Educated

Shawn always said you picked the fights, and I guess I wanted to believe
that, because it was easier. Because you were strong and rational, and
anyone could see that Shawn was not.
That didn’t make sense. If I had seemed rational, why had Mother believed
Shawn when he’d told her I was picking fights? That I needed to be subdued,
disciplined.
I’m a mother, she said. Mothers protect. And Shawn was so damaged.
I wanted to say that she was also my mother but I didn’t. I don’t think Dad
will believe any of this, I typed.
He will, she wrote. But it’s hard for him. It reminds him of the damage his
bipolar has caused to our family.
I had never heard Mother admit that Dad might be mentally ill. Years
before, I had told her what I’d learned in my psychology class about bipolar
disorder and schizophrenia, but she had shrugged it off. Hearing her say it
now felt liberating. The illness gave me something to attack besides my
father, so when Mother asked why I hadn’t come to her sooner, why I hadn’t
asked for help, I answered honestly.
Because you were so bullied by Dad, I said. You were not powerful in the
house. Dad ran things, and he was not going to help us.
I am stronger now, she said. I no longer run scared.
When I read this, I imagined my mother as a young woman, brilliant and
energetic, but also anxious and complying. Then the image changed, her
body thinning, elongating, her hair flowing, long and silver.
Emily is being bullied, I wrote.
She is, Mother said. Like I was.
She is you, I said.
She is me. But we know better now. We can rewrite the story.
I asked about a memory. It was from the weeks before I’d left for BYU,
after Shawn had had a particularly bad night. He’d brought Mother to tears,
then plopped onto the sofa and turned on the TV. I’d found her sobbing at the
kitchen table, and she’d asked me not to go to BYU. “You’re the only one
strong enough to handle him,” she’d said. “I can’t, and your father can’t. It
has to be you.”
I typed slowly, reluctantly: Do you remember telling me not to go to
school, that I was the only one who could handle Shawn?
Yes, I remember that.