Her face hardened. She shook her bony, needle-scarred finger in his face:
“A writer he wants to be, with the family starving.” She wiped her nose, her eyes. “A doctor he don’t want to be, what’s a profession. A writer, even if maybe we die and your sister Reba got to break her arms pushing that machine.”
Out in the kitchen he read Etta’s letter. She had spoken to her parents, she wrote—Emmanuel had left that to her because he didn’t have the courage, he didn’t care enough—and her father had expressed willingness to furnish an office for him after the marriage. “Gee, I’m just tickled silly, are you glad, honey?” was her question in the even, characterless business-college handwriting. “I just couldn’t wait until I see you, so I had to write.”
“So that’s it,” he thought. His mouth moved: “Glad....”
His mother was standing next to him again.
“Goils! I’m going blind with embroidery and your father any minute is gonna kill himself with that rheumatism yet. All our lifes, all our lifes for you we worked.”
Oh, yes, all their lives. Putting pennies into him, putting food into him, waiting, waiting....
“It’s all right, Ma, I....”
“My eyes feel like they was on fire....”
“It’s all right, Ma. Listen!” He read her the letter. “You see, Etta’s father is going to furnish an office for me. You see....”