There were two letters on the dining-room table. One had come in a large, oblong manila envelope, the other in a cheap pink one.
Emmanuel had just come home from college. He picked up the letters. He saw that his mother had opened them. Now, as he came into the room, her diseased eyes narrowed:
“That’s why we go hungry an education to give you? That’s why?”
He coloured. Angrily.
“You shouldn’t have opened them. You had no business to.”
“What? My own children’s letters I shouldn’t open, maybe?”
Anyway, she couldn’t have read them. She couldn’t read English. One of the things was a returned manuscript, the other a letter from Etta.... Still, his mother must have guessed, because now she turned on him:
“Goils! To spend money on. And this craziness, this story business.”
Pale, he threw at her:
“I’ve got to write if I want to be a writer!”