And since I am already down there in supplication on the floor, let me hold that position as I reach back in time three years earlier to the moment when this entire story began —a moment which also found me in this exact same posture: on my knees, on a floor, praying.

既已跪在地上祈祷，让我保持这个姿势，回溯到三年前，这整则故事开始的时刻——那时的我也一样跪在地上祈祷。

Everything else about the three-years-ago scene was different, though. That time, I was not in Rome but in the upstairs bathroom of the big house in the suburbs of New York which I'd recently purchased with my husband. It was a cold November, around three o'clock in the morning. My husband was sleeping in our bed. I was hiding in the bathroom for something like the forty-seventh consecutive night, and—just as during all those nights before—I was sobbing. Sobbing so hard, in fact, that a great lake of tears and snot was spreading before me on the bathroom tiles, a veritable Lake Inferior (if you will) of all my shame and fear and con-fusion and grief.

然而在三年前的场景中，一切大不相同。当时的我不在罗马 ，而是在纽约郊区那栋跟我先生才买下不久的大房子的楼上浴室里。寒冷的十一月，凌晨三点。我先生睡在我们的床上，我躲在浴室内。大约 持续了四十七个晚上，就像之前的那些夜晚， 我在啜泣。痛苦的呜咽，使得一汪眼泪、鼻涕在我眼前的浴室地板上蔓延开来，形成一小滩羞愧、恐惧、困惑与哀伤的湖水。

I don't want to be married anymore.

我不想再待在婚姻中。

I was trying so hard not to know this, but the truth kept insisting itself to me.

我拼命让自己漠视此事，然而实情却不断地向我逼来。

I don't want to be married anymore. I don't want to live in this big house. I don't want to have a baby.

我不想再待在婚姻中。我不想住在这栋大房子里。我不想生孩子。

But I was supposed to want to have a baby. I was thirty-one years old. My husband and I—who had been together for eight years, married for six—had built our entire life around the common expectation that, after passing the doddering old age of thirty, I would want to settle down and have children. By then, we mutually anticipated, I would have grown weary of trav-eling and would be happy to live in a big, busy household full of children and homemade quilts, with a garden in the backyard and a cozy stew bubbling on the stovetop. (The fact that this was a fairly accurate portrait of my own mother is a quick indicator of how difficult it once was for me to tell the difference between myself and the powerful woman who had raised me.) But I didn't—as I was appalled to be finding out—want any of these things. Instead, as my twenties had come to a close, that deadline of THIRTY had loomed over me like a death sentence, and I discovered that I did not want to be pregnant. I kept waiting to want to have a baby, but it didn't happen. And I know what it feels like to want something, believe me. I well know what desire feels like. But it wasn't there. Moreover, I couldn't stop thinking about what my sister had said to me once, as she was breastfeeding her firstborn: "Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you com-mit."

但是照说我应当想生孩子的。我三十一岁。我先生和我——我们在一起的时间已八年，结婚已六年——一生的共同期望是，在过了“老态龙钟”的三十岁后，我愿意定下心来养儿育女。我们双方都预料，到时候我开始厌倦旅行，乐于住在一个忙碌的大家庭里，家里塞满孩子和自制拼被，后院有花园，炉子上炖着一锅温馨的食物。（这一幅对我母亲的准确写照，是一个生动的指标；它指出要在我自己 和抚养我的女强人之间作出区分，对我而言是多么困难。）然而我震惊地发现，自己一点都不想要这些东西。反而，在我的二十几岁年代要走入尾声，将面临死刑般的“三十”大限时，我发现自己不想 怀孕。我一直等着想生孩子，却没有发生。相信我，我知道想要一样东西的感觉；我深知渴望是什么感受。但我感受不到。再说，我不断想起我姐姐在哺育第一胎时告诉过我的话“生小孩就像在你脸上 刺青。做之前一定得确定你想这么做。”

How could I turn back now, though? Everything was in place. This was supposed to be the year. In fact, we'd been trying to get pregnant for a few months already. But nothing had happened (aside from the fact that—in an almost sarcastic mockery of pregnancy—I was ex-periencing psychosomatic morning sickness, nervously throwing up my breakfast every day). And every month when I got my period I would find myself whispering furtively in the bath-room: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me one more month to live . . .

但现在我怎能挽回？一切都已定案。照说这就是那一年。事实上，我们尝试怀孕已有好几个月。然而什么事也没发生（除了——像是对怀孕的反讽——我经历到心理因素影响的害喜，每天都神经质地把 早餐吐出来）。每个月大姨妈来的时候，我都在浴室里暗自低语：谢天谢地，谢天谢地 ，让我多活一个月……