Heavy Cream

The week after we ransacked my grandmother’s house for bounty, we drove back to Maple Falls to attend as guests my grandmother’s memorial at the Northwest Hills Community Church.

在我们为了赏金而洗劫祖母的房子一周后，我们开车回到枫叶瀑布，作为客人参加在西北山社区教堂举行的祖母纪念活动。

One thing my mother never shied from was a long-haul drive.

我母亲从不回避的一件事就是长途驾驶。

We hurtled up Route 542, shadowed by Mount Baker.

我们沿着 542 号公路疾驰而上，贝克山的阴影笼罩着我们。

The mountain was a dormant volcano that had been a glacier, and I felt my mother becoming more agitated as she moved in the direction of the hot flow of home.

这座山是一座休眠火山，曾经是一座冰川，当我走向家的热流方向时，我感觉到母亲变得更加焦躁。

She turned up the dial for a song we liked, and that I felt was a pep talk for both of us Sloopies.

她调出了一首我们喜欢的歌曲，我觉得这对我们俩来说都是一次鼓舞士气的谈话。

Hang on, Sloopy, Sloopy, hang on!

坚持住，斯洛比，斯洛比，坚持住！

She was a lawless driver, always, calm as a clam in gridlock, backing through an intersection to avoid circling the block.

她是一个无法无天的司机，总是在交通堵塞时冷静得像蛤蜊一样，在十字路口倒车以避免绕过街区。

She would run red lights, not slowing down on a yellow, saying it “felt like a green.” Chances were: no traffic cop, just a consortium of resentful fellow citizens, blaring their horns.

她会闯红灯，在黄灯时不会减速，她说“感觉就像是绿灯”。可能的情况是：没有交通警察，只有一群充满怨恨的公民，按着喇叭。

These small transgressions added up to a sense of ourselves as special, exempt from the rules—but also disliked, distrusted, untrustworthy, apart.

这些小小的越轨行为加起来让我们感觉自己很特别，不受规则约束，但同时也让人不喜欢、不被信任、不值得信任、与众不同。

Arriving at the church, we were directed to the worship hall.

到达教堂后，我们被引导到礼拜堂。

We slipped past a few people in navy suits, then faltered, uncertain where to sit.

我们从几个穿着海军服的人身边溜过去，然后犹豫不决，不知道该坐在哪里。

We had worn thrift-shop black, subtly faded over time to slate.

我们穿的是从旧货店买的黑色衣服，随着时间的推移，颜色渐渐褪色，变成了石板色。

An elderly woman in a proper ink-black dress and modest, sensible heels motioned us over and led us down the aisle, inviting us to sit in the pair of waiting chairs just opposite the pulpit.

一位穿着得体的墨黑色连衣裙、脚踩端庄实用的高跟鞋的老妇人示意我们过去，领着我们走过过道，邀请我们坐在讲坛对面的一对等候椅上。

At the front of the church, the projector hummed.

教堂前面的投影仪嗡嗡作响。

And there, fussing with the remote as it cycled through the same four or five images of my grandmother, smiling and waving, with our same pale eyes, holding a pie, was my aunt Nell.

在那里，我的内尔阿姨在遥控器上不停地循环播放着四五张我祖母的照片，她微笑着挥手，有着我们同样苍白的眼睛，手里拿着一个馅饼。

She sniffed as she made her way back to her seat from behind the lectern.

当她从讲台后面回到座位时，她吸了吸鼻子。

I snuck glances but managed to avoid her eyes.

我偷偷看了一眼，但还是设法避开了她的目光。

I felt that if I met them, I might turn to stone or worse.

我觉得如果我遇到他们，我可能会变成石头，甚至更糟。

“Of course she’s making a show,” my mother whispered.

“她当然是在表演，”我母亲低声说道。

“As if she’s such a sensitive flower.”

“好像她是一朵敏感的花。”

My mother and I did not cry.

我和妈妈没有哭。

It would have been unseemly to feign sadness.

假装悲伤是不合时宜的。

I tried to imagine what grief would feel like, if I could feel it.

我试着想象如果我能感受到悲伤会是什么样的感觉。

Perhaps like one’s heart crisply split in two, spilling its squelched juices, like the baobab fruit broken open by the stylish monkey in The Lion King , my favorite vintage cartoon.

也许就像一个人的心被脆脆地分成两半，溢出其被压制的汁液，就像我最喜欢的老式动画片《狮子王》中时尚的猴子打破的猴面包树果实。

My grandmother had been devoutly Christian, if not always practicing in the usual ways.

我的祖母一直是虔诚的基督教徒，尽管并不总是以通常的方式实行。

Her sleepy house was dusty and silent, peppered with doves and angels in a gray tinged orange my mother called terra-cotta.

她昏昏欲睡的房子布满灰尘，寂静无声，在我母亲称之为赤土色的灰色橙色房子里，布满了鸽子和天使。

They looked to me like they should be outside, activated to a rich color by rain, rather than turning stale gray on her shelf.

在我看来，它们应该放在外面，被雨水激活，呈现出丰富的色彩，而不是放在架子上变成陈旧的灰色。

I hadn’t set eyes on them, or her statuary, since my mother had severed contact after the dispute over our house— the house my mother had believed rightfully ours.

我没有看过它们，也没有看过她的雕像，因为我母亲在我们的房子发生争执后就断绝了联系——我母亲认为这所房子理应属于我们。

From what I could gather, my mother, having seized upon the idea of home ownership, had scrolled the classifieds for a few weeks and landed on a suitable two bedroom with a down payment she was just short of, the way that with her it was always just .

据我所知，我的母亲抓住了买房的想法，滚动了几个星期的分类广告，终于找到了一间合适的两居室，首付还不够，对她来说，这总是公平的。

My grandmother had said something like, “I want to help you buy it,” which my mother had interpreted to mean she was buying it for her and proceeded on this assumption.

我祖母说过类似的话，“我想帮你买它”，我母亲将其解释为她正在为她买它，并继续按照这个假设进行。

Once the illusion was punctured, she’d called off the moving van—swallowing the late cancellation fee that the customer-service line refused to waive or reduce, no matter how she pleaded about an unforeseeable emergency—and then did not speak to her mother for five years.

一旦幻想被戳破，她就取消了搬家车——吞下了迟到的取消费用，无论她如何辩解不可预见的紧急情况，客户服务热线都拒绝免除或减少——然后五年没有和母亲说话。

The rift between my mother and her sister, Nell, was something more nebulous, harder to trace.

我母亲和她姐姐内尔之间的裂痕更加模糊，更难以追踪。

I was primed, on the lookout for the inevitable confrontation between my mother and Nell, an artist who lived in New York.

我已经做好了准备，留意着我的母亲和住在纽约的艺术家内尔之间不可避免的对抗。

The sense I had of her was that she was smart, quirky, quiet.

我对她的感觉是她聪明、古怪、安静。

Edgy and cerebral.

急躁且理智。

Otherwise occupied.

否则被占用。

I’d met her only a handful of times.

我只见过她几次。

There had been a period of reconciliation, a fragile truce between the two sisters, in my kindergarten year.

在我上幼儿园的那一年，两姐妹之间曾有过一段和解的时期，一段脆弱的休战期。

Nell had not fared any better with their mother than my own mother had, a fact that alone had been enough to reunite the sisters periodically, bound by a shared experience—and then, confronted by how their experience had differed, finish in a spectacular falling-out.

内尔与她们的母亲相处得并不比我自己的母亲好，仅凭这一点就足以使姐妹俩定期团聚，因共同的经历而紧密相连——然后，面对她们的不同经历，最终以一场壮观的争吵告终。

I always felt that my aunt liked the idea of children but wouldn’t have known what to do with me for long.

我总觉得姨妈喜欢孩子，但长期不知道该拿我做什么。

“It wasn’t entirely Nell’s fault,” my mother acknowledged.

“这并不完全是内尔的错，”我母亲承认。

She said that their mother set them at odds as children.

她说，小时候，他们的母亲就让他们不和。

She was intensely jealous.

她嫉妒极了。

“She felt we did not love her enough for her to allow us to love each other.

“她觉得我们不够爱她，以至于她不允许我们彼此相爱。

We had , for a time, anyway, in spite of her.

无论如何，我们曾经有过一段时间，尽管她不顾一切。

I was my sister’s protector.”

我是我姐姐的保护者。”

Once, apparently, my aunt had tried to shove my infant mother off their mother’s lap.

显然，有一次，我的姨妈试图把我尚在襁褓中的母亲从她们母亲的腿上推开。

Supposedly, my grandmother had hankered for a son, having ingested the belief that boys were naturally devoted to their mothers.

据说，我的祖母一直渴望有一个儿子，因为她相信男孩天生就会忠于母亲。

She was wearily certain that her daughters were uninterested in her.

她疲倦地确信她的女儿们对她不感兴趣。

“She’d say to us, ‘You girls would cry anytime I held you.

“她会对我们说，‘只要我抱着你们，你们这些女孩就会哭。

You didn’t like me.’”

你不喜欢我。’”

I wished she had held her tongue.

我希望她闭嘴。

Maybe things would have been different.

也许事情会有所不同。

All this patter, and now she was gray dust.

所有这些喋喋不休，现在她变成了灰色的灰尘。

In my early memories, my grandfather had smelled like carpet cleaner.

在我早期的记忆中，祖父闻起来像地毯清洁剂。

If I asked, “What about Grandpa?” my mother would shudder.

如果我问：“爷爷呢？”我妈妈会颤抖的。

“It’s so weird to hear you call him that, Jellybean.

“听到你这么称呼他真是太奇怪了，Jellybean。

He just sort of dissociated.

他只是有点脱离了。

Grandma was the only one present in the household.”

家里只有奶奶一人。”

My mother felt that anyone—namely her best friend from college, Bonnie Vowell, who had landed in Connecticut, and her sister, Nell—who moved to New York had a certain presumption.

我母亲认为，任何人——即她在大学时最好的朋友邦妮·沃威尔（Bonnie Vowell）来到康涅狄格州，以及她搬到纽约的妹妹内尔——都有一定的假设。

It was where you went if you fancied yourself too fabulous to live

如果你觉得自己太棒了而无法生活，那么这里就是你去的地方

anyplace else.

其他任何地方。

If you felt you’d be able to make a mark in a markworn place.

如果您觉得自己能够在有痕迹的地方做个记号。

If you needed not just a Fifth Avenue at your disposal but a Broadway to boot.

如果您不仅需要第五大道，还需要百老汇。

“Nell always felt superior because she had this thing she did”— my mother meant art—“like she was God’s gift to creation, like she had a direct channel to something more meaningful than my own daily existence, like she was plugged into something real, while I was just walking around, dumb and unenlightened.”

“内尔总是觉得自己很优越，因为她拥有她所拥有的东西”——我母亲指的是艺术——“就像她是上帝赐予创造的礼物，就像她有一个直接的渠道通向比我自己的日常生活更有意义的东西，就像她接入了一些真实的东西，而我只是四处走动，愚蠢而无知。”

I felt burned, angry on my young mother’s behalf.

我为年轻的母亲感到愤怒和愤怒。

“Saint Nell,” I said, mockingly making the sign of the cross.

“圣内尔，”我说道，并嘲讽地画了十字。

“Believe me,” my mother said.

“相信我，”妈妈说。

“It was really stifling to grow up around that.”

“在这样的环境下长大真的很令人窒息。”

She said their mother had bought Nell’s posturing.

她说他们的母亲已经接受了内尔的姿态。

“That’s something you should know about people, Jelly.

“这是你应该了解的关于人的事情，果冻。

They believe what they’re told.

他们相信别人告诉他们的。

If you tell people what you do is important, they believe it.”

如果你告诉人们你所做的事情很重要，他们就会相信。”

Though my mother meant it pejoratively, I logged this idea—that others’ perception of a person could be established so simply.

尽管我母亲的意思是贬义的，但我记录了这个想法——别人对一个人的看法可以如此简单地建立起来。

And I used it, too.

我也用过它。

At school, I told the other kids that we were from a fine old family out east.

在学校里，我告诉其他孩子，我们来自东部一个古老的好家庭。

I made hazy reference to my esteemed aunt Nell.

我含糊地提到了我尊敬的内尔阿姨。

I hinted that we’d been shipping heirs, that my mother had refused her inheritance out of moral objection.

我暗示我们一直在运送继承人，而我母亲出于道德上的反对而拒绝继承她的遗产。

And they swallowed it whole.

他们把它整个吞了下去。

Spinning my yarns, fleecing my classmates, gave me no pause.

我不停地编造故事，欺骗同学。

I was the Lady Eve, a character of reinvention from another of my grandmother’s VHSes.

我是夏娃女士，是根据我祖母的另一部录像带重新塑造的角色。

I was Miley Cyrus peeling off her Hannah Montana wig and straddling a wrecking ball.

我是麦莉·赛勒斯，摘下汉娜·蒙塔娜的假发，跨坐在一个破碎球上。

It was fraudulent, but it was fun.

这是欺诈性的，但很有趣。

“Nell clung to art,” my mother said, “because it helped her avoid seeing what was right in front of her.

“内尔坚持艺术，”我母亲说，“因为它帮助她避免看到眼前的事物。

Me, I preferred to keep my eyes open.

我，我更喜欢睁大眼睛。

There’re repercussions for that.

这是有影响的。

But at least I knew what was real.”

但至少我知道什么是真实的。”

I thought I could see what had happened between them.

我想我能看到他们之间发生了什么。

Life opened like a zipper, separating them painfully at first, notch by notch, then faster, wider, until the garment lay split in two.

生活像拉链一样打开，一开始痛苦地把他们分开，一点一点地分开，然后更快、更宽，直到衣服分成两半。

Nell chose Art.

内尔选择了艺术。

What had my mother chosen?

我妈妈选择了什么？

Freedom?

自由？

Motherhood?

母性？

Or had she just drifted along?

或者她只是随波逐流？

I could tell my mother was uneasy about having left the funeral arrangements to her sister by the way she vented over Nell’s decisions, errors of judgment she wanted it known she herself would never have made.

从母亲对内尔的决定发泄的方式来看，我可以看出她对将葬礼安排留给她姐姐感到不安，她希望人们知道她自己永远不会犯这样的判断错误。

“Those corpse-green ranunculus wouldn’t have been my doing, but then Nell has always had a distinctive sensibility.” She cut her eyes toward me.

“那些死绿色的毛茛花不会是我做的，但内尔总是有一种独特的情感。”她把目光转向我。

“Might have been the quaaludes in the eighties.”

“可能是八十年代的安眠药。”

I watched Nell closely, looking for any trace of those quaaludes at work.

我仔细观察内尔，寻找工作中任何安眠药的痕迹。

With my mother, sometimes there was a seed of truth.

和我母亲在一起，有时会有一颗真理的种子。

Nell was wearing black Converse sneakers.

内尔穿着黑色匡威运动鞋。

“They look like clown shoes,” my mother whispered.

“它们看起来像小丑鞋，”我母亲低声说道。

“With those rubber tips.

“有了那些橡胶头。

Clown shoes to her mother’s memorial.”

献给她母亲的纪念的小丑鞋。”

I was eleven but I looked, say, nine.

我十一岁，但我看起来像是九岁。

Which is to say I looked like someone people felt they needed to take care of.

也就是说，我看起来就像是人们认为需要照顾的人。

We found this useful.

我们发现这很有用。

I was small and I could get under things, gathering coins from beneath a chewing-gum rack.

我很小，可以钻到东西下面，从口香糖架下面收集硬币。

I could order off the kids’ menu.

我可以点儿童菜单上的菜。

I had a hand in this.

我参与了这件事。

My mother liked it when I was babyish, soft and dependent, infantile.

当我还是个幼稚的、软弱的、依赖的、婴儿般的时候，我母亲就喜欢它。

On most topics and especially that of my aunt, my mother instituted our opinions.

对于大多数话题，尤其是关于我姨妈的话题，我母亲提出了我们的意见。

I wouldn’t have known how to begin to form one of my own.

我不知道如何开始组建自己的一支。

Still, I’d worried.

尽管如此，我还是很担心。

What if Nell, after all these years, was alluring?

这么多年过去了，如果内尔仍然迷人怎么办？

Someone with the same disregard for convention as my mother, but one who’d channeled that subversiveness into something successful?

一个和我母亲一样无视传统的人，但却将这种颠覆性转化为成功的东西？

As with my mother, I had no sense whatsoever what I might expect of her.

和我母亲一样，我完全不知道我对她有什么期望。

Afterward, there was coffee out of paper cups in the meeting hall.

随后，会议厅里摆满了纸杯咖啡。

It was customary, we were told, for the family to stand at the back of the church and greet the attendees, what number there were.

我们被告知，按照惯例，家人会站在教堂后面，向与会者打招呼，询问有多少人。

The projector blinked off.

投影仪闪烁关闭。

My aunt greeted me politely, from a distance.

阿姨远远地有礼貌地跟我打招呼。

The thing about the kind of hair we all had was that even with your hair pulled back you could always see it.

我们都有这样的头发，即使你把头发向后梳，你也总是能看到它。

You couldn’t forget yourself.

你无法忘记自己。

I gave my aunt a small smile to indicate I did not carry my mother’s old grievances.

我对姑妈微微一笑，表示我没有背负母亲的旧怨。

But I wasn’t certain she noticed.

但我不确定她注意到了。

Nell didn’t seem to give much thought to people, not even to herself, out of devotion to her creative pursuit.

出于对创造性追求的奉献，内尔似乎并没有过多考虑别人，甚至没有考虑自己。

She never used my name.

她从来没有用过我的名字。

Sometimes, I wondered if she knew it.

有时我想知道她是否知道这一点。

My mother had no choice but to acknowledge her sister.

母亲没办法，只好承认了姐姐。

They inched toward each other, landing at each other’s side.

他们慢慢靠近，落在彼此身边。

They had both tried to pin back their frizzy hair, neither successfully.

他们都曾试图把卷曲的头发别在脑后，但都没有成功。

“Nice flowers,” she said.

“好花，”她说。

“You think I would order those cabbagey ranunculus?” Nell said.

“你认为我会点那些卷心菜毛茛吗？”内尔说。

Her lips were thin, where mine and my mother’s were full.

她的嘴唇很薄，而我和我母亲的嘴唇却很饱满。

As if she’d tasted something she didn’t like.

就好像她尝到了一些她不喜欢的东西一样。

“They smell like feet.”

“它们闻起来像脚。”

My mother nodded; so she’d been wrong.

妈妈点点头；所以她错了。

After both sisters had abdicated planning the memorial, logistical matters—the casket and its transport, the readings, and, yes, the flowers—had fallen to the front desk volunteer of a church my grandmother no longer attended.

两姐妹放弃了纪念活动的筹划后，后勤事务——棺材及其运输、朗读，还有鲜花——就落到了我祖母不再参加的教堂的前台志愿者身上。

I felt slighted by my delinquent grandmother.

我感到自己被我那犯罪的祖母轻视了。

I had the impression that she had done something negligent.

我的印象是她做了一些疏忽的事情。

Rather than be accountable and considerate, here she was, dead, without a plan.

她没有负责任和体贴，而是死在这里，没有计划。

We were interrupted, introduced to the young pastor who’d led the service.

我们被打断了，我们被介绍给主持仪式的年轻牧师。

He patted my head.

他拍拍我的头。

Seeming to grasp something about us, he shared that the church held secular community events: local author readings and a pancake breakfast.

他似乎了解了我们的一些情况，并透露教会举办了世俗社区活动：当地作家阅读会和煎饼早餐。

If we were around for a few days, we might be interested.

如果我们在那里待几天，我们可能会感兴趣。

My mother said she hated pancakes.

我妈妈说她讨厌煎饼。

Taking this as his cue, he excused himself, leaving my mother and me no choice but to join the dwindled remaining group, what I understood to be a patchy few friends and a small number of our distant relatives, which included her sister.

以此为暗示，他告辞了，让我和母亲别无选择，只能加入日益减少的剩余群体，我认为他们是零星的几个朋友和少数我们的远房亲戚，其中包括她的妹妹。

There was a table of instant coffee in Styrofoam cups, individual creamers, and boxes of Entenmann’s mini muffins, but neither woman took a plate.

桌子上放着泡沫塑料杯里的速溶咖啡、单独的奶精和盒装的恩滕曼迷你松饼，但两个女人都没有拿盘子。

Nell listened with polite interest as they traded in fond, if fading, memories.

内尔礼貌而饶有兴趣地听着，他们交换着美好的（尽管正在消逝的）回忆。

There were words of gentle affection about my grandmother’s habit of fishing candies out of her purse, and soft laughter about how she never quite got the pastor’s name right.

有人对我祖母从钱包里掏糖果的习惯表示温柔的爱意，也有人轻声笑道她总是记不清牧师的名字。

It was Rodney, but she was set on Richard.

是罗德尼，但她选择了理查德。

“In time, we all just called him Pastor Richard, too, so she wouldn’t feel embarrassed.

“后来，我们也都叫他理查德牧师，这样她就不会感到尴尬了。

I think even he began to get a little confused!”

我想连他都开始有点困惑了！”

My mother did not crack a smile.

我妈妈没有笑。

I watched as she made a decision.

我看着她做出决定。

She turned to Nell.

她转向内尔。

“Remember when she threw away your journals and told you I’d done it?”

“还记得她扔掉你的日记并告诉你我已经做到了吗？”

The small assembled group shifted in their chairs.

聚集在一起的一小群人在椅子上动了动。

I could smell the sour ranunculus, carried in from the worship hall.

我能闻到从礼拜堂带进来的酸毛茛的味道。

Nell was quiet.

内尔很安静。

“I don’t want to think about that right now.”

“我现在不想考虑这个。”

My mother snorted.

我妈妈哼了一声。

“I’m sure you don’t.”

“我相信你不会。”

Nell slumped lower in her chair.

内尔跌坐在椅子上。

“Don’t start.”

“别开始。”

I stayed very quiet.

我保持着非常安静的态度。

I, too, hoped my mother wouldn’t start.

我也希望妈妈不要开始。

I was invested in her staying steady—steadyish, at least.

我致力于让她保持稳定——至少是稳定。

We were a package deal.

我们是一揽子交易。

If she was sometimes a witch, what did it matter when our shared broomstick was the only splinter of wood keeping me from plunging solo through the atmosphere?

如果她有时是个女巫，那么当我们共用的扫帚是唯一阻止我独自坠入大气层的木头碎片时，那又有什么关系呢？

“She treated us like dirt,” my mother continued.

“她对待我们就像对待泥土一样，”我母亲继续说道。

Nell made a gesture that implied she was ceding the floor.

内尔做了一个手势，暗示她要让出发言权。

“Here we go.”

“开始了。”

I thought of my grandmother, on the projector, holding out her pie.

我想起了我的祖母，在投影仪上，递着她的馅饼。

“Folks,” Nell addressed my grandmother’s next-door neighbors, “the wine hasn’t even started flowing.”

“各位，”内尔对我祖母的隔壁邻居说，“酒还没开始流呢。”

Yet my mother was not a drinker.

然而我的母亲并不喝酒。

She was simply a person committed to, and proud of, blurting out whatever came into her head, unfiltered like a gutter so clogged it overflowed, no matter how inconvenient the timing.

她只是一个致力于并自豪的人，无论时机多么不方便，她都会脱口而出，像排水沟一样未经过滤，堵塞了，就会溢出。

It was a quality I often admired.

这是我经常钦佩的品质。

I was humiliated now, but I was also my mother’s daughter.

我现在感到羞辱，但我也是我母亲的女儿。

It catered to what, even then, I could identify as my budding pre-teenage sensibility.

即使在那时，它也迎合了我所认为的我青春期前萌芽的情感。

How she spoke her mind, how she did not behave like everyone else.

她如何表达自己的想法，她的行为如何与其他人不同。

So long, of course, as she kept it within suitable bounds.

当然，只要她把它控制在适当的范围内就可以了。

My mother turned an ice-cold eye on Nell.

我母亲冰冷地看着内尔。

We all felt the chill.

我们都感到一阵寒意。

“Oh, because you’ve made peace, right?

“哦，因为你们已经讲和了，对吧？

No, you haven’t.

不，你还没有。

You’ve revised history, and that’s a trap.

你修改了历史，那是一个陷阱。

One that will come and bite you in the ass.”

一个会来咬你屁股的人。”

Elderly couples surrounded us in somber ceremony, each of them in seats clustered close to one another, some holding hands, their fingers dusted in crumb cake.

老夫妇以庄严的仪式包围了我们，他们每个人都坐在彼此靠近的座位上，有些人手牵着手，手指上沾满了面包屑。

People who did not find tact and courtesy a challenge, who kept things simple.

人们不认为机智和礼貌是一个挑战，他们让事情变得简单。

My grandmother had been one of the flock.

我的祖母就是这群人中的一员。

She had died, and she deserved remembrance.

她已经死了，她值得被纪念。

“Let’s rein it in a little,” Nell said with a quick smile.

“我们控制一下吧，”内尔笑着说。

It seemed impossible that the two women, Nell ready with her reins, my mother unbridled, shared the same gene pool.

这两个女人似乎不可能拥有相同的基因库，内尔已经准备好缰绳，而我的母亲却不受约束。

That they’d grown up in the same house.

他们是在同一所房子里长大的。

“Let’s do this score-settling later.”

“这个算账的事，我们以后再算吧。”

The truth was, my fancy New York artist aunt was a disappointment to me.

事实是，我那漂亮的纽约艺术家阿姨让我很失望。

She should have been fabulous.

她本来应该很棒。

It was a near miss.

这是一次险些失手的事故。

She didn’t look like she was having fun.

她看起来并不开心。

She was passive aggressive, and it felt like she had a millstone around her neck.

她被动攻击，感觉就像脖子上挂着一块磨石。

“There’s a reason it’s called a memorial,” my mother said.

“它被称为纪念碑是有原因的，”我母亲说。

“I have a right to remember her as she was, in all her damaging complexity.”

“我有权记住她本来的样子，尽管她具有破坏性的复杂性。”

Nell, in one last attempt to curtail her, said, “I think you’ve made your point.”

内尔最后一次试图阻止她说：“我认为你已经表达了你的观点。”

An old lady engaged me, probably thinking that a child shouldn’t hear this about her grandmother, thinking it was the first time my unsullied ears were hearing the adult version of events.

一位老太太吸引了我，可能认为一个孩子不应该听到有关她祖母的事情，认为这是我纯洁的耳朵第一次听到成人版本的事件。

“Do you like crumb cake?”

“你喜欢面包屑蛋糕吗？”

I nodded.

我点点头。

I was good at this.

我很擅长这个。

If she only knew what I’d heard.

如果她知道我听到的话就好了。

As we entered Corvallis, the Diamante was held up for a passing display.

当我们进入科瓦利斯时，钻石号被高高举起进行展示。

It was a marching band.

那是一支军乐队。

The drum majors leading the procession were wearing polyester shirts emblazoned Tumwater Middle School.

带领游行队伍的鼓手们穿着印有图姆沃特中学图案的涤纶衬衫。

I was overcome by a flare of hostility toward the parade for the delay.

我对游行的延误感到一阵敌意。

My mother resented jazz, it was pretentious.

我母亲讨厌爵士乐，它很自命不凡。

But she bopped along with the pep-rally beat.

但她随着鼓舞士气的节奏一起跳动。

It took three or so minutes for them to pass.

他们花了三分钟左右才通过。

Enough time for me to register that the stab I’d felt was something other than simple irritation with the unsolicited display.

有足够的时间让我意识到我所感受到的刺痛不仅仅是对不请自来的展示的简单刺激。

This idling and sweaty ill-assorted lot belonged to something , I thought, as the last of the trundling tubas cleared the intersection, joined together in practice and ritual, filing off in lockstep.

当最后一批滚动的大号驶过十字路口，在练习和仪式中结合在一起，整齐划一地行进时，我想，这群闲置、汗流浃背、杂乱无章的人群属于某种东西。

They had something I didn’t.

他们有我没有的东西。

“See how she behaves toward me .

“看看她对我的态度。

.

。

.” my mother began to ask at home, grief turning to grudge, her ultimate takeaway from the afternoon.

”。我母亲在家里开始询问，悲伤变成了怨恨，这是她下午的最终收获。

She had her pen in hand, her tongue between her teeth in concentration.

她手里拿着笔，舌头咬在牙缝里，全神贯注。

She was drafting an interpersonal map, a tool she returned to now and then, summarizing her relationships on a single page.

她正在起草一张人际关系地图，这是她时不时使用的工具，在一页上总结了她的人际关系。

“.

”。

.

。

.

。

sanctimonious, as if she’s a realized person and I’m not.”

道貌岸然，好像她是一个成道的人，而我不是。”

I knew what she was doing.

我知道她在做什么。

She was trying to make sense of things.

她试图弄清楚事情的意义。

A circle with “me/Helene” was fixed directly at the center, the axis around which the web of conflicts radiated.

一个写有“我/海伦”的圆圈直接固定在中心，冲突网络围绕着这个轴辐射。

One offshooting arrow led to Nell, another to their mother.

一支支箭指向内尔，另一支则指向他们的母亲。

A few others to the usual suspects, the village of our lives, revolving around her.

其他几个人都是平常的嫌疑人，我们生活的村庄，都围绕着她。

I noticed that I wasn’t listed.

我注意到我没有被列出。

I was that much a part of her that I didn’t warrant consideration.

我是她的一部分，不值得被考虑。

Nighttime was the bad time.

晚上是最糟糕的时间。

I distrusted her fun.

我不相信她的乐趣。

Once, after a seizure of merrymaking, she woke me up.

有一次，我一阵狂欢后，她把我叫醒。

She swore that she felt bugs crawling on her scalp, but neither of us could find anything.

她发誓她感觉有虫子在她的头皮上爬，但我们俩都找不到任何东西。

Who knew, she might even have seen them.

谁知道，她甚至可能看到他们了。

Former landlords lurked in bushes or on roofs or waited in cars outside our home.

前房东潜伏在灌木丛中或屋顶上，或者在我们家门外的汽车里等待。

She made people so vengeful that sometimes I wondered if these apparitions weren’t in fact real.

她让人们变得如此复仇，有时我想知道这些幽灵是否实际上是真实的。

I thought of the neighbor who had leaned out of his window and called down as I was leaving for school: “Hey, little girl, your mom is a bitch!”

我想起了在我去学校的路上，那位邻居把身子探出窗外，对着楼下喊道：“嘿，小女孩，你妈妈是个婊子！”

I’d seen that with my own eyes.

我亲眼所见。

Hadn’t I?

我不是吗？

By the time I’d turned ten, joining her in those fateful double digits, I saw her through a veil of sanity that had grown between us.

当我十岁的时候，与她一起进入那些致命的两位数，我透过我们之间逐渐形成的理智的面纱看到了她。

From Heavy Cream by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright.

来自 Sarah Blakley-Cartwright 的《Heavy Cream》。

Used with permission of the publisher, Simon & Schuster.

经出版商 Simon & Schuster 许可使用。

Copyright © 2026 by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright.

版权所有 © 2026 莎拉·布莱克利-卡特赖特。