The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

Beautiful, beautiful Jamie. By the time Mam swung the door open I had the
papers back where they belonged and was sitting placidly in my chair.
For dinner Mam boiled potatoes and cabbage with a small piece of tough
beef. She ate the beef herself, because, she said, until we had our ration books
back we didn’t have the right to eat meat. “I’ll get that cat to send them,” she
said. “Get the law on her, if I have to.”
Jamie looked miserable and didn’t want to eat, but I piled his plate with
vegetables. “They’re good,” I said encouragingly. “They tasted a little like the
beef.”
He eyed me. I winked. He stared at me for a while, then carefully ate
everything on his plate.
When Mam got up to leave for work, I took a deep breath. It was time.
Now or never, I thought. “You don’t need us here,” I said. “You’re better off
without having to take care of us, feed us and everything. You don’t really
want us. Not even Jamie.”
Jamie started to say something, but I kicked him underneath the table,
hard, and he shut his mouth.
Mam eyed me. “What’s all this? Some kind of trick?”
“You never wanted us,” I said. “Not really. That’s why you didn’t send for
us, when all the other mothers did.”
“Don’t know what right you’ve got to complain about it,” she said. “You
had a pretty high time out there from all I can see. Fancy clothes, fancy ideas,
prancing around the town—”
“It’s nothing to you what happens to us,” I said. “You only brought us back
because you thought it would cost more to keep us away.”
“And so it would have,” Mam said. “You saw that letter. Why should I pay
for you to live better than me? When you’re nothing but a—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. I worked hard to keep my voice quiet and even.
I was going to have the truth said plainly. I was done with lies.
“Nineteen shillings,” Mam said. “Nineteen shillings a week! When they
first let you go away for free. You never cost me no nineteen shillings a week.
It’s robbery, that’s what it is.”
“If you don’t have to pay, you won’t care if we leave,” I said. “I can
arrange that. We’ll go away and you won’t have to pay for anything.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re up to, girl. I don’t know
where you got all these words. Talk, talk.”