The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett

Stella became white and Desiree married the darkest man she could find.

Lightness, like anything inherited at great cost, was a lonely gift. He’d married a mulatto even lighter than himself. She was pregnant then with their first child, and he imagined his children’s children’s children, lighter still, like a cup of coffee steadily diluted with cream. A more perfect Negro. Each generation lighter than the one before.

“Negroes always love our hometowns,” he said. “Even though we’re always from the worst places. Only white folks got the freedom to hate home.”

Sometimes who you were came down to the small things.

People thought that being one of a kind made you special. No, it just made you lonely. What was special was belonging with someone else.

How real was a person if you could shed her in a thousand miles?

She had become white only because everyone thought she was.

There was nothing more tantalizing than the possibility of total destruction.

Leaving was simple. Staying was the part she’d never quite mastered.

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.