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"No! I won't!" I screamed.
“不练！就不练!”我尖声高叫。
She yanked me by the arm, pulled me off the floor, snapped off the TV. She was frighteningly strong, half pulling, half carrying me towards the piano as I kicked the throw rugs under my feet. She lifted me up and onto the hard bench. I was sobbing by now, looking at her bitterly. Her chest was heaving even more and her mouth was open, smiling crazily as if she were pleased I was crying.
她拽住我的胳膊，把我拖到地上，啪地关掉电视。她力气大得吓人，尽管我蹬踢着脚下的地毯，她还是把我半拖半推到钢琴旁。随后，她把我拽起来弄到硬邦邦的琴凳上。我已泣不成声，恨恨地看着她。她的胸脯起伏得更剧烈，张着嘴，疯了般地咧着嘴笑，好像因为我哭而感到满足。
"You want me to be someone that I'm not!" I sobbed. "I'll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be!"
“你想把我培养成我做不到的人!”我抽泣着，“我绝不会成为你想要的那种女儿!”
"Only two kinds of daughters," she shouted in Chinese. "Those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!"
“只有两种女儿，”她用汉语大喊，“听话的和不听话的！这个家只容得下一种女儿，那就是听话的!”
"Then I wish I wasn't your daughter, I wish you weren't my mother," I shouted. As I said these things I got scared. It felt like worms and toads and slimy things crawling out of my chest, but it also felt good, as if this awful side of me had surfaced, at last.
“希望我不是你的女儿。希望你也不是我的母亲!”我喊着。同时我有些害怕，好像有蠕虫、蟾蜍或别的滑溜溜的东西爬出我的胸膛。可我又感到畅快，好像我那可怕的一面最终显露出来了。
"Too late to change this,"said my mother shrilly.
“来不及了！变不了了！”母亲尖声说道。
And I could sense her anger rising to its breaking point. I wanted to see it spill over. And that's when I remembered the babies she had lost in China, the ones we never talked about. "Then I wish I'd never been born!" I shouted. "I wish I were dead! Like them."
我能感觉到她气愤到极点，即将爆发。我真想让她的愤怒顷刻迸发。突然，我想到了她在中国那对失去的、我们从不谈论的孪生女婴。“我希望你没有生我!”我扯着嗓子喊，“我希望我死了！就像她们一样。”
It was as if I had said magic words. Alakazam!-and her face went blank, her mouth closed, her arms went slack, and she backed out of the room, stunned, as if she were blowing away like a small brown leaf, thin, brittle, lifeless.
我好像是说出神奇的咒语。阿拉卡扎姆！她的脸部失去了表情，嘴巴紧闭，双臂无力地垂下。她退出了房间，神色惊异，好像一小片枯黄的树叶被风吹走了，那样的单薄、脆弱、毫无生气。
It was not the only disappointment my mother felt in me. In the years that followed, I failed her many times, each time asserting my own will, my right to fall short of expectations. I didn't get straight As. I didn't become class president. I didn't get into Stanford. I dropped out of college.
我母亲不止一次对我失望。在随后的几年里，我多次令她失望，每次都是我坚持自己的意愿，坚持表达自己不能满足她期望的权力。我没有得到全A的成绩，没有当上班长，没能进斯坦福大学。我中途放弃了大学学业。
For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be, I could only be me.
因为跟母亲不一样，我不相信心想事成。我只能做我自己。
