an incredible mixed message, I was allowed by my mother to have wigs, props, and clown costumes of all kinds. She didn’t love the idea but she didn’t want to stifle me either. On Halloween, however, costumes from the wig box were not to be worn. Halloween was the Devil’s holiday, and to celebrate it customarily was to do the Devil a favor, give him an inlet to pour wickedness into the souls of innocent children.
Halloween day the previous year I begged my mother to make me a costume like all of the other kids at school were wearing. I knew from past experience that all of the other kids would be dressed in elaborate costumes. Jessica would be a witch, Billy would be a vampire, and Tonya would probably be a kitty cat. Going to school out of costume, being forced to explain why I wasn’t allowed to celebrate the holiday like everyone else, would be suicide.
I wept until my mother gave in and made me a last minute costume. She took a paper grocery bag and cut out two holes for eyes. She drew on a smile, put the bag on my head, and sent me off to school. The bag said You have a FRIEND at Almacs across the back in red letters. The eyeholes were too low so I had to keep pushing the bag up from the bottom. The kid with the killer Magilla Gorilla costume kept laughing and asking me what I was supposed to be but I had no idea, no answer. I kept that bag on my head all day.
When I got home from school I went about my usual routine of putting on clown make-up, getting a plate of Chips Ahoy and a big glass of milk, and settling in to watch General Hospital. God, why can’t I live in Port Charles? Even Luke and Laura had costumes on. Shit, even Edward Quartermaine was donning a set of fake-schnozz glasses. What about me? I grew intensely bitter as Bobbie Spencer walked into the hospital with bunny ears and a rubber nose on.
Dinner at my house was at four-thirty like clockwork. I washed off the clown lotion and Maybelline eyeliner, and assembled at the dinner table with my family. After we held hands and said grace, I spoke my mind. I told them how embarrassing it was, wanting them to realize how hurtful it was. Wanting them to make it up to me somehow, me explaining how I went to school as The Bag-Headed Boy, but they didn’t care. They laughed.
They all nearly choked on their shepherd’s pie, laughing. Laughing at me harder than Magilla Gorilla. Laughing as I ran from the table into my room, crying and punching my pillow. Laughing as I screamed, “I hate you!” at the top of my lungs. But it wasn’t them I hated. It was Wilton who I hated. Wilton was making me hate my family. Wilton was making me hate God.
In lieu of allowing us to go trick-or-treating like the Normals, Wilton approved a Community celebration called the Light of the World Party. Held in the church basement, the party ran simultaneously with a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, draining all the anonymity from their group. By Monday, everybody at school would know that Mr. Demrest, the gym teacher, was a teetotaler.
For the party all Community members were required to wear costumes of a biblical nature, and Wilton called Jesus first. The Risen Christ version, with long flowing white robes and sandals. He jumped in with the alcoholics when they joined hands in their circle, leading them in the Lord’s Prayer. Standing in costume with the drunks, Wilton was radiant, holding the hands of his partners way too tight and speaking in tongues. So happy to have them surrounding him, he played out the Gospel story of Christ and the lepers, trying to fix broken hearts and shaking limbs with what sounded like Pig Latin.
If they didn’t want a drink before Wilton crashed their circle, they sure as hell would need one now. Even AA considered The Community to be a cult, so we must’ve been pretty official. The AA’s quickly finished up their serenity prayer and got their wagon out of the church before our party hit full stride.
Apple-bobbing, Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and other church-friendly games were played for prizes. First place was a Bible, second place a plastic rosary and on down from there to fourteenth place. It was the Everybody is a Winner model of competition even for me, always ending up with a box of raisins. There were dangerous three-legged races involving dispassionate cult kids strapped together with leather belts, hopping through lanes of metal tables and fold-up church chairs painted brown. As the races went on, blood and prayer were as inevitable as the clotting of raisins when they set, sweating, in their box for too long.
Out the window I could see my neighbors, the Pagans, going door to door with impressive caches of razor-filled candies. Jennifer was dressed as a bumblebee and her brother Marty was a giant can of Raid. So clever.
I could imagine Marty bustling around before trick-or-treat, up and down the carpeted stairs, the final touches on his bug-spray costume being applied with splendid precision, while next door my mother dressed me as Nameless Shepherd. I looked like an eight-year-old oil magnate, wearing a blue and white checked turban that my father brought from the Holy Land, and draped in a yellow sheet, with sandals.
All I wanted was trick-or-treat, to take my chances on razor blades instead of listening to Wilton pontificate over the hum of The Community Music Ministry, singing away and strumming hard with thick picks. Some of them clicked tambourines, Lu dragged a stick down a corrugated, hand-held wooden Jesus fish, making a krrrrr-it sound in time with the honking band.
Running away to the Pagans was just a matter of disappearing after dinner, I thought. I spent a lot of time there, doing sleepovers whenever I could. My parents were so absorbed in The Community they couldn’t attend the goings-on in their own nuclear family. I was free to do as I pleased, as long as I didn’t bother them during Community meetings or work, which was most of the time, so I could do Ruth Buzzi unsupervised in the wall mirror for hours.
My father permitted us to live our lives as normally as possible when inside his walls. In exchange for robbing us of our childhoods he turned double agent. Holding the façade of a strict disciplinarian when in the presence of the misogynist Men of The Community, at home he stuck to the ideals of a working stiff, trying his best to give his family what they needed without interference from Wilton Bilder.
In the presence of Community members, mentioning the allowance of toys and props I had accumulated in my father’s house was forbidden. No mention of the make-up and wigs cluttering my toy box, and sundresses and heels just one room over in my sister’s closet, where I played Normal City Girl, a serialized performance piece inspired by Marlo Thomas in the teevee show That Girl.
Further mastering the mixed message, my parents forced us to give up our favorite rock group, KISS, for Lent. All the Christian organizations were focusing on the evils of KISS, claiming the name was an anagram for “Kids In Satan’s Service” and warning parents about the backward masking on the records. From a book titled “Backward Masking: Unmasked,” my mother learned that all rock groups, even The Captain and Tennille, were Satanists. So we gave up Satan for Lent.
We did it, too, we gave up KISS. Driving in the car my oldest sister would change the station when “Rocket Ride” came on the radio. We would plead from the back seat to cheat and listen to the new KISS song, just the one song? But my sister was a rock. Now that she had her license it was her responsibility to protect my father’s car from accidents, spilled drinks and, during the Lenten season, Satan.
She wouldn’t have listened even if she was alone. She was a Peter Criss fan, on the mellow, low end of the KISS fanaticism scale; I was rabid for KISS, especially Ace Frehley, with his toxic silver make-up and shoes I would’ve killed a nun for. My other sister claimed Gene Simmons as her favorite. Poseur. Though I loved Ace and his total look, I was in love with the hirsute Paul Stanley, something I was crystal clear with. All through Lent I was a kid without KISS, forcing me to find other costumes. No pointy make-up, no heels, nothing. No KISS. It was an eternity.
When the Satan-free Lenten season ended on Easter Sunday, each of our baskets held not only candy but a copy of the record albums Hotter Than Hell, Rock and Roll Over, and the much awaited KISS: ALIVE II. My parents were good people. Brainwashed, but good. They wanted us to have fun and we did. There was always love, not the constant tension floating in the air down the street at The Bilder compound.
My father saw the unhappiness the cult caused and even though the cult didn’t pay his mortgage, he tried to make light of it, always entertaining the kids. He went along with my mother’s religious whims often, attending giant