When I tell people my name is Miracle, they tend to look at me funny. “No, you mean Mira-cal, right?” They ask. “No,” I tell them impatiently, “my mama named me Miracle.” But they go on and call me Mira-cal anyways.
You see, in my little town on Morton Street, nothing really big happens, not the things like down south in Little Rock, so the news that a baby had been born with a tumor in her head spread fast, and pretty soon, all the neighbors came to visit the child. Most people just told my mama “well, shucks, I sure am sorry.” and frowned. But one man, the Reverend, said “we should thank the Lord that such a beautiful miracle was born here in Shadowbrook!” And my mama took such a fancy to that sentence that sure enough, my name fell right out of it. As soon as I got over the ga-ga nonsense and I could say big kid words, my mama drilled it into my mind six ways to Sunday that my ‘gift’ in my head wasn’t all that bad. So maybe God did give me a gift. After all, nothing really does happen on Morton Street.