"There was a tiny little lion…" I was giggling with Melanie by my side. "He would run and play in the forest…"
"His mother loved him very, very much."
We were in the orphanage garden. It was an old social services center that hosted the rare, fragmented memories I had of the first five years of my childhood. I remembered the cats in the yard—the crazy orange ones that always fought, knocking over trash cans—the old Dalmatian dog, and the tri-colored calicos that were perpetually pregnant. We had countless kittens.
Sometimes they'd hit my hand with a ruler for taking food from the cafeteria to give to them, but the ruler only tickled! Since I was a quiet and hardworking child, even the nuns tolerated my occasional mischief. That was where I first met Melanie.
"If his mother loved him, she wouldn't have left him in the forest," Melanie said, closing her book. "They don't love us."
