Educated

prison but that some type of intervention was needed. I turned to Mother,
waiting for her to add her voice to mine, but she was silent. Her eyes were
fixed on the floor as if Dad and I were not there.
There was a moment when I realized she would not speak, that she would
sit there and say nothing, that I was alone. I tried to calm Dad but my voice
trembled, cracked. Then I was wailing—sobs erupted from somewhere, some
part of me I had not felt in years, that I had forgotten existed. I thought I
might vomit.
I ran to the bathroom. I was shaking from my feet to my fingers.
I had to strangle the sobs quickly—Dad would never take me seriously if I
couldn’t—so I stopped the bawling using the old methods: staring my face
down in the mirror and scolding it for every tear. It was such a familiar
process, that in doing it I shattered the illusion I’d been building so carefully
for the past year. The fake past, the fake future, both gone.
I stared at the reflection. The mirror was mesmeric, with its triple panels
trimmed with false oak. It was the same mirror I’d gazed into as a child, then
as a girl, then as a youth, half woman, half girl. Behind me was the same
toilet Shawn had put my head in, holding me there until I confessed I was a
whore.
I had often locked myself in this bathroom after Shawn let me go. I would
move the panels until they showed my face three times, then I would glare at
each one, contemplating what Shawn had said and what he had made me say,
until it all began to feel true instead of just something I had said to make the
pain stop. And here I was still, and here was the mirror. The same face,
repeated in the same three panels.
Except it wasn’t. This face was older, and floating above a soft cashmere
sweater. But Dr. Kerry was right: it wasn’t the clothes that made this face,
this woman, different. It was something behind her eyes, something in the set
of her jaw—a hope or belief or conviction—that a life is not a thing
unalterable. I don’t have a word for what it was I saw, but I suppose it was
something like faith.
I had regained a fragile sense of calm, and I left the bathroom carrying that
calmness delicately, as if it were a china plate balancing on my head. I
walked slowly down the hall, taking small, even steps.
“I’m going to bed,” I said when I’d made it to the Chapel. “We’ll talk
about this tomorrow.”