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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