Educated

images that came to mind were of that girl, in the bathroom, in the parking
lot.
I couldn’t tell Dr. Kerry about that girl. I couldn’t tell him that the reason I
couldn’t return to Cambridge was that being here threw into great relief every
violent and degrading moment of my life. At BYU I could almost forget,
allow what had been to blend into what was. But the contrast here was too
great, the world before my eyes too fantastical. The memories were more real
—more believable—than the stone spires.
To myself I pretended there were other reasons I couldn’t belong at
Cambridge, reasons having to do with class and status: that it was because I
was poor, had grown up poor. Because I could stand in the wind on the
chapel roof and not tilt. That was the person who didn’t belong in
Cambridge: the roofer, not the whore. I can go to school, I had written in my
journal that very afternoon. And I can buy new clothes. But I am still Tara
Westover. I have done jobs no Cambridge student would do. Dress us any
way you like, we are not the same. Clothes could not fix what was wrong
with me. Something had rotted on the inside, and the stench was too
powerful, the core too rancid, to be covered up by mere dressings.
Whether Dr. Kerry suspected any part of this, I’m not sure. But he
understood that I had fixated on clothes as the symbol of why I didn’t, and
couldn’t, belong. It was the last thing he said to me before he walked away,
leaving me rooted, astonished, beside that grand chapel.
“The most powerful determinant of who you are is inside you,” he said.
“Professor Steinberg says this is Pygmalion. Think of the story, Tara.” He
paused, his eyes fierce, his voice piercing. “She was just a cockney in a nice
dress. Until she believed in herself. Then it didn’t matter what dress she
wore.”