单选题 I start my day here at five o"clock. I get up and prepare all the children"s clothes. If there are shoes to shine, I do it in the morning. About seven o"clock I bathe the children. I leave the baby with the baby sitter and I go to work at the settlement house. I work until twelve o"clock. Sometimes I"ll work longer if I have to go to welfare and get a check for somebody. When I get back, I try to make hot food for the kids to eat. In the afternoon it"s pretty well on my own. I scrub and clean and cook and do whatever I have to do.
Welfare makes you feel like you"re nothing. Like you"re laying back and not doing anything and it"s falling in your lap. But you must understand, mothers, too, work. My house is clean. I"ve been scrubbing since this morning. You could check my clothes, all washed and ironed. I"m home and I"m working. I am a working mother.
Some men work eight hours a day. There are mothers that work eleven, twelve hours a day. We get up at night, a baby vomits, you have to be calling the doctor, and you have to be changing the baby. When do you get a break, really? You don"t. This is an all-around job, day and night. Why do they say it"s charity? We"re working for our money. I am working for this check. It is not charity. We are giving some kind of home to these children.
I"m so busy all day I don"t have time to daydream. I pray a lot. I pray to God to give me strength. If He should take a child away from me, to have the strength to accept it. It"s His kid. He just borrowed him to me.
It"s living off welfare and feeling that you"re taking something for nothing the way people have said. You get to think maybe you are. You get to think, why am I so stupid? Why can"t I work? Why do I have to live this way? You feel degraded.
The other day I was at the hospital and I went to pay my bill. This nurse came and gave me the green card. Green card is for welfare. She went right in front of me and gave it to the cashier. She said, "I wish I could stay home and let the money fall in my lap." I felt rotten. I was just burning inside. You hear this all the way around you. The doctor doesn"t even look at you. People are ashamed to show that green card. This nurse, to her way of thinking, she represents the working people. The ones with the green card, we represent the lazy no-goods.