西班牙文化之旅

Chapter 15

第15章

What I remember most is the fucking spiders. Really big ones, like tarantulas or something. I stood at a window of one of those sleazy roadside motels, separated from a woman (who certainly hadn’t majored in hospitality management) by a thick pane of glass. The light from her office illuminated a few spiderwebs suspended between the building and the makeshift sun blocker that seemed primed to collapse on top of me. On each web was at least one giant spider, and I thought that if I looked away from them for too long, one of those ghastly creatures would jump on my face and suck my blood. I’m not even afraid of spiders, but these things were big.

我記得最深的是那些該死的蜘蛛。真的很大，比如狼蛛什麼的。我站在一家骯髒的路邊汽車旅館的窗戶前，與一個女人（她當然沒有主修酒店管理）隔著一塊厚厚的玻璃。她辦公室的燈光照亮了懸掛在建築物和臨時防曬罩之間的幾張蜘蛛網，這些防曬霜似乎已經準備好在我身上坍塌了。每張網上至少有一隻巨大的蜘蛛，我想如果我把目光從它們身上移開太久，那些可怕的生物之一就會跳到我的臉上吸我的血。我什至不怕蜘蛛，但這些東西很大。

I wasn’t supposed to be here. I’d structured my entire life to avoid just these types of places. When I thought of leaving my hometown, of “getting out,” it was from this sort of place that I wanted to escape. It was past midnight. The streetlight revealed the silhouette of a man sitting halfway in his truck—the door open, his feet dangling to the side—with the unmistakable form of a hypodermic needle sticking from his arm. I should have been shocked, but this was Middletown, after all. Just a few weeks earlier, the police had discovered a woman passed out at the local car wash, a bag of heroin and a spoon in the passenger seat, the needle still protruding from her arm.

我不應該在這裡。我的整個生活都是為了避免這些類型的地方。當我想到離開我的家鄉，想“走出去”時，我想逃離的就是這種地方。已經過了午夜。路燈照亮了一個男人的輪廓，他坐在卡車的一半——車門開著，他的腳懸在一邊——他的手臂上插著一根明顯的皮下注射針頭。我應該感到震驚，但這畢竟是米德爾敦。就在幾周前，警方在當地洗車場發現一名婦女昏倒，乘客座位上有一袋海洛因和一把勺子，針頭仍然從她的手臂上伸出。

The woman running the hotel that night was the most pitiful sight of all. She might have been forty, but everything about her—from the long, gray, greasy hair, the mouth empty of teeth, and the frown that she wore like a millstone—screamed old age. This woman had lived a hard life. Her voice sounded like a small child’s, even a toddler’s. It was meek, barely audible, and very sad.

那天晚上經營酒店的女人是最可憐的景象。她可能已經四十歲了，但她身上的一切——從長長的、灰色的、油膩的頭髮、嘴裏沒有牙齒，到她像磨石一樣皺著的眉頭——都在尖叫著衰老。這個女人過著艱苦的生活。她的聲音聽起來像個小孩的聲音，甚至像個蹣跚學步的孩子的聲音。它很溫順，幾乎聽不見，而且非常悲傷。

I gave the woman my credit card, and she was clearly unprepared. “Normally, people pay cash,” she explained. I told her, “Yeah, but like I said on the phone, I’m going to pay with a credit card. I can run to an ATM if you’d prefer.” “Oh, I’m sorry, I guess I forgot. But it’s okay, we’ve got one of those machines around here somewhere.” So she retrieved one of those ancient card-swiping machines—the kind that imprints the card’s information on a yellow slip of paper. When I handed her the card, her eyes seemed to plead with me, as if she were a prisoner in her own life. “Enjoy your stay,” she said, which struck me as an odd instruction. I had told her on the phone not an hour earlier that the room wasn’t for me, it was for my homeless mother. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

我把我的信用卡給了那個女人，她顯然沒有準備好。“通常，人們支付現金，”她解釋道。我告訴她，“是的，但就像我在電話裡說的，我要用信用卡付款。如果你願意，我可以跑到自動取款機上。“哦，對不起，我想我忘了。但沒關係，我們這附近有一台這樣的機器。於是，她找回了一台古老的刷卡機——那種將刷卡資訊印在一張黃色紙條上的機器。當我把卡片遞給她時，她的眼神似乎在懇求我，彷彿她是自己生活中的囚犯。“祝你住得愉快，”她說，這讓我覺得這是一個奇怪的指示。一個小時前，我在電話裡告訴她，這個房間不是給我的，而是給我無家可歸的母親的。“好吧，”我說。“謝謝。”

I was a recent graduate of Yale Law School, a former editor of the prestigious Yale Law Journal, and a member of the bar in good standing. Just two months earlier, Usha and I were married on a beautiful day in Eastern Kentucky. My entire family showed up for the occasion, and we both changed our name to Vance—giving me, finally, the same name as the family to which I belonged. I had a nice job, a recently purchased home, a loving relationship, and a happy life in a city I loved—Cincinnati. Usha and I had returned there for a year after law school for one-year clerkships and had built a home with our two dogs. I was upwardly mobile. I had made it. I had achieved the American Dream.

我是耶魯大學法學院的應屆畢業生，曾是著名的《耶魯法學雜誌》的編輯，也是信譽良好的律師。就在兩個月前，我和烏莎在肯塔基州東部一個美麗的日子裡結婚了。我全家都出席了這個場合，我們倆都把名字改成了萬斯——終於，我的名字和我所屬的家庭一樣。我有一份不錯的工作，最近買了一套房子，一段充滿愛的關係，在我熱愛的城市辛辛那提過著幸福的生活。烏莎和我從法學院畢業后回到那裡做了一年的見習，並和我們的兩隻狗一起建了一個家。我是向上移動的。我成功了。我實現了美國夢。

Or at least that’s how it looked to an outsider. But upward mobility is never clean-cut, and the world I left always finds a way to reel me back in. I don’t know the precise chain of events that led me to that hotel, but I knew the stuff that mattered. Mom had begun using again. She’d stolen some family heirlooms from her fifth husband to buy drugs (prescription opiates, I think), and he’d kicked her out of the house in response. They were divorcing, and she had nowhere to go.

或者至少在局外人看來是這樣。但向上流動從來都不是一帆風順的，我離開的世界總能找到一種方法把我拉回來。我不知道導致我到那家酒店的確切事件鏈，但我知道重要的事情。媽媽又開始用了。她從第五任丈夫那裡偷了一些傳家寶來買毒品（我想是處方鴉片），作為回應，他把她趕出了家門。他們要離婚了，她無處可去。

I’d sworn to myself that I’d never help Mom again, but the person who made that oath to himself had changed. I was exploring, however uneasily, the Christian faith that I’d discarded years earlier. I had learned, for the first time, the extent of Mom’s childhood emotional wounds. And I had realized that those wounds never truly heal, even for me. So when I discovered that Mom was in dire straits, I didn’t mutter insults under my breath and hang up the phone. I offered to help her.

我曾對自己發誓，我再也不會幫助媽媽了，但對自己發誓的人變了。我正在探索，儘管很不安，我多年前就拋棄了基督教信仰。我第一次瞭解到媽媽童年情感創傷的程度。我意識到，即使對我而言，這些傷口也永遠不會真正癒合。所以當我發現媽媽陷入困境時，我沒有低聲嘀咕侮辱，掛斷了電話。我主動提出説明她。

I tried to call a Middletown hotel and give them my credit card information. The cost for a week was a hundred and fifty dollars, and I figured that would give us time to come up with a plan. But they wouldn’t accept my card over the phone, so at eleven P.M. on a Tuesday night, I drove from Cincinnati to Middletown (about an hour’s drive each way) to keep Mom from homelessness.

我試著打電話給米德爾敦的一家酒店，給他們我的信用卡資訊。一個星期的費用是一百五十美元，我想這會讓我們有時間想出一個計劃。但是他們不接受我的電話卡，所以在星期二晚上十一點，我從辛辛那提開車到米德爾敦（單程大約一個小時的車程），以防止媽媽無家可歸。

The plan I developed seemed relatively simple. I’d give Mom enough money to help her get on her feet. She’d find her own place, save money to get her nursing license back, and go from there. In the meantime, I’d monitor her finances to ensure that she stayed clean and on track financially. It reminded me of the “plans” Mamaw and Papaw used to put together, but I convinced myself that this time things would be different.

我制定的計劃似乎相對簡單。我會給媽媽足夠的錢來説明她站起來。她會找到自己的地方，攢錢拿回她的護士執照，然後從那裡出發。與此同時，我會監控她的財務狀況，以確保她保持清白，財務狀況良好。這讓我想起了媽媽和爸爸曾經制定的“計劃”，但我說服自己，這次情況會有所不同。

I’d like to say that helping Mom came easily. That I had made some peace with my past and was able to fix a problem that had plagued me since elementary school. That, armed with sympathy and an understanding of Mom’s childhood, I was able to patiently help Mom deal with her addiction. But dealing with that sleazy motel was hard. And actively managing her finances, as I planned to do, required more patience and time than I had.

我想說的是，幫助媽媽來得容易。我已經與我的過去和解了，並且能夠解決從小學開始困擾我的問題。懷著對媽媽童年的同情和理解，我能夠耐心地幫助媽媽處理她的毒癮。但是與那個骯髒的汽車旅館打交道是很困難的。正如我計劃的那樣，積極管理她的財務狀況需要比我更多的耐心和時間。

By the grace of God, I no longer hide from Mom. But I can’t fix everything, either. There is room now for both anger at Mom for the life she chooses and sympathy for the childhood she didn’t. There is room to help when I can, when finances and emotional reserves allow me to care in the way Mom needs. But there is also recognition of my own limitations and my willingness to separate myself from Mom when engagement means too little money to pay my own bills or too little patience left over for the people who matter most. That’s the uneasy truce I’ve struck with myself, and it works for now.

靠著上帝的恩典，我不再躲避媽媽。但我也無法解決所有問題。現在，既有對媽媽選擇的生活的憤怒，也有對她沒有選擇的童年的同情的空間。當我有能力時，當經濟和情感儲備允許我以媽媽需要的方式照顧時，我就可以提供説明。但也認識到我自己的局限性，我願意將自己與媽媽分開，因為訂婚意味著我的錢太少，無法支付自己的帳單，或者為最重要的人留下的耐心太少。這就是我與自己達成的不安的休戰協定，它現在有效。

People sometimes ask whether I think there’s anything we can do to “solve” the problems of my community. I know what they’re looking for: a magical public policy solution or an innovative government program. But these problems of family, faith, and culture aren’t like a Rubik’s Cube, and I don’t think that solutions (as most understand the term) really exist. A good friend, who worked for a time in the White House and cares deeply about the plight of the working class, once told me, “The best way to look at this might be to recognize that you probably can’t fix these things. They’ll always be around. But maybe you can put your thumb on the scale a little for the people at the margins.”

人們有時會問我是否認為我們可以做些什麼來“解決”我所在社區的問題。我知道他們在尋找什麼：一個神奇的公共政策解決方案或一個創新的政府計劃。但這些家庭、信仰和文化問題並不像魔方，我不認為解決方案（正如大多數人所理解的那樣）真的存在。一位在白宮工作過一段時間的好朋友，非常關心工人階級的困境，他曾經告訴我，“看待這個問題的最好方法可能是認識到你可能無法解決這些問題。他們將永遠在身邊。但也許你可以把你的拇指放在天平上，為邊緣的人服務。

There were many thumbs put on my scale. When I look back at my life, what jumps out is how many variables had to fall in place in order to give me a chance. There was my grandparents’ constant presence, even when my mother and stepfather moved far away in an effort to shut them out. Despite the revolving door of would-be father figures, I was often surrounded by caring and kind men. Even with her faults, Mom instilled in me a lifelong love of education and learning. My sister always protected me, even after I’d physically outgrown her. Dan and Aunt Wee opened their home when I was too afraid to ask. Long before that, they were my first real exemplars of a happy and loving marriage. There were teachers, distant relatives, and friends.

我的體重秤上有很多大拇指。當我回顧自己的生活時，跳出的是有多少變數必須落到位才能給我一個機會。我的祖父母經常在場，即使我的母親和繼父為了把他們拒之門外而搬到了很遠的地方。儘管有準父親的旋轉門，但我經常被有愛心和善良的男人包圍。即使有缺點，媽媽也向我灌輸了對教育和學習的終生熱愛。我姐姐總是保護我，即使我的身體已經長大了。丹和黃阿姨在我不敢問的時候打開了他們的家。早在那之前，他們就是我幸福和充滿愛的婚姻的第一個真正典範。有老師，有遠房親戚，有朋友。

Remove any of these people from the equation, and I’m probably screwed. Other people who have overcome the odds cite the same sorts of interventions. Jane Rex runs the transfer students’ office at Appalachian State University. Like me, she grew up in a working-class family and was its first member to attend college. She’s also been married for nearly forty years and has raised three successful kids of her own. Ask what made a difference in her life, and she’ll tell you about the stable family that empowered her and gave her a sense of control over her future. And she’ll tell you about the power of seeing enough of the world to dream big: “I think you have to have good role models around you. One of my very good friends, her father was the president of the bank, so I got to see different things. I knew there was another life out there, and that exposure gives you something to dream for.”

把這些人中的任何一個從等式中剔除，我可能就完蛋了。其他克服困難的人也引用了同樣的干預措施。簡·雷克斯（Jane Rex）在阿巴拉契亞州立大學（Appalachian State University）負責轉學生辦公室。和我一樣，她在一個工人階級家庭長大，是第一個上大學的成員。她也結婚近四十年，並撫養了三個成功的孩子。問她的生活有什麼變化，她會告訴你穩定的家庭賦予了她力量，讓她對自己的未來有了掌控感。她會告訴你，看到足夠多的世界的力量，讓你有遠大的夢想：“我認為你身邊必須有好的榜樣。我的一個好朋友，她的父親是銀行的行長，所以我看到了不同的東西。我知道外面還有另一種生活，而這種接觸會給你帶來一些夢想。

My cousin Gail is one of my all-time favorite people: She’s one of the first of my mom’s generation, the Blanton grandchildren. Gail’s life is the American Dream personified: a beautiful house, three great kids, a happy marriage, and a saintly demeanor. Outside of Mamaw Blanton, a virtual deity in the eyes of us grandkids and great-grandkids, I’ve never heard anyone else called “the nicest person in the world.” For Gail, it’s an entirely deserved title.

我的表妹蓋爾是我一直以來最喜歡的人之一：她是我媽媽那一代的第一代人之一，布蘭頓的孫子孫女。蓋爾的生活是美國夢的化身：漂亮的房子、三個可愛的孩子、幸福的婚姻和聖潔的舉止。除了媽媽布蘭頓，我們孫子和曾孫眼中的虛擬神，我從未聽說過其他人被稱為“世界上最好的人”。對於蓋爾來說，這是一個當之無愧的頭銜。

I assumed that Gail had inherited her storybook life from her parents. No one’s that nice, I thought, especially not someone who’s suffered any real adversity. But Gail was a Blanton, and, at heart a hillbilly, and I should have known that no hillbilly makes it to adulthood without a few major screwups along the way. Gail’s home life provided its own emotional baggage. She was seven when her dad walked out and seventeen when she graduated from high school, planning for college at Miami University. But there was a catch: “Mom told me I couldn’t go to college unless I broke up with my boyfriend. So I moved out the day after graduation, and by August, I was pregnant.”

我以為蓋爾從她的父母那裡繼承了她的故事書生活。我想，沒有人那麼好，尤其是那些遭受過任何真正逆境的人。但蓋爾是布蘭頓人，而且，本質上是一個鄉巴佬，我應該知道，沒有一個鄉巴佬能長大成人，一路上沒有幾次重大的失誤。蓋爾的家庭生活提供了自己的情感包袱。當她父親離開時，她七歲，高中畢業時她十七歲，計劃在邁阿密大學上大學。但有一個問題：「媽媽告訴我，除非我和男朋友分手，否則我不能上大學。所以我畢業后的第二天就搬出去了，到了八月，我懷孕了。

Almost immediately, her life began to disintegrate. Racial prejudice bubbled to the surface when she announced that a black baby was joining the family. Announcements led to arguments, and then one day Gail found herself without a family. “I didn’t hear from any of our relatives,” Gail told me. “My mom said she never wanted to hear my name again.”

幾乎立刻，她的生活開始瓦解。當她宣佈一個黑人嬰兒加入這個家庭時，種族偏見浮出水面。公告引發了爭吵，然後有一天蓋爾發現自己沒有家人。“我沒有收到任何親戚的消息，”蓋爾告訴我。“我媽媽說她再也不想聽到我的名字了。

Given her age and the lack of family support, it’s hardly surprising that her marriage soon ended. But Gail’s life had grown considerably more complex: She hadn’t just lost her family, she’d gained a young daughter who depended entirely on her. “It completely changed my life—being a mom was my identity. I might have been a hippie, but now I had rules—no drugs, no alcohol, nothing that was going to lead to social services taking my baby away.”

考慮到她的年齡和缺乏家庭支援，她的婚姻很快就結束了也就不足為奇了。但蓋爾的生活變得更加複雜：她不僅失去了家人，還得到了一個完全依賴她的小女兒。“這完全改變了我的生活——當媽媽是我的身份。我可能是一個嬉皮士，但現在我有了規則——沒有毒品，沒有酒精，沒有任何東西會導致社會服務帶走我的孩子。

So here’s Gail: teenage single mom, no family, little support. A lot of people would wilt in those circumstances, but the hillbilly took over. “Dad wasn’t really around,” Gail remembered, “and hadn’t been in years, and I obviously wasn’t speaking to Mom. But I remember the one lesson I took from them, and that was that we could do anything we wanted. I wanted that baby, and I wanted to make it work. So I did it.” She got a job with a local telephone company, worked her way up the ladder, and even returned to college. By the time she remarried, she had hit one hell of a stride. The storybook marriage to her second husband, Allan, is just icing on the cake.

所以這是蓋爾：十幾歲的單身媽媽，沒有家人，幾乎沒有支援。在這種情況下，很多人會枯萎，但鄉巴佬接管了。“爸爸真的不在身邊，”蓋爾回憶道，“而且已經很多年沒有去過了，我顯然沒有和媽媽說話。但我記得我從他們那裡學到的一個教訓，那就是我們可以做任何我們想做的事。我想要那個孩子，我想讓它發揮作用。所以我做到了。她在當地一家電話公司找到了一份工作，一路向上爬，甚至回到了大學。當她再婚時，她已經邁出了一大步。與她的第二任丈夫艾倫的故事書般的婚姻只是錦上添花。

Some version of Gail’s story often rears its head where I grew up. You watch as teenagers find themselves in dire straits, sometimes of their own making and sometimes not. The statistics are stacked high against them, and many succumb: to crime or an early death at worst, domestic strife and welfare dependency at best. But others make it. There’s Jane Rex. There’s Lindsay, who blossomed in the midst of Mamaw’s death; Aunt Wee, who put her life on track after ditching an abusive husband. Each benefited from the same types of experiences in one way or another. They had a family member they could count on. And they saw—from a family friend, an uncle, or a work mentor—what was available and what was possible.

蓋爾故事的某些版本經常在我長大的地方浮現。你看著青少年發現自己陷入了可怕的困境，有時是他們自己造成的，有時不是。統計數據對他們不利，許多人屈服於犯罪或早逝，最壞的情況是家庭衝突和福利依賴。但其他人做到了。還有簡·雷克斯。有琳賽，她在媽媽的死中綻放;黃阿姨，在拋棄虐待丈夫後，她的生活走上了正軌。每個人都以這樣或那樣的方式從相同類型的經驗中受益。他們有一個可以依靠的家人。他們從家人朋友、叔叔或工作導師那裡看到了什麼是可用的，什麼是可能的。

Not long after I began thinking about what might help the American working class get ahead, a team of economists, including Raj Chetty, published a groundbreaking study on opportunity in America. Unsurprisingly, they found that a poor kid’s chances of rising through the ranks of America’s meritocracy were lower than most of us wanted. By their metrics, a lot of European countries seemed better than America at the American Dream. More important, they discovered that opportunity was not spread evenly over the whole country. In places like Utah, Oklahoma, and Massachusetts, the American Dream was doing just fine—as good or better than any other place in the world. It was in the South, the Rust Belt, and Appalachia where poor kids really struggled. Their findings surprised a lot of people, but not me. And not anyone who’d spent any time in these areas.

在我開始思考什麼可以幫助美國工人階級取得成功后不久，包括拉傑·切蒂（Raj Chetty）在內的一組經濟學家發表了一項關於美國機會的開創性研究。不出所料，他們發現一個窮孩子在美國精英階層中晉陞的機會比我們大多數人想要的要低。從他們的指標來看，許多歐洲國家在美國夢方面似乎比美國更好。更重要的是，他們發現機會並沒有均勻地分佈在全國。在猶他州、奧克拉荷馬州和馬薩諸塞州等地，美國夢做得很好——與世界上任何其他地方一樣好或更好。在南部、鏽帶和阿巴拉契亞，窮孩子真正掙扎的地方。他們的發現讓很多人感到驚訝，但不是我。而不是任何在這些領域呆過的人。

In a paper analyzing the data, Chetty and his coauthors noted two important factors that explained the uneven geographic distribution of opportunity: the prevalence of single parents and income segregation. Growing up around a lot of single moms and dads and living in a place where most of your neighbors are poor really narrows the realm of possibilities. It means that unless you have a Mamaw and Papaw to make sure you stay the course, you might never make it out. It means that you don’t have people to show you by example what happens when you work hard and get an education. It means, essentially, that everything that made it possible for me, Lindsay, Gail, Jane Rex, and Aunt Wee to find some measure of happiness is missing. So I wasn’t surprised that Mormon Utah—with its strong church, integrated communities, and intact families—wiped the floor with Rust Belt Ohio.

在一篇分析數據的論文中，切蒂和他的合著者指出了解釋機會地理分佈不均的兩個重要因素：單親父母的普遍性和收入隔離。在很多單身父母身邊長大，生活在一個大多數鄰居都很窮的地方，這確實縮小了可能性的範圍。這意味著除非你有一個媽媽和爸爸來確保你堅持到底，否則你可能永遠無法成功。這意味著你沒有人以身作則地向你展示當你努力工作並接受教育時會發生什麼。從本質上講，這意味著，讓我、琳賽、蓋爾、簡·雷克斯和黃阿姨能夠找到某種程度的幸福的一切都消失了。因此，我並不感到驚訝，猶他州摩門教——擁有強大的教會、融合的社區和完整的家庭——用俄亥俄州鏽帶擦地板。

There are, I think, policy lessons to draw from my life—ways we might put our thumb on that all-important scale. We can adjust how our social services systems treat families like mine. Remember that when I was twelve I watched Mom get hauled away in a police cruiser. I’d seen her get arrested before, but I knew that this time was different. We were in the system now, with social worker visits and mandated family counseling. And a court date hanging over my head like a guillotine blade.

我認為，可以從我的生活中吸取一些政策教訓——我們可以把拇指放在這個最重要的尺度上。我們可以調整我們的社會服務系統如何對待像我這樣的家庭。還記得我十二歲的時候，我看著媽媽被一輛警車拖走。我以前見過她被捕，但我知道這次不同。我們現在在系統中，有社會工作者的訪問和強制性的家庭諮詢。法庭日期像斷頭台刀一樣懸在我頭上。

Ostensibly, the caseworkers were there to protect me, but it became very obvious, very early in the process, that they were obstacles to overcome. When I explained that I spent most of my time with my grandparents and that I’d like to continue with that arrangement, they replied that the courts would not necessarily sanction such an arrangement. In the eyes of the law, my grandmother was an untrained caretaker without a foster license. If things went poorly for my mother in the courts, I was as likely to find myself with a foster family as I was with Mamaw. The notion of being separated from everyone and everything I loved was terrifying. So I shut my mouth, told the social workers everything was fine, and hoped that I wouldn’t lose my family when the court hearing came.

從表面上看，個案工作者在那裡是為了保護我，但很明顯，在這個過程的早期，他們是需要克服的障礙。當我解釋說我大部分時間都和祖父母在一起，我想繼續這種安排時，他們回答說法院不一定會批准這樣的安排。在法律眼中，我的祖母是一個沒有寄養執照的未經訓練的看護人。如果我母親在法庭上的情況很糟糕，我很可能會發現自己和一個寄養家庭在一起，就像我和媽媽在一起一樣。與我所愛的所有人和一切分開的想法是可怕的。於是我閉上了嘴，告訴社工一切都很好，並希望在法庭聽證會到來時我不會失去我的家人。

That hope panned out—Mom didn’t go to jail, and I got to stay with Mamaw. The arrangement was informal: I could stay with Mom if I wanted, but if not, Mamaw’s door was always open. The enforcement mechanism was equally informal: Mamaw would kill anyone who tried to keep me from her. This worked for us because Mamaw was a lunatic and our entire family feared her.

這個希望實現了——媽媽沒有進監獄，我得和媽媽呆在一起。這個安排是非正式的：如果我願意，我可以和媽媽呆在一起，但如果不願意，媽媽的門總是敞開的。執行機制同樣是非正式的：媽媽會殺死任何試圖讓我遠離她的人。這對我們有用，因為媽媽是個瘋子，我們全家都害怕她。

Not everyone can rely on the saving graces of a crazy hillbilly. Child services are, for many kids, the last pieces of the safety net; if they fall through, precious little remains to catch them.

不是每個人都能依靠瘋狂的鄉巴佬的救命恩典。對於許多孩子來說，兒童服務是安全網的最後一塊;如果它們掉下來了，剩下的寶貴東西就很少了。

Part of the problem is how state laws define the family. For families like mine—and for many black and Hispanic families—grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles play an outsize role. Child services often cut them out of the picture, as they did in my case. Some states require occupational licensing for foster parents—just like nurses and doctors—even when the would-be foster parent is a grandmother or another close family member. In other words, our country’s social services weren’t made for hillbilly families, and they often make a bad problem worse.

部分問題在於州法律如何定義家庭。對於像我這樣的家庭以及許多黑人和西班牙裔家庭來說，祖父母、堂兄弟姐妹、阿姨和叔叔扮演著巨大的角色。兒童服務機構經常將他們排除在外，就像我的情況一樣。一些州要求寄養父母（就像護士和醫生一樣）獲得職業許可，即使潛在的寄養父母是祖母或其他近親。換句話說，我們國家的社會服務不是為鄉巴佬家庭提供的，而且它們經常使糟糕的問題變得更糟。

I wish I could say this was a small problem, but it’s not. In a given year, 640,000 children, most of them poor, will spend at least some time in foster care. Add that to the unknown number of kids who face abuse or neglect but somehow avoid the foster care system, and you have an epidemic—one that current policies exacerbate.

我希望我能說這是一個小問題，但事實並非如此。在某一年，有64萬名兒童，其中大多數是貧困兒童，將至少在寄養中度過一段時間。再加上數量不詳的孩子面臨虐待或忽視，但以某種方式避開寄養系統，你就有了流行病——一種當前政策加劇的流行病。

There are other things we can do. We can build policies based on a better understanding of what stands in the way of kids like me. The most important lesson of my life is not that society failed to provide me with opportunities. My elementary and middle schools were entirely adequate, staffed with teachers who did everything they could to reach me. Our high school ranked near the bottom of Ohio’s schools, but that had little to do with the staff and much to do with the students. I had Pell Grants and government-subsidized low-interest student loans that made college affordable, and need-based scholarships for law school. I never went hungry, thanks at least in part to the old-age benefits that Mamaw generously shared with me. These programs are far from perfect, but to the degree that I nearly succumbed to my worst decisions (and I came quite close), the fault lies almost entirely with factors outside the government’s control.

我們還可以做其他事情。我們可以在更好地瞭解像我這樣的孩子遇到什麼障礙的基礎上制定政策。我一生中最重要的一課不是社會沒有為我提供機會。我的小學和中學完全足夠，配備了老師，他們盡其所能聯繫我。我們的高中在俄亥俄州的學校中排名墊底，但這與教職員工關係不大，而與學生關係很大。我有佩爾助學金和政府補貼的低息學生貸款，使大學負擔得起，併為法學院提供基於需求的獎學金。我從來沒有挨過餓，至少在一定程度上要歸功於媽媽慷慨地與我分享的養老福利。這些計劃遠非完美，但就我幾乎屈服於我最糟糕的決定的程度而言（我非常接近），錯誤幾乎完全在於政府無法控制的因素。

Recently, I sat down with a group of teachers from my alma mater, Middletown High. All of them expressed the worry, in one form or another, that society devoted too many resources too late in the game. “It’s like our politicians think college is the only way,” one teacher told me. “For many, it’s great. But a lot of our kids have no realistic shot of getting a college degree.” Another said: “The violence and the fighting, it’s all they’ve seen from a very young age. One of my students lost her baby like she’d lost her car keys—had no idea where it went. Two weeks later, her child turned up in New York City with the father, a drug dealer, and some of his family.” Short of a miracle, we all know what kind of life awaits that poor baby. Yet there’s precious little to support her now, when an intervention might help.

最近，我和母校米德爾敦高中的一群老師坐下來。他們都以這樣或那樣的形式表達了對社會在遊戲中投入太多資源的擔憂。“這就像我們的政客認為上大學是唯一的出路，”一位老師告訴我。“對許多人來說，這很棒。但是我們的很多孩子都沒有獲得大學學位的現實機會。另一位說：「暴力和戰鬥，這是他們從很小的時候就看到的一切。我的一個學生失去了她的孩子，就像她丟失了她的車鑰匙一樣——不知道它去了哪裡。兩周后，她的孩子和父親、毒販和他的一些家人一起出現在紐約市。沒有奇跡，我們都知道等待那個可憐的嬰兒的將是什麼樣的生活。然而，現在幾乎沒有什麼可以支援她的東西，而干預可能會有所説明。

So I think that any successful policy program would recognize what my old high school’s teachers see every day: that the real problem for so many of these kids is what happens (or doesn’t happen) at home. For example, we’d recognize that Section 8 vouchers ought to be administered in a way that doesn’t segregate the poor into little enclaves. As Brian Campbell, another Middletown teacher, told me, “When you have a large base of Section 8 parents and kids supported by fewer middle-class taxpayers, it’s an upside-down triangle. There’re fewer emotional and financial resources when the only people in a neighborhood are low-income. You just can’t lump them together, because then you have a bigger pool of hopelessness.” On the other hand, he said, “put the lower-income kids with those who have a different lifestyle model, and the lower-income kids start to rise up.” Yet when Middletown recently tried to limit the number of Section 8 vouchers offered within certain neighborhoods, the federal government balked. Better, I suppose, to keep those kids cut off from the middle class.

因此，我認為任何成功的政策計劃都會認識到我以前高中的老師每天所看到的：對於這些孩子中的許多人來說，真正的問題是在家裡發生（或沒有發生）的事情。例如，我們認識到第8節代金券的管理方式不應將窮人隔離成小飛地。正如另一位米德爾敦的老師布萊恩·坎貝爾（Brian Campbell）告訴我的那樣，“當你擁有大量第8節的父母和孩子，而中產階級納稅人較少時，這是一個倒立的三角形。當一個社區中唯一的人是低收入者時，情感和財務資源就會減少。你不能把它們混為一談，因為那樣你就會有更大的絕望。另一方面，他說，“把低收入的孩子和那些生活方式不同的孩子放在一起，低收入的孩子就會開始崛起。然而，當米德爾敦最近試圖限制某些社區提供的第 8 節代金券數量時，聯邦政府猶豫不決。我想，最好是讓這些孩子與中產階級隔絕。

Government policy may be powerless to resolve other problems in our community. As a child, I associated accomplishments in school with femininity. Manliness meant strength, courage, a willingness to fight, and, later, success with girls. Boys who got good grades were “sissies” or “faggots.” I don’t know where I got this feeling. Certainly not from Mamaw, who demanded good grades, nor from Papaw. But it was there, and studies now show that working-class boys like me do much worse in school because they view schoolwork as a feminine endeavor. Can you change this with a new law or program? Probably not. Some scales aren’t that amenable to the proverbial thumb.

政府政策可能無力解決我們社區的其他問題。小時候，我把學校的成就與女性氣質聯繫在一起。男子氣概意味著力量、勇氣、戰鬥的意願，以及後來在女孩身上的成功。成績好的男孩是「娘娘腔」或「基佬」。。我不知道我從哪裡得到這種感覺。當然不是來自要求取得好成績的媽媽，也不是來自爸爸。但它就在那裡，現在的研究表明，像我這樣的工薪階層男孩在學校的表現要差得多，因為他們認為學業是女性的努力。你能用新的法律或計劃改變這一點嗎？可能不是。有些鱗片不適合眾所周知的拇指。

I’ve learned that the very traits that enabled my survival during childhood inhibit my success as an adult. I see conflict and I run away or prepare for battle. This makes little sense in my current relationships, but without that attitude, my childhood homes would have consumed me. I learned early to spread my money out lest Mom or someone else find it and “borrow” it—some under the mattress, some in the underwear drawer, some at Mamaw’s house. When, later in life, Usha and I consolidated finances, she was shocked to learn that I had multiple bank accounts and small past-due balances on credit cards. Usha still sometimes reminds me that not every perceived slight—from a passing motorist or a neighbor critical of my dogs—is cause for a blood feud. And I always concede, despite my raw emotions, that she’s probably right.

我瞭解到，使我在童年時期能夠生存的特質抑制了我成年後的成功。我看到衝突，我逃跑或準備戰鬥。這在我現在的關係中沒什麼意義，但如果沒有這種態度，我童年的家就會吞噬我。我很早就學會了把錢攤開，以免媽媽或別人發現並“借”錢——有的在床墊下，有的在內衣抽屜里，有的在媽媽家。在後來的生活中，當烏莎和我合併財務時，她震驚地發現我有多個銀行帳戶和信用卡上的小額逾期餘額。烏莎有時仍然會提醒我，並不是每一個被察覺到的輕視——來自路過的駕車者或批評我的狗的鄰居——都會導致血仇。我總是承認，儘管我的情緒很原始，但她可能是對的。

A couple of years ago, I was driving in Cincinnati with Usha, when somebody cut me off. I honked, the guy flipped me off, and when we stopped at a red light (with this guy in front of me), I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the car door. I planned to demand an apology (and fight the guy if necessary), but my common sense prevailed and I shut the door before I got out of the car. Usha was delighted that I’d changed my mind before she yelled at me to stop acting like a lunatic (which has happened in the past), and she told me that she was proud of me for resisting my natural instinct. The other driver’s sin was to insult my honor, and it was on that honor that nearly every element of my happiness depended as a child—it kept the school bully from messing with me, connected me to my mother when some man or his children insulted her (even if I agreed with the substance of the insult), and gave me something, however small, over which I exercised complete control. For the first eighteen or so years of my life, standing down would have earned me a verbal lashing as a “pussy” or a “wimp” or a “girl.” The objectively correct course of action was something that the majority of my life had taught me was repulsive to an upstanding young man. For a few hours after I did the right thing, I silently criticized myself. But that’s progress, right? Better that than sitting in a jail cell for teaching that asshole a lesson about defensive driving.

幾年前，我和烏莎一起在辛辛那提開車，當時有人打斷了我。我按了喇叭，那傢伙把我甩開了，當我們在紅燈處停下來時（這個人在我前面），我解開安全帶，打開車門。我打算要求道歉（必要時與那個人打架），但我的常識佔了上風，我在下車前關上了車門。烏莎很高興我改變了主意，然後她對我大喊大叫，讓我不要再表現得像個瘋子了（過去也發生過這種情況），她告訴我，她為我抵制我的自然本能而感到自豪。另一個司機的罪過是侮辱了我的榮譽，正是在這種榮譽上，我小時候幸福的幾乎每一個元素都取決於這種榮譽——它使學校的惡霸不惹我，當某個男人或他的孩子侮辱她時，將我與母親聯繫起來（即使我同意侮辱的實質）， 並給了我一些東西，無論多麼小，我都可以完全控制它。在我生命的前十八年左右的時間里，站起來會讓我被罵成“貓”或“懦夫”或“女孩”。客觀正確的行動方針是我一生中大部分時間教給我的東西，對一個正直的年輕人來說是令人厭惡的。在我做正確的事後的幾個小時里，我默默地批評自己。但這就是進步，對吧？這比坐在牢房裡給那個混蛋上一堂關於防禦性駕駛的課要好。