In a two-bedroom trailer perched high above Greasy Creek lives the Maynard family. For Shirley Maynard, making ends meet for her eight-member household is not easy.
“Sometimes it don’t last long,” Maynard said about her monthly checks. “Sometimes there are ten or eleven of us living under the same roof.” Shirley is raising both her daughter’s children and her own children. Shirley carts the family’s water from her sister’s house about a mile away
“I got enough to get by on, and that’s all I care about,” she said. “I’d like to have a 20-bedroom house and someone to wash my dishes. But I don’t want no one to wait on me all my life. I like to do for myself.”
Between a sip of black instant coffee and a puff from a filter-less cigarette, she speaks as the endless drone of the television drown out the buzzing of flies. The children’s voices rise and fall as Shirley gently strokes a child’s hair.
“I hope they do better than I did,” she said, smiling at her 4-year-old granddaughter. “The telephone rings, the children scream and life goes on. “Life is tough,” Shirley said. ”You gotta be tough.”
“You take young girls having kids too young who don’t know how to take care of them.” she said. “It’s not the man that pays for it, it’s the woman.”
