Charlie's Sister
1961; Antioch College; Volume: 21; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/4610310
ISSN2326-9707
Autores Tópico(s)Law, Rights, and Freedoms
Resumo* Her eyes, which had been watching the sidewalk to save her from stepping on the cracks, left it for just a second. Glancing sideways, she caught in the window of a parked car the image of herself in her bathing suit-the late-August tan, the small emergent breasts that she furtively admired in her bedroom mirror, the long blonde hair that fluctuated like the sea. How blonde the hair was! She caressed it with her pink fingers and laughed to herself. I wonder am I really pretty. And then, of course, the mouth. The last time Uncle Aran visited them she could see he was afraid to kiss her on the mouth. There were ways of telling. Were her lips becoming too sensual? No, they mustn't. She would pray to the Virgin that her lips would not turn sensual. Just pretty, that's all. Shut up, Charlie, can't you see I'm concentrating? The trouble with Charlie, who was eight-and-a-half-going-onnine, was that he never considered other people. Still, Cathy was good enough to take him to the beach with her, especially today on the feast of the Assumption when her mother said there was a cure in the water. It was a ten minute walk. She pretended not to notice him, walking backwards with his towel tied around his shoulders like a Superman cape, and busied herself with watching for the cracks in the sidewalk. Step on a crack and break the devil's back. Or was it step on a crack and break your mother's back ? Kids said those things so easily, as though it didn't much matter which way they came out, and yet it mattered terribly. It was frightening to
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