The night before my medical school interview, my sister poured bleach on my only blazer, and my parents told me to stop making a scene.

“My grandmother?” I asked.

“Dr. Rosalind Mercer,” he said. “Your mother’s mother.”

The name landed in the room like a key turning in a lock.

I had seen my grandmother only in old photographs. A tall Black woman with silver-streaked hair, serious eyes, and a white coat buttoned to the throat. My mother rarely mentioned her except to say she was “difficult,continue reading …