The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett

THAT SEMESTER, she thought of bodies. Once a week, she sat on the edge of the bathtub, holding a hypodermic needle while Reese rolled up his plaid boxers. On the counter, a glass vial filled with a liquid that was yellowy clear like chardonnay. He still hated needles; he never looked when she flicked the tip before squeezing the fat part of his thigh. Okay, she always whispered after, sorry that she’d hurt him. Each month, he paid out of pocket for a vial small enough to fit in his palm. She barely understood how hormones worked, so on a whim, she enrolled in an anatomy class that she enjoyed far more than she’d expected. The rote memorization that bored the rest of the class thrilled her. She left flash cards labeled with body parts strewn all over the apartment: phalanges by the bathroom sink, deltoids on the kitchen table, dorsal metacarpal veins squeezed between couch cushions. Her favorite organ was the heart. She was the first person in her class to properly dissect the sheep heart. It was the most difficult dissection, the professor said, because the heart isn’t perfectly symmetrical but so close to it that you cannot tell which side is which. You have to orient the heart correctly to find the vessels. “You really must experience the heart with your hands,” he told the class. “I know it’s slippery but don’t be shy. You have to use your fingers to feel your way through the dissection.” At night, she placed her flash cards on Reese to quiz herself. He stretched out on...