The House on Mango Street

By Santlra Cisneros

墨西哥裔美国女作家桑德拉·希斯内洛丝在《芒果街上的小屋》这部中篇作品中以简洁稚嫩的、诗一般富有韵律的语言讲述了她的成长和经历的沧桑，以及追求拥有一套自己的房子的梦想。作品折射出少数族裔在美国艰难的生存状态。其实不仅在美国，在中国也有这样一条芒果街，那些从农村到城市打工的农民工，那些蜗居在一线城市的年轻人，都在梦想拥有属于自己的小屋。本期节选了书中的四个章节。

The House on Mango Street

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, and before that I can’t remember. But What I remember most is moving a lot. Each time it seemed there’d be one more of us. By the time we got to Mango Street we were six—Mama, Carlos, Kiki, my sister Nenny and me.

The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don’t have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise, and there isn’t a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom.But even so, it’s not the house we’d thought we’d get.

We had to leave the flat on Loomis quick. The water pipes broke and the landlord wouldn’t fix them because the house was too old. We had to leave fast. We were using the washroom next door and carrying water over in empty milk gallons（一加仑的容器） . That’s why Mama and Papa looked for a house, and that’s why we moved into the house on Mango Street, far away, on the other side of town.

They always told us that one day we would move into a house, a real house that would be ours for always so we wouldn’t have to move each year. And our house would have running water（自来水）and pipes that worked. And inside it would have real stairs, not hallway（走廊）stairs,but stairs inside like the houses on TV. And we’d have a basement and at least three washrooms so when we took a bath we wouldn’t have to tell everybody. Our house would be white with trees around it, a great big yard and grass growing without a fence. This was the house Papa talked about when he held a lottery ticket（彩票）and this was the house Mama dreamed up in the stories she told us before we went to bed.

But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all. It’s small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d think they were holding their breath. Bricks are crumbling in places, and the front yard, only four little elms（榆树） the city planted by the curb（路边）. Out back is a small garage for the car we don’t own yet and a small yard that looks smaller between the two buildings on either side. There are stairs in our house, but they’re ordinary hallway stairs, and the house has only one washroom. Every one has to share a bedroom—Mama and Papa, Carlos and Kiki, me and Nenny.

Once when we were living on Loomis, a nun from my school passed by and saw me playing out front. The laundro-mat（自助洗衣店）downstairs had been boarded up（用木板围起来）because it had been robbed two days before and the owner had painted on the wood YES WE’RE OPEN so as not to lose business.

Where do you live? She asked.

There, I said pointing up to the third floor.

You live there?

There. I had to look to where she pointed—the third floor, the paint peeling（剥落）, wooden bars Papa had nailed on the windows so we wouldn’t fall out. You live there? The way she said it made me feel like nothing.There. I lived there. I nodded.

I knew then I had to have a house. A real house. One I could point to. But this isn’t it. The house on Mango Street isn’t it. For the time, Mama says. Temporary（临时的）, says Papa. But I know how those things go.

Born Bad

Most likely I will go to hell and most likely I deserve to be there. My mother says I was born on an evil day and prays for me. Lucy and Rachel pray too. For ourselves and for each other… because of what we did to Aunt Lupe.

Her name was Guadalupe and she was pretty like my mother. Dark. Good to look at. In her Joan Crawford1. Joan Crawford: 琼·克劳馥（1904—1977），曾凭电影《欲海情魔》（Mildred Pierce）获第18届奥斯卡最佳女主角奖。dress（琼·克劳馥式的裙子，）and swimmer’s legs. Aunt Lupe of the photographs.

But I knew her sick from the disease that would not go,her legs bunched（隆起的）under the yellow sheets, the bones gone limp（无力的，松软的） as worms. The yellow pillow, the yellow smell, the bottles and spoons. Her head thrown back like a thirsty lady. My aunt, the swimmer.

Hard to imagine her legs once strong, the bones hard and parting water, clean sharp strokes, not bent and wrinkled like a baby, not drowning under the sticky yellow light.Second- floor rear apartment. The naked light bulb. The high ceilings. The light bulb always burning.

I don’t know who decides who deserves to go to bad.There was no evil in her birth. No wicked curse（诅咒）.One day I believe she was swimming, and the next day she was sick. It might have been the day that gray photograph was taken. It might have been the day she was holding cousin Totchy and baby Frank. It might have been the moment she pointed to the camera for the kids to look and they wouldn’t.

Maybe the sky didn’t look the day she fell down. Maybe God was busy. It could be true she didn’t dive right one day and hurt her spine（脊椎）. Or maybe the story that she fell very hard from a high step stool, like Totchy said, is true.

But I think disease have no eyes. They pick with a dizzy finger anyone, just anyone. Like my aunt who happened to be walking down the street one day in her Joan Crawford dress, in her funny felt hat（毡帽）with the black feather, cousin Totchy in on hand, baby Frank in the other.

Sometimes you get used to the sick and sometimes the sickness, if it is there too long, gets to seem normal.This is how it was with her, and maybe this is why we chose her.

It was a game, that’s all. It was the game we played every afternoon ever since that day one of us invented it—I can’t remember who—I think it was me.

You had to pick somebody. You had to think of someone everybody knew. Someone you could imitate and everyone else would have to guess who it was. It started out with famous people: Wonder Woman, the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe.2. Wonder Woman: 《神力女超人》中的主人公，该剧是美国20世纪70年代经典电视剧集,改编自同名漫画；Beatles: 披头士乐队，是一支成立于1960年的英国利物浦摇滚乐队，是20世纪60年代的文化标志之一；Marilyn Monroe: 玛丽莲·梦露（1926—1962），美国著名女演员及性感明星。… But then somebody thought it’d better if we changed the game a little, if we pretended we were Mr. Benny, or his wife Blanca, or Ruthie, or anybody we knew.

I don’t know why we picked her. Maybe we were bored that day. Maybe we got tired. We liked my aunt. She listened to our stories. She always asked us to come back.Lucy, me, Rachel. I hated to go there alone. The six blocks to the dark apartment, second- floor rear building where sunlight never came, and what did it matter? My aunt was blind by then. She never saw the dirty dishes in the sink.She couldn’t see the ceilings dusty with flies, the ugly maroon（栗色的） walls, the bottles and sticky（黏性的）spoons. I can’t forget the smell. Like sticky capsules（胶囊） filled with jelly. My aunt, a little oyster （牡蛎，沉默寡言的人）, a little piece of meat on an open shell for us to look at. Hello, hello. As if she had fallen into a well.

I took my library books to her house. I read her stories.I liked the book The Waterbabies3. The Waterbabies: 《水孩子》，为英国19世纪作家查尔斯·金斯利所著的一部儿童文学经典名著，亦为其儿童文学创作的代表作，讲述了一个男孩怎样成长为一个男子汉的故事。. She liked it too. I never knew how sick she was until that day I tried to show her one of the pictures in the book, a beautiful color picture of the water babies swimming in the sea. I held the book up to her face. I can’t see it, she said, I’m blind. And then I was ashamed.

She listened to every book, every poem I read her.One day I read her one of my own. I came very close. I whispered it into the pillow:

I want to be

Like the waves on the sea,

Like the clouds in the wind,

But I’m me.

One day I’ll jump

Out of my skin.

I’ll shake the sky

Like a hundred violins.

That’s nice. That’s very good, she said in her tired voice.You just remember to keep writing, Esperanza （作者的名字）. You must keep writing. It will keep you free, and I said yes, but at that time I didn’t know what she meant.

The day we played the game, we didn’t know she was going to die. We pretended with our heads thrown back,our arms limp and useless, dangling like the dead. We laughed the way she did. WE talked the way she talked,the way blind people talk without moving their head. We imitated（模仿，仿效）the way you had to lift her head a little so she could drink water, she sucked it up slow out of a green tin cup. The water was warm and tasted like metal.Lucy laughed. Rachel too. We took turns being her. We screamed in the weak voice of a parrot for Totchy to come and wash those dishes. It was easy.

We didn’t know. She had been dying such a long time, we forgot. Maybe she was ashamed. Maybe she was embarrassed it took so many years. The kids who wanted to be kids instead of washing dishes and ironing（熨）their papa’s shirts, and the husband who wanted a wife again.

And then she died, my aunt who listened to my poems.

And then we began to dream the dreams.

Bums（流浪者）in the Attic（阁楼）

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（高傲的，自大的）, 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 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（吱吱嘎嘎响）upstairs. The attic grumble（嘟囔，抱怨）.

Rats? They’ll ask.

Bums, I’ll say, and I’ll be happy.

Mango Says Goodbye Sometimes

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 （步履艰难地走） 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.