The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett

Big thinking crushed by reality—that’s what he’d inherited.

“This big ol’ world and we only get to go through it once. The saddest thing there is, you ask me.”

Important men became martyrs, unimportant ones victims. The important men were given televised funerals, public days of mourning. Their deaths inspired the creation of art and the destruction of cities. But unimportant men were killed to make the point that they were unimportant—that they were not even men—and the world continued on.

Improbable events happened all the time, she tried to explain to her students, because improbability is an illusion based on our preconceptions. Often it has nothing to do with statistical truth.

That was the thrill of youth, the idea that you could be anyone. That was what had captured her in the charm shop, all those years ago. Then adulthood came, your choices solidifying, and you realize that everything you are had been set in motion years before. The rest was aftermath.

Memory works that way—like seeing forward and backward at the same time. In that moment, she could see in both directions. She saw herself as a little girl—eager, pestering, clambering to be close to a mother who never wanted her to be. A mother whom she’d never actually known.

You didn’t just find a self out there waiting—you had to make one. You had to create who you wanted to be.

Her death hit in waves. Not a flood, but water lapping steadily at her ankles. You could drown in two inches of water. Maybe grief was the same.