Then: “But what if you were a woman, and somehow you felt exactly as you do now?”
Josh’s eyes fixed on the wall for a moment. He was really thinking about it. Then he said, “I’d know something was wrong with me.”
I’d been wondering whether something was wrong with me since the beginning of the semester, when I’d attended my first lecture on world affairs. I’d been wondering how I could be a woman and yet be drawn to unwomanly things.
I knew someone must have the answer so I decided to ask one of my professors. I chose the professor of my Jewish history class, because he was quiet and soft-spoken. Dr. Kerry was a short man with dark eyes and a serious expression. He lectured in a thick wool jacket even in hot weather. I knocked on his office door quietly, as if I hoped he wouldn’t answer, and soon was sitting silently across from him. I didn’t know what my question was, and Dr. Kerry didn’t ask. Instead he posed general questions—about my grades, what courses I was taking. He asked why I’d chosen Jewish history, and without thinking I blurted that I’d learned of the Holocaust only a few semesters before and wanted to learn the rest of the story.
“You learned of the Holocaust when?” he said.
“At BYU.”
“They didn’t teach about it in your school?”
“They probably did,” I said. “Only I wasn’t there.”
“Where were you?”
I explained as best I could, that my parents didn’t believe in public education, that they’d kept us home. When I’d finished, he laced his fingers as if he were contemplating a difficult problem. “I think you should stretch yourself. See what happens.”
“Stretch myself how?”
He leaned forward suddenly, as if he’d just had an idea. “Have you heard of Cambridge?” I hadn’t. “It’s a university in England,” he said. “One of the best in the world. I organize a study abroad program there for students. It’s highly competitive and extremely demanding. You might not be accepted, but if you are, it may give you some idea of your abilities.”
I walked to my apartment wondering what to make of the conversation. I’d wanted moral advice, someone to reconcile my calling as a wife and mother with the call I heard of something else. But he’d put that aside. He’d seemed to say, “First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.”
I applied to the program.
* * *
—
EMILY WAS PREGNANT. THE pregnancy was not going well. She’d nearly miscarried in the first trimester, and now that she was approaching twenty weeks, she was beginning to have contractions. Mother, who was the midwife, had given her Saint-John’s-wort and other remedies. The contractions lessened but continued.
When I arrived at Buck’s Peak for Christmas, I expected to find Emily on bed rest. She wasn’t. She was standing at the kitchen counter straining herbs, along with half a dozen other women. She rarely spoke and smiled even more rarely, just moved about the house carrying vats of cramp bark and motherwort. She was quiet to the point of invisibility, and after a few minutes, I forgot she was there.
It had been six months since the explosion, and while Dad was back on his feet, it was clear he would never be the man he was. He could scarcely walk across a room without gasping for air, so damaged were his lungs. The skin on his lower face had regrown, but it was thin and waxy, as if someone had taken sandpaper and rubbed it to the point of transparency. His ears were thick with scars. He had thin lips and his mouth drooped, giving him the haggard appearance of a much older man. But it was his right hand, more than his face, that drew stares: each finger was frozen in its own pose, some curled, some bowed, twisting together into a gnarled claw. He could hold a spoon by wedging it between his index finger, which bowed upward, and his ring finger, which curved downward, but he ate with difficulty. Still, I wondered whether skin grafts could have achieved what Mother had with her comfrey and lobelia salve. It was a miracle, everyone said, so that was the new name they gave Mother’s recipe: after Dad’s burn it was known as Miracle Salve.
At dinner my first night on the peak, Dad described the explosion as a tender mercy from the Lord. “It was a blessing,” he said. “A miracle. God spared my life