When Jam was a toddler, she’d refused to speak, which was why they’d taught her to sign instead. She used her hands and body and face for her words but saved her voice for the most important one—screamed out during her first and only temper tantrum, when she was three, when someone had complimented her for the thousandth time by calling her “such a handsome little boy” and Jam had flung herself on the floor under her parents’ shocked gazes, screaming her first word with explosive sureness. “Girl! Girl! Girl!” Bitter had stared before laughing. “All right, sweetness,” she’d said, looking at the
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