I didn't feel the need to elaborate on my family, though I wasn't even sure if what I had could be called a family.

To cut to the chase, I wasn't a child born of anticipation. My birth was the result of coercion, violence, despair, and screams.

The sole reason my mother didn't abandon me wasn't out of love, but because by the time she became aware of my existence, I had been nestled in her womb for so long that getting rid of me would have caused her irreversible, fatal ...