司氏姐妹 第15章：有其母就有其女

法妈躲到花园的一个角落里，慢慢地喝着一杯开水。在排队慰问时亨特太太表现出如此友善的姿态后，法妈认为应该让姑娘们在这儿多呆一会儿才对，尽管其他镇民们刺人的眼光有多么不舒服。她沉浸在自己的角落里，她的眼睛显得模糊，仿佛在看着远方。

在来到美国后，多年来她已经完善了如何让自己在人群中感到舒服的策略。她让自己眼睛的聚焦稍微偏离一些，使得周围人的面孔显的模糊和相互交错，使得她无法看到他们的眼球盯着的焦点，或者他们嘴角的跳动以及所指的方向。在她从上海来到加利福尼亚海岸的最初几年，这些策略是必须的。她记得她想过母亲说错了，美国并不是象她的名字一样是一个美丽的国家，她并不能更加容忍或接受人们之间的差异。虽然美国人的眼睛可能没有中国人那样犀利，但他们也能足够清晰的看到，她的皮肤是黄色的，她的头发是黑色的－－这些天生的东西本身是一个诅咒——比她是女巫的状况更糟糕。在中国，即使舌头被割断，眼睛被烧瞎（对巫婆的惩罚），她至少还能走回去，融入人群而不被认出。

法妈在旧金山市的街头徘徊了一个星期，无意中逛进了一条让她想起中国老家的小巷。她说服了一家小餐馆，让她做一名女侍者，后来她成为了一名厨师。她很快学到想要打破与白人之间的那堵墙，最可靠的方法是通过他们的胃。她开始安居下来并学会从中找到快乐——虽然象是兜了一大圈子－－在这陌生的土地上。

然后，一些变故迫使她来到安玫瑰镇。有那么一刻，法妈把目光聚焦在格雷厄姆的肖像上，她的视觉随之变得清晰。她突然倒吸了一口冷气，她的眼睛又蒙上一层阴影，这一次是因为泪水。她的记忆漂浮回溯到她早年的岁月－－在姑娘们还没出生，她自己还是个姑娘的岁月－－她突然意识到玛拉的境况与她自己是多么的相似。但是，这些年来她不是一直在努力保护她们不要遭受象自己一样的遭遇吗？她咽了一下口水，摇了摇头。有其母，必有其女。她应该知道她是不可能阻止她的女儿犯自己同样的错误的。

她花了一个月的时间横渡太平洋，来到旧金山，因为她的母亲在去世之前讲的故事。这些故事说，在大洋彼岸美丽的土地上，有很多城市。那里生活着形形色色，三教九流的人们，充满了各种各样具有魔法的人群。在那里，陌生人受到拥抱和欢迎，个人的隐私得到尊重，人们不用生活在那种时刻被人发现秘密的恐惧中。虽然法妈发现​​这些故事并不完全真实——这里是有更多看着不同的人，但他们被划分在城市不同的区域，所有的中国人住在某一地方，所有的黑人又在另一方——但有一点是真的，旧金山的确秘密的生活着一大批女巫。有一天，法妈在餐馆里服务了一名叫克拉拉的女顾客。克拉拉开始与她谈话，这在一般白人顾客中是很少见的，她们很快成了朋友。

克拉拉看上去很年轻，但法妈很快发现，她已是人到中年，她甚至有一个儿子与法妈年龄相仿。有一天，克拉拉问法妈是否女巫。令人惊讶的是，法妈并不感到奇怪。 “是的，”她说，“我是的。”

从那天起，克拉拉对待法妈象自己的孩子。克拉拉也是个女巫，她一直保守着秘密，甚至连她的家人也不知。她感到很孤独，因为不能与她的丈夫和儿子分享。她一直盼望有一个女儿，因为魔法只能传给女性。如此孤独的生活很是艰难，她告诉法妈。她能理解。

克拉拉的儿子特纳成为了法妈－－他母亲的徒弟－－的好朋友，虽然他不知道她们之间的关系实质。克拉拉鼓励他们之间的友情。最终，他们相爱，并结了婚。

有很多年，法妈和特纳婚姻美满。他们有了一个漂亮的女儿，取名为玛拉，然后又有了一对双胞胎。特纳自己有绿色的眼睛（象玛拉一样），他很奇怪他每个女儿的眼睛颜色是不同的。除了明亮的眼睛，女孩们淡淡的白色皮肤似乎是唯一一样从她们父亲那儿继承下来的东西。否则，她们看起来完全是中国人。法妈猜测，是神奇的魔法在眼睛的颜色上起了某种作用，虽然她不知道是如何起作用的——即使特纳没有魔法，因为他是一个男人，他的母亲有魔法的血液仍然流动在他的血管里。法妈和克拉拉都知道，他们的孩子的魔法会特别强大，因为魔法来自父母双方的家庭。 法妈和克拉拉也都猜测，眼睛的颜色最有可能是双重魔力组合的结果。

在以后的岁月里，当法妈自己单独抚养孩子们时，她才逐渐认识到每个女儿眼睛的颜色象征着她们控制某种特定元素的魔力。玛拉的绿色，表明她对土和长在土地上的草木的强大的控制魔力，玛丽的蓝色是水，摩根的褐色是火，而米娜，她猜测，其灰色眼睛会让她有一天拿捏住风和空气。

但克拉拉只能看到玛拉开始展现她的魔力——当玛丽和摩根长大时，法妈已经逃得远远的了。

事情在玛拉五岁时就开始了。每当她发脾气时，脚下的地面就开始颤抖。在旧金山，偶尔感觉到一次地面震动并不奇怪，但特纳是一个有心人，他开始慢慢注意到，每次的震中似乎总是在他们家。有一天，他把这件事随便地向法妈提起，带着点逗乐，带着点担心。

法妈信任他。她与他有了三个孩子，还有另一个正在肚子里。她先去问克拉拉，她鼓励她透露真相。有了三个女儿，也是不可能永远瞒着他的。她便告诉了他。当然，他开始不相信。为了证明自己，她没用火柴就点燃了火，然后又熄灭了它。

第二天早上，特纳不见了，衣柜里他的衣服清扫一空。法妈等着他回来－－她没有告诉他有关他母亲克拉拉的事，而她也告诉她要耐心等待。毕竟，这样令人吃惊的消息就是像特纳这样的人也需要一段时间去调整和适应。最后，两天后，有人来敲门。法妈松了口气，跑下楼。

站在门外的人不是特纳。他是警察。他们抓住了她，没作任何解释就拷住了她​​。 “对孩子有危险，”她只听到有人在说，“诱拐，欺诈，”没有人给她解释，她只能猜测。或许特纳出卖了她，把她看成一个疯子和怪胎。

法妈别无选择。只见烟雾升起，听到劈劈啪啪几声响指，便有人倒在地上不省人事。法妈逃跑了，无声的消失了，跑得远远的，带着女儿们，有抱在怀里的，有背在背上的，有怀在肚里的。她最后终于在安玫瑰镇，在这个幅员辽阔​​的国家的另一端安顿下来。她学会了用她那与众不同的脸庞作为面具，来掩饰她与众不同的能力，她觉得，由于对外族的仇视而让她隔离于主流社会比由于对魔法的恐惧更易让她接受。她对自己发誓她要保护她的女儿们不要陷入自己同样的命运。

法妈眼前的迷雾突然散去。她的注意力回到了花园，那里格雷厄姆的追悼会正在结束散场。亨特一家人已离开，人群变得很稀疏。法妈环顾四周，要聚集她的女儿们回家。就在这时她突然发现，她惊恐万分：司氏姐妹们不见了！

Chapter 15: Like Mother, Like Daughter

Fa retreated to a corner of the garden, sipping on a cup of hot water. After Ms. Hunter’s gesture of kindness in the condolences line, Fa thought it only right that the girls stay around for a bit, no matter how uncomfortably the looks from the other townsfolk stung. She sunk into her corner, and her eyes appeared glazed, as if she were looking far away.

She had perfected this strategy for feeling comfortable in crowds from many years ago, when she first came to America. She unfocused her eyes slightly, so that the faces of people around her blurred and faded into each other, so that she couldn’t see the points of their pupils staring, or the direction and twitch of their mouths. It had been necessary during those first years, when she had first arrived on the coast of California from Shanghai. She had remembered thinking that her mother had been wrong, that America was not the beautiful country of its name, that it was not more tolerant or acceptant of differences. Perhaps the eyes of the American people were not as sharp as those of the Chinese, but they were sharp enough to see that her skin was yellow, her hair black, and that had been a curse in itself–worse than being a witch. In China, even if tongues cut and eyes burned, she could at least step back and blend in.

In San Francisco, Fa had wandered the streets for a week before she stumbled onto an alleyway that reminded her of home. She convinced a small restaurant to hire her as a waitress and then a cook, learning quickly that the surest way to break down the white man’s wall was through his stomach. She settled in and learned to find happiness–however roundabout it was–in the strange land.

And then circumstances had forced her to Ambrose. For a moment, Fa’s vision cleared and focused on the picture of Graham. A sharp intake of breath, and her eyes clouded over again, this time with tears. As she floated in the memory of her early years–the years before the girls, when she was a girl herself–she realized suddenly how similar Mara’s circumstance was to her own. But wasn’t that what she had been trying to protect them from, all these years? She swallowed and shook her head. Like mother, like daughter. She should have known it would be impossible to prevent her daughters from making the same mistakes.

She had gone to San Francisco–spent a month swimming across the ocean–because of the stories her mother had told her before she died. Stories that in the beautiful land across the ocean, there were cities full of magical people, people from all walks of life. In these cities, strangeness was embraced, and people didn’t live in fear of being discovered. Though Fa did not find that this was the case–there were more people who looked different, but they were partitioned into different parts of the city, with all the Chinese in one part, all the blacks in another, and so on–it was true that there was a large secret network of witches in San Francisco. One day, Fa served a woman named Clara at the restaurant. Clara started to talk to her–something that their white customers almost never did–and soon they developed a friendship.

Clara looked as young as Fa, but Fa soon discovered that she was in her middle years, and that she even had a son who was near Fa’s age. One day, Clara asked Fa if she was a witch. Amazingly, Fa was not surprised. “Yes,” she said, “I am.”

From that day on, Clara adopted Fa like a second child. Clara was a witch too, living in secret from everyone, even her family. She felt isolated, since her husband and son did not know, and had always longed for a daughter. Magic was only passed on to women. It was hard to live alone, she told Fa. She knew.

Clara’s son Turner became good friends with his mother’s new mentee, though he had no idea about the nature of their relationship. Clara encouraged the friendship. Eventually, they fell in love, and married.

For many years Fa and Turner had a wonderful marriage. They had a beautiful daughter, who they named Mara, and then two twin babies. Turner had green eyes (like Mara), and marveled that all his daughters all had differently colored eyes. Other than the bright eyes, the girls’ light milky skin was the only thing they seemed to have inherited from their father. Otherwise, they looked very much Chinese. Fa guessed that magic was in play somehow in the eye colors, though she wasn’t sure how–even though Turner was not magical because he was a man, his mother’s magical blood still ran through his veins. Fa–and Clara–knew that their children would be especially powerful, with magic running in both sides of the family. Together, Fa and Clara guessed that the eye colors were most likely a result of the double magic combination.

In later years, when Fa raised the girls alone, she would come to realize that the eye colors signified each daughter’s propensity towards control of a certain element. Mara, green, held a strong power over the Earth; Marie, blue, over water; Morgan, brown, over fire; and Mina, she guessed, with gray eyes, would one day hold the wind and air in her hands.

But Clara would only see Mara start to develop her powers–by the time Marie and Morgan were old enough, Fa had run far away.

It started when Mara was just five. When she had tantrums, the ground would start to tremble beneath her feet. Being in San Francisco, it wasn’t so odd to feel tremors once in a while, but Turner, not a dull man, began to notice that the epicenter of the quake seemed always to be in their home. He brought it up to Fa, one day, casually, a little amused, a little worried.

Fa trusted him. She had had three children with him, and another was on its way. She talked with Clara, who encouraged her to disclose the truth. With three daughters, it would be impossible to hide it from him forever. She told him. Of course, he didn’t believe her at first. To prove herself, she lit her hand on fire, and then extinguished the flame, all without touching a match.

The next morning, Turner was gone, the drawers emptied of his clothes. Fa waited for him, called Clara–she hadn’t told him about his mother–who told her to be patient. It was surprising information, after all, and even a man like Turner would have to process and adjust. Finally, two days later, there was a knock on the door. Relieved, Fa ran down the stairs.

The man who stood outside was not Turner. It was the police. They grabbed her, cuffed her without explanation. “A danger to your children,” she heard, “abduction, fraud.” Nobody explained. She could only guess that Turner had gone to them, turned her in as a lunatic and a freak.

Fa had no choice. Smoke rose, fingers snapped, bodies dropped to the ground unconscious. Fa fled, disappeared without a word, ran far away, with her daughters in her arms and on her back and in her belly. She finally settled in Ambrose, on the other coast of the vast country. She learned to use her strange face as a mask for her strange abilities, deciding that xenophobia was a better form of ostracism than fear of magic. She promised herself she would protect her daughters from a similar fate.

The fog in front of Fa’s eyes lifted. Her mind drifted back to the garden, where Graham’s memorial service reception was dwindling to a close. The Grahams had gone inside, and the crowd was thinning. Fa looked around to gather her daughters to go home. That was when she realized, a furious panic rising in her chest: the Switch sisters were nowhere in sight.