“Ay caramba,” Sister Maria de la Guardia sighed.

“Que
“St. Lucy’s Home for Girls barbaridad!” She made the Sign of the Cross. Sister Maria
Raised by Wolves” came to St. Lucy’s from a halfway home in Copacabana. In
Copacabana, the girls are fat and languid and eat pink slivers of
guava right out of your hand. Even at Stage 1, their pelts are
By: Karen Russell silky, sun-bleached to near invisibility. Our pack was hirsute
and sinewy and mostly brunette. We had terrible posture. We
copyright © 2006 went knuckling along the wooden floor on the calloused pads
of our fists, baring row after row of tiny, wood-rotted teeth.
Sister Josephine sucked in her breath. She removed a yellow
Stage 1: The initial period is one in which everything wheel of floss from under her robes, looping it like a miniature
is new, exciting, and interesting for your students. It is lasso.
fun for your students to explore their new environment. “The girls at our facility are backwoods,” Sister
—from The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock Josephine whispered to Sister Maria de la Guardia with a
beatific smile. “You must be patient with them.” I clamped
down on her ankle, straining to close my jaws around the
woolly XXL sock. Sister Josephine tasted like sweat and
At first, our pack was all hair and snarl and floor-thumping joy. freckles. She smelled easy to kill.
We forgot the barked cautions of our mothers and fathers, all We’d arrived at St. Lucy’s that morning, part of a pack
the promises we’d made to be civilized and ladylike, couth and fifteen-strong. We were accompanied by a mousy, nervous-
kempt. We tore through the austere rooms, overturning dresser smelling social worker; the baby-faced deacon; Bartholomew,
drawers, pawing through the neat piles of the Stage 3 girls’ the blue wolfhound; and four burly woodsmen. The deacon
starched underwear, smashing lightbulbs with our bare fists. handed out some stale cupcakes and said a quick prayer. Then
Things felt less foreign in the dark. The dim bedroom was he led us through the woods. We ran past the wild apiary, past
windowless and odorless. We remedied this by spraying the felled oaks, until we could see the white steeple of St.
exuberant yellow streams all over the bunks. We jumped from Lucy’s rising out of the forest. We stopped short at the edge of
bunk to bunk, spraying. We nosed each other midair, our bodies a muddy lake. Then the deacon took our brothers.
buckling in kinetic laughter. The nuns watched us from the Bartholomew helped him to herd the boys up the ramp of a
corner of the bedroom, their tiny faces pinched with small ferry. We girls ran along the shore, tearing at our new
displeasure. jumpers in a plaid agitation. Our brothers stood on the deck,
looking small and confused.

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 Our mothers and fathers were werewolves. They lived Our noses ached beneath an invisible assault. Everything was
an outsider’s existence in caves at the edge of the forest, smudged with a human odor: baking bread, petrol, the nuns’
threatened by frost and pitchforks. They had been ostracized by faint woman-smell sweating out beneath a dark perfume of
the local farmers for eating their silled fruit pies and terrorizing tallow and incense. We smelled one another, too, with the same
the heifers. They had ostracized the local wolves by having astounded fascination. Our own scent had become foreign in
sometimes-thumbs, and regrets, and human children. (Their this strange place.
condition skips a generation.) Our pack grew up in a green We had just sprawled out in the sun for an afternoon
purgatory. We couldn’t keep up with the purebred wolves, but nap, yawning into the warm dirt, when the nuns reappeared.
we never stopped crawling. We spoke a slab-tongued pidgin in They conferred in the shadow of the juniper tree, whispering
the cave, inflected with frequent howls. Our parents wanted and pointing. Then they started towards us. The oldest sister
something better for us; they wanted us to get braces, use had spent the past hour twitching in her sleep, dreaming of
towels, be fully bilingual. When the nuns showed up, our fatty and infirm elk. (The pack used to dream the same dreams
parents couldn’t refuse their offer. The nuns, they said, would back then, as naturally as we drank the same water and slept on
make us naturalized citizens of human society. We would go to the same red scree.) When our oldest sister saw the nuns
St. Lucy’s to study a better culture. We didn’t know at the time approaching, she instinctively bristled. It was an improvised
that our parents were sending us away for good. Neither did bristle, given her new, human limitations. She took clumps of
they. her scraggly, nut-brown hair and held it straight out from her
That first afternoon, the nuns gave us free rein of the head.
grounds. Everything was new, exciting, and interesting. A low Sister Maria gave her a brave smile.
granite wall surrounded St. Lucy’s, the blue woods humming “And what is your name?” she asked.
for miles behind it. There was a stone fountain full of The oldest sister howled something awful and
delectable birds. There was a statue of St. Lucy. Her marble inarticulable, a distillate of hurt and panic, half- forgotten hunts
skin was colder than our mother’s nose, her pupil-less eyes and eclipsed moons. Sister Maria nodded and scribbled on a
rolled heavenward. Doomed squirrels gamboled around her yellow legal pad. She slapped on a name tag: HELLO, MY
stony toes. Our diminished pack threw back our heads in a NAME IS__________! “Jeanette it is.”
celebratory howl—an exultant and terrible noise, even without The rest of the pack ran in a loose, uncertain circle, torn
a chorus of wolf brothers in the background. There were holes between our instinct to help her and our new fear. We sensed
everywhere! some subtler danger afoot, written in a language we didn’t
We supplemented these holes by digging some of our understand.
own. We interred sticks, and our itchy new jumpers, and the Our littlest sister had the quickest reflexes. She used her
bones of the friendly, unfortunate squirrels. hands to flatten her ears to the side of her head.

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She backed towards the far corner of the garden, snarling in the Could we betray our parents by going back to them? After
most menacing register that an eight-year-old wolf-girl can they’d given us the choicest part of the woodchuck, loved us at
muster. Then she ran. It took them two hours to pin her down our hairless worst, nosed us across the ice floes and abandoned
and tag her: HELLO, MY NAME IS MIRABELLA! us at St. Lucy’s for our own betterment?
“Stage 1,” Sister Maria sighed, taking careful aim with Physically, we were all easily capable of clearing the
her tranquilizer dart. “It can be a little overstimulating.” low stone walls. Sister Josephine left the wooden gates wide
open. They unslatted the windows at night so that long fingers
Stage 2: After a time, your students realize that they of moonlight beckoned us from the woods. But we knew we
must work to adjust to the new culture. This work may couldn’t return to the woods; not till we were civilized, not if
be stressful and students may experience a strong sense we didn’t want to break the mother’s heart. It all felt like a sly,
of dislocation. They may miss certain foods. They may
spend a lot of time daydreaming during this period.
human taunt.
Many students feel isolated, irritated, bewildered, It was impossible to make the blank, chilly bedroom
depressed, or generally uncomfortable. feel like home. In the beginning, we drank gallons of bathwater
as part of a collaborative effort to mark our territory. We
—from The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock puddled up the yellow carpet of old newspapers. But later,
when we returned to the bedroom, we were dismayed to find
Those were the days when we dreamed of rivers and all trace of the pack musk had vanished. Someone was coming
meat. The full-moon nights were the worst! Worse than cold in and erasing us. We sprayed and sprayed every morning; and
toilet seats and boiled tomatoes, worse than trying to will our every night, we returned to the same ammonia eradication. We
tongues to curl around our false new names. We would snarl at couldn’t make our scent stick here; it made us feel invisible.
one another for no reason. I remember how disorienting it was Eventually we gave up. Still, the pack seemed to be adjusting
to look down and see two square-toed shoes instead of my own on the same timetable. The advanced girls could already
four feet. Keep your mouth shut, I repeated during our walking alternate between two speeds: “slouch” and “amble.” Almost
drills, staring straight ahead. Keep your shoes on your feet. everybody was fully bipedal.
Mouth shut, shoes on feet. Do not chew on your new penny Almost.
loafers. Do not. I stumbled around in a daze, my mouth black The pack was worried about Mirabella.
with shoe polish. The whole pack was irritated, bewildered, Mirabella would rip foamy chunks out of the church
depressed. We were all uncomfortable, and between languages. pews and replace them with ham bones and girl dander. She
We had never wanted to run away so badly in our lives; but loved to roam the grounds wagging her invisible tail. (We all
who did we have to run back to? Only the curled black grimace had a hard time giving that up. When we got excited, we would
of the mother. Only the father, holding his tawny head between fall to the ground and start pumping our backsides.
his paws.
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Back in those days we could pump at rabbity velocities. Que The pack hated Jeanette. She was the most successful of
horror! Sister Maria frowned, looking more than a little us, the one furthest removed from her origins. Her real name
jealous.) We’d give her scolding pinches. “Mirabella,” we was GWARR!, but she wouldn’t respond to this anymore.
hissed, imitating the nuns. “No.” Mirabella cocked her ears at Jeanette spiffed her penny loafers until her very shoes seemed
us, hurt and confused. to gloat. (Linguists have since traced the colloquial origins of
Still, some things remained the same. The main “goody two-shoes” back to our facilities.) She could even
commandment of wolf life is Know Your Place, and that growl out a demonic-sounding precursor to “Pleased to meet
translated perfectly. Being around other humans had awakened you.” She’d delicately extend her former paws to visitors,
a slavish-dog affection in us. An abasing, belly-to-the-ground wearing white kid gloves.
desire to please. As soon as we realized that someone higher up “Our little wolf, disguised in sheep’s clothing!” Sister
in the food chain was watching us, we wanted only to be Ignatius liked to joke with the visiting deacons, and Jeanette
pleasing in their sight. Mouth shut, I repeated, shoes on feet. would surprise everyone by laughing along with them, a harsh,
But if Mirabella had this latent instinct, the nuns couldn’t inhuman, barking sound. Her hearing was still twig-snap sharp.
figure out how to activate it. She’d go bounding around, Jeanette was the first among us to apologize; to drink apple
gleefully spraying on their gilded statue of St. Lucy, mad- juice out of a sippy cup; to quit eyeballing the cleric’s jugular
scratching at the virulent fleas that survived all of their in a disconcerting fashion. She curled her lips back into a
powders and baths. At Sister Maria’s tearful insistence, she’d cousin of a smile as the traveling barber cut her pelt into bangs.
stand upright for roll call, her knobby, oddly muscled legs Then she swept her coarse black curls under the rug. When we
quivering from the effort. Then she’d collapse right back to the entered a room, our nostrils flared beneath the new odors:
ground with an ecstatic oomph! She was still loping around on onion and bleach, candle wax, the turnipy smell of unwashed
all fours (which the nuns had taught us to see looked unnatural bodies. Not Jeanette. Jeanette smiled and pretended like she
and ridiculous—we could barely believe it now, the shame of couldn’t smell a thing.
it, that we used to locomote like that!), her fists blue-white I was one of the good girls. Not great and not terrible,
from the strain. As if she were holding a secret tight to the solidly middle of the pack. But I had an ear for languages, and
ground. Sister Maria de la Guardia would sigh every time she I could read before I could adequately wash myself. I probably
saw her. “Caramba!” She’d sit down with Mirabella and pry could have vied with Jeanette for the number one spot, but I’d
her fingers apart. “You see?” she’d say softly, again and again. seen what happened if you gave in to your natural aptitudes.
“What are you holding on to? Nothing, little one. Nothing.” This wasn’t like the woods, where you had to be your fastest
Then she would sing out the standard chorus, “Why and your strongest and your bravest self. Different sorts of
can’t you be more like your sister Jeanette?” calculations were required to survive at the home.

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 The pack hated Jeanette, but we hated Mirabella more. “Ohhkaaythankyou,” I said. (It took me a long time to
We began to avoid her, but sometimes she’d surprise us, curled say anything; first I had to translate it in my head from the
up beneath the beds or gnawing on a scapula in the garden. It Wolf.) It wasn’t fair. They knew Mirabella couldn’t make bread
was scary to be ambushed by your sister. I’d bristle and growl, balls yet. She couldn’t even undo the twist tie of the bag. She
the way that I’d begun to snarl at my own reflection as if it was sure to eat the birds; Mirabella didn’t even try to curb her
were a stranger. desire to kill things—and then who would get blamed for the
“Whatever will become of Mirabella?” we asked, dark spots of duck blood on our Peter Pan collars? Who would
gulping back our own fear. We’d heard rumors about former get penalized with negative Skill Points? Exactly.
wolf-girls who never adapted to their new culture. It was As soon as we were beyond the wooden gates, I
assumed that they were returned to our native country, the snatched the bread away from Mirabella and ran off to the duck
vanishing woods. We liked to speculate about this before pond on my own. Mirabella gave chase, nipping at my heels.
bedtime, scaring ourselves with stories of catastrophic bliss. It She thought it was a game. “Stop it,” I growled. I ran faster,
was the disgrace, the failure that we all guiltily hoped for in our but it was Stage 2 and I was still unsteady on my two feet. I fell
hard beds. Twitching with the shadow question: Whatever will sideways into a leaf pile, and then all I could see was my
become of me? sister’s blurry form, bounding towards me. In a moment, she
We spent a lot of time daydreaming during this period. was on top of me, barking the old word for tug-of-war. When
Even Jeanette. Sometimes I’d see her looking out at the woods she tried to steal the bread out of my hands, I whirled around
in a vacant way. If you interrupted her in the midst of one of and snarled at her, pushing my ears back from my head. I bit
these reveries, she would lunge at you with an elder-sister her shoulder, once, twice, the only language she would respond
ferocity, momentarily forgetting her human catechism. We to. I used my new motor skills. I threw dirt, I threw stones.
liked her better then, startled back into being foamy old “Get away!” I screamed, long after she had made a cringing
Jeanette. retreat into the shadows of the purple saplings. “Get away, get
In school, they showed us the St. Francis of Assisi slide away!”
show, again and again. Then the nuns would give us bags of Much later, they found Mirabella wading in the
bread. They never announced these things as a test; it was only shallows of a distant river, trying to strangle a mallard with her
much later that I realized that we were under constant rosary beads. I was at the lake; I’d been sitting there for hours.
examination. “Go feed the ducks,” they urged us. “Go practice Hunched in the long cattails, my yellow eyes flashing, shoving
compassion for all God’s creatures.” Don’t pair me with ragged hunks of bread into my mouth.
Mirabella, I prayed, anybody but Mirabella. “Claudette”— I don’t know what they did to Mirabella. Me they
Sister Josephine beamed—”why don’t you and Mirabella take separated from my sisters. They made me watch another slide
some pumpernickel down to the ducks?” show.

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This one showed images of former wolf-girls, the ones who had The nuns were worried about Mirabella, too. To correct a failing,
failed to be rehabilitated. Long- haired, sad-eyed women, limping you must first be aware of it as a failing. And there was Mirabella,
after their former wolf packs in white tennis shoes and pleated shucking her plaid jumper in full view of the visiting cardinal.
culottes. A wolf-girl bank teller, her makeup smeared in oily Mirabella, battling a raccoon under the dinner table while the rest
rainbows, eating a raw steak on the deposit slips while her of us took dainty bites of peas and borscht. Mirabella, doing belly
colleagues looked on in disgust. Our parents. The final slide was a flops into compost.
bolded sentence in St. Lucy’s prim script: DO YOU WANT TO “You have to pull your weight around here,” we
END UP SHUNNED BY BOTH SPECIES? overheard Sister Josephine saying one night. We paused below
After that, I spent less time with Mirabella. One night she the vestry window and peered inside.
came to me, holding her hand out. She was covered with splinters, “Does Mirabella try to earn Skill Points by shelling
keening a high, whining noise through her nostrils. Of course I walnuts and polishing Saint-in-the-Box? No. Does Mirabella even
understood what she wanted; I wasn’t that far removed from our know how to say the word walnut? Has she learned how to say
language (even though I was reading at a fifth-grade level, anything besides a sinful ‘HraaaHA!’ as she commits frottage
halfway into Jack London’s The Son of the Wolf). against the organ pipes? No.”
“Lick your own wounds,” I said, not unkindly. It was There was a long silence.
what the nuns had instructed us to say; wound licking was not “Something must be done,” Sister Ignatius said firmly.
something you did in polite company. Etiquette was so The other nuns nodded, a sea of thin, colorless lips and kettle-
confounding in this country. Still, looking at Mirabella—her fists black brows. “Something must be done,” they intoned. That
balled together like small, white porcupines, her brows knitted in ominously passive construction; a something so awful that
animal confusion—I felt a throb of compassion. How can people nobody wanted to assume responsibility for it.
live like they do? I wondered. Then I congratulated myself. This I could have warned her. If we were back home, and
was a Stage 3 thought. Mirabella had come under attack by territorial beavers or snow-
blind bears, I would have warned her. But the truth is that by
Stage 3: It is common that students who start living in Stage 3 I wanted her gone. Mirabella’s inability to adapt was
a new and different culture come to a point where they taking a visible toll. Her teeth were ground down to nubbins; her
reject the host culture and withdraw into themselves. hair was falling out. She hated the spongy, long-dead foods we
During this period, they make generalizations about the were served, and it showed—her ribs were poking through her
host culture and wonder how the people can live like uniform. Her bright eyes had dulled to a sour whiskey color. But
they do. Your students may feel that their own
you couldn’t show Mirabella the slightest kindness anymore—
culture’s lifestyle and customs are far superior to those
of the host country. — from The Jesuit Handbook on she’d never leave you alone! You’d have to sit across from her at
Lycanthropic Culture Shock meals, shoving her away as she begged for your scraps.

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I slept fitfully during that period, unable to forget that The purebred girls sold seven hundred rolls of gift-wrap paper
Mirabella was living under my bed, gnawing on my loafers. and used the proceeds to buy us a yellow fleet of bicycles built
It was during Stage 3 that we met our first purebred for two. We’d ride the bicycles uphill, a sanctioned pumping, a
girls. These were girls raised in captivity, volunteers from St. grim-faced nun pedaling behind each one of us.
Lucy’s School for Girls. The apple-cheeked fourth-grade class “Congratulations!” the nuns would huff. “Being human is like
came to tutor us in playing. They had long golden braids or riding this bicycle. Once you’ve learned how, you’ll never
short, severe bobs. They had frilly-duvet names like Felicity forget.” Mirabella would run after the bicycles, growling out
and Beulah; and pert, bunny noses; and terrified smiles. We our old names. HWRAA! GWARR! TRRRRRRR! We pedaled
grinned back at them with genuine ferocity. It made us nervous faster.
to meet new humans. There were so many things that we could At this point, we’d had six weeks of lessons, and still
do wrong! And the rules here were different depending on nobody could do the Sausalito but Jeanette. The nuns decided
which humans we were with: dancing or no dancing, checkers we needed an inducement to dance. They announced that we
playing or no checkers playing, pumping or no pumping. would celebrate our successful rehabilitations with a Debutante
The purebred girls played checkers with us. Ball. There would be brothers, ferried over from the Home for
“These girl-girls sure is dumb,” my sister Lavash Man-Boys Raised by Wolves. There would be a photographer
panted to me between games. “I win it again! Five to none.” from the Gazette Sophisticate. There would be a three-piece
She was right. The purebred girls were making jazz band from West Toowoomba, and root beer in tiny plastic
mistakes on purpose, in order to give us an advantage. “King cups. The brothers! We’d almost forgotten about them. Our
me,” I growled, out of turn. “I say king me!” and Felicity invisible tails went limp. I should have been excited; instead, I
meekly complied. Beulah pretended not to mind when we got felt a low mad anger at the nuns. They knew we weren’t ready
frustrated with the oblique, fussy movement from square to to dance with the brothers; we weren’t even ready to talk to
square and shredded the board to ribbons. I felt sorry for them. them. Things had been so much simpler in the woods. That
I wondered what it would be like to be bred in captivity, and night I waited until my sisters were asleep. Then I slunk into
always homesick for a dimly sensed forest, the trees you’ve the closet and practiced the Sausalito two-step in secret, a
never seen. private mass of twitch and foam. Mouth shut—shoes on feet!
Jeanette was learning how to dance. On Holy Thursday, Mouth shut—shoes on feet! Mouthshutmouthshut . . .
she mastered a rudimentary form of the Charleston. “Brava!” One night I came back early from the closet and
The nuns clapped. “Brava!” stumbled on Jeanette. She was sitting in a patch of moonlight
Every Friday, the girls who had learned how to ride a on the windowsill, reading from one of her library books. (She
bicycle celebrated by going on chaperoned trips into town. was the first of us to sign for her library card, too.) Her cheeks
looked dewy.
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 “Why you cry?” I asked her, instinctively reaching over Not for mating, not for hunting, not for fighting, not for anything
to lick Jeanette’s cheek and catching myself in the nick of time. but the sound itself. And we’d howl along with the choir, hurling
Jeanette blew her nose into a nearby curtain. (Even her every pitted thing within us at the stained glass. “Sotto voce.” The
mistakes annoyed us—they were always so well intentioned.) nuns would frown. But you could tell that they were pleased.
She sniffled and pointed to a line in her book: “The lake-water
was reinventing the forest and the white moon above it, and Stage 4: As a more thorough understanding of the host
wolves lapped up the cold reflection of the sky.” But none of culture is acquired, your students will begin to feel
more comfortable in their new environment. Your
the pack besides me could read yet, and I wasn’t ready to claim students feel more at home, and their self-confidence
a common language with Jeanette. grows. Everything begins to make sense.
The following day, Jeanette golfed. The nuns set up a
miniature putt-putt course in the garden. Sister Maria dug four —from The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock
sandtraps and got old Walter, the groundskeeper, to make a
windmill out of a lawn mower engine. The eighteenth hole was “Hey, Claudette,” Jeanette growled to me on the day before
what they called a “doozy,” a minuscule crack in St. Lucy’s the ball. “Have you noticed that everything’s beginning to make
marble dress. Jeanette got a hole in one. sense?”
On Sundays, the pretending felt almost as natural as Before I could answer, Mirabella sprang out of the hall
nature. The chapel was our favorite place. Long before we closet and snapped through Jeanette’s homework binder. Pages and
could understand what the priest was saying, the music pages of words swirled around the stone corridor, like dead leaves
off trees.
instructed us in how to feel. The choir director—aggressively
“What about you, Mirabella?” Jeanette asked politely,
perfumed Mrs. Valuchi, gold necklaces like pineapple rings stooping to pick up her erasers. She was the only one of us who
around her neck—taught us more than the nuns ever did. She would still talk to Mirabella; she was high enough in the rankings
showed us how to pattern the old hunger into arias. Clouds that she could afford to talk to the scruggliest wolf-girl. “Has
moved behind the frosted oculus of the nave, glass shadows everything begun to make more sense, Mirabella?”
that reminded me of my mother. The mother, I’d think, Mirabella let out a whimper. She scratched at us and
struggling to conjure up a picture. A black shadow, running scratched at us, raking her nails along our shins so hard that she drew
behind the watery screen of pines. blood. Then she rolled belly-up on the cold stone floor, squirming on
We sang at the chapel annexed to the home every a bed of spelling-bee worksheets. Above us, small pearls of light
morning. We understood that this was the humans’ moon, the dotted the high, tinted window.
place for howling beyond purpose. Jeanette frowned. “You are a late bloomer, Mirabella!
Usually, everything’s begun to make more sense by Month Twelve
at the latest.”
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I noticed that she stumbled on the word bloomer. HraaaHA! “Yeees,” Kyle growled back. “It is beginning to look a lot like
Jeanette could never fully shake our accent. She’d talk like that Christmas.” All around the room, boys. and girls raised by
her whole life, I thought with a gloomy satisfaction, each word wolves were having the same conversation. Actually, it had
winced out like an apology for itself. been an unseasonably warm and brown winter, and just that
“Claudette, help me,” she yelped. Mirabella had closed morning a freak hailstorm had sent Sister Josephina to an early
her jaws around Jeanette’s bald ankle and was dragging her grave. But we had only gotten up to Unit 7: Party Dialogue; we
towards the closet. “Please. Help me to mop up Mirabella’s hadn’t yet learned the vocabulary for Unit 12: How to Tactfully
mess. Acknowledge Disaster. Instead, we wore pink party hats and
I ignored her and continued down the hall. I had only sucked olives on little sticks, inured to our own strangeness.
four more hours to perfect the Sausalito. I was worried only The nuns swept our hair back into high, bouffant
about myself. By that stage, I was no longer certain of how the hairstyles. This made us look more girlish and less inclined to
pack felt about anything. eat people, the way that squirrels are saved from looking like
At seven o’clock on the dot, Sister Ignatius blew her rodents by their poofy tails. I was wearing a white organdy
whistle and frog-marched us into the ball. The nuns had dress with orange polka dots. Jeanette was wearing a mauve
transformed the rectory into a very scary place. Purple and organdy dress with blue polka dots. Linette was wearing a red
silver balloons started popping all around us. Black streamers organdy dress with white polka dots. Mirabella was in a dark
swooped down from the eaves and got stuck in our hair like corner, wearing a muzzle. Her party culottes were duct-taped to
bats. A full yellow moon smirked outside the window. We her knees. The nuns had tied little bows on the muzzle to make
were greeted by blasts of a saxophone, and fizzy pink drinks, it more festive. Even so, the jazz band from West Toowoomba
and the brothers. kept glancing nervously her way.
The brothers didn’t smell like our brothers anymore. “You smell astoooounding!” Kyle was saying,
They smelled like pomade and cold, sterile sweat. They looked accidentally stretching the diphthong into a howl and then
like little boys. Someone had washed behind their ears and blushing. “I mean—”
made them wear suspendered dungarees. Kyle used to be a “Yes, I know what it is that you mean,” I snapped.
blustery alpha male, BTWWWR!, chewing through (That’s probably a little narrative embellishment on my part; it
rattlesnakes, spooking badgers, snatching a live trout out of a must have been months before I could really “snap” out
grizzly’s mouth. He stood by the punch bowl, looking pained words.) I didn’t smell astounding. I had rubbed a pumpkin
and out of place. muffin all over my body earlier that morning to mask my
“My stars!” I growled. “What lovely weather we’ve natural, feral scent. Now I smelled like a purebred girl, easy to
been having!” kill. I narrowed my eyes at Kyle and flattened my ears,
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Kyle looked panicked, trying to remember the words that “The steps!”
would make me act like a girl again. I felt hot, oily tears “The steps?” Then Jeanette gave me a wide, true wolf
squeezing out of the red corners of my eyes. Shoesonfeet! I smile. For an instant, she looked just like our mother. “Not for
barked at myself. I tried again. “My! What lovely weather—” you,” she mouthed back.
The jazz band struck up a tune. I threw my head back, a howl clawing its way up my
“The time has come to do the Sausalito,” Sister Maria throat. I was about to lose all my Skill Points, I was about to
announced, beaming into the microphone. “Every sister grab a fail my Adaptive Dancing test. But before the air could burst
brother!” She switched on Walter’s industrial flashlight, from my lungs, the wind got knocked out of me. Oomph! I fell
struggling beneath its weight, and aimed the beam in the center to the ground, my skirt falling softly over my head. Mirabella
of the room. had intercepted my eye-cry for help. She’d chewed through her
Uh-oh. I tried to skulk off into Mirabella’s corner, but restraints and tackled me from behind, barking at unseen
Kyle pushed me into the spotlight. “No,” I moaned through my cougars, trying to shield me with her tiny body. “Caramba!”
teeth, “noooooo.” All of a sudden the only thing my body Sister Maria squealed, dropping the flashlight. The music
could remember how to do was pump and pump. In a flash of ground to a halt. And I have never loved someone so much,
white-hot light, my months at St. Lucy’s had vanished, and I before or since, as I loved my littlest sister at that moment. I
was just a terrified animal again. As if of their own accord, my wanted to roll over and lick her ears, I wanted to kill a dozen
feet started to wiggle out of my shoes. Mouth shut, I gasped, spotted fawns and let her eat first.
staring down at my naked toes, mouthshutmouthshut. But everybody was watching; everybody was waiting to
“Ahem. The time has come,” Sister Maria coughed, “to see what I would do. “I wasn’t talking to you,” I grunted from
do the Sausalito.” She paused. “The Sausalito,” she added underneath her. “I didn’t want your help. Now you have ruined
helpfully, “does not in any way resemble the thing that you are the Sausalito! You have ruined the ball!” I said more loudly,
doing.” hoping the nuns would hear how much my enunciation had
Beads of sweat stood out on my forehead. I could feel improved.
my jaws gaping open, my tongue lolling out of the left side of “You have ruined it!” my sisters panted, circling around
my mouth. What were the steps? I looked frantically for us, eager to close ranks. “Mirabella has ruined it!” Every girl
Jeanette; she would help me, she would tell me what to do. was wild-eyed and itching under her polka dots, punch froth
Jeanette was sitting in the corner, sipping punch dribbling down her chin. The pack had been waiting for this
through a long straw and watching me pant. I locked eyes with moment for some time. “Mirabella cannot adapt! Back to the
her, pleading with the mute intensity that I had used to beg her woods, back to the woods!”
for weasel bones in the forest. “What are the steps?” I
mouthed.

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 The band from West Toowoomba had quietly packed One Sunday, near the end of my time at St. Lucy’s, the
their instruments into black suitcases and were sneaking out the sisters gave me a special pass to go visit the parents. The
back. The boys had fled back towards the lake, bow ties woodsman had to accompany me; I couldn’t remember how to
spinning, snapping suspenders in their haste. Mirabella was find the way back on my own. I wore my best dress and
still snarling in the center of it all, trying to figure out where brought along some prosciutto and dill pickles in a picnic
the danger was so that she could defend me against it. The nuns basket. We crunched through the fall leaves in silence, and
exchanged glances. every step made me sadder. “I’ll wait out here,” the woodsman
In the morning, Mirabella was gone. We checked under said, leaning on a blue elm and lighting a cigarette.
all the beds. I pretended to be surprised. I’d known she would The cave looked so much smaller than I remembered it.
have to be expelled the minute I felt her weight on my back. I had to duck my head to enter. Everybody was eating when I
Walter came and told me this in secret after the ball, “So you walked in. They all looked up from the bull moose at the same
can say yer good-byes.” I didn’t want to face Mirabella. time, my aunts and uncles, my sloe-eyed, lolling cousins, the
Instead, I packed a tin lunch pail for her: two jelly sandwiches parents. My uncle dropped a thighbone from his mouth. My
on saltine crackers, a chloroformed squirrel, a gilt-edged littlest brother, a cross-eyed wolf-boy who has since been
placard of St. Bolio. I left it for her with Sister Ignatius, with a successfully rehabilitated and is now a dour, balding children’s
little note: “Best wishes!” I told myself I’d done everything I book author, started whining in terror. My mother recoiled
could. from me, as if I was a stranger. TRRR? She sniffed me for a
“Hooray!” the pack crowed. “Something has been long moment. Then she sank her teeth into my ankle, looking
done!” proud and sad. After all the tail wagging and perfunctory
We raced outside into the bright sunlight, knowing full barking had died down, the parents sat back on their hind legs.
well that our sister had been turned loose, that we’d never find They stared up at me expectantly, panting in the cool gray
her. A low roar rippled through us and surged up and up, envelope of the cave, waiting for a display of what I had
disappearing into the trees. I listened for an answering howl learned.
from Mirabella, heart thumping—what if she heard us and “So,” I said, telling .my first human lie. “I’m home.”
came back? But there was nothing.
We graduated from St. Lucy’s shortly thereafter. As far
as I can recollect, that was our last communal howl.

Stage 5: At this point your students are able to interact

effectively in the new cultural environment. They find
it easy to move between the two cultures.

—from The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock Page 246

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