當(dāng)幸福來敲門(英文版)

1、第1章IHIIMIIHIIHI1Candyn my memory ' s sketch of early childhood, drawn by an artist of the impressionist school, thereis one image that sta nds out above the rest which whe n called forth is preceded by themouth-wateri ng aroma of pan cake syrup warm ing in a skillet and the crackli ng, bubbli ng

2、 sounds of the syrup tran sform ing magically into homemade pull can dy. The n she comes into view, the real, real pretty woman who stands at the stove, making this magic just for me.Or at least, that ' s how it feels to a boy of three years old. There is another wonderful smellthat accompa nies

3、 her prese nce as she turns, smili ng right in my direct ion, as she steps closer to where I sta nd in the middle of the kitche n wait ing eagerly n ext to my sister, seve n-year-oldOphelia, and two of the other childre n, Rufus and Pookie, who live in this house. As she slips the cooli ng candy off

4、 the woode n spo on, pull ing and break ing it into pieces that she brings and places in my outstretched hand, as she watches me happily gobbli ng up the tasty sweet ness, her wonderful fragrance is there again. Not perfume or anything floral or spicy it ' s just a clean,warm, good smell that wr

5、aps around me like a Superman cape, making me feel strong, special, and loved even if I don ' t have words for those concepts yet.Though I don ' t know who she is, I sense a familiarity about her, not only because she hascome before and made candy in this same fashi on, but also because of h

6、ow she looks at me likeshe' s talking to me from her eyes, sayingYou remember me, don ' t you?At this point in childhood, and for most of the first five years of my life, the map of myworld was broke n strictly into two territoriesthe familiar and the unknown. The happy, safezone of the fami

7、liar was very small, often a shifting dot on the map, while the unknown was vast, terrify ing, and con sta nt.What I did know by the age of three or four was that Ophelia was my older sister and best friend, and also that we were treated with kindn ess by Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, the adults whose hous

8、e we lived in. What I didn' t know was that the Robinsons ' house was a foster home, or whatthat meant. Our situation where our real parents were and why we didn' t live with them, or whywe sometimes did live with un cles and aunts and cous inswas as mysterious as the situati ons ofthe o

9、ther foster children living at the Robinsons'.What mattered most was that I had a sister who looked out for me, and I had Rufus and Pookie and the other boys to follow outside for fun and mischief. All that was familiar, the backyard and the rest of the block, was safe turf where we could run an

10、d play games like tag, kick-the-can, and hide-and-seek, even after dark. That is, except, for the house two doors down from the Robinsons.Every time we passed it I had to almost look the other way, just knowing the old white woman who lived there might suddenly appear and put an evil curse on me bec

11、ause, accordingto Ophelia and everyone else in the neighborhood, the old woman was a witch.When Ophelia and I passed by the house together once and I confessed that I was scared of the witch, my sister said,“I ain 't scared, ” and to prove it she walked right into the front yard andgrabbed a han

12、dful of cherries off the woman's cherry tree.Ophelia ate those cherries with a smile. But within the week I was in the Robinsons' housewhen here came Ophelia, racing up the steps and stumbling inside, panting and holding her seven-year-old chest, describing how the witch had caught her steal

13、ing cherries and grabbed her arm, cackling,“I'm gonna get you! ”Scared to death as she was now, Ophelia soon decided that since she had escaped an untimely death once, she might as well go back to stealing cherries. Even so, she made me promise to avoid the strange woman's house. “Now, remem

14、ber, ” Ophelia warned,“when you walkby, if you see her on the porch, don't you look at her and never say nuthin' to her, even if she calyou by name. ”I didn 't have to promise because I knew that nothing and no one could ever make me do that.But I was still haunted by nightmares so real

15、that I could have sworn I actually snuck into her house and found myself in the middle of a dark, creepy room where I was surrounded by an army of cats, rearing up on their back legs, baring their claws and fangs. The nightmares were so intense that for the longest time I had an irrational fear and

16、dislike of cats. At the same time, I was not entirely convinced that this old woman was in fact a witch. Maybe she was just different. Since I never seen any white people other than her, I figured they might all be like that.Then again, because my big sister was my only resource for explaining all t

17、hat was unknown, I believed her and accepted her explanations. But as I pieced together fragments of information about our family over the years, mainly from Ophelia and also from some of our uncles and aunts, I found the answers much harder to grasp.How the real pretty woman who came to make the ca

18、ndy fit into the puzzle, I was never told, but something old and wise inside me knew that she was important. Maybe it was how she seemed to pay special attention to me, even though she was just as nice to Ophelia and the other kids, or maybe it was how she and I seemed to have a secret way of talkin

19、g without words. In ourunspoken conversation, I understood her to be saying that seeing me happy made her even happier, and so somewhere in my cells, that became my first job in life to make her feel as good as she made me feel. Intuitively, I also understood who she was, in spite of never being tol

20、d, and there is a moment of recognition that comes during one of her visits as I watch her at the stove and make observations that will be reinforced in years to come.More than pretty, she is beautiful, a stop-you-in-your-tracks-turn-around-and-look-twice beautiful. Not tall at five-four, but with a

21、 stature of nobility that makes her appear much taller, she is light brow n skinned but not too lightalmost the color of the rich maple syrup she stirs andheats into candy. She has supernaturally strong fingernailscapable of breaking an apple in half,bare-handed, something that few women or men can

22、do and something that impresses me for life.She has a stylish way of dressingthe color burgundy and paisley print dresses stand outwith ascarf or shawl thrown over her shoulder to give her a feminine, flowing look. The brightness of color and the flowing layers of fabric give her an appearance I wou

23、ld later describe asAfro-centric.But the features that most capture her beauty are her expressive eyes and her amazing smile.Then and later, I liken that smile to opening a refrigerator at night. You open up that door smile and the light fills up the room. Even on those nights ahead when the refrige

24、rator contains nothing but a lightbulb and ice water, her smile and the memory of her smile are all the comforts I need.When the recognition occurs exactly, I don't recall, except that it takes place somewhere inmy fourth year, maybe after she hands me a piece of candy, in an instant when at las

25、t I can respond to that look she has been giving me and reassure her with my own lookOf course Irememberyou, you 're my momma!Ours was a family of secrets. Over the years, I heard only parts of my mother's saga, toldto me by a variety of sources, so that the understanding that eventually eme

26、rged was of a kind of Cinderella story without the fairy godmother and the part at the end where she marries the prince and they all live happily ever after. The oldest and only daughter of the four surviving children born to parents Archie and Ophelia Gardner, Bettye Jean came into this world in 19

27、28, in Little Rock, Arkansas, but was raised in Depression-era, dirt-poor, rural Louisianasomewhere near thetown of Rayville, population five hundred. With the trials of poverty and racism, life wasn't efor the Gardners. Bettye and her brother Archie who cried grown-man tears when he recalledwha

28、t it was like walking the long, dusty country roads to school in the thirties and forties in Rayville had to keep their heads up as white children rode by in horse-drawn wagons or on horseback, looking down at the two of them, pointing, calling them“niggers, ” and spitting onthem.Yet, in spite of ha

29、rd times and hateful ignorance, Bettye' s childhood was relatively stableand very loving. Adored by her three younger brothers Archie Jr., Willie, and Henry she was,in fact, a golden girl of promise, a star student who finished third in her class when she graduated from Rayville Colored High Sch

30、ool in 1946. But her dreams quickly unraveled the moment it was time to go off to college and pursue her calling as an educator, starting with the devastating sudden death of her mother. Like Cinderella, while she was still in mourning, almost overnight her father remarried, leaving Bettye to cope w

31、ith a domineering stepmother who went by the ironicnickname of Little Mama and a new set of competitive stepsiblings. Just at a time when BettyeJean was depending on the financial support from her father to go to college, Little Mama saw to it that the money went to her own daughter, Eddie Lee who h

32、ad graduated in the same class asBettye but wasn ' t among the top students.Rather than giving up, even though her heart was broken by her father' s refusal to help,Bettye found work as a substitute teacher while she put herself through beauty school. But once again, when she needed financia

33、l assistance from her father to pay for her state licensing fees, he said no.With all the talent, brilliance, and beauty that had been naturally bestowed on Bettye Jean Gardner, she had apparently drawn an unlucky card when it came to men most of whom seemeddestined to disappoint her, starting with

34、her own daddy. There was Samuel Salter, a married schoolteacher who professed his love for her and his plan to leave his wife, but who must have changed his mind when she became pregnant. True to form, her daddy and Little Mama were no help. They let it be known that she had embarrassed them enough

35、by being single at age twenty-two, but for her to be an old maid and an unwed mother was too much shame for them to bear. On these grounds, they put her out.Thus began my mother ' s four-year trek to Milwaukee, where all three of her brothers had settled. Along the way she gave birth to my siste

36、r named Ophelia for her belovedmother before crossing paths with a tall, dark, handsome stranger during a trip back to Louisiana. His name was Thomas Turner, a married man who swept Bettye Jean off her feet either romantically or by force. The result was me, Christopher Paul Gardner, born in Milwauk

37、ee, Wisconsin, on February 9, 1954 the same year, auspiciously, that school segregation was ruled inviolation of the Fourteenth Amendment by the U.S. Supreme Court.In keeping with other family mysteries, my father was a figment of the vast unknown throughout my childhood. His name was mentioned only

38、 once or twice. It probably would have bothered me much more if I weren' t so occupied trying to get to the bottom of other more pressingquestions, especially the how-when-where-why my smart, strong, beautiful mother ever became entangled with Freddie Triplett.Tall and dark, but not exactly hand

39、some at times he bore a strong resemblance to SonnyListon Freddie had the demeanor of some ill-begotten cross between a pit bull and Godzilla. At six-two, 280 pounds, he did have a stature and brawn that some women found attractive. Whateverit was that first caught her attention must have been a red

40、eeming side of him that later vanished. Or maybe, as I 'd wonder in my youthful imagination, my mother was tricked by a magic spell into thinking that he was one of those frog princes. After all, the other men who looked good had not turned out to be dependable; maybe she thought Freddie was the

41、 oppositea man who lookeddangerous but was kind and tender underneath his disguise. If that was the case, and she believed in the fairy tale that her kiss would turn the frog into a prince, she was sadly mistaken. In fact, he turned out to be many times more dangerous than he looked, especially afte

42、r that first kiss, and after he decided she was his.No one ever laid out the sequence of events that led to my mother being prosecuted and imprisoned for alleged welfare fraud. It started out with an anonymous tip, apparently, that somehow she was a danger to society because she was earning money at

43、 a jobto feed and carefor her two children (Ophelia and me) and a third on the way (my sister Sharon)and wasreceiving assistance at the same time. That anonymous tip had come from Freddie, a man willing to do or say anything to have her locked up for three years because she had committed the crime o

44、f trying to leave his sorry ass.It was because of Freddie's actions in having her sent away that Ophelia and I spent thosethree years either in foster care or with extended family members. Yet we never knew why or when changes in our living situation would take place.Just as no one told me that

45、it was my mother who came to make candy and visit us at the foster home under special, supervised leave from prison, no explanation accompanied our move when Ophelia and I went to stay with my Uncle Archie and his wife Clara, or TT as we all called her. Way back in Louisiana, the entire Gardner fami

46、ly must have signed an oath of secrecy because serious questions about the past were almost always shrugged off, a policy my mother may have instituted out of her dislike for discussing anything unpleasant.Later on in my adolescence there was one occasion when I pressed her about just who my father

47、was and why he wasn't in my life. Moms gave me one of her searing looks, the kind thatgot me to be quiet real fast.“But . . .” I tried to protest.She shook her head no, unwilling to open up.“Why?”“ Well, because the past is the past, ” Moms said firmly. Seeing my frustration, she sighed but stil

48、l insisted, “Ain't nothing you can do about it. ” She put a stop to my questions, wistfully remarking, “ Things happen. ” And that was all there was to it.Even as my questions continued, while waiting for clarification to arrive of its own accord, I went back to my job of trying to be as happy a

49、s possible not a difficult assignment at first.The land of the familiar where I grew up in one of the poorer areas of the north side ofMilwaukee was a world that I eventually viewed as a blackHappy Days. Just like on that TVshow that was set in the 1950s in the same time period in which my neighborh

50、ood seemed to befrozen even in later decades there were local hangouts, places where different age groupsgathered to socialize, well-known quirky merchants, and an abundance of great characters. While on the TV show the only black color you ever saw was Fonzie' s leather jacket, in myneighborhoo

51、d, for nearly the first dozen years of my life, the only white people I ever saw were on television and in police cars.Some of the greatest characters in our Happy Days version were my own family members, starting with my three stubborn uncles. After both Willie and Henry got out of the Army, having

52、 traveled to many distant shores, the two returned to Louisiana long enough to join with Uncle Archie as each came to the simultaneous decision to get as far away from southern bigotry as he possibly could.Their plan was to go to Canada, but when their car broke down in Milwaukee, so the story goes,

53、 they laid anchor and went no farther. The hardworking Gardner brothers didn' t have toomuch trouble making Milwaukee home. To them, the fertile, versatile city that had been plunked down at the meeting place of the Milwaukee River and Lake Michigan which provided rich soilfor farming and ample

54、waterways for trade and industry was their land of milk and honey, ofgolden opportunity. To put up with the extremes in the seasons, the brutal winters and scorching summers, you had to have an innate toughness and the kind of deeply practical, hustling ability that my relatives and many of the othe

55、r minorities and immigrants brought with them to Wisconsin from other places. Those traits must have existed as well as in the descendents of the true Milwaukeeans members of tribes like the Winnebago and Potawatomi. There was another local personality trait not exclusive to the new arrivals of blac

56、ks, Jews, Italians, and eastern Europeans or the families of the first wave of settlers from Germany, Ireland, and Scandinavia, or the area ' s Native Americans, and that was an almost crazy optimism.All that ambitious, pragmatic dreaming sometimes resulted in overachievement. It wasn' tenou

57、gh to just have one brand of beer, Milwaukee had to have several. The region couldn' t just befamous for its dairies, it had to have the best cheese in the world. There wasn' t just one majorindustry but several from the brickyards, tanneries, breweries, shipyards, and meatpackingbusinesses

58、to the dominating steel factories like Inland Steel and A. O. Smith and the automotive giant American Motors (deceased as of the late 1980s).It was mainly the steel mills and foundries and carmakers that brought so many blacks fromstates like Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and all points

59、south of the Mason-Dixon north to Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland. These blue-collar jobs were far and away preferable to a life sharecropping in the sweltering heat way down south in Dixie, in places where less than a century earlier many of our people had been enslaved. Seemed like almost everyone had family members that brought with them their country ways and who tended to stick together. Sam Salter Ophelia ' s father ended u