“Dear Baby Witch” by Sara Finnerty | Rkvry Quarterly Literary Journal

We, the women in our family, have a problem with love, little girl.

我们，我们家里的女人，在爱情上有问题，小女孩。

Love inside of us is a hard black hole, baseless, bottomless, always threatening to suck the rest of our bodies through its borders and to consume us until we no longer exist.

我们内心的爱是一个坚硬的黑洞，毫无根据、无底，总是威胁着要把我们身体的其余部分吸过它的边界，吞噬我们，直到我们不再存在。

Love is something too heavy to hold.

爱情是一种太重的东西，难以握住。

Love isn’t something we think we deserve.

爱不是我们认为自己应得的东西。

We have been taught love means to clutch, to drag down into the dirt.

我们被教导爱意味着抓住，拖入泥土。

Love is something to bear.

爱是需要承受的事情。

But that is not what love is.

但这不是爱。

You will be born into a long line of witches, of complicated women capable of great anger and great joy.

你将出生在女巫世系中，她们都是复杂的女性，她们既能愤怒，又能快乐。

There are demons and curses in your story, little girl, but our family’s story, like all immigrant stories, is a fairy tale wrapped in war.

小女孩，你的故事里有恶魔和诅咒，但我们家的故事，就像所有移民的故事一样，是一个包裹着战争的童话。

My grandmother says when she was a child, “Someone put a curse on us, a witch, or they paid a witch, or it was a demon.” Why, I ask, would anyone want to do that do your family?

我祖母小时候说，“有人对我们下了咒语，一个女巫，或者他们付钱给一个女巫，或者它是一个恶魔。”我问，为什么有人愿意像你的家人那样做呢？

“I don’t know,” she says.

“我不知道，”她说。

“Maybe they were jealous of us.

“也许他们嫉妒我们。

Curses bring trouble to a family.

诅咒会给家庭带来麻烦。

Curses will make people drink, beat, steal, cheat, lie, rape, get pregnant, die.

咒语会让人喝酒、殴打、偷窃、欺骗、撒谎、强奸、怀孕、死亡。

This was a big curse, a bad curse, what they call an Original Curse.

这是一个很大的诅咒，一个糟糕的诅咒，他们称之为原始诅咒。

The worst kind.

最糟糕的一种。

Hard, very hard, almost impossible to lift.”

很难，非常难，几乎无法举起。”

I always loved listening to my grandmother’s stories of Italy and the war.

我一直喜欢听祖母讲意大利和战争的故事。

Others groaned at the beginning of a war story, but I leaned in.

其他人在战争故事的开头发出呻吟，但我却倾心投入。

Stories of the past are in our blood, little girl, in our genes.

小女孩，过去的故事就在我们的血液里，在我们的基因里。

Even if we never hear the words, they are unspoken in our bodies and they are our framework, our blueprint, whether we know it or not.

即使我们从未听过这些话，它们也没有在我们的身体中说出，它们是我们的框架，我们的蓝图，无论我们是否知道。

I want to tell you, always listen to your family stories.

我想告诉你，永远倾听你的家庭故事。

They are the story of who you are.

它们是关于你是谁的故事。

Our people are from a farming village on the Adriatic Coast.

我们的人民来自亚得里亚海海岸的一个农村。

My mother was born there and her mother, in a tiny concrete hut, and these two women raised me far away from the farm, as far away as they could get, across an ocean and in what they imagined to be the most magical city in the world, New York, where people come from all over the world to live, where the languages and smells of every country are in every particle of the air, a city of islands on the sea, a city without bombs, a city where the unimaginable was possible.

我的母亲和她的母亲出生在一个小小的水泥小屋里，这两个女人把我养育在远离农场的地方，尽可能远的地方，跨越大洋，来到他们想象中的世界上最神奇的城市，纽约，那里的人们来自世界各地，空气中的每一个粒子都充满了每个国家的语言和气味，一座海上岛屿的城市，一座没有炸弹的城市，一座无法想象的城市。

My grandmother Elena, your great-grandma, will sometimes tell a story of her childhood on an idyllic farm.

我的祖母埃琳娜，你的曾祖母，有时会讲述她在田园诗般的农场度过的童年故事。

She will smile and her eyes will go soft.

她会微笑，眼神会变得柔和。

They were five sisters, little girl, and they were bound tight, tight against the outside, tight against their brothers.

她们是五个姐妹，小女孩，她们被紧紧地绑着，紧紧地贴着外面，紧紧地贴着她们的兄弟。

They gathered eggs from the chickens, they buried meat in the ground, and they washed each other’s hair with vinegar.

他们从鸡身上捡蛋，把肉埋在地里，用醋互相洗头发。

She will tell us of her sweet father, Rocco, and how he loved her so.

她会告诉我们她可爱的父亲罗科，以及他是如何爱她。

When he died, the ghost of her father searched the earth for her and found his daughter in a Queens apartment.

当他去世后，她父亲的鬼魂在地球上寻找她，并在皇后区的一间公寓里找到了他的女儿。

He sat on her bed across the sea and placed his hand on her chest.

他隔海坐在她的床上，将手放在她的胸前。

“He was a saint,” she will tell me, but I will not yet know that this is only true because once a person dies, all their sins are forgiven.

“他是一位圣人，”她会告诉我，但我还不知道这只是真的，因为一旦一个人死了，他们所有的罪孽都会被宽恕。

The men drank, little girl.

男人们喝了酒，小女孩。

They drank and fought and waged little wars.

他们喝酒、打仗、发动小战争。

In America today, there would be labels like addiction or abuse, but in Italy then, they were only men.

在今天的美国，会有诸如成瘾或虐待之类的标签，但在当时的意大利，他们只是男人。

My grandmother will laugh and say, my father liked to drink.

我奶奶会笑着说，我爸爸喜欢喝酒。

He rode Nina, the horse, into town and got so drunk that the men in the tavern had to carry him out and drape him over Nina, and Nina was such a good horse, she knew the way home.

他骑着尼娜这匹马进城，喝得酩酊大醉，酒馆里的人不得不把他抬出去，披在尼娜身上，而尼娜是一匹好马，她知道回家的路。

When we heard Nina coming, we got out of bed, carried our father inside, we took off his shoes, we washed his feet, we did this with love.

当我们听到尼娜来的时候，我们就起床，把父亲抱进去，脱掉他的鞋子，给他洗脚，我们充满爱地这样做。

Years later, when I am a grown woman in my thirties, my grandmother’s younger sister will tell me another truth.

多年后，当我成为三十多岁的成年女性时，祖母的妹妹会告诉我另一个真相。

That Rocco came home drunk and beat their mother.

罗科喝醉了回家，殴打了他们的母亲。

That the brothers didn’t want to see.

这是兄弟们不愿意看到的。

The sisters were too small or too scared to intervene, but my grandmother was the only one who wasn’t afraid of him.

姐妹们太小或太害怕，无法干预，但我的祖母是唯一不怕他的人。

She would stand between her mother and father, fists clenched, body strong and scream for him to stop.

她会站在父母之间，握紧拳头，身体强壮，尖叫着让他停下来。

This is not your right, she screamed, leave mother alone.

这不是你的权利，她尖叫道，别打扰妈妈。

Sometimes he shoved her aside and continued to beat her mother, but sometimes Elena got him stop.

有时他把她推到一边，继续殴打她的母亲，但有时埃琳娜让他停下来。

Sometimes it worked.

有时它有效。

In our family, before your father, the men were loose cannons and helpless babies and the women had to learn to be witches.

在我们家，在你父亲之前，男人是松散的大炮和无助的婴儿，女人必须学会成为女巫。

Women learn to orchestrate the family and the town and the universe with their wands.

女人学会用她们的魔杖协调家庭、城镇和宇宙。

A woman must learn to freeze time, must learn to hold one million things together, hovered in the air, with only her will.

女人必须学会冻结时间，必须学会仅凭自己的意志将一百万个东西聚集在一起，悬浮在空中。

Her ability to keep a family and a farm together, in sync with the weather and seasons, in sync with the neighbors, her ability to bend and morph herself in order to keep a marriage together is her magic, and her magic is her love.

她有能力将家庭和农场维持在一起，与天气和季节同步，与邻居同步，她有能力弯曲和变形自己以维持婚姻，这就是她的魔力，而她的魔力就是她的爱。

I want you to know, little girl, that love was different then, all kinds—romantic and familial.

我想让你知道，小女孩，那时的爱是不同的，各种各样的——浪漫的和家庭的。

The definition of love is not something constant or permanent.

爱的定义不是恒定的或永久的。

My grandparents’ marriage was arranged.

我祖父母的婚姻是包办的。

Love changes with the air.

爱随着空气而改变。

Love changes based on space, on time, on geography, on what you think you can handle, or more exactly, on what is put in front of you.

爱会根据空间、时间、地理位置、你认为你能处理的事情而变化，或者更准确地说，根据摆在你面前的事情而变化。

My grandmother grew up on the front line of a world war, little girl.

我的祖母在世界大战的前线长大，小女孩。

Italy was divided into a north and south, two sides of the same country fighting each other.

意大利分为南北两方，同一国家的两方互相争斗。

The farm was on that line, the line that divided the country, that divided loyalties, the line on which every soldier was the enemy, my grandmother said, as nearly every soldier was a bad man.

农场就在那条线上，这条线分割了国家，分割了忠诚，在这条线上，每个士兵都是敌人，我祖母说，因为几乎每个士兵都是坏人。

Germans, Americans, Brits, and Canadians raped farm girls and made their fathers watch then drank all the wine.

德国人、美国人、英国人和加拿大人强奸农场女孩，让她们的父亲看着，然后喝掉所有的酒。

My grandmother and her sisters learned to scatter into the fields and hide when soldiers came so their father could say, “There are no girls here.” Sometimes this line worked and sometimes it didn’t.

我的祖母和她的姐妹们学会了在士兵到来时分散到田野里躲起来，这样她们的父亲就可以说：“这里没有女孩。”有时这条线有效，有时则无效。

I ask her, how could you move to a country that has men like that?

我问她，你怎么能搬到一个有这样男人的国家呢？

She shrugs, our men were no better.

她耸耸肩，我们的人也好不到哪儿去。

Men are the same everywhere.

男人在哪里都是一样的。

It is important you know this, little girl.

小女孩，你知道这一点很重要。

In our history, women were for raping, for shaming, for childbearing, for cooking, for beating, and keeping a house together.

在我们的历史上，女性是用来强奸、羞辱、生育、​​做饭、殴打和持家的。

Often women turned on each other to save themselves.

女性常常为了拯救自己而互相攻击。

Mothers and daughters warred while the men stayed out of it, quiet, off to the side, with a drink.

母亲和女儿们在打仗，而男人们却置身事外，安静地在一旁喝着酒。

The sons were coddled and the daughters were made to be strong, taught to cook and clean and care for the men, there was a different love for sons than for daughters.

儿子们被溺爱，女儿们被教导要坚强，被教导做饭、打扫卫生、照顾男人，对儿子的爱和对女儿的爱是不同的。

The magic of mothers clashes with those of her daughters.

母亲的魔力与女儿的魔力发生冲突。

I will not do this to you, little girl.

我不会这样对你，小女孩。

Nothing will ever be as important to me as valuing you for who you are, loving you in a way that is new to our family.

对我来说，没有什么比重视你的本来面目、以我们家庭全新的方式爱你更重要的了。

Love was standing by your husband’s side no matter what he did.

无论你的丈夫做什么，爱都会站在他身边。

There was no limit to what he could do, little girl.

他能做的事是没有限制的，小女孩。

He could do anything.

他可以做任何事。

The worst things you could imagine.

你能想象到的最糟糕的事情。

He could rape your daughter.

他可能会强奸你的女儿。

He could rape your best friend.

他可能会强奸你最好的朋友。

He could beat you almost to death.

他几乎可以把你打死。

But you must stand by him and I can’t pretend to know why, little girl.

但你必须支持他，我无法假装知道为什么，小女孩。

I can only guess.

我只能猜测。

Because there was no other way to survive?

因为没有其他办法生存？

Because there was a war?

因为有战争？

Because there was God?

因为有上帝？

Because there were neighbors watching?

因为有邻居在看？

Because if you didn’t have a husband, you had nothing?

因为如果你没有丈夫，你就什么都没有了？

No rights to your land or your children?

对你的土地或你的孩子没有权利吗？

Because there was nothing else?

因为没有别的事了？

Nowhere else to go?

没有别的地方可去吗？

No one else to be?

没有其他人可以吗？

Women used their magic to weave invisible veils, cloaks over their eyes that stuck to their skin and perhaps they were so good at their magic that they forgot the veils were ever there to begin with.

女人们用她们的魔法编织隐形的面纱，斗篷遮住她们的眼睛，粘在她们的皮肤上，也许她们太擅长魔法，以至于忘记了面纱一开始就在那里。

When my grandmother was young she often slept in Nina-the-horse’s stall.

我祖母年轻时经常睡在马尼娜的马厩里。

In the morning, Nina’s hair was braided into thousands of tiny braids.

早上，尼娜的头发被编成了数千条小辫子。

The next morning, the braids undone.

第二天一早，辫子就解开了。

It was the fairies, my grandmother will explain eighty years later to her adult granddaughter and she will still believe in the fairies, and you will believe in them too.

这是仙女，八十年后我的祖母会向她成年的孙女解释，她仍然相信仙女，你也会相信他们。

She kicked me, my grandmother said, when I was young.

我祖母说，当我还小的时候，她踢了我。

I almost died.

我差点就死了。

She was sorry.

她很抱歉。

For years.

多年来。

Really, for the rest of her life she was sorry.

真的，她后悔了一辈子。

She loved me, and I loved her.

她爱我，我也爱她。

When the bombs came, my grandmother couldn’t leave Nina behind.

当炸弹来袭时，我的祖母不能把尼娜抛在后面。

She took Nina across the fields, to each point of escape, across hills and valleys, to the homes of family and friends, she took her horse with her as they ran from the bombs that ripped the land apart, shredded houses, destroyed the vineyards and olive groves, killed the animals, scattered the people.

她带着尼娜穿过田野，到达每一个逃生点，越过山丘和山谷，到达家人和朋友的家中，当他们逃离炸弹时，她带着她的马，这些炸弹撕裂了大地，摧毁了房屋，摧毁了葡萄园和橄榄园，杀死了动物，驱散了人们。

Many ran to the mountains, to La Maiella, where there were caves.

许多人跑到山上，跑到拉马耶拉，那里有洞穴。

People lived for years in the caves, they made chimneys and stoves and rugs and beds.

人们在洞穴里生活了很多年，他们制作烟囱、炉灶、地毯和床。

The mountains were safe and strong.

山是安全而坚固的。

We could go to La Maiella, my grandmother pleaded with her mother.

我们可以去拉马耶拉，我的祖母恳求她的母亲。

We could bring Nina.

我们可以带尼娜来。

We could be safe inside the mountain.

我们在山里就可以安全了。

My grandmother will stop her story here.

我祖母的故事到这里就结束了。

She will make me think that it worked, that they lived in the mountains.

她会让我觉得这很有效，他们住在山里。

“We could not bring her to where we were going,” my grandmother will say.

“我们无法带她去我们要去的地方，”我的祖母会说。

She will not answer my question.

她不会回答我的问题。

Her face, which had been enchanted, animated, returns to its regular state, the resigned face I am used to, ready for whatever is next.

她那张原本充满魅力、充满活力的脸又恢复了正常状态，那张我已经习惯了的听天由命的脸，为接下来的一切做好了准备。

In Italy, and in America, we are taught if a woman has sex and is not married, she is a whore, she is a demon, she is a witch.

在意大利和美国，我们被教导如果一个女人有性行为但没有结婚，她就是妓女，她就是恶魔，她就是女巫。

We can say it is no longer this way but it is.

我们可以说现在不再是这样了，但事实确实如此。

Women are witches and demons and are only allowed sex from husbands to have babies but men can do what they want.

女人是女巫和恶魔，只允许与丈夫发生性行为来生孩子，但男人可以为所欲为。

A woman’s job is to stay.

女人的工作就是留下来。

A whore casts a spell on a man to make him wander.

妓女对一个男人施了咒语，让他流浪。

I will do all I can to make sure these lessons don’t sink into your core, little girl.

我会尽我所能，确保这些教训不会深入你的内心，小女孩。

But sometimes the air around us is so thick with these curses that we can’t help but breathe them in.

但有时我们周围的空气中充满了这些咒语，以至于我们情不自禁地吸入它们。

When explaining the Original Curse on our family, Grandma Elena says that everyone knows an original curse lasts for three generations: my grandmother’s, my mother’s and mine.

在解释我们家的原始诅咒时，埃琳娜奶奶说，每个人都知道原始诅咒会持续三代人：我祖母的、我母亲的和我的。

You will not have the original curse in you, little girl.

小女孩，你身上不会有原来的诅咒。

But there have been other curses, curses that have landed on me.

但还有其他的诅咒降临在我身上。

I haven’t outrun my demons and curses, and I am afraid you will get some of them too.

我还没有摆脱我的恶魔和诅咒，我担心你也会受到其中的一些影响。

But they are diluted.

但它们被稀释了。

I diluted them.

我稀释了它们。

I tried to get rid of the demons and curses before you came to be but I couldn’t.

在你出现之前，我试图摆脱恶魔和诅咒，但我做不到。

I can only let time pass and not let the curses take hold of me.

我只能让时间流逝，不让诅咒抓住我。

I can fight them.

我可以和他们战斗。

I can teach you to fight them.

我可以教你如何对抗他们。

There’s a new branch of science these days called epigenetics.

如今有一个新的科学分支，称为表观遗传学。

It is basically the law of the Original Curse.

基本上就是本源咒的法则。

If your grandparents were cursed, it will get passed down to you.

如果你的祖父母被诅咒了，它也会遗传给你。

The Holocaust, the Cultural Revolution, Genocide, Rape, War, Drug abuse, these things are manifested as methyl tags on our DNA and we pass the trauma to our children and our grandchildren, so you will get my traumas and my mother’s but you will also inherit all of my fight, all of my searching for a peaceful love.

大屠杀、文化大革命、种族灭绝、强奸、战争、吸毒，这些东西都以甲基标签的形式出现在我们的DNA上，我们将这些创伤传递给我们的子孙，所以你会得到我和我母亲的创伤，但你也会继承我所有的斗争，所有我对和平爱情的追寻。

When my grandmother left for America with her children, her father got on his hands and knees and beat the ground with his fists and cursed America for taking his daughter and grandchildren.

当我的祖母带着孩子们前往美国时，她的父亲双手双膝跪地，用拳头敲打地面，咒骂美国带走了他的女儿和孙子。

He wailed and beat the ground bloody.

他嚎啕大哭，把地面打得血肉模糊。

For my grandmother, there is no greater love than this.

对于奶奶来说，没有比这更大的爱了。

I was born into my grandmother’s house, among labyrinths of gardens, vegetables vining up the fences and fruit trees blooming through concrete.

我出生在祖母的房子里，那里有迷宫般的花园，蔬菜爬满了栅栏，果树在混凝土中开花。

In late summer we made and jarred tomato sauce for the year, in fall, salad dressing and wine.

夏末，我们制作并罐装了当年的番茄酱，秋天，我们制作了沙拉酱和葡萄酒。

On Sunday mornings we pressed fresh pasta in the basement.

周日早上，我们在地下室压制新鲜的意大利面。

I pushed my finger into tiny balls of dough to make gnocchi.

我把手指伸进小面团里做面疙瘩。

We made each piece of pasta, one by one.

我们一块一块地制作了每块意大利面。

My grandmother says there was no greater love in her life than her love for her children and grandchildren.

我的祖母说，她一生中没有比她对子孙的爱更伟大的爱了。

All her demons and the curse upon her family followed her across the ocean.

她所有的恶魔和对她家人的诅咒都跟着她漂洋过海。

There was no love between her and my grandfather, or between my mother and father.

她和我的祖父之间，或者我的母亲和父亲之间，都没有爱。

Our house erupted in violence nearly every day, the roar of their screaming and the neglect of our parents brought police and child services to our house.

我们的房子几乎每天都会爆发暴力事件，他们的尖叫声和我们父母的忽视让警察和儿童服务机构来到我们家。

Magical Realism represents a leap over a chasm, a reality impossible to bear.

魔幻现实主义代表着跨越鸿沟的跨越，一种无法承受的现实。

This leap coveys more truth than reality ever could.

这一飞跃传达了比现实更多的真相。

When I was young, I thought I could overthrow my past, I could leave, I could move, I could change, I could be my greatest self.

年轻的时候，我以为我可以推翻自己的过去，我可以离开，我可以移动，我可以改变，我可以成为最伟大的自己。

But now that you are deep within me, and now that you have slowed every part of me down, I can see that all I can hope for myself and for you are subtle shifts, glacial growth, and bursts of energy and light in unexpected places because we cannot escape our past; there is no way to cleave us of our ancestors, and anyway, even if we could, I wouldn’t want to.

但现在你已经深入我的内心，你已经放慢了我的每一个部分，我可以看到，我对自己和你所能希望的只是微妙的转变、冰川般的成长，以及在意想不到的地方爆发出的能量和光明，因为我们无法逃避我们的过去；没有办法将我们与我们的祖先分开，无论如何，即使我们可以，我也不想这样做。

I’d want all of it, all the curses, all the demons, all the love, however fraught, however damaged.

我想要这一切，所有的诅咒，所有的恶魔，所有的爱，无论多么令人忧虑，多么受损。

The demons and the fairies and the witches and the dead followed my mother across an ocean and fifty years later they followed me across a country, from New York to California.

恶魔、仙女、女巫和死者跟随我母亲漂洋过海，五十年后，他们跟随我穿越整个国家，从纽约到加利福尼亚。

You can live on a different planet, little girl but you will still be cursed.

小女孩，你可以生活在不同的星球上，但你仍然会受到诅咒。

Sometimes we are under water.

有时我们会在水下。

Sometimes we breathe the water in and we drown.

有时我们吸入水就会被淹死。

We carry the geography of where we are from inside our bodies.

我们的身体里携带着我们所在位置的地理信息。

Immigration stories are about land, little girl, about geography.

移民故事是关于土地的，小女孩，关于地理的。

Not just time.

不仅仅是时间。

A person is the land on which they were born and raised.

一个人就是他出生和成长的土地。

My grandmother is long lines of perfectly parallel vineyards that stretch to infinity.

我的祖母是一排排完美平行的葡萄园，一直延伸到无限远。

She is gnarled olive groves, bombed farmhouses, chickens and dirt; she is a valley, a mountain, the Adriatic Sea.

她是粗糙的橄榄园、被炸毁的农舍、鸡和泥土；她是一座山谷，一座山，是亚得里亚海。

My mother is these things too but she is also concrete sidewalks, she is the bridges and skyscrapers her father helped to build.

我的母亲也是这些东西，但她也是混凝土人行道，她是她父亲帮助建造的桥梁和摩天大楼。

She is a cacophony of cars, languages and smells.

她是汽车、语言和气味的刺耳声音。

She is the East River.

她就是东江。

She is a city of islands.

她是一座岛屿之城。

And so am I.

我也是。

You will be these things too, little girl, you will be Italy and New York City but you will be born in Los Angeles, another city on the sea, and like Italy, another city of horses, cypress trees, oleander, long warm days and long cool nights.

你也会成为这些东西，小女孩，你将是意大利和纽约，但你将出生在洛杉矶，另一个海上城市，就像意大利一样，另一个充满马匹、柏树、夹竹桃、漫长温暖的白天和漫长凉爽的夜晚的城市。

You will be windstorms and palm fronds scattered in the streets.

你将成为暴风雨和散落在街道上的棕榈叶。

You will be a glittering and infinite city encased in mountains, you will be the dark silhouettes of owls in the wilderness above the city, you will be wild fires, ashes falling thick and flames curling into the sky.

你将是群山环抱中一座闪闪发光的无限之城，你将是城市上空旷野中猫头鹰的黑色剪影，你将是野火，浓重的灰烬飘落，火焰袅袅升天。

You will be hot pink bougainvillea vines and raining purple jacarandas.

你会看到粉红色的九重葛藤蔓和紫色的蓝花楹雨。

You will be packs of coyotes low to the ground, quiet and running in the night.

你们将成为一群低伏在地面上的土狼，安静地在夜色中奔跑。

These places are in your blood.

这些地方都在你的血液里。

Someday, you might find yourself standing at a counter in Italy, drinking an espresso in the brisk morning air, biting into a sweet cream-filled pastry.

有一天，你可能会发现自己站在意大利的柜台前，在清晨清新的空气中喝着浓缩咖啡，咬着甜甜的奶油糕点。

A motorino will pass and its exhaust will curl through the cool air, through the dusty and ancient orange trees that line the street, and you will smell the bitter coffee, the pastry, the exhaust, the oranges, and you will feel like you are home again.

一辆摩托罗拉驶过，它的尾气在凉爽的空气中盘旋，穿过街道两旁布满灰尘的古老橘子树，你会闻到苦咖啡、糕点、废气、橘子的味道，你会感觉自己又回到了家。

I crossed this country for myself, to save myself, and I stayed for you, and for other generations.

我为了自己、为了拯救自己穿越了这个国家，为了你们，也为了子孙后代，我留下来了。

I wanted to change our fate.

我想改变我们的命运。

I wanted us to breathe easier, have more access to peace.

我希望我们呼吸更顺畅，获得更多的平静。

My grandfather used to dance with me when I was a little girl; he used to twirl me around the dance floor at the Italian social club until I was exhausted.

当我还是个小女孩的时候，我的祖父经常和我一起跳舞；他常常在意大利社交俱乐部的舞池里绕着我旋转，直到我筋疲力尽。

He died just a few months ago.

他几个月前去世了。

He knew you existed but he didn’t know you were a girl.

他知道你的存在，但他不知道你是个女孩。

He didn’t know your name.

他不知道你的名字。

He will never see your face.

他永远不会看到你的脸。

It seems impossible that you weren’t with me my whole life, right next to me, knowing everything I’ve known.

你似乎不可能一生都在我身边，就在我身边，知道我所知道的一切。

I don’t know how to let time come and go like that.

我不知道如何让时间就这样来来去去。

Let realities exist in different space times concurrently.

让现实同时存在于不同的时空。

Except I don’t have a choice.

除非我别无选择。

They must.

他们必须。

My grandparents are still in Italy.

我的祖父母仍在意大利。

They are in New York.

他们在纽约。

They are being captured and held as prisoners of war.

他们被俘虏并作为战俘关押。

They are being hunted by soldiers through the fields that are, that are supposed to be, their homes.

士兵们在原本应该是他们家园的田野里追捕他们。

They are working all day and all night inside the factories of New York City or outside making the buildings, highways and bridges that will become a city.

他们日以继夜地在纽约市的工厂内或室外工作，建造将成为一座城市的建筑物、高速公路和桥梁。

They are fighting to break free, to change, and they are failing.

他们正在努力挣脱束缚、努力改变，但他们失败了。

Maybe when we move from one place to another, we become whatever wide-open space we crossed to get here: we are the oceans we have sailed across, the highways that traverse a country, the desert between cities.

也许当我们从一个地方搬到另一个地方时，我们就变成了我们穿过的广阔空间：我们是我们航行过的海洋，穿越一个国家的高速公路，城市之间的沙漠。

If we go back, we will not be the same.

如果我们回去，我们将不再一样。

We will be half-here and half-there, half-nowhere and half empty air, bigger than we were before, so big we may float away.

我们将一半在这里，一半在那里，一半不存在，一半空荡荡的空气，比以前更大，大到我们可能会飘走。

When I was a little girl, I stood between my grandparents the way my grandmother stood between her parents, so they wouldn’t kill each other.

当我还是个小女孩的时候，我站在祖父母之间，就像我的祖母站在她父母之间一样，这样他们就不会互相残杀。

You will never have to do this little girl.

你永远不必做这个小女孩。

I have something no other woman in my family has ever had.

我拥有我家里其他女人所没有的东西。

I fell in love.

我恋爱了。

I am, so far, the luckiest woman in this long line of women.

到目前为止，我是这一长串女性中最幸运的女性。

I have chosen a father for you that isn’t like the men I’ve known.

我为你选择了一位与我所认识的父亲不同的父亲。

Your father is gentle and kind.

你的父亲温柔又善良。

He believes in fairies and guardian angels and your father would do anything for me, anything for you.

他相信仙女和守护天使，你的父亲会为我、为你做任何事。

Your father went hunting with men, little girl, and he couldn’t shoot the birds.

小女孩，你父亲和男人一起去打猎，但他不能射鸟。

The hardest thing I have ever done, so far, is learn to love him, your father, and to learn to accept his love for me.

到目前为止，我做过的最困难的事情就是学会爱他，你的父亲，并学会接受他对我的爱。

But I did it, and now I am ready for what I am told will be harder than anything yet: raising you, loving you, and letting you go.

但我做到了，现在我已经准备好接受比任何事情都更困难的事情：抚养你，爱你，然后放手。

I dreamed your father a few days before I met him on a warm summer night at the beer garden in Queens.

在一个温暖的夏夜，在皇后区的啤酒花园遇见你父亲的几天前，我梦见了他。

It was after two in the morning, our feet were dusted in dirt.

凌晨两点多了，我们的脚上沾满了泥土。

He had braces and a baseball cap and a face from my dreams.

他戴着牙套，戴着棒球帽，还有一张我梦中的脸。

I’d had plenty of dreams that had come true, but magic had been a letdown, a disappointment.

我有很多梦想都实现了，但魔法却让我失望、失望。

Dreams came true but amounted to nothing.

梦想实现了，但一无所获。

There were many times I thought we couldn’t last.

有很多次我以为我们无法长久。

But we fought for each other, we fought for our marriage, and for a long time now, it has been easy.

但我们为彼此而奋斗，为我们的婚姻而奋斗，很长一段时间以来，这一切都很容易。

I battled to discard the memories of what men will do, how they will ruin your body and spirit.

我努力抛弃关于男人会做什么、他们会如何毁掉你的身体和精神的记忆。

My war was learning to trust.

我的战争就是学会信任。

My dropped bombs were ones of betrayal.

我投下的炸弹是背叛的炸弹。

I didn’t think I could love, or trust, but I do.

我不认为我可以爱或信任，但我可以。

There is magic.

有魔法。

It exists.

它存在。

We were all pregnant, little girl, my mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother, and on and on.

我们都怀孕了，小女孩，我的母亲，我的祖母，我的曾祖母，等等。

We all felt our daughters move inside us.

我们都感觉到我们的女儿在我们体内移动。

We felt her heels move across our stomachs and we felt her hiccups and we felt infinity inside us.

我们感觉到她的脚跟在我们的肚子上移动，我们感觉到她的打嗝，我们感到我们内心的无限。

The sense of possibility that maybe this time, things can be different.

也许这一次，事情可能会有所不同。

We can choose the way we look at our lives, at our pasts, we can look both ways.

我们可以选择如何看待我们的生活、我们的过去，我们可以从两个方面看待。

We can say—fairies braided the horses’ hair while bombs dropped from the sky.

我们可以说——当炸弹从天而降时，仙女们把马的头发编成辫子。

Sara Finnerty has essays and stories in Lithub, Black Warrior Review, Brevity, Longreads, Joyland, The Nervous Breakdown, Fanzine, The Weeklings, Dame, and others.

萨拉·芬纳蒂 (Sara Finnerty) 在 Lithub、《Black Warrior Review》、《Brevity》、《Longreads》、《Joyland》、《The Nervous Breakdown》、《Fanzine》、《The Weeklings》、《Dame》等杂志上发表文章和故事。

She is the Nonfiction Editor at Entropy magazine, co-curator of The Griffith Park Storytelling Series and The Women’s Center for Creative Work Reading Series.

她是《熵》杂志的非小说类编辑、格里菲斯公园讲故事系列和妇女创意作品阅读中心系列的联合策展人。

Sara is originally from Queens, NY and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

萨拉来自纽约皇后区，与丈夫和女儿住在洛杉矶。

Find her at www.sarafinnerty.com .

请访问 www.sarafinnerty.com 找到她。

Very powerful story.

非常有力的故事。

Very blessed your in our family Sara finnerty.

非常幸运你在我们的家庭萨拉·芬纳蒂。