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This column, originally published on Dec.
19,1994, placed first in tne Daily Nebraskan
Publications Board opinion category.
Sometimes I think they can tell. “They”
meaning everyone, meaning you probably.
“They” meaning professors and friends and
prospective employers.
Sometimes I think that it shows in
everything I do and say. In the way I walk
and dress. Sometimes I think they smell it.
Beneath my perfume, seeping out from
beneath my well-soaped skin.
Sometimes I think that no matter how
hard I study and smile and struggle, the
poverty is still in me, rotting in my breath,
devouring my stomach, burning in the
back of my throat.
In my eyes.
And sometimes I think they can tell.
Because it’s still there. It will always be
there. Keeping me on the run, making me
think that if I sit still it will catch me again.
It will catch me and hold me for good this
time.
inai u win mm on me neat ana taxe
away my shoes. That it will empty my
refrigerator and make my mother cry.
And so I run.
I excel. Not out of pride or achieve
ment. Out of fear. Fear is my motivation
and drive. My muse. Because if I make
everyone happy and pass every test, they
can’t send me back. They can’t. They
can’t.
But it can. It can catch me, and it can
catch you. Don’t every think you’re too
smart or too clean. Don’t every think that
you’re too hard working.
“I don’t like welfare,” someone told me
yesterday.
I don’t like welfare either. I hate it. But
I don’t know where I would be without it. I
hope that I would still be here. On the run
from poverty, but not in its clutches.
But I doubt it.
My mother went on welfare when I was
eight. My father left us — three kids, a
pregnant wife — on a farm in eastern
Nebraska.
A farm with no phone. No car. No heat.
No electricity. And a few weeks before
they turned off the running water. No
nearby family to step in. No benevolent
private sector.
We needed a safety net. And I thank
God — and this state and this nation —
Rainbow Rowell
that there was one. Being on welfare was
hard. Harder for my mother than for me.
The monthly check was hardly enough for
a family of five, and our rent was high
because she refused to live in the housing
projects.
But we were warm and safe and fed.
Above all, we were together.
Now, I’m at a university in Lincoln. For
the first time in my life, I’m not wearing
used shoes and I own more than two pairs
of jeans.
I’m two semesters away from a degree.
I have a decent shot at being middle-class.
After a few years in the job market, my
income taxes should pay back those
welfare checks, food stamps and public
school lunches.
l m hearing more and more about
welfare. I hear important men and women
talking about trimming the fat from the
budget. About setting loose welfare queens
and cheats.
About the government’s role. About -
waste. About orphanages. Welfare, it
seems, is dragging our nation down.
But Aid to Families With Dependent
Children saved my family. Welfare gave
me a chance.
Most people on welfare aren’t lazy.
Aren’t dirty. Most people on welfare are
children, children neck-deep in poverty.
Children who already face more obstacles
than they should.
And I don’t want them to fail. I want
them to have the same chances I had. The
same hope that maybe someday they’ll
crawl out of poverty. That if they work
hard enough they can get away.
That if they study and smile and
struggle, they will rise above it, beyond it.
And maybe no one will every know.
Rowell is i senior news-editorial, advertising
and English major and a Daily Nebraskan senior
editor.
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