My Therapist Talks About Biddle City

She asks why I’m here, and I say, I’m having an interracial child, and I’m afraid she’ll be white. This is a rapid-access telehealth call. My therapist’s face is framed by a rectangle inside a rectangle. My therapist is a white person. She squints as I speak, never interrupts me. I say I’m afraid my child will reject me, choose my partner’s family, my partner’s personality, because he’s white and this country’s white. My therapist asks if I grew up in Biddle City. There are lots of Biddle Cities everywhere, she tells me. I didn’t know she knew about Biddle City. I thought it was a place I made up. I realize what was wrong all along. I say: I’m not an interracial person, but I’m afraid that I’m white. I’m afraid that I made myself white. That I’d chosen whiteness a long time ago. I see myself crying on a square on my computer screen. Like this, my face looks undeniably Asian. I try to relax so that it’s no longer crumpled in this way, but it doesn’t move. It’s frozen like this in its rectangular box.