“I don’t understand any of your hesitation. You never stop badgering that you want us to treat you more like a young woman than a young girl,” my mother said, sitting in her pool of self-satisfaction. For once, she believed she had successfully manipulated me. “Well, now you will have your wish. Your childhood friends who you always complain are too juvenile will peel away.”

She folded her arms across her breasts and sat back. I was losing any resistance, and she knew it.

“Both your father and I were quite impressed with how you handled your short visit with Aunt Nettie. You traveled on your own and managed what you saw as difficulties. We have new confidence in you,” she added. It felt like she was throwing me a bone.

Managed? If she only knew, I thought, but I thanked her. To do otherwise would have raised new questions.

“I can’t say I’m not saddened to see my little girl fade away. We wish, as you will someday, that children could remain innocent and without the trials and tribulations of adult life, all especially difficult for a woman today with the added baggage of being a good wife and managing a home. But time is a great thief, probably the greatest,” she said sadly.

My father looked close to tears himself.

There was no doubt in my mind from where I had inherited my dramatic powers. I was convinced she had been rehearsing this speech in her mind many times for years and probably dreamed of delivering it just like this every night. I looked at my father again. Now he was smiling and nodding. I felt like someone falling with nothing to reach out to and grab to break my descent. At least I would get in some defiance, I thought.

“I’m not going to wear clothes that make me look like some old hag.”

“You’d better not,” my father said, still smiling. “It’s not whom I want new customers to see when they enter my bank.”

I glanced at my mother.

The battle was set, at least. I’d make the best of it.

Nevertheless, after dinner, I went up to my room to pout. I started on my diary again. I had so much to tell it, from my visit to my great-aunt to Garland to this. Never did I write with such frenzy. Finally, the words came easily.