 My mother had spent the past two years traveling around the world with my father, seeking chemotherapy, radiation, alternative treatments. And when the doctors said that there was nothing more that they could do, my mother spent sometimes hours and days at a stretch in the church praying and fasting. She fasted her body into half its size. As they screamed at her, my aunt looked at me, shook her head, and said, I wish you were a boy. See, if you were a boy as your parents' first child,