I
Angelica sat at the kitchen table, her blouse torn rudely open at the
neck, wet through with perspiration, haggard and worn almost beyond
recognition.
"My Gawd!" she said, pushing back her hair. "It’s hot as hell, mommer!"
Mrs. Kennedy sighed, without speaking or interrupting her work. She was
standing at the ironing-board, finishing a big week’s washing. It was a
night of intolerable and sultry heat, and the kitchen, with the stove
lighted for the irons, and the gas blazing for light, was a place of
torment. The two women were curiously pallid, curiously alert, with the
terrible activity of exhaustion. They had reached so high a point of
suffering, both physical and mental, on that night, that they were no
longer aware of their pain.
"Listen, mommer!" said Angelica. "Here’s what I’ve written."
She picked up the sheet of soft paper with blue lines, on which the ink
blurred and the pen dug and scratched, and on which she had written: