El Hogar de Maggi

En casa los chicos soportan la violencia y los malos tratos de la madre (alcohólica) y la desatención del padre. Maggie se esconde en un rincón, temerosa de recibir un golpe y Tommie llora desconsolado. Todo es violencia, gritos, amenazas. Un hogar destruido en el que se criarán estos niños. Unos párrafos en inglés de Maggie, a Girl of the Streets.

En vocabulario encontramos gruesome, urchin, street children, scuffle, y shin.

Finalmente pusimos unas fotos imperdibles: una de un tenement en Nueva York y la otra de un alcohólico bebiendo en la calle.

 

Paragraphs

… Finally the procession plunged into one of the gruesome horrible doorways. They crawled up dark stairways and along cold, gloomy halls. At last the father pushed open a door and they entered a lighted room in which a large woman was uncontrolled.

Un tenement en Nueva York

She stopped in a career from an incensed stove to a pan-covered table. As the father and children filed in she peered at them.

"Eh, what? Been fightin' agin, by Gawd!" She threw herself upon Jimmie. The urchin tried to dart behind the others and in the scuffle the babe, Tommie, was knocked down. He protested with his usual vehemence, because they had bruised his tender shins against a table leg.

The mother's massive shoulders moved with anger. Grasping the urchin by the neck and shoulder she shook him until he spoke rapidly. She dragged him to an unholy sink, and, soaking a rag in water, began to scrub his lacerated face with it. Jimmie screamed in pain and tried to twist his shoulders out of the clasp of the huge arms.

The babe sat on the floor watching the scene, his face in contortions like that of a woman at a tragedy. The father, with a newly-ladened pipe in his mouth, crouched on a backless chair near the stove. Jimmie's cries annoyed him. He turned about and shouted at his wife:

"Let the damned kid alone for a minute, will yeh, Mary? Yer allus poundin' 'im. When I come nights I can't git no rest 'cause yer allus poundin' a kid. Let up, d'yeh hear? Don't be allus poundin' a kid."

The woman's operations on the urchin instantly increased in violence. At last she tossed him to a corner where he flaccidly lay cursing and weeping.

The wife put her immense hands on her hips and with a boss-like stride approached her husband.

"Ho," she said, with a great grunt of contempt. "An' what in the devil are you stickin' your nose for?"

The babe crawled under the table and, turning, peered out cautiously. The ragged girl retreated and the urchin in the corner drew his legs carefully beneath him.

The man puffed his pipe calmly and put his great mudded boots on the back part of the stove.

"Go teh hell," he murmured, tranquilly.

The woman screamed and shook her fists before her husband's eyes. The rough yellow of her face and neck flared suddenly crimson. She began to howl.

He puffed imperturbably at his pipe for a time, but finally arose and began to look out at the window into the darkening chaos of back yards.

"You've been drinkin', Mary," he said. "You'd better let up on the bot', ol' woman, or you'll git done."

Bebiendo en un lugar público

"You're a liar. I ain't had a drop," she roared in reply.

They had a loud altercation, in which they damned each other's souls with frequence.

The babe was staring out from under the table, his small face working in his excitement.

The ragged girl went furtively over to the corner where the urchin lay.

"Are yehs hurted much, Jimmie?" she whispered timidly.

"Not a damn bit! See?" growled the little boy.

"Will I wash deh blood?"

"Naw!"

"Will I—"

"When I catch dat Riley kid I'll break 'is face! Dat's right! See?"… (Adapted from Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, by Stephen Crane)

Chicos de la calle

Vocabulary

Gruesome: horrible, awful.

Urchin: a mischievous and often poor and raggedly clothed youngster.

Street children are poor or homeless children who live on the streets of a city, town, or village. Homeless youth are often called street kids, or urchins.

Scuffle: struggle.

Shin: the front part of the vertebrate leg below the knee.

 

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