The lights are off, signaling that pagans are not welcome here. They come anyway. Every few minutes a mass of bodies marches across the lawn and climbs the stairs, fingers already reaching for the bell. We don’t answer. Usually the pagans leave. But sometimes the bell is pressed again, or the door is banged impatiently. Then our father rises from the couch, a print Bible in hand he can’t read, there only to emphasize his position and to help shield against evil. As soon as he steps onto the porch the visitors surge forward with their bags extended, and our ears fill with their sinful plea.

Our father explains that it’s against our religion to celebrate Halloween. A couple of the older kids always laugh, perhaps believing this is a continuation of the gag that had us bathe our house in darkness. The intention is to give the impression that no one is home, but the effect, for some, is to make the premises foreboding, potentially dangerous, and that draws them to us.

At first they’re not disappointed: a grave-looking, blind man clutching a Bible could prove to be the highlight of the evening. And this is even before he mentions the fiery pits of hell. When he does, the laughter starts up again. Our father counters it with scripture, something from the book of Colossians about idolatry and Satan. He usually gets no further than two verses in before the children interrupt him. “Trick or treat!” they demand, making it clear the gag has gone on long enough and it’s time to stop this crazy talk and deliver the Milk Duds and Snickers.

Each time my father goes outside, I creep close to the door so I can get a better view of their costumes. When he returns, I go back to my post by the picture window next to Bubba. We watch a few kids linger on the porch, still unconvinced that this isn’t a trick before they slouch downstairs toward equally perplexed parents, and then everyone moves toward another house, a straggler casting a final glance our way. We wait for the next group, and the scenario is repeated. In the morning our house will be covered with raw eggs, our garbage bins overturned. But at least the holiday will be over.

I hate Halloween. I hate all the pagan holidays, but Halloween is especially difficult to endure because I know in my heart it’s harmless fun. Does God really intend to sear the skin off my fifth-grade classmates for cutting witches from construction paper and taping them to the walls? Did he actually write Mrs. Montgomery’s name in the Book of Punishment for allowing her students to wear their costumes to school on the day before Halloween? Did he not see how unhappy I was watching my classmates prance around like actors on a stage, a dress rehearsal for the biggest night of the year? Or did he only see my sinfulness, how I longed to be that pirate with a puffy white shirt and plastic sword, or that cowboy in the suede vest and boots with twirling spurs, or that football player in shoulder pads and cleats, or that policeman, or that lumberjack, or maybe even that prostitute who tripped into the room in high heels and a skirt so short that we caught flashes of her underwear before she was sent to the principal’s office to wait for her mother to take her home.

Despite my prayers for the strength to not covet these costumes, I wanted them all, and if God would punish me for that sin, he would punish me for this one too: yesterday after school, I stood in my basement’s bathroom wearing a wig, pumps, and a dress. The dress was purple with small white flowers; the pumps were black with ribbons on the toes. I think the clothes were Mary’s, but they could’ve been Linda’s. I was certain the wig was my mother’s. She had several of various styles and colors, and the one I selected had long, brunette curls that fell beyond my shoulders, the same one my father had donned once before sitting at the dinner table, causing Tommy to laugh so hard that the orange juice he’d just swallowed sprayed from his nose. I wondered what Paul’s response would be when I emerged from behind the door.

This was his idea. He said he and his little sister dressed up in their mother’s clothes and wigs for fun all the time. Since I couldn’t officially celebrate Halloween, he reasoned, this would be the next best thing. I agreed to give it a try. I drew the line at his suggestion that I wear panties, though; then he withdrew the suggestion and said only a faggot would wear panties, which he swore he wasn’t. I swore I wasn’t one either.

“What’s a faggot?” I asked Timmy later.

“That’s a bad word and you shouldn’t use it.”

“What does it mean?”

“It’s what vulgar people call boys who like boys.”

“What’s wrong with boys liking boys?”

“Not just liking them,” he said. “Liking them.”

“Okay, so what’s wrong with boys liking boys?”

He asked me if I knew how babies were made. In my mind flashed a diagram I’d seen in an old biology book of the male and female reproductive systems, each one resembling an aerial view of a highway. I knew that the seed drove from the man’s highway to the woman’s (though exactly how these highways met was not clear), and then the seed and egg merged to form a kind of tadpole before exiting the woman’s highway, now as a fully formed baby, into a doctor’s waiting hands. I explained this to Timmy.

“Close enough,” he said. “The thing is, some males try to have babies with other males, which is impossible because to have a baby you need a seed and an egg. The correct name for these men is homosexual. God says it’s a terrible thing to be a homosexual, one of the worst sins imaginable.” He got his Bible and found a relevant passage. It was in the book of Leviticus, which didn’t surprise me. A lot of terrible sins were in the book of Leviticus. “‘If a man lies with a male as with a woman,’” he read, “‘both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.’” He looked at me and said sadly, “For your sake, I sure hope you’re not a homosexual.”

I told him I wasn’t. And it seemed prudent not to mention wearing our sisters’ clothes and shoes and our mother’s wig, or how when I walked past Paul he’d lain on the floor to peek under my dress and once even reached to lift it, or how, when it was his turn to wear the dress, he lifted it again. And while it was true that he wasn’t wearing panties, it was also true that he wasn’t wearing briefs.

“There,” Paul had said when we were finished. “Isn’t celebrating Halloween fun?”

It was. I’d known it would be. But I imagined I would’ve enjoyed it equally as a pirate or a cowboy.

“And the really cool thing,” Paul continued, “is that you don’t have to wait until Halloween to celebrate it. You can celebrate it anytime you feel like it. Want to do it again tomorrow?”

I did, I told him, but later that night, when the guilt of committing this sin kept me from sleeping, I changed my mind. I rolled onto my stomach and silently prayed for God to forgive me for celebrating Halloween, the worst of the pagan holidays. “But at least,” I added, “I’m not a homosexual.” I promised to repent, but like so many of my prior promises to repent, this one showed immediate signs of breakage. And so now, as my father stands before trick-or-treaters quoting the book of Colossians, I’m less moved by his warnings of idolatry than by the children’s crestfallen faces. And in the morning, while Bubba and I wash our house and clean our lawn, I think about our assailants, imagine God punishing them for throwing eggs and dumping our trashcans, but the overwhelming sadness I feel isn’t for them, it’s for me.