芒果街上的小屋麼麼·奧提茲

麼麼·奧提茲

　　凱茜一家搬走後，麼麼·奧提茲搬進了她的家。他其實不叫麼麼。他叫胡安。可我們問他叫什麼名字時，他說叫麼麼。除他媽媽外，所有人都這麼叫他。

　　麼麼有條灰眼睛的狗，一條有兩個名字的牧羊犬，一個英文名一個西班牙名。那條狗很大，像一個披著狗皮的人，跑起來和主人一樣，又笨又癲，腳爪踢裡踏拉，一路拍打過去，像沒系帶的鞋。

　　凱茜的爸爸蓋了麼麼搬進去住的屋子。是木頭的。屋裡的地面有坡度。有的房間在坡上，有的在坡下。沒有小間。房子前面有21級臺階，全都向一邊傾斜，盤踞在那裡像一嘴歪牙（凱茜說，是故意做成這樣的，方便雨水流出去）。麼麼的媽媽從門道裡一喊，麼麼就手忙腳亂地爬上這21級木臺階，後面跟著爬的是那條有兩個名字的狗。

　　屋後面是個院子，大部分地方是泥土地面，還有一紮油膩膩的木板，是過去的車庫。不過，你記得最清的應該是那棵樹，巨大，枝幹肥碩，高高的枝椏上棲息著繁盛的松鼠家族。從上面張望，周圍都是鄰里的屋頂，A字形，澆了黑色的瀝青。上面的天溝裡，躺著一些永遠不再著地的皮球。樹底下，那條有兩個名字的狗在沖著空氣狂吠。街區的盡頭是我的家，看上去更小了，像只貓兒縮起腳爪窩在那裡。

　　這棵樹被我們挑來舉行第一屆年度人猿泰山跳躍比賽。麼麼贏了。可兩條胳膊都摔破了。

　　Meme Ortiz moved into Cathy's house after her family moved away. His name isn't really Meme. His name is Juan. But when we asked him what his name was he said Meme, and that's what everybody calls him except his mother.

　　Meme has a dog with gray eyes, a sheepdog with two names, one in English and one in Spanish. The dog is big, like a man dressed in a dog suit, and runs the same way its owner does, clumsy and wild and with the limbs flopping all over the place like untied shoes.

　　Cathy's father built the house Meme moved into. It is wooden. Ihe floors slant. Some rooms uphill. Some down. And there are no closets. Out front there are twenty-oeps, all lopsided and jutting like crooked teeth（made that way on purpose, Cathy said, so the rain will slide off），and when Meme's mama calls from the doorway, Meme goes scrambling up the twenty-one wooden stairs with the dog with two names scrambling after him.

　　Around the back is a yard, mostly dirt, and a greasy bunch of boards that used to be a garage. But what you remember most is this tree, huge, with fat arms and mighty families of squirrels in the higher branches. All around, the neighborhood of roofs, black-tarred and A-framed, and in their gutters, the balls that never came back down to earth. Down at the base of the tree, the dog with two names barks into the empty air, and there at the end of the block, looking smaller still, our house with its feet tucked under like a cat.

　　This is the tree we chose for the First Annual Tarzan Jumping test. Meme won. And broke both arms.

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