"Oh, for Gawd’s sake, mommer! After working all day, a girl my age can’t sit home alone all evening."
Alone! The poor woman winced.
"You could read magazines, or get books out of the library."
"I don’t want to read. There’s nothing in books. I want to live. I want to find out if there’s anything—anywhere."
"What do you mean, deary? If there’s anything anywhere?"
"Oh, it don’t matter! I’m going to bed. Good night!"
They went on in this way for weeks. What misery for the mother! She was nothing to her child; she could not even serve her. Angelica had become completely independent. She didn’t want to talk to Mrs. Kennedy, to go out with her, to stay at home with her.
Moreover, she had grown indifferent to the little niceties about which she had once been so fastidious. Sometimes she would get in earlier than her mother. Then, without waiting, she would get some sort of meal for herself, eaten off the tub tops, from the saucepan in which it was cooked. She would spend a long time dressing herself in her vivid finery, leaving the dirty pots for her mother to wash. Then again she wouldn’t appear until late, long after Mrs. Kennedy had disposed of her meal.
"We met some of the fellers," she would say; "and we hung around a while and ate a lot of candy. I don’t want any dinner."
One evening her mother weakly reproached her for her lateness.