(If you read this story out loud, please use the following voices:ME: as a child, high-pitched, forgettable; as a woman, the same.THE BOY WHO WILL GROW INTO A MAN, AND BE MY SPOUSE: robust with serendipity.MY FATHER: kind, booming; like your father, or the man you wish was your father.MY SON: as a small child, gentle, sounding with the faintest of lisps; as a man, like my husband.ALL OTHER WOMEN: interchangeable with my own.)

That night, I wash myself. The silky suds between my legs are the color and scent of rust, but I am newer than I have ever been.

They are talking about how we can't trust the faded women, women who can't be touched but can stand on the earth, which means they must be lying about something, they must be deceiving us somehow.

I took a step toward her. 'It is my right to reside in my own mind. It is my right,' I said.

…all you can think about is Clara Barton, the feminist icon of your youth who had to teach herself how to be a nurse and endured abuse from men telling her what to do at every turn, and you remember being so *angry* and running to your parents and asking them if women still got told what was right or proper, and your mom said ‘Yes’ and your dad said ‘No,’ and you, for the first time, had an inkling of how complicated and terrible the world was…

No one knows what causes it. It’s not passed in the air. It’s not sexually transmitted. It’s not a virus or a bacteria, or if it is, it’s nothing scientists have been able to find. At first everyone blamed the fashion industry, then the millennials, and, finally, the water. But the water’s been tested, the millennials aren’t the only ones going incorporeal, and it doesn’t do the fashion industry any good to have women fading away. You can’t put clothes on air. Not that they haven’t tried.