For generations the fate of the women in my family was determined at conception. At the moment that the universe chose them to be women, their palate was fixed. The future could be read by even a plane deck of cards. It would take no magic or imagination to walk the journey of my mother or my grandmother or her mother before that. And so it was with me. I had a story that was a carbon copy of the story told by my older sisters. Told by my auntie. Told by my neighbors and my teachers and the strangers who walk by our house. It was as if when I was a child somebody had gone through the box of crayons and removed all the interesting colors. And still we sat earnestly on the floor of the kitchen with the papers we got from school and the six or seven crayons left in the box. We found a way to create contrast. We found a way to make the paper beautiful. But it was restricted. It was humbling, and I got tired of looking at the same sadness piled up in every corner of our home. There was a painting in me. It was lodged deep in my heart, and it made it hard to take deep breaths or to sleep all night long. I don't know who made it. Maybe it was something I made myself. Maybe in that moment of conception, time slowed and I was able to paint with color. I don't know. All I know is that I walked through the world of women with pain in my chest. It hurt to see them. It hurt to see myself, and I often avoided the mirror. I did not want to see those crayons in me. I did not want to see how dull my eyes were because brown and taupe and beige and sand were the only colors left with which to play. Some nights my skin felt so thin that if I pressed hard on the art I could see the painting underneath my ribs. They were colors that were like a shout or a laugh or a weeping bent branch of a green tree in a summer storm. And I would stay up all night trying to remember the curves of the lines and the colors that raced across the canvas. I started to stand upside down. I had hoped that somehow the painting would come out of me. Maybe I would open my mouth to sing at church and all the colors would come out of me at once. And my neighbors would see what I had inside and they would forgive me. Because it was like a cancer. I did not choose it. It was a tumor that grew inside of me with a gilded frame and a signature that seemed to change every time I looked. And even though there was no way to get it out of me, I started to see it shift. It would change sizes and move from one part of my body to another. One day it would be on the bottom of my foot. Another day would poke from my hip bone, looking like a corsage. But finally it floated and found its way to my face. And then the most remarkable thing happened. It blossomed from my cheekbones and spread across my nose. The colors of the painting stained the colors of my skin. And for the first time in the history of my people there was a woman standing there full of color. And so I had to confess about the pain in my chest and the painting that sometimes would glow beneath my skin. But instead of being flogged or stoned by the men of our community, I was surrounded by my sisters. By my auntie. My mom. And each of them found some way to undress themselves to show their skin. And as I looked at each, standing before me partly dressed I could see the colors flowering from their bodies. Each of them had a painting, too. And I realized that the signatures on each one was the name of an ancestor who came before us. It was their hands that painted these masterpieces. It was their hands that filled us all with color.