第9章 (第2/3页)
的,味道像金属。露西笑起来,拉切尔也笑了。我们轮流扮演她。我们像鹦鹉学舌一样,用微弱的声音呼喊托奇过来洗碗。那很容易做到。
可我们不懂。她等待死亡很长时间了。我们忘了。也许她很愧疚。也许她很窘迫:死亡花了这么多年时间。孩子们想要做成孩子,而不是在那里洗碗涮碟,给爸爸熨衬衫。丈夫也想再要一个妻子。
于是她死了。听我念诗的婶婶。
于是我们开始做起了那些梦。
Born Bad
Most likely I will go to hell and most likely I deserve to be there. My mother says I was born on an evil day and prays for me. Lucy and Rachel pray too. For ourselves and for each other... because of what we did to Aunt Lupe.
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生辰不吉(2)
Her name was Guadalupe and she was pretty like my mother. Dark. Good to look at. In her Joan Crawford dress and swimmer's legs. Aunt Lupe of the photographs.
But I knew her sick from the disease that would not go, her legs bunched under the yellow sheets, the bones gone Limp as worms. The yellow pillow, the yello
w smell, the bottles and spoons. Her head thrown back like a thirsty lady. My aunt, the swimmer.
Hard to imagine her legs once strong, the bones hard and parting water, clean sharp strokes, not bent and wrinkled like a baby, not drowning under the sticky yellow light. Second-floor rear apartment. The naked light bulb. The high ceilings. The light bulb always burning.
I don't know who decides who deserves to go bad. There was no evil in her birth. No wicked curse. One day I believe she was swimming, and the next day she was sick. It might have been the day that gray photograph was taken. It might have been the day she was holding cousin Totchy and baby Frank. It might have been the moment she pointed to the camera for the kids to look
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