Brit Bennett The Vanishing Half Quotes

Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles. You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.

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.

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.

This big ol' world and we only get to go through it once. The saddest thing there is, you ask me.

There were many ways to be alienated from someone, few to actually belong.

The only difference between lying and acting was whether your audience was in on it, but it was all a performance just the same.

A town always looked different once you'd returned, like a house where all the furniture had shifted three inches. You wouldn't mistake it for a stranger's house but you'd keeping banging your shins on the table corners.

That was the thrill of youth, the idea that you could be anyone. That was what had captured her in the charm shop, all those years ago. Then adulthood came, your choices solidifying, and you realize that everything you are had been set in motion years before. The rest was aftermath.

When you married someone, you promised to love every person he would be. He promised to love every person she had been. And here they were, still trying, even though the past and the future were both mysteries.

In the dark, you could never be too black. In the dark, everyone was the same color.

You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.

A body could be labeled but a person couldn’t, and the difference between the two depended on that muscle in your chest. That beloved organ, not sentient, not aware, not feeling, just pumping along, keeping you alive.

Sometimes who you were came down to the small things.

Memory works that way—like seeing forward and backward at the same time.

The key to staying lost was to never love anything.

How real was a person if you could shed her in a thousand miles?

That was the problem: you could never love two people the exact same way.

You didn't just find a self out there waiting. You had to make one. You had to create who you wanted to be.

That was the thing about death. Only the specifics of it hurt. Death, in a general sense, was background noise. She stood in the silence of it.

Your guilt can't do nothin for me, honey. You want to go feel good about feelin bad, you can go on and do it right across the street.

You can escape a town, but you cannot escape blood. Somehow, the Vignes twins believed themselves capable of both.

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.

She could think of nothing more horrifying than not being able to hide what she wanted.

All of her blessings had come so easily in the beginning of her life, and she'd spent the back half losing them all.

But maybe in those seven minutes they'd first been apart, they'd each lived a lifetime, setting out their separate paths. Each discovering who she might be.

They're gonna hate me anyway," Loretta said. "Might as well hate me in my big house with all of my nice things.

She’d tell her because, in spite of everything, Loretta was her only friend in the world. Because she knew that, if it came down to her word versus Loretta’s, she would always be believed. And knowing this, she felt, for the first time, truly white.

Gratitude only emphasized the depth of your lack, so she tried to hide it.

Telling Stella a secret was like whispering into a jar and screwing the lid tight.

The hardest part about becoming someone else was deciding to. The rest was only logistics.

Well, maybe that's your problem," Kennedy said, "You tell yourself no before anyone even says it to you.

Loretta said that, a couple months ago, Cindy asked her what assassination meant. She told her the truth, of course—that an assassination is when someone kills you to make a point. Which was correct enough, Stella supposed, but only if you were an important man. Important men became martyrs, unimportant ones victims. The important men were given televised funerals, public days of mourning. Their deaths inspired the creation of art and the destruction of cities. But unimportant men were killed to make the point that they were unimportant—that they were not even men—and the world continued on.

She felt queasy at how simple it was. All there was to being white was acting like you were.

TV loves a black woman judge,” Pam told her. “It’s funny—can you imagine what this world would look like if we decided what’s fair?

She sacrificed for a daughter who could never learn what she'd lost.

You could never quite get used to loneliness; every time she thought she had, she sank further into it.

I love shopping,' she said, almost to herself. 'It's like trying on all the other people you could be.

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

You shouldn’t tell people the truth because you want to hurt them. You should tell them because they want to know it. And I think you want to know now.

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.

She couldn’t imagine living like this—hanging on a cliff, exposed by glass. But maybe the rich didn’t feel a need to hide. Maybe wealth was the freedom to reveal yourself.

Deserve is a bullshit term,” her yoga instructor boyfriend said. “None of us deserves anything. We get what we get.

That was the thrill of youth, the idea that you could be anyone.

Eventually remembering turned into imagining. How slight the difference was between the two.

In all of her school pictures, she'd either looked too black or over-exposed, invisible except for the whites of her eyes and teeth. The camera, Reese told her once, worked like the human eye. Meaning, it was not created to notice her.

Important men became martyrs, unimportant ones victims. The important men were given televised funerals, public days of mourning. Their deaths inspired the creation of art and the destruction of cities. But unimportant men were killed to make the point that they were unimportant—that they were not even men—and the world continued on.

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.

She never felt darker than when she was running, and at the same time, she never felt less black, less anything.

If nakedness would not reveal who you were, then what would?

what was the point of sharing good news with someone who couldn’t be happy for you?

Do you think—” She paused, scraping the celery into a bowl. “Do you think Daddy loved you?” “I think everybody who ever hurt me loved me,” her mother said. “Do you think he loved me?” Her mother touched her cheek. “Yes,” she said. “But I couldn’t wait around to see.

Being white wasn’t the most exciting part. Being anyone else was the thrill. To transform into a different person in plain sight, nobody around her even able to tell. She’d never felt so free.

The world worked differently than he’d ever imagined. People you loved could leave and there was nothing you could do about it. Once he’d grasped that, the inevitability of leaving, he became a little older in his own eyes.

Her whole life, in fact, had been a gift of good fortune—she had been given whiteness. Blonde hair, a pretty face, a nice figure, a rich father. She’d sobbed out of speeding tickets, flirted her way to endless second chances. Her whole life, a bounty of gifts she hadn’t deserved.

Now time had fallen right out of his pockets when he wasn’t looking

As they grew, they no longer seemed like one body split in two, but two bodies poured into one, each pulling it her own way.

Then adulthood came, your choices solidifying, and you realize that everything you are had been set in motion years before. The rest was aftermath.

Being half lost was worse than being fully lost. It was impossible to know which part of you knew the way.

Besides, Jude wasn’t like Sam either. She was, in a way, like Stella. Private, like if she told you anything about herself, she was giving away something she could never get back.

Lightness, like anything inherited at great cost, was a lonely gift.

True acting meant becoming invisible so that only the character shone through.

The world worked differently than he’d ever imagined. People you loved could leave and there was nothing you could do about it.

People lived in bodies that were largely unknowable. Some things you could never learn about yourself—some things nobody could learn about you until after you died.

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.

They weren’t far from home but this was Los Angeles. You could cover a lifetime in eleven miles.

He was raised in the projects of Cleveland and he loved that city with the fierceness of someone who hadn’t been given much to love.

On the road from El Dorado, Therese Anne Carter became Reese.

The last thing she wanted was to love someone else who looked just like herself.

But then Desiree felt hated and Stella felt ignored. That was the problem: you could never love two people the exact same way.

A body could be labeled but a person couldn’t,

Look at this, look at that, she must have been such a good girl this year! Unlike all those rotten poor children staring at empty trees who must have deserved it, bad because they were poor, poor because they were bad.

People lived in bodies that were largely unknowable. Some things you could never learn about yourself—some things nobody could learn about you until after you died. She was fascinated by the mystery of dissections as well as the challenge. They had to search for tiny nerves that were impossible to find. It was almost like a little treasure hunt.

He was straining against his white briefs and she felt embarrassed for him, embarrassed for all men, really, forced to wear their desire so openly. She could think of nothing more horrifying than not being able to hide what she wanted.

Nothing made a boy less exciting than the fact that you were supposed to like him.

A dark man would trample her beauty. He'd love it at first, but like anything he desired and could never attain, he would soon grow to resent it. And he hated her for it.

Instead, after a year, the twins scattered, their lives splitting as evenly as their shared egg. Stella became white and Desiree married the darkest man she could find.

This big ol’ world and we only get to go through it once. The saddest thing there is, you ask me.

Willie Lee heard that the white men were angry that Leon stole their business by underbidding them. But how could you shoot a man for accepting less than what you asked for? “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.

But even here, where nobody married dark, you were still colored and that meant that white men could kill you for refusing to die. The Vignes twins were reminders of this, tiny girls in funeral dresses who grew up without a daddy because white men decided that it would be so.

In Socorro, he began wrapping his chest in a white bandage, and by Las Cruces, he’d learned to walk again, legs wide, shoulders square. He told himself that it was safer to hitchhike this way, but the truth was that he’d always been Reese. By Tucson, it was Therese who felt like a costume. How real was a person if you could shed her in a thousand miles?

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.

A town always looked different once you'd returned, like a house where all the furniture had been shifted three inches. You wouldn't mistake it for a stranger's house but you'd keep banging your shins on the table corners.

She finally unlatched the screen door and stepped barefoot onto the porch. Early eased toward her. He smelled like sandalwood and sweat, and as he neared, she thought, for one breathless second, that he might kiss her. But he didn’t. He lifted his fig to her lips. She bit where his mouth had been.

Even in their darkened bedroom, even to Desiree, Stella couldn’t bring herself to say. She always wanted to believe that there was something special about her but she knew that Mr. Dupont only picked her because he sensed her weakness. She was the twin who wouldn’t tell.

Summer was nearly over and she couldn’t bring herself to imagine autumn, scrubbing bathroom floors while her friends gossiped in the lunchroom and planned homecoming dances. Would this be the rest of her life? Constricted to a house that swallowed her as soon as she stepped inside?

Early loved her hair, so she always paid it special attention. Once, Jude had seen him ease up behind her mother and bury his face in a handful of her hair. She didn’t know who she wanted to be in that moment—Early or her mother, beautiful or beholding—and she’d felt so sick with longing that she turned away.

All over the city, couples doing what they were doing. Teenagers kissing on blankets at a beach, the ocean rolling in black. Newlyweds fumbling in a hotel room. A man whispering into his lover’s ear. A woman holding a match to a slender candle, her face glowing off the kitchen window. Across the city, darkness and light.

Three times he’d touched her and himself too, panting, his breath thick with brandy, while she tried to get away, but the pantry was too small and he was too strong, pressing her against the shelves. Then it was over, as quick as it started. Soon her fear of him became worse than the touching. All the days she worried that he might creep up behind her ruined the ones when he didn’t.

Some hoped, watching Desiree hold the hand of the little dark girl, that the two wouldn't even stay that long. They weren't used to having a dark child amongst them and were surprised by how much it upset them. Each time that girl passed by, no hat or nothing, they were as galled as when Thomas Richard returned from the war, half a leg lighter, and walked around town with one pant leg pinned back so that everyone could see his loss. If nothing could be done about ugliness, you ought to at least look like you were trying to hide it.

They hadn’t even kissed yet but his question sounded as serious as a marriage proposal. “Just say yes,” he said, and the word tasted like cherries, sweet and tart and easy. Yes, and just like that, she could become Miss Vignes for good. She didn’t give herself a chance to second-guess. She didn’t plan how she would leave her sister, how she would settle in a new city on her own. For the first time in her life, she didn’t worry about any of the practical details when she told Blake Sanders yes. The hardest part about becoming someone else was deciding to. The rest was only logistics.

She would leave him. She'd always had a good sense for when it was time to leave. Call it intuition or restlessness, call it whatever you want. She'd never been the type to overstay her welcome. She knew when it was time to leave Los Angeles, and a year later, she would know to leave New York. She knew when she out to be with a man for six weeks or six years. Leaving was the same regardless. Leaving was simple. Staying was the part she'd never quite mastered.

Good,” he said. “You got beautiful skin.” He glanced at her, but she looked away, staring down at the photo paper as an abandoned building shimmered into view. She hated to be called beautiful. It was the type of thing people only said because they felt they ought to. She thought about Lonnie Goudeau kissing her under the moss trees or inside the stables or behind the Delafosse barn at night. In the dark, you could never be too black. In the dark, everyone was the same color.

After that night, she never tried to search for the town again. It would be something that she would always know she was right about but could never prove, like people who swore they’d seen Elvis wandering around the grocery store, knocking on the melons. Unlike those loons, she wouldn’t tell anyone. A private crazy—she was okay with that. Until she met Jude Winston. That night, at the cast party, Jude spoke the word Mallard and it sounded like a song Kennedy hadn’t heard in years. Ah, that’s how it goes.

Blake smiling at her through the mirror as he shaved. “I do believe I made you late to work, Mrs. Sanders,” he said, which didn’t have as nice a ring to it as Dr. Sanders, but maybe that was okay. Maybe it was enough to be Mrs. Sanders, maybe it was enough to have her Introduction to Statistics class, and her house, and her family. That dark girl. She saw her again, tried to shake her out of her mind. She’d been arrogant, that was her problem. So focused on what was next that she didn’t appreciate what she’d already gotten away with. She couldn’t let herself slip up like that again. She’d have to focus. Stay alert.

What do you think of all this?” he said. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never heard anything like it.” But that wasn’t exactly true. She’d always known that it was possible to be two different people in one lifetime, or maybe it was only possible for some. Maybe others were just stuck with who they were. She’d tried to lighten her skin once, during her first summer in Mallard. She was still young enough then to believe that such a thing was possible, yet old enough to understand that it would require a degree of alchemy that she didn’t quite understand. Magic. She wasn’t foolish enough to hope that someday she might be light, but a deep brown maybe, anything better than this endless black.

BY HIGH SCHOOL, the names no longer shocked her but the loneliness did. You could never quite get used to loneliness; every time she thought she had, she sank further into it. She sat by herself at lunch, flipping through cheap paperbacks. She never received visits on the weekends, or invitations to Lou’s for lunch, or phone calls just to see how she was doing. After school, she went running alone. She was the fastest girl on the track team, and on another team in another town, she might have been captain. But on this team in this town, she stretched alone before practice and sat by herself on the team bus, and after she won the gold medal at the state championship, no one congratulated her but Coach Weaver.

ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, she leaned against Blake’s chest, watching their daughter squeal and dive into her pile of gifts. A Talking Barbie that spoke when you pulled her cord, a Suzy Homemaker oven set, a red Spyder bicycle. Look at this, look at that, she must have been such a good girl this year! Unlike all those rotten poor children staring at empty trees who must have deserved it, bad because they were poor, poor because they were bad. She’d never wanted to participate in the Santa mythmaking, but Blake said that it was important to preserve Kennedy’s innocence. “It’s just a little story,” he said. “It’s not like she’ll hate us when she figures it out.” He couldn’t even bring himself to say the word lie. Which was a lie in itself.

She imagined marching across the street to explain herself. Standing in Loretta’s cavernous living room, Loretta balanced on one moving box while taping another shut. Loretta wouldn’t look angry to see her—she wouldn’t look like anything at all, and her blank face would hurt even more. Stella would tell her that she’d only said those terrible things about Reg because she was desperate to hide. “I’m not one of them,” she would say. “I’m like you.” “You’re colored,” Loretta would say. Not a question, but a statement of blunt fact. Stella would tell her because the woman was leaving; in hours, she’d vanish from this part of the city and Stella’s life forever. She’d tell her because, in spite of everything, Loretta was her only friend in the world. Because she knew that, if it came down to her word versus Loretta’s, she would always be believed. And knowing this, she felt, for the first time, truly white.

They only like light Negroes out there. You’d fit right in.” She’d said it so offhandedly that Kennedy almost didn’t realize it. “I’m not a Negro,” she said. Jude laughed again, this time uneasily. “Well, your mother is,” she said. “So?” “So that makes you one too.” “It doesn’t make me anything,” she said. “My father’s white, you know. And you don’t get to show up and tell me what I am.” It wasn’t a race thing. She just hated the idea of anyone telling her who she had to be. She was like her mother in that way. If she’d been born black, she would have been perfectly happy about it. But she wasn’t and who was Jude to tell her that she was somebody that she was not? Nothing had changed, really. She’d learned one thing about her mother, but what did that amount to when you looked at the totality of her life? A single detail had been moved and replaced. Swapping out one brick wouldn’t change a house into a fire station. She was still herself. Nothing had changed. Nothing had changed at all.

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.