I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This / 《我本不想告诉你》
By Jacqueline Woodson
Translated by Yun Zhang
Published by Yilin Press
杰奎琳•伍德森著
张芸译
译林出版社出版
I had never questioned anybody’s happiness before my mother left. Grown-ups were supposed to be happy. They had things. They had freedom and jobs, and if they were my parents, they had a daughter they had named Marie Victoria. But my mother hadn’t been happy. Some nights, when my father was late coming home from work, I would hear her in the bathroom, crying . . . sobbing, gulping for air, turning the water on thinking I couldn’t hear her grieving. When I asked her why she cried, she looked at me, surprised, then answered, “There is so much to cry about in this world.”
When I was ten, I watched her walk away. It was raining the day she left, but she walked away with a suitcase in each hand, no umbrella, her back straight. She didn’t look over her shoulder. She didn’t wave good-bye. I stood with my father at the window, my head pressed against the glass. I watched her go, thinking she’d be back in an hour. That was two years ago. Postcards come with no return address. They come from all over the world—Paris, Lithuania, Spain, Bermuda. She draws pictures of herself on the cards—having meals in outdoor cafés, sitting alone by streams, buying oranges from sidewalk vendors. The sketches improve with each postcard. My father tells me that my mother always wanted to be an artist. I look at the pictures and wonder if she got her wish.
在妈妈离家以前，我从没怀疑过这世上会有人不幸福。大人就应该很开心啊。他们拥有很多东西，有工作、有自由。看看我爸妈，他们还有我这个叫玛丽•维多利亚的女儿。可是我妈妈看起来就不幸福。许多个夜晚，父亲工作到很晚才回来的那些个夜晚，我总听到妈妈在浴室哭泣……她打开水龙头，任水哗哗地流，以为这样我就听不见她的啜泣和抽泣声。我问她为什么哭，她惊讶地看着我，说：“这世上的很多事都让人想哭。”
我十岁那年，目睹妈妈离家出走。那天下着雨，她一手提着一个行李箱，背挺得直直的，没有撑伞。她没有回首，也没有道别。我和爸爸站在窗边，我的脸贴着窗户。看着她走，一开始我还以为她不出一个小时就会回来。然而两年过去了。妈妈从世界各地给我们寄来明信片——巴黎、立陶宛、西班牙、百慕大。每张明信片都没有寄信人地址，只有妈妈的自画像——画中的她在户外就餐、在河边驻足、在街边小贩的摊儿上买橙子。每一张都比前一张画得更好。爸爸说，妈妈的梦想是当艺术家。看着这些明信片，我很想知道她的梦想实现了没有。
Every day I walk past a FOR RENT sign in the window of the house where Lena and Dion once lived. I know the way the white letters of the sign curve against their red background. I know that the fourth pane in the window has a crack running diagonally across it. I know if you press your face against the glass, you can see inside. There are dustballs flying around in there. In one corner a broom sits upside down, its bristles brushing against the gray-blue wall. A naked lightbulb hangs from the ceiling. A piece of paper with a tiny bit of a picture drawn on it is lying right in the center of the floor. Outside the front door I found a piece of notebook paper with their names written on it in Lena’s handwriting: Elena Cecilia Bright and her sister Edion Kay Bright lived here once. I had to swallow when I came across Dion’s name. I had never known it. What other things about them hadn’t I known? Had Lena left this piece of paper hoping one day I’d find it? Will she ever know that it’s laminated now, in a corner of my drawer where I can look at it whenever I want and remember them?
Each morning I expect to see their grainy faces on a milk carton. Sad, hard faces looking out at the world, daring it to say something about them leaving.
Each morning my father comes into my room and, taking my face between his hands, asks if I’m okay. His hands are warm and softer than the hands I remembered. In the beginning, when I leaned into him to cry, those hands were awk- ward but gentle as they patted the back of my head. “Go ahead, Marie,” Daddy whispered. “It’s okay to cry.” As though he were saying it was okay to cry for everyone who has left my life.
莱娜和迪翁以前的住处门口已经挂起了“招租”的牌子。我每天经过这里，已经把招租牌上白色字母和红色背景交织的图案记得清清楚楚。我还知道窗户的第四格玻璃沿着对角线裂开了，如果你把脸贴在玻璃上，就能看到房屋内部。里面满是尘埃，灰尘都起球了。屋子一角有一把倒置的扫帚，硬毛部分抵着蓝灰色墙面，屋顶上挂着一只光秃秃的灯泡。地面中央是一张白纸，纸上是一幅小小的图画。我在大门外找到一张笔记本上扯下的纸，上面写着姐妹俩的名字：艾莲娜•西西莉娅•布莱特和爱迪翁•凯•布莱特，看字迹是莱娜的。看到迪翁的全名时，我哽咽了，以前我都不知道这是她的全名。还有什么是我不知道的？莱娜是不是故意留下这张纸片让我找到的？她一定没想到我已经把这张纸过了塑，放在抽屉的一角，随时拿出来看一眼。我用这种方式纪念她俩。
每天早晨，我都期望在牛奶硬纸盒上看到她们姐妹俩粗粝的脸。那既哀伤又坚强的脸，望向这世界，问它敢不敢说出她们离家出走的真相。
每天早晨，爸爸都来到我房间，捧着我的脸，问我还好吗。他的手比我记忆中更柔更暖。一开始，我扑到他怀里哭泣，这双手略带尴尬地轻拍我后脑勺。“哭吧，玛丽，”爸爸小声说，“哭出来没事的。”他告诉我，为我生命中一一离去的那些人哭泣，是可以的。