Educated

I awoke with my face pressed to the desk. The room was bright. I could
hear Shannon and Mary in the kitchen. I put on my Sunday dress and the
three of us walked to church. Because it was a congregation of students,
everyone was sitting with their roommates, so I settled into a pew with mine.
Shannon immediately began chatting with the girl behind us. I looked around
the chapel and was again struck by how many women were wearing skirts cut
above the knee.
The girl talking to Shannon said we should come over that afternoon to see
a movie. Mary and Shannon agreed but I shook my head. I didn’t watch
movies on Sunday.
Shannon rolled her eyes. “She’s very devout,” she whispered.
I’d always known that my father believed in a different God. As a child,
I’d been aware that although my family attended the same church as everyone
in our town, our religion was not the same. They believed in modesty; we
practiced it. They believed in God’s power to heal; we left our injuries in
God’s hands. They believed in preparing for the Second Coming; we were
actually prepared. For as long as I could remember, I’d known that the
members of my own family were the only true Mormons I had ever known,
and yet for some reason, here at this university, in this chapel, for the first
time I felt the immensity of the gap. I understood now: I could stand with my
family, or with the gentiles, on the one side or the other, but there was no
foothold in between.
The service ended and we filed into Sunday school. Shannon and Mary
chose seats near the front. They saved me one but I hesitated, thinking of how
I’d broken the Sabbath. I’d been here less than a week, and already I had
robbed the Lord of an hour. Perhaps that was why Dad hadn’t wanted me to
come: because he knew that by living with them, with people whose faith
was less, I risked becoming like them.
Shannon waved to me and her V-neck plunged. I walked past her and
folded myself into a corner, as far from Shannon and Mary as I could get. I
was pleased by the familiarity of the arrangement: me, pressed into the
corner, away from the other children, a precise reproduction of every Sunday
school lesson from my childhood. It was the only sensation of familiarity I’d
felt since coming to this place, and I relished it.