The Gift Gap

(Guest Post by Catherine Whitworth, MPA)

Some time ago, my husband Steve and I served as Peace Corps volunteers in the enchanting Central American country of Guatemala.  It is often said that Peace Corps volunteers gain more than they contribute in the countries where they live and work.  Some of the most important lessons I have learned in my life were from the children of Guatemala.  One child, Maria, who visited us frequently, taught me the true meaning of giving.

Maria was 12 years old when we met.  She was repeating the third grade for the third time in a rural school where I worked.  She was desperately poor, owned no shoes, and both of her parents were tragic alcoholics.  Maria visited our home frequently to chat or to bathe. She had no clean water in her home.  In the indigenous villages of Guatemala, children do not play as much as children here.  Each child works and contributes to the survival and well-being of the family.  It seemed that many, especially the girls, didn’t even know how to play and were too self-conscious to do so, so when Maria visited, we usually sat around a table sipping coffee and talking. 
      We answered flurries of questions about North Americans.  “Is it true that you steal children?”  “Is it true that you only eat canned food?”  “You gringos are all rich, right?”  “Gringos don’t like tortillas, do they?”  “How much do your shoes cost?”  “What does it cost to go to the U.S.?”  and “Why on earth don’t you have children yet?” 
      She described how her family was relatively prosperous at one time; they were weavers and operated twelve looms.  But they had to sell all but one loom because of her parents’ drinking and they were “pobres.”  Maria chatted about such things very  matter-of-factly, her expressions conveying neither shame nor sorrow.

      Every now and again, we passed along extra items of clothing or food that we did not need to Maria.  We had been admonished by Peace Corps administration to avoid “paternalistic giving”  and not create a “gift gap” that would make people in our communities feel uncomfortable.  So we kept our gifts small.... chicken necks and backs we weren’t going to eat, an old sweater with a hole in it, old calendars from previous years...and we felt generous about this.  I recall once giving  Maria a cookie to have with her coffee.  She broke it into 5 pieces and tucked it into her apron to carry home to her brothers and sisters.

      While some who visited us, half-jokingly hinted that we should “gift” them our more flashy belongings such as our radio and toaster oven, Maria never expressed interest in such things.  During our last days in Totonicapan, the one material thing Maria very shyly and tentatively asked us about was if we would take our “tinaja” (plastic jug for carrying water on one’s head) back to the U.S..  I told her that we didn’t need tinajas in the U.S. because everyone had running water and asked her if she would like it.  She was very pleased with this shabby, battered gift.  It meant her family could collect an extra gallon of water during the two hours a day that water was available in the village.  Again, I felt generous.

On our last night in Totonicapan, Maria and countless others brought us gifts to remember them by.  One boy gave Steve a hat. An old soul in a droopy cowboy hat dropped 5 kernels of dry corn into my hands. Maria brought us some bread and a woven tortilla napkin.  We knew this had cost her family either money or time, both in short supply for a struggling family.  I explained that we didn’t want her to spend what little they had on us.  She just smiled and said it wouldn’t be giving if nothing was given up. 
       Later, I pondered Maria’s words and thought about the generosity routinely bestowed on us by the people of Guatemala.  People who invited us to dinner and served us their best arroz con pollo recipe as they and their children ate only beans and tortillas, or sometimes just tortillas and salt.  The ancient ones sporting broad, toothless grins handing us apples, just because we strolled past their adobe homes. 
       It seemed that what Maria and many other Guatemalan people did without thinking was a foreign concept to us.  They gave what they could not spare and we never gave away anything that we would actually miss.  Talk about a “gift gap”.

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This timely post is by my dear friend, Catherine Whitworth. Catherine Whitworth, MPA, is a tobacco dependence treatment specialist and policy analyst at West Virginia University.  She served in the Peace Corps in Guatemala from 1989 to 1992.  There she met and married another volunteer, Stephen DiFazio.  Catherine and Steve live in Morgantown with their two teenagers.  In her spare time Catherine works to get smoke free laws passed in local communities.

Out of the Box

It has always been clear to me that you adored your folks and sister. That your life with them was one of faith, love, and charity. But then your sister went away. In sickness, not health. Her leaving left a pockmark on your insides. A small but permanent, life-will-never-be-the-same nick.

            God holds your tears in a bottle. You know that, right? In my mind’s eye I see it. It looks like a cordial glass carved out of amethyst Swarovski crystal.

            So I thought, as writers often do, what if? What if the “H” family had one more daughter? No, that’s not it. What if Mr. “H” walked out on the front porch to fetch the Sunday paper and there was a baby girl. Freshly hatched. In a lightbulb box, swaddled in a khaki cardigan.      

            Wait a minute. There has to be backstory. How exactly did this infant come to be?

            Well, my birth mother was a young thing, and unwed. Her father, all Magic Marker eyebrows and flailing hands, accused her of wantonness. She insisted she was merely putting on weight. Consumed huge quantities of Wonder bread slathered in Parkay margarine to make it seem true.  Every day she wore her father’s scratchy, mud-colored sweater. Tugged at it constantly to make her stomach seem more corpulent than expectant.

            When my time came she made her beau bring me into the world. In the back of his dad’s car. She’d brought towels. Rubbing alcohol. And a library book on midwifery. He had a flashlight.

            The windows were rolled up and steamed. My birth father said surely the folks closing up inside the hardware store would hear her screams. She didn’t care. “Get it out of me!”

            “Now what?” he said. His face was pale and slick with sweat. He held me in his arms, but not close.

            My mother wouldn’t look at my face. She cracked the window to release the scent of my beginning.

            “Cut the cord,” she said. “My sewing scissors are in my purse. The outside pocket.”

            My father’s face blanched as he balanced me on his knees and leaned to fish for the scissors. They rattled against his class ring. My mother struggled to sit up.

            “Here! Give ‘em to me! I’ll do it.” She snatched them from him. Pinched the cord and severed it. I cried my first cry when the cold of the stainless steel fingerloops brushed my belly. 
           My mother made him drive to your house. Because she knew, was positive, that Mr. and Mrs. “H” would do the right thing. They did.

            We three girls grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. Most of the time we could finish each other’s sentences.  Every Monday Becky would pass her lima beans to me under the kitchen table and I’d lean forward and stuff the whole handful in my mouth and chew, chew, gulp. We watched The Brady Bunch every week on the living room floor and fiddled with each other’s hair. You were the only one who knew how to French braid though.  Sometimes late at night in your all’s bedroom, we took turns kissing a handmirror, so we’d be ready for the time when Daddy let us car date.

            Almost every evening at supper, he’d stare at each of us for a moment, and then he'd nod.

            “Yes, indeed. Three is surely a charm. The good Lord knew what he was doing with our family.”

            But then after college, your sister— our sister passed. And once again, back in our childhood home, you and I huddled under the covers. Only there did we dare to say, why and if only. We sobbed until we were ugly and had the hiccups. Finally the exhausted slumber of grief consumed us.

            At the church, we sat thigh to thigh. In blue dresses because blue was her favorite color. You gripped my hand and blotted my face every now and then with a handkerchief our grandmother embroidered decades before.

            “Hand me your purse,” I said (Lord knows I never carry one). “I think I have to throw up.”

            “Breathe deep,” you whispered as you traced circles on my leg. “Remember what Daddy said. She’s absent from us but present with the Lord. And surely we’ll see her again one day. When the roll is . . . When we . . .”

            I let out a raggedy sigh. “I know. But now three's not a charm." 
           Your breath stirred my hair. "Even so, God still knows what he's doing, right? Right?"