“You’re talking to me like I’m a little kid. If you want to work, go work. I’m not stopping you. Jake already goes to the diner by himself. I can walk to school. I can walk home and stay here until you come back. If you’re worried about where I am, you can get me a phone. You can call me whenever you want.”

“You sound like your father,” Mom says. The way she says it is the way she used to talk to him.

“What do you mean?”

“That’s what he always said. Go back to work, if that’s what you want. It’s like nobody’s paying attention to what I actually do. Okay, that’s fine, that’s my job. But who’s going to do your laundry, who’s going to pack your lunch, who’s going to make sure you do your homework and turn off the lights and wake you up in the morning. . . .”

“Maria does the laundry.”

“Maria only comes twice a week.”

“So she can come more.”

Mom takes a deep breath. “Okay, I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“You always complain to me that I don’t want to talk about anything, and then when I try to talk about it, you tell me to stop.”

“This isn’t talking, this is just—you have no idea what actually goes on here. That’s fine. You’re a kid.”

“That’s because you treat me like a kid.”

“I just . . . I can’t have this conversation,” she says, and gets up. “I think we both need to cool down.”

“I’m not angry,” I tell her, but it’s not true, because as soon as she walks out of the kitchen, I feel too mad to eat—the waffles are cold anyway, and everything’s sticky. For some reason, I hear Jake’s voice in my head. He’s teasing me: “Are you going to cry?” No, I’m not going to cry, I feel like shouting, but nobody’s there.

The rest of the day is like any other summer day. I watch TV until Mom tells me to turn it off. I go see if Jake’s around—we play video games. Jake asks his mom if we can go out to the coffee shop, but she says I have to check with my mother first.

“Forget it,” I say. “She never lets me go.”

“Come on, just ask her,” Jake tells me.

So I go back to my apartment and in fact she says okay. She’s in her bedroom with a bunch of clothes on the bed, but she goes out to the hallway and gets her purse. She gives me a twenty-dollar bill.

“Thanks,” I mumble.

I turn to go, but Mom says, “It’s hard for me, too, you know. I’m doing my best, but I don’t always get everything right. I know you have to grow up, but it’s like—I have to grow up, too. I have to let you.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I say, a little louder this time.

She stares at me for a minute. “Look at me. Just to the coffee shop—eat what you want but then come right back. Wait for the lights to cross the street, but you know all that.”