2024年3月17日发(作者：)

What is poverty?

What is poverty?

Jo Goodwin Parker

You ask me what is poverty? Listen to me. Here I am, dirty, smelly, and with no

“proper” underwear on and with the stench of my rotting teeth near you. I will

tell you. Listen to me. Listen without pity. I cannot use your pity. Listen with

understanding. Put yourself in my dirty, worn out, ill-fitting shoes, and hear me.

Poverty is getting up every morning from a dirt and illness-stained mattress.

The sheets have long since been used for diapers. Poverty is living in a smell that

never leaves. This is a smell of urine, sour milk, and spoiling food sometimes joined

with the strong smell of long-cooked onions. Onions are cheap. If you have

smelled this smell, you did not know how it came. It is the smell of the outdoor

privy. It is the smell of young children who cannot walk the long dark way in the

night. It is the smell of the mattresses where years of “accidents” have happened.

It is the smell of the milk which has gone sour because the refrigerator long has

not worked, and it costs money to get it fixed. It is the smell of rotting garbage. I

could bury it, but where is the shovel? Shovels cost money.

Poverty is being tired. I have always been tired. They told me at the hospital

when the last baby came that I had chronic anemia caused from poor diet, a bad

case of worms, and that I needed a corrective operation. I listened politely--- the

poor are always polite. The poor always listen. They don’t say that there is no

money for iron pills, or better food, or worm medicine. The idea of an operation is

frightening and costs so much that, if I had dared, I would have laughed. Who

takes care of my children? Recovery from an operation takes a long time. I have

three children. When I left them with “Granny” the last time I had a job, I came

home to find the baby covered with fly specks, and a diaper that had not changed

since I left. When the dried diaper came off, bits of my baby’s flesh came with it.

My other child was playing with a sharp bit of broken glass and my oldest was

playing alone at the edge of a lake. I made twenty-two dollars a week, and a good

nursery school costs twenty dollars a week for three children. I quit my job.

Poverty is dirt. You can say in your clean clothes coming from your clean house,

“Anybody con be clean.” Let me explain about housekeeping with no money. For

breakfast I give my children grits with no oleo or cornbread without eggs and oleo.

This does not use up many dishes. What dishes there are, I wash in cold water and

with no soap. Even the cheapest soap has to be saved for the baby’s diapers.

Look at my hands, so cracked and red. Once I saved for two months to buy a jar of

Vaseline for my hands and the baby’s diaper rash. When I had saved enough, I

went to buy it and the price had gone up two cents. The baby and I suffered on. I

have to decide every day if I can bear to put my cracked sore hands into the cold

water and strong soap. But you ask, why not hot water? Fuel costs money. If you

have a wood fire it costs money. If you burn electricity, it costs money. Hot water is

a luxury. I do not have luxuries. I know you will be surprised when I tell you how

young I am. I look so much older. My back has been bent over the wash tubs every

day for so long, I cannot remember when I ever did anything else. Every night I

wash every stitch my school age child has on and just hope her clothes will be dry

by morning.

Poverty is staying up all night on cold nights to watch the fire knowing one

spark on the newspaper covering the walls means your sleeping child dies in

flames. In summer poverty is watching gnats and flies devour your baby’s tears

when he cries. The screens are torn and you pay so little rent you know they will

never be fixed. Poverty means insects in your food, in your nose, in your eyes, and

crawling over you when you sleep. Poverty is hoping it never rains because diapers

won’t dry when it rains and soon you are using newspapers. Poverty is seeing

your children forever with runny noses. Paper handkerchiefs cost money and all

your rags you need for other things. Even more costly are antihistamines. Poverty

is cooking without food and cleaning without soap.

Poverty is asking for help. Have you ever had to ask for help, knowing your

children will suffer unless you get it? Think about asking for a loan from a relative,

if this is the only way you can imagine asking for help. I will tell you how it feels.

You find out where the office is that you are supposed to visit. You circle that block

four or five times. Thinking of your children, you go in. everyone is very busy.

Finally, someone comes out and you tell her that you need help. That is never the

person you need to see. You go see another person, and after spilling the whole

shame of your poverty all over the desk between you , you find that this isn’t the

right office after all---you must repeat the whole process, and it never is any easier

at the next place.

You have asked for help, and after all it has a cost. You are again told to wait.

You are told why, but you don’t hear because of the red cloud of shame and the

rising cloud of despair.

Poverty is remembering. It is remembering quitting school in junior high

because “nice” children has been so cruel about my clothes and my smell. The

attendance officer came. My mother told him I was pregnant. I wasn’t, but she

thought that I could get a job and help out. I had jobs off and on, but never long

enough to learn anything. Mostly I remember being married. I was so young then.

I am still young. For a time, we had all the things you have. There was a little house

in another town, with hot water and everything. Then my husband lost his job.

There was unemployment insurance for a while and what few jobs I could get.

Soon, all our nice things were repossessed and we moved back here. I was

pregnant then. This house didn’t look so bad when we first moved in. every week

it gets worse. Nothing is ever fixed. We now had no money. There were a few odd

jobs for my husband, but everything went for food then, as it does now. I don’t

know how we lived through three years and three babies, but we did. I’ll tell you

something, after the last baby I destroyed my marriage. It had been a good one,

but could you keep on bringing children in this dirt? Did you ever think how much

it costs for any kind of birth control? I knew my husband was leaving the day he

left, but there were no good-bys between us. I hope he has been able to climb out

of this mess somewhere. He never could hope with us to drag him down.

That’s when I asked for help. When I got it, you know how much it was? It

was, and is, seventy-eight dollars a month for the four of us; that is all I ever can

get. Now you know why there is no soap, no needles and thread, no hot water, no

aspirin, no worm medicine, no hand cream, no shampoo. None of these things

forever and ever and ever . So that you can see clearly, I pay twenty dollars a

month rent, and most of the rest goes for food. For grits and cornmeal, and rice

and milk and beans. I try my best to use only the minimum electricity. If I use more,

there is that much less for food.

Poverty is looking into a black future. Your children won’t play with my boys.

They will turn to other boys who steal to get what they want. I can already see

them behind the bars of their prison instead of behind the bars of my poverty. Or

they will turn to the freedom of alcohol or drugs, and find themselves enslaved.

And my daughter? At best, there is for her a life like mine.

But you say to me, there are schools. Yes, there are schools. My children have

no extra books, no magazines, no extra pencils, or crayons, or paper and most

important of all, they do not have health. They have worms, they have infections,

they have pink-eye all summer. They do not sleep well on the floor, or with me in

my one bed. They do not suffer from hunger, my severty-eight dollars keeps us

alive, but they do suffer from malnutrition. Oh yes. I do remember what I was

taught about health in school. It doesn’t do much good. In some places there is a

surplus commodities program. Not here. The country said it cost too much. There

is a school lunch program. But I have two children who will already be damaged by

the time they get to school.

But, you say to me, there are health clinics. Yes, there are health clinics and

they are in the towns. I live out here eight miles from town. I can walk that far (even

if it is sixteen miles both ways), but can my little children? My neighbor will take

me when he goes; but he expects to get paid, one way or another. I bet you know

my neighbor. He is that large man who spends his time at the gas station, the

barbershop, and the corner store complaining about the government spending

money on the immoral mothers of illegitimate children.

Poverty is an acid that drips on pride until all pride is worn away. Poverty is a

chisel that chips on honor until honor is worn away. Some of you say that you

would do something in my situation, and maybe you would, for the first week or

the first month, but for year after year after year?

Even the poor can dream. A dream of a time when there is money. Money for

the right kinds of food, for worm medicine, for iron pills, for toothbrushes, for

hand cream, for a hammer and nails and a bit of screening, for a shovel, for a bit of

paint, for some sheeting, for needles and thread. Money to pay in money for a trip

to town . And, oh, money for hot water and money for soap. A dream of when

asking for help does not eat away the last bit of pride. When the office you visit is

as nice as the offices of other governmental agencies, when there are enough

workers to help you quickly, when workers do not quit in defeat and despair. When

you have to tell your story to only one person, and that person can send you for

other help and you don’t have to prove your poverty over and over and over

again.

I have come out of my despair to tell you this. Remember I did not come from

another place or another time. Others like me are all around you. Look at us with

an angry heart, anger that will help you help me. Anger that will let you tell of me.

The poor are always silent. Can you be silent too?

1) stench [ stentF ] n. 恶臭，臭气

2) rot [ rCt ] v. （使）腐烂，（使）腐败

3) chronic [ 5krCnik ] adj. 慢性的

4) anemia [ E5ni:miE ] n. 贫血，贫血症

5) diaper [ 5daiEpE ] n. 尿布

6) cracked [ krAkt ] adj. 破裂的

7) Vaseline [ 5vAzili:n ] n. 凡士林， [ 化 ] 石油冻，矿脂

8) rash [ rAF ] n. 皮疹

9) luxury [ 5lQkFEri ] n. 奢侈品

10) tub [ tQb ] n. 浴盆

11) gnat [ nAt ] n. 小昆虫

12) devour [ di5vauE ] v. 吞吃

13) rag [ rA^ ] n. 碎布，破旧衣服

14) antihistamines [ 7Anti5histEmi(:)n ] n. 抗组（织）胺

药，常用于治疗感冒

15) acid [ 5Asid ] n. [ 化 ] 酸

16) chisel [ 5tFizl ] n. 凿子