Dr. Kerry said he’d been watching me. “You act like someone who is
impersonating someone else. And it’s as if you think your life depends
on it.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.
“It has never occurred to you,” he said, “that you might have as much
right to be here as anyone.” He waited for an explanation.
“I would enjoy serving the dinner,” I said, “more than eating it.”
Dr. Kerry smiled. “You should trust Professor Steinberg. If he says
you’re a scholar—‘pure gold,’ I heard him say—then you are.”
“This is a magical place,” I said. “Everything shines here.”
“You must stop yourself from thinking like that,” Dr. Kerry said, his
voice raised. “You are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular
light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is
who you always were. It was always in you. Not in Cambridge. In you.
You are gold. And returning to BYU, or even to that mountain you
came from, will not change who you are. It may change how others see
you, it may even change how you see yourself—even gold appears dull
in some lighting—but that is the illusion. And it always was.”
I wanted to believe him, to take his words and remake myself, but I’d
never had that kind of faith. No matter how deeply I interred the
memories, how tightly I shut my eyes against them, when I thought of
my self, the images that came to mind were of that girl, in the
bathroom, in the parking lot.
I couldn’t tell Dr. Kerry about that girl. I couldn’t tell him that the
reason I couldn’t return to Cambridge was that being here threw into
great relief every violent and degrading moment of my life. At BYU I
could almost forget, allow what had been to blend into what was. But
the contrast here was too great, the world before my eyes too
fantastical. The memories were more real—more believable—than the
stone spires.
To myself I pretended there were other reasons I couldn’t belong at
Cambridge, reasons having to do with class and status: that it was
because I was poor, had grown up poor. Because I could stand in the
wind on the chapel roof and not tilt. That was the person who didn’t
belong in Cambridge: the roofer, not the whore. I can go to school, I
had written in my journal that very afternoon. And I can buy new