Educated

by Tara Westover

  Sometime after 1:30 I went to bed. I glimpsed Dad as I left, his face frozen in the dark, the light from the TV leaping across his square glasses. He sat as if posed, with no agitation, no embarrassment, as if there were a perfectly mundane explanation for why he was sitting up, alone, at near two in the morning, watching Ralph and Alice Kramden prepare for a Christmas party.

  He seemed smaller to me than he had that morning. The disappointment in his features was so childlike, for a moment I wondered how God could deny him this. He, a faithful servant, who suffered willingly just as Noah had willingly suffered to build the ark.

  But God withheld the flood.

  When January 1 dawned like any other morning, it broke Dad’s spirit. He never again mentioned Y2K. He slipped into despondency, dragging himself in from the junkyard each night, silent and heavy. He’d sit in front of the TV for hours, a black cloud hovering.

  Mother said it was time for another trip to Arizona. Luke was serving a mission for the church, so it was just me, Richard and Audrey who piled into the old Chevy Astro van Dad had fixed up. Dad removed the seats, except the two in front, and in their place he put a queen mattress; then he heaved himself onto it and didn’t move for the rest of the drive.

  As it had years before, the Arizona sun revived Dad. He lay out on the porch on the hard cement, soaking it up, while the rest of us read or watched TV. After a few days he began to improve, and we braced ourselves for the nightly arguments between him and Grandma. Grandma was seeing a lot of doctors these days, because she had cancer in her bone marrow.

  “Those doctors will just kill you quicker,” Dad said one evening when Grandma returned from a consultation. Grandma refused to quit chemotherapy, but she did ask Mother about herbal treatments. Mother had brought some with her, hoping Grandma would ask, and Grandma tried them—foot soaks in red clay, cups of bitter parsley tea, tinctures of horsetail and hydrangea.

  “Those herbs won’t do a damned thing,” Dad said. “Herbals operate by faith. You can’t put your trust in a doctor, then ask the Lord to heal you.”

  Grandma didn’t say a word. She just drank her parsley tea.

  I remember watching Grandma, searching for signs that her body was giving way. I didn’t see any. She was the same taut, undefeated woman.

  The rest of the trip blurs in my memory, leaving me with only snapshots—of Mother muscle-testing remedies for Grandma, of Grandma listening silently to Dad, of Dad sprawled out in the dry heat.

  Then I’m in a hammock on the back porch, rocking lazily in the orange light of the desert sunset, and Audrey appears and says Dad wants us to get our stuff, we’re leaving. Grandma is incredulous. “After what happened last time?” she shouts. “You’re going to drive through the night again? What about the storm?” Dad says we’ll beat the storm. While we load the van Grandma paces, cussing. She says Dad hasn’t learned a damned thing.

  Richard drives the first six hours. I lie in the back on the mattress with Dad and Audrey.

  It’s three in the morning, and we are making our way from southern to northern Utah, when the weather changes from the dry chill of the desert to the freezing gales of an alpine winter. Ice claims the road. Snowflakes flick against the windshield like tiny insects, a few at first, then so many the road disappears. We push forward into the heart of the storm. The van skids and jerks. The wind is furious, the view out the window pure white. Richard pulls over. He says we can’t go any further.

  Dad takes the wheel, Richard moves to the passenger seat, and Mother lies next to me and Audrey on the mattress. Dad pulls onto the highway and accelerates, rapidly, as if to make a point, until he has doubled Richard’s speed.

  “Shouldn’t we drive slower?” Mother asks.

  Dad grins. “I’m not driving faster than our angels can fly.” The van is still accelerating. To fifty, then to sixty.

  Richard sits tensely, his hand clutching the armrest, his knuckles bleaching each time the tires slip. Mother lies on her side, her face next to mine, taking small sips of air each time the van fishtails, then holding her breath as Dad corrects and it snakes back into the lane. She is so rigid, I think she might shatter. My body tenses with hers; together we brace a hundred times for impact.

  It is a relief when the van finally leaves the road.

  * * *

  —

  I AWOKE TO BLACKNESS. Something ice-cold was running down my back. We’re in a lake! I thought. Something heavy was on top of me. The mattress. I tried to kick it off but couldn’t, so I crawled beneath it, my hands and knees pressing into the ceiling of the van, which was upside down. I came to a broken window. It was full of snow. Then I understood: we were in a field, not a lake. I crawled through the broken glass and stood, unsteadily. I couldn’t seem to gain my balance. I looked around but saw no one. The van was empty. My family was gone.

  I circled the wreck twice before I spied Dad’s hunched silhouette on a hillock in the distance. I called to him, and he called to the others, who were spread out through the field. Dad waded toward me through the snowdrifts, and as he stepped into a beam from the broken headlights I saw a six-inch gash in his forearm and blood slashing into the snow.

  I was told later that I’d been unconscious, hidden under the mattress, for several minutes. They’d shouted my name. When I didn’t answer, they thought I must have been thrown from the van, through the broken window, so they’d left to search for me.

  Everyone returned to the wreck and stood around it awkwardly, shaking, either from the cold or from shock. We didn’t look at Dad, didn’t want to accuse.

  The police arrived, then an ambulance. I don’t know who called them. I didn’t tell them I’d blacked out—I was afraid they’d take me to a hospital. I just sat in the police car next to Richard, wrapped in a reflective blanket like the one I had in my “head for the hills” bag. We listened to the radio while the cops asked Dad why the van wasn’t insured, and why he’d removed the seats and seatbelts.

  We were far from Buck’s Peak, so the cops took us to the nearest police station. Dad called Tony, but Tony was trucking long-haul. He tried Shawn next. No answer. We would later learn that Shawn was in jail that night, having been in some kind of brawl.

  Unable to reach his sons, Dad called Rob and Diane Hardy, because Mother had midwifed five of their eight children. Rob arrived a few hours later, cackling. “Didn’t you folks damned near kill yerselves last time?”

  * * *

  —

  A FEW DAYS AFTER the crash, my neck froze.

  I awoke one morning and it wouldn’t move. It didn’t hurt, not at first, but no matter how hard I concentrated on turning my head, it wouldn’t give more than an inch. The paralysis spread lower, until it felt like I had a metal rod running the length of my back and into my skull. When I couldn’t bend forward or turn my head, the soreness set in. I had a constant, crippling headache, and I couldn’t stand without holding on to something.

  Mother called an energy specialist named Rosie. I was lying on my bed, where I’d been for two weeks, when she appeared in the doorway, wavy and distorted, as if I were looking at her through a pool of water. Her voice was high in pitch, cheerful. It told me to imagine myself, whole and healthy, protected by a white bubble. Inside the bubble I was to place all the objects I loved, all the colors that made me feel at peace. I envisioned the bubble; I imagined myself at its center, able to stand, to run. Behind me was a Mormon temple, and Kamikaze, Luke’s old goat, long dead. A green glow lighted everything.

  “Imagine the bubble for a few hours every day,” she said, “and you will heal.” She patted my arm and I heard the door close behind her.

  I imagined the bubble every morning, afternoon and night, but my neck remained immobile. Slowly, over the course of a month, I got used to the headaches. I learned how to stand, then how to walk. I used my eyes to stay upright; if I closed them even for a moment, the world would shift and I would fall. I went back to work—to Randy’s and occasionally to the junkyard. And every
night I fell asleep imagining that green bubble.

  * * *

  —

  DURING THE MONTH I was in bed I heard another voice. I remembered it but it was no longer familiar to me. It had been six years since that impish laugh had echoed down the hall.

  It belonged to my brother Shawn, who’d quarreled with my father at seventeen and run off to work odd jobs, mostly trucking and welding. He’d come home because Dad had asked for his help. From my bed, I’d heard Shawn say that he would only stay until Dad could put together a real crew. This was just a favor, he said, until Dad could get back on his feet.

  It was odd finding him in the house, this brother who was nearly a stranger to me. People in town seemed to know him better than I did. I’d heard rumors about him at Worm Creek. People said he was trouble, a bully, a bad egg, that he was always hunting or being hunted by hooligans from Utah or even further afield. People said he carried a gun, either concealed on his body or strapped to his big black motorcycle. Once someone said that Shawn wasn’t really bad, that he only got into brawls because he had a reputation for being unbeatable—for knowing all there was to know about martial arts, for fighting like a man who feels no pain—so every strung-out wannabe in the valley thought he could make a name for himself by besting him. It wasn’t Shawn’s fault, really. As I listened to these rumors, he came alive in my mind as more legend than flesh.

  My own memory of Shawn begins in the kitchen, perhaps two months after the second accident.

  I am making corn chowder. The door squeaks and I twist at the waist to see who’s come in, then twist back to chop an onion.

  “You gonna be a walking Popsicle stick forever?” Shawn says.

  “Nope.”

  “You need a chiropractor,” he says.

  “Mom’ll fix it.”

  “You need a chiropractor,” he says again.

  The family eats, then disperses. I start the dishes. My hands are in the hot, soapy water when I hear a step behind me and feel thick, callused hands wrap around my skull. Before I can react, he jerks my head with a swift, savage motion. CRACK! It’s so loud, I’m sure my head has come off and he’s holding it. My body folds, I collapse. Everything is black but somehow spinning. When I open my eyes moments later, his hands are under my arms and he’s holding me upright.

  “Might be a while before you can stand,” he says. “But when you can, I need to do the other side.”

  I was too dizzy, too nauseous, for the effect to be immediate. But throughout the evening I observed small changes. I could look at the ceiling. I could cock my head to tease Richard. Seated on the couch, I could turn to smile at the person next to me.

  That person was Shawn, and I was looking at him but I wasn’t seeing him. I don’t know what I saw—what creature I conjured from that violent, compassionate act—but I think it was my father, or perhaps my father as I wished he were, some longed-for defender, some fanciful champion, one who wouldn’t fling me into a storm, and who, if I was hurt, would make me whole.

  When Grandpa-down-the-hill was a young man, there’d been herds of livestock spread across the mountain, and they were tended on horseback. Grandpa’s ranching horses were the stuff of legend. Seasoned as old leather, they moved their burly bodies delicately, as if guided by the rider’s thoughts.

  At least, that’s what I was told. I never saw them. As Grandpa got older he ranched less and farmed more, until one day he stopped farming. He had no need for horses, so he sold the ones that had value and set the rest loose. They multiplied, and by the time I was born there was a whole herd of wild horses on the mountain.

  Richard called them dog-food horses. Once a year, Luke, Richard and I would help Grandpa round up a dozen or so to take to the auction in town, where they’d be sold for slaughter. Some years Grandpa would look out over the small, frightened herd bound for the meat grinder, at the young stallions pacing, coming to terms with their first captivity, and a hunger would appear in his eyes. Then he’d point to one and say, “Don’t load that ’un. That ’un we’ll break.”

  But feral horses don’t yield easily, not even to a man like Grandpa. My brothers and I would spend days, even weeks, earning the horse’s trust, just so we could touch it. Then we would stroke its long face and gradually, over more weeks, work our hands around its wide neck and down its muscular body. After a month of this we’d bring out the saddle, and the horse would toss its head suddenly and with such violence that the halter would snap or the rope break. Once a large copper stallion busted the corral fence, smashed through it as if it weren’t there, and came out the other side bloody and bruised.

  We tried not to name them, these beasts we hoped to tame, but we had to refer to them somehow. The names we chose were descriptive, not sentimental: Big Red, Black Mare, White Giant. I was thrown from dozens of these horses as they bucked, reared, rolled or leapt. I hit the dirt in a hundred sprawling postures, each time righting myself in an instant and skittering to the safety of a tree, tractor or fence, in case the horse was feeling vengeful.

  We never triumphed; our strength of will faltered long before theirs. We got some so they wouldn’t buck when they saw the saddle, and a few who’d tolerate a human on their back for jaunts around the corral, but not even Grandpa dared ride them on the mountain. Their natures hadn’t changed. They were pitiless, powerful avatars from another world. To mount them was to surrender your footing, to move into their domain. To risk being borne away.

  The first domesticated horse I ever saw was a bay gelding, and it was standing next to the corral, nibbling sugar cubes from Shawn’s hand. It was spring, and I was fourteen. It had been many years since I’d touched a horse.

  The gelding was mine, a gift from a great-uncle on my mother’s side. I approached warily, certain that as I moved closer the horse would buck, or rear, or charge. Instead it sniffed my shirt, leaving a long, wet stain. Shawn tossed me a cube. The horse smelled the sugar, and the prickles from his chin tickled my fingers until I opened my palm.

  “Wanna break him?” Shawn said.

  I did not. I was terrified of horses, or I was terrified of what I thought horses were—that is, thousand-pound devils whose ambition was to dash brains against rock. I told Shawn he could break the horse. I would watch from the fence.

  I refused to name the horse, so we called him the Yearling. The Yearling was already broke to a halter and lead, so Shawn brought out the saddle that first day. The Yearling pawed the dirt nervously when he saw it; Shawn moved slowly, letting him smell the stirrups and nibble curiously at the horn. Then Shawn rubbed the smooth leather across his broad chest, moving steadily but without hurry.

  “Horses don’t like things where they can’t see ’em,” Shawn said. “Best to get him used to the saddle in front. Then when he’s real comfortable with it, with the way it smells and feels, we can move it around back.”

  An hour later the saddle was cinched. Shawn said it was time to mount, and I climbed onto the barn roof, sure the corral would descend into violence. But when Shawn hoisted himself into the saddle, the Yearling merely skittered. His front hooves raised a few inches off the dirt, as if he’d pondered rearing but thought better of it, then he dropped his head and his paws stilled. In the space of a moment, he had accepted our claim to ride him, to his being ridden. He had accepted the world as it was, in which he was an owned thing. He had never been feral, so he could not hear the maddening call of that other world, on the mountain, in which he could not be owned, could not be ridden.

  I named him Bud. Every night for a week I watched Shawn and Bud gallop through the corral in the gray haze of dusk. Then, on a soft summer evening, I stood next to Bud, grasping the reins while Shawn held the halter steady, and stepped into the saddle.

  * * *

  —

  SHAWN SAID HE WANTED out of his old life, and that the first step was to stay away from his friends. Suddenly he was home every evening, looking for something to do. He began to drive me to my rehearsals at Worm Creek. When it w
as just the two of us floating down the highway, he was mellow, lighthearted. He joked and teased, and he sometimes gave me advice, which was mostly “Don’t do what I did.” But when we arrived at the theater, he would change.

  At first he watched the younger boys with wary concentration, then he began to bait them. It wasn’t obvious aggression, just small provocations. He might flick off a boy’s hat or knock a soda can from his hand and laugh as the stain spread over the boy’s jeans. If he was challenged—and he usually wasn’t—he would play the part of the ruffian, a hardened “Whatcha gonna do about it?” expression disguising his face. But after, when it was just the two of us, the mask lowered, the bravado peeled off like a breastplate, and he was my brother.

  It was his smile I loved best. His upper canines had never grown in, and the string of holistic dentists my parents had taken him to as a child had failed to notice until it was too late. By the time he was twenty-three, and he got himself to an oral surgeon, they had rotated sideways inside his gums and were ejecting themselves through the tissue under his nose. The surgeon who removed them told Shawn to preserve his baby teeth for as long as possible, then when they rotted out, he’d be given posts. But they never rotted out. They stayed, stubborn relics of a misplaced childhood, reminding anyone who witnessed his pointless, endless, feckless belligerence, that this man was once a boy.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS A HAZY summer evening, a month before I turned fifteen. The sun had dipped below Buck’s Peak but the sky still held a few hours of light. Shawn and I were in the corral. After breaking Bud that spring, Shawn had taken up horses in a serious way. All summer he’d been buying horses, Thoroughbreds and Paso Finos, most of them unbroken because he could pick them up cheap. We were still working with Bud. We’d taken him on a dozen rides through the open pasture, but he was inexperienced, skittish, unpredictable.