writer作者：Nile Cappello
cast演播：underage未成年吖
translater译者：underage
THE GIRL IN THE PICTURE
相中女郎
A sketch artist and a grieving mother set out to solve a cold case. The more they dug, the more terrifying the truth became.
一位素描艺术家和一位悲痛欲绝的母亲着手解决一个悬案。他们挖得越深，真相越令人毛骨悚然。
The Atavist Magazine, No. 118
PART ONE
For most residents of Holland, Michigan, there was nothing remarkable about March 11, 1989, a Saturday. Frost on the ladders of the city’s water towers thawed in the sun—spring was just over a week away. Mothers poured milk over cereal for kids watching back-to-back（除了有背靠背的意思，还有连续的意思） episodes of their favorite cartoons. Fathers who worked weekends drove pickup trucks to industrial jobs at local automotive and concrete companies.
对于密歇根州荷兰市的大多数居民来说，1989年3月11日，星期六，并没有什么不同。阳光照耀，城市水塔梯子上的冰霜开始化冻——春天才刚到来一周。母亲们把牛奶倒在麦片上，孩子们则在看他们最喜欢的连续剧动画片。周末工作的父亲们开着皮卡车在当地汽车和混凝土公司从事工业工作。
皮卡货车pickup trunk是轻型货车，一般是敞篷的，可以参考这个图
But all was not well in the house on the corner of Lincoln Road and 52nd Street. It belonged to Dennis and Brenda Bowman, a married couple with two children. For the Bowmans, March 11 marked the last time they saw their 14-year-old daughter, Aundria, alive.
但在林肯路和52街拐角处的房子里，似乎不太平。这栋房子属于Dennis和Brenda Bowman夫妇，他们有两个孩子。3月11日是他们最后一次看到活蹦乱跳的14岁的女儿Aundria。
Dennis was the one who contacted the police. He told them that he’d come home from his job as a wood machinist to find Aundria missing, along with some of her belongings and $100 from his dresser（dresser本身有梳妆台，衣橱的意思，但一个男人的梳妆台，我觉得可能有点别扭，所以更倾向于衣柜的说法）. Dennis described Aundria—whom he and Brenda had adopted when she was an infant—as a troubled teenager who frequently fought with her mother and had run away to a friend’s house once before.
联系警察的人是Dennis。他告诉警察，当他做完木工工作后回家时，发现Aundria失踪了，她带着随身物品和他衣柜里的100美元一起消失了。Dennis描述Aundria——他和Brenda在她还是婴儿时就收养了她——她是一个问题少年，经常和妈妈吵架，以前还曾离家出走到朋友家里。
Dennis agreed to call around to the homes of kids Aundria knew to find out if anyone had seen her. But his wife soon took over as the family’s point of contact. It was Brenda who called the police regularly, and Brenda who corrected the amount of cash missing from her husband’s dresser to $150. That was enough for police to issue a warrant for Aundria’s arrest for larceny（盗窃）; the warrant listed Dennis as the victim of his daughter’s alleged crime.
Dennis同意给Aundria认识的孩子家打电话，看看是否有人见过她。但他的妻子很快就接过手成为家里的接话员。是Brenda定期给警察打电话，也是她将她丈夫衣柜里丢失的现金数更正为150美元。这足以让警方以盗窃罪对Aundria发出逮捕令；这个逮捕令将Dennis列为其女儿所犯罪行的受害者。
With no foul play suspected, the police labeled Aundria a runaway and passed her case along to the Youth Services Bureau. Few （few几乎没有，a few有一点）people who knew the Bowmans questioned the official narrative. Over the years, there had been whispers about the family. Once, when Aundria was in middle school, she boarded the school bus bleeding from her wrist. Some kids gossiped about a suicide attempt, but others said Aundria had cut herself trying to get back into her house after her parents locked her out. There were rumors that Dennis, a former Navy reservist with reddish-brown hair, a goatee, and wire-rimmed glasses, and Brenda, a portly woman with curled bangs who’d once worked at the jewelry counter at Meijer department store, abused Aundria. But back then, what happened behind closed doors was considered family business.
由于没有疑点，警方将Aundria判定为离家出走，并将她的案件移交给青年服务局。虽然认识Bowman夫妇的人不多，但他们对官方的说法提出质疑。多年来，一直有关于这个家庭的小道消息。有一次，当Aundria上初中时，她手腕流着血登上校车。有孩子八卦说她企图自杀，但其他人认为Aundria的父母把她锁在门外，她在试图回到自己家里时割伤了自己。Dennis是一名前海军预备役军人。他有着红棕色的头发，留着山羊胡子，戴着铁丝边眼镜。而胖女人Brenda留着卷刘海。她曾在Meijer百货公司珠宝柜台工作。有传闻说是他们俩虐待了Aundria。但当时，关起门来发生了什么，是人家的家事。
Fifteen months before Aundria disappeared, Brenda gave birth to a daughter, Vanessa. Aundria went from being an only child to more than a big sister—she was a third parent to the chubby, redheaded baby. While other kids her age went to afterschool clubs and Friday night football games, Aundria stayed home changing diapers and cleaning bottles. She kept a photo of her sister in a school folder, where other teens might stash a magazine cutout or a polaroid of their crush. When she wasn’t with Vanessa, Aundria was anxious about the baby’s well-being.
在Aundria失踪前15个月，Brenda生下了一个女儿Vanessa。Aundria从独生子女成为大姐姐——她还是这个胖乎乎的红发婴儿的第三个家长。当其他同龄孩子去参加课后俱乐部和周五晚上的足球赛时，Aundria则留在家换尿布，清洗瓶子。她把妹妹的照片放在学校文件夹里，其他青少年则把杂志剪报或他们暗恋对象的宝丽来照片藏在那。当她和Vanessa分开时，Aundria很担心她的健康。
Many people in Holland assumed that Aundria had gotten so fed up with her home life that she finally split. Maybe she’d gone looking for her birth mother. People heard that she’d hitched a ride at a local truck stop, had left town with an older boy, or was pregnant.
在荷兰，很多人都认为，Aundria已对她的家庭生活感到厌倦，所以她最终选择离开。也许她去找亲生母亲了。人们听说她在当地的一个卡车站搭便车，和一个大男孩离开了小镇，或许她怀孕了。
Brenda reported a series of tips in the weeks and months following her daughter’s disappearance, all of which seemed to confirm that Aundria had run away. At the end of March, Brenda claimed Aundria had been spotted at a 7-Eleven. In mid-April, Brenda said she received an anonymous call from someone claiming that police were looking for the teenager in the right area, but on the wrong street—whatever that meant. In June, she reported a sighting at a local property, where Aundria had supposedly been hanging out with a group of young men. And in October, Brenda said a friend had seen Aundria, pregnant and with dyed hair, in a line at Meijer. Police investigated but found nothing.
Brenda在女儿失踪后的几周至几个月内上报了一系列线索，所有这些线索似乎都证实Aundria是离家出走。3月底，Brenda声称有人在7-11店看到了Aundria。4月中旬，Brenda说她接到一个匿名电话，声称警方在正确地区寻找这名少年，但找错了街道——不管这意味着什么。6月，她报告说，有人在当地的一处房产看到Aundria，据说她在那和一群年轻男子鬼混。10月，Brenda说她的一个朋友在Meijer超市排队时看到了Aundria，她怀了孕，还染了发。警方进行调查，但一无所获。
Aundria’s classmates went to prom and graduated, then got jobs or headed to college. Eventually they married and had children of their own. But Aundria remained forever 14. A single photograph formed most people’s memory of her. It was given to police when she first vanished. In it, Aundria is sitting against a blue studio backdrop and looking just off camera, with her green eyes cast hopefully upward and pieces of her dark, shaggy hair hanging over her forehead. Her smile is charmingly off-balanced. She looks suspended between adolescence and adulthood.
Aundria的同学们参加舞会，毕业，然后找到工作或者上了大学。最终，他们结婚并有了自己的孩子。但Aundria却永远停留在14岁。大部分人对她的记忆定格在了照片上。这张照片是她第一次失踪时被交给警方的。照片中，Aundria坐在蓝色的摄影棚背景下，看着镜头外，她青碧的眼睛充满希望地向上凝视，她深色蓬松的头发垂在额前。她的微笑迷人得令人倾倒。她的外貌看起来在青春期和成年人之间。
Photos of missing children were often printed on the sides of milk cartons or on flyers taped to the top of pizza delivery boxes. Aundria’s picture wound up somewhere else. In 1993, the band Soul Asylum debuted a music video for its song “Runaway Train,” featuring the images and names of missing kids across America. The video was a huge hit, with several versions airing on MTV and VH1. In the one that played in Michigan, Aundria’s photo appears just after the two-minute mark.
失踪儿童的照片经常被印在牛奶盒的侧面或贴在比萨送餐盒顶部的传单上。Aundria的照片却出现在其他地方。1993年，灵魂避难所乐队在他们的歌曲 "失控列车 "中首次推出了音乐视频，其中包括全美失踪儿童的图像和名字。该视频大受欢迎，有几个版本在MTV和VH1播出。在密歇根州播放的那个版本中，Aundria的照片在两分钟后出现。
Reflecting on the video 20 years after its release, director Tony Kaye claimed that more than two dozen missing children were found because of the video. Aundria Bowman wasn’t one of them.
在这段视频发布20年后，导演Tony Kaye回忆到，有二十多个失踪儿童因为这段视频而被找到。Aundria Bowman却不在其中。
网友评论