"You look like a Negro Chinese," she lamented, as if I had done this on purpose.
“你看，像个黑人华人了。”母亲抱怨，好像我故意想这样似的。
The instructor of the beauty training school had to lop off these soggy clumps to make my hair even again. "Peter Pan is very popular these days" the instructor assured my mother. I now had hair the length of a boy's, with straight-across bangs that hung at a slant two inches above my eyebrows. I liked the haircut, and it made me actually look forward to my future fame.
美容培训班的指导老师不得不亲自出马，操起剪刀修理我头上那湿漉漉的乱发。“现在很时兴彼得·潘式的发型，”那老师想让母亲放心。结果我的头发被剪成男孩子的那样：直溜溜的刘海垂到眉毛上方两英寸的地方。我喜欢这种发式，它使我期待将来的名气。
In fact, in the beginning I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so. I pictured this prodigy part of me as many different images, trying each one on for size. I was a dainty ballerina girl standing by the curtain, waiting to hear the right music that would send me floating on my tiptoes. I was like the Christ child lifted out of the straw manger, crying with holy indignity. I was Cinderella stepping from her pumpkin carriage with sparkly cartoon music filling the air.
真的，刚开始，我像母亲一样兴奋，或许比她更兴奋。我憧憬着自己种种各不相同的天才形象，看看哪个更加适合于自己。有时我犹如一位已在侧幕摆好优美姿势的芭蕾舞演员，只等着音乐的响起，即踮起足尖翩然起舞；有时我就像马厩里诞生的圣婴，用哭声宣布自己的降临；有时我又是灰姑娘，在卡通音乐声中迈下南瓜马车。
In all of my imaginings, I was filled with a sense that I would soon become perfect. My mother and father would adore me. I would be beyond reproach. I would never feel the need to sulk, for anything. But sometimes the prodigy in me became impatient. "If you don't hurry up and get me out of here, I'm disappearing for good," it warned. "And then you'll always be nothing."
反正我觉得，我不久就会变得十分完美：父母会称赞我，我再不会挨骂，我从此再也不会憋闷。可是我大脑中的天才开始难耐:“你要再不赶紧展示我，我就永远消失，”它警告说，“如果这样， 你将一事无成。”
Every night after dinner my mother and I would sit at the Formica topped kitchen table. She would present new tests, taking her examples from stories of amazing children she had read in Ripley's Believe It or Not or Good Housekeeping, Reader's digest, and a dozen other magazines she kept in a pile in our bathroom. My mother got these magazines from people whose houses she cleaned. And since she cleaned many houses each week, we had a great assortment. She would look through them all, searching for stories about remarkable children.
每天晚饭后，母亲和我常常坐在没有桌布的餐桌边。她总用新题考我，这些题都是她读过故事中那些天才儿童的例子，是她从里普利的《信不信由你》《好管家》《读者文摘》等堆在我家浴室里十几种杂志上搜集来的。母亲从雇她做清洁工的人家弄来这些杂志。她每周给多户人家打扫房间，我们家的杂志种类自然就不少。她逐一浏览，搜刮非凡儿童的故事。