现代大学英语精读5lesson2课文TwoKinds.docx

1、现代大学英语精读5lesson2课文TwoKindsTwo Kinds Amy TanMy mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America. You could open a restaurant. You could work for the government and get good retirement. You could buy a house with almost no money down. You could become rich. You could become instantly

2、famous.“Of course, you can be a prodigy1, too,” my mother told me when I was nine. “You can be best anything. What does Auntie Lindo know? Her daughter, she is only best tricky.”America was where all my mothers hopes lay. She had come to San Francisco in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mo

3、ther and father, her home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls. But she never looked back with regret. Things could get better in so many ways.We didnt immediately pick the right kind of prodigy. At first my mother thought I could be a Chinese Shirley Temple2. Wed watch Shirleys ol

4、d movies on TV as though they were training films. My mother would poke my arm and say, “Ni kan.You watch.” And I would see Shirley tapping her feet, or singing a sailor song, or pursing her lips into a very round O while saying “Oh, my goodness.”“Ni kan,” my mother said, as Shirleys eyes flooded wi

5、th tears. “You already know how. Dont need talent for crying!” Soon after my mother got this idea about Shirley Temple, she took me to the beauty training school in the Mission District and put me in the hands of a student who could barely hold the scissors without shaking. Instead of getting big fa

6、t curls, I emerged with an uneven mass of crinkly black fuzz3. My mother dragged me off to the bathroom and tried to wet down my hair. “You look like a Negro Chinese,” she lamented, as if I had done this on purpose. The instructor of the beauty training school had to lop off4 these soggy clumps to m

7、ake my hair even again. “Peter Pan5 is very popular these days” the instructor assured my mother. I now had bad hair the length of a boys, with curly 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. In fact, in the

8、beginning I was just as excited as my mother, maybe even more so. I pictured this prodigy part of me as many different images, and I tried each one on for size. I was a dainty ballerina girl standing by the curtain, waiting to hear the music that would send me floating on my tiptoes. I was like the

9、Christ child lifted out of the straw manger, crying with holy indignity. I was Cinderella6 stepping from her pumpkin carriage with sparkly cartoon music filling the air. 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 b

10、e beyond reproach. I would never feel the need to sulk, or to clamor for anything. But sometimes the prodigy in me became impatient. “If you dont hurry up and get me out of here, Im disappearing for good,” it warned. “And then youll always be nothing.” Every night after dinner my mother and I would

11、sit at the Formica7 topped kitchen table. She would present new tests, taking her examples from stories of amazing children that she read in Ripleys Believe It or Not or Good Housekeeping, Readers digest, or any of a dozen other magazines she kept in a pile in our bathroom. My mother got these magaz

12、ines 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. The first night she brought out a story about a three-year-old boy who knew the capitals of all the sta

13、tes and even the most of the European countries. A teacher was quoted as saying that the little boy could also pronounce the names of the foreign cities correctly. “Whats the capital of Finland?” my mother asked me, looking at the story.All I knew was the capital of California, because Sacramento8 w

14、as the name of the street we lived on in Chinatown9. “Nairobi10!” I quessed, saying the most foreign word I could think of. She checked to see if that might be one way to pronounce “Helsinki11” before showing me the answer. The tests got harder - multiplying numbers in my head, finding the queen of

15、hearts in a deck of cards, trying to stand on my head without using my hands, predicting the daily temperatures in Los angeles, New York, and London.One night I had to look at a page from the Bible for three minutes and then report everything I could remember. “Now Jehoshaphat had riches12 and honor

16、 in abundance and thats all I remember, Ma,” I said.And after seeing, once again, my mothers disappointed face, something inside me began to die. I hated the tests, the raised hopes and failed expectations. Before going to bed that night I looked in the mirror above the bathroom sink, and I saw only

17、 my face staring back-and understood that it would always be this ordinary face -I began to cry. Such a sad, ugly girl! I made high-pitched noises like a crazed animal, trying to scratch out the face in the mirror.And then I saw what seemed to be the prodigy side of me-a face I had never seen before

18、. I looked at my reflection, blinking so that I could see more clearly. The girl staring back at me was angry, powerful. She and I were the same. I had new thoughts, willful thoughts or rather, thoughts filled with lots of wonts. I wont let her change me, I promised myself. I wont be what Im not. So

19、 now when my mother presented her tests, I performed listlessly, my head propped on one arm. I pretended to be bored. And I was. I got so bored that I started counting the bellows of the foghorns out on the bay while my mother drilled me in other areas. The sound was comforting and reminded me of th

20、e cow jumping over the moon. And the next day I played a game with myself, seeing if my mother would give up on me before eight bellows. After a while I usually counted ony one bellow, maybe two at most. At last she was beginning to give up hope.Two or three months went by without any mention of my

21、being a prodigy. And then one day my mother was watching the Ed Sullivan Show13 on TV. The TV was old and the sound kept shorting out. Every time my mother got halfway up from the sofa to adjust the set, the sound would come back on and Sullivan would be talking. As soon as she sat down, Sullivan wo

22、uld go silent again. She got up, the TV broke into loud piano music. She sat down, silence. Up and down, back and forth, quiet and loud. It was like a stiff, embraceless dance between her and the TV set. Finally, she stood by the set with her hand on the sound dial. She seemed entranced by the music

23、, a frenzied little piano piece with a mesmerizing quality, which alternated between quick, playful passages and teasing, lilting ones. “Ni kan,” my mother said, calling me over with hurried hand gestures. “Look here.”I could see why my mother was fascinated by the music. It was being pounded out by

24、 a little Chinese girl, about nine years old, with a Peter Pan haircut. The girl had the sauciness of a Shirley Temple. She was proudly modest, like a proper Chinese Child. And she also did a fancy sweep of a curtsy, so that the fluffy skirt of her white dress cascaded to the floor like petals of a

25、large carnation.In spite of these warning signs, I wasnt worried. Our family had no piano and we couldnt afford to buy one, let alone reams of sheet music and piano lessons. So I could be generous in my comments when my mother badmouthed14 the little girl on TV.“Play note right, but doesnt sound goo

26、d!” my mother complained “No singing sound.”“What are you picking on her for?” I said carelessly. “Shes pretty good. Maybe shes not the best, but shes trying hard.” I knew almost immediately that I would be sorry I had said that.“Just like you,” she said. “Not the best. Because you not trying.” She

27、gave a little huff as she let go of the sound dial and sat down on the sofa. The little Chinese girl sat down also, to play an encore of “Anitras Tanz,” by Grieg15. I remember the song, because later on I had to learn how to play it. Three days after watching the Ed Sullivan Show my mother told me w

28、hat my schedule would be for piano lessons and piano practice. She had talked to Mr. Chong, who lived on the first floor of our apartment building. Mr.Chong was a retired piano teacher, and my mother had traded housecleaning services for weekly lessons and a piano for me to practice on every day, tw

29、o hours a day, from four until six.When my mother told me this, I felt as though I had been sent to hell. I wished and then kicked my foot a little when I couldn”t stand it anymore.“Why dont you like me the way I am? Im not a genius! I cant play the piano. And even if I could, I wouldnt go on TV if

30、you paid me a million dollars!” I cried.My mother slapped me. “Who ask you be genius.”she shouted. “Only ask you be your best. For you sake. You think I want you be genius? Hnnh! What for! Who ask you!”“So ungrateful,”I heard her mutter in chinese. “If she had as much talent as she had temper, she w

31、ould be famous now.”Mr. Chong, whom I secretly nicknamed Old Chong, was very strange, always tapping his fingers to the silent music of an invisible orchestra. He looked ancient in my eyes. He had lost most of the hair on top of his head and he wore thick glasses and had eyes that always thought, si

32、nce he lived with his mother and was not yet married.I met Old Lady Chong once, and that was enough. She had a peculiar smell, like a baby that had done something in its pants, and her fingers felt like a dead persons, like an old peach I once found in the back of the refrigerator: its skin just slid off the flesh when I picked it up. I soon found out why Old Chong had retired from teaching piano. He was deaf. “Like Beethoven!” he shouted to me “Were both listening only in our head!” And he would start to conduct his frantic silent sonatas16. Our lessons went like this. He wou