The Vanishing Half

When Desiree and Stella reached New Orleans as young girls, they found work at a laundromat despite the fact that they weren’t old enough for full-time employment. Life was hard, and Desiree often considered calling it quits and returning to Mallard. To her surprise, though, Stella always encouraged her to stay. Although she’d been reluctant to leave home, she now seemed motivated to make it in New Orleans.  One day, she said that she should have left home without Stella. She felt bad, she said, for dragging her sister into such a hard life. The comment offended Stella, who said that Desiree would never leave her behind—and it was true, she wouldn’t. At that point in their lives, Desiree liked to think that Stella needed her, and Stella was happy to indulge this thought.

In the present, Desiree starts working at Lou’s Egg House as a waitress. One day, Early comes to see her. He asks if her husband knows how to find her mother’s house. She says no, but he keeps asking questions to make sure Sam won’t be able to find her on his own. When he asks why Desiree isn’t in touch with Stella, she says that Stella left her 13 years ago because she “took a job.” Stella needed a new job after getting fired from the laundromat, so she applied to work in an office in the Maison Blanche building. The office would never hire a Black woman, but Desiree encouraged Stella to apply anyway—the employers never needed to know her racial identity. Stella got the job and then, a year later, disappeared into a new life.

Early offers to help Desiree find Stella. He’s good at hunting people down, he tells her, and though she’s hesitant at first, she goes along with the idea. He has to go to Texas to find a fugitive, but then he and Desiree can go to New Orleans together and see if they can dig anything up about Stella’s whereabouts. While on the job in Texas, all he can think about is Desiree. Eventually, he calls Sam and lies to him, saying that Desiree can’t be found. Sam insists that Early must not have looked hard enough, but Early just hangs up the phone.

Time passes. It’s been a month since Desiree came back to Mallard with Jude. Everyone expected her to leave, but she doesn’t, which makes some townspeople uncomfortable, since they’re not used to having children as dark as Jude in the community. Nonetheless, Desiree doesn’t leave, instead spending her days at the diner and talking to Early on the phone at the end of each shift.

Before Early left for Texas, he told Desiree that Sam had hired him to find her, but he promised he wouldn’t reveal her whereabouts. He also said he was willing to find Stella without getting paid, and though Adele thinks he’s just telling Desiree what she wants to hear, she’s hopeful that he might actually be able to help. Adele, however, points out that Stella clearly doesn’t want to be found, and that Desiree should let her live her life in peace. In response, Desiree insists that whatever existence Stella is leading right now isn’t her real life—she’s just pretending.

Adele informs her daughter that Stella has a history of pretending to be white. Shortly after she and Desiree ran away, their mother learned that Stella had gone to Opelousas and entered a store in which an employee assumed she was white. Instead of correcting the employee, Stella just played along. It gave her a thrill. Throughout their childhood, Desiree and Stella heard stories about people trying to pass as white, but everyone they heard about always got caught. For all of those people, though, Desiree assumes there must be many who successfully transitioned into white society. For all she knows, Stella has acted white for so long that she no longer even has to pretend.

Early finishes his job in Texas and returns to Mallard. He takes Desiree for a drive and asks her about Jude, who is always quiet and spends her time alone. Early notes that it won’t be easy for her growing up in Mallard as a dark-skinned Black girl. When he was a child in Mallard, he accidentally stepped in front of a white woman at church, and the woman’s husband smacked him on the back of his neck. Early assumed his uncle would stand up for him. Instead, though, his uncle apologized to the man and his wife on Early’s behalf. Hearing Early’s story, Desiree apologizes for letting her mother drive him away all those years ago. He forgives her, and she gently puts her hand on the back of his neck.

Desiree and Early spend time in New Orleans together trying to track down Stella. They visit an old friend who knew the twins when they first moved to the city, and she tells them that she saw Stella once on the street. It was before Desiree moved away from the city. Their friend saw Stella walking with a white man, their arms linked. Desiree is surprised to hear that her sister was with a man—she can’t believe Stella would make such a drastic life choice based on romance. But Early tells her that sometimes people don’t behave as rationally as one might assume. Emotion, he says, often influences a person’s actions.

Early teaches Desiree some tricks about finding people. He shows her how to act assertive when she asks strangers questions about Stella, urging her to pretend like there’s nothing suspicious about what she’s doing. When they visit the Maison Blanche, where Stella used to work, Early tells Desiree to act like she’s a white woman who lost touch with a friend and wants her contact information. To Desiree’s surprise, the tactic works. A secretary gives her the most recent address they had on file for Stella. It’s no longer her current residence, but it’s a start. What really surprises Desiree, though, is that the address is in Boston, Massachusetts.

That evening, Early and Desiree become physically intimate, and Early says he’ll keep looking for Stella. He stresses, however, that he might not be able to find her. She might be gone, and Desiree will have to accept that outcome. Slipping her hands under his shirt, she says she understands.