My great-grandmother beat her daughters with a stick, but my grandmother had the guts to steal away to a dance contest, a rebellious girl, on the cusp of the Second World War. The dance contest she won, but from this defiance my mother was born, out of wedlock – in a thunderstorm, Mom would say, with a touch of melodrama – in a stranger’s house in another town. And my grandmother’s name became an omen, overshadowing our lives.