Half and Half

I have been trying to figure out what the title “Half and Half” means. The story is almost half about the present situation, the narrator’s divorce, and half about her younger brother’s drowning; her marriage is half and half, she is Chinese, her husband is American, and after the accident, the remaining six children are evenly split by sex- three girls, three boys. Then I realize it’s in the last bit, “fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention”. Rose has believed all the time that her mother has given up on faith, the Bible under the table a sure sign to her. Similarly, Rose believes that she caused her brother’s death and the death of her marriage, both due to inattention. When she opens the Bible, still pure white even after all the years under the table leg, she sees her brother’s death written in “erasable pencil” and realizes that although her mother pretends to have abandoned her beliefs completely, she has not. She begins to understand that when “you lose something you love, faith takes over … You have to undo the expectation”. Rose sounds as though she may try to work it out with her husband, believing that it may be time to think for herself, to “pay attention to what [she] lost”.