The three children sat in the airplane, watching the clouds clear away as the airplane went higher and higher into the sky. Two years ago, before their parents' death, it would have been fun. Now it was nothing more than another time of meeting new relatives, trying to fit into their family life, and then moving on again. It wasn't easy to think of these places as home.
Amy Jackson thought about the days when they had a home of their own, when she thought their parents would always be with them. Although their father often spent days traveling round the sheep farm looking at the sheep, grass, and fences, their mother was always there.
Then, when Amy was just thirteen, everything changed. Usually her father went alone to the annual farmers' meeting in Sydney, but that year their mother went too. They were to celebrate their fifteenth wedding anniversary.
The day Amy learned of the car accident and her parents' death in Sydney, she realized what it really meant to be the eldest in the family. Before, she had rather enjoyed playing mother and helping to look after the younger children, though she did less for Richard than she did for Susie, the baby of the family. Amy had washed her dirty hands, read stories, washed cuts, and wiped away tears for her, always knowing she could stop when she wanted to. Then it was no longer a game now.
Susie was too young to realize exactly what had happened, but through watching the other children, she knew it was something terrible. Her cries hurt Amy, and as she tried to comfort Richard and Susie, she realized with a shock that in future she must be both sister and mother.
Now, Amy wondered how successful she had been. Would Susie have been so self-willed if their mother had been alive? Amy knew that she needed a firm parent, but it often seemed easier to avoid a fight than to stand up to her in public.
Richard, who seemed older than his ten years, was never any trouble, but Amy worried about him too. She sometimes found him lying in bed, just looking at the ceiling.
As the plane began to lose height Amy tried to think of how they would appear to their aunt. With her very fair skin, red hair and blue eyes she looked just like her father, a typical Australian. Richard, however, looked like his mother, a woman from Singapore who had met their father when she visited Australia for a short holiday and stayed.
Susie was a mixture of the two, and Amy loved her especially for this. Her hair was as dark and shiny as Richard's, but not as straight. Her skin and high cheek bones came from her mother, but her eyes were her father's.
Amy moved to wake her sister. "Will Aunt Helen like us?" she thought anxiously. "Perhaps our luck will change at last; then we might be asked to stay and not move on."
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Trying to Fit into a New Family 课文讲解
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