芒果街上的小屋么么·奥提兹

么么·奥提兹

　　凯茜一家搬走后，么么·奥提兹搬进了她的家。他其实不叫么么。他叫胡安。可我们问他叫什么名字时，他说叫么么。除他妈妈外，所有人都这么叫他。

　　么么有条灰眼睛的狗，一条有两个名字的牧羊犬，一个英文名一个西班牙名。那条狗很大，像一个披着狗皮的人，跑起来和主人一样，又笨又癫，脚爪踢里踏拉，一路拍打过去，像没系带的鞋。

　　凯茜的爸爸盖了么么搬进去住的屋子。是木头的。屋里的地面有坡度。有的房间在坡上，有的在坡下。没有小间。房子前面有21级台阶，全都向一边倾斜，盘踞在那里像一嘴歪牙（凯茜说，是故意做成这样的，方便雨水流出去）。么么的妈妈从门道里一喊，么么就手忙脚乱地爬上这21级木台阶，后面跟着爬的是那条有两个名字的狗。

　　屋后面是个院子，大部分地方是泥土地面，还有一扎油腻腻的木板，是过去的车库。不过，你记得最清的应该是那棵树，巨大，枝干肥硕，高高的枝桠上栖息着繁盛的松鼠家族。从上面张望，周围都是邻里的屋顶，A字形，浇了黑色的沥青。上面的天沟里，躺着一些永远不再着地的皮球。树底下，那条有两个名字的狗在冲着空气狂吠。街区的尽头是我的家，看上去更小了，像只猫儿缩起脚爪窝在那里。

　　这棵树被我们挑来举行第一届年度人猿泰山跳跃比赛。么么赢了。可两条胳膊都摔破了。

　　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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