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