Ella
When I was young, I always felt lucky when Ella had us for dinner.
We had just moved into the neighborhood, and when she came to welcome us our new next-door neighbor invited us over for dinner. We brought brownies made from a powder in a box, but she had spent that whole Saturday cooking for us. My mom had been ashamed to offer our desert, but Ella took it with a smile and must have thanked us a hundred times. I was suspicious when the plate was placed before me. I had never tried liver, but until that night I knew I would hate it. My mother had pleaded with me and tossed veiled threats of bodily harm if I were not polite and at least try the dish. I cut off a tiny slice, and with the smallest corner of my front teeth I nibbled at the liver. To my surprise it was not horrible. I tried a larger bite and found that I liked it quite a lot.
For the following year, every Saturday evening we would spend time as a family, cooking a more serious desert, and then we would dress up sharply for dinner with Ella. Every time I would present myself for her inspection, she would tell me, “Oh you dear, you look so sweet, I could just eat you right up.” It made me blush every time.
And the meals she would make were so exotic; so many things I had never heard of, let alone eaten. One Saturday we would have pate, another tartar. Her homemade stews and soups made me beg for seconds. I had my first steak at the beginning of Summer break that year. I never knew meat could be so soft; I was not allowed a knife but did not need one. Italian sausage, Polish sausage, Mexican sausage, all homemade, and every one of them my favorite.
One morning as I prepared for school and my father read the paper, I saw a word on the front page that I had mistaken with “Cannonballs?” Though I had misread the big block headline, the photo of skulls and long bones in the forest at the edge of our neighborhood were unmistakable. My parents insisted I no longer walk alone that fall, too worried I would fall victim to the local pirates I was sure. When conversation with Ella turned toward the bones in the woods, she dismissed it as “silly teenagers playing at being wicked with grave robbery and made up rituals.”
The morning that winter when the police escorted Ella away, my mother quickly turned green and ran to the bathroom, retching along the way. It took longer for it to dawn on me what had made my mother ill. Months later, when we sat in the courtroom and the prosecutor explained to me what a cannibal is, I reacted much the same.
I still feel lucky Ella never had us for dinner.