Voices
the rest of my classes and work to
tend to. I’m in bed by three. This
isn’t every day, I have two days off
a week from each of my obligations. I use that time to clean the
house and soothe Mr. Martini and
see the kids for longer than an
hour and catch up on schoolwork.
Those nights I’m in bed by midnight, but if I go to bed too early I
won’t be able to stay up the other
nights because I’ll fuck my pattern
up, and I drive an hour home from
Job 2 so I can’t afford to be sleepy.
I never get a day off from work
unless I am fairly sick. It doesn’t
leave you much room to think
about what you are doing, only to
attend to the next thing and the
next. Planning isn’t in the mix.
When I got pregnant the first
time, I was living in a weekly
motel. I had a mini-fridge with
no freezer and a microwave. I
was on WIC. I ate peanut butter
from the jar and frozen burritos
because they were 12/$2. Had I
had a stove, I couldn’t have made
beef burritos that cheaply. And I
needed the meat, I was pregnant.
I might not have had any prenatal care, but I am intelligent
enough to eat protein and iron
whilst knocked up.
I know how to cook. I had to take
LINDA
TIRADO
HUFFINGTON
12.08.13
Home Ec to graduate high school.
Most people on my level didn’t.
Broccoli is intimidating. You have
to have a working stove, and pots,
and spices, and you’ll have to do
the dishes no matter how tired you
are or they’ll attract bugs. It is a
huge new skill for a lot of people.
We have learned not to
try too hard to be middleclass. It never works out
well and always makes you
feel worse for having tried
and failed yet again.”
That’s not great, but it’s true. And
if you fuck it up, you could make
your family sick. We have learned
not to try too hard to be middleclass. It never works out well and
always makes you feel worse for
having tried and failed yet again.
Better not to try. It makes more
sense to get food that you know
will be palatable and cheap and
that keeps well. Junk food is a
pleasure that we are allowed to
have; why would we give that up?
We have very few of them.
The closest Planned Parenthood
to me is three hours. That’s a lot
of money in gas. Lots of women