She forced herself to take up her pen again. Her plans for the day were predicated on finishing an essay before lunchtime.
One warm hot humid summer afternoon Clem and I were out exploring near a farmhouse which had a large, vicious dog on a chain. Even Clem was a little afraid of that dog. Well, sSomehow the dog wasn’t on its chain that day, and it jumped over a fence and started chasing me. It bit my ankle and I fell down. I could have been very seriously injured if Clem hadn’t dove onto the dog and started fighting with it. By the time the farmwife came to the rescue, Clem was the one who was seriously injured. The dog bit his face and both of his arms, and he had to have thirty forty fifty forty stitches. He was lucky the dog didn’t cripple his arm or bite through an artery. To this day, whenever I see the scars on his arms and his cheek, I remember how he Always does the right thing without caring what other people think of him
Sticks up for kids who get picked on not afraid of bullies （just like dog）
He helped me realize there are more important things in life than being the
Why did her writing have to make her sound like such a nitwit? She ripped the offending page out of the notebook. From the kitchen came the smell of a preheating oven, the morning slipping away. She felt unfairly stymied by the badness of what was on the page, as if she weren’t, herself, the person who’d put it there.
And now came her mother, carrying a pitcher of water into the living room. “Oh,” she said. “You’re up.”
“Yes,” Becky said.
“I didn’t hear you get up. Have you had breakfast?”
Her mother was already in her exercise clothes, a formless sweatshirt, saggy synthetic knit pedal pushers. It was a look that encapsulated, Becky felt, the difference between her mother and her aunt, who’d been as trim as her mother was bulky and couldn’t possibly have owned such a sweatshirt. As her mother kneeled down to water the Christmas tree, Becky averted her eyes from the impending exposure of lumbar flesh. Another, more tragic difference between her mother and Shirley was that her mother was alive. Shirley had stayed trim by smoking two packs of Chesterfields a day.
Her mother asked her if she had any fun plans.
“Working on my applications,” Becky said. “Christmas shopping.”
“Well, just make sure you’re home by six, so you have time to get ready for the Haefles’ party. We’ll leave as soon as your father gets home.”
“I’m going to a party?”
Her mother stood up with the pitcher. “Dwight invited everyone to bring their families. Perry’s staying home with Judson, and I don’t know what time Clem is getting here.”
“Sorry—what is this party?”
“An open house for clergy. Clem came with us last year.”
“Did I say I would do this?”
“No. I’m telling you now that you will.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but I have other plans. I’m going to the Crossroads concert.”
She kept her eyes averted, but she could imagine her mother’s expression.
“Your father won’t be happy about that. But if that’s your choice, we’ll be home from the Haefles’ by eight thirty.”
“The concert starts at seven thirty.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being fashionably late. Missing one hour, to maintain some semblance of peace at the holidays, doesn’t seem like much to ask.”
Becky inclined her head mulishly. She had her reasons, but she wasn’t going to explain them.
“How’s it going with your essay?” her mother asked.
“Fine.”
“I can help you with it, if you want to show me what you’ve written. Do you want to do that?”
This in a more honeyed tone, intended as a peace offering, but Becky took it as a reminder that her mother was better than her at writing, she herself better at nothing her mother valued. “I’m thinking,” she said, by way of striking back, “that I might write about Aunt Shirley.”
Her mother stiffened. “I thought you were writing about Clem.”
“It’s a personal essay. I can write whatever I want.”
“True enough.”
Her mother left the room. The light in the windows had brightened a little, and Becky was pleased to find her goodwill still intact. It wasn’t as if her mother was a bad person. She just didn’t understand how much nicer Becky’s own plans were than going to the Haefles’ party.
After the dog attack in Indiana, when the bite on Clem’s face was iodined and stitched and his arms were in bandages, her father had come home from a church meeting and yelled at him. How did you let this happen? What on earth were you doing at that farm? I gave you responsibility for your sister! She could have been killed! It happens all the time—a child no smaller than Becky gets killed by a dog! What were you thinking? All this to a ten-year-old boy who’d been mauled while protecting her. And then came the edict: Clem was henceforth forbidden to take Becky beyond the lines of their property, except on the county road to and from their school. When Becky thought about her and Clem’s unusual friendship, her mind went back to the word forbidden. Things that were forbidden were often precisely what the heart most wanted. Things became more attractive because they were forbidden by some cruel or uncomprehending authority. As a teenager, when she saw the light under Clem’s door, late on a Saturday night, it was like the beckoning glow of a forbidden thing. She and Clem were united against the authority that wanted to separate them.