 While raising her young daughter as a single mother, Stephanie Land cleaned houses through an agency to scrape by. 斯蒂芬妮·兰德(Stephanie Land)以单身母亲的身份抚养年幼的女儿，她通过一家中介打扫房屋勉强度日。  It was back-aching work and the pay — $8.55 an hour to start, $9.25 an hour two years in — just wasn't enough. 这份工作让人腰酸背痛，开始时每小时8.55美元，两年后每小时9.25美元，这肯定是不够的。 Land, who had left an abusive relationship, lived for a time in a homeless shelter with her daughter. 兰德离开了一段受虐待的关系后，曾和她的女儿在一个无家可归的收容所住了一段时间。 She supplemented her housecleaning income with government assistance, at one point accruing seven types of aid simultaneously, including housing and utility assistance, food stamps, child care grants and Medicaid. 她靠政府援助来补充清理房屋的收入，曾一度同时获得7种援助，包括住房和公用事业援助、食品券、儿童保育补助金和医疗补助等。 Looking back, she says, "There's no way that you can work full time [at] minimum wage and have a family. It's impossible." 回首过去，她说:“你不可能在最低工资的情况下全职工作，同时还要养家糊口。这是不可能的。”  Eventually, Land decided to revive her dream of going to college. 最终，兰德决定重拾她上大学的梦想。 With the help of a Pell Grant, she pursued a degree in creative writing. 在佩尔助学金的帮助下，她攻读了创意写作学位。 Her new memoir, Maid, details her experiences cleaning houses — as well as the hurdles she has faced as a single mother living on public assistance. 她的新回忆录《女佣》详细描述了她打扫房子的经历，以及她作为一个依靠公共援助生活的单身母亲所面临的障碍。  Interview Highlights 我们来看看她的一段采访。
I knew them by the imprints they left in their bed. 我可以从他们在床上留下的印记来认识他们。 I knew them by the ring of coffee from their coffee mug that was always in the same place, or I knew them by what toothbrush they preferred, or what toothpaste or shampoo or just the act of them switching their shampoo. 我通过他们的咖啡杯上的咖啡环来认识他们，咖啡杯总是在同一个地方，或者我通过他们喜欢什么样的牙刷，或者用什么样的牙膏或洗发水，或者仅仅是他们换洗发水的动作来认识他们。 I kind of wondered like, "Oh, I wondered why they do that?" 我有点想知道，“哦，我想知道他们为什么这么做?” And it very much was a job where I got to know people just by the things that they left out on the counter. 在这份工作中，我通过人们在柜台上遗漏的东西来了解他们。 Not so much like their home decor or anything but just the little things that they did just in living — that was the interesting thing to me. 我不太喜欢关注他们的家居装饰或其他东西，而是他们在生活中做的一些小事情——这对我来说很有趣。  2.On expenses she accrued while cleaning houses 关于她在打扫房子时积累的费用 I paid for my gas for the travel between houses, and this was in kind of a rural area, and sometimes the travel time between houses would be a half an hour, and I had to wash my own work rags, which meant driving to a laundromat and doing a few loads of laundry once a week. 我得负担在各个屋主房子间来往的汽油费，这里有点像乡村地区，有时两个房子之间得开半个小时，我还得自己洗我的工作服，这意味着要开车去自助洗衣店，每周洗几次衣服。 I was only allowed to work no more than six hours a day. 我每天只能工作不超过六个小时。 [The agency] said after that I would be too tired and might injure myself. 中介说，在那之后，我就会太累，可能会伤到自己。  3.On the difficulty of trying to get child care as a single parent 关于单亲妈妈养孩子的艰难 The Catch-22 ... is you have to have a job first, and you have to prove that you are employed — gainfully, regularly employed — and then you can get the voucher for a child care, depending on what your income is. 第二十二条规定……首先你必须有一份工作，你必须证明你有工作——有收入的，有规律的工作——然后你就可以根据你的收入获得儿童保育的代金券。 And then you can go out to different day cares who accept that grant and see if they have an opening, which for a very young child is pretty rare, because it's just not affordable for day care centers to have [children] under 2 years old, which they still consider infants. 然后你可以去不同的各种地方接受资助,看他们是否有一个名额,一个非常年轻的孩子是很罕见的,因为有2岁以下的(孩子)不是日托中心担得起的，他们认为仍然算婴儿。 So it's a lot of work to not only get the ability to go look for a day care center but then to find one, and if they have a full-time spot or Monday, Wednesday, Friday — it's a huge web of difficulty. 因此，不仅仅有能力去找日托中心，而且还要找到一个日托中心，这都是非常艰巨的工作。  4.On how there's a disincentive to make more money or you'll lose benefits 关于想要赚更多钱的渴望，不然就会入不敷出 There's a thing called a "welfare cliff," and what happens is you get up to a threshold — which is a very firm line — and if you jump over it, then you lose all of your benefits. 有一个叫做“福利悬崖”的东西，当你到达一个门槛时——这是一条非常严格的界限——如果你越过这个门槛，你就失去了所有的福利。 If there was a time that I made, I think, $50 more a month, and because of that I suddenly had a $50 copay for child care. 如果有一段时间，我一个月能多出50美元，正因为如此，我突然就得多付50美元的儿童看护费。 So even though I was making more a month, I had to pay more. Food stamps is pretty abrupt as well. 所以即使我一个月赚得多，我也得付更多的钱。食品券也扣除得很突然。 Like, if you go over the line, then you're suddenly not getting $200-$300 a month in assistance. 比如，如果你的收入越过这条线，你一个月就得不到200- 300美元的援助。  5.On calling the police on her daughter's father, who was abusive. 关于报警把家暴的丈夫抓起来 Emotional abuse is so invisible, and it's so confusing [because of] gaslighting. And it usually cuts you down to a point of nothingness. 情感虐待是如此的无形，它是如此的令人困惑。它通常会把你切割变成一个虚无的点。 I felt so horrible about myself every second of the day, and he made me believe that I was mentally ill and that I was crazy. 我每时每刻都觉得自己很害怕，他让我以为我有精神病，我疯了。 So to have a police officer validate what had happened and to have like a slip of paper with a case number on it — I carried that around for months because it was some kind of proof that I wasn't actually crazy, that this person was being truly horrible. 所以，为了让一名警官确认所发生的事情，为了得到一张写有案件编号的纸条，我随身携带了好几个月，因为这是一种证据，证明我并不是真的疯了，这个人真的很可怕。  6.On living in an apartment that turned out to have black mold, which made her daughter, Mia, sick 关于曾住在一间有黑霉的公寓里，这让她的女儿米娅生病了 Mia was very sick as a child. She had constant sinus infections, pinkeye, ear infections. 米娅小时候病得很重。她经常鼻窦感染，红眼病，耳部感染。 She would come home sometimes and ... we would walk in and I'd look over at her and her eyes were just immediately red. ... I was constantly sick. 她有时会回家……我们走进去，我看着她，她的眼睛立刻就红了。我也经常生病。 I think it was just the wet, really damp climate. ... 我想那只是因为潮湿，非常潮湿的气候。 As a parent you know you want to provide safe, healthy environments for your children. 作为父母，你知道你想为你的孩子提供安全、健康的环境。 I had a doctor who I was taking Mia to, to be seen for yet another infection. 我带米亚去看医生，看她是否又感染了。 She told me, "You need to do better," and I just looked at her and I'm like, "I can't." 她告诉我，“你需要做得更好，”我看着她说，“我做不到。” It was a defining moment for me — other people are telling me that I need to be a better mom. 这对我来说是一个决定性的时刻——就是当其他人告诉我，我需要成为一个更好的母亲。 That was something that I already felt so horrible about. 这是我已经感到很可怕的事情。  7.On going back to school to study writing 关于回到学校学写作 I decided to do the paralegal program, because I felt like I needed a job that would make me a contributing member of society and that I would have health insurance and the ability to hopefully pay for housing and child care and food all on my own. 我决定参加律师助理项目，因为我觉得我需要一份能让我成为社会一名有贡献的成员的工作，能让我有医疗保险，有能力独自支付住房、儿童保健和食物。 Writers are not notoriously a well-paid bunch, so I didn't think that that was really an option for me. 作家并不是出了名的高薪群体，所以我不认为这是我的选择。 But then once [I] ... started going to the University of Montana, which was my original plan ... I felt like if I went for the office job or I went for a job I wasn't totally happy with and then I wouldn't be a happy mother — and I wanted to pursue something that I had wanted to do since I was 10 years old. 但是一旦我……开始上蒙大拿大学，这是我最初的计划…我觉得如果我去做办公室工作，或者我去做一份我并不完全满意的工作，那么我就不会是一个快乐的母亲——我想追求一些我从10岁开始就想做的事情。 I felt like if I could possibly do that, then it would show Mia that she could do the same. 我觉得如果我能做到这一点，那么米娅也能做到。 问题： 兰德一个月最多领过几种援助或福利？ 留言回复正确答案，即可获得amber给你准备的红包啦，快来试试吧！ |
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