A Walk Beyond the Gates

The afternoon had a way of pressing down on the school like a warm hand on a fevered forehead. Elena sat at the window of the sewing room, a half-finished apron draped across her lap, her needle moving in the practiced rhythm that Signora Petrova had drilled into all of them. But her eyes were not on the stitches. They were on the street beyond the iron gate, where a cart rumbled past, where a woman in a bright scarf laughed at something a man had said, where the world went on living without the smell of starch and boiled cabbage.

The gate. It was always there, black iron, tall and patient, with its curling scrollwork that made Elena think of frozen music. It opened only for deliveries, for the priest who came on Sundays, for the parents who visited once a month. The girls were not meant to pass through it except in rows, two by two, on the way to church or on the rare sanctioned outing to the market.

But Elena had noticed something. A gap.