A Turn for the Better
    
Like most of the children at St. Morgan’s Orphanage for Girls, I know nearly nothing about my life outside the place. Don’t get me wrong--not all orphanages are like this. However, I was unfortunate enough to end up in one of the bad ones.
    
Just the same, I will say that I am rather smart for my age and I have discovered little things about myself--here, there, over the years. I have collected facts and dates and faces like a peddler collects ribbons and buttons and snippets of cloth. And one of the things I have realized is that although I am strong of mind and soul, I am weak of body and health. Thus I am constantly catching colds and flus and I am often shivering or raging with fever in my cot instead of scrubbing pots with the other girls. It was during one of these slightly spontaneous illnesses that my life took a turn.
    
I was tossing and turning in my single crumpled linen blanket, struggling to escape the grasps of an unbearably high fever. My head was throbbing. Salty tears ran down my face and puddled in my ears. But throughout it all, I managed to notice that all children seemed to be working extra hard. Curiosity replacing my pain, I asked a passing girl, Julia, what was going on.
    
“Some Miss Johanson’s coming, Ellis,” she replied and went back to mopping.
    
I was shocked. Nobody ever visited the orphanage!
    
But come she did, all decked out in silk and pearls. She swept past all of us and faced the Director. For a year, a decade, or perhaps a century, they spoke in hushed tones. Finally Miss Johanson turned to us, smiling. And out of her painted lips came the best news of my life--she was buying St. Morgan’s!
    
As I stood in dumb amazement, smiling like a fool among the screaming, singing, and weeping orphans, I discovered another fact for my collection--an unexpected visitor had never before brought so much joy to so many lives.