Everyday Use原文+译文

Everyday Use

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 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

–

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.

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 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.

回答人的补充

2009-09-30 18:43

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 it she will want

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

manage to come see us. But she will never bring her 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 when you see the wriggling end of a snake just in front of your toot on the ro

ad.

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

It is her sister's hair. It stands straight up like the wool on a sheep. It is black as night

and around the edges are two long pigtails that rope about like small lizards

disappearing behind her ears.

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

up with

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 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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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 churn,

回答人的补充

2009-09-30 18:56

When she finished wrapping the dasher the handle stuck out. I took it for a moment in

my hands. You didn't even have to look close to see where hands pushing the dasher

up and down to make butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a

lot of small sinks; you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood. It

was beautiful light yellow wood, from a tree that grew in the yard where Big Dee and

Stash had lived.

After dinner Dee (Wangero) went to the trunk at the foot of my bed and started

rifling through it. Maggie hung back in the kitchen over the dishpan. Out came

Wangero with two quilts. They had been pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee

and me had hung them on the quilt frames on the front porch and quilted them. One

was in the Lone Star pattern. The other was Walk Around the Mountain. In both of

them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had worn fifty and more years ago. Bit

sand pieces of Grandpa Jarrell's Paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece, about

the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra's uniform that he

wore in the Civil War.

I heard something fall in the kitchen, and a minute later the kitchen door

slammed.

just done by me and Big Dee from some tops your grandma pieced before she died.

machine.

used to wear. She did all this stitching by hand. Imagine!

in her arms, stroking them.

handed down to her,” I said, movi

ng up to touch the quilts. Dee (Wangero) moved

back just enough so that I couldn't reach the quilts. They already belonged to her.

marries John Thomas.

She gasped like a bee had stung her.

enough to put them to everyday use.

age ’em for long enough

with nobody using 'em. I hope she will! ” I didn't want to bring up how I had offered

Dee (Wangero) a quilt when she went away to college. Then she had told me they

were old-fashioned, out of style.

that!

Dee (Wangero) looked at me with hatred.

point is these quilts, these quilts!

Maggie by now was standing in the door. I could almost hear the sound her feet

made as they scraped over each other.

anything, or having anything reserved for her.

the quilts.

I looked at her hard. She had filled her bottom lip with checkerberry snuff and it

gave her face a kind of dopey, hangdog look. It was Grandma Dee and Big Dee who

taught her how to quilt herself. She stood there with her scarred hands hidden in the

folds of her skirt. She looked at her sister with something like fear but she wasn't mad

at her. This was Maggie's portion. This was the way she knew God to work.

When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran

down to the soles of my feet. Just like when I'm in church and the spirit of God

touches me and I get happy and shout. I did something I never had done before:

hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into the room, snatched the quilts out of

Miss Wangero's hands and dumped them into Maggie's lap. Maggie just sat there on

my bed with her mouth open.