educated

Chapter 1

Choose the Good

• “Butter and honey shall he eat”

• Breakfast became a test of loyalty.

• “Get yourself up real early,” Grandma said, “around five, and we’ll take you with us. Put you in school.”

• I imagined what would happen when my family discovered I was missing.

• The Weavers

Tara grows up the youngest of seven children on a farm. Her father, very religious and suspicious of the government, prevents his children from attending school and stockpiles supplies. Her father's mother disagrees with her father's ideas and offers to take Tara away to attend school, but Tara feels unable to leave her family.

Chapter 2

The Midwife

• Judy and Maria

• Months passed in this way, Mother leaving the house at all hours and coming home, trembling, relieved to her core that it was over.

• “Mom says your mother should take over,”

• Midwifing changed my mother.

• Mother also used the money to improve herself as a midwife.

• Once she had begun the paperwork for Luke, Mother decided she might as well get birth certificates for all of us.

• Each document gave a different birth date, and neither matched the one Grandma had put on the affidavit.

• I went with Mother on a birth.

• A doctor stopped Mother and asked why she’d been at the birth in the first place.

Tara's mother, an herbalist, became a busy unlicensed midwife, financially independent from Tara's father but still deferential to him. She teaches Tara some of her healing techniques and gets her a birth certificate.

Chapter 3

Cream Shoes

• …she dedicated herself to constructing the perfect family…. This would, she believed, shield her daughters from the social contempt that had so wounded her.

• Still, the way Mother tells it, back then Dad was bursting with energy, laughter and panache.

• Mother never told us that her family had opposed the engagement but we knew.

• It is difficult for me to believe that the untroubled young man in that photograph is my father.

• …that Grandma was the only person who might have understood what was happening to me.

Without her family’s permission, Tara's mother, Faye, married Tara's father, Gene. As Gene grew older and had more children, he became more paranoid and controlling.

Chapter 4

Apache Women

• But after Christmas Dad seemed to deflate, to collapse in on himself.

• Then he used a word I’d never heard before: Illuminati.

• These people were like the ancient Israelites because they’d been given a true religion but hankered after false idols.

• Once there, we were to hunt for nuggets of black rock.

• According to Grandma, a hundred years ago a tribe of Apaches had fought the U.S. Cavalry on those faded rocks.

• I had never before left the mountain and I ached for it,

• I awoke when the car hit the first utility pole.

• Mother didn’t come out of the basement for a week.

• Tyler’s guilt was all-consuming.

Faye takes the family to Arizona to visit her in-laws. Gene spends most of the visit arguing with his mother, who one day takes Tara and her brother Richard to the desert to gather some rocks. On the way back, the family has a serious accident, and Faye experiences a brain injury, which causes confusion and migraines.

Chapter 5

Honest Dirt

• “I’m g-g-going to c-college,” he said, his face rigid.

• Tyler liked books, he liked quiet. He liked organizing and arranging and labeling.

• One was black, with a hundred men and women dressed in white on the cover. I pointed to it.

• There had been a time, when Tyler was a boy, when Mother had been idealistic about education.

• He’d enrolled his three oldest sons in school…. Tony had stayed in school through high school

• It usually took about an hour for Dad to notice that Tyler was not among his brothers.

• I figured Dad had all summer to bring Tyler to his senses, which he tried to do most days when the crew came in for lunch.

• I smiled, remembering that Dad had said Grandma could keep her carpet so white only because Grandpa had never done any real work.

• “We’re going to change it into silver. That’s what people will be wishing they had soon, silver and gold.”

• Tony and Shawn had left the mountain, but they’d left to do what my father had taught them to do: drive semis, weld, scrap. Tyler stepped into a void.

• “You should always wash your hands after you use the toilet.”

Tara’s brother Tyler, who had always been studious and introduced Tara to classical music, announces he wants to go to college, disturbing Gene, who heavily depends on Tyler's help since his older sons Tony and Shawn left home.

Chapter 6

Shield and Buckler

• The winter after Tyler left, Audrey turned fifteen. She picked up her driver’s license from the county courthouse and, on her way home, got a job flipping burgers.

• Dad didn’t have enough of a crew to build hay sheds… I remember the first morning I entered the junkyard as one of my father’s crew.

• Dad lived in fear of time.

• I remembered all the times I’d seen one of my brothers burst through the back door, howling, pinching some part of his body that was gashed or squashed or broken or burned.

• She convinced herself, perhaps because [midwifing] was a part of herself she couldn’t surrender without some kind of struggle.

• To create her formulas, Mother took up something called “muscle testing,”

• … she began charging clients for something called “energy work.”

• Now Mother said that healing was spiritual and limitless. Muscle testing, she explained to me, was a kind of prayer, a divine supplication.

• The seed of curiosity had been planted; it needed nothing more than time and boredom to grow… But I didn’t ask.

• —he would have done better to turn his attention to Richard.

• I had entered into the new reality. I saw the world through my father’s eyes.

• I didn’t understand. He wanted to dump the bin with me in it?

Faye starts concocting oils she believes have healing properties. Tara's sister Audrey begins to work and becomes more independent. Tara and Richard help their father with his dangerous work with scrap metal. One day, Tara is involved in an accident, has her injuries treated by her mother, tells her father she wants to go to school, and backs down when he disapproves.

Chapter 7

The Lord Will Provide

• The crusher won’t take a car with the fuel tank attached, because there’s a risk of explosion, so every tank had to be drained and removed.

• Dad lay on the kitchen floor cracking jokes about an ordinance that had recently passed in our little farming village.

• That morning, like every morning, he had hitched up his trousers with a yard of baling twine, which is smooth and slippery, and needs a horseman’s knot to stay in place.

• The burn was the injury, I reasoned. It made sense to treat it first.

• I ran back into the kitchen and found the bags that fit the can, then held one open for Luke and told him to put his leg in.

• Mother and I stayed by Luke’s bed that first night.

• Dad told us to tell people Luke was sick. He said there’d be trouble if the Government found out about Luke’s leg, that the Feds would take us kids away.

While helping his father in the junkyard, Tara's brother Luke spills gasoline on his clothes, accidentally sets himself on fire, and causes the fire to spread to the surrounding area.

Chapter 8

Tiny Harlots

• I asked Myrna if I could put a card up on the board. She asked what the card was for. I said I hoped I could find jobs babysitting.

• He stopped by the post office one afternoon and chatted with Myrna about how tired he was of packing the boxes himself, how he wished he could hire some kids but they were all tied up with football and band.

• People at church said Mary could play the piano beautifully.

• I looked in the mirror at our reflection, at the twelve girls, sleek and shiny, pirouetting blurs of black, white and pink. Then at myself, large and gray.

• The other girls rarely spoke to me, but I loved being there with them. I loved the sensation of conformity.

• We began rehearsals for the Christmas recital, and Caroline called Mother to discuss the costume.

• The music ended. The girls glared at me as we left the stage—I had ruined the performance—but I could barely see them.

• She’d noticed the hours I spent in my room with Tyler’s old boom box, listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, so she began looking for a voice teacher.

• The song finished and I returned to our pew. A prayer was offered to close the service, then the crowd rushed me.

Tara starts taking piano and dance lessons, which she hides from her father. After Tara's father is outraged at her dance recital, her mother suggests she take voice lessons instead. Tara sings a hymn at church, and her father, proud of her talents, allows her to audition for a role in a local production of the musical Annie.

Chapter 9

Perfect in His Generations

• Dad called it Y2K. On January 1, he said, computer systems all over the world would fail.

• The interactions between people at Worm Creek were not at all what I was used to in my family. Of course I’d spent time with people outside my family, but they were like us:

• until I remembered that in act two Annie wears beautiful dresses, which Daddy Warbucks buys for her. I didn’t have anything like that.

• Dad didn’t stop me from auditioning for the next play, or the one after that, even though he worried about me spending so much time away from home.

• Dad suggested his own remedy. “People don’t know it, but the sun is the most powerful medicine we have.

• I braced myself, for what I wasn’t sure, then he said, “I wanted to tell you that your singing is about the best I ever heard.”

• It took more than an hour, and when they’d finished they stood back, revealing what looked like an enormous military-green telescope, with its long barrel set firmly atop a short, broad tripod.

• Before Christmas, we continued our preparations as if every action, every minor addition to our stores might make the difference between surviving, and not

Tara successfully plays the role of Annie, continues to act and sing, and meets a boy named Charles, who is friendly to her. Her father makes the family prepare for January 1, 2000, a day he believes will be catastrophic, and is then astounded when the New Year comes and nothing abnormal happens.

Chapter 10

Shield of Feathers

• When January 1 dawned like any other morning, it broke Dad’s spirit. He never again mentioned Y2K. He slipped into despondency…

• Mother said it was time for another trip to Arizona.

• Grandma was seeing a lot of doctors these days, because she had cancer in her bone marrow.

• “After what happened last time?” she shouts. “You’re going to drive through the night again?

• Dad pulls onto the highway and accelerates, rapidly, as if to make a point, until he has doubled Richard’s speed.

• It is a relief when the van finally leaves the road.

• Something ice-cold was running down my back. We’re in a lake! I thought. Something heavy was on top of me. The mattress.

• A few days after the crash, my neck froze.

• “Imagine the bubble for a few hours every day,” she said, “and you will heal.”

• During the month I was in bed I heard another voice. I remembered it but it was no longer familiar to me. It had been six years since that impish laugh had echoed down the hall.

• I’d heard rumors about him at Worm Creek. People said he was trouble, a bully, a bad egg, that he was always hunting or being hunted by hooligans from Utah or even further afield.

• Before I can react, he jerks my head with a swift, savage motion. CRACK!

As Gene gets depressed, the family goes on a trip to Arizona again. They have a car accident on the way back, and Tara injures her neck. Sometime later, her older brother Shawn moves home again.

Chapter 11

Instinct

• As Grandpa got older he ranched less and farmed more, until one day he stopped farming.

• Then he’d point to one and say, “Don’t load that ’un. That ’un we’ll break.”

• But feral horses don’t yield easily, not even to a man like Grandpa. My brothers and I would spend days, even weeks, earning the horse’s trust, just so we could touch it.

• “Wanna break him?” Shawn said. I did not.

• He joked and teased, and he sometimes gave me advice, which was mostly “Don’t do what I did.” But when we arrived at the theater, he would change.

• It was his smile I loved best.

• That evening, Shawn saddled a new horse, a copper-coated mare, for the first time.

• Those instincts were my guardians.

Shawn takes an interest in Tara's life, helps her tame a horse, drives her to theater rehearsals, and helps her when she is almost thrown off her horse.

Chapter 12

Fish Eyes

• Tony called Shawn and asked if he could run the rig for a week or two.

• Shawn drove for days with little sleep, navigating our fifty-foot trailer as if it were his own arm.

• By sunset on the second day, our bodies ached from sitting, and Shawn said he should teach me martial arts.

• We had few forms of entertainment, so we made a game of talking. The game had only two rules.

• When we tired of this, we’d turn on the CB and listen to the lonely banter of truckers stretched out across the interstate.

• The Ferrari honked, weaved back and forth, braked, honked again.

• Charles was also there, talking to a girl named Sadie…

• She was very pretty, with soft, full lips and large dark eyes, but when I asked Shawn if he liked her, he said he didn’t.

• Shawn hardly even spoke to her, just grabbed whatever she’d brought him and kept walking toward the corral.

• Shawn ignored her and Apollo. He offered none of the help he’d given me…

• “What is this shit? I asked for a Milky Way.” “You didn’t,” she said. “You said Snickers.”

• When Mother heard the rumors, she said now it made sense why Shawn had taken an interest in Sadie. “He’s always protected angels with broken wings,” she said.

• Shawn found out Sadie’s class schedule and memorized it.

• “I simply won’t see her. All I have to do is not see her, and she will suffer.”

• Shawn plopped down next to me. “Get me a glass of water.”

• He grabbed a fistful of my hair, a large clump, his grip fixed near the root to give him greater leverage, and dragged me into the bathroom.

• I’m only crying from the pain, I told myself. From the pain in my wrist. Not from anything else.

• In it I saw myself as unbreakable, as tender as stone. At first I merely believed this, until one day it became the truth.

Tara accompanies Shawn when he temporarily takes over Tony's trucking business, and they become much closer. Shawn meets a girl named Sadie and is alternately flirtatious with and cruel to her. One day, when Shawn treats Tara in the same bossy way, she dumps a glass of water on his head, and he hurts her.

Chapter 13

Silence in the Churches

• In September the twin towers fell….“There will be a conflict, a final struggle for the Holy Land,” he’d said. “My sons will be sent to war. Some of them will not come home.”

• Audrey was married—to Benjamin,

• My body was changing, bloating, swelling, stretching, bulging.

• “I saw you talking to Charles,” he said. “You don’t want people thinking you’re that kind of girl.”

• The first time I wore lip gloss, Shawn said I was a wh-re.

• I said I was cold and Shawn moved to turn up the heat.

• He drove around town for two hours, searching for Charles’s Jeep, cursing and swearing that when he found that bastard he was “gonna give him a new face.”

• I awoke with needles in my brain. Thousands of them, biting, blocking out everything.

• I looked up and saw that his gaze was fixed on the stairwell. Only then did it occur to me that Tyler was real.

• “You’re special, Tara,” Shawn said.

• “Go where I went,” Tyler said. “Go to college.”

• “Doorknob’s broke,” I lied. “Door blows open. This lock was cheap but it’ll do the trick.”

Audrey gets married, and Tara’s father starts warning about an impending holy war. When Charles goes on a date with Sadie after she and Shawn break up, Shawn threatens Charles in a jealous rage. The next morning, Tara awakes to Shawn attacking her and calling her names, and she is saved from Shawn's rage by Tyler, who arrives unexpectedly. Shawn apologizes to Tara, explaining he was trying to protect her from becoming sinful, but Tyler urges her to go to college.

Chapter 14

My Feet No Longer Touch Earth

• Shawn wanted to professionalize the operation, to invest the profits from the Malad job in new equipment; Dad wanted things to stay the same.

• I’d only ever used the Internet at Randy’s, for work, but after Tyler hung up I turned on our computer and waited for the modem to dial.

• I would go to Worm Creek, where I’d sit in the balcony and watch rehearsals, my feet on the ledge, a math book open in front of me.

• I began to study trigonometry. There was solace in its strange formulas and equations.

• Perhaps reality was not wholly volatile. Perhaps it could be explained, predicted. Perhaps it could be made to make sense.

• I scribbled the problem on a fresh sheet of paper. Dad didn’t look up as I approached, so gently, slowly, I slid the paper over the blueprints.

• I could not self-teach trigonometry. But I knew someone who had.

• I felt such a wave of loss that my knees nearly buckled, but in the next moment I felt something else. Relief.

• He screamed himself hoarse, then just when Dad thought he had calmed down, he gripped Dad around the waist and flung him like a sack of grain.

• In the morning I drove to Buck’s Peak. I couldn’t explain why I wasn’t rushing to my brother’s bedside. I told Mother I had to work.

• “You came,” he said. “I didn’t think you would.” He took my hand and then fell asleep.

• I felt guilty that I hadn’t visited him immediately in the hospital, so to make it up to him I quit my job and tended him day and night.

• In the reality she constructed for herself nothing had been wrong before her brother fell off that pallet. I wish I had my best friend back, she wrote. Before his injury, I never got hurt at all.

Tara prepares for the ACT exam to apply to college, and she takes trigonometry lessons from Tyler, who is graduating as an engineer and planning to complete a PhD. Shawn has an accident and is taken to a hospital after starting to behave strangely and aggressively. When Shawn returns home, he and Sadie reunite.

Chapter 15

No More a Child

• I understood that no future could hold them; no destiny could tolerate him and her.

• “The Lord has called me to testify,” he said. “He is displeased. You have cast aside His blessings to whore after man’s knowledge. His wrath is stirred against you. It will not be long in coming.”

• The next morning I found Mother mixing oils in the kitchen. “I’ve decided not to go to BYU,” I said. She looked up, fixing her eyes on the wall behind me, and whispered, “Don’t say that. I don’t want to hear that.”

• Although I was still fearful of God’s wrath, I reasoned with myself that my passing the ACT was so unlikely, it would take an act of God.

• A middle-aged woman handed out tests and strange pink sheets I’d never seen before.

• I flapped my T-shirt to make a fan, then rolled up my sleeves until an inch of my shoulders was visible.

• I watched him walk away and, mechanically, as if I weren’t making the decision, rerolled them.

• I showed Mother the score and she told Dad. He became agitated, then he shouted that it was time I moved out.

• A few days later Dad came home with the most frightening machine I’ve ever seen. He called it the Shear.

• Luke’s arm was gashed to the bone and he was running toward the house, blood spurting.

• Shawn had awoken something in Dad, some primal need. Dad could not lose this argument and save face. If I didn’t run the Shear, Dad would no longer be Dad.

Despite her father's disapproval, Tara continues to prepare with her mother's support and takes the ACT. On the day her scores arrive, her father abruptly tells her to move out, which she avoids by reminding her parents she is only 16. Her father demands that Tara and Shawn work on a dangerous machine.

Chapter 16

Disloyal Man, Disobedient Heaven

• Shawn surprised everyone when he announced that he wanted me to operate the crane.

• One afternoon Dad walked over and stood right next to Shawn, watching him weld. A minute later, for no reason, he started shouting

• I had seen Dad lose his temper and shout at every one of my brothers. Shawn was the only one I ever saw walk away.

• The phone rang. It was Shawn. Did I want to watch a movie?

• I changed lanes to drive around them, but stopped when I saw a small object lying in the middle of the highway.

• Dwain was shouting, “Let’s go!” but I barely heard him. I was lost to panic. My thoughts wandered wildly, feverishly, through a fog of resentment.

• “You nearly home?” he said. “I’m at the hospital.”

• The truth is this: that I am not a good daughter…

• I scanned down to the composite score. Twenty-eight.

• I applied to BYU a week later. I had no idea how to write the application, so Tyler wrote it for me.

• I still hadn’t managed to attach the cables. I stood, and once on my feet, didn’t care whether the cables were attached.

• I knew I should prepare, try to acquire the high school education Tyler had told the university I had.

Shawn gets in a motorcycle accident and Tara takes him to the hospital despite her father's instructions to bring him home. Tara is accepted to Brigham Young University and scheduled to start college in January.

Chapter 17

To Keep it Holy

• I lived alone in the quiet apartment for three days. Except it wasn’t quiet. Nowhere was quiet.

• Shannon moved to the sink and I saw the word “Juicy” written across her rear. That was more than I could take.

• My mind was spinning as I shut my bedroom door. How could she be a Mormon?

• Shopping was forbidden on the Sabbath... Mary casually unpacked eggs, milk and pasta... she withdrew a can of Diet Coke

• When the bell rang, the professor approached my desk. “You don’t belong here,” she said.

• …who kept talking about something called the “essay form,”

• … talked about “philosophical underpinnings” and the writings of Cicero and Hume, names I’d never heard.

• … dotted the page like black holes, sucking all the other words into them. I took the quiz and missed every question.

• I chose a seat next to a girl in a high- necked blouse. Her name was Vanessa.

• When I came to the word, I paused. “I don’t know this word,” I said. “What does it mean?”

• That Saturday, I sat at my desk with a stack of homework. Everything had to be finished that day because I could not violate the Sabbath.

• The girl talking to Shannon said we should come over that afternoon to see a movie.

• Shannon and Mary chose seats near the front. They saved me one but I hesitated, thinking of how I’d broken the Sabbath.

Tara moves to Utah into a place with two roommates, Mary and Shannon, who are also Mormon but less rigid about their faith than Tara. Most of her courses make no sense to Tara, who hadn't heard about events such as the Holocaust, and she begins to disagree with her roommates about some Mormon traditions.

Chapter 18

Blood and Feathers

• After that, I rarely spoke to Shannon or Mary and they rarely spoke to me, except to remind me to do my share of the chores, which I never did.

• I began to think that even if I did pass I wouldn’t be coming back to school for one obvious reason: I couldn’t afford it.

• The morning of the exam, the professor instructed everyone to take out their blue books.

• The mountains were as unfamiliar and menacing as ever, but I wanted to stay.

• I wrote, I don’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to get a decent education as a child.

• The owl grew restless... It didn’t belong. It couldn’t be taught to belong.

• “If there’s no scholarship, there’s no scholarship,” he said. “Maybe I can help with the money. We’ll figure it out. Just be happy, okay?”

• “Don’t worry about your notes,” Vanessa said. “They aren’t as important as the textbook.

Tara struggles with the expenses of attending college, but her father surprisingly offers to help. By chance, she learns she is expected to read the textbooks for her classes, and her grades improve dramatically once she starts doing so.

Chapter 19

In the Beginning

• … so I went to get my old job back at Stokes.

• Truck, trailer and excavator were totaled.

• But I couldn’t do the job, because to do it would be to slide backward.

• my ears, solitary and suspicious, heard something else: What do you expect me to do?

• I told her I quit, said I was sorry, then put down the phone. I opened my closet and there they were, where I’d left them four months before: my scrapping boots.

• Just be Shannon, I thought to myself.

• I showered, blasting away the dirt, then I laid the new clothes on my bed and stared at them.

• I wished he would bring it up but he didn’t. I wished he would let me know some other way

• I’d meant it as a brag, but for some reason my fears came out with it.

• I couldn’t let him near me—not that night, and not any night for months—without shuddering as that word, my word, ripped its way into remembrance. Wh-re.

When the semester ends, Tara returns home for the summer and is forced by her father to return to scrapping. She is awarded a scholarship that allows her to continue her studies. Charles asks her out on a date, but she panics the first time he tries to touch her.

Chapter 20

Recitals of the Fathers

• I couldn’t reconcile his world with mine so I separated them. Every evening I watched for his red jeep from my window, and when it appeared on the highway I ran for the door.

• Dad said I was becoming “uppity.”

• Shawn had a gift for language, for using it to define others.

• I suspect he [Shawn] wanted to be near the driveway when Charles drove up it.

• My hands were black with grease, and each stroke left a dark smudge.

• Then the world had turned upside down: I had entered a university, where I’d wandered into an auditorium and listened, eyes wide, mind buzzing, to lectures on American history.

• I don’t know what Shawn saw on my face—whether it was shock, anger or a vacant expression. Whatever it was, he was delighted by it.

Tara starts to feel uncomfortable with her father's and Shawn's behavior, like when her brother uses a racial epithet as a nickname for her.

Chapter 21

Skullcap

• I’d had an earache for two days, and during the night it had changed from a dull twinge to a constant sharp stab.

• “People take drugs for pain,” he said. “It’s normal.” I must have winced at the word “normal,” because he went quiet.

• I swallowed it, then the other.

• Robin was the oldest, and for some reason she was sympathetic to me. Somehow she understood that my missteps came from ignorance, not intention, and she corrected me gently but frankly.

• Algebra threatened to put an end to my scholarship.

• I developed stomach ulcers.

• Jenni and Robin kept saying I should see a doctor but I didn’t.

• Charles said my behavior was self-destructive, that I had an almost pathological inability to ask for help

Tara returns to college and moves in with new roommates: Robin, Megan, and Jenni. She learns about some social norms from Robin, develops stomach ulcers because of stress, refuses to see a doctor, and takes on additional work as a janitor. She asks Charles to help her study algebra over Thanksgiving.

Chapter 22

What We Whispered and What We Screamed

• Charles was coming for dinner.

• I laughed loudly at both, hoping Charles would think they were jokes.

• He could not know that for all my pretenses—my makeup, my new clothes, my china place settings—this is who I was.

• What was important to me wasn’t love or friendship, but my ability to lie convincingly to myself: to believe I was strong.

• What was important to me wasn’t love or friendship, but my ability to lie convincingly to myself: I surrendered to rages, venting all my savage anger, every fearful resentment I’d ever felt toward Dad or Shawn, at him, this bewildered bystander who’d only ever helped me.o believe I was strong.

• The stomach ulcers returned, burning and aching through the night… The next morning, Robin asked me to go with her to a doctor

• The toe was not broken because it was not breakable. Only an X-ray could prove otherwise. Thus, the X-ray would break my toe.

• I felt drunk with it and wanted to shout at the world: Here’s the proof: nothing touches me.

• We’d only just started eating when Dad, his mouth full of potatoes, said, “Richard, I’ll give you next week off, paid, if you’ll use it to study them books.”

• I was worried: Dad’s expectations were so high, and Richard’s fear of disappointing him so intense, it seemed possible that Richard might not take the ACT at all.

• Through the city of cars I spy one, a red jeep. Charles.

• Why didn’t he stop when I begged him? It was like getting beaten by a zombie, I write. Like he couldn’t hear me.

• It’s comforting to think the defect is mine, because that means it is under my power.

• But he’d apologized already, in my room. I had never known Shawn to apologize twice.

• Not knowing for certain, but refusing to give way to those who claim certainty, was a privilege I had never allowed myself.

On Thanksgiving, Shawn fights Tara when Charles arrives for dinner. Charles leaves, Tara meets him later, but eventually she breaks up with him. Back at college, Tara still refuses to see a doctor or a counselor despite Robin's urges. Back home for Christmas, Tara is shocked to learn her father supports Richard's plans to go to college and is taunted and attacked by Shawn.

Chapter 23

I’m from Idaho

• “Marriage is God’s plan,” the bishop said,

• Days later, when it was confirmed that I was not pregnant, I evolved a new understanding of the word “whore,” one that was less about actions and more about essence.

• I wished he would yell. If he yelled, it would make me angry, and when angry I felt powerful.

• The bishop made me promise only one thing: that I wouldn’t work for my father.

• I visited a dentist, who said the tooth had been rotting for years. It would cost fourteen hundred dollars to repair.

• I called home. Mother agreed to lend me the money, but Dad attached terms:

• “I don’t believe in Government grants,” I said.

• my mind was absorbed with more immediate concerns, such as the exact balance of my bank account, who I owed how much, and whether there was anything in my room I could sell for ten or twenty dollars.

• “Merry Christmas,” he said. “You won’t waste this like I will.”

• She knew I was lying—I could tell because when Dad came in unexpectedly and asked why she was copying the returns, she said the duplicates were for her records.

• That night I had entered my father’s house as an intruder. It was a shift in mental language, a surrendering of where I was from.

Chapter 24