I AM IN A COURTROOM. THE COLOR PALETTE IS CREAMY SHELLS and brass, cold emerald lawyers’ lamps and spit-polished mahoganies. I am in the corner in a witness box. The audience stares at me hard. I have been put here to testify about what it is to be female, a sister, a mother (though I am not a mother, I am a sixteen-year-old girl). To testify about adultery. I am asked who I am. What I am. Who we have allowed inside of us. I must defend the women in my family, all the way back, and every girl and woman who ever was. Something fundamental is breaking and I will be responsible. The black veins of the marble floor look like cheese mold, cords of rot. I open my lips and out comes . . . vapor.