Satanic Panic

Eye Level

Content Warning: this piece discusses satanic panic, transphobia, homophobia, and…

✨ A little Magic ✨

Take care and buckle up!

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I leaned forward in my chair, foot tapping. I gripped my backpack, ready. In my hand, a little cash my parents had given me. I daydreamed about what to spend it on. The intercom crackled. Our class was called. We grabbed our things and made our way down to the library.

Through the double doors, the dusty old library had transformed into a playground of books. Bright neon slap bracelets in holographic designs. Erasers shaped like food, ice cream cones and pizza slices, none of them useful for actually erasing. Pencils in tons of neon colors with metallic and animal prints. I wanted everything. But I could get one book, maybe an eraser and a flat bracelet.

I went down one of the book aisles. One caught my eye right away. It was eye level. The cover was beautiful, a gorgeous day with a girl and a boy by a stream. The girl had blonde hair like mine.

I picked it up. That was the one. I carried it with me as I browsed, but I already knew. At the checkout, I fumbled through the pages, excited to read it.

At home, I showed my mom, smiling. She took it and handed it to my dad, raising an eyebrow. He looked at it, flipped it over to read the back. "Let me look at this," he said seriously.

My sister and I returned to watching TV.

When he came back, he said, "Lily, you can't read this."

I asked, "But why?"

He said, "You're too young for it,” he said.

“But They sold it to me at school,” I said

“You'll just have to trust me. You can read it when you're older,” he said taking it.

That's not fair. Why can't I read that?

I knew it wouldn't do any good to keep asking. I waited until they left to ask my sister, Hilda.

"What's wrong with me reading that book?" I asked. "Do you know what's in it?"

"No," she said.

"Why can't I read it?"

"You heard dad. You're just not old enough," she said.

I figured the book probably had something in it about periods, sex, or magic. That's why I couldn't read it.

It wasn't the first time Dad had taken something from me. He took the TV from us for a year.

We were all sitting in the living room when Dad walked in.

"Alright, guys," he said. "I'm not paying for TV anymore. Next month, we'll stop having cable."

We all groaned. My mom joined in too.

"Why?" I asked.

"We need to spend more time talking together," he said. "We don't talk anymore. We need family time."

"But Mom," I groaned.

"I know," she said. "But your dad. You know your dad." She shook her head.

On Saturday morning, my sister Hilda and I had made a fort in the living room with blankets and chairs. We had pancakes and waffles with syrup and powdered sugar. We were watching cartoons, the Smurfs.

Dad walked in. He looked at the TV. He shook his head, got the remote, and changed the channel.

"Hey, we were watching that," Hilda said.

"I don't want you watching that," he said. I knew better than to ask why this time.

After that, anything he didn't approve of went underground.

When Charmed was on TV, I tried to watch it every week. My parents would be in the living room watching their shows. I would sneak into their bedroom, slowly close the door, and keep the volume low. I lay in their bed and wrapped the blankets around me. I kept the remote close so I could change the channel if someone walked in. The TV faced away from the door, so I knew I could get away with it.

Over time, I forgot about the original book that started it all, the one that taught me to hide. By the time I remembered, I was older. I didn't want to read kids' books anymore.

I couldn't understand what they were afraid of when I was a child, and I was too afraid to ask. I thought our church and pastor might help me understand, but I just ended up more confused.

“Don't be one of those Christians,” minister Mel said. “We don't have to be offended by everything. I love watching the Simpsons, for example. Baseball is always something I can connect to nonbelievers about,” he said from the stage. “There's no need to burn Eminem CDs,” he said laughing, mocking those in our congregation who did.

No one could tell me which perspective was true, neither my pastor nor my dad. So, I decided for myself.

A few years later, I was at another Scholastic Book Fair. I went down another book aisle. One in particular caught my eye. A kid with shaggy hair and glasses. The cover seemed to sparkle. It was eye level, just like the Bridge to Terabithia had been.

I picked it up, fumbled through the pages. I bought it.

I didn't show my parents. I stopped telling them what I bought after they confiscated the first one. I binge-read it. Then, another one came out. Then another.

By the time the fourth book came out, there was a midnight release party at the local town bookstore. I couldn't go. We were leaving the next morning to visit family. So I preordered it, and on the way out of town my parents dropped me at the bookstore to pick it up, and I read it in the back seat the whole drive.

I ended up telling my parents about it after I saw a movie trailer for it at a school book fair one year. It was going to be a movie. Harry Potter.

When the movie came out, Mom wanted to see it. We all went together. Dad didn't read the books until we were older, but he didn't get upset either. I figured maybe I was just old enough.

I brought my Harry Potter book to church. I liked to sit alone on the floor in a corner, cross-legged, barefoot, my back against the wall where no one could see me. The walls were dull gray and yellow, the cheapest paint Minister Mel could find. The carpet was cheap too, rough and scratchy under me, the kind that tore easily but never showed the wear. It made my fingers itch. I sat behind a water fountain in a hallway hardly anyone passed through. I could do what I wanted there.

Dan saw me reading. He came over and sat down next to me on the floor. Dan was Minister Mel's son, my age.

"Oh, Harry Potter," he said. "I love Harry Potter! Our whole family does,” Dan said.

He said they watch the movies together. They read the books. His dad, the pastor. His whole family. No one said anything about it. No one questioned it. Magic was forbidden, and then suddenly it wasn't.

J.K. Rowling, the woman who wrote these books, went on to spend her fame warning people about who she thought was dangerous.

I spent my young adulthood learning none of it was true, just like the satanic panic never was. I left the church. One day, I publicly posted on social media for the whole church to see, “come as you are” from this church is a lie. A sugar-coated lie, but a lie nonetheless.

A woman from the congregation saw my post. She messaged me about a trans woman in her family, proof that the church was loving and accepting. That trans woman and I then spoke directly.

"They say they love everyone," I said. "‘You don't have to be perfect. It doesn't matter who you are, you're welcome there,’ so they say.”

Her reply, “they've only ever been loving and accepting towards me. They've helped me through a lot of hard times."

I was on my couch with my cats, on my phone, tense from typing. My head hurt.

Someone else was watching the thread. The mother of my brother's best friend, an openly gay man, who had grown up the same town I did. “I've been to this church,” she said. “They say they welcome everyone as they are, but they're not accepting of LGBTQ people."

The next time I looked, the trans woman's page was gone. Page not found.

They offered what people need most. She couldn't afford to turn it down, I guess.

From that same stage, Minister Mel talked about how Christians can be so mean and cruel. “That's not what Jesus called us to do,” he’d said. “He called us to love one another!” Spit would fly from his mouth passionately as he spoke.

"If I'm in the bathroom," he said, "and there's a trans person next to me, I'm not mean to them. I love them the way Jesus loves me,” he said.

I almost believed him, except now I'm old enough to know the rules.

If you were LGBTQ, you couldn't be an elder or lead anything. You couldn't serve on mission trips.

You could come, but you couldn't belong.