The weather was mild. The sun had gone down an hour before and had taken none of the autumn warmth with it. The yard was lit with paper lanterns strung like big Christmas ornaments from the maple trees. The tables sparkled with glassware and china. Each one had a bunch of flowers and a chimneyed candle on its white cloth. It looked like a grownup party. It seemed like real life.

Melanie was enchanted. She was still a quarter year shy of her eighth birthday but she felt like she had arrived.

She was at the worst table but she didn’t mind. The hosts had set up two wooden tables-with-attached-benches in addition to the one that was a permanent fixture in their yard. The original table held places for the adults. The central table had the biggest flower arrangement and was for the birthday girl and her twelve and thirteen year-old peers. The other borrowed table, the one closest to the fence, seated the neighborhood kids who were invited to attend even though they weren’t close friends with Dabney. They ranged in age from eleven year old Freddie to Melanie, almost eight.

It was a Halloween birthday party. Among other items of good fortune, Dabney had been born on October 31. The actual party was a day late because Halloween that year had fallen on a Thursday, but that was lucky too; everyone got to go trick-or-treating the night before and then reuse their costumes for the party.

Melanie wasn’t proud of her outfit. Her mother was too busy to make a costume for her, too impatient to let Melanie create her own, too thrifty to consider a purchase. Melanie was a hobo that Halloween, which wasn’t very different from the peddler she’d been the year before. Her outfit was fashioned from an old suit that her father never wanted to see again. It was comfortable to wear but it wasn’t dramatic, scary, or lovely. Although Melanie thought it might be nice to be the standout costume of the evening, she preferred not to be noticed. She felt privileged to be at the party and she just wanted to soak in all the sights and sounds in that festive back yard. She hadn’t yet heard of anthropology or even journalism, but she was getting pretty good at spying on adults and the older neighborhood kids; she just wanted to observe.

She was at the least of the tables and that didn’t bother her at all. It made sense to her that the seats with Dabney and her schoolmates were central, and that the table closest to the house was reserved for the grownups. Melanie and other younger kids were next to the rail fence that ran at the back of the yard. They had an excellent view of the other tables, but they were cloaked by shadows themselves. They received exactly the same treats as the other guests, and got to watch Dabney’s mother walk across the yard to bring them goodies. Dabney’s mother was the most glamorous mom on the block.

Melanie didn’t know her name, but she expected it to be different. She thought of the woman as Dabney’s mama (which is what Dabney called her) or Mrs. Swanson. Melanie’s mother taught her to call most of the neighborhood mothers “Aunt Ruth” or “Aunt Grace” or Aunt Whatever-Her-First-name-Is, even though they weren’t real family, but she referred to Dabney’s mama as She or Her.

Melanie figured the name would be odd, like other things about the Swanson family. They only had one child, which was unusual for the block. They all had reddish blonde hair. They owned a big slobbery wonderful dog called Sheba. Sheba was a St Bernard like Melanie had seen on TV: huge and shaggy and gentle. The dog was so large that some of the babies in the neighborhood tried to ride her, and Sheba stood quietly for those attempts. Unlike the other households, the Swansons were neither Catholic nor Jewish; they didn’t leave their house for regular Sunday services and when they did attend, no one knew where. But the strangest fact about the family was their southern origin. No one else in the area came from Mississippi or spoke with their songlike cadence. It was to that heritage that Melanie attributed Dabney’s name and the family’s hospitality.