TCNJ

11 Prairie WINTER 2024 I am nine years old, sitting on the floor of the den, flipping through a photo album. I stop at the old photo- graph of my paternal grandmother, Bernice. I angle her face toward mine, trying to see the thin reflection of my own face over hers, hoping to see what everyone else does. But as I tilt the album, another photograph slips out from behind it — a black-and-white photo of a teenage girl. Her face is round and pretty and framed by short curls that lie flat on her skin. "Who is this?" I ask my mother, who is sitting nearby on the sofa. She sticks her head out above a newspaper and looks at the picture upside down. "That's John's first wife," she says and ducks her head behind the paper again. "John who?" "Your father." "Daddy had another wife?" "She was killed in the wreck," she says without looking up from her paper. I study the round contours of the woman's plump face, her small eyes and smooth skin, trying to make myself know her because my mother has said "your father's first wife" like I am supposed to know. "What was her name?" I ask. "Willodene." I repeat her name, first aloud, and then in my head. But I have never heard this name before. Panic rises inside me, and I feel like I cannot find the edges of myself. Like my mother might say at any moment, "You know, she's your real mother," without ever looking up from her paper. I want to scream, What else is there? What else don't I know? FACING PAGe PeTeR MURPHY; THIS PAGe ANTHONY DePRIMO I am at the grocery story when I catch a checkout clerk staring at my arms. I have thrown on an old T-shirt on this unseasonably warm day, thinking that no one will notice any- thing out of the ordinary about my body. My body, Black and young- enough-looking, is good at keeping secrets. Even the receptionists at the fertility clinic cannot process the idea that my body is both Black and infer- tile. They regularly direct me to a sign-in list for egg donors, twenty- somethings who, for a fee, allow doctors to harvest their eggs and give them to infertile women. When the clerk spots the bloody game of connect-the-dots on my arms, with one spot still red from an early morning blood draw, a thin shudder passes through her dark brown neck. She curls glittery pink lips into a wince and looks into my face. I am too star- tled to answer her narrowed eyes. She tosses her long dark weave over her shoulders and returns to her work scanning each item. But her eyes dart back and forth between groceries and the marks on my body as she tries to make sense of me — an apparent heroin addict buying Greek yogurt and organic baby spinach. By the time she hands me the receipt she is sucking her teeth and rolling her eyes. I thank her in a voice too happy for the super- market. She makes "You're welcome" sound like a curse, spitting the words so that they hang in the air in a comic- book word bubble. I smile, feeling seen even if I have been mistaken for someone else. I walk out of the store, pushing my cart with my arms facing as far out- wards as I can turn them. I greet strangers, daring them to see me too, but they smile back and look right through me, their eyes filling the gaps in my skin. I am invisible again. Excerpts reprinted with permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

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