Okay, I will raise my hand and tell you
that I, too, am a member of the 47%. Also the 99%, while we are busy slicing
the American populace into fragments and segments. I was on WIC and state
health care before and after the birth of my son because I was in graduate
school and not making enough money to afford health insurance for anyone in my
household. It was a grim time, one episode in a long stretch that is so very
common in this country for people who are trying their best but not getting
paid quite enough to afford food, housing, and healthcare.
I wasn't very victim-y about it. I am
not sure what you mean by "victim." When I think about that word, I
think of someone who passively takes whatever injuries life is handing out.
Maybe that victim woman would lay down on the pavement, squinting while gravel
stuck to her skin from the cars passing by. Nope, I'm not a victim. I hollered.
I bothered everyone I could. I also shopped around like a good believer in the
power of "the market," and wouldn't you know it, there was no free
market solution to the problem of a woman with a uterus and an infant. We were
too expensive for the market to take care of us. So I had to go to the state
welfare offices, which has remained the best healthcare experience ever in my life.
I wrote a whole book about it, and I will send a copy to you if you like. Or
maybe you should buy a copy via the free market.
But what I really want to tell you is
that I was never a victim. Nope, I was a busy busy bee. Not only did I work my
butt off as a new mom and a graduate student and a teaching assistant, I also
took out zero loans because I was scared of debt. I didn't even rack up much
credit card debt. Instead, I took on both a second, a third, and a fourth job.
That's right: I was a proofreader for a medical supply company AND a freelance
journalist for a regional magazine AND taught yet another adjunct class at a
different university. I didn't have much time to savor my son's first year, but
we who work hard have to make many, many sacrifices.
Since then, I have followed in my
family members' footsteps. Many of us have been poor--too poor to have to pay
income tax at the end of the year, but poor enough to have significant chunks
taken out during each of our checks, amounts that are disproportionate to our
income. My family members all work their butts off, and so do I.
But what I really want to do is to tell
you a story from a time in my life when I was poor, and living in a poor
neighborhood. I knew I was privileged because I had an education, even then. I
knew I had options, and nothing taught me gratitude like seeing the privilege I
had. That's a good lesson: to see your privilege. It tends to make a person
less bitter and judgmental.
One day I was sitting on my porch
trying to get my son to sleep for a nap. One of my neighbors--a woman named
Crystal--was pushing a stroller down the street with her baby inside. She had
tied a lawnmower handle to the stroller handle with a piece of plastic rope.
She was pushing this contraption slowly down the pavement with quite a lot of
clattering and noise.
"Do you need your lawn
mowed?" she asked.
I said I didn't. The truth was that I
didn't have anything to spare to give her, but we talked for a while. She told
me about the tattoo on her calf and I showed her the tattoo on my shoulder. Her
baby in the stroller kept dropping his bottle onto the asphalt, and either she
or I would keep picking it up and handing it back to him. After a while she
said she had to keep moving because it was hot, and because she had to find
someone's lawn to mow.
Mitt, you cannot even imagine. You
can't imagine what it was like to go to Crystal's house later, sneak up on her
porch, and leave a package of diapers for her that were too small for my son.
You can't imagine how ashamed this made Crystal, and how she knew it was me,
and how she didn't roll her lawnmower contraption near my house anymore. You
clearly don't know a thing about pride.
Everyone who drives down a highway or
visits a post office or a library or a university in this country is a
beneficiary of our shared trust, the resources we have pulled together like a
big old barnraising to help make this country great in all the ways that aren't
given enough credit by the people who claim to be the biggest patriots. We are
not victims. We are just the ones who know that we need to help each other,
because we don't have pockets of family wealth to sustain us. We need to help
each other, because the seasons will turn as they do, and the next time around
it will be us who needs the help. That's what it's like over here in the 47%.
All the best,
Sonya Huber
Sonya Huber is the
author of two books of creative nonfiction, Cover
Me: A Health Insurance Memoir (2010), finalist for the ForeWord Book of the
Year, and Opa Nobody (2008),
shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize. She has also written a textbook, The Backwards Research Guide for Writers:
Using Your Life for Reflection, Connection, and Inspiration (2011). Her
work has been published in literary journals and magazines including Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Crab
Orchard Review, Hotel Amerika, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Washington Post Magazine. She teaches in
the Department of English at Fairfield University.
