I wanted to say something really badass to start off this story with, like, “The first memory I have in life is being born.” Obviously, I’d be lying through my teeth, but try and tell me it’s not some hard stuff to say, like you could actually remember shit like that, pardon my language. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt and stamped the passport.

The truth is, though, that even if I could remember being born, it really wouldn’t matter. This story has absolutely nothing to do with the first memories of my life, but rather the memories that come to mind first when I start thinking about everything that’s happened in my life. In that sense, I suppose, I really can say something pretty badass—my first-first memory is of watching my father being dragged across our lawn in handcuffs, and me saying, “Good riddance.”

I suppose I should give you a little bit of history, so I’ll rewind. My name is Hannah Gray, and I was born on February 14th, 1990—that’s right, Valentine’s Day—to Douglas and Charlotte Gray. He was a car mechanic and a mean drunk, and she was a stay-at-home mom and living proof that Stockholm Syndrome has a timeshare in the suburbs.

We weren’t always in the suburbs, though. Like most young, low-income couples, Douglas and Charlotte lived in the east end. But, being younger and having a lower income than most of their kind, they lived in the part of the east end in which there weren’t any cafés or art galleries, not even run-down, closed-after-a-week-of-business-because-someone-threw-a-brick-through-the-storefront cafés or galleries. It was the lower end of Fourth Street, to be exact, just a few blocks below Anchor Road. The kind of place where if you opened the window and the wind was right, you could smell the fish packing plant. This was the part of the east end few people would admit to knowing about and fewer would admit to living in. Not that you can really live there, so I guess they wouldn’t be lying.

But it was this second-floor flat on lower Fourth that Douglas and Charlotte called home, even if they weren’t doing much living. And they couldn’t have, from what I’ve seen of it since: rats chewed through the wiring in the ceiling lights, and instead of repairing it, the landlord—if you could call him that—removed the light switches and circuit breakers to avoid the threat of electrical fires. So, it was a candlelit apartment, though less the bed-of-roses kind of candlelight and more the squatters-avoiding-attention candlelight. All the taps dripped out-of-rhythm and out-of-tune, a dark brown liquid that would offend rust’s delicate sensibilities to be compared to. The water did turn clear, though, it you ran it full-pitch for what always seemed like far too long.

And it was to this wretched apartment I was brought from the hospital after I was born—what a wonderful first impression of life. I’m glad to say that the building’s finally been condemned, as it should have been before I was even conceived, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Suffice to say, I’m simply glad that no other families, no other children, will ever be subjected to that hovel.

To be honest, though, there isn’t much else to tell about the first ten months of my life. Partly because I don’t want your pity and I’m saving the gritty details of life in what could aptly be called a ghetto for later; but partly also because, looking back, those ten months really had nothing to do with what I know as my life. Even in the obligatory baby pictures—Hannah in the hospital blanket, Hannah coming “home” for the first time, Hannah’s big dumb eyes staring up from her crib—I didn’t seem to be a very inspired newborn. I imagine life went on like any other year in New Royal, quietly and without note. That is, until Charlotte Gray had a second daughter, just ten months after my own birth.

And it is in my sister that my life begins.