I wish you were mine

In her story, The Whisper Test, Mary Ann Bird writes: "I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech. When schoolmates asked, "What happened to your lip?" I'd tell them I'd fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me. There was, however, a teacher in the second grade whom we all adored. Her name was Mrs. Leonard. She was a short, round, happy, sparkling lady. Every year we had a hearing test. Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and one year I went last. I knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back--things like "The sky is blue" or "Do you have new shoes?" I waited there and listened and heard words that God must have put into her mouth, seven words that changed my life. Mrs. Leonard said, in her whisper, "I wish you were my little girl."