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?

After Bridget left, my parents removed my doorknob, leaving a fist-sized hole that could always be seen through. The invitation list for my Confirmation party doubled in size. They wanted as many witnesses as they could get.

And yet, when it mattered most, none of them saw a thing.