Here is what Lily Packmother likes to say: “The acorn does not fall far from the tree.”

Here is what I say: “I was not bitten by an acorn.”

And here’s the thing of it: when the next full moon came, I turned right into a werewolf and went out and caught and ate three squirrels and a collie and part of a sleeping man on a park bench who smelled funny and tasted like old shoes, so Lily Packmother was right about that dog.

Lily Packmother says she is always right. She says this is because she has the most spearience of anyone in the whole pack because she was bitten by another werewolf hundreds and thousands and billions of years ago, in the 1920s right before the stock market went to Hades. I don’t know where Hades is. I think that it is somewhere in California or Detroit. I am very specially good at geography. I know how to take the crosstown bus all by myself.

There was this time that one of our pack said that Lily Packmother was wrong and they had this duel and Lily Packmother tore his throat right open with her teeth even though she was not a wolf at the time, which was highly inconvenient, and there was this blood slorshing all over everywhere, for Lord’s sake, and my dress was entirely ruined.

Lily Packmother said, “Emmeline, you can’t be seen in public like that even if you are a werewolf because blood will tell.” I asked, “What will it tell?” and she said, “The police,” and I remembered what Daddy says about the police being capitalist tools to repress the proleterrycats, so I said, “I need a new dress.”

Lily Packmother went away and came back with this very fawncy frilly dress for me. I asked her where she found it and she said some people should learn to watch their children better. I put it on and said, “Thank you very much, it fits perfectly, and I hope this is not the product of the sploitation of the working classes.” Then I spun around and around to make the skirt go whoosh all swirly and I fell down into the bushes and skinned my knee.

Here’s what I can do:

Climb trees

Spell

Curtsy the way Mama taught me before Daddy told her it was an affectation of the boorshwazee and she died

Slurp the insides out of squirrels

Make fur hats

Howl

Quote Marks

Fight for the Revolution and the workers and topple the capitalist pigs and destroy the oppressive System when I get older

Draw a horse

There are lots of horses near Central Park. They pull these handsome cabs filled with people through the park at all hours of the day or night. I like horses, specially the brown ones. My fur is brown. It sprouts all over my body and grows soft and plushery when the full moon rises over the trees and the buildings and the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel. At first it itches on my face. That is where the fur entirely bursts out before it grows anywhere else on me at all. Then I have to scratch it with this broken rattle that this baby who had it before me wasn’t going to use anymore.

A broken rattle makes a very good back scratcher.

Lily Packmother says, “Emmeline, you must stop scratching your fur! If you break the skin, you will get the mange, and then where will you be?”

I say, “I will be in Central Park.” I don’t know what the mange is, but I am pretty sure it is something I can blame on the capitalists.

Lily Packmother says that it’s a good thing that all of us in the pack itch when the full moon rises, because the itching gives us fair warning that the Change is upon us and we should wriggle out of our human clothes just as fast as we can or else they will rip themselves to pieces right off our bodies in utter shreds when we turn into wolves. This is specially true of the pack males, who all wear trousers, which do not grow on trees.

I want to wear trousers, but Lily Packmother says they are not the proper attire for a young lady and she ought to know. She was a deb-you-tont before she got bit by that man from Rumania or Bohemia or Astoria or someplace else they talk with that accent. That man met her at a big dance at the Plaza Hotel when Lily Packmother was still just Plain Lily and her younger sister Marie Isolde was getting married in the White and Gold Room. Everyone was saying what a dreadful shame it was that Plain Lily’s sister was getting married before she was, and she couldn’t even tell them it was on account of how Marie Isolde stole her boyfriend by being no better than she should be and having round heels.

I still want to wear trousers.

Here’s what Lily Packmother likes: Doris Day movies.

Here’s what I like: The Adventures of Robin Hood with Richard Greene on television even though we don’t have a television in the park so I can’t see him anymore.

One day I was walking through Central Park and I came to that zoo and went to look at those ravaging sea lions for a while. It was very hot and sunny and I was absolutely dying of thirst and shriveling up into ashes like a bug when all of a sudden I saw that dog with those frog eyes who bit me that time. He was with this little girl and this rather large and musty woman so I went right up to them and said, “I am Emmeline, your dog bit me, and now I am a werewolf, do you want to play?”

The woman looked down her nose at me and said, “Our Louise cawn’t cawn’t cawn’t be playing with just any child who comes along, her mother knows people.”

I said, “That is all right because my daddy knows the Rosenbergs.”

That was when the woman just scooped up that little girl and vrooshed away with her over one shoulder and that dog running after them on little tiny scootly legs because everybody dropped that leash, and it was dragging on the ground for anyone to grab so I did. I held on to it with two hands and absolutely yanked it. That frog dog stopped-goink!-just like that, and his legs all kept going but his neck didn’t and he landed on his back looking up at me so I said, “Hello, I am Emmeline and you bit me. That is boorjwa oppression and what do you intend to do about making restitution to the prolethingiat?”

And that frog dog looked up at me and said, “You’re the One!” He sounded just like David Niven.

Ooooooh, I absolutely adore David Niven! I sneak into all his movies.

Just then that musty lady came back with that little girl walking behind her howling and blubbering and having the worst temper fit I have ever seen in my entire whole life. The little girl ran right up to that frog dog and scooped him up in her arms and made this most hideous ugly face at me and said, “Don’t you dare steal my dog! Do you want to play?” So we did.

Her name is Louise. She is six. She lives in the Plaza Hotel. She wanted me to go to the Plaza with her to play but the musty lady said, “You cawn’t cawn’t cawn’t possibly just go waltzing off with us like this, child. Your Mummy and Daddy will become concerned.”

I said, “I don’t know how to waltz, but I can curtsy, my daddy is still in the Plaza Hotel and my mommy is dead.” That made the musty lady creak right down on one knee in front of me and hug me to her chest, which is all fluffy. She said some people should never have children and called me a poor little lost lamb. I tried to tell her I am not a lamb, but it was extremely difficult with all that fluffiness. Then the little girl thwapped the musty lady on top of her head with her fist so hard that she crunched her felt hat and said, “Stop blubbering, you old prune, you’re wasting our time. If her daddy’s in the Plaza, she can come play in my room now!”

So I did. We went right up to those big front doors and across that lobby and straight up to the very top floor in that elevator. Then we just raced right down that hall and Louise kicked on the door to her apartment until that musty lady caught up to us and let us in with a big metal key. It took her too long, so Louise kicked her in her ankles and said, “Amanda, you are ugly and you stink and as soon as my mother calls I am going to tell her to have you fired and sent back to Hell or England.”