by Chanelle Benz We did not understand how she came to be alone. We wished to know more, the more that she alone could tell us. It was well understood in our village that Adela was a beauty, albeit a beauty past her heyday. But this was of little consequence to us, no?2 We came not to spy and discover if indeed her bloom had faded; we came because Mother did not nod to Adela in the street when so rarely she passed, under a parasol despite there being no sun; we came because we knew that on occasion Adela had a guest of queer character who alighted in her courtyard well past the witching hour; we came because Father fumbled to attention when we dared mention “Adela” at supper, piping her syllables into the linen of our diminutive napkins; and finally, we came because Adela alone welcomed us: we, the unconsidered, the uninvited, the under five feet high. Uncountable afternoons that year, after we had gotten our gruel3—some of us trammeled up with the governess, others, the tutor—we raced en bloc to the back of beyond, letting ourselves into the bedimmed foyer of Adela’s ivy-shrouded, crumbling house.
