Raising Maisie

It was just bad timing, the birth.

Maisie was born on a full moon in the middle of summer. In the morning her mother turned back into a women, but Maisie stayed a tiny, wriggling, blind and deaf wolf pup. The father werewolf drove to the store and brought puppy formula. The mother werewolf quit her job as a kindergarten teacher. The couple did not file a birth certificate--how could they? Instead they moved across the country, and the mother werewolf did not see a doctor again for fear they'd get her medical records and ask questions about what happened to the baby.

The new house was on 10 acres and had a cellar where Maisie spent her days after she became large enough and mobile enough to tear into the furniture. It took over a year. She grew at the same pace as a human child. At least, the werewolf couple agreed, they would not lose their only child to old age like their old beagle Bucky.

The couple wrote emails to faraway professors of folklore, asked what might happen to a werewolf child born on a full moon. The couple hoped that their child would find her human side between the ages of 10 and 13, as werewolves typically find their wolf side. The folklorists could not give them a definite answer of course. To almost everyone else on earth, families like theirs are myth, and a distorted joke of a modern myth at that. Where was the sitcom about a pack of young werewolves trying to make it in the big city? Where was the romance novel about the werewolf kindergarten teacher and the werewolf insurance sales representative? Where were the parenting books?

Three summers after Maisie was born, the mother werewolf came across a video on social media of a dog using programmable buttons to say things like, "outside outside go please," and, "love you Mom."

Maisie struggled in the mother werewolf's lap, nibbled on her arm, asked to be free so she could go tear up a pillow on the couple's bed and then pee on it.

"You're at least as smart as Bucky was," the mother werewolf said.

Maisie barked at a squirrel outside. The mother werewolf pressed purchase on a set of eight programmable buttons and a wooden board with cut-outs to contain them all.

Maisie and the mother werewolf spent their days that third summer playing tug of war, taking walks around the parameter of their property in the early morning--always with Maisie in her harness--and practicing their words. Maisie took to the buttons the way she took to digging, chasing, howling, and licking her parents' faces every full moon. The werewolf mother started reading to her; Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, Little House in the Big Woods. Maisie's English proved to her mother that she was indeed a member of her species. Secretly, the mother werewolf had often wondered, when she was alone upstairs in the evenings cooking dinner, if she had dreamed the birth, if her child was indeed her own, or if she had somehow broken out of their old caller and exchanged her child for a wild wolf's pup.

The mother werewolf added more buttons to the wooden board on the cellar floor, words like "I" and "we" and "went." She worried about Maisie's lack of interest in the past tense, worried that her teaching wasn't enough. Praise didn't work. Withholding play until Maisie used her words in the correct order only led her to take up a new game of digging to the center of the earth, of pressing her body into the hole she made when she tired, and sleeping there.

The father werewolf brought a sack of rocks at the gardening store and filled the hole. He wagged his finger at Maisie, but did not scold her with words, as the mother werewolf had. Instead, he scratched behind her ears.

One night a month, the mother werewolf felt utterly sure of herself, utterly sure that she knew what she was doing, that there was no uncrossable distance between herself and her child. One night a month, the werewolf couple locked themselves in the cellar with Maisie and howled for the wild.

The werewolf couple had never once experienced a full moon outside of a locked room. For them, full moons were stressful, like doing taxes or having the neighbors over for dinner. For Maisie it was different. She felt better, calmer, more herself to have her parents with her and like her. Her mother pants. Maisie licks her mouth, apologizes in a way for every wrong thing she did since the last full moon. But she was only actually sorry her parents could not be like her all the time.

The father werewolf paced, found the now-filled hole Maisie dug, scratched at it and stopped, remembering himself. The rest of the month he's an insurance representative. He wore a tie.

At the other side of the cellar, Maisie bowed, wagged her tail, invited her mother to play. Full moons were the only time Maisie could play with her mother on her terms.

The mother werewolf playfully bit her on the side of the head. The werewolf father joined, chasing Maisie in tight circles. At the rock-filled hole, Maisie stopped, pawed at the ground, looked between her parents, and asked a question with a tilt of her head, with her perked ears.

It didn't take long for the werewolf couple to dig the rocks out and complete Maisie's work.

The night air was sticky in their fur. The pack smelled the pines and the neighbor's compost. The mother werewolf and the father werewolf had never before seen a tree with their canine eyes. They'd never lifted their legs and peed into thistle bushes, into Kentucky Bluegrass.

Maisie yipped and barked, ran ahead of them into the forest. They'd missed out on it all until now. Someone howled back--a young female wolf. The mother werewolf ran ahead, the summer air thick in her lungs and the stones sharp on her uncalloused paw pads. She called back, telling the other wolf her family was here and these woods were their woods.