我家柜子里的骷髏

My husband, Mark, was a pack rat. So clearing out his belongings after he died suddenly at 57 was a challenge even for a rabid organizer like me. To complicate matters, my two kids and I were moving from a four-bedroom house in the suburbs to a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. Most of what we owned wasn’t coming along.

我丈夫馬克(Mark)喜歡囤積沒用的東西。因此在他57歲突然去世后，清理他的東西，即便是對我這種熱衷整理的人來說也是挑戰(zhàn)。更要命的是，我和兩個孩子要從郊區(qū)一棟有四個臥室的房子搬去曼哈頓的一套兩居室公寓，大部分物品都不會和我們一起搬走。

I spent every spare minute making piles: keep, sell, donate, toss. Tucked under the attic eaves were several milk crates of Mark’s old Playboys, Sports Illustrateds and National Geographics, dating back to the 1960s. I sold a few at our moving sale, but the rest sit untouched in a cramped storage unit. I’m guessing the unenviable job of selling them will one day fall to my kids.

我把空閑時間都用在了分堆上：要留的、要賣的、要捐贈的和要扔的。在閣樓的屋檐下，幾個裝過牛奶的箱子里是馬克的舊《花花公子》(Playboy)、《體育畫報》(Sports Illustrated)和《國家地理》(National Geographics)。最早的可以追溯回60年代。我在搬家甩賣時賣掉了一些，但剩下的都完好無損地放在一個小角落里。我猜，賣掉它們這件煩人的差事有一天要落在孩子們身上了。

I also found a trove of sweet handwritten letters from his college girlfriend, a stack of cringe-worthy seminude photos of another old girlfriend, and his wedding album. Not our wedding album. It was from his short-lived first marriage. I was wife No. 2 and would’ve become ex-wife No. 2; we were living apart when he died but you’d never know it from the sheer amount of stuff he left behind, as if all he took when he moved out were a couple of T-shirts and a pair of socks.

我還發(fā)現(xiàn)了他大學(xué)時代的女友給他的大量手寫情書、另一個前女友一堆令人難堪的半裸照片，以及他的婚禮相冊——不是我們的婚禮相冊。那屬于他短暫的第一段婚姻。我是他的第二任妻子，也差點(diǎn)成為他的第二任前妻。他去世時候我們已經(jīng)分居了。但單從他留下的那么多東西來看，你絕對看不出來。仿佛他搬出去的時候只帶走了幾件T恤和一雙襪子。

But one discovery eclipsed them all. Digging through a rarely used closet one night, I opened a Nike shoe box and came face-to-face with a real human skull.

但另一個發(fā)現(xiàn)讓它們都黯然失色。一天晚上，在清理一個不常用的衣櫥時，我打開了一個耐克鞋盒，眼前出現(xiàn)了一具真人頭骨。

My first word was “holy” followed by an expletive. Then a hazy memory floated back: My husband, a dentist, was showing me a research skull, the kind dental students use in anatomy class, with metal hinges attaching the lower jaw to each side and two clasps securing the cranium in place. It was the same one I now held. Stamped on the left was a company name — Clay Adams, Parsippany, N.J. — an importer of medical supplies.

我說的第一個詞是“天哪”，后面是一句臟話。然后，一段模糊的回憶浮現(xiàn)了出來：當(dāng)牙醫(yī)的丈夫給我看過一具研究用的頭骨，就是牙科學(xué)生在解剖課上用的那種，金屬鉸鏈把下頜骨栓在兩邊，兩個搭扣固定著頭蓋骨。現(xiàn)在我手里拿著的就是它。左邊刻著一家公司的名字——克萊·亞當(dāng)斯(Clay Adams)，新澤州帕西帕尼——是一家醫(yī)藥用品進(jìn)口商。

Of all the things I inherited after Mark’s death, the skull topped a long list I call “I Never Wanted This.” It included cabinets crammed with ancient financial documents, a garage and shed bursting with all manner of cobweb-covered gadgets, and shelves of sweaters not worn since the Reagan administration.

馬克去世后，在我繼承的所有東西中，這具頭骨在“我從來沒想到自己擁有的物品”清單上排第一。這個長長清單上的物品還包括幾柜子的舊金融文件;布滿蜘蛛網(wǎng)、塞滿各種小工具的車庫兼修車棚，以及幾架子自里根政府以后就沒再穿過的毛衣。

After we separated, I had imagined that eventually I’d move out and he’d move back in, sparing me this overwhelming job. It was even more fraught because I felt an obligation to my kids, who were just teenagers when he died, to preserve his memory. Would they want his old cameras and slides? His favorite faded blue sweatshirt? If they said no, would they wish they had said yes years from now?

我們分居后，我曾想過我最終會搬出去，他搬回來，給我省去這累人的工作。讓我更加憂心的是，我想到自己有責(zé)任為孩子們保存他的回憶——在他去世時，他們還只有十幾歲。他們會想要他的老相機(jī)和幻燈片嗎?會想要他最愛的那件褪色的藍(lán)運(yùn)動衫嗎?要是他們現(xiàn)在說“不要”，幾年后他們會希望自己當(dāng)時說的是“要”嗎?

Now I felt uneasy. Was it even legal to have this skull in my home? Didn’t it belong in a school or museum?

現(xiàn)在我心神不寧。甚至，在家里擁有頭骨是否合法?難道這不應(yīng)該屬于某個學(xué)?；虿┪镳^嗎?

I was angry at Mark for leaving me with it and I wanted to make the skull disappear. I considered burying it in the backyard, the final resting place of my kids’ four gerbils. But I pictured the future homeowners discovering it while gardening one fine spring day. “Honey, what’s this?” the husband would say to his wife, and in a flash a cop from “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” would be grilling me about where I buried the rest of the body.

當(dāng)時我因?yàn)轳R克把這么個東西留給我而生氣，想讓這個頭骨消失。我考慮過把它埋在后院，那也是孩子們四只沙鼠的安息之地。但我想到了這座房子未來的主人在某個春日做園藝時發(fā)現(xiàn)頭骨的樣子。“親愛的，這是什么?”丈夫會這樣對妻子說，不出一會，一名來自《犯罪現(xiàn)場調(diào)查》(CSI: Crime Scene Investigation)的警察就會開始盤問我把剩下的尸體埋在了哪里。

Once we’d moved into our apartment, I hid it in yet another closet, doing my best Scarlett O’Hara: I’ll think about it tomorrow. Tomorrow turned into three years and last summer I finally decided that, unlike those old magazines, I didn’t want my kids to have to deal with this someday. Keeping it in a closet felt wrong and I wasn’t about to display it in my curio cabinet. This skull needed a new home.

一搬進(jìn)我們的新公寓，我還是把它藏在了衣櫥里，我盡量像郝思嘉(Scarlett O’Hara)那樣做：明天我再來想這個問題。結(jié)果“明天”變成了三年，到了去年夏天，我終于下了決心，和那些舊雜志不一樣，我不希望孩子們未來某一天還要處理這個東西。把它藏在衣櫥里感覺不對，而我也不打算把它擺在我的古玩柜里。這個頭骨需要一個新家。

But figuring out how to make that happen was trickier than I thought. My research took me down a rabbit hole. Surprisingly, there’s no federal law against owning, buying or selling human skulls (except Native American ones), although there’s a patchwork of vague and often unenforced state regulations. In 2016, eBay put the kibosh on human skulls but you can find them on Amazon and Instagram, or even your local flea market. Macabre? Perhaps. But not necessarily illegal.

但是要弄清楚怎么給它找新家比我想象的更困難。我的研究把我引向了一個未知之地。令我感到意外的是，盡管有著模糊且往往執(zhí)行不力、東拼西湊的各州規(guī)定，聯(lián)邦法律并不反對擁有、購買或出售人類頭骨(美洲原住民的頭骨除外)。2016年，eBay終止了人頭骨的出售，但你可以在亞馬遜或Instagram上，甚至是在你當(dāng)?shù)氐奶槭袌錾险业剿鼈儭樔?也許吧。但并不一定違法。

I also found several reputable companies that trade in human bones. Want a male skull with 25 teeth? How about a Caucasian female with 28 teeth, one broken? Those were two of dozens of skulls — male and female, old and young — I found online, available if you’re willing to part with about $2,000.

我還找到了幾家做人骨交易的靠譜公司。想要一個有25顆牙齒的男性頭骨?有28顆牙齒(其中一顆壞了)的高加索女性頭骨怎么樣?這是我在網(wǎng)上找到的幾十個在售頭骨中的兩個——有男有女，有老有少——售價約為2000美元。

Roughly 80 percent come from people like me who inherit one, according to Josh Villemarette of Skulls Unlimited, a family business in Oklahoma City founded in 1986 by his dad.

據(jù)Skulls Unlimited公司的喬希·維勒馬雷特(Josh Villemarette)說，約80%的頭骨是像我這樣繼承來的。該公司是喬希的父親1986年在俄克拉何馬城創(chuàng)建的家族企業(yè)。

“Typically someone’s parents passed away and they’re cleaning out their belongings and they find the skeleton in the closet or the skull in the attic,” he said, adding that skulls were required for many dental students. “Your husband may have had to purchase it in school for $200, which was quite affordable at the time.”

“通常是某人的父母去世了，他們清理父母遺物時發(fā)現(xiàn)了壁櫥里的骷髏，或者閣樓上的頭骨，”他說。他還說，對很多牙科學(xué)生來說，頭骨是必需的。“你丈夫可能不得不以200美元的價格在學(xué)校里買了它，當(dāng)時這個是很便宜的。”

The skull I had looked smaller than the adult ones online. I went to a mirror and held it next to my head. They were close in size. I sent photos and measurements to Skulls Unlimited. They estimated it was from a 12-year-old, possibly female, likely from India.

我擁有的這個頭骨比我在網(wǎng)上看到的成人頭骨要小。我走到鏡子前，把它舉到臉邊。它的大小跟我的頭差不多。我把頭骨的照片和尺寸發(fā)給了Skulls Unlimited。他們估計，這個頭骨屬于一個12歲的孩子，可能是女孩，很可能來自印度。

India? Why would a young girl there donate her body to American science? My question was well meaning but naïve. Turns out that in the 1970s when my husband was in dental school, most skulls came from India, from families too poor to bury or cremate their dead, or because grave robbers dug up bones for profit. India banned the export of human bones in the mid-1980s and China later followed. The skull market soon dried up and prices skyrocketed.

印度?為什么印度的一個小女孩會把自己的遺體捐給美國的研究機(jī)構(gòu)?我這么問是出于善意，但很幼稚。結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)，1970年代我丈夫在牙科學(xué)校就讀時，大多數(shù)頭骨都來自印度，來自那些沒錢埋葬或火化親屬遺體的家庭，或者來自那些挖掘遺骨牟利的盜墓者。印度從1980年代中期開始禁止出口人體骨骼，隨后中國也開始禁止。頭骨市場的貨源很快干涸，價格飛漲。

I was horrified that this skull might have belonged to a child who suffered such a fate. Questions swirled: Who was her family? How did she die? It was entirely possible she and I were born around the same year. I began to feel an odd mix of maternal tenderness and sisterly kinship for this skull, laced with a hefty dose of “there but for the grace of God go I.”

我很害怕這個頭骨也屬于一個遭受這種命運(yùn)的孩子。我的腦海中還盤旋著很多問題：她的家人是誰?她是怎么死的?她和我完全有可能是同一年出生的。我開始對這個頭骨產(chǎn)生了奇怪的母愛和姐妹情，還夾雜著深深的“若非上帝恩典，我也可能有此厄運(yùn)”的情緒。

Although I couldn’t return it to its original resting place — if it ever had one — maybe it would find peace among other bones that, for whatever reason, had landed far from home.

雖然我不能把它送回原來的安息之地——如果它曾經(jīng)有過的話——但它也許能在其他頭骨的陪伴下找到平靜。不管出于什么原因，它們都遠(yuǎn)離家園。

I sold it to Skulls Unlimited and donated the proceeds to a program at Mark’s dental school that provides free dental care to low-income kids. It seemed fitting: A child in India reaches across decades to give a disadvantaged child in New York a reason to smile.

我把它賣給了Skulls Unlimited，把收益捐給了馬克牙科學(xué)校的一個為低收入兒童提供免費(fèi)牙科保健服務(wù)的項目。這似乎很合適：經(jīng)過幾十年之后，一個印度孩子給了紐約的弱勢兒童一個微笑的理由。

I liked knowing that Mark helped make it happen, not because he was a dentist, but because he was a pack rat. Something good emerged from all his clutter. It also feels pretty good to finally have closets in which, as far as I know, there are no more hidden skeletons.

我認(rèn)為這一切都是馬克幫忙實(shí)現(xiàn)的，不是因?yàn)樗茄泪t(yī)，而是因?yàn)樗嵌诜e狂。他的一大堆雜物總算產(chǎn)生了一點(diǎn)益處。至少據(jù)我所知，我的櫥柜里終于再也沒有隱藏的骷髏了，這也讓我感覺很好。