Educated: A Memoir

Westover explores more of her memories of her older brother, Shawn. One morning, Shawn and Westover were visiting their horses. Westover’s horse was a gelding that had not been broken to ride yet. She was afraid to break the horse herself, so Shawn did it instead. It did not take long for Shawn to go off galloping through the corral on the horse every evening. Westover named the horse Bud, and after a week of watching Shawn ride Bud, she finally worked up the courage to try it herself.

Westover tells readers that Shawn wanted out of his old life with his friends who were a poor influence, so he began spending more time at the family home. He started driving Westover to rehearsals. Shawn would be lighthearted and good-natured during the drive, but his behavior would change when they arrived at the theater. He would bait and tease the younger boys and play mean pranks on them, as if to intentionally humiliate them. But when they left the theater, the aggressive facade would disappear, and he would be Westover’s brother again.

Shawn took up breaking horses more seriously after breaking Bud. One night, Westover and Shawn went riding. Westover rode Bud and Shawn rode a new mare. About half a mile up the mountain, Westover accidentally got too close to the mare, who did not like having Bud close behind her. The mare leapt forward and kicked Bud in the chest, hard. Bud bolted and Westover lost her grip on the reins. As Bud galloped at breakneck speed, her foot slid down through the stirrup and got caught, all the way up to her calf.

Gripping the saddle horn for dear life, Westover considered trying to jump from the horse as he repeatedly bucked and stomped. She knew that if she let go and could not get her foot free, she would fall backwards on the horse, placing her head dangerously near Bud’s back hooves and risking getting kicked in the back of the head. Believing that Shawn would save her, she decided to stay on the horse as the world blurred around her with every buck and stomp.

Westover felt Shawn galloping toward her. He jumped from his horse and reached for Bud’s reins, pulling them toward the ground so that he could not buck anymore. Westover slid from the horse to the ground, where she watched the horses pant and paw the dirt above her. 

Westover continues to explore her memories of her time with Shawn as a teenager. As a favor to their older brother, Tony, Shawn agreed to drive a semi-truck for a couple of weeks, but only if Westover could come along too. On the trip, she and Shawn bonded, playing games and practicing martial arts in warehouse parking lots. Their main form of entertainment on the road was talking, so they made up a game where every statement had to have at least two words in which the first letters were switched. Shawn said that Westover was not his little sister; she was his “sittle lister” (113).

After they got back to Buck’s Peak, the local opera house announced a new play: Carousel. Shawn drove Westover to the auditions, then surprised her by auditioning himself. A local girl named Sadie (a pseudonym) took interest in Shawn and began flirting with him. Westover thought she was very pretty, but when she asked Shawn if he liked her, he said, “She’s got fish eyes” (115). Westover did not understand what this meant. Shawn explained that her eyes were “dead stupid” (115) like a fish. Nevertheless, Sadie started stopping by the junkyard to give Shawn milkshakes, cookies, or cake. Shawn barely acknowledged her; he would simply take the treats and head to the corral.

Shawn was chronically unkind to Sadie. He played mind games with her and seemed to enjoy making her cry. One evening at theater rehearsals, after Sadie got Shawn a candy bar that he asked for, he told her she had beautiful eyes, “just like a fish” (115).

One night, Shawn came home in a bad mood. He gruffly told Westover to get him a glass of water. Disliking his attitude, she poured the glass of water on his head. Shawn immediately got violent. He chased her up the hall and shoved her head in the toilet, then bent her wrist back toward her forearm until Westover could barely breathe or move. The more pain Westover seemed to be in, the harder he bent her wrist. He insisted she apologize. The second she did, he let her go. When Shawn left, Westover cried in the bathroom. She hated herself for crying, for her weakness. She decided she would not be weak like that again, and she “saw [herself] as a tender as stone” (119). She thought that Shawn’s abuse was not affecting her, but as she later realized, that staunch “was its effect” (119).  

Westover begins with memories from the autumn of 2001, when she turned 15 and the twin towers—which she had never heard of before—fell. She spent that autumn still afraid of Shawn, who had become abusive, and her fear was exacerbated by the fact that she was going through puberty. Westover was terrified that the changes to her body would make her the kind of “immodest,” “whor[ish]” woman her father hated. She wanted to make sure she did not act or look like them, but no one had ever taught her how.

Nevertheless, Westover started wearing makeup. Shawn noticed, and he told her she was just like every other girl and woman in town and called her a “whore” (122). One night at the theater, Westover noticed Charles flirting with Sadie. As she watched him talk to her, Westover reapplied her lip gloss, not realizing that Shawn was watching.

Soon after that night at the theater, Westover woke up in the middle of the night to Shawn picking her up out of bed by the throat. He was choking and shaking her and yelling to his mother that Westover was a “slut” and a “whore,” that Faye did not know how she acted around town. Shawn dragged her through the house by her hair and violently twisted her arm behind her back, but Faye did nothing. Shawn would not let Westover go until she said, aloud, that she was a “whore.”

Shawn did not let go until Tyler appeared. Neither Westover nor Shawn knew Tyler was home to visit from college. Shawn let her go abruptly and sheepishly acted like nothing was happening. Tyler seemed grim yet resigned, as if he had seen Shawn do this to someone else before. Westover wished Tyler had not been there to see it happen.

Later, Tyler found Westover alone and told her she needed to leave home, and as soon as possible. She needed to take the ACT and go to Brigham Young University (BYU) like he did: “There’s a world out there, Tara. And it will look a lot different once Dad is no longer whispering his view of it in your ear” (128). The next day Westover purchased a lock for her door. To her horror, Shawn caught her trying to install it. However, he was back to the good-natured, jovial version of himself and even helped her install it.