a Coke, and when he’d finished unloading, he found her standing beside his truck, breathless and flushed. She’d gone inside some shop called Darlene’s Charms, where the shopgirl mistook her for white.

“Isn’t it funny?” she’d said. “White folks, so easy to fool! Just like everyone says.”

“It ain’t no game,” he told her. “Passin over. It’s dangerous.”

“But white folks can’t tell,” she said. “Look at you—you just as redheaded as Father Cavanaugh. Why does he get to be white and you don’t?”

“Because he is white,” he said. “And I don’t wanna be.”

“Well, neither do I,” she’d said. “I just wanted to look at that shop. You won’t tell my mama, will you?”

In Mallard, you grew up hearing stories about folks who’d pretended to be white. Warren Fontenot, riding a train in the white section, and when a suspicious porter questioned him, speaking enough French to convince him that he was a swarthy European; Marlena Goudeau becoming white to earn her teaching certificate; Luther Thibodeaux, whose foreman marked him white and gave him more pay. Passing like this, from moment to moment, was funny. Heroic, even. Who didn’t want to get over on white folks for a change? But the passe blanc were a mystery. You could never meet one who’d passed over undetected, the same way you’d never know someone who successfully faked her own death; the act could only be successful if no one ever discovered it was a ruse. Desiree only knew the failures: the ones who’d gotten homesick, or caught, or tired of pretending. But for all Desiree knew, Stella had lived white for half her life now, and maybe acting for that long ceased to be acting altogether. Maybe pretending to be white eventually made it so.



* * *



—

“FINISHIN UP,” Early said, two nights later, calling outside of Shreveport. “Headin back your way, if you still wanna look for your sister.”

She had never imagined that Stella kept big secrets from her. Not Stella, who’d slept beside her, whose thoughts ran like a current between them, whose voice she heard in her own head. How could she have spent that whole summer not knowing that Stella had already decided to become someone else? She didn’t know who Stella was anymore, and maybe she’d never quite known her at all.

She twirled her finger tighter around the phone cord. Inside the empty diner, Jude sat at the counter, reading a book. She was always reading, always alone.