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honest, he’s kind of scrawny. But he’s got a glare that could bore a hole through an oak.
    When he was about ten feet away, he pointed his clippers at me and snapped, “I thought I told you not to hang out with that boy, Lily!”
    â€œWe’re not hurting anything, Grampa!”
    â€œThe hurt’s already been done!” Turning his angry eyes on Jake, he snarled, “You’d best git.”
    â€œSorry, Jake,” I muttered. “You’d better go.”
    He turned and ran.
    I looked at my grandfather. “Why do you hate him that way?” I asked.
    â€œAin’t him so much,” said Grampa. “It’s his whole dang family.”
    â€œBut why ?”
    He didn’t answer, just turned and stalked away.

6
(Jacob)

TRANSFORMATION
    W hen I got home, I found Mom having coffee with Mrs. McSweeney, who was bouncing Little Dumpling on her knee. Her shoulder bag, which mostly held her knitting, was beside her on the table. She never went anywhere without it, and I was sometimes amazed at the things she could pull out of it.
    Curled up at her feet, casually licking a milk-white paw, was Mrs. McSweeney’s cat, Luna Marie Eleganza the Sixth.
    Mrs. McSweeney always brought Luna with her when she came to visit. This made me happy, since we don’t have a pet of our own. I loved to stroke the cat—she had the silkiest fur I had ever felt. Her tail was so fluffy it looked like an ostrich plume, and her nose was as pink as peppermint candy. Her ears, too, were pink, especially when there was light shining through the thin skin.
    When I first met Luna, she had been named Luna Marie Eleganza the Fourth . Mrs. McSweeney claimed the reason for the name change was that the cat had since used up two more of her nine lives.
    â€œWell, if it isn’t himself!” Mrs. McSweeney exclaimed when I came in. She spoke in a thick Irish brogue that I had come to love. “Come here and give your old darlin’ a kiss, will ya now?”
    Mrs. McSweeney’s full name is Eloise Elvira McDougal Smirnov Rodriguez Chang McSweeney. The last four names were the result of outliving four husbands.
    â€œWhich was quite enough for any woman,” she had told my mother on more than one occasion. “Any more after that and I’d’ve felt I was takin’ more than my share, if you know what I mean.”
    Though she appeared frail, Mrs. McSweeney could wield an ax—she still cooked on a wood-burning stove—with amazing power and accuracy.
    â€œIt’s the bread,” she had told me when I was six and staying at her house while my parents took a weekend away. Just as I was thinking I needed to find some of this bread and eat it—I was, after all, only six—she clarified by adding, “Nothin’ like kneadin’ bread to strengthen the arms—especially if you have fourteen children, bless the little darlin’s, and are making the bread for all of them.”
    When I was seven, she let me try kneading a batch of bread dough myself. I quickly understood why she had developed such sturdy muscles! That was the same year she let me watch as she beheaded one of the chickens she kept in the backyard and then prepared it for Sunday dinner. She had carefully explained each of the internal organs as she removed them from the body cavity, taking care to point out the eggs that were in various stages of development.
    I had adored her ever since, though I continued to regard her with a combination of love and wary awe.
    â€œI’ve got a committee meeting at church tonight, Jake,” Mom said. “I’ll tuck LD in before I go. He’s a good sleeper, so you shouldn’t have any problem. If you do, call Mrs. McSweeney. She can be here in a jiffy.”
    â€œAnd glad to do it,” agreed the older woman.
    I sighed, but the truth was I didn’t really mind. I like having the house to myself every once in a while.
    Mom left for her