The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Self-Talk by Esinam Bediako

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Content Warning: racism or racialized violence

Black Hard Palate

Once upon a time, you had so much pigment in your skin,
darkness pooling in your elbows, your knuckles, and especially
your knees. You looked, some kid quipped, like you’d fallen on
your knees in the blackest dirt on the rainiest day. Chocolate
knees. Shit knees. These kids were black, like you, but they
were the right kind, and you, wrong. They’re just kids being
kids, your teacher said, like you weren’t a kid, too, like you
should shoulder their cruelty, like you had to wait for them to
grow out of it.

Later, when you were older but still young, you yawned too
wide in science, and your lab partner gasped. Eww, he said,
what is that? It looks like those pictures of skin cancer from
our textbook. At home, in the mirror, you spotted a splotch on
the roof of your mouth, like a prune had flattened itself against
your hard palate. Your mother, a nurse who has seen
everything, had never seen this. Your doctor called it
hyperpigmentation, excess pigment that would likely fade
along with the darkness on the skin of your joints. Not fade,
really. Spread. You’d grow more skin, and the blackness would
have someplace to go. How long, you asked, how soon, but all
the doctor said was that you would grow out of it.

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