西班牙文化之旅

Chapter 9

第9章

Mamaw knew little of how this arrangement affected me, partly by design. During a long Christmas break, just a couple of months after I’d moved in with my new stepfather, I called her to complain. But when she answered, I could hear the voices of family in the background—my aunt, I thought, and cousin Gail, and perhaps some others. The background noise suggested holiday merriment, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her what I had called to say: that I loathed living with these strangers and that everything that had made my life to that point tolerable—the reprieve of her house, the company of my sister—had apparently vanished. I asked her to tell everyone whose voice I heard in the background that I loved them, and then I hung up the phone and marched upstairs to watch TV. I had never felt so alone. Happily, I continued to attend Middletown’s schools, which kept me in touch with my school friends and gave me an excuse to spend a few hours at Mamaw’s. During active school sessions, I saw her a few times a week, and every time I did, she reminded me of the importance of doing well academically. She often remarked that if anyone in our family “made it,” it would be me. I didn’t have the heart to tell her what was really happening. I was supposed to be a lawyer or a doctor or a businessman, not a high school dropout. But I was much closer to dropping out than I was to anything else.

媽媽對這種安排對我有多大影響知之甚少，部分原因是有意為之。在一個漫長的聖誕假期里，就在我和我的新繼父搬進來幾個月後，我打電話給她抱怨。但當她回答時，我能聽到背景中傳來家人的聲音——我想，我的姨媽和表妹蓋爾，也許還有其他一些人。背景的喧囂暗示著節日的歡樂，我沒有心思告訴她我打電話要說的話：我討厭和這些陌生人住在一起，一切讓我的生活變得可以忍受的東西——她家的緩刑，我姐姐的陪伴——顯然已經消失了。我讓她告訴所有我在後台聽到的聲音的人，我愛他們，然後我掛了電話，上樓去看電視。我從未感到如此孤獨。令人高興的是，我繼續在米德爾敦的學校上學，這讓我與學校的朋友保持聯繫，並給了我一個在媽媽學校呆幾個小時的藉口。在學校上課期間，我每周見到她幾次，每次見到她，她都會提醒我學業成績好的重要性。她經常說，如果我們家裡有人“成功了”，那就是我。我沒有心思告訴她到底發生了什麼。我應該成為一名律師、醫生或商人，而不是一個高中輟學生。但我比其他任何事情都更接近輟學。

She learned the truth when Mom came to me one morning demanding a jar of clean urine. I had stayed at Mamaw’s the night before and was getting ready for school when Mom walked in, frantic and out of breath. She had to submit to random urinalyses from the nursing board in order to keep her license, and someone had called that morning demanding a sample by the end of the day. Mamaw’s piss was dirtied with a half dozen prescription drugs, so I was the only candidate.

一天早上，當媽媽來找我，要一罐乾淨的尿液時，她才知道了真相。前一天晚上我住在媽媽家，正準備上學，媽媽走了進來，氣喘吁吁。為了保住她的執照，她不得不接受護理委員會的隨機尿液分析，那天早上有人打電話要求在一天結束前提供樣本。媽媽的小便被六種處方藥弄髒了，所以我是唯一的候選人。

Mom’s demand came with a strong air of entitlement. She had no remorse, no sense that she was asking me to do something wrong. Nor was there any guilt over the fact that she had broken yet another promise to never use drugs.

媽媽的要求帶著強烈的權利氣息。她沒有悔恨，沒有感覺到她要求我做錯什麼。她也沒有任何內疚感，因為她違背了另一個永不吸毒的承諾。

I refused. Sensing my resistance, Mom transitioned. She became apologetic and desperate. She cried and begged. “I promise I’ll do better. I promise.” I had heard it many times before, and I didn’t believe it even a little. Lindsay once told me that, above all, Mom was a survivor. She survived her childhood, she survived the men who came and went. She survived successive brushes with the law. And now she was doing everything she could to survive an encounter with the nursing board.

我拒絕了。感覺到我的抗拒，媽媽轉變了。她變得歉疚和絕望。她哭著乞求。“我保證我會做得更好。我保證。我以前聽過很多次，我甚至有點不相信。琳賽曾經告訴我，最重要的是，媽媽是一個倖存者。她熬過了她的童年，她熬過了來來往往的男人。她連續與法律擦肩而過。現在，她正在盡一切努力在與護理委員會的相遇中倖存下來。

I exploded. I told Mom that if she wanted clean piss, she should stop fucking up her life and get it from her own bladder. I told Mamaw that enabling Mom made it worse and that if she had put her foot down thirty years earlier, then maybe Mom wouldn’t be begging her son for clean piss. I told Mom that she was a shitty mother and I told Mamaw that she was a shitty mother, too. The color drained from Mamaw’s face, and she refused to even look me in the eye. What I had said had clearly struck a nerve.

我爆炸了。我告訴媽媽，如果她想要乾淨的尿液，她應該停止搞砸自己的生活，從自己的膀胱里得到它。我告訴媽媽，讓媽媽變得更糟，如果她早三十年放下腳步，那麼也許媽媽不會乞求兒子要乾身的尿液。我告訴媽媽她是一個糟糕的母親，我告訴媽媽她也是一個糟糕的母親。媽媽的臉上流下了麥圖的顏色，她甚至拒絕看我的眼睛。我說的話顯然觸動了我的神經。

Though I meant these things, I also knew that my urine might not be clean. Mom collapsed onto the couch, crying quietly, but Mamaw wouldn’t give in so easily, even though I’d wounded her with my criticism. I pulled Mamaw into the bathroom and whispered a confession—that I had smoked Ken’s pot twice in the past few weeks. “I can’t give it to her. If Mom takes my pee, we could both be in trouble.”

雖然我是認真的，但我也知道我的尿液可能不乾淨。媽媽癱倒在沙發上，小聲地哭泣，但媽媽不會輕易屈服，即使我的批評傷害了她。我把媽媽拉進洗手間，低声懺悔——過去幾個星期我抽了兩次肯的火壺。“我不能給她。如果媽媽拿走我的尿液，我們倆都可能遇到麻煩。

First, Mamaw assuaged my fears. A couple of hits of pot over three weeks wouldn’t show up on the screen, she told me. “Besides, you probably didn’t know what the hell you were doing. You didn’t inhale, even if you tried.” Then she addressed the morality of it. “I know this isn’t right, honey. But she’s your mother and she’s my daughter. And maybe, if we help her this time, she’ll finally learn her lesson.”

首先，媽媽緩解了我的恐懼。她告訴我，三周內的幾次擊球不會出現在螢幕上。“再說了，你可能不知道你到底在做什麼。即使你嘗試了，你也沒有吸氣。然後她談到了它的道德問題。“我知道這是不對的，親愛的。但她是你的母親，她是我的女兒。也許，如果我們這次説明她，她最終會吸取教訓。

It was the eternal hope, the thing to which I couldn’t say no. That hope drove me to voluntarily attend those many N.A. meetings, consume books on addiction, and participate in Mom’s treatment to the fullest extent that I could. It had driven me to get in the car with her when I was twelve, knowing that her emotional state could lead her to do something she’d regret later. Mamaw never lost that hope, after more heartache and more disappointment than I could possibly fathom. Her life was a clinic in how to lose faith in people, but Mamaw always found a way to believe in the people she loved. So I don’t regret relenting. Giving Mom that piss was wrong, but I’ll never regret following Mamaw’s lead. Her hope allowed her to forgive Papaw after the rough years of their marriage. And it convinced her to take me in when I needed her most.

這是永恆的希望，是我無法拒絕的東西。這種希望驅使我自願參加那些NA會議，閱讀有關成癮的書籍，並盡我所能參與媽媽的治療。在我十二歲的時候，它驅使我和她一起上車，因為我知道她的情緒狀態可能會導致她做一些她以後會後悔的事情。媽媽從來沒有失去希望，在經歷了比我所能理解的更多的心痛和失望之後。她的生活是一個如何對人失去信心的診所，但媽媽總能找到一種方法來相信她所愛的人。所以我不後悔心軟。給媽媽撒尿是不對的，但我永遠不會後悔跟隨媽媽的腳步。她的希望讓她在婚姻的艱難歲月後原諒了爸爸。這說服了她在我最需要她的時候收留我。

Though I followed Mamaw’s lead, something inside me broke that morning. I went to school red-eyed from crying and regretful that I’d helped. A few weeks earlier, I had sat with Mom at a Chinese buffet as she tried in vain to shovel food in her mouth. It’s a memory that still makes my blood boil: Mom unable to open her eyes or close her mouth, spooning food in as it fell back on the plate. Other people stared at us, Ken was speechless, and Mom was oblivious. It was a prescription pain pill (or many of them) that had done this to her. I hated her for it and promised myself that if she ever did drugs again, I’d leave the house.

雖然我跟著媽媽的腳步走，但那天早上我內心的一些東西都壞了。我哭得紅著眼睛去上學，後悔自己幫了忙。幾周前，我和媽媽坐在一起吃中式自助餐，她徒勞地試圖把食物塞進嘴裏。這段記憶至今仍讓我熱血沸騰：媽媽無法睜開眼睛或閉上嘴巴，當食物掉回盤子裡時，她用勺子舀了進去。其他人盯著我們看，肯說不出話來，媽媽也忘乎所以。是處方止痛藥（或其中許多）對她造成了這種影響。我恨她，並答應自己，如果她再吸毒，我會離開家。

The urine episode was the last straw for Mamaw, too. When I came home from school, Mamaw told me that she wanted me to stay with her permanently, with no more moving in between. Mom seemed not to care: She needed a “break,” she said, I supposed from being a mother. She and Ken didn’t last much longer. By the end of sophomore year, she had moved out of his house and I had moved in with Mamaw, never to return to the homes of Mom and her men. At least she passed her piss test.

尿液事件也是壓垮媽媽的最後一根稻草。當我放學回家時，媽媽告訴我，她希望我永遠和她在一起，中間不要再搬家了。媽媽似乎並不在乎：她需要「休息一下」，她說，我應該是一個母親。她和肯並沒有持續太久。到大二結束時，她搬出了他的房子，我和媽媽一起搬了進來，再也沒有回到媽媽和她的男人的家裡。至少她通過了她的小便測試。

I didn’t even have to pack, because much of what I owned remained at Mamaw’s as I bounced from place to place. She didn’t approve of me taking too many of my belongings to Ken’s house, convinced that he and his kids might steal my socks and shirts. (Neither Ken nor his children ever stole from me.) Though I loved living with her, my new home tested my patience on many levels. I still harbored the insecurity that I was burdening her. More important, she was a hard woman to live with, quick-witted and sharp-tongued. If I didn’t take out the garbage, she told me to “stop being a lazy piece of shit.” When I forgot to do my homework, she called me “shit for brains” and reminded me that unless I studied, I’d amount to nothing. She demanded that I play card games with her—usually gin rummy—and she never lost. “You are the worst fucking cardplayer I’ve ever met,” she’d gloat. (That one didn’t make me feel bad: She said it to everyone she beat, and she beat everyone at gin rummy.)

我甚至不需要收拾行李，因為當我從一個地方蹦蹦跳跳時，我擁有的大部分東西都留在了Mamaw s。她不贊成我把太多的東西帶到肯家，相信他和他的孩子可能會偷我的襪子和襯衫。（肯和他的孩子們都沒有從我這裡偷過東西。雖然我喜歡和她住在一起，但我的新家在很多層面上考驗了我的耐心。我仍然懷有不安全感，因為我給她帶來了負擔。更重要的是，她是一個很難相處的女人，機智而犀利。如果我不倒垃圾，她就告訴我“別再做懶惰的狗屎了”。當我忘記做作業時，她罵我“腦子狗屎”，並提醒我，除非我學習，否則我一事無成。她要求我和她一起玩紙牌遊戲——通常是杜松子酒拉米酒——她從來沒有輸過。“你是我見過的最糟糕的紙牌玩家，”她幸災樂禍。（這句話並沒有讓我感到難過：她對她打敗的每個人都說過這句話，她在杜松子酒拉米酒上打敗了所有人。

Years later, every single one of my relatives—Aunt Wee, Uncle Jimmy, even Lindsay—repeated some version of “Mamaw was really hard on you. Too hard.” There were three rules in her house: Get good grades, get a job, and “get off your ass and help me.” There was no set chore list; I just had to help her with whatever she was doing. And she never told me what to do—she just yelled at me if she did anything and I wasn’t helping.

多年後，我的每一個親戚——黃阿姨、吉米叔叔，甚至琳賽——都重複著某種版本的“媽媽對你真的很苛刻。太難了。她家裡有三條規則：取得好成績，找到一份工作，以及“放下你的屁股，幫幫我”。沒有固定的家務清單;無論她做什麼，我都必須説明她。她從不告訴我該怎麼做——如果她做了什麼而我沒有幫忙，她就會對我大吼大叫。

But we had a lot of fun. Mamaw had a much bigger bark than bite, at least with me. She once ordered me to watch a TV show with her on a Friday night, a creepy murder mystery, the type of show Mamaw loved to watch. At the climax of the show, during a moment designed to make the viewer jump, Mamaw flipped off the lights and screamed in my ear. She’d seen the episode before and knew what was coming. She made me sit there for forty-five minutes just so she could scare me at the appointed time.

但我們玩得很開心。媽媽的吠叫比咬人大得多，至少在我這裡是這樣。她曾經命令我在週五晚上和她一起看一個電視節目，一個令人毛骨悚然的謀殺之謎，媽媽喜歡看的那種節目。在演出的高潮處，在一個旨在讓觀眾跳起來的時刻，媽媽關掉了燈，在我耳邊尖叫。她以前看過這一集，知道會發生什麼。她讓我在那裡坐了四十五分鐘，這樣她就可以在約定的時間嚇唬我。

The best part about living with Mamaw was that I began to understand what made her tick. Until then, I had resented how rarely we traveled to Kentucky after Mamaw Blanton’s death. The decline in visits wasn’t noticeable at first, but by the time I started middle school, we visited Kentucky only a few times a year for a few days at a time. Living with Mamaw, I learned that she and her sister, Rose—a woman of uncommon kindness—had a falling-out after their mother died. Mamaw had hoped that the old house would become a sort of family time share, while Rose had hoped that the house would go to her son and his family. Rose had a point: None of the siblings who lived in Ohio or Indiana visited often enough, so it made sense to give the house to someone who would use it. But Mamaw feared that without a home base, her children and grandchildren would have no place to stay during their visits to Jackson. She, too, had a point.

和媽媽住在一起最好的部分是我開始理解是什麼讓她打勾。在那之前，我一直對布蘭頓媽媽去世后我們很少去肯塔基州感到不滿。起初訪問量的下降並不明顯，但到我開始上中學時，我們每年只訪問肯塔基州幾次，每次幾天。和媽媽住在一起，我瞭解到她和她的妹妹羅斯——一個異常善良的女人——在母親去世后發生了爭執。媽媽希望老房子能成為一種家庭分時度假，而羅斯則希望這所房子能屬於她的兒子和他的家人。羅斯說得有道理：住在俄亥俄州或印第安那州的兄弟姐妹都不夠頻繁地來訪，所以把房子送給願意使用它的人是有道理的。但媽媽擔心，如果沒有大本營，她的孩子和孫子們在傑克遜訪問期間將沒有地方住。她也說得有道理。

I started to understand that Mamaw saw returning to Jackson as a duty to endure rather than a source of enjoyment. To me, Jackson was about my uncles, and chasing turtles, and finding peace from the instability that plagued my Ohio existence. Jackson gave me a shared home with Mamaw, a three-hour road trip to tell and listen to stories, and a place where everyone knew me as the grandson of the famous Jim and Bonnie Vance. Jackson was something much different to her. It was the place where she sometimes went hungry as a child, from which she ran in the wake of a teenage pregnancy scandal, and where so many of her friends had given their lives in the mines. I wanted to escape to Jackson; she had escaped from it.

我開始明白，媽媽把回到傑克遜看作是一種忍受的責任，而不是一種享受的源泉。對我來說，傑克遜是關於我的叔叔們，追逐，並從困擾我在俄亥俄州生活的不穩定中尋找平靜。傑克遜給了我一個與媽媽合住的家，一個三小時的公路旅行，可以講故事和聽故事，以及一個每個人都知道我是著名的吉姆和邦妮·萬斯的孫子的地方。傑克遜對她來說是一個截然不同的東西。這是她小時候有時會挨餓的地方，在少女懷孕醜聞之後，她從那裡逃跑，她的許多朋友都在礦井中獻出了生命。我想逃到傑克遜;她已經逃脫了。

In her old age, with limited mobility, Mamaw loved to watch TV. She preferred raunchy humor and epic dramas, so she had a lot of options. But her favorite show by far was the HBO mob story The Sopranos. Looking back, it’s hardly surprising that a show about fiercely loyal, sometimes violent outsiders resonated with Mamaw. Change the names and dates, and the Italian Mafia starts to look a lot like the Hatfield-McCoy dispute back in Appalachia. The show’s main character, Tony Soprano, was a violent killer, an objectively terrible person by almost any standard. But Mamaw respected his loyalty and the fact that he would go to any length to protect the honor of his family. Though he murdered countless enemies and drank excessively, the only criticism she ever levied against him involved his infidelity. “He’s always sleeping around. I don’t like that.”

在她行動不便的晚年，媽媽喜歡看電視。她更喜歡不修邊幅的幽默和史詩劇，所以她有很多選擇。但到目前為止，她最喜歡的節目是HBO黑幫故事《黑道家族》。回想起來，一部關於極度忠誠、有時甚至是暴力的局外人的節目引起Mamaw的共鳴也就不足為奇了。改變名字和日期，義大利黑手黨開始看起來很像阿巴拉契亞的哈特菲爾德-麥考伊爭端。該劇的主角托尼·女高音（Tony Soprano）是一個暴力殺手，幾乎以任何標準衡量，他都是一個客觀上可怕的人。但媽媽尊重他的忠誠，以及他會不惜一切代價保護家人榮譽的事實。儘管他謀殺了無數的敵人並酗酒，但她對他的唯一批評是他的不忠。“他總是在睡覺。我不喜歡那樣。

I also saw for the first time Mamaw’s love of children, not as an object of her affection but as an observer of it. She often babysat for Lindsay’s or Aunt Wee’s young kids. One day she had both of Aunt Wee’s girls for the day and Aunt Wee’s dog in the backyard. When the dog barked, Mamaw screamed, “Shut up, you son of a bitch.” My cousin Bonnie Rose ran to the back door and began screaming over and over, “Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!” Mamaw hobbled over to Bonnie Rose and scooped her up in her arms. “Shhh! You can’t say that or you’ll get me in trouble.” But she was laughing so hard that she could barely get the words out. A few weeks later, I got home from school and asked Mamaw how her day had gone. She told me that she’d had a great day because she’d been watching Lindsay’s son Kameron. “He asked me if he could say ‘fuck’ like I do. I told him yes, but only at my house.” Then she chuckled quietly to herself. Regardless of how she felt, whether her emphysema made it difficult to breathe or her hip hurt so badly that she could barely walk, she never turned down an opportunity to “spend time with those babies,” as she put it. Mamaw loved them, and I began to understand why she had always dreamed of becoming a lawyer for abused and neglected children.

我也第一次看到媽媽對孩子的愛，不是作為她愛的物件，而是作為愛的觀察者。她經常照顧琳賽或黃阿姨的年幼孩子。有一天，她把黃阿姨的兩個女兒都帶走了，還有黃阿姨的狗在後院。當狗吠叫時，媽媽尖叫道：“閉嘴，你這個婊子。我的表妹邦妮·羅斯（Bonnie Rose）跑到後門，開始一遍又一遍地尖叫，“婊子的兒子！婊子的兒子！媽媽蹣跚地走到邦妮·羅斯身邊，把她抱在懷裡。“噓！你不能這麼說，否則會給我帶來麻煩。但她笑得太厲害了，幾乎說不出話來。幾個星期後，我放學回家，問媽媽她今天過得怎麼樣。她告訴我，她今天過得很愉快，因為她一直在看琳賽的兒子卡梅隆。“他問我他能不能像我一樣說'他媽的'。我告訴他是的，但僅限於我家。然後她悄悄地自言自語地笑了起來。無論她的感受如何，無論是她的肺氣腫導致呼吸困難，還是她的臀部疼痛嚴重到幾乎無法走路，她從未拒絕過“與那些嬰兒共度時光”的機會，正如她所說。媽媽愛他們，我開始理解為什麼她一直夢想成為受虐待和被忽視兒童的律師。

At some point, Mamaw underwent major back surgery to help with the pain that made walking difficult. She landed in a nursing home for a few months to recover, forcing me to live alone, an experience that happily didn’t last long. Every night she called Lindsay, Aunt Wee, or me and made the same request: “I hate the damned food here. Can you go to Taco Bell and get me a bean burrito?” Indeed, Mamaw hated everything about the nursing home and once asked me to promise that if she ever faced a permanent stay, I’d take her .44 Magnum and put a bullet in her head. “Mamaw, you can’t ask me to do that. I’d go to jail for the rest of my life.” “Well,” she said, pausing for a moment to reflect, “then get your hands on some arsenic. That way no one will know.” Her back surgery, it turned out, was completely unnecessary. She had a broken hip, and as soon as a surgeon repaired it, she was back on her feet, though she used a walker or cane from then on. Now that I’m a lawyer, I marvel that we never considered a medical malpractice suit against the doctor who operated unnecessarily on her back. But Mamaw wouldn’t have allowed it: She didn’t believe in using the legal system until you had to.

在某個時候，媽媽接受了背部大手術，以幫助緩解行走困難的疼痛。她住進了養老院幾個月，被迫獨自生活，這種經歷並沒有持續多久。每天晚上，她都會打電話給琳賽、黃阿姨或我，提出同樣的要求：“我討厭這裡該死的食物。你能去塔可鐘給我買一個豆捲餅嗎？事實上，媽媽討厭療養院的一切，曾經讓我答應，如果她面臨永久居留，我會拿走她的 .44 Magnum 並在她的頭上放一顆子彈。“媽媽，你不能要求我那樣做。我會在監獄里度過餘生。“好吧，”她說，停頓了一會兒思考，“那就去拿點砒霜吧。這樣就沒人知道了。事實證明，她的背部手術是完全沒有必要的。她的髖部骨折了，外科醫生一修復它，她就重新站起來了，儘管從那時起她就使用助行器或拐杖。現在我是一名律師，我很驚訝我們從未考慮過針對在她背上進行不必要手術的醫生提起醫療事故訴訟。但媽媽不會允許這樣做：她不相信使用法律制度，除非你不得不這樣做。

Sometimes I’d see Mom every few days, and sometimes I’d go a couple of weeks without hearing from her at all. After one breakup, she spent a few months on Mamaw’s couch, and we both enjoyed her company. Mom tried, in her own way: When she was working, she’d always give me money on paydays, almost certainly more than she could afford. For reasons I never quite understood, Mom equated money with affection. Perhaps she felt that I would never appreciate that she loved me unless she offered a wad of spending money. But I never cared about the money. I just wanted her to be healthy.

有時我每隔幾天就會見到媽媽，有時我會去幾個星期，根本沒有她的消息。一次分手後，她在媽媽的沙發上呆了幾個月，我們倆都很享受她的陪伴。媽媽用她自己的方式嘗試過：當她工作時，她總是在發薪日給我錢，幾乎可以肯定比她能承受的要多。出於我一直不太明白的原因，媽媽把金錢等同於感情。也許她覺得我永遠不會感激她愛我，除非她提供一大筆零花錢。但我從不在乎錢。我只是希望她健康。

Not even my closest friends knew that I lived in my grandma’s house. I recognized that though many of my peers lacked the traditional American family, mine was more nontraditional than most. And we were poor, a status Mamaw wore like a badge of honor but one I’d hardly come to grips with. I didn’t wear clothes from Abercrombie & Fitch or American Eagle unless I’d received them for Christmas. When Mamaw picked me up from school, I’d ask her not to get out of the car lest my friends see her—wearing her uniform of baggy jeans and a men’s T-shirt—with a giant menthol cigarette hanging from her lip. When people asked, I lied and told them that I lived with my mom, that she and I took care of my ailing grandmother. Even today, I still regret that far too many high school friends and acquaintances never knew Mamaw was the best thing that ever happened to me.

甚至連我最親密的朋友都不知道我住在我奶奶的房子里。我認識到，儘管我的許多同齡人缺乏傳統的美國家庭，但我的家庭比大多數人更非傳統。我們很窮，媽媽戴著這種身份就像一枚榮譽勳章，但我幾乎無法理解。我不穿Abercrombie & Fitch或American Eagle的衣服，除非我在耶誕節收到它們。當媽媽從學校接我時，我會要求她不要下車，以免我的朋友看到她穿著寬鬆牛仔褲和男士T恤的制服，嘴唇上掛著一根巨大的薄荷醇香煙。當人們問起時，我撒謊告訴他們我和我媽媽住在一起，她和我照顧生病的祖母。即使在今天，我仍然後悔，太多的高中朋友和熟人從來不知道媽媽是發生在我身上的最好的事情。

My junior year, I tested into the honors Advanced Math class—a hybrid of trigonometry, advanced algebra, and precalculus. The class’s instructor, Ron Selby, enjoyed legendary status among the students for his brilliance and high demands. In twenty years, he had never missed a day of school. According to Middletown High School legend, a student called in a bomb threat during one of Selby’s exams, hiding the explosive device in a bag in his locker. With the entire school evacuated outside, Selby marched into the school, retrieved the contents of the kid’s locker, marched outside, and threw those contents into a trash can. “I’ve had that kid in class; he’s not smart enough to make a functioning bomb,” Selby told the police officers gathered at the school. “Now let my students go back to class to finish their exams.”

大三那年，我考上了榮譽高級數學課——三角學、高等代數和微積分的混合體。該班的導師羅恩·塞爾比（Ron Selby）因其才華橫溢和高要求而在學生中享有傳奇地位。二十年來，他從未缺過一天學。根據米德爾敦高中的傳說，一名學生在塞爾比的一次考試中打電話威脅炸彈，將爆炸裝置藏在他儲物櫃的一個袋子里。當整個學校都撤離到外面時，塞爾比走進學校，取回孩子儲物櫃里的東西，走到外面，把這些東西扔進了垃圾桶。“我在課堂上有過那個孩子;他不夠聰明，無法製造出有效的炸彈，「塞爾比告訴聚集在學校的員警。“現在讓我的學生回去上課完成考試。”

Mamaw loved stories like this, and though she never met Selby, she admired him and encouraged me to follow his lead. Selby encouraged (but didn’t require) his students to obtain advanced graphing calculators—the Texas Instruments model 89 was the latest and greatest. We didn’t have cell phones, and we didn’t have nice clothes, but Mamaw made sure that I had one of those graphing calculators. This taught me an important lesson about Mamaw’s values, and it forced me to engage with school in a way I never had before. If Mamaw could drop $180 on a graphing calculator—she insisted that I spend none of my own money—then I had better take schoolwork more seriously. I owed it to her, and she reminded me of it constantly. “Have you finished your work for that Selby teacher?” “No, Mamaw, not yet.” “You damn well better start. I didn’t spend every penny I had on that little computer so you could fuck around all day.”

媽媽喜歡這樣的故事，雖然她從未見過塞爾比，但她很欽佩他，並鼓勵我跟隨他的領導。塞爾比鼓勵（但並不要求）他的學生獲得先進的圖形計算機——德州儀器 （TI） 的 89 型是最新、最好的。我們沒有手機，也沒有漂亮的衣服，但媽媽確保我有一個圖形計算機。這給我上了重要的一課，讓我瞭解了媽媽的價值觀，它迫使我以一種前所未有的方式參與學校。如果媽媽能花180美元費用一個車輸算器——她堅持我不花自己的錢——那麼我最好更嚴肅地對待功業。我欠她的，她不斷提醒我。“你為塞爾比老師完成作業了嗎？”“不，媽媽，還沒有。”“你該死的，最好開始。我沒有把我的每一分錢都花在那台小電腦上，這樣你就可以整天亂搞。

Those three years with Mamaw—uninterrupted and alone—saved me. I didn’t notice the causality of the change, how living with her turned my life around. I didn’t notice that my grades began to improve immediately after I moved in. And I couldn’t have known that I was making lifelong friends.

和媽媽在一起的那三年——不間斷的、孤獨的——拯救了我。我沒有注意到這種變化的因果關係，沒有注意到和她一起生活如何改變了我的生活。我沒有注意到我的成績在我搬進來后立即開始提高。我不可能知道我正在結交終生的朋友。

During that time, Mamaw and I started to talk about the problems in our community. Mamaw encouraged me to get a job—she told me that it would be good for me and that I needed to learn the value of a dollar. When her encouragement fell on deaf ears, she then demanded that I get a job, and so I did, as a cashier at Dillman’s, a local grocery store.

在那段時間里，媽媽和我開始談論我們社區的問題。媽媽鼓勵我找一份工作，她告訴我這對我有好處，我需要學習一美元的價值。當她的鼓勵被置若罔聞時，她要求我找一份工作，於是我照做了，在當地一家雜貨店迪爾曼（Dillman's）當收銀員。

Working as a cashier turned me into an amateur sociologist. A frenetic stress animated so many of our customers. One of our neighbors would walk in and yell at me for the smallest of transgressions—not smiling at her, or bagging the groceries too heavy one day or too light the next. Some came into the store in a hurry, pacing between aisles, looking frantically for a particular item. But others waded through the aisles deliberately, carefully marking each item off of their list. Some folks purchased a lot of canned and frozen food, while others consistently arrived at the checkout counter with carts piled high with fresh produce. The more harried a customer, the more they purchased precooked or frozen food, the more likely they were to be poor. And I knew they were poor because of the clothes they wore or because they purchased their food with food stamps. After a few months, I came home and asked Mamaw why only poor people bought baby formula. “Don’t rich people have babies, too?” Mamaw had no answers, and it would be many years before I learned that rich folks are considerably more likely to breast-feed their children.

收銀員的工作使我成為了一名業餘社會學家。狂熱的壓力激發了我們的許多客戶。我們的一個鄰居會走進來，對我大吼大叫，因為我犯了最小的過錯——不對她微笑，或者今天把雜貨裝得太重，第二天太輕。有些人匆匆忙忙地走進商店，在過道之間踱步，瘋狂地尋找特定的商品。但其他人則故意在過道上跋涉，小心翼翼地將每一項從清單上劃掉。有些人購買了大量的罐頭和冷凍食品，而另一些人則一直帶著裝滿新鮮農產品的手推車來到收銀台。顧客越是煩惱，他們購買的預煮或冷凍食品越多，他們就越有可能貧窮。我知道他們很窮，因為他們穿的衣服，或者因為他們用食品券購買食物。幾個月後，我回到家問媽媽，為什麼只有窮人買嬰兒配方奶粉。“有錢人不也有孩子嗎？”媽媽沒有答案，很多年後我才知道，有錢人更有可能母乳餵養他們的孩子。

As my job taught me a little more about America’s class divide, it also imbued me with a bit of resentment, directed toward both the wealthy and my own kind. The owners of Dillman’s were old-fashioned, so they allowed people with good credit to run grocery tabs, some of which surpassed a thousand dollars. I knew that if any of my relatives walked in and ran up a bill of over a thousand dollars, they’d be asked to pay immediately. I hated the feeling that my boss counted my people as less trustworthy than those who took their groceries home in a Cadillac. But I got over it: One day, I told myself, I’ll have my own damned tab.

當我的工作教會了我更多關於美國階級鴻溝的知識時，它也讓我充滿了一點怨恨，既針對富人，也針對我自己的同類。迪爾曼的老闆是老式的，所以他們允許信用良好的人經營雜貨店，其中一些超過一千美元。我知道，如果我的親戚走進來，開了一千多美元的帳單，他們就會被要求立即付款。我討厭這樣一種感覺，即我的老闆認為我的員工不如那些開著凱迪拉克把雜貨帶回家的人值得信賴。但我克服了它：有一天，我告訴自己，我會有自己該死的標籤。

I also learned how people gamed the welfare system. They’d buy two dozen-packs of soda with food stamps and then sell them at a discount for cash. They’d ring up their orders separately, buying food with food stamps, and beer, wine, and cigarettes with cash. They’d regularly go through the checkout line speaking on their cell phones. I could never understand why our lives felt like a struggle while those living off of government largesse enjoyed trinkets that I only dreamed about.

我還了解了人們如何玩弄福利制度。他們會用食品券購買兩打裝蘇打水，然後以折扣價出售以換取現金。他們會單獨下訂單，用食品券購買食物，用現金購買啤酒、葡萄酒和香煙。他們經常通過收銀台，用手機說話。我永遠無法理解為什麼我們的生活感覺像是一場鬥爭，而那些靠政府慷慨生活的人卻享受著我夢寐以求的小飾品。

Mamaw listened intently to my experiences at Dillman’s. We began to view much of our fellow working class with mistrust. Most of us were struggling to get by, but we made do, worked hard, and hoped for a better life. But a large minority was content to live off the dole. Every two weeks, I’d get a small paycheck and notice the line where federal and state income taxes were deducted from my wages. At least as often, our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else. This was my mind-set when I was seventeen, and though I’m far less angry today than I was then, it was my first indication that the policies of Mamaw’s “party of the working man”—the Democrats—weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

媽媽專心致志地聽著我在迪爾曼的經歷。我們開始以不信任的眼光看待我們的工人階級同胞。我們大多數人都在掙扎著過日子，但我們湊合著過日子，努力工作，希望過上更好的生活。但有很大一部分人滿足於靠救濟金生活。每兩周，我就會拿到一小筆薪水，並注意從我的工資中扣除聯邦和州所得稅的那條線。至少同樣頻繁的是，我們吸毒成癮的鄰居會買T骨牛排，我太窮了，不能自己買，但被山姆大叔強迫給別人買。這是我十七歲時的心態，雖然我今天的憤怒遠不如那時，但這是我第一次表明，媽媽的“工人黨”——民主黨——的政策並不是他們所想的那樣。

Political scientists have spent millions of words trying to explain how Appalachia and the South went from staunchly Democratic to staunchly Republican in less than a generation. Some blame race relations and the Democratic Party’s embrace of the civil rights movement. Others cite religious faith and the hold that social conservatism has on evangelicals in that region. A big part of the explanation lies in the fact that many in the white working class saw precisely what I did, working at Dillman’s. As far back as the 1970s, the white working class began to turn to Richard Nixon because of a perception that, as one man put it, government was “payin’ people who are on welfare today doin’ nothin’! They’re laughin’ at our society! And we’re all hardworkin’ people and we’re gettin’ laughed at for workin’ every day!”²⁰

政治學家花了數百萬字試圖解釋阿巴拉契亞和南方如何在不到一代人的時間里從堅定的民主黨變成堅定的共和黨。一些人指責種族關係和民主黨對民權運動的擁護。其他人則引用了宗教信仰和社會保守主義對該地區福音派教徒的控制。很大一部分原因在於，白人工人階級中的許多人看到了我在迪爾曼工作所做的事情。早在 1970 年代，白人工人階級就開始轉向理查·尼克鬆，因為正如一個人所說，政府是「付錢給今天領取福利的人」無所事事'！他們在嘲笑我們的社會！我們都是勤奮的人，我們每天都因為工作而受到嘲笑！²⁰

At around that time, our neighbor—one of Mamaw and Papaw’s oldest friends—registered the house next to ours for Section 8. Section 8 is a government program that offers low-income residents a voucher to rent housing. Mamaw’s friend had little luck renting his property, but when he qualified his house for the Section 8 voucher, he virtually assured that would change. Mamaw saw it as a betrayal, ensuring that “bad” people would move into the neighborhood and drive down property values.

大約在那個時候，我們的鄰居——媽媽和爸爸最年長的朋友之一——為我們隔壁的房子註冊了第 8 節。第 8 節是一項政府計劃，為低收入居民提供租房券。Mamaw 的朋友租下他的房產運氣不佳，但當他有資格獲得第 8 節代金券時，他幾乎可以肯定這種情況會改變。Mamaw認為這是一種背叛，確保「壞」人會搬進社區並壓低房產價值。

Despite our efforts to draw bright lines between the working and nonworking poor, Mamaw and I recognized that we shared a lot in common with those whom we thought gave our people a bad name. Those Section 8 recipients looked a lot like us. The matriarch of the first family to move in next door was born in Kentucky but moved north at a young age as her parents sought a better life. She’d gotten involved with a couple of men, each of whom had left her with a child but no support. She was nice, and so were her kids. But the drugs and the late-night fighting revealed troubles that too many hillbilly transplants knew too well. Confronted with such a realization of her own family’s struggle, Mamaw grew frustrated and angry.

儘管我們努力在有工作的窮人和非有工作的窮人之間劃清界限，但媽媽和我認識到，我們與那些我們認為給我們的人民帶來壞名聲的人有很多共同點。那些第8節的接受者看起來很像我們。第一個搬進隔壁家庭的女族長出生在肯塔基州，但隨著父母尋求更好的生活，她很小的時候就搬到了北方。她和幾個男人發生了關係，每個男人都給她留下了一個孩子，但沒有支援。她很好，她的孩子也很好。但毒品和深夜的戰鬥揭示了太多鄉巴佬移植者所熟知的麻煩。面對自己家庭的掙扎，媽媽變得沮喪和憤怒。

From that anger sprang Bonnie Vance the social policy expert: “She’s a lazy whore, but she wouldn’t be if she was forced to get a job”; “I hate those fuckers for giving these people the money to move into our neighborhood.” She’d rant against the people we’d see in the grocery store: “I can’t understand why people who’ve worked all their lives scrape by while these deadbeats buy liquor and cell phone coverage with our tax money.”

社會政策專家邦妮·萬斯（Bonnie Vance）從這種憤怒中湧現出來：“她是一個懶惰的妓女，但如果她被迫找工作，她就不會了”;“我討厭那些混蛋給這些人錢搬進我們的社區。她會對我們在雜貨店裡看到的人大發雷霆：「我不明白為什麼那些工作了一輩子的人，而這些無賴卻用我們的稅款買酒和手機。

These were bizarre views for my bleeding-heart grandma. And if she blasted the government for doing too much one day, she’d blast it for doing too little the next. The government, after all, was just helping poor people find a place to live, and my grandma loved the idea of anyone helping the poor. She had no philosophical objection to Section 8 vouchers. So the Democrat in her would resurface. She’d rant about the lack of jobs and wonder aloud whether that was why our neighbor couldn’t find a good man. In her more compassionate moments, Mamaw asked if it made any sense that our society could afford aircraft carriers but not drug treatment facilities—like Mom’s—for everyone. Sometimes she’d criticize the faceless rich, whom she saw as far too unwilling to carry their fair share of the social burden. Mamaw saw every ballot failure of the local school improvement tax (and there were many) as an indictment of our society’s failure to provide a quality education to kids like me.

對於我流血的奶奶來說，這些都是奇怪的景象。如果她某一天抨擊政府做得太多，那麼第二天她就會抨擊政府做得太少。畢竟，政府只是在幫助窮人找到住處，而我奶奶喜歡任何人幫助窮人的想法。她對第8節代金券沒有哲學上的反對意見。因此，她身上的民主黨人將重新浮出水面。她會咆哮著說沒有工作，並大聲想知道這是否就是我們的鄰居找不到一個好男人的原因。在她更富有同情心的時刻，媽媽問我們的社會可以買得起航空母艦，但不能為每個人買得起戒毒設施——比如媽媽的——這有什麼意義嗎？有時她會批評那些不露面的富人，她認為他們太不願意承擔他們應有的社會負擔。媽媽認為，當地學校改善稅的每一次投票失敗（而且有很多）都是對我們社會未能為像我這樣的孩子提供優質教育的控訴。

Mamaw’s sentiments occupied wildly different parts of the political spectrum. Depending on her mood, Mamaw was a radical conservative or a European-style social Democrat. Because of this, I initially assumed that Mamaw was an unreformed simpleton and that as soon as she opened her mouth about policy or politics, I might as well close my ears. Yet I quickly realized that in Mamaw’s contradictions lay great wisdom. I had spent so long just surviving my world, but now that I had a little space to observe it, I began to see the world as Mamaw did. I was scared, confused, angry, and heartbroken. I’d blame large businesses for closing up shop and moving overseas, and then I’d wonder if I might have done the same thing. I’d curse our government for not helping enough, and then I’d wonder if, in its attempts to help, it actually made the problem worse.

Mamaw的情緒佔據了政治光譜中截然不同的部分。根據她的心情，媽媽是一個激進的保守派或歐洲式的社會民主黨人。正因為如此，我最初以為媽媽是一個沒有改革的傻瓜，只要她開口談論政策或政治，我還不如閉上耳朵。然而，我很快意識到，在媽媽的矛盾中蘊藏著偉大的智慧。我花了這麼長時間才在我的世界裡生存下來，但現在我有了一點空間來觀察它，我開始像媽媽一樣看待這個世界。我感到害怕、困惑、憤怒和心碎。我會責怪大企業關門大吉，搬到海外，然後我想知道我是否也會做同樣的事情。我會詛咒我們的政府沒有提供足夠的説明，然後我想知道，在它試圖提供幫助的過程中，它是否真的使問題變得更糟。

Mamaw could spew venom like a Marine Corps drill instructor, but what she saw in our community didn’t just piss her off. It broke her heart. Behind the drugs, and the fighting matches, and the financial struggles, these were people with serious problems, and they were hurting. Our neighbors had a kind of desperate sadness in their lives. You’d see it in how the mother would grin but never really smile, or in the jokes that the teenage girl told about her mother “smacking the shit out of her.” I knew what awkward humor like this was meant to conceal because I’d used it in the past. Grin and bear it, says the adage. If anyone appreciated this, Mamaw did.

媽媽可以像海軍陸戰隊的演習教官一樣噴出毒液，但她在我們社區的所見所聞不僅惹惱了她。這傷了她的心。在毒品、格鬥比賽和財務鬥爭的背後，這些人有嚴重的問題，他們正在受傷。我們的鄰居在他們的生活中有一種絕望的悲傷。你會從母親如何咧嘴笑但從未真正微笑，或者從十幾歲的女孩講述的關於她母親“從她身上啪”的笑話中看出這一點。我知道像這樣尷尬的幽默是為了隱藏什麼，因為我過去用過它。咧嘴一笑，忍受它，諺語說。如果有人欣賞這一點，媽媽就做到了。

The problems of our community hit close to home. Mom’s struggles weren’t some isolated incident. They were replicated, replayed, and relived by many of the people who, like us, had moved hundreds of miles in search of a better life. There was no end in sight. Mamaw had thought she escaped the poverty of the hills, but the poverty—emotional, if not financial—had followed her. Something had made her later years eerily similar to her earliest ones. What was happening? What were our neighbor’s teenage daughter’s prospects? Certainly the odds were against her, with a home life like that. This raised the question: What would happen to me?

我們社區的問題離家很近。媽媽的掙扎並不是某個孤立的事件。它們被許多像我們一樣為了尋求更好生活而搬遷數百英里的人複製、重播和重溫。看不到盡頭。媽媽以為她逃離了山上的貧窮，但貧窮——如果不是經濟上的貧窮——一直跟隨著她。有些東西使她的晚年與她早年的晚年驚人地相似。這是怎麼回事？我們鄰居十幾歲的女兒的前景如何？當然，對她來說，這樣的家庭生活是不利的。這就提出了一個問題：我會發生什麼？

I was unable to answer these questions in a way that didn’t implicate something deep within the place I called home. What I knew is that other people didn’t live like we did. When I visited Uncle Jimmy, I did not wake to the screams of neighbors. In Aunt Wee and Dan’s neighborhood, homes were beautiful and lawns well manicured, and police came around to smile and wave but never to load someone’s mom or dad in the back of their cruiser.

我無法以一種不牽涉到我稱之為家的地方深處的方式回答這些問題。我所知道的是，其他人的生活並不像我們一樣。當我拜訪吉米叔叔時，我沒有被鄰居的尖叫聲吵醒。在黃阿姨和丹的鄰居那裡，房子很漂亮，草坪修剪整齊，員警過來微笑和揮手，但從不把別人的媽媽或爸爸裝在他們的巡洋艦後面。

So I wondered what was different about us—not just me and my family but our neighborhood and our town and everyone from Jackson to Middletown and beyond. When Mom was arrested a couple of years earlier, the neighborhood’s porches and front yards filled with spectators; there’s no embarrassment like waving to the neighbors right after the cops have carted your mother off. Mom’s exploits were undoubtedly extreme, but all of us had seen the show before with different neighbors. These sorts of things had their own rhythm. A mild screaming match might invite a few cracked shutters or peeking eyes behind the shades. If things escalated a bit, bedrooms would illuminate as people awoke to investigate the commotion. And if things got out of hand, the police would come and take someone’s drunk dad or unhinged mom down to the city building. That building housed the tax collector, the public utilities, and even a small museum, but all the kids in my neighborhood knew it as the home of Middletown’s short-term jail.

所以我想知道我們有什麼不同——不僅僅是我和我的家人，還有我們的社區和我們的城鎮，以及從傑克遜到米德爾敦及其他地區的每個人。幾年前，當媽媽被捕時，附近的門廊和前院擠滿了觀眾;沒有什麼比在員警把你母親趕走後立即向鄰居揮手更尷尬的了。媽媽的功績無疑是極端的，但我們所有人都以前和不同的鄰居一起看過這個節目。這些事情有自己的節奏。一場輕微的尖叫比賽可能會招致一些破裂的百葉窗或窗簾後面偷看的眼睛。如果事情稍微升級，當人們醒來調查騷動時，臥室就會亮起。如果事情失控，員警會來把某人喝醉的爸爸或精神錯亂的媽媽帶到城市大樓。那棟樓里有稅吏、公用事業，甚至還有一個小博物館，但我附近的所有孩子都知道它是米德爾敦短期監獄的所在地。

I consumed books about social policy and the working poor. One book in particular, a study by eminent sociologist William Julius Wilson called The Truly Disadvantaged, struck a nerve. I was sixteen the first time I read it, and though I didn’t fully understand it all, I grasped the core thesis. As millions migrated north to factory jobs, the communities that sprouted up around those factories were vibrant but fragile: When the factories shut their doors, the people left behind were trapped in towns and cities that could no longer support such large populations with high-quality work. Those who could—generally the well educated, wealthy, or well connected—left, leaving behind communities of poor people. These remaining folks were the “truly disadvantaged”—unable to find good jobs on their own and surrounded by communities that offered little in the way of connections or social support.

我閱讀了有關社會政策和工作窮人的書籍。著名社會學家威廉·朱利葉斯·威爾遜（William Julius Wilson）的一本名為《真正的弱勢群體》（The Truly Disadvantaged）的書尤其觸動了人們的神經。我第一次讀這本書時才十六歲，雖然我沒有完全理解它，但我掌握了核心論點。隨著數以百萬計的人向北遷移到工廠工作，這些工廠周圍萌芽的社區充滿活力但脆弱：當工廠關門時，留下來的人被困在城鎮中，這些城鎮無法再以高品質的工作來支援如此龐大的人口。那些有能力的人——通常是受過良好教育、富有或人脈廣闊的人——離開了，留下了窮人社區。剩下的這些人是“真正的弱勢群體”——無法自己找到好工作，周圍的社區幾乎沒有提供聯繫或社會支援。

Wilson’s book spoke to me. I wanted to write him a letter and tell him that he had described my home perfectly. That it resonated so personally is odd, however, because he wasn’t writing about the hillbilly transplants from Appalachia—he was writing about black people in the inner cities. The same was true of Charles Murray’s seminal Losing Ground, another book about black folks that could have been written about hillbillies—which addressed the way our government encouraged social decay through the welfare state.

威爾遜的書對我說話了。我想給他寫一封信，告訴他他已經完美地描述了我的家。然而，它如此個人化地引起共鳴是很奇怪的，因為他不是在寫從阿巴拉契亞移植來的鄉巴佬，而是在寫內城的黑人。查理斯·默里（Charles Murray）的開創性著作《失地》（Losing Ground）也是如此，這是另一本關於黑人的書，本來可以寫成鄉巴佬的——它談到了我們的政府如何通過福利國家鼓勵社會衰敗。

Though insightful, neither of these books fully answered the questions that plagued me: Why didn’t our neighbor leave that abusive man? Why did she spend her money on drugs? Why couldn’t she see that her behavior was destroying her daughter? Why were all of these things happening not just to our neighbor but to my mom? It would be years before I learned that no single book, or expert, or field could fully explain the problems of hillbillies in modern America. Our elegy is a sociological one, yes, but it is also about psychology and community and culture and faith.

雖然很有見地，但這兩本書都沒有完全回答困擾我的問題：為什麼我們的鄰居不離開那個施虐的人？她為什麼要把錢花在毒品上？為什麼她看不出自己的行為正在毀掉她的女兒？為什麼所有這些事情不僅發生在我們的鄰居身上，也發生在我媽媽身上？多年後，我才知道，沒有一本書、專家或領域可以完全解釋現代美國鄉巴佬的問題。是的，我們的挽歌是一首社會學的挽歌，但它也是關於心理學、社區、文化和信仰的。

During my junior year of high school, our neighbor Pattie called her landlord to report a leaky roof. The landlord arrived and found Pattie topless, stoned, and unconscious on her living room couch. Upstairs the bathtub was overflowing—hence, the leaking roof. Pattie had apparently drawn herself a bath, taken a few prescription painkillers, and passed out. The top floor of her home and many of her family’s possessions were ruined. This is the reality of our community. It’s about a naked druggie destroying what little of value exists in her life. It’s about children who lose their toys and clothes to a mother’s addiction.

在我高中三年級的時候，我們的鄰居帕蒂打電話給她的房東，報告屋頂漏水。房東趕到后發現帕蒂赤裸上身，被石頭砸死，昏迷不醒地躺在客廳的沙發上。樓上的浴缸溢出了水，因此屋頂漏水了。帕蒂顯然給自己洗了個澡，吃了幾片處方止痛藥，然後昏倒了。她家的頂樓和她家的許多財產都被毀了。這就是我們社區的現實。這是關於一個赤裸裸的吸毒者摧毀了她生活中所存在的一點價值。這是關於孩子們因母親的成癮而失去玩具和衣服的故事。

Another neighbor lived alone in a big pink house. She was a recluse, a neighborhood mystery. She came outside only to smoke. She never said hello, and her lights were always off. She and her husband had divorced, and her children had landed in jail. She was extremely obese—as a child, I used to wonder if she hated the outdoors because she was too heavy to move.

另一位鄰居獨自住在一棟粉紅色的大房子里。她是一個隱士，一個鄰里之謎。她來到外面只是為了抽菸。她從不說你好，她的燈總是關著。她和丈夫離婚了，孩子們也進了監獄。她非常肥胖——小時候，我曾經懷疑她是否討厭戶外活動，因為她太重了，無法移動。

There were the neighbors down the street, a younger woman with a toddler and her middle-aged boyfriend. The boyfriend worked, and the woman spent her days watching The Young and the Restless. Her young son was adorable, and he loved Mamaw. At all times of the day—one time, past midnight—he would wander to her doorstep and ask for a snack. His mother had all the time in the world, but she couldn’t keep a close enough watch on her child to prevent him from straying into the homes of strangers. Sometimes his diaper would need changing. Mamaw once called social services on the woman, hoping they’d somehow rescue the young boy. They did nothing. So Mamaw used my nephew’s diapers and kept a watchful eye on the neighborhood, always looking for signs of her “little buddy.”

街上有鄰居，一個帶著蹣跚學步的年輕女子和她的中年男友。男朋友在工作，女人整天在看《年輕人與不安分的人》。她的小兒子很可愛，他愛媽媽。在一天中的任何時候——有一次，午夜過後——他都會徘徊到她家門口，要點零食。他的母親在這個世界上擁有所有的時間，但她無法密切關注她的孩子，以防止他誤入陌生人的家中。有時他的尿布需要更換。媽媽曾經打電話給這個女人的社會服務機構，希望他們能以某種方式救出這個小男孩。他們什麼也沒做。於是，媽媽用我侄子的尿布，密切關注著附近，總是在尋找她“小夥伴”的跡象。

My sister’s friend lived in a small duplex with her mother (a welfare queen if one ever existed). She had seven siblings, most of them from the same father—which was, unfortunately, a rarity. Her mother had never held a job and seemed interested “only in breeding,” as Mamaw put it. Her kids never had a chance. One ended up in an abusive relationship that produced a child before the mom was old enough to purchase cigarettes. The oldest overdosed on drugs and was arrested not long after he graduated from high school.

我姐姐的朋友和她的母親住在一個小複式公寓里（如果有的話，她就是福利女王）。她有七個兄弟姐妹，其中大部分來自同一個父親——不幸的是，這種情況很少見。她的母親從未有過工作，似乎「只對繁殖感興趣」，正如媽媽所說。她的孩子們從來沒有機會。其中一人最終陷入了一段虐待關係，在母親長大到可以購買香煙之前就生了一個孩子。最年長的吸毒過量，高中畢業后不久就被捕了。

This was my world: a world of truly irrational behavior. We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don’t need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being. We spend to pretend that we’re upper-class. And when the dust clears—when bankruptcy hits or a family member bails us out of our stupidity—there’s nothing left over. Nothing for the kids’ college tuition, no investment to grow our wealth, no rainy-day fund if someone loses her job. We know we shouldn’t spend like this. Sometimes we beat ourselves up over it, but we do it anyway.

這就是我的世界：一個真正非理性行為的世界。我們一路走進貧民窟。我們購買巨型電視和iPad。我們的孩子穿著漂亮的衣服，這要歸功於高息信用卡和發薪日貸款。我們購買不需要的房子，為它們再融資以獲得更多的支出，然後宣布破產，往往讓它們在我們身後裝滿垃圾。節儉對我們的存在是有害的。我們花錢假裝自己是上流社會。當塵埃落定時——當破產來襲，或者一個家庭成員把我們從愚蠢中解救出來時——就沒有什麼了。孩子們的大學學費一無所有，沒有投資來增加我們的財富，如果有人失業，就沒有未雨綢繆的基金。我們知道我們不應該這樣花錢。有時我們會為此自責，但我們還是這樣做了。

Our homes are a chaotic mess. We scream and yell at each other like we’re spectators at a football game. At least one member of the family uses drugs—sometimes the father, sometimes the mother, sometimes both. At especially stressful times, we’ll hit and punch each other, all in front of the rest of the family, including young children; much of the time, the neighbors hear what’s happening. A bad day is when the neighbors call the police to stop the drama. Our kids go to foster care but never stay for long. We apologize to our kids. The kids believe we’re really sorry, and we are. But then we act just as mean a few days later.

我們的家是一團亂麻。我們互相尖叫和大喊大叫，就像我們是足球比賽的觀眾一樣。家庭中至少有一名成員吸毒——有時是父親，有時是母親，有時兩者兼而有之。在特別緊張的時候，我們會互相毆打和拳打腳踢，都是在家人面前，包括年幼的孩子;很多時候，鄰居們會聽到正在發生的事情。糟糕的一天是鄰居打電話給員警阻止戲劇。我們的孩子去寄養，但從不呆太久。我們向孩子們道歉。孩子們認為我們真的很抱歉，我們確實如此。但幾天后，我們表現得同樣卑鄙。

We don’t study as children, and we don’t make our kids study when we’re parents. Our kids perform poorly in school. We might get angry with them, but we never give them the tools—like peace and quiet at home—to succeed. Even the best and brightest will likely go to college close to home, if they survive the war zone in their own home. “I don’t care if you got into Notre Dame,” we say. “You can get a fine, cheap education at the community college.” The irony is that for poor people like us, an education at Notre Dame is both cheaper and finer.

我們小時候不學習，當我們為人父母時，我們也不會讓孩子學習。我們的孩子在學校表現不佳。我們可能會對他們生氣，但我們從不給他們成功的工具——比如家裡的和平與安寧。即使是最優秀、最聰明的人，如果他們在自己家中度過戰區，也可能會去離家很近的大學。“我不在乎你是否進入了巴黎聖母院，”我們說。“你可以在社區大學接受優質、廉價的教育。具有諷刺意味的是，對於像我們這樣的窮人來說，聖母大學的教育既便宜又好。

We choose not to work when we should be looking for jobs. Sometimes we’ll get a job, but it won’t last. We’ll get fired for tardiness, or for stealing merchandise and selling it on eBay, or for having a customer complain about the smell of alcohol on our breath, or for taking five thirty-minute restroom breaks per shift. We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we’re not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves to solve the cognitive dissonance—the broken connection between the world we see and the values we preach.

當我們應該找工作時，我們選擇不工作。有時我們會找到一份工作，但它不會持久。我們會因為遲到而被解僱，或者因為偷竊商品並在eBay上出售，或者因為有顧客抱怨我們呼吸中的酒精味，或者因為每班在洗手間休息五次，30分鐘。我們談論努力工作的價值，但告訴自己，我們不工作的原因是一些不公平：奧巴馬關閉煤礦，或者所有的工作都流向了中國人。這些是我們告訴自己的謊言，以解決認知失調——我們看到的世界和我們所宣揚的價值觀之間的斷裂聯繫。

We talk to our children about responsibility, but we never walk the walk. It’s like this: For years I’d dreamed of owning a German shepherd puppy. Somehow Mom found me one. But he was our fourth dog, and I had no clue how to train him. Within a few years, all of them had vanished—given to the police department or to a family friend. After saying goodbye to the fourth dog, our hearts harden. We learn not to grow too attached.

我們和孩子談論責任，但我們從不言出必行。就像這樣：多年來，我一直夢想擁有一隻德國牧羊犬。不知怎的，媽媽給我找了一個。但他是我們的第四隻狗，我不知道如何訓練它。沒過幾年，他們都消失了——交給了員警局或家人朋友。告別第四隻狗后，我們的心變硬了。我們學會了不要太執著。

Our eating and exercise habits seem designed to send us to an early grave, and it’s working: In certain parts of Kentucky, local life expectancy is sixty-seven, a full decade and a half below what it is in nearby Virginia. A recent study found that unique among all ethnic groups in the United States, the life expectancy of working-class white folks is going down. We eat Pillsbury cinnamon rolls for breakfast, Taco Bell for lunch, and McDonald’s for dinner. We rarely cook, even though it’s cheaper and better for the body and soul. Exercise is confined to the games we play as children. We see people jog on the streets only if we leave our homes for the military or for college in some distant place.

我們的飲食和運動習慣似乎被設計為了讓我們早日進入墳墓，而且它正在起作用：在肯塔基州的某些地區，當地的預期壽命是六十七歲，比附近的維吉尼亞州低了整整十五年。最近的一項研究發現，在美國所有種族群體中，工人階級白人的預期壽命正在下降。我們早餐吃 Pillsbury 肉桂卷，午餐吃 Taco Bell，晚餐吃麥當勞。我們很少做飯，儘管它更便宜，對身體和靈魂更好。運動僅限於我們小時候玩的遊戲。只有當我們離開家去軍隊或去某個遙遠的地方上大學時，我們才會看到人們在街上慢跑。

Not all of the white working class struggles. I knew even as a child that there were two separate sets of mores and social pressures. My grandparents embodied one type: old-fashioned, quietly faithful, self-reliant, hardworking. My mother and, increasingly, the entire neighborhood embodied another: consumerist, isolated, angry, distrustful.

並非所有的白人工人階級都在鬥爭。我甚至在孩提時代就知道有兩套不同的習俗和社會壓力。我的爺爺奶奶體現了一種類型：老式的、安靜的、忠誠的、自力更生的、勤奮的。我的母親，以及越來越多的整個社區都體現了另一種：消費主義、孤立、憤怒、不信任。

There were (and remain) many who lived by my grandparents’ code. Sometimes you saw it in the subtlest of ways: the old neighbor who diligently tended her garden even as her neighbors let their homes rot from the inside out; the young woman who grew up with my mom, who returned to the neighborhood every day to help her mother navigate old age. I say this not to romanticize my grandparents’ way of life—which, as I’ve observed, was rife with problems—but to note that many in our community may have struggled but did so successfully. There are many intact families, many dinners shared in peaceful homes, many children studying hard and believing they’ll claim their own American Dream. Many of my friends have built successful lives and happy families in Middletown or nearby. They are not the problem, and if you believe the statistics, the children of these intact homes have plenty of reason for optimism.

曾經（並且仍然）有很多人按照我祖父母的準則生活。有時你會以最微妙的方式看到它：老鄰居勤奮地照料她的花園，即使她的鄰居讓他們的房子從里到外腐爛;那個和我媽媽一起長大的年輕女子，她每天都回到附近説明她的母親度過晚年。我這樣說並不是要把我祖父母的生活方式浪漫化——正如我所觀察到的，這種生活方式充滿了問題——而是要指出，我們社區中的許多人可能一直在掙扎，但取得了成功。有許多完整的家庭，許多在和平的家中共進晚餐，許多孩子努力學習並相信他們會實現自己的美國夢。我的許多朋友在米德爾敦或附近建立了成功的生活和幸福的家庭。他們不是問題，如果你相信統計數據，這些完整家庭的孩子有足夠的理由樂觀。

I always straddled those two worlds. Thanks to Mamaw, I never saw only the worst of what our community offered, and I believe that saved me. There was always a safe place and a loving embrace if ever I needed it. Our neighbors’ kids couldn’t say the same.

我總是橫跨這兩個世界。多虧了媽媽，我從來不會只看到我們社區提供的最糟糕的東西，我相信這救了我。總有一個安全的地方和一個充滿愛的擁抱，如果我需要的話。我們鄰居的孩子不能這麼說。

One Sunday, Mamaw agreed to watch Aunt Wee’s kids for several hours. Aunt Wee dropped them off at ten. I had to work the dreaded eleven A.M. to eight P.M. shift at the grocery store. I hung out with the kids for about forty-five minutes, then left at ten-forty-five for work. I was unusually upset—devastated, even—to leave them. I wanted nothing more than to spend the day with Mamaw and the babies. I told Mamaw that, and instead of telling me to “quit your damn whining” like I expected, she told me she wished that I could stay home, too. It was a rare moment of empathy. “But if you want the sort of work where you can spend the weekends with your family, you’ve got to go to college and make something of yourself.” That was the essence of Mamaw’s genius. She didn’t just preach and cuss and demand. She showed me what was possible—a peaceful Sunday afternoon with the people I loved—and made sure I knew how to get there.

一個星期天，媽媽同意看黃阿姨的孩子幾個小時。黃阿姨在十點把他們送走了。我不得不在雜貨店工作可怕的上午十一點到晚上八點。我和孩子們一起出去玩了大約四十五分鐘，然後在十點四十五分離開去上班。離開他們，我感到異常沮喪，甚至感到沮喪。我只想和媽媽和寶寶們一起度過這一天。我告訴了媽媽，她沒有像我預期的那樣告訴我“停止你該死的抱怨”，而是告訴我她希望我也能呆在家裡。這是一個難得的同理心時刻。“但是，如果你想要一份可以和家人一起度過週末的工作，你就必須上大學，為自己做點什麼。這就是媽媽天才的本質。她不只是說教、責駡和要求。她向我展示了什麼是可能的——與我所愛的人一起度過一個寧靜的周日下午——並確保我知道如何到達那裡。

Reams of social science attest to the positive effect of a loving and stable home. I could cite a dozen studies suggesting that Mamaw’s home offered me not just a short-term haven but also hope for a better life. Entire volumes are devoted to the phenomenon of “resilient children”—kids who prosper despite an unstable home because they have the social support of a loving adult.

大量的社會科學證明瞭一個充滿愛心和穩定的家庭的積極影響。我可以舉出十幾項研究表明，媽媽的家不僅為我提供了一個短期的避風港，還為我提供了過上更好生活的希望。整本書都致力於“有彈性的孩子”現象——儘管家庭不穩定，但孩子們仍然茁壯成長，因為他們得到了一個充滿愛心的成年人的社會支援。

I know Mamaw was good for me not because some Harvard psychologist says so but because I felt it. Consider my life before I moved in with Mamaw. In the middle of third grade, we left Middletown and my grandparents to live in Preble County with Bob; at the end of fourth grade, we left Preble County to live in a Middletown duplex on the 200 block of McKinley Street; at the end of fifth grade, we left the 200 block of McKinley Street to move to the 300 block of McKinley Street, and by that time Chip was a regular in our home, though he never lived with us; at the end of sixth grade, we remained on the 300 block of McKinley Street, but Chip had been replaced by Steve (and there were many discussions about moving in with Steve); at the end of seventh grade, Matt had taken Steve’s place, Mom was preparing to move in with Matt, and Mom hoped that I would join her in Dayton; at the end of eighth grade, she demanded that I move to Dayton, and after a brief detour at my dad’s house, I acquiesced; at the end of ninth grade, I moved in with Ken—a complete stranger—and his three kids. On top of all that were the drugs, the domestic violence case, children’s services prying into our lives, and Papaw dying.

我知道媽媽對我有好處，不是因為哈佛的心理學家這麼說，而是因為我感覺到了。想想我和媽媽一起搬進來之前的生活。三年級中期，我們離開了米德爾敦和我的祖父母，和鮑勃一起住在普雷布爾縣;四年級結束時，我們離開普雷布爾縣，住在麥金利街 200 街區的米德爾敦複式公寓里;五年級結束時，我們離開了麥金利街的200街區，搬到了麥金利街的300街區，那時奇普是我們家的常客，儘管他從未和我們住在一起。六年級結束時，我們住在麥金利街300號街區，但奇普已經被史蒂夫取代了（關於搬去和史蒂夫住在一起的討論很多次）;七年級結束時，馬特接替了史蒂夫的位置，媽媽正準備搬去和馬特一起住，媽媽希望我能和她一起去代頓;八年級結束時，她要求我搬到代頓，在我爸爸家繞了一小段路后，我默許了;九年級結束時，我和肯——一個完全陌生的人——和他的三個孩子住在一起。除此之外，還有毒品、家庭暴力案件、窺探我們生活的兒童服務以及Papaw的死亡。

Today, even remembering that period long enough to write it down invokes an intense, indescribable anxiety in me. Not long ago, I noticed that a Facebook friend (an acquaintance from high school with similarly deep hillbilly roots) was constantly changing boyfriends—going in and out of relationships, posting pictures of one guy one week and another three weeks later, fighting on social media with her new fling until the relationship publicly imploded. She is my age with four children, and when she posted that she had finally found a man who would treat her well (a refrain I’d seen many times before), her thirteen-year-old daughter commented: “Just stop. I just want you and this to stop.” I wish I could hug that little girl, because I know how she feels. For seven long years, I just wanted it to stop. I didn’t care so much about the fighting, the screaming, or even the drugs. I just wanted a home, and I wanted to stay there, and I wanted these goddamned strangers to stay the fuck out.

今天，即使記得那段時間足夠長，把它寫下來，也會在我心中喚起一種強烈的、難以形容的焦慮。不久前，我注意到一個Facebook朋友（一個有著同樣深厚鄉巴佬血統的高中熟人）不斷更換男朋友——進進出出，一周后發佈一個男人的照片，三周后發佈另一個男人的照片，在社交媒體上與她的新朋友爭吵，直到這段關係公開破裂。她和我同齡，有四個孩子，當她發帖說她終於找到了一個會善待她的男人時（我以前見過很多次），她十三歲的女兒評論說：“停下來。我只想讓你和這件事停下來。我希望我能擁抱那個小女孩，因為我知道她的感受。在長達七年的時間里，我只想讓它停下來。我不太在乎打架、尖叫，甚至毒品。我只是想要一個家，我想呆在那裡，我想讓這些該死的陌生人呆在外面。

Now consider the sum of my life after I moved in with Mamaw permanently. At the end of tenth grade, I lived with Mamaw, in her house, with no one else. At the end of eleventh grade, I lived with Mamaw, in her house, with no one else. At the end of twelfth grade, I lived with Mamaw, in her house, with no one else. I could say that the peace of Mamaw’s home gave me a safe space to do my homework. I could say that the absence of fighting and instability let me focus on school and my job. I could say that spending all of my time in the same house with the same person made it easier for me to form lasting friendships with people at school. I could say that having a job and learning a bit about the world helped clarify precisely what I wanted out of my own life. In hindsight, those explanations make sense, and I am certain that a bit of truth lies in each.

現在想想我永久搬來媽媽家後的生活總和。十年級結束時，我和媽媽一起住在她的房子里，沒有其他人。十一年級結束時，我和媽媽一起住在她的房子里，沒有其他人。十二年級結束時，我和媽媽住在一起，住在她的房子里，沒有其他人。我可以說，媽媽家的寧靜給了我一個安全的空間來做作業。我可以說，沒有戰鬥和不穩定讓我專注於學校和工作。我可以說，把我所有的時間都花在同一個房子里，和同一個人在一起，讓我更容易與學校裡的人建立持久的友誼。我可以說，有一份工作並瞭解一些世界有助於澄清我想要從自己的生活中得到什麼。事後看來，這些解釋是有道理的，我確信每個解釋都有一點道理。

I’m sure that a sociologist and a psychologist, sitting in a room together, could explain why I lost interest in drugs, why my grades improved, why I aced the SAT, and why I found a couple of teachers who inspired me to love learning. But what I remember most of all is that I was happy—I no longer feared the school bell at the end of the day, I knew where I’d be living the next month, and no one’s romantic decisions affected my life. And out of that happiness came so many of the opportunities I’ve had for the past twelve years.

我敢肯定，一位社會學家和一位心理學家坐在一個房間里，可以解釋為什麼我對毒品失去了興趣，為什麼我的成績提高了，為什麼我在SAT考試中取得了優異成績，以及為什麼我找到了幾位激勵我熱愛學習的老師。但我最難忘的是，我很快樂——我不再害怕一天結束時的上課鈴聲，我知道下個月我會住在哪裡，沒有人的浪漫決定影響我的生活。從這種幸福中，我獲得了過去十二年中的許多機會。