When I get home, Granny announces me to everyone.

“Here’s our changeling, now.”

It’s her special joke just for me. I think it’s because I have recently gone from child to young woman; perhaps there is more to it, I won’t let myself be offended. Mother makes me sit at the table and eat dinner with everyone even though she knows I have already eaten, because I’m not supposed to eat at the chipper.

“Waste of money and waste of appetite.”

Mother says as she heaps boiled vegetables out of the pot and onto my plate. I struggle through the carrots and parsnips while she smirks. My perfect mother, a sweet and stinging honeybee. When I was a little girl, when I was very young and confused, just a small fruit fly bumbling around her kitchen, I refused to leave her side. Even at my small age, I understood that there were limits to love, and I felt sure that one day people would run out of love for me. I think with Mother, it started when I was in junior infants, when I received three slaps to the palm from Sister Loretta for playing kiss chase in the yard. Mother was always so smug over...

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