The movie begins in a high school locker room, camera panning over girls in various states of undress. They towel their hair and fiddle with lockers, skin slick down their backs, breasts bouncing. I almost turn it off. This isn’t what I expected when my husband went out and I decided to stay home to watch Carrie, the 1976 movie about a girl who gets her period in the shower and blood dumped on her at prom. When I was in high school, girls dressed with their backs to the wall and changed bras under tee shirts, but on-screen the girls are comfortable, even the one who has no friends, Carrie, alone under the shower’s stream. She takes her time washing her shoulders, her stomach, and between her legs. A gush of red slides down her thigh. Carrie holds a slick hand to her face and blinks. Suddenly everyone else in the locker room is clothed, and there is only Carrie, naked and bleeding. Carrie lunges at the girls, begging for help. They laugh, pelting her with pads and tampons as she stretches out her bloody hands.
The first time I learned to be ashamed of my body was on an evening in fifth grade when my mother said we should have a talk and my father left the room with his mouth in a flat line. On a piece of notebook paper, she drew a triangle with an opening at the bottom and circles connected by lines on either side.
“It isn’t like regular blood,” my mother reassured me. “This blood is already dead.”
I felt slightly sick. Something in my body was going to die every month. Blood would leak from a place I didn’t know was there. There was nothing I had done to cause it and nothing I could do to stop it. I nodded my grave understanding of the situation then padded back to the TV room to join my siblings, bumping into my father in the hall.
“Girl stuff,” he said sheepishly, and I felt my face flush.
When I bled for the first time, I kept it a secret. I snuck a pad from under the sink where my mother kept them and hid the blue wrapper under cotton balls in the trash. My insides felt scraped. At school, I crossed and uncrossed my legs, wishing I’d worn my navy uniform pants instead of the plaid skirt, afraid everyone could smell iron.
The next day, my mother asked about a pad I’d carefully rolled up and placed in the trash. It seemed to have unfurled on its own, exposing a dull spot of redness. My temples seized with embarrassment. She showed me how to wrap the pad in toilet paper so no one else would see.
Carrie’s house is dimly lit with pointed archways and faded images of Jesus, like the dusty back room of a church no one goes in. Carrie buttons her cardigan to her chin and tip-toes down the stairs to her mother, who has just come home. Later I’ll learn Stephan King’s inspiration for this story came from a former classmate who wore the same clothes to school everyday, and another whose house had a crucifix so large he thought it could kill a person if it fell.
Blood would leak from a place I didn’t know was there.
In our Southeast Minneapolis high-rise, Jesus watches over my shoulder from the olive wood cross he hangs on, perpetually dying. He was a present from my Catholic mother before my wedding five months ago, stuck to the wall above the light-switch with an adhesive strip. Now I resent the way he poses, straining for air, stomach sunken, reminding me of the daily pain I cause him.
Upset by the news of Carrie’s period, her mother slaps her. “You’re a woman now,” she tells the cowering girl. Carrie insists she’s done nothing wrong and asks her mother why she never told her about the blood that made the girls taunt her, that made her believe she was dying. “Don’t you know I can see inside of you?” her mother says, leafing through a book of prayers. “I can see the sin as surely as God can.”
When I was fourteen, a woman from church left voicemails on our home phone, saying she wanted to talk to me about the clothes I wore to Sunday mass. I remember the outfit: black dress pants, a gray cardigan, and a semi-sheer blouse with a tank top underneath. After three messages, my mother insisted I call her back and waited next to me in the kitchen as I dialed.
I’d never spoken to this woman before, but she wasn’t the first to confront me about modesty. My mother pinched the fabric around my thighs in dressing rooms, sewed the necklines of my dresses higher, and insisted I buy jeans two sizes too big. My body was dangerous, a temptation. Once, after an argument over a two-piece bathing suit, she sat me at the family computer to watch videos about how the male brain perceived the female body with lines that connected and shapes that filled themselves in.
On the phone, the woman told me the top was too revealing.
“Men are so visual,” she said in a sympathetic tone. “More than you or I will ever understand.”
I pressed my forehead into the tile kitchen wall as she tried to convince me to remove the blouse from my wardrobe altogether. I pretended to think about it, though the shirt was one of my favorites, bought from Forever 21 with babysitting money.
“Some people are more traditional,” my mother said after I hung up. She didn’t see anything wrong with that particular blouse, though she had an issue with another shirt I often wore, one that had a slight downward slope. She joked we should wear turtlenecks to mass the following Sunday as an act of passive aggression.
The back of my throat stung with frustration at both the caller and my mother. The following Sunday, and every Sunday after, I glimpsed the woman standing like a pillar a few pews behind me. The sight of her drained blood from my face as if I was freshly accused.
At school, a well-meaning gym teacher finds Carrie moping on the concrete steps and whisks her to a mirror. Gently, she brushes Carrie’s hair out of her face and lifts her chin, forcing Carrie to look at herself. “Look at those eyes,” the teacher says. “Those are pretty eyes.” She suggests adding mascara and lipstick. Maybe a curl to her hair.
I want Carrie to listen. I don’t like looking at her, shoulders slumped in a plain dress, hiding behind her hair. Pretty means palatable, pleasing to others. Even as my mother forced me to dress modestly, she still wanted me to look pleasing. I wore a new skirt with dangling earrings. My hair was combed. To combat my friendlessness in high school, I roamed the mall and ransacked makeup counters, wanting to believe there was some combination of goops and powders that would make me deserving. Pretty is an illusion. It must be constantly maintained so no one questions what’s underneath.
The corner of Carrie’s mouth pulls upward as the gym teacher prods. “You’re a pretty girl, Carrie,” she says with a soothing smile, but there is worry under her eyes.
In high school, my mother opted me out of sex ed and drove me to an abstinence retreat at a Catholic school in the suburbs, where I scanned the cafeteria of girls I didn’t know and my mother raved about the free bagels.
The retreat preached messages I’d heard before. My virginity was a sacrificial gift to my future husband. Premarital sex led to disease, unplanned pregnancy, and moral ruin. One woman pretended to cry while telling us about her “friend” who was careless with her body only to discover she was no longer attractive to the kind of good, church-going men she wanted to marry.
“You are all so beautiful,” another speaker said to a room of sullen teens. “You have beautiful legs and arms and stomachs and breasts, and you have to protect that beauty for your future husband.”
Even as my mother forced me to dress modestly, she still wanted me to look pleasing.
Most of the talks seemed unnecessarily dramatic. I kept to myself, waiting for it to be over, but during lunch, a group of girls ushered me into their circle. They were giggling over a retreat pamphlet, pointing to a line on the glossy paper, where the word “sex” was blotted out with a black bar.
“We can’t even read the word now?” I said, relieved to have someone to talk to.
“Apparently not,” the girl said, flashing a wry smile before turning serious. “I don’t even know why I’m here. I already told my parents I’m not going to have sex, but they’re like ‘we just want to make sure.’”
It surprised me how openly she said this, how the other girls agreed. In my public school, I tried not to draw attention to my virginity, though I felt the same as these girls. I enjoyed flirting with boys and was dating a guy on the wrestling team who made my stomach flutter when he kissed me, but there was no part of me that considered having sex. I barely understood the mechanics of what that would entail. Sex was blocked from my mind like that black bar.
Thunder rattles the walls when Carrie tells her mother she’s going to prom. Sitting across a candle-lit dinner table, a portrait of the Last Supper illuminated by flickers, Carrie explains that a boy, Tommy, asked her to the dance. She pleads for her mother to understand, “I want to be a whole person before it’s too late.”
I love her decisiveness, how she tells her mother rather than asking permission. The year after the abstinence retreat, I made out with boys in movie theaters, parked cars, and pressed against cold basement floors. I finagled my way around my parents and any rule that tried to stop me. One day, our jeans rubbing together, I discovered a pleasure that deepened and burst. I wasn’t having sex, but there was a sexual part of me that was thrilling, though wrong. Afterwards, alone in my room, I was wracked by guilt, resolving to go to confession and never do it again.
On the night of prom, Carrie fixes her makeup while her mother tears at her dress, shrieking, “We’ll burn it and pray for forgiveness together.” Carrie dismisses her with an edge of impatience. She’s been developing her own power, learning to shatter mirrors, explode light bulbs, and slam doors with her mind. When her mother blocks her path, Carrie flings her out of the way.
In college, I moved out of my parents’ house and spent my newfound freedom dancing with my roommates in our shared kitchen and drinking wine coolers until my tongue tingled. I was proud to have my life together, paying my own bills, attending weekly bible study. I was in a long-term relationship with a Catholic boy I intended to marry. No one told me what to do anymore.
But back with my family in the summer for our annual lake-cabin trip, I wore shorts over my swimsuit. My brothers pushed each other off the dock shirtless while I waded in green water, arms glued to my ribs. I told myself to strip off my shorts and get in the water, but as everyone splashed and yelled, I remained frozen in place.
One July morning, my mother confronted me in the kitchen of our rental cabin, saying my father saw me come out of the bathroom in a towel the day before. At first, I didn’t know what she was talking about, but then I remembered stepping from the bathroom to the bedroom I shared with my sister, wrapped in a thin towel after showering lake water off with hard water.
I wasn’t having sex, but there was a sexual part of me that was thrilling, though wrong.
“I didn’t know anyone saw,” I said, keeping my face blank while my stomach coiled. When I was younger, I pushed limits, testing how high I could lift my shirt to tan my back before my father went berserk. One inch? Two? But this time, I hadn’t meant to offend. I had only been trying to escape the humidity of the sunken-floor bathroom with rung bathing suits above the toilet.
“What if your cousins saw?” my mother asked, voice pinching with accusation. She brought up my uncle, a priest. “He comes in here to get beer or cards for euchre. What if it was him who saw?”
“I didn’t think anyone would see,” I hissed to get her to stop. A familiar blood-draining panic swept me back to my teenage body. I had found myself under my parents’ roof again.
The most excruciating part of Carrie is the brief moment she’s happy. The camera circles as she dances with Tommy, as they kiss, as she rests her head against his shoulder. She doesn’t know there’s a bucket of pig’s blood teetering in the rafters. She asks Tommy why he brought her to the dance. Pulling her face back to meet his eyes, she peppers him with questions, as if she can sense something wrong.
Weeks before my wedding I had a premonition and called my fiancé in a panic. “After we’re married, I won’t be a virgin anymore,” I said. “And everyone will know.” I burst into tears I couldn’t explain. Wasn’t it always the plan to lose my virginity after marriage? But the tears kept coming as I considered losing this arbitrary thing I’d clung to. My virginity was the only indisputable piece of goodness I had.
The blood falls in one huge splash, drenching Carrie in her prom queen sash and crown. Her mouth gapes, shoulders up to her ears. The whites of her eyes pierce starkly against the stickiness of her skin. For a moment, nobody moves. Then the laughter comes like a roar.
On my wedding day, I struggled to breathe under a cloud of organza and soft pink peonies. My uncle presided over the mass, and during the homily, he said the purpose of marriage was to have children. “Hopefully many children,” he added, and everyone laughed except the bride and groom.
At the end of the night, the white dress ballooned to the floor, and we arranged ourselves on the bed for the first time. But everything tensed up. The slightest penetration caused waves of pain. I rolled away heaving, apologizing, telling myself aloud “relax” and “breathe.” But I couldn’t relax or breathe, and the same thing happened night after night, me unable to stand an inch before I cried in pain, my husband giving me space and straightening the pillows, my skin jumpy like live wires.
A quick Google search revealed a condition that caused involuntary muscle spasms, a physical response to psychological stress. It could result from lack of sex education, negative attitudes about sex, and/or fear of pregnancy. I didn’t understand. I had done everything right—the Catholic wedding, waiting until marriage, confessing my sins. Back when we were dating, I drank up my husband’s touch, wishing I could stitch myself into his skin, but now no matter how gentle he was, the warmth of his body felt like a threat. I was broken. I’d been tricked. I cradled my head in my hands and cried until I threw up, bursting blood vessels in my eyes.
Doors close and lock of their own volition, and fire hoses unravel, spraying the crowd. Carrie stands rigid, arms tensed as everyone screams and runs. The principal gets electrocuted and the gym teacher crushed by a wood beam. Then the whole building goes up in flame.
Where’s my revenge? I wonder from the safety of my Ikea couch. During mass, I fantasize about storming onto the altar, pushing over candles and golden dishes. Acknowledge me! I’d scream. Instead, I swallow my anger, storing it deep in the pit of myself until it has gathered into a separate being. Anger claws at me from the inside out, leaving bitten nails, swollen eyes, and ground teeth. I glare around rooms and start heated confrontations that make family gatherings uncomfortable. No one knows the source of this churning undercurrent except me.
The slightest penetration caused waves of pain. I rolled away heaving, apologizing.
But when I look around, I can’t think of a specific place to pin blame. Shame among girls is mundane, daily, and not confined to religious spaces. At my public high school, an administrator threatened to photograph girls who wore rompers to class, “front and back,” before making them change. I draft bitter emails full of childhood resentments that don’t feel productive to send. There are countless girls like me, brought to abstinence retreats by parents enmeshed in a system, hoping to impart the only world they knew.
There are no buildings I want to burn, no lives I want to obliterate. Carrie drags her sticky limbs through her front door and sends kitchen knives flying at her mother, but I close my laptop, messages unsent. My anger is too broad, my complaints too trite, a collection of small, unspecial moments. I am Carrie in a blood-soaked dress, but the gymnasium is empty.
Things I’ve tried: yoga, alcohol, and hot baths. My husband massages my back while I visualize sinking into the bed. We listen to guided meditations and imagine inhaling the color blue and exhaling the color red. I lube up a plastic dilator I purchased off the internet and insert the hard wand on the couch with a towel under me. I spread my legs in front of a floor mirror and search for pressure points with my finger until I’m nauseous. None of these has had any noticeable effect.
The pain is compounded by my shame. Sex was supposed to be a gift to my husband, a reward for marrying me, and though I realize that thinking is harmful, I still feel unworthy because I can’t fulfill my role. The Catholic Church considers any form of sex other than vaginal penetration to be a serious sin, which means my husband and I are sinning and it’s my fault. I think if I were a better person, I would grit my teeth and bear the pain. I feel broken in a way no one else is, and I refuse to talk to anyone about it. I want to keep this shame wrapped within me, where no one else can see.
My husband insists he’s in no hurry. He’ll wait as long as it takes. “What if it’s never?” I ask, and I see the gears turning as he considers. “I would have to figure out if I can be okay with that,” he answers seriously. Later, he gently suggests that sex could be easier if I associate it with pleasure. Since childhood, I understood sex as a duty to my husband and the creation of children, an act that would happen to me rather than one I’d participate in. The idea of seeking out and defining my own pleasure is uncomfortable enough to make my vision blur.
If I were a better person, I would grit my teeth and bear the pain.
Nancy Allen, the actor who played Carrie’s bully, said in an interview that she performed her locker room taunts long enough to internalize her character’s emotions. “[I] did start to feel like I hated her and all of those feelings that you’re supposed to be feeling as a character,” Allen said. “But I remember shaking. It was very disturbing, very very disturbing.”
I learned to be afraid of sex long enough that my body won’t accept it’s safe. It’s like I’m trapped in a house of mirrors, crashing into my own reflection. Now, I’m running out of calming methods and can’t find a way out of the house.
At the end of the movie, Carrie haunts her only surviving classmate. In a dream, the girl walks slowly to Carrie’s grave, wearing a long white dress. She sinks to her knees and delivers a bundle of red and white flowers. Suddenly, a bloody hand rises from the earth and grabs her.
Our nervous rescue cat crosses from one hiding spot to another, and I wonder if I’ll spend the rest of my life haunting the world with my anger. Someday, I might find resolution, but first I have to remove Jesus’ corpse from the wall. I have to stop setting deadlines to get better—six months, one year, more years than I’ll admit. I have to excavate everything I thought I knew, stripping my mind down to the foundation.
But none of that can happen yet. Instead, I turn off the TV, and in the morning, my husband and I squeeze into the back church pew, holy water dripped on our foreheads. The kneeler creaks under my weight, but I am not there. This bodily revolt is the first thread-pull of an unraveling faith. Even as I sing the entrance hymn, I already know I’m leaving.
