New York Day Women

The Story, "New York Day Women," is about a girl who from Brooklyn who sees her mother in Manhattan.  She says that she has never seen her mother in that part of the city, and decides to follow her around to see what she is up to.  There are 2 narrators in this story, the regular font being the daughter and the smaller, bold font being the mother.  Her mother seems to be a rather uptight person, so it is odd for her to be seeing her mother out of her normal environment.  The girl is very curious about her mother's journey, so much so that she knowingly stays out of work long after her lunch hour is over.  Her mother stops at numerous vendors on her way, one being a hotdog vendor who she buys a soda from, and then she stops at a dress vendor.  The girl thinks to herself that her mother should not buy the dress, because it will be donated, but her mother always insists that they will save the clothes to give to their people back in Haiti.  She then stops at another hotdog vendor, which is especially strange because she has a high cholesterol, and almost never eats anything with sodium.  She then waits for her mother to enter a park, where she sees her mother approach a woman who leaves her with her child.  The 2 of them sit near the sandbox, and she gives the little boy her soda.  Her mother is holding a conversation with other mothers who are watching other people's children.  The girl stops spying on her mother and takes a cab to return to work.  She then describes her mother in a somewhat rhetorical sense, as if it were extremely out of the ordinary to see her mother with another child.  The second to last line of the story reads, "I don't want you to be ashamed of this day woman."  I think that this is representative of a theory that her mother has always told her, that she is just beginning to understand.  I think that it means that no matter what side you may see of a woman, there may be another side of her, that you could not have imagined.  When she is by herself during the day, she may act differently than one would expect.