Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago on December 20, 1954, the third child in a family of seven children. The only daughter of a Mexican father and a Mexican-American mother, she was educated in the Midwest before moving to the Southwest in 1984. She has worked as a teacher to high-school dropouts, a poet-in-the-schools, a college recruiter, an arts administrator, and as a visiting writer at a number of universities around the country. The recipient of numerous awards for her poetry and fiction, Cisneros is the author of The House on Mango Street (Arte Público Press, 1984/Vintage, 1991), My Wicked Wicked Ways (Third Woman 1987/Turtle Bay, 2992), Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (Random House, 1991/Vintage 1992), Loose Woman (Knopf, 1994), Hairs/Pelitos (Knopf, 1994), and Caramelo (Knopf, 2002). Sandra Cisneros's books have been translated into ten languages. In 1995 Cisneros was the recipient of a grant from the MacArthur Foundation. She lives in a purple house in San Antonio, Texas.

　  I like to tell stories. I tell them inside my head. I tell them after the mailman says, Here's your mail. Here's your mail he said.

　　I make a story for my life, for each step my brown shoe takes. I say, "And so she trudged up the wooden stairs, her sad brown shoes taking her to the house she never

　　liked."

　　I like to tell stories. I am going to tell you a story about a girl who didn't want to belong.

　　We didn't always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, but what I remember most is Mango Street, sad red house, the house I belong but do not belong to.

　　I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much. I write it down and Mango says goodbye sometimes. She does not hold me with both arms. She sets me free.

　　One day I will pack my bags of books and paper. One day I will say goodbye to Mango. I am too strong for her to keep me here forever. One day I will go away.

　　Friends and neighbors will say, What happened to that Esperanza? Where did she go with all those books and paper? Why did she march so far away?

　　They will not know I have gone away to come back. For the ones I left behind. For the ones who cannot out.




芒果有时说再见

　　我喜欢讲故事。我在心里讲述。在邮递员说过这是你的邮件之后。这是你的邮件。他说。然后我开始讲述。

　　我编了一个故事，为我的生活，为我棕色鞋子走过的每一步。我说，“她步履沉重地登上木楼梯，她悲哀的棕色鞋子带着她走进了她从来不喜欢的房子。”

　　我喜欢讲故事。我将向你们讲述一个不想归属的女孩的故事。

　　我们先前不住芒果街。先前我们住鲁米斯的三楼，再先前我们住吉勒。吉勒前面是波琳娜。可我记得最清楚的是芒果街，悲哀的红色小屋。我住在那里却不属于那里的房子。

　　我把它写在纸上，然后心里的幽灵就不那么疼了。我把它写下来，芒果有时说再见。她不再用双臂抱住我。她放开了我。

　　有一天我会把一袋袋的书和纸打进包里。有一天我会对芒果说再见。我强大得她没法永远留住我。有一天我会离开。

　　朋友和邻居们会说，埃斯佩朗莎怎么了？她带着这么多书和纸去哪里？为什么她要走得那么远？

　　他们不会知道，我离开是为了回来。为了那些我留在身后的人。为了那些无法出去的人。

　 Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own. With my porch and my pillow, my pretty purple petunias. My books and my stories. My two shoes waiting beside the bed. Nobody to shake a stick at. Nobody's garbage to pick up after.　　
    Only a house quiet as snow, a space for myself to go, clean as paper before the poem.

　　不是小公寓.也不是阴面的大公寓.也不是哪个男人的房子.也不是爸爸的房子.是完完全全属于我自己的.那里有我的前廊我的枕头,我漂亮的紫色矮牵牛.我的书和我的故事.我的两只等在床边的鞋.不用和谁去作对.没有别人扔下的垃圾要拾起.　　只是一所寂静如雪的房子,一个自己归去的空间,洁净如同诗笔未落的纸.

　　有时候,在非常牵强的情况下flat是指一整套公寓,然后将这些公寓分成一间间或者一套套的,分租出去的那种.apartment是指一整套公寓。

　  I like Alicia because once she gave me a little leather purse with the word GUADALAJARA stitched on it, which is home for Alicia, and one day she will go back there. But today she is listening to my sadness because I don't have a house.
      You live right here, 4006 Mango, Alicia says and points to the house I am ashamed of.
      No, this isn't my house I say and shake my head as if shaking could undo the year I've lived here. I don't belong. I don't ever want to come from here. You have a home, Alicia, and one day you'll go there, to a town you remember, but me I never had a house, not even a photograph ... only one I dream of.
      No, Alicia says. Like it or not you are Mango Street, and one day you'll come back too.
      Not me. Not until somebody makes it better.
      Who's going to do it? The mayor?
      And the thought of the mayor coming to Mango Street makes me laugh out loud.
      Who's going to do it? Not the mayor.

　  They came with the wind that blows in August, thin as a spider web and barely noticed. Three who did not seem to be related to anything but the moon. One with laughter like tin and one with eyes of a cat and one with hands like porcelain. The aunts, the three sisters, las comadres, they said.
      The baby died. Lucy and Rachel's sister. One night a dog cried, and the next day a yellow bird flew in through an open window. Before the week was over, the baby's fever was worse. Then Jesus came and took the baby with him far away. That's what their mother said.
      Then the visitors came ... in and out of the little house. It was hard to keep the floors clean. Anybody who had ever wondered what color the walls were came and came to look at that little thumb of a human in a box like candy.
      I had never seen the dead before, not for real, not in somebody's living room for people to kiss and bless themselves and light a candle for. Not in a house. It seemed strange.
      They must've known, the sisters. They had the power and could sense what was what. They said, Come here, and gave me a stick of gum. They smelled like Kleenex or the inside of a satin handbag, and then I didn't feel afraid.
      What's your name, the cat-eyed one asked.
      Esperanza, I said.
      Esperanza, the old blue-veined one repeated in a high thin voice. Esperanza ... a good good name.
      My knees hurt, the one with the funny laugh complained.
      Tomorrow it will rain.
      Yes, tomorrow, they said.
      How do you know? I asked.
      We know.
      Look at her hands, cat-eyed said.
      And they turned them over and over as if they were looking for something.
      She's special.
      Yes, she'll go very far.
      Yes, yes, hmmm.
      Make a wish.
      A wish?
      Yes, make a wish. What do you want?
      Anything? I said.
      Well, why not?
      I closed my eyes.
      Did you wish already?
      Yes, I said.
      Well, that's all there is to it. It'll come true.
      How do you know? I asked.
      We know, we know.
      Esperanza. The one with marble hands called me aside. Esperanza. She held my face with her blue-veined hands and looked and looked at me. A long silence. When you leave you must remember always to come back, she said.
      What?
      When you leave you must remember to come back for the others. A circle, understand? You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are.
      Then I didn't know what to say. It was as if she could read my mind, as if she knew what I had wished for, and I felt ashamed for having made such a selfish wish.
      You must remember to come back. For the ones who cannot leave as easily as you. You will remember? She asked as if she was telling me. Yes, yes, I said a little confused.
      Good, she said, rubbing my hands. Good. That's all. You can go.
      I got up to join Lucy and Rachel who were already outside waiting by the door, wondering what I was doing talking to three old ladies who smelled like cinnamon. I didn't understand everything they had told me. I turned around. They smiled and waved in their smoky way.
      Then I didn't see them. Not once, or twice, or ever again.

　  Sally got married like we knew she would, young and not ready but married just the same. She met a marshmallow salesman at a school bazaar, and she married him in another state where it's legal to get married before eighth grade. She has her husband and her house now, her pillowcases and her plates. She says she is in love, but I think she did it to escape.
      Sally says she likes being married because now she gets to buy her own things when her husband gives her money. She is happy, except sometimes her husband gets angry and once he broke the door where his foot went through, though most days he is okay. Except he won't let her talk on the telephone. And he doesn't let her look out the window. And he doesn't like her friends, so nobody gets to visit her unless he is working.
      She sits at home because she is afraid to go outside without his permission. She looks at all the things they own: the towels and the toaster, the alarm clock and the drapes. She likes looking at the walls, at how neatly their corners meet, the linoleum roses on the floor, the ceiling smooth as wedding cake.

　   Sally, you lied. It wasn't what you said at all. What he did. Where he touched me. I didn't want it, Sally. The way they said it, the way it's supposed to be, all the storybooks and movies, why did you lie to me?
      I was waiting by the red clowns. I was standing by the tilt-a-whirl where you said. And anyway I don't like carnivals. I went to be with you because you laugh on the tilt-a-whirl, you throw your head back and laugh. I hold your change, wave, count how many times you go by. Those boys that look at you because you're pretty. I like to be with you, Sally. You're my friend. But that big boy, where did he take you? I waited such a long time. I waited by the red clowns, just like you said, but you never came, you never came for me.
      Sally Sally a hundred times. Why didn't you hear me when I called? Why didn't you tell them to leave me alone? The one who grabbed me by the arm, he wouldn't let me go. He said I love you, Spanish girl, I love you, and pressed his sour mouth to mine.
      Sally, make him stop. I couldn't make them go away. I couldn't do anything but cry. I don't remember. It was dark. I don't remember. I don't remember. Please don't make me tell it all.
      Why did you leave me all alone? I waited my whole life. You're a liar. They all lied. All the books and magazines, everything that told it wrong. Only his dirty fingernails against my skin, only his sour smell again. The moon that watched. The tilt-a-whirl. The red clowns laughing their thick-tongue laugh.
      Then the colors began to whirl. Sky tipped. Their high black gym shoes ran. Sally, you lied, you lied. He wouldn't let me go. He said I love you, I love you, Spanish girl.

　  The monkey doesn't live there anymore. The monkey moved—to Kentucky—and took his people with him. And I was glad because I couldn't listen anymore to his wild screaming at night, the twangy yakkety-yak of the people who owned him. The green metal cage, the porcelain tabletop, the family that spoke like guitars. Monkey, family, table. All gone. And it was then we took over the garden we had been afraid to go into when the monkey screamed and showed its yellow teeth.
      There were sunflowers big as flowers on Mars and thick cockscombs bleeding the deep red fringe of theater curtains. There were dizzy bees and bow-tied fruit flies turning somersaults and humming in the air. Sweet sweet peach trees. Thorn roses and thistle and pears. Weeds like so many squinty-eyed stars and brush that made your ankles itch and itch until you washed with soap and water. There were big green apples hard as knees. And everywhere the sleepy smell of rotting wood, damp earth and dusty hollyhocks thick and perfumy like the blue-blond hair of the dead.
      Yellow spiders ran when we turned rocks over and pale worms blind and afraid of light rolled over in their sleep. Poke a stick in the sandy soil and a few blue-skinned beetles would appear, an avenue of ants, so many crusty ladybugs. This was a garden, a wonderful thing to look at in the spring. But bit by bit, after the monkey left, the garden began to take over itself. Flowers stopped obeying the little bricks that kept them from growing beyond their paths. Weeds mixed in. Dead cars appeared overnight like mushrooms. First one and then another and then a pale blue pickup with the front windshield missing. Before you knew it, the monkey garden became filled with sleepy cars.
      Things had a way of disappearing in the garden, as if the garden itself ate them, or, as if with its old-man memory, it put them away and forgot them. Nenny found a dollar and a dead mouse between two rocks in the stone wall where the morning glories climbed, and once when we were playing hide-and-seek, Eddie Vargas laid his head beneath a hibiscus tree and fell asleep there like a Rip Van Winkle until somebody remembered he was in the game and went back to look for him.
      This, I suppose, was the reason why we went there. Far away from where our mothers could find us. We and a few old dogs who lived inside the empty cars. We made a clubhouse once on the back of that old blue pickup. And besides, we liked to jump from the roof of one car to another and pretend they were giant mushrooms.
      Somebody started the lie that the monkey garden had been there before anything. We liked to think the garden could hide things for a thousand years. There beneath the roots of soggy flowers were the bones of murdered pirates and dinosaurs, the eye of a unicorn turned to coal.
      This is where I wanted to die and where I tried one day but not even the monkey garden would have me. It was the last day I would go there.
      Who was it that said I was getting too old to play the games? Who was it I didn't listen to? I only remember that when the others ran, I wanted to run too, up and down and through the monkey garden, fast as the boys, not like Sally who screamed if she got her stockings muddy.
      I said, Sally, come on, but she wouldn't. She stayed by the curb talking to Tito and his friends. Play with the kids if you want, she said, I'm staying here. She could be stuck-up like that if she wanted to, so I just left.
      It was her own fault too. When I got back Sally was pretending to be mad. . . something about the boys having stolen her keys. Please give them back to me, she said punching the nearest one with a soft fist. They were laughing. She was too. It was a joke I didn't get.
      I wanted to go back with the other kids who were still jumping on cars, still chasing each other through the garden, but Sally had her own game.
      One of the boys invented the rules. One of Tito's friends said you can't get the keys back unless you kiss us and Sally pretended to be mad at first but she said yes. It was that simple.
      I don't know why, but something inside me wanted to throw a stick. Something wanted to say no when I watched Sally going into the garden with Tito's buddies all grinning. It was just a kiss, that's all. A kiss for each one. So what, she said.
      Only how come I felt angry inside. Like something wasn't right. Sally went behind that old blue pickup to kiss the boys and get her keys back, and I ran up three flights of stairs to where Tito lived. His mother was ironing shirts. She was sprinkling water on them from an empty pop bottle and smoking a cigarette.
      Your son and his friends stole Sally's keys and now they won't give them back unless she kisses them and right now they're making her kiss them, I said all out of breath from the three flights of stairs.
      Those kids, she said, not looking up from her ironing.
      That's all?
      What do you want me to do, she said, call the cops? And kept on ironing.
      I looked at her a long time, but couldn't think of anything to say, and ran back down the three flights to the garden where Sally needed to be saved. I took three big sticks and a brick and figured this was enough.
      But when I got there Sally said go home. Those boys said leave us alone. I felt stupid with my brick. They all looked at me as if I was the one that was crazy and made me feel ashamed.
      And then I don't know why but I had to run away. I had to hide myself at the other end of the garden, in the jungle part, under a tree that wouldn't mind if I lay down and cried a long time. I closed my eyes like tight stars so that I wouldn't, but I did. My face felt hot. Everything inside hiccupped.
      I read somewhere in India there are priests who can will their heart to stop beating. I wanted to will my blood to stop, my heart to quit its pumping. I wanted to be dead, to turn into the rain, my eyes melt into the ground like two black snails. I wished and wished. I closed my eyes and willed it, but when I got up my dress was green and I had a headache.
      I looked at my feet in their white socks and ugly round shoes. They seemed far away. They didn't seem to be my feet anymore. And the garden that had been such a good place to play didn't seem mine either.

　  He never hits me hard. She said her mama rubs lard on all the places where it hurts. Then at school she'd say she fell. That's where all the blue places come from. That's why her skin is always scarred.
      But who believes her. A girl that big, a girl who comes in with her pretty face all beaten and black can't be falling off the stairs. He never hits me hard.
      But Sally doesn't tell about that time he hit her with his hands just like a dog, she said, like if I was an animal. He thinks I'm going to run away like his sisters who made the family ashamed. Just because I'm a daughter, and then she doesn't say.
      Sally was going to get permission to stay with us a little and one Thursday she came finally with a sack full of clothes and a paper bag of sweetbread her mama sent. And would've stayed too except when the dark came her father, whose eyes were little from crying, knocked on the door and said please come back, this is the last time. And she said Daddy and went home.
      Then we didn't need to worry. Until one day Sally's father catches her talking to a boy and the next day she doesn't come to school. And the next. Until the way Sally tells it, he just went crazy, he just forgot he was her father between the buckle and the belt.
      You're not my daughter, you're not my daughter. And then he broke into his hands.

　　萨莉得到了允许讲和我们住一阵子，星期四她终于来了，带着一布袋衣服和一纸袋她妈妈拿的甜面包。本来他可以住住下来的，可天黑的时候她爸爸来了，眼睛哭肿了，变得很小，他敲打着门说请回来吧。这是最后一次。她应了一声爸爸，就回家了。

　　然后我们就不用担心了。直到有一天，萨莉的爸爸抓到她和一个男孩说话，第二天她没有来上学。第三天也没有。直到后来萨莉说起来，他简直就是疯了，解开了皮带的他，忘记了他是她的父亲。

　  I could've been somebody, you know? my mother says and sighs. She has lived in this city her whole life. She can speak two languages. She can sing an opera. She knows how to fix a TV. But she doesn't know which subway train to take to get downtown. I hold her hand very tight while we wait for the right train to arrive. She used to draw when she had time. Now she draws with a needle and thread, little knotted rosebuds, tulips made of silk thread. Someday she would like to go to the ballet. Someday she would like to see a play. She borrows opera records from the public library and sings with velvety lungs powerful as morning glories.
      Today while cooking oatmeal she is Madame Butterfly until she sighs and points the wooden spoon at me. I could've been somebody, you know? Esperanza, you go to school. Study hard. That Madame Butterfly was a fool. She stirs the oatmeal. Look at my comadres. She means Izaura whose husband left and Yolanda whose husband is dead. Got to take care all your own, she says shaking her head.
      Then out of nowhere:
      Shame is a bad thing, you know? It keeps you down. You want to know why I quit school? Because I didn't have nice clothes. No clothes, but I had brains.
      Yup, she says disgusted, stirring again. I was a smart cookie then.

　　我本来可以出人头地的，你知道么？妈妈说着叹了口气。她一辈子都住在这个城市里。她会说两种语言。她会唱歌剧。她知道怎么修理电视机。可她不知道坐哪条地铁线去市中心。在等对的那趟车来的时候，我紧紧攥着她的手。

　　她过去有时间就常画画。现在她用针和线画画，编织的玫瑰花苞，丝绣的郁金香。有一天她想去看芭蕾。又一天她想去看戏。她从公共图书馆里借来了歌剧唱片，用醇厚的嗓音唱起来，歌声像朝阳一样蓬勃。

　  I am an ugly daughter. I am the one nobody comes for.
      Nenny says she won't wait her whole life for a husband to come and get her, that Minerva's sister left her mother's house by having a baby, but she doesn't want to go that way either. She wants things all her own, to pick and choose. Nenny has pretty eyes and it's easy to talk that way if you are pretty.
      My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.
      In the movies there is always one with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away.
      I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.

　   I want a house on a hill like the ones with the gardens where Papa works. We go on Sundays, Papa's day off. I used to go. I don't anymore. You don't like to go out with us, Papa says. Getting too old? Getting too stuck-up, says Nenny. I don't tell them I am ashamed—all of us staring out the window like the hungry. I am tired of looking at what we can't have. When we win the lottery . . . Mama begins, and then I stop listening.
      People who live on hills sleep so close to the stars they forget those of us who live too much on earth. They don't look down at all except to be content to live on hills. They have nothing to do with last week's garbage or fear of rats. Night comes. Nothing wakes them but the wind.
      One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask, Can I come in? I'll offer them the attic, ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house.
      Some days after dinner, guests and I will sit in front of a fire. Floorboards will squeak upstairs. The attic grumble.
      Rats? they'll ask.
      Bums, I'll say, and I'll be happy.

　　我想要一所山上的房子，像爸爸工作的地方那样的花园房。星期日，爸爸的休息日，我们会去那里。我过去常去。现在不去了。你长大了，就不喜欢和我们一起出去吗？爸爸说。你傲起来了。蕾妮说。我没告诉他们我很羞愧——我们一帮人全都盯着那里的窗户，像饥饿的人。我厌倦了盯着我不能拥有的东西。如果我们赢了彩票……妈妈才开口，我就不要听了。

　　那些住在山上，睡得靠星星如此近的人，他们忘记了我们这些住在地面上的人。他们根本不朝下看，除非为了体会住在山上的心满意足。上星期的垃圾，对老鼠的恐惧，这些与他们无关。夜晚来临，没什么惊扰他们的梦，除了风。

　　有一天我要拥有自己的房子，可我不会忘记我是谁我从哪里来。路过的流浪者会问，我可以进来吗？我会把他们领上阁楼，请他们住下来，因为我知道没有房子的滋味。

　　有些日子里，晚饭后，我和朋友们坐在火旁。楼上的地板吱呀吱呀响。阁楼上有咕咕哝哝的声音。

　　是老鼠吗？他们会问。

　　是流浪者。我会回答说。我很开心。

　   Minerva is only a little bit older than me but already she has two kids and a husband who left. Her mother raised her kids alone and it looks like her daughters will go that way too. Minerva cries because her luck is unlucky. Every night and every day. And prays. But when the kids are asleep after she's fed them their pancake dinner, she writes poems on little pieces of paper that she folds over and over and holds in her hands a long time, little pieces of paper that smell like a dime.
      She lets me read her poems. I let her read mine. She is always sad like a house on fire—always something wrong. She has many troubles, but the big one is her husband who left and keeps leaving.
      One day she is through and lets him know enough is enough. Out the door he goes. Clothes, records, shoes. Out the window and the door locked. But that night he comes back and sends a big rock through the window. Then he is sorry and she opens the door again. Same story.
      Next week she comes over black and blue and asks what can she do? Minerva. I don't know which way she'll go. There is nothing I can do.

　　密涅瓦只比我大一点点，可她已经有两个孩子和一个出走的丈夫。她妈妈肚子抚养孩子们，看来她的女儿也要走她的老路了。因为她运气这样糟，密涅瓦哭呀哭。每个夜晚每个白天。并且祈祷。不过，在喂完孩子们煎饼晚餐后，他们就睡着了，她会在小纸片上写诗。那纸片他折了又折，捏在手里很长时间了，闻起来像一角硬币的小纸片。

　　她让我读她的诗，我让她读我的。她总是悲伤得像一所着了火的房子——总是有什么出了问题。他麻烦太多了，最大的麻烦就是丈夫会出走，而且不停地出走。

　  Sally is the girl with eyes like Egypt and nylons the color of smoke. The boys at school think she's beautiful because her hair is shiny black like raven feathers and when she laughs, she flicks her hair back like a satin shawl over her shoulders and laughs.
      Her father says to be this beautiful is trouble. They are very strict in his religion. They are not supposed to dance. He remembers his sisters and is sad. Then she can't go out. Sally I mean.
      Sally, who taught you to paint your eyes like Cleopatra? And if I roll the little brush with my tongue and chew it to a point and dip it in the muddy cake, the one in the little red box, will you teach me?
      I like your black coat and those shoes you wear, where did you get them? My mother says to wear black so young is dangerous, but I want to buy shoes just like yours, like your black ones made out of suede, just like those. And one day, when my mother's in a good mood, maybe after my next birthday, I'm going to ask to buy the nylons too.
      Cheryl, who is not your friend anymore, not since last Tuesday before Easter, not since the day you made her ear bleed, not since she called you that name and bit a hole in your arm and you looked as if you were going to cry and everyone was waiting and you didn't, you didn't, Sally, not since then, you don't have a best friend to lean against the schoolyard fence with, to laugh behind your hands at what the boys say. There is no one to lend you her hairbrush.
      The stories the boys tell in the coatroom, they're not true. You lean against the schoolyard fence alone with your eyes closed as if no one was watching, as if no one could see you standing there, Sally. What do you think about when you close your eyes like that? And why do you always have to go straight home after school? You become a different Sally. You pull your skirt straight, you rub the blue paint off your eyelids. You don't laugh, Sally. You look at your feet and walk fast to the house you can't come out from.
      Sally, do you sometimes wish you didn't have to go home? Do you wish your feet would one day keep walking and take you far away from Mango Street, far away and maybe your feet would stop in front of a house, a nice one with flowers and big windows and steps for you to climb up two by two upstairs to where a room is waiting for you. And if you opened the little window latch and gave it a shove, the windows would swing open, all the sky would come in. There'd be no nosy neighbors watching, no motorcycles and cars, no sheets and towels and laundry. Only trees and more trees and plenty of blue sky. And you could laugh, Sally. You could go to sleep and wake up and never have to think who likes and doesn't like you. You could close your eyes and you wouldn't have to worry what people said because you never belonged here anyway and nobody could make you sad and nobody would think you're strange because you like to dream and dream. And no one could yell at you if they saw you out in the dark leaning against a car, leaning against somebody without someone thinking you are bad, without somebody saying it is wrong, without the whole world waiting for you to make a mistake when all you wanted, all you wanted, Sally, was to love and to love and to love and to love, and no one could call that crazy.

　　萨莉是一个描着埃及的眼圈，穿烟灰色尼龙丝袜的女孩。学校的男生认为她很美，因为她的头发像渡乌鸦毛一样乌黑闪亮，她笑的时候，把头发往后一甩，像一面滑缎方巾披在肩膀上，然后大笑起来。

　　她爸爸说长这么美是麻烦事。他们非常严格地遵从他的信仰。他们不能去跳舞。他想起他的姐妹们，很伤心。于是她就不能出来。我说的是萨莉。

　　萨莉，是谁教会你把眼睛涂得像克莉奥帕特拉？如果我把这个小刷子用舌头卷一下，舔成尖尖的，蘸到小泥饼里去，那个小红盒子里的，你会教我吗？

　 On Tuesdays Rafaela`s husband comes home late because that`s the night he plays dominoes.And then Rafaela,who is still young but getting old from leaning out the window so much,gets locked indoors because her husband is afraid Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful to look at.

　　Fafaela leans out the window and leans on her elbow and dreams her hair is like Rapunzel`s.On the corner there is music from the bar,and Rafaela wishes she could go there and dance before she gets old.

　　A long time passes and we forget she is up there watching until she says:Kids,If I give you a dollar wiill you go to the store and buy me something? She throws a crumpled dollar down and always asks for coconut or sometimes papaya juice, and we send it up to her in a paper shopping bag she lets down with clothesline.

        Rafaela who drinks and drinks coconut and papaya juice on Tuesdays and wishes there were sweeter drinks, not bitter like an empty room, but sweet sweet like the island, like the dance hall down the street where women much older than her throw green eyes easily like dice and open homes with keys. And always there is someone offering sweeter drinks, someone promising to keep them on a silver string.

　　每逢星期二，拉菲娜的丈夫回家就晚，因为这一晚他要玩多米诺骨牌。于是拉菲娜，年纪轻轻就因为倚在窗口太久太久而变老的她，被锁在了屋里，因为她的丈夫害怕拉菲娜会逃跑，因为她长得太美了，不能被人看到。

　　拉菲娜倚在窗口，倚着她的胳膊肘，梦想她的头发能像拉潘索公主的一样。酒吧的乐声从街角传来，拉菲娜希望能在变老以前去那里，去跳舞。

　　时间过去很久了，我们忘了她在那上面张望，直到她说：孩子们，我给你们一元钱，你们去店里帮我买点东西好吗？她扔下一张皱巴巴的票子来。她总是要可可汁，有时要木瓜汁。我们把它放进一个她用晾衣绳放下来的纸手袋里，给她递上去。

　　Mamacita is the big mama of the man across the street, third-floor front. Rachel says her name ought to be Mamasota, but I think that's mean.
      The man saved his money to bring her here. He saved and saved because she was alone with the baby boy in that country. He worked two jobs. He came home late and he left early. Every day.
      Then one day Mamacita and the baby boy arrived in a yellow taxi. The taxi door opened like a waiter's arm.
      Out stepped a tiny pink shoe, a foot soft as a rabbit's ear, then the thick ankle, a flutter of hips, fuchsia roses and green perfume. The man had to pull her, the taxicab driver had to push. Push, pull. Push, pull. Poof!
      All at once she bloomed. Huge, enormous, beautiful to look at, from the salmon-pink feather on the tip of her hat down to the little rosebuds of her toes. I couldn't take my eyes off her tiny shoes.
      Up, up, up the stairs she went with the baby boy in a blue blanket, the man carrying her suitcases, her lavender hatboxes, a dozen boxes of satin high heels. Then we didn't see her.
      Somebody said because she's too fat, somebody because of the three flights of stairs, but I believe she doesn't come out because she is afraid to speak English, and maybe this is so since she only knows eight words. She knows to say: He not here for when the landlord comes, No speak English if anybody else comes, and Holy smokes. I don't know where she learned this, but I heard her say it one time and it surprised me.
      My father says when he came to this country he ate hamandeggs for three months. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hamandeggs. That was the only word he knew. He doesn't eat hamandeggs anymore.
      Whatever her reasons, whether she is fat, or can't climb the stairs, or is afraid of English, she won't come down. She sits all day by the window and plays the Spanish radio show and sings all the homesick songs about her country in a voice that sounds like a seagull.
      Home. Home. Home is a house in a photograph, a pink house, pink as hollyhocks with lots of startled light. The man paints the walls of the apartment pink, but it's not the same you know. She still sighs for her pink house, and then I think she cries. I would.
      Sometimes the man gets disgusted. He starts screaming and you can hear it all the way down the street.
      Ay, she says, she is sad.
      Oh, he says. Not again.
      ¿Cuándo, cuándo, cuándo? she asks.
      ¡ Ay, caray! We are home. This is home. Here I am and here I stay. Speak English. Speak English. Christ!
      ¡ Ay! Mamacita, who does not belong, every once in a while lets out a cry, hysterical, high, as if he had torn the only skinny thread that kept her alive, the only road out to that country.
      And then to break her heart forever, the baby boy, who has begun to talk, starts to sing the Pepsi commercial he heard on TV.
      No speak English, she says to the child who is singing in the language that sounds like tin. No speak English, no speak English, and bubbles into tears. No, no, no, as if she can't believe her ears.

　　They are the only ones who understand me. I am the only one who understands them. Four skinny trees with skinny necks and pointy elbows like mine. Four who do not belong here but are here. Four raggedy excuses planted by the city. From our room we can hear them, but Nenny just sleeps and doesn't appreciate these things.

　　Their strength is secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep. Let one forget his reason for being, they'd all droop like tulips in a glass, each with their arms around the other. Keep, keep, keep, trees say when I sleep. They teach.

　　When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against so many bricks, then it is I look at trees. When there is nothing left to look at on this street. Four who grew despite concrete. Four who reach and do not forget to reach. Four whose only reason is to be and be.

　　他们是唯一懂得我的。我是唯一懂得它们的。四棵细瘦的树儿长着细细的脖颈和尖尖的肘骨，像我的一样。不属于这里但到了这里的四个。市政栽下充数的四棵残次品。从我的房间里我们可以听到它们的声音，可蕾妮只是睡觉，不能领略这些。

　　他们的力量是个秘密。他们在地下展开凶猛的根系。他们向上生长也向下生长，用它们须发样的脚趾攥紧泥土，用它们猛烈的牙齿噬咬天空，怒气从不懈怠。这就是它们坚持的方式。

　　假如有一棵忘记了他存在的理由，他们就全都会像玻璃瓶里的郁金香一样耷拉下来，手挽着手。坚持，坚持，坚持。树儿在我睡着的时候说。他们教会人。

　　当我太悲伤太瘦弱无法坚持再坚持的时候，当我如此渺小却要对抗这么多砖块的时候，我就会看着树儿。当街上没有别的东西可看的时候。不畏水泥仍在生长的四棵。伸展伸展从不忘记伸展的四棵。唯一的理由是存在存在的四棵。