Girls of Tender Age
Here is how my father describes our socioeconomic level: Working Stiffs. We live in the D section of Charter Oak Terrace in Hartford, Connecticut. Hartford is a city where all manner of public buildings, bridges, restaurants, playgrounds, and gin mills are named after the oak tree where Captain Joseph Wadsworth hid the Charter of Independence granted by England in 1687. He hid it because England changed her mind. When James II assumed power, he sent an agent to seize it but the charter had gone missing and the agent didn’t think to look in a squirrel’s nest. Likely story. Charter Oak Terrace was the first low-income housing project to be constructed in the United States. It was built for the GI’s returning from war to give them a leg up while they put the Battle of the Bulge, Anzio, Bataan, and Corregidor behind them and looked for jobs. My father’s brother-in-law, Uncle Guido, was a WWII veteran so he got to live there, and my father, who wasn’t, got to live there because of his job making ball bearings for the war effort. Also because Uncle Guido had pull. At D-106, we have a coal furnace in its own little room, an alcove black with soot, between the front door and the kitchen. Our furnace utilizes a primitive heating system consisting of aluminum pipes and ducts and a narrow chimney that carries fumes, gases, and grime out through the roof while providing fitful outbreaks of warmth to our kitchen, living room, and two bedrooms. The vents in the walls have an aureole of coal dust. These heating details differentiate us, Working Stiffs, from the truly impoverished, who also work, but at the most menial of jobs -- picking tobacco in the fields bordering the city’s North End, sweeping factory floors, or risky jobs like running numbers. Their coal stoves have no alcove; they are in the kitchen. The truly impoverished attach a rolled-up piece of sheet metal to their stoves that leads through a hole gouged out of the wall. Plus they gerry-rig hoses from the main shoot to bring heat into the other rooms. These hoses melt and then the houses catch fire and burn down. Their children come to school with rags tied around their shaved heads because they have lice. The truly impoverished girl who sits next to me in first grade with her head wrapped in a rag has a name that intrigues me, Poo-Poo. When her house burns down, she moves to a new school district. Two days after she leaves, all the first-graders have lice. Since we’re the children of Working Stiffs, not the truly impoverished, we don’t have our heads shaved. Instead we are subject to foul-smelling shampoos, plus my mother combs my hair every night with a fine comb to remove the nits, which are lice eggs. Got one! she goes, whereupon she carefully slides the nit out from the teeth of the comb and snaps it between her thumbnails. Each morning my father fuels the furnace, shoveling coal into its belly as quietly as he can so as not to wake my mother, who is the prototype of the light sleeper. My mother can be wakened by the smell of cigarette smoke outside. Yutchie, wake up. A prowler! She’s also awakened by Mrs. Alexander’s radio even though it’s late in the evening in the dead of winter and we’re all sealed in tight with our coal dust. My mother can hear a field mouse in a nearby empty lot as well as Fluffy, the neighbor’s cat, stalking it. Later I will learn that fog comes on little cat feet. My mother can hear arriving fog too. Beyond that, she is just as easily awakened by the absence of sound; one spring night the freight train barreling through Hartford like clockwork at 2 A.M. doesn’t send forth its dull blast at the Flatbush Avenue crossing three miles from D-106 at the northeast corner of Charter Oak Terrace. That’s because it never reaches Flatbush Avenue. She rouses my father. Yutchie, wake up! The train has crashed. My father calls my Uncle Norbert, my mother’s youngest brother, who is a fireman. Early the next morning Uncle Norbert drops in. What do you mean, Florence? he says to my mother. You couldn’t have heard the crash. The goddamn train derailed in Meriden! (Meriden is twenty-five miles away.) She says, I didn’t hear the crash. What I heard was the train’s horn not blast (which it always does when it crosses Flatbush). My father says to my Uncle Norbert, How about a short one? Word is that my mother has psychic powers based on her placement in her family of fourteen. She is the seventh daughter. When I ask my Auntie Coranna, the sixth daughter, what psychic powers are, Auntie Coranna says it’s when people can see and hear what the rest of us can’t. A devout Catholic, my mother eschews such nonsense. But the night the train derails in Meriden there is fire and destruction and death too, because in Meriden the train tracks run right down the middle of Main Street. Being a psychic, no matter that she denies it, is it any wonder she woke up? Ten years later, my Uncle Eddie, my mother’s brother born between her and Uncle Norbert, is staggering home from Alphone’s Bar and Grill and is hit by the 2 A.M. train when he passes out on the tracks at the Flatbush Avenue crossing. The engineer never sees him, never applies his brakes, so my mother doesn’t hear the train coming to a screeching halt, which would have really woken her up. At six each morning, I force myself to open my eyes and climb out of my crib in the corner of my parents’ bedroom, where I experience many horrific nightmares probably due to the sounds of sex a few feet away and my, no doubt, witnessing the shadowy tussles in the dark. When my father hears me whimpering, he comes over to the crib and says, You’re having a nightmare, Mick. (My nickname is Mickey though I am a girl.) Go back to sleep. He brings me a glass of water. At 6 A.M., I scramble downstairs, take a right through the kitchen, and sit on a little rug by the front door in order to watch my father perform his daily, cold-weather ritual: he takes up a shovel leaning against the wall of the alcove and heaves coal out of a three-sided metal bin and into the fading pink interior of the furnace until its gaping black maw magically blooms into a wildly crimson glow. Then a tiny lick of flame leaps up above the coals signaling the end to my father’s chore. The red glow is the most beautiful, most ethereal image that exists in my life. Sitting and watching, I think that if Our Lady ever appears to me (all little Catholic children are insanely envious of the children of Fatima) it won’t be in a bush, it will be in our incantatory furnace. When my father is finished shoveling coal, he gives me a piece of toast from the toaster on the kitchen floor. There is no counter space in our kitchen to speak of, just a sink against the wall and a white metal table next to it with one drawer packed tightly with Raleigh coupons. One day, I lean against the hot toaster acquired via Raleigh coupons and the first three letters of the name WEAREVER are branded onto the back of my calf. I am four and starting to read. WEA I know, is not a word. The toaster burn is my first memory of pain. I gag and press my hands to my mouth as I leap away from the toaster. My mother says to my father, Look at what you’ve done! This is the chronic response to crisis in my family. First, there can be no cry. That is because of Tyler. Tyler is my brother, five years older. We are all half-mad because my brother is autistic at a time when no one has ever heard of autism. (Today it is rampant.) Tyler cannot stand noise, which includes crying out or, in fact, just plain crying. The agony he feels when he hears such noise is extreme; when that pain comes, he bites his wrist. He grasps his left hand in his right and gnaws away like he’s devouring a drumstick. He squeals hideously while he does this. His left wrist is covered by a thick, often oozing, callous. People will do terrible things to satisfy their compulsions and in Tyler’s case, he does them to himself. There is no one in the United States with the name Tyler except my brother. His name, like autism, is also rampant today. But then, my mother was psychic. The second response to crisis follows immediately upon the heels of the first; my mother assigns blame and then won’t forgive the guilty party even if it means carrying a grudge to the grave. The third response is for her to light up a Raleigh then light up a second while stamping out the first until the ash tray is overflowing. Until I am in first grade, I have no idea that when you are hurt, some people have the urge to hug and comfort you. In the first grade, my fingers get caught in the girls’ lavatory door and my teacher, Miss Wells, takes me in her arms and hugs me to her big bosom. I don’t understand what this is, a body surrounding mine, pressing sympathy from one heart into another. But my mother is the prototype of a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. That is what I hear my aunts say to each other: Florence is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. They are familiar with such verging because it is the fifties when women were either on the verge or actually having one. Two of my aunts have nervous breakdowns themselves. When I am five, my Auntie Mary, my mother’s only unmarried sister, has a nervous breakdown and then gets shock treatments after which she comes and lives with us for three months. She sleeps on a cot in the living room. My Auntie Kekkie has one too; first she goes missing and then my father’s brother, Uncle Johnnie, finds her behind the furnace and she won’t come out. He calls my father to come help. My father assesses the situation and calls for a doctor. The doctor sends my father and Uncle Johnnie out for all the ice they can get. Then he has them dump the ice in the bathtub, add cold water almost to the top, whereupon my aunt is wrestled into the tub and submerged. (Perhaps there wasn’t such a thing as a shot of tranquilizer back then.) Once subdued, Auntie Kekkie goes to the hospital and comes back a month later all better. As young as I am, when I am burned by the toaster I know it isn’t my father’s fault. I know it isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s the toaster’s fault and the toaster didn’t do it on purpose because it’s an appliance. After I’m burned, my father smears the WEA on my calf with Vaseline and then he makes me smile by lighting up a Dutch Masters and blowing smoke rings into which I carefully insert my index finger. His record is six smoke rings from one inhalation on the cigar. Sometimes, a friend will give him a special treat, a cigar from Havana. He passes all his exotic cigar bands along to me for my treasure box, which is actually a humidor distributed on the fiftieth anniversary of the Dutch Masters Company. I think the picture on the humidor -- a lot of men in a jolly group and sporting pointy beards -- are Jesus’s apostles only wearing pilgrim suits. My father tells me the girl and boy on my prize Havana band are Romeo and Juliet. He says, In Cuban, Mickey, that’s Romeo y Julieta. He tells me his rendition of the Shakespeare tragedy except he changes the ending and Romeo and Juliet get married and live happily ever after. I picture them dancing the polka at their wedding. I pretend my name is Juliet. After all, I have an uncle named Romeo, one of my mother’s brothers. When I’m an adult, I watch Dick Schaap interview Joe Namath on TV. Dick asks Joe what movies he’s seen recently. Joe says, Some broad dragged me to see Romeo and Juliet. I didn’t like it. Why? asks Dick. Because it was so sad. There’s a pause, and then Dick asks, You didn’t know how it would end, did you, Joe? No. Poor Joe. Poor me; when I read the play in high school, I figure I know how it will end, my father’s version. A few days after I am burned by the toaster, I am sitting in the closet with a flashlight aimed at my leg, enjoying the delicious solitary pleasure of peeling the paper-thin scab off my skin. I look at the pieces of scab in the palm of my hand. They are me, but they are no longer me, a phenomenon I wonder at. I save the scab in my humidor. For the next few days I will have raw pink letters on my leg -- WEA. Each morning after my father stokes the furnace, I stand in the doorway and wave good-bye to him. He drives off in his black Ford coupe to the factory where he will keep many furnaces stoked all at once. He is a heat treater in the hardening room. The factory, the Abbott Ball Company, turns out millions of ball bearings punched from steel wire an inch in diameter, which are heat-treated in the furnaces and then polished to a high shine in huge vats of teeming chemicals, where they bounce up and down like Mexican jumping beans. The Abbott Ball Company also produces ball bearings the size of poppy seeds punched from twenty-four-karat gold wire the diameter of a silk thread. My godmother, Auntie Doris, works at the Abbott Ball Company as an inspector. When she has to inspect the tiny gold ball bearings, she must be guarded and then inspected herself. The inspector knows Auntie Doris isn’t a thief, but all the same he has to check very carefully under her fingernails, where the ball bearings might lodge without her even knowing it. Auntie Doris studied opera when she was a girl. At all our family weddings she sings the "Ave Maria." (For my wedding, I ask her to sing the Miriam Makeba hit, "Kumbaya"; I have returned from Peace Corps service in an African country and I think it’s an appropriate choice. But Auntie Doris sings the "Ave Maria.") As a child, I am convinced my godmother is an actual angel with her golden voice and the stray golden seeds lodged beneath her nails. Auntie Doris is actually my cousin, but she is twenty years older than me so I think she is my aunt. No one corrects this. I do not know that she is my mother’s oldest sister’s daughter. My mother’s oldest sister, Auntie Verna, whose real name was Zephyrina, died of breast cancer when she was in her early forties. My Auntie Mary, who is sister number three, tells me Verna was in so much pain she would lie on the floor and ask family members to jump on her. The pain of being jumped on is bearable while the cancer pain is not; the former takes her mind off the latter. I understand, then, why Tyler bites his wrist. I stand in the doorway and wave good-bye to my father until I can’t see his black Ford anymore. One day, when I am three years old, I stand in the doorway whimpering because I do not manage to wake myself up in time to watch him feed the stove, or feed me my piece of toast, or worst of all, wave good-bye. He is gone and I must face the day without the ritual of his attention, which means a day without any attention whatsoever. It’s winter, and my mother comes downstairs with a sweater wrapped around her. Mickey, get in here and shut the door. I don’t move. Get in here, Mary-Ann! She calls me Mary-Ann instead of Mickey when she is angry. I still don’t move. I am hoping my father forgot something and will come back and I don’t want to take a chance of missing him. But it must be a morning when my mother is especially close to the verge of a nervous breakdown because she grabs my hand and yanks me in the door so hard my upper arm breaks. This is a pain I don’t remember. What I do remember is my mother standing in the doctor’s office arguing with him that my arm is broken. He keeps saying, You can’t break a child’s arm by yanking her by the hand. My mother says, I’m telling you, I heard it snap. The broken arm is suddenly his fault. That is, until my father arrives, running into the examining room, Freddie Ravenel right behind him. Freddie is the colored man my father hired to sweep the floors at the Abbott Ball Company. The first colored man ever hired there. My father says on many occasions, Freddie Ravenel is the best man I’ve got. When my father becomes foreman, he promotes Freddie to stoker. My father’s real name is Maurice, which his family pronounces Morris, but everyone calls him Yutch. Freddie Ravenel, though, insists on calling him Mr. Mawse because Freddie feels it’s a due respect and my father can’t convince him otherwise. Freddie is so grateful for the job he is devoted to my father. When the news of my broken arm reaches the Abbott Ball Company, Freddie insists on driving my father to the doctor’s office because he can see how upset my father is. My mother’s arms are folded across her chest. She says to my father, You didn’t wave good-bye to her. This is her explanation of how my arm came to be broken. I won’t be waving good-bye to my father for some time. At least not with my right arm. The doctor quits arguing with my mother and takes an X ray. Then he mixes a pot of plaster of paris. (In those days, there was no such thing as going to a specialist in orthopedics.) While he is soaking the strips of gauze, he is distracted by my brother, who is drawing a line of B-52s on the examining room wall. The doctor turns to my mother. Can you not do something about that? My mother says to my father, You do something. Freddie Ravenel, like everyone else, knows my mother is on the verge of a nervous breakdown so he goes to my brother and says, Tyler, come stand over here by Freddie. Doctor say not to draw on his wall. Tyler looks up in the vicinity of Freddie Ravenel, not directly into his eyes because that is something autistic people are unable to do, smiles his perfect Cheshire grin, and says, Blackie. He loves Freddie Ravenel, who rolls his eyes, slaps his knee, and laughs heartily. Then Freddie Ravenel says to me, Don’t you worry, Junior Miss, you be fine. His words have a similar effect to Miss Wells’s hug. When I’m an adult attending a dinner party, I’m sitting next to a specialist from Yale-New Haven Hospital, a child abuse expert. He is one of the doctors who determines that Woody Allen’s behavior toward his three-year-old daughter is inappropriate rather than sexually abusive. I find myself telling him about my mother breaking my arm. He says to me, It’s an accident when a child is yanked and her wrist breaks. But the humerus? You were treated very roughly. Today, that injury would be categorized as a direct result of physical abuse. The physician would be required by law to notify the police. I say, My mother didn’t really mean to break my arm. He says, Oh? She was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He’s quiet and then he says, No intent then? That’s right. He says, A nervous breakdown isn’t a clinical term. In most cases, it’s a psychotic episode of paranoia. Really? Yes, but the lay term conveys what a lay person might observe in the patient. Then he says, Was it a wake-up call for your mother? Injuring you like that? Yes. She never hurt you again? She never laid a hand on me. He says, Sometimes, that’s the case. I’m glad. He pauses before he says, Did she have a nervous breakdown? No. I’m glad for that, too. Then he says, My own mother had a ner- vous breakdown. I say, Did you find her behind the furnace? No. Up in the apple tree. I’m sorry. Thank you. I don’t explain to the doctor the reason my mother is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Explaining Tyler would overly monopolize the man and he wouldn’t be able to speak to the woman on his right. When Tyler is eight and I am three, sporting a cast from hand to shoulder, he has over five hundred books on the subject of WWII because he is obsessed with the war; his books cover battles, defense, weaponry. My mother says to the child psychiatrist at the Boston Children’s Hospital, who deems him retarded, If he’s retarded, how come he’s reading Arms and the Covenant by Mr. Winston Churchill? The doctor gives her a withering look. But my mother will not wither. She raises her chin and storms out of the child psychiatrist’s office. This is how she fights people, storming out on them because, of course, she’s powerless. My mother learns she is powerless as a young woman at the Aetna Life Insurance Company where she is successful at a difficult job -- processing data at a time when it is accomplished with a pencil. But this is during the Great Depression and the rule is that female employees are immediately fired upon marrying. Married men need work to support their families; how selfish for a woman to take up a job merely for frivolity. However, when my mother is about to get married she is asked to keep the marriage a secret because the championship Aetna girls’ basketball team is undefeated and they have been asked to take part in an exhibition game against the girls’ Olympic basketball team. My mother, a fine athlete and the youngest member of a national championship bowling team, is Aetna’s center, which today would translate to point guard. My mother agrees to keep her marriage a secret and gets to play in the big game. The center for the Olympic team is Babe Didrikson. The Aetna girls win. (Connecticut girls have been playing great basketball for a long, long time.) Then my mother is fired.
女孩的童年 女孩的童年 这是我父亲如何描绘我们的社会经济水平的:工人阶级! 我们住在康乃狄格州,哈特福德Charter Oak Terrace D区。Hartford 是个以橡树命名的城市。同时也密集了所有公共建筑、桥梁、宾馆、娱乐场所以及一些低级酒吧的风格!1687年,在英国,Captain Joseph Wadsworth 隐藏《Charter Of Independence》被公认他把《Chart Of Independence》隐藏起来是因为英国人改变他的想法!当JAMES2即位时,他派人没收了《Chart Of Independence》,但不幸的是代理人遗失了特许状,而他不想到平民区去寻找。说得好象真的有这么回事似的! Charter Oak Terrace是美国第一次构建的低收入住宅区。这些住房是供给从战场归来的美国兵。为的是在大坦克之战能助他们一臂之力;另外Guido(我伯父)因为是二战的老兵,所以住在那儿,而父亲的工作是为战争而制作滚珠轴承,且因为伯父扭伤脚了,所以也住那里! D-106排房那我们有一间备有煤炉的小房间和一间位于前门与厨房之间被煤烟熏黑的壁橱。我们的熔炉使用一种原始的供暖系统,它是由铝管加热导管及烟囱组成的;而那些烟、气体及污垢从屋顶狭小的烟囱内排出,而加热导管则间歇的提供暖气给厨房、起居室和另外两间卧室;墙上的排气口有煤炭灰尘的光环。这些供热系统使我们这些工人阶级区别于那些名副其实的穷人。他们的煤炉在厨房,以至于煤炉没有壁橱。虽然他们也有工作但都是些适合仆人做的最卑微的工作---在城市北部边缘地带采摘烟叶,在工厂里打扫卫生或是其他一些危险的工作比如说跑步运动员。 那些贫困的人们把一片金属片卷起来固定在煤炉上,便于引入到被凿好的墙上洞穴内。另外,他们通过那些主要洞穴用橡皮软管把热气输送到其他房间,然而这些橡皮软管一旦熔化,整个房子就会着火,然后夷为平地! 穷人孩子头上长虱子了,他们就在剃光的头上裹些破布后去上学。记得一年级,那个邻座的女孩——头上裹着破布的贫困生叫POO-POO引起我的兴趣。自从她家被烧毁之后,她就搬迁到一个新的学校。她离开后的两天,所有一年级的学生都长虱子了。由于我们是工人阶级的孩子,不是贫困生,因此我们不用剃光头。于是,母亲每晚用一把质地好的梳子为我梳头发,梳走那些虱子卵。这样就避免使用那些难闻气味的洗发露了。 每梳到一个虱子卵时,母亲就会小心翼翼地把虱子卵从梳子齿间剔了出来,然后放在两个大拇指之间“啪”的一声弄坏了。 每天早上父亲都会为熔炉添加燃料,即用铁锹铲一铲煤填进炉肚里,。母亲是个典型的浅睡眠者,她甚至可以被外面香烟的气味熏醒!所以父亲尽可能小声的填燃料以便不吵醒母亲。 “Yutchie,快起来!有小偷!” 即使是在冬天午夜,我们被煤尘封得严严实实的,母亲也会被ALEXANDER的广播吵醒,甚至她能够听到隔壁家的猫在空旷的田野上捉老鼠的声音! 之后,我了解到FOG COMES ON LITTLE CAT FEET。母亲也能够感受到。除此之外,她也很容易在无声中醒来。一个春天的夜晚,午夜2点时分货运列车非常准时地从哈特福德快速经过。在离Charter Oak Terrace东北处D-106三英里的Flatbush Avenue穿过,而没有留下令人讨厌的汽笛声。因为它从来没有到过Flatbush Avenue。 母亲唤醒身边的父亲:“Yutchie,快起来,火车越轨了!” 父亲醒来后马上打电话给消防人员(母亲的弟弟)Notbort. 第二天早晨,舅舅很早就来拜访了。 “Florence,你真不可思议!你怎么能够听到火车发生事故的声音呢?那讨厌的火车在Meriden 出轨了(Meriden 离家有25英里的距离!)。 母亲回答到,“我没有听到火车出轨的声音,我听到的是火车的喇叭声,不是汽笛声。而火车每次经过Flatbush时都会鸣笛的。” 父亲对舅舅说:“多坐一会吧!” 听说母亲有这种特异功能是基于她在家里排行十四的缘故!母亲是第七个女儿。我问六姨(外婆的第六个女儿)什么是特异功能,六姨回答说:“就是能够看到常人看不到的东西,听到常人听不到的东西。”做为虔诚的天主教徒,母亲尽可能的避开这些荒谬言行的发生。但是那晚在MERIDEN火车越轨事件也确实造成了火灾、破坏及人员伤亡等灾害。因为在Meriden,火车越轨后直接冲到主要道路的中心路段。作为一个有特异功能的人,无论她怎么否定,她被吵醒的事实也就不足为齐了! 10年以后的一个晚上,Eddie舅舅(母亲的弟弟,Norbort舅舅的哥哥)从Laphone烤肉酒吧遥遥晃晃地走在回家的路上。他躺在Flatbush Avenue的铁轨上昏睡过去。这个时候刚好凌晨两点,火车从他身上轧过,火车司机没有看到他,所以没有刹车而直接行驶过去。然而真正使母亲醒过来的原因是因为母亲没有听到火车到来时发出尖锐的急刹车的声音! 每天早晨,六点时分,我都会逼自己睁开双眼,然后爬出我那被放在父母卧室转角的小床。我经常做噩梦也许是由于听到在离小床几尺远的做爱声。毫无疑问,也目睹了在黑暗中两人扭打在一起的朦胧的影子。每当父亲听到我抽噎地哭泣声,便会走到床边说“Mick(虽然我是个女孩子,但我的乳名却叫做Mick!),你只是在做梦。继续睡吧! 于是父亲给我端了杯水。 凌晨六点,我爬到楼下,正直爬到厨房,坐在前门的一小块地毯上。目的是为了能够看到父亲开始他的日常生活习惯:他拿起一把铁锹依靠在壁橱的墙上,然后从一个三角装的煤箱里铲出煤炭抛向那粉红褪色的熔炉里,直到熔炉里腾现出一窜窜深红色的火焰。那一窜窜的火焰在煤炭上跳跃,像是在暗示父亲的工作已经完成了,那炽热的火焰,似我生命中最美,最缥缈的画面。我坐着,看着,思考着:如果所有“女士都亲近我(所有天主教徒的孩子都疯狂的妒忌法蒂玛的孩子),那么他们就不是呆在灌木丛里而是坐在我们的熔炉边了。” 当父亲铲完煤后,他到厨房的烤面包片器里拿了一片土司面包给我吃。我们的厨房小得没得说:只有一个靠墙的污水槽,旁边就是一张抽屉装满罗利票据的白色金属桌子。一天,我靠在烤面包机上,看着罗利票据。我当时四岁了,开始认字了。我知道WEAREVER 的前三个字母是烙印在我小腿肚后部的字母。也知道“WEA”不是一个字。然而被烤箱烫伤,这使我第一次意识到什么是痛。我用手塞住嘴“蹦的”离开烤箱! 母亲对父亲说,“看看你做了什么!” 接下来便是家庭慢性潜在的危机。首先,就是没有哭声。因为有Tyler。Tyler是比我大5岁的哥哥。我们都是HALF-MAD。因为哥哥曾经自闭了一段时期,而当时根本没有听说“自闭症”这种症状(如今,自闭症却很盛行)。Tyler不能忍受噪音,包括大喊大叫,事实上,他连安静的哭泣也难以忍受。只要听到这些噪音他就会感到极度痛苦,甚至他会咬他自己的手腕,即自残。他用右手紧紧地抓住左手,咬下一口,就好象他在吞食一只鸡腿似的,接着发出一声尖叫。于是他左手腕上留下了一道深的、渗透脓液的伤口。人们做这种蠢事只是为了满足他们一时的冲动,在Tyler 这件事上,同样也是他对自己的满足!在当时的美国,除了我哥哥的名字叫Tyler之外,再也没有其他人了。可他的名字,就像“自闭症”这个词一样,在当今时代也很盛行。更不可思议的是,在那时,我母亲还是个有特异功能的人! 第二个相应的危机接踵而来。母亲谴责那些有罪的人,即使这将意味着她要带着怨恨死去(死不瞑目)。 第三个相应的反应是她点燃一张罗利票据后继续点第二张,同时踩灭第一张,这样反复直到灰缸溢满出来。 直到一年级,我才知道,原来在你受伤的时候,有些人会很紧张的拥抱你,安慰你。记得上一年级的时候,我的手指被女厕所的门卡住,受伤了。Well老师,把我拥在怀中。而当时的母亲却正处于神经衰落症的边缘。所以我不明白这种“从一个人传到另一个人心里”的同情。 母亲患神经衰弱症是我从阿姨们的谈话中听到的:Florence正处于神经衰弱的边缘。理由是因为母亲已经有50多岁了,而这个年龄阶段的人不是处于边缘状态就是已经患上了。我的两个阿姨就患过神经衰弱症。在我5岁的时候,母亲唯一一个还没有结婚的妹妹Mary阿姨就患过。她来到我们家,和我们住在一起,接受三个月的治疗。她睡在起居室的一张简易狭窄的床上。Kekkie阿姨也是,刚开始时她迷路了,Johnnie伯父在熔炉后面找到她,可她不想出来,于是伯父给父亲一个求助电话。父亲设想了一下环境,然后带了一位医生。医生派父亲和Johnnie伯父去收集尽可能多的冰块,然后他把收集来的冰块倾倒到浴缸里,添加些冷水直到满。这样,小姨便被浸泡在装满冰块的浴缸内。(也许那个时候没有像镇静剂一样的东西)直到小姨情绪稳定之后,她被送到医院。一个月后,她康复了。 因为我还小,所以不觉得被烤箱烫伤的事是我父亲的错。我知道不是任何人的错,而是烤箱的错。可烤箱不是故意的,因为它只是一种器具。我被烫伤之后,父亲用Vaseline药液把附在我小腿肚的“WEA”擦掉,然后点燃一根Dutch Masters,吹了几个烟环到我所关注的食指上,以此来逗我开心。他的记录是从吸入的雪茄烟里吐出6个烟环。有时,有朋友对他特殊优待,给他Havane牌香烟。父亲会把他所有外来品种的香烟放在我的宝藏盒里归我所属。而这个宝藏盒实际是Dutch Masters Company 50周年纪念日所设计的雪茄盒。我想雪茄盒上的图案---许多脸上都有尖胡须的男士愉快的成群结队——都是那些穿着朝圣耶酥服饰的传道者。 父亲告诉我说,在我看来,男女生的Havava乐队是Romeo and Juliet。 父亲还说,在古巴,Mickey就是Romeo and Juliet。 除了改变Romeo and Juliet的结局外,父亲还详细解释了莎士比亚悲剧中Romeo and Juliet结婚,从此过上幸福的生活。我想象他们在婚礼上跳着波尔卡舞的画面,我假设我的名字就是Juliet,毕竟我有个舅舅叫Romeo Joe .问他最近在看什么影片,他回答说“有个婆娘硬拉着我去看的,我个人不喜欢! “为什么呢?” Dick 问到。 因为它太伤感了! 休息时间,Dick问道:“你不知结局如何吧,Joe?!” “知道”。 同命相连。在高中的时候,我读过剧本,我认为它的结局,应该和父亲的说法是一样的! 在我被烤箱烫伤后的几天,我坐在壁橱里,用手电筒照在自己的小腿上,享受着令人愉快的隐士乐趣,即从我的皮肤上撕下那些极薄的伤疤。我看着放在手掌上已脱落的皮:他们原先属于我的,而现在已经不再是我的了!我把那些脱落的皮储存在我的雪茄盒里,因为在接下来的日子,我的小腿又会长出带有粉色字母的新皮肤---WEA。 每天早晨,在父亲添完燃料后,我都会站在门口挥手向他道别。他总是开着黑色的Ford牌的双门小汽车到工厂去。在那儿他负责添加燃料保持熔炉的温度。他在卒火车间是负责处理热的处理器。那个叫Abbott Ball Company的工厂生产成千上万个滚珠,而那些滚珠可以打在直径为1英尺的铁线网上。Abbott Ball 公司也生产直径有丝线大小,24克拉金属网线的罂粟种子大小的滚珠。 Doris阿姨,教母,在Abbott Ball公司得像检查员一样工作,她必须检查那些极小的金属滚珠,在检查工作的同时她也被监视着。虽然检查员知道Doris阿姨不是小偷,但他们也非得一直慎重的检查她的手指甲。因为,滚珠会在不知情的情况下,留在指甲缝里! Doris阿姨还是个孩子的时候就学歌剧了。在我们家族所有的婚庆典礼上她都会唱“Ave Maria”。 还是小孩子的我,相信教母是个有着金嗓子的真命天使!(在我的婚礼上,我叫她换唱Miriam Makeba编制的“Kumbaya”, 可Doris 阿姨还是唱老歌。)我已经从美国的一个山村叫Peace Corps服务专区的地方回来,我以为这是个很好的选择。 Doris阿姨实际是我的老姐,但由于她比我大20岁,使得我误认为她是我小姨。然而没有人纠正这个错误。后来我才知道她是我大姨的女儿。我大姨Verna阿姨,真名叫Zephyrine,在她四十初头的时候死于乳腺癌。Mary阿姨,家里姐妹排行第三,告诉我说Verna阿姨痛得在地上打滚,她甚至乞求家人狠狠的抽打她。当癌症疼痛的时候,被狠狠抽打的疼痛还是可以忍受的,因为前者占据她的思想更多于后者。那个时候,我终于理解Tyler为什么选择自残了。 我站在门口向父亲挥手道别,直到看不到他那辆黑色Ford小车。三岁那年的一天,我站在门口哭泣,因为我没能及时醒过来,看父亲添加燃料,或者是他喂我一片面包,或者更糟糕的事,我没有和他道别。他离开后,我将面对没有受到礼仪关注的一天,同时也意味着我要面对自己没有受人关注的一天。由于是冬天,母亲包裹着一身毛衣下楼。 “Kickey,关上门上楼!” 我无动于衷。 “Mary-Ann,进里屋去!她生气的时候总是叫我Mary-Ann”而不是Kickey。 我依旧站着不动。我希望父亲忘了带东西而回来,因为我不想思念他,也许那天早上,母亲精神特别紧张,在门口,她抓紧我的手,猛拉了一下,也许用力过度,导致我的胳膊脱臼了。而如今的我已不记得疼痛了。 我所能记得的是我母亲站在医生办公室与医生争执着我手脱臼的事! 医生始终坚持:“用力过度而使孩子的手脱臼是不可能。” 母亲回答到:“听着,我听到手脱臼的声音了。 手是否脱臼是判断的确是医生的错。直到父亲的到来,父亲冲进观察室,后面跟着Freddie Ravernel 。Freddiel被父亲雇佣在Abbott Ball公司打扫卫生的混血男儿!在那儿,他是被雇佣的第一个混血儿。父亲经常在很多场合说:Freddie Ravernel是他雇来的最好的员工。父亲作为领班时,提升Freddiel 为司炉。父亲的真名是Maurice,而家人都叫他Morris,但人人都叫他Yutch。但Freddie却始终坚持称呼他Mause先生。因为Freddie觉得那是父亲应得的尊重。关于这一点,父亲说服不了。 Freddie非常感激父亲给他那份工作,因此极力效力于父亲。当我的手脱臼的事传到Abbott Ball公司后,Freddie 坚持把父亲载到医院,因为他不想看到父亲伤心。 母亲双臂交叉,对父亲说:“都怪你,怎么能忘了和她道别呢!” 这就是母亲对于造成我的手脱臼的事实的最佳解释!偶尔我也会没有向父亲道别,至少不是用右手道别! 医生停止和母亲的争执,协助我做了X光,然后在手臂上打上石膏。(过去并没有像现在这样拥有专业的整形外科。)当他去浸湿条形纱布时,被正在观察室外墙上画B-52S线条的哥哥转移了注意力。 医生转向母亲说:“你们能不能安分点!” 母亲面向父亲:“都怪你!” Freddie Ravernel ,和其他人一样,都知道母亲患有精神衰弱症,因此他走到哥哥面前,“Tyler,过来。医生说不准在墙上乱涂乱画!” Tyler抬头看着一旁的Freddie Ravernel,但是没有直视他的眼神,一般的自闭症患者都不不会那样做的。他露齿而笑,“知道了,黑人!” Tyler喜欢Freddie Ravernel。因为他是个有趣的人:他经常转动他的黑眼球,摇晃着膝盖,而且又是个和蔼可亲,喜笑颜开的人。后来Freddie Ravernel对我说:“别担心,很快就会好的!” 他的话和Well小姐的拥抱感觉相似。 成人后,一次参加宴会,我临坐在一个Yale-New Haven医院的研究虐待儿童的专家。他是判定关于Woody Allen对于他三岁女儿的行为是不适当的而不是歧视性别的专家之一。后来我才发现我把母亲把我的手弄伤的事告诉了他。 他对我说,“小孩子被拉导致脱臼是个案例。但是肱骨如何呢?你的治疗太大意了,如今,那种伤势将会像虐待身体的直接结果一样被分类。医师须按照法律要求通知警察。 “我母亲并不是故意这么做的。”我回答到! “哦,是么?”他反问。 “她当时精神很紧张。” “没有其他意图么?”他思索着平静了下来。 “是的。没错。” “一个精神衰弱时期不是一个临床期,在多数情况下,是一个精神病患者得妄想症的一段经历。” “真的么?“ “是的。但是非专业术语表达的是一个平信徒应该观察病人的哪些地方。”他接着说,“可有电话叫醒你母亲,或是其他类似的遭遇?” “是的。” “她没有再伤害过你吗?” “她甚至再也没有搭过我的肩了。” “有时,就是那样。”他停顿了一下,说:“她患有精神衰弱症!” “没有。” “很高兴听到那个。”他接着说,“我自己的母亲就患精神衰弱症!” “你是在熔炉后面找到她的么?” “不是,在苹果树上。” “抱歉。” “没关系。” 我没有向那个医生解释我母亲正处于精神衰弱症边缘的原因,不过却解释了Tyler过度的和男生在一起,导致了他不和他身边的女士搭话的现象。 Tyler八岁那年我三岁。那时的我从手到肩都打上了石膏。Tyler有500多本关于二战的书。因为他被战争所陶醉。那些书内容包括战争,防卫,兵器。母亲对那个认为Tyler是弱智的儿科医生(波士顿儿童医院)说:“如果他是弱智,那么他怎么能读懂温斯---顿丘吉尔所著的《Arms and The Covenant》呢?” 医生极其蔑视地看了母亲一眼,但母亲并没有退缩。她昂着头气冲冲地离开了儿科精神病医师的办公室。这就是她如何气冲冲地离开他们。当然,她也无能为力。 母亲意识到她像一个年轻女士那样有所成就。在Aetna人寿保险公司那她就取得成功。因为她在一项很难完成的项目上取得成功——即用一支铅笔一次性完成数据处理的全过程。而那时的美国正处于大萧条时期,有这么一些规定:妇女员工一旦结婚就必须马上开除。已婚男人必须工作以维持家庭;对于女士来说,从事职业只不过是一种愚蠢的行为。这是多么自私! 因此,母亲结婚的事被要求保密。因为当时母亲是Aetna国际宝龄求竞赛最好的运动员,也是最年轻的中锋队员成员,而现在转变到组织后卫。由于Aetna女子篮球队是全胜的冠军赛队,而且他们应邀参加一场与女子奥林匹克队的比赛。母亲因此同意保守已婚的事实,投入到那场大型比赛中。奥林匹克队的中锋是Babe Didrikson。最终Aetna队获胜。(康乃狄格队打过大型篮球赛已经很久很久了。) 最后,母亲被解雇了!
|