Educated

poured in through gossamer curtains and onto marigold tiles, giving the
whole room an amber glow.
After Grandma slid the first batch into the oven, I went to the bathroom. I
passed through the hallway, with its soft white carpet, and felt a stab of anger
when I remembered that the last time I’d seen it, I’d been with Tyler. The
bathroom felt foreign. I took in the pearly sink, the rosy tint of the carpet, the
peach-colored rug. Even the toilet peeked out from under a primrose
covering. I took in my own reflection, framed by creamy tiles. I looked
nothing like myself, and I wondered for a moment if this was what Tyler
wanted, a pretty house with a pretty bathroom and a pretty sister to visit him.
Maybe this was what he’d left for. I hated him for that.
Near the tap there were a dozen pink and white soaps, shaped like swans
and roses, resting in an ivory-tinted shell. I picked up a swan, feeling its soft
shape give under pressure from my fingers. It was beautiful and I wanted to
take it. I pictured it in our basement bathroom, its delicate wings set against
the coarse cement. I imagined it lying in a muddy puddle on the sink,
surrounded by strips of curling yellowed wallpaper. I returned it to its shell.
Coming out, I walked into Grandma, who’d been waiting for me in the
hall.
“Did you wash your hands?” she asked, her tone sweet and buttery.
“No,” I said.
My reply soured the cream in her voice. “Why not?”
“They weren’t dirty.”
“You should always wash your hands after you use the toilet.”
“It can’t be that important,” I said. “We don’t even have soap in the
bathroom at home.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “I raised your mother better than that.”
I squared my stance, ready to argue, to tell Grandma again that we didn’t
use soap, but when I looked up, the woman I saw was not the woman I
expected to see. She didn’t seem frivolous, didn’t seem like the type who’d
waste an entire day fretting over her white carpet. In that moment she was
transformed. Maybe it was something in the shape of her eyes, the way they
squinted at me in disbelief, or maybe it was the hard line of her mouth, which
was clamped shut, determined. Or maybe it was nothing at all, just the same
old woman looking like herself and saying the things she always said. Maybe
her transformation was merely a temporary shift in my perspective—for that