Bad Habits Confessions of a Recovering Catholic Read online

  I chose a beautiful new Cabbage Patch doll. This was my seventh one. My bedroom had started to look like Angelina Jolie’s house. I had dolls from every ethnicity and I loved them all.

  When I got home, all my sisters gathered around to watch me open my newest doll box. The excitement was like Charlie finding a golden ticket in a Wonka Bar. I pulled my fresh baby out of its box and we did what we always did—pull the pants down and make sure it had butt cheeks like the rest of the Cabbage Patch dolls.

  Then I pulled out his birth certificate and saw the name: Ben.

  “Oh my God!” I screamed, and frantically ran to my mom. “Satan is here! Damn it, Mom, Satan is here!” I cried, holding her leg.

  “Jenny, what in God’s name are you talking about?”

  “My baby’s name is Ben! His name is Ben! It’s the devil, Mom. He’s coming for me!”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have let you watch that movie. You need to calm the hell down, Jenny. You are not going to be possessed.”

  How could I believe any adults at this point? My friends at school obviously knew more than they did.

  My next problem was figuring out how to get rid of Ben. I walked back upstairs and looked at Ben lying there on the floor. I picked him up slowly and walked into my backyard. I spun in circles, let go, and watched Ben/Satan fly into the air. I had no idea where he landed, but I was happy he was gone.

  Ding dong.

  “Hi, Linda, this doll just landed in our pool,” our neighbor said to my mom. “I thought it must belong to one of your girls.”

  “Jenny!” my mom shouted.

  Ben/Satan had returned to the house. I grabbed the doll and walked right out the back door. I moved quickly toward the alley, where we kept our garbage cans, while I recited the Our Father prayer. To me, reciting the Lord’s Prayer was like using bug spray in the summertime. It was a repellent that worked and this bug needed to be squashed immediately.

  I opened the heavy lid with my little arms and threw Ben/Satan in the trash, where he belonged. I stomped back into the house with high hopes that it was the last I would see or hear of Ben/Satan.

  About a year later, my mom adopted a bunny for my sisters and me. Its former owners couldn’t care for it anymore. We all decided on the name Zack. When the bunny got there, it was black and fluffy. We all attacked it like it was cotton candy.

  The owners were saying their last good-byes and the woman turned around and said, “You’ll be in good hands now, Ben.”

  “Take it back!” I shouted.

  My mom caught on right away. “Jenny, stop that!” she yelled.

  “No, Mom, it’s you know who!”

  The woman asked, “Who is you know who?”

  My mom tried to cover it up with a giggle. “It’s no one really,” she said.

  “Take it back,” I shouted. “I don’t want a devil bunny in our house!”

  “I’m sorry, what?” said the lady.

  “I’m talking about Satan. You just brought Satan into this house and I want you to take him back with you.”

  “That’s enough, Jennifer,” said my mom. “Go to your room.”

  “No, Mom. The bunny has to go. It’s me or the bunny.”

  My sisters Amy and Lynette shouted, “Keep the bunny, Mom!”

  I stormed upstairs and cried on my bed. Satan was getting closer to me, and my sisters didn’t even care. My family kept the bunny because majority ruled. I would stare at him from far, far away. Everyone knew to keep him away from me because otherwise someone would suffer the wrath of my mighty little fists in their face.

  JoJo, who pretty much did everything I did, stayed away from Ben/Satan/Zack too. She didn’t want to take any chances of my being right, so we stuck together on this one.

  About two years later, the bunny died. Needless to say, I did not attend the backyard funeral. I watched from my window as Dad dug a hole by the garden and placed the shoebox in there.

  “I hope you’re really dead, Ben,” I said.

  By the time high school came along, my fears of being possessed remained intact, but I talked about it less. I wanted to be cool, so I didn’t let on to my obsessive-compulsive disorder about becoming possessed by the devil.

  I was invited to a sleepover, and as usual we played the game Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. I’m grateful the Internet didn’t exist back then, because God knows what we would have been doing on those sleepovers.

  After that G-rated game, my friend Linney pulled out a Ouija board. “You guys want to try to summon a spirit?” she asked.

  “Hell, no. No way. I get freaked out by that stuff,” I said as cool as possible.

  “Don’t be a dork, Jenny. It’s just stupid fun.”

  So I put on a brave face as we all sat around in a circle. We put our hands on the arrow and began moving it.

  Linney did the commentating. “Are there any spirits here?”

  Swish, swish went the arrow. It wasn’t landing anywhere.

  “Are you a child spirit?” said Erin.

  Swish, swish went the arrow.

  It landed on no.

  All the girls gasped.

  “Are you guys moving this thing?” I asked.

  “No, the spirit is moving it,” said Erin.

  “How old are you?” asked Linney.

  Swish, swish.

  The arrow went to no.

  “See, this is stupid. Let’s stop. It’s not even answering the questions correctly,” I pleaded.

  “What is your name?” asked Erin.

  Swish, swish.

  I shit you not that the arrow went to the letter B.

  That’s all I needed to see. I grabbed the board, ran out into the middle of the street, and threw the game as far as I could. I had never told my friends the Ben/Satan story, and I was thoroughly convinced that demons were still chasing me. I called my mom to pick me up and I went home.

  There was also the time in college when a guy named Charles and I went to his place. As we stumbled into his bedroom to make out, his dog jumped on the bed.

  “Ben, get down,” he yelled.

  I was running down the street before Charles turned back around to kiss me.

  To this day, I still get freaked out by the name Ben. It’s the dumbest thing ever, but you will never see me watch a Ben Stiller movie or date anyone named Ben.

  I was often taunted by Michael Jackson’s song … you guessed it … “Ben”—and especially during the holidays.

  Now don’t get any bright ideas at an autograph signing and bring me a Cabbage Patch doll named Ben. JoJo and I would have to do to you what we did to the bunny.

  Just kidding.

  6

  Jenny’s First Fall from Grace

  I was about nine years old when my mom showed me a picture of Satan in a religious book. It was the first time I had a visual of what this infamous demon that everyone seemed to be frightened of looked like.

  He was green with horns and looked quite comfortable standing in a fire pit that seemed to melt the skin of only the evildoers around him. I trembled at the sight of him. I was surprised that he didn’t match the red-horned man I saw on Halloween. When I inquired how Satan came to be, my mom explained that he was a fallen angel.

  I visualized this angel accidentally slipping on a stair in Heaven and falling miles to Hell. Because I wasn’t taught in detail about his fall from grace, I spent the next few years terrified of stairs. I would hold on for dear life thinking that if I fell, I too would become “a Satan.”

  What Catholicism—or any religion for that matter—doesn’t realize is that children’s minds will go to great lengths to try to understand what they are being taught, even when taught poorly. Since most of the Bible is metaphorical, it should be taught as such. There were just too many questions unanswered and it seemed as though there was nobody willing to listen.

  Don’t get me wrong. I loved being a part of the Church. I loved how it gave a real sense of community and belonging. I have fond memories
of attending our church bazaars and bake sales to help raise money for poor families like my own that were struggling to make ends meet.

  Even though we were one of the poorest families at our church, my mother refused to accept handouts. She was simply too proud. We barely scraped by at times, but my mom wouldn’t allow us to admit defeat. This caused a lot of frustration for me growing up, but it also made me admire my parents’ strong work ethic and determination to persevere despite any obstacle thrown our way.

  My sister JoJo and I were very close growing up, mainly because we both shared a fear of Satan and would not leave each other’s side in the off chance that he would try to steal our souls. We had each other’s backs so much so that she never slept a day in her own room. I had a twin bed, and after my parents went to sleep, she would crawl into it. Then we would pull out our Mother Mary statue, St. Joseph statue, Jesus statue, and four rosaries and make them into a wall around our bodies to protect us from any looming demons. Our nightly talk was about what we would do if Satan walked into the room. We had plans. Big ones. I would throw my Jesus statue at Satan and JoJo would drown him in holy water that we stole from the church in hopes of melting him like the witch in The Wizard of Oz.

  This behavior could largely be the reason why JoJo and I were both bed wetters until we were ten years old. Every night, without fail, JoJo and I woke up in pee. Because we both knew we wet the bed, we stopped blaming each other.

  It finally got to the point that my mother said that if either of us peed anymore, she would put us in diapers. The thought of that was traumatizing. We had to come up with yet another master plan; this time to cover our bladder handicap from our mom.

  Come two A.M., one of us would usually wake up soaked and then shake the other one to get up. Then JoJo and I would tiptoe from our bedroom down into the basement to wash and dry the sheets and bring them back up.

  The problem was that the basement is where the devil hangs out. So JoJo and I would strip the sheets off the bed and then put all of our rosaries around our necks until we looked like Mr. T or, for all you youngsters out there, Flavor Flav.

  Once we were heavily weighed down with prayer beads, we would slowly open the basement door. There was always a creepy, musty, cold breeze that would flow toward us when we opened the door. Usually, we would nudge each other and fight over who had to walk down the stairs first. Whoever lost had to hold on to the pee-filled sheets and lead the way in the dark because we could never find the light until we made it into the laundry room.

  One foot would slowly attempt to reach the first stair but wouldn’t quite touch it. It would just linger, as if it were testing the water to see if it was cold. (Except in this case it was testing to see if a demon would grab it.) After a litmus test of thirty seconds passed, my trembling foot would make contact with the first step.

  The haunting Stephen King sound effect that each stair made as we pressed our toes on it did nothing to calm our nerves. Also, JoJo’s nose was chronically clogged as a kid, so it sounded like the Elephant Man was gasping for air beside me as we made our way down to Satan’s basement.

  Once we got to the bottom, JoJo and I would glue our bodies back-to-back as we walked so we could Cagney & Lacey it in case demons popped out of the shadows.

  I know a lot of people have a scent that reminds them of their youth. Mine is urine. To this day, that smell is reminiscent of me and the Elephant Man chasing away demons.

  JoJo and I routinely made our way to the laundry room. Sometimes the washer was full of dirty clothes. JoJo and I tried not to scream as we reluctantly grabbed Mom’s and Dad’s unmentionables and flung them into the dryer. Then we would slump our bodies down and lean against the soothing rhythm of the washer. Sometimes we would pass out sitting up, but we were always awakened by the soft buzz of the washer as it completed its cycle.

  One night JoJo had a bad case of strep throat, but it didn’t stop her from crawling into my bed at night and peeing all over me. So like any good sister, I woke her sick ass up and told her she had to go to the basement with me.

  She was shaking with chills and her face was dripping with beads of sweat. I remember thinking that she looked like she was going to die. Her fever had to be up to 104 or 105.

  I whispered to her in a loving tone, “If you don’t go with me, Satan might come up here and get you when you’re all alone.”

  Her sick eyes cracked open and she uttered a weak “okay,” as she rolled her shivering body off the bed and started to walk with me. Well, I was walking. JoJo was weaving down the hallway like a drunk driver on New Year’s Eve.

  As we made our way to the stairs, her body began trembling more violently. It probably didn’t help that she was wearing pee-soaked PJs. I thought I would warm her up by telling her how hot Hell must be. I talked about people’s skin melting off and fire roaring for all eternity.

  JoJo mumbled an incoherent response. Had I been an adult, I would have realized that this was probably a sign that she was close to death. However, she still managed to walk back-to-back with me until we made it to our usual washer and dryer spot. But then all hell broke loose.

  JoJo mumbled, “Do you see that?” and pointed to a corner with nothing in it.

  I looked back at her face to see if she was messing with me, but she wasn’t.

  She held her hand out like a scary possessed child from The Ring as she continued pointing. She was full-on fucking seeing something in the corner.

  “Is it a spider? A rat?” I was hoping she would say yes.

  But she didn’t. She replied, “That’s him.”

  My heart fell into my uterus. She just said “him.”

  Who the fuck is him?

  “JoJo, what are you talking about? Stop scaring me.”

  Then her face started shaking back and forth as if “he” were coming toward her.

  I started screaming at the top of my lungs, which made JoJo scream at the top of her lungs.

  “We’re gonna die! Help!!!”

  Above us, I heard what sounded like a herd of elephants stampeding into the basement. My mom and dad found JoJo and me on the ground holding on to each other for dear life.

  We continued to scream and point toward the corner.

  My parents turned their heads to see what we were pointing at, but of course they saw nothing and proceeded to yell back at me. “What?! What are you pointing at?!”

  JoJo’s teeth were chattering and her body was shaking, so I spoke.

  “Him! Do you see him in the corner?”

  My mom and dad again looked toward the corner, and my dad yelled back at me even louder, “Jennifer, what in the hell is wrong with you?” Jennifer was the name my parents called me when I was in major trouble (which happens often in this book).

  My mother then yelled, “What are you doing down here? It’s three A.M.! And JoJo, you’re sick as a dog.”

  I looked at JoJo. Her eyes were pretty much rolling into the back of her head and she was shaking from her fever. I could tell she had still not regained the ability to speak, so I took the liberty of throwing her under the bus.

  “JoJo crawled into my bed and then peed in it, and I didn’t want her to get in trouble, so we came down here to wash the sheets, but she started speaking in tongues and I think she was seeing ghosts.” There was no way I could stick up for her because I adamantly rejected the idea of being a nine-year-old in diapers.

  My mom yelled, “Both of you get upstairs … now!”

  I didn’t learn the meaning of the word “karma” until I moved to Los Angeles later in life, but looking back, my karma was about to unfold for blaming this entire incident on my sister.

  Later in the month, I was all alone one night because JoJo decided to do something selfish and sleep at Grandma’s house. I mean pee on Grandma.

  So while she was gone, I was forced to endure the demons myself.

  My eyes popped open at two A.M.; I stripped my bedsheets down and stood face-to-face with the basement door. I mustered
up all the strength and Jesus power within and decided that if I made the sign of the cross over and over and over while walking down the stairs, I would be protected. Kind of like the wax on/wax off move from The Karate Kid, but with the sign of the cross.

  I opened the basement door and started my descent. My hand moved at superhuman speed. Nothing was going to harm me … Suddenly, and all in slow motion, my foot missed one of the stairs. I felt my body floating in the air. All nine years of my life flashed before my eyes.

  I quickly thought of two things:

  1. I was about to become a child of Satan!

  2. Which one of my sisters would get my Cabbage Patch dolls?

  Oh no, I thought. It’s happening. This is it. I asked too many questions. I’m going to Hell.

  It’s amazing how time stands still before impact in situations like this. I managed to yell, but not for help. Oh no, I full-on managed to scream the Our Father prayer in its entirety.

  “Our Father Who art in Heaven hallowed be Thy Name Thy kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil Amen.”

  And then BOOM.

  I felt nothing. No pain. For sure I was in Hell. I knew my soul was forever in Satan’s hands, so I slowly opened my eyes. Standing before me was Satan!

  Kidding. I opened my eyes and nothing was there. I slowly lifted my head and then sat up.

  How I wasn’t hurt was a miracle.

  I sat in awe, wondering if this fall symbolized my own fall from grace. Would I continue to be a devout Catholic or would I now be cursed with temptations from Satan? I knew only time would tell.

  As you read on, you can make your own judgments about how hard I fell from grace.

  7

  Stay Home and Make It a Godbuster Night

  Since we didn’t have much money to ever go out as a family, I really looked forward to Sunday movies at home with everyone. The only real bummer was that we had to borrow a VCR from our neighbor. Those things were expensive pains in the ass back in the day. Not only were they a lot of money, but the damn things were really heavy. Together, JoJo and I would carry one back from the Collinses, three doors down.