Melody Chavis loves natures. She believes bringing it back into the city is one way to help save her run-down,crime-ridden neighborhood. Planting trees along the street where she livesseems like one step in the right direction, but it turned out to be not quite so simple.
梅洛迪·查維斯熱愛大自然。她相信把大自然帶回城市是幫助挽救她那衰落的、頻頻發生犯罪活動的住宅區的一種辦法。在她居所的街道旁植樹似乎是邁出的正確可行的一步,但結果表明事情并非那么簡單。
Street Trees
街樹
Melody Ermachild Chavis
梅洛迪·厄瑪蔡爾德·查維斯
I was drawn to my upstairs bedroom window by shouting in the street. The shouter was a middle-aged black man in shabby pants, and he strode, fast, right down the middle of the street. Storming across the intersection, the man beat the air with his fists and shouted intothe sky. "Somalia!" he cried. "Somalia!"
街上的喊叫聲把我吸引到樓上臥室的窗邊。喊叫的是個穿著破破爛爛褲子的中年黑人;他沿著街道中央大踏步快速走去。那漢子一邊闖過十字路口,一邊揮舞拳頭,仰天大吼。"索馬里!"他喊道,"索馬里!"
Ours is a neighborhood where poverty and addiction have made misery for years, and this waswhen airlifts of food to the Horn of Africa were all over the nightly news. "I know what you mean," I thought. "Why there? Why feed them but not you?"
多年來,我們的住宅區因貧困和吸毒一直處于悲慘境地,這事發生期間,夜晚新聞中正廣為報道空運食物到非洲之角的消息。"我知道你是什么意思,"我想,"為什么運到那兒?為什么給他們吃而不給你吃?"
Then he walked up to the newly planted tree under my window, grabbed its skinny trunk withboth hands, yanked it over sideways, and cracked it in half on his knee. He threw the tree's leafy top onto the sidewalk and stomped off, cursing. I pressed my palms to the glass as he disappeared up the sidewalk.
過一會兒,他走到我窗下最近種的一棵樹旁,用雙手抓住細瘦的樹干,使勁往一邊拔,放在膝上拗成兩半。他把帶葉的樹梢扔到人行道上,一邊咒罵一邊噔噔地踩著重步離去。我把手掌緊緊貼在窗上,看著他在人行道上漸漸消失。