I stop hearing him. I remember the movie now. A bleeding head is hard to forget.
I was in ninth grade at the time, and it must have been May because Ted’s semester had recently ended. He called me out of school that day, telling the principal’s secretary that I wouldn’t be in again “until you drop the Earth Science requirement in favor of something far more useful. Freud! Jung! Piaget! Asch!” I laughed as he shouted names into Mrs. Keller’s ear.
We ate leftover Chinese food for breakfast that morning, Ted educating me about all the psychologists that Cedar High was too much of a “spineless giraffe” to teach. Then we microwaved slices of bread, covered them with mayo, and called it lunch. Even as he quizzed me about the scientists he’d just taught me, telling me I was “a brilliant girl” with “an unprecedented mind” every time I answered correctly, I was afraid to speak above a whisper, to laugh louder than a chuckle. I thought that if I did, Ted would realize he was wasting his day by spending it in the kitchen with me, instead of with the books and papers in his office.
“I have a thrilling idea!” Ted said as we ate. “Let’s go to the movies!”
I nearly choked on my crust. Ted didn’t go to the movies. Ted thought the movies were “colorful excrement.” But I didn’t question him as he pushed open the screen door and headed to his car.
In the refrigerated darkness of the theater, Ted laughed at all the previews—the gorier they were, the harder he guffawed. Twenty minutes into the movie, my excitement over our impromptu outing drained from me like blood from a face. The cabin on the screen was veiled in a weblike fog. Its blue door opened with the creaky sound of a witch’s voice. When the walls welled with red, when the woman’s head did, too, I shook in my seat until I couldn’t take it anymore. I covered my eyes with my arm and waited through the woman’s screams and the audience’s gasps until, finally, the theater flooded with light.
In the car on the way home, Ted said, “That movie really scared you, huh?”
I pulled at the bottom of my T-shirt, feeling myself blush. “I don’t like horror movies,” I said.
“I thought it was hilarious. Come on, Fern. You know blood doesn’t really look like that. And the floating ax? You could see the wires!” He paused, put a finger to his chin. “But it’s noteworthy that it scared you so much. Do you think we should do an interview?”
I snapped my head toward him. Didn’t say a word.
“I know I told you I’m taking the day off,” he added. Then he paused again. Longer this time. “But I could make an exception for this.”
Cooper’s voice breaks through the memory. “Hey, whatcha got there, a bug bite?”
I follow his gaze to the back of my hand. I’ve been scratching. My skin is flaking off beneath my nails. The trees form an awning against the sun, but I’m still sweating hard.
“Can we go now?” I ask.
“Sure,” Cooper says. “Thanks for indulging me.” The truck growls as he turns it on. “I’ll get you home in two secs.”
Not home, I almost correct him. Ted’s.
Excerpt from Chapter One of Behind the Red Door: A Memoir by Astrid Sullivan
There are parts of my story I can only tell now that my parents are dead.
Like how my knees grew sore every Sunday, the wooden pew kneelers leaving half-moon marks that were always too slow to fade. Hymns often scraped instead of sang in my throat. All the lacy collars itched. And each week, beneath my virginal dress, I wore an Ani DiFranco shirt. Sometimes, before I put it on, I even stroked Ani’s face, ran my tongue along her lips.
Now that I’ve lost my father to a heart attack, my mother to an aneurysm, I can say that the eight p.m. curfews humiliated me to the point of nearly hating my parents. (I once poured my mom a glass of orange juice and turned my back to spit in it before I handed it to her. She smiled at me and sipped; I smiled at her and watched.) I can also call the broken lock on my bedroom door what it actually was: a betrayal. A vow that they would not trust me, no matter how well I projected my prayers so they could hear them through the walls.
My parents were not bad people. They simply believed in God and guilt, and they wanted me to believe the same. (And no, it isn’t lost on me that they devoted their hearts and brains to God, and those were the organs that failed them.) When I was little, I pictured God as a jovial white man, Santa Claus in a cream-colored robe, just like the ones that Father Murphy wore. But when I grew older, and my mom explained my period to me as a punishment I must endure for the sin of a woman I’d never met, I imagined God as a scowling black-clad judge, raising his gavel, ready to slam it down on my head.
My parents were not bad people. But I can’t unsee the horror on my mother’s face when she found me with Bridget in the basement, our breath hot between our lips, our hands roaming each other’s bodies. My parents said how could you. They said filth. They said unholy and abomination. But Bridget’s tongue in my mouth felt like the communion I’d been waiting my entire life to taste. Body of Christ or body of Bridget—I’d choose Bridget every time.
And anyway, I met her at CCD (Catholic City Dump, we all used to call it). So if God really condemned our union, then why did he bring us together at all—in his place of worship, no less? During Confirmation rehearsals, I sat in the pews and imagined Bridget and I making out right on top of the altar. I saw myself peel back her yellow cardigan, lift up the white T-shirt beneath. I saw my fingers inch toward the bra that I knew would have a tight little bow in its center.
Before we got caught, we’d been talking on the phone every night for weeks. After my parents went to sleep, I huddled under my blankets and kept my voice low and soft. I wanted the vibration of my whisper to feel like breath against her ear. I wanted to tell her about my altar fantasy, to confess that when our teacher asked if I was feeling okay, noting the flush in my cheeks, I’d only been thinking of her. But I didn’t tell her these things. And for her part, she didn’t divulge her feelings either. But we knew.
All these years later, I still remember this about Bridget: she ate the outsides of Oreos first, nibbling at the chocolate cookies until there was nothing left, until the stiff circle of cream crumbled in her fingers. And I remember this, too: she was embarrassed to love Top 40, especially when she saw my secret stash of Ani and Fiona and Tori. She tucked her hair behind her ear, and she asked me to play her a song. I picked “Shy,” and I hoped she heard within it the hymn I would have written for her if Ani hadn’t gotten there first.
That day in the basement was the first time I’d ever kissed a girl. Until then, I’d had only fumbling, dry-lipped kisses with boys at Youth Group. But Bridget’s lips were soft. It’s a cliché, I know, for a girl to be softer than a boy, but what do you expect? Women have been taught so well to be pliant.
When my mother came downstairs with a laundry basket in her arms, Bridget and I broke apart like a wishbone snapping in half. Too late, it turned out. The basket fell to the floor, all the carefully sorted whites spilling out. Then the screaming began. Words like wicked and immoral, words that had nothing to do with love.
Here’s the thing, though. In CCD they taught us that the very first woman sucked the juice from a forbidden fruit, so is it any wonder that the juice remains on our lips? That even now, we get all kinds of hunger we’re not supposed to have?