Grace Martin, at eight years old, held the world record for filling her mouth with marbles. Only, her name wasn’t Grace Martin then. She was Kaysha Williams. Her parents wanted her to have a fierce knowledge of her history and still fit in. Grace felt they had something to prove, using her as a vehicle to tell the world that she could be black and perfect. She turned up to the world record event and nobody cared about her dress, ironed into pleats, and her hair, hot combed into straightness. She was the only Black girl competing for that record, maybe the only Black girl some of these people had ever met. She felt the weight of it with every blink. They took a photo of her for the local paper with a face full of marbles, smiling part-way through a practice with a bit of spittle trickling down her chin. Her parents were so embarrassed. Since then, she’s given them much more to be concerned about. She bet they wished she was still eight and their largest concern was the way she would set a bowl of marbles in front of her, methodically rolling each ball in her fingers before making space. She always made space. That was her problem. She crammed everything in until there wasn’t enough space anymore, until her vision was tiles and porcelain and her nostrils were acid and piss. 

She rolls it between her fingers. Slender. It leaves a fine white residue. She wonders how many would fit in her mouth, but she starts with one at a time. A glass of water balances on the porcelain sink. A Black woman returns her vacant stare.

Her parents cried when she changed her name, as if it hadn’t been used as a weapon against her all her life, as if they hadn’t cried the same way when her name was in bold beside that world record. She made the book. It was her uncle who got her registered. He took her to a hotel so that the people could come and take her photograph. 

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It was ancient history and it was right now. Everything was right now. Waking up at 6 am in unfamiliar apartments to reapply her face was right now. Red eyes. Acid. Desperate flushes. This was control. Her pillowcases, stained with makeup. Each exclaim of surprise at how beautiful she was in the mornings stung like a slap. None of it mattered. She didn’t want to be Kaysha anymore and despite the deed poll, she wasn’t transformed. None of her family called her Grace, but she got job interviews. A foot in the door was enough, she could force it open with her body, her mouth, her thighs. 

She paid off her debts to her uncle from that summer in cash for the hotel, meals, travel plus interest. He had kept track of it all, but now she owes him nothing. When she was fired her parents didn’t even ask why or what happened. Her room was just as she left it in their home, like they always expected her back. Her prized marbles still sat on her dressing table beside the photo of her and her uncle. She guessed that to some it would be comforting but she knew them too well; knew herself. Maybe her life was a collection of ways to disappoint her parents. Maybe that’s what that was. Maybe that’s what it all was.

Grace removes the photograph from its frame and rips it to pieces. Throws it in the toilet and covers it with the results of her fingers’ violent trespass on her throat. For old times’ sake. For now. The next pack is sugar-coated. She washes three down at once. Tries to hold onto thoughts. Grips the sink with scarred hands. She tastes the sweetness on her tongue before the water hits, the perfect smooth of it. Her hands are shaking. She’d already brought the marbles into the bathroom. They dance for her, reflecting the intense bulb. She hasn’t planned this part, but it feels so right. Once she empties every packet her face blurs into the tiles and the marbles blur into the toothbrush holder, but she feels them in her hands, and they know the journey to her mouth. Her insides knock against themselves, roll. It is familiar. She’s been practising, maybe her whole life. She can see the ceiling now. The bowl is empty. Her mouth is bigger. The marbles have space to move, to hit against each other, to nudge themselves towards her tonsils; to reach towards the burning acid crawling up her throat.

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