The Vanishing Half: A Novel

By 1988, Stella’s life has changed significantly. After Loretta moved away, Stella needed a diversion, and that diversion was continued education. She earned a GED, then applied to college, and is now teaching as an adjunct mathematics professor at Santa Monica College. Despite Blake’s reservations, Stella is considering a graduate degree and a full professorship.

In contrast, Kennedy has no interest in academic excellence. She has been behaving wildly ever since high school. Stella thinks, “Only a lazy girl would get caught, and her daughter was clever but lazy, blissfully unaware of how hard her mother worked to maintain the lie that was her life” (226).

Kennedy has dropped out of college to pursue a career in the theater, but Stella makes a deal with her daughter. She will attend a performance of Kennedy’s play if Kennedy will agree to go back to college.

Kennedy’s rebellious behavior frightens Stella: “But here in this world, her daughter felt like a stranger and it terrified her. If her daughter didn’t feel like she was really hers, then nothing about her life was real” (232). Later, Stella shares her concerns about Kennedy with her academic mentor, Peg Davis. Peg has encouraged Stella’s scholarly ambitions as well as her interest in feminism, which Blake finds unnerving. Peg says that Kennedy needs to find out who she is. Peg then presses Stella to describe what her own youth was like, but Stella says that she can’t remember.

Jude is determined to meet her aunt again, so she deliberately cultivates a friendship with Kennedy and takes a part-time job at the Stardust Theater. The cast finds Kennedy annoying because she is spoiled and demanding. Jude can scarcely believe that the two girls are cousins, and she begins to speculate about what her life might have been like if both twins had decided to pass and Desiree had married a White man. Despite their personality differences, Jude and Kennedy find themselves forming an odd bond.

Even though Jude keeps watching the audience for a glimpse of Stella, her aunt never shows up at the theater. Reese warns Jude that her search for her aunt has become a dangerous obsession. Jude recalls searching through Stella’s things as a child, asking herself, “How had she found a way to leave Mallard when her mother only knew how to stay?” (241-42).

Jude continues to haunt the theater throughout the run of the play, hoping to catch a glimpse of Stella. On closing night, she finally despairs of ever seeing her aunt. During intermission, Jude is working the concession stand when Stella appears: “Her mother, but not. That’s the only way she could think of her. Like her mother’s face transplanted onto another woman’s body” (246).

When Stella steps outside for a cigarette, Jude confronts her. The older woman is taken aback, incredulous that such a dark girl could be her niece. She’s even more shocked to learn that Desiree married an abusive husband and then moved back to Mallard. When Jude suggests that Stella should call Desiree, her aunt flees into the night.

At the cast party, Kennedy makes a rude comment to Jude, who then lashes out by revealing Stella’s identity to her cousin. Kennedy only partially believes her. Back at home, Stella makes a preemptive strike by telling her husband and daughter that a Black girl accosted her at the theater and falsely claimed that they are related. Blake assumes the girl wanted money.

To distract Kennedy from asking too many questions, Stella rents her an apartment and allows her to pursue an acting career for a year before she decides about going back to college. Kennedy remarks that her mother is a closed book when it comes to her own teen years. Stella thinks, “She could tell the truth […] but there was no single truth anymore. She’d lived a life split between two women—each real, each a lie” (260).