“What do you think will happen if you take the pills?” he said.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what would happen. Mother always
said that medical drugs are a special kind of poison, one that never
leaves your body but rots you slowly from the inside for the rest of your
life. She told me if I took a drug now, even if I didn’t have children for a
decade, they would be deformed.
“People take drugs for pain,” he said. “It’s normal.”
I must have winced at the word “normal,” because he went quiet. He
filled a glass of water and set it in front of me, then gently pushed the
pills forward until they touched my arm. I picked one up. I’d never
seen a pill up close before. It was smaller than I’d expected.
I swallowed it, then the other.
For as long as I could remember, whenever I was in pain, whether
from a cut or a toothache, Mother would make a tincture of lobelia and
skullcap. It had never lessened the pain, not one degree. Because of
this, I had come to respect pain, even revere it, as necessary and
untouchable.
Twenty minutes after I swallowed the red pills, the earache was
gone. I couldn’t comprehend its absence. I spent the afternoon
swinging my head from left to right, trying to jog the pain loose again. I
thought if I could shout loudly enough, or move quickly enough,
perhaps the earache would return and I would know the medicine had
been a sham after all.
Charles watched in silence but he must have found my behavior
absurd, especially when I began to pull on my ear, which still ached
dully, so I could test the limits of this strange witchcraft.
—MOTHER WAS SUPPOSED TO drive me to BYU the next morning, but during
the night, she was called to deliver a baby. There was a car sitting in
the driveway—a Kia Sephia Dad had bought from Tony a few weeks
before. The keys were in the ignition. I loaded my stuff into it and
drove it to Utah, figuring the car would just about make up for the
money Dad owed me. I guess he figured that, too, because he never
said a word about it.
I moved into an apartment half a mile from the university. I had new