Educated(69)

My first day in Idaho, I got my old job back at Stokes. Dad scoffed, said I’d never earn enough to return to school. He was right, but the bishop had said God would provide a way and I believed it. I spent the summer restocking shelves and walking elderly ladies to their cars.

I avoided Shawn. It was easy because he had a new girlfriend, Emily, and there was talk of a wedding. Shawn was twenty-eight; Emily was a senior in high school. Her temperament was compliant. Shawn played the same games with her he’d played with Sadie, testing his control. She never failed to follow his orders, quivering when he raised his voice, apologizing when he screamed at her. That their marriage would be manipulative and violent, I had no doubt—although those words were not mine. They had been given to me by the bishop, and I was still trying to wrest meaning from them.

When the summer ended, I returned to BYU with only two thousand dollars. On my first night back, I wrote in my journal: I have so many bills I can’t imagine how I’m going to pay them. But God will provide either trials for growth or the means to succeed. The tone of that entry seems lofty, high-minded, but in it I detect a whiff of fatalism. Maybe I would have to leave school. That was fine. There were grocery stores in Utah. I would bag groceries, and one day I’d be manager.

I was shocked out of this resignation two weeks into the fall semester, when I awoke one night to a blinding pain in my jaw. I’d never felt anything so acute, so electrifying. I wanted to rip my jaw from my mouth, just to be rid of it. I stumbled to a mirror. The source was a tooth that had been chipped many years before, but now it had fractured again, and deeply. I visited a dentist, who said the tooth had been rotting for years. It would cost fourteen hundred dollars to repair. I couldn’t afford to pay half that and stay in school.

I called home. Mother agreed to lend me the money, but Dad attached terms: I would have to work for him next summer. I didn’t even consider it. I said I was finished with the junkyard, finished for life, and hung up.

I tried to ignore the ache and focus on my classes, but it felt as though I were being asked to sit through a lecture while a wolf gnawed on my jaw.

I’d never taken another ibuprofen since that day with Charles, but I began to swallow them like breath mints. They helped only a little. The pain was in the nerves, and it was too severe. I hadn’t slept since the ache began, and I started skipping meals because chewing was unthinkable. That’s when Robin told the bishop.

He called me to his office on a bright afternoon. He looked at me calmly from across his desk and said, “What are we going to do about your tooth?” I tried to relax my face.

“You can’t go through the school year like this,” he said. “But there’s an easy solution. Very easy, in fact. How much does your father make?”

“Not much,” I said. “He’s been in debt since the boys wrecked all the equipment last year.”

“Excellent,” he said. “I have the paperwork here for a grant. I’m sure you’re eligible, and the best part is, you won’t have to pay it back.”

I’d heard about Government grants. Dad said that to accept one was to indebt yourself to the Illuminati. “That’s how they get you,” he’d said. “They give you free money, then the next thing you know, they own you.”

These words echoed in my head. I’d heard other students talk about their grants, and I’d recoiled from them. I would leave school before I would allow myself to be purchased.

“I don’t believe in Government grants,” I said.

“Why not?”

I told him what my father said. He sighed and looked heavenward. “How much will it cost to fix the tooth?”

“Fourteen hundred,” I said. “I’ll find the money.”

“The church will pay,” he said quietly. “I have a discretionary fund.”

“That money is sacred.”

The bishop threw his hands in the air. We sat in silence, then he opened his desk drawer and withdrew a checkbook. I looked at the heading. It was for his personal account. He filled out a check, to me, for fifteen hundred dollars.

“I will not allow you to leave school over this,” he said.

The check was in my hand. I was so tempted, the pain in my jaw so savage, that I must have held it for ten seconds before passing it back.



* * *



—

I HAD A JOB at the campus creamery, flipping burgers and scooping ice cream. I got by between paydays by neglecting overdue bills and borrowing money from Robin, so twice a month, when a few hundred dollars went into my account, it was gone within hours. I was broke when I turned nineteen at the end of September. I had given up on fixing the tooth; I knew I would never have fourteen hundred dollars. Besides, the pain had lessened: either the nerve had died or my brain had adjusted to its shocks.

Still, I had other bills, so I decided to sell the only thing I had of any value—my horse, Bud. I called Shawn and asked how much I could get. Shawn said a mixed breed wasn’t worth much, but that I could send him to auction like Grandpa’s dog-food horses. I imagined Bud in a meat grinder, then said, “Try to find a buyer first.” A few weeks later Shawn sent me a check for a few hundred dollars. When I called Shawn and asked who he’d sold Bud to, he mumbled something vague about a guy passing through from Tooele.

I was an incurious student that semester. Curiosity is a luxury reserved for the financially secure: my mind was absorbed with more immediate concerns, such as the exact balance of my bank account, who I owed how much, and whether there was anything in my room I could sell for ten or twenty dollars. I submitted my homework and studied for my exams, but I did so out of terror—of losing my scholarship should my GPA fall a single decimal—not from real interest in my classes.