大学高级英语第一册张汉熙版第四课原文加翻译EverydayUseforyourgrandmama

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Everyday Use for your grandmama

Alice Walker

I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yester

day afternoon. A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not

just a yard. It is like an extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a

floor and the fine sand around the edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone

can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and wait for the breezes that never

come inside the house.

Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in

corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her

sister with a mixture of envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life always in

the palm of one hand, that

You've no doubt seen those TV shows where the child who has

confronted, as a surprise, by her own mother and father, tottering in weakly from

backstage. (A Pleasant surprise, of course: What would they do if parent and child

came on the show only to curse out and insult each other?) On TV mother and child

embrace and smile into each other's face. Sometimes the mother and father weep,

the child wraps them in her arms and leans across the table to tell how she would

not have made it without their help. I have seen these programs.

Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly brought together

on a TV program of this sort. Out of a cark and soft- seated limousine I am ushered

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into a bright room filled with many people. There I meet a smiling, gray, sporty man

like Johnny Carson who shakes my hand and tells me what a fine girl I have. Then

we are on the stage and Dee is embracing me with tear s in her eyes. She pins on

my dress a large orchid, even though she has told me once that she thinks or chides

are tacky flowers.

In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man- working hands. In

the winter I wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill

and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can

work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver

cooked over the open tire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One

winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge

hammer and had the meat hung up to chill be-fore nightfall. But of course all this

does not show on television. I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a

hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pan-cake. My hair glistens

in the hot bright lights. Johnny Car

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son has much to do to keep up with my quick

and witty tongue.

But that is a mistake. I know even before I wake up. Who ever knew a Johnson

with a quick tongue? Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the

eye? It seems to me I have talked to them always with one toot raised in flight, with

my head turned in whichever way is farthest from them. Dee, though. She would

always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no part of her nature.

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enveloped in pink skirt and red blouse for me to know she's there, almost hidden

by the door.

Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless

person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to

be kind of him? That is the way my Maggie walks. She has been like this, chin on

chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other

house to the ground.

Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure. She's a woman

now, though sometimes I forget. How long ago was it that the other house burned?

Ten, twelve years? Sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie's arms

sticking to me, her hair smoking and her dress falling off her in little black papery

flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open by the flames reflect-ed in

them. And Dee. I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used to dig

gum out of; a look at concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray

board of the house tall in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don't you do a

dance around the ashes? I'd wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much.

I used to think she hated Maggie, too. But that was before we raised the money,

the church and me, to send her to Augusta to school. She used to read to us

without pity, forcing words, lies, other folks' habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting

trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She washed us in a river of

make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn't necessarily need to

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know. Pressed us to her with the serious way she read, to shove us away at just the

moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand.

Dee wanted nice things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation

from high school; black pumps to match a green suit she'd made from an old suit

somebody gave me. She was determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts.

Her eyelids would not flicker for minutes at a time. Often I fought off the

temptation to shake her. At sixteen she had a style of her own' and knew what style

was.

I never had an education myself. After second grade the school was closed

down. Don't ask me why. in 1927 colored asked fewer questions than they do now.

Sometimes Maggie reads to me. She stumbles along good-naturedly but can't see

well. She knows she is not bright. Like good looks and money, quickness passed her

by. She will marry John Thomas (who has mossy teeth in an earnest face) and then

I'll be free to sit here and I guess just sing church songs to myself. Although I never

was a good singer. Never could carry a tune. I was always better at a man's job. 1

used to love to milk till I was hooked in the side in '49. Cows are soothing and slow

and don't bother you, unless you try to milk them the wrong way.

I have deliberately turned my back on the house. It is three rooms, just like the

one that burned, except the roof is tin: they don't make shingle roofs any more.

There are no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a

ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding the shutter s up on the

outside. This house is in a pasture, too, like the other one. No doubt when Dee sees

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it she will want to tear it down. She wrote me once that no matter where we

friends. Maggie and I thought about this and Maggie asked me, Mama, when did

Dee ever have any friends?

She had a few. Furtive boys in pink shirts hanging about on washday after

school. Nervous girls who never laughed. Impressed with her they worshiped the

well-turned phrase, the cute shape, the scalding humor that erupted like bubbles in

lye. She read to them.

When she was courting Jimmy T she didn't have much time to pay to us, but

turned all her faultfinding power on him. He flew to marry a cheap city girl from a

family of ignorant flashy people. She hardly had time to recompose herself.

When she comes I will meet -- but there they are!

Maggie attempts to make a dash for the house, in her shuffling way, but I stay her

with my hand.

sand with her toe.

It is hard to see them clearly through the strong sun. But even the first glimpse

of leg out of the car tells me it is Dee. Her feet were always neat-looking, as it God

himself had shaped them with a certain style. From the other side of the car comes

a short, stocky man. Hair is all over his head a foot long and hanging from his chin

like a kinky mule tail. I hear Maggie suck in her breath.

like. Like when you see the wriggling end of a snake just in front of your toot on the

road.

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Dee next. A dress down to the ground, in this hot weather. A dress so loud it

hurts my eyes. There are yel-lows and oranges enough to throw back the light of

the sun. I feel my whole face warming from the heat waves it throws out. Earrings

gold, too, and hanging down to her shoulders. Bracelets dangling and making

noises when she moves her arm up to shake the folds of the dress out of her

armpits. The dress is loose and flows, and as she walks closer, I like it. I hear Maggie

go

sheep. It is black as night and around the edges are two long pigtails that rope

about like small lizards disappearing behind her ears.

her move. The short stocky fellow with the hair to his navel is all grinning and he

follows up with

but she falls back, right up against the back of my chair. I feel her trembling there

and when I look up I see the perspiration falling off her chin.

see me trying to move a second or two before I make it. She turns, showing white

heels through her sandals, and goes back to the car. Out she peeks next with a

Polaroid. She stoops down quickly and lines up picture after picture of me sitting

there in front of the house with Maggie cowering behind me. She never takes a

shot without making sure the house is included. When a cow comes nibbling

around the edge of the yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house. Then

she puts the Polaroid in the back seat of the car, and comes up and kisses me on

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the forehead.

Meanwhile Asalamalakim is going through motions with Maggie's hand.

Maggie's hand is as limp as a fish, and probably as cold, despite the sweat, and she

keeps trying to pull it back. It looks like Asalamalakim wants to shake hands but

wants to do it fancy. Or maybe he don't know how people shake hands. Anyhow, he

soon gives up on Maggie.

the people who oppress me.

my sister. She named Dee. We called her

back as I can trace it,

Though, in fact, I probably could have carried it back beyond the Civil War

through the branches.

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I try to trace it that far back?

He just stood there grinning, looking down on me like somebody inspecting a

Model A car. Every once in a while he and Wangero sent eye signals over my head.

Well, soon we got the name out of the way. Asalamalakim had a name twice as

long and three times as hard. After I tripped over it two or three times he told me to

just call him Hakim-a-barber. I wanted to ask him was he a barber, but I didn't really

think he was, so I don't ask.

said

too busy feeding the cattle, fixing the fences, putting up salt-lick shelters, throwing

down hay. When the white folks poisoned some of the herd the men stayed up all

night with rifles in their hands. I walked a mile and a half just to see the sight.

Hakim-a-barber said,

cattle is not my style.

had really gone and married him.)

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We sat down to eat and right away he said he didn't eat collards and pork was

unclean. Wangero, though, went on through the chitlins and corn bread, the greens

and every-thing else. She talked a blue streak over the sweet potatoes. Everything

delighted her. Even the fact that we still used the benches her daddy made for the

table when we couldn't afford to buy chairs.

lovely these benches are. You can feel the rump prints,

underneath her and along the bench. Then she gave a sigh and her hand closed

over Grandma Dee's butter dish.

wanted to ask you if I could have.

the corner where the churn stood, the milk in it clabber by now. She looked at the

churn and looked at it.

tree you all used to have?

Dee (Wangero) looked up at me.

couldn't hear her.

churn top as a center piece for the alcove table,

”

she said, sliding a plate over the