I was seventeen years old when my twin daughters were born, and although people sometimes tell stories about difficult beginnings as though hardship automatically makes a person stronger, the truth is that I did not feel strong at all during those first months; I felt frightened, tired, painfully young, and constantly aware that one unexpected expense could take away the fragile little life I was trying to build.
My name is Caroline Brooks, and in the winter of 1999 I was living with my babies, Lily and June, in a cramped upstairs apartment in Providence, Rhode Island, where the radiators rattled at night, cold air slipped through the window frames, and the laundromat downstairs sent the faint smell of detergent through the floorboards every morning.
Before the girls arrived, I had been the kind of student teachers described as promising, the girl who finished assignments early, volunteered in the school office, and quietly believed that if she followed every rule and worked harder than everyone else, adulthood would eventually reward her with something steady and respectable.
