厌倦了整天给头发上电刑，这几天我找了一个偷懒的办法： 把头发拽直盘在后脑上， 再用几十个卡子固定住， 这样头发里的圈就不明显了。 微微看到后皱了皱眉头， 但没有说什莫。刚才从外面回来，我的头发松开了。一圈儿一圈儿的伸展到我的肩膀。微微立刻注意到。她当时正在桌边研墨， 盯着我，眼睛像东北 狼一般犀利。
我现在瞥一眼微微。她在漫无目的的把玩手里的墨石。我意识到她的苦楚远远超越了我头发里的圈圈。这成了她的秘密之一，我也许会，也许不会揭开。
My curls have upset her. For the first time, it occurs to me that her anguish over my hair goes beyond the curls. It’s one of the many mysteries of her I may or may never find out.
As I tilt my head to iron my hair, my eyes fall on the family photos on the wall, inevitably gazing at the one on the side. The photo is small, hung on the edge of the cluster of photos like an afterthought. My father—or whom I insist to be my father—stands alone inside the simple, ill-fitting frame. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been obsessed with this picture, looking for resemblance between him and me. He has small, squinting eyes on his dark, square face, whereas my eyes are big and shaped like an apricot seed, or so others tell me. His nose is flared; his mouth is pulled slightly downward on the side, which gives him a sad expression. The only resemblance between us is the raven blackness of our hair, though his is straight. My father’s photo is small, but his image is huge in my mind. VeVe avoids talking about him. The only thing I know is that he was a renowned doctor who died from a rare illness when I was two. I’ve always had the inkling that he is still alive somewhere. As I grow older, that feeling grows stronger. Once VeVe became angry when I would not stop asking about him and said, “You must forget him. It's just you and me.” I knew then that VeVe was hiding the truth about my father from me, as she does so many other things. How do I even know if the man in the photo is indeed my father?
But he is, I always assure myself in the end.
Still grinding ink, VeVe has fallen into a trance; she seems locked in a place only she knows, and she will stay there until she is spent. This is the image of her I’ve known since childhood. She pours the ink into an empty milk bottle so she can grind more. Later, as always, I will empty the ink in the bottle, or bottles. She will need them again. And again.
As soon as every curl in my hair has yielded to the heat, I pull the electric comb out of the wall and sneak out. VeVe won’t notice I’m gone before I make it back.
此刻，微微仍然在研墨，好像落进了一个赌咒。好像被锁进了一个只有他她自己知道的地方。她要在那里呆下去，直到精疲力尽。她的这个形象是我从小就熟悉的。 她把没墨汁倒进空奶瓶里。之后我会把墨倒出来，把奶瓶收好，我知道她还会再需要的。
我头发里最后一个圈在高热里屈服了。我把电梳子从墙里拔出来。趁微微没注意，我悄悄的打开门走了出去。也许微微注意到以前我已经回来了。
--待续
Girl at Dawn 黎明女 已经发表在 Amazon.com:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=girl+at+dawn&ref=nb_sb_noss
