Dominoes and Biscuits

(Trigger warning: content reflects religious cynicism)

Dominoes and Biscuits

I remember one of the worst days of my life. It involved a now defunct car model, the Studebaker, and Ritz crackers. 

When I was eight, my cousin, Patty Jo, married a jerk named Gary. Due to their financial situation (nonexistent), my parents agreed to throw them a reception even though we had just moved from Indiana (arriving in our new, spiffy Studebaker). We still didn’t have curtains on all the windows and there my mom was spending money on cream cheese and celery sticks, Ritz crackers and Velveeta, and other non-imaginative morsels that screamed, “No money! No class!

 Anyway, Patty Jo and Gary said their vows and stayed behind for the photographs. The rest of us went to my new home to wait for them, busying ourselves scotch taping white crepe streamers everywhere. After the photos were taken, Gary told Patty Jo to go to the car and he would pay the minister. Turns out, she waited forever. Gary’s cold feet kicked in. He walked out the back of the church and disappeared. Patty Jo finally arrived the reception, sans groom.

We all tried to be cheerful but watching her sit in a corner munching on Ritz crackers put a crimp on the festivities. Let it be noted that I harbored resentful memories of Ritz crackers, so when two men came to the door an hours into the reception and repossessed my dad’s 1958 Studebaker, I was doubly crushed. All our friends and relatives observed this rather terse exchange with the repo men. A fun day all around.

Anyhoo, all that happened in 1959. Three years before, when I was five, my father had signed us all up to be Catholics. My mother and brothers met this sea change with great resistance, but I was immediately gob-smacked by all the pageantry and hoopla. This was Franklin, Indiana. And there I was watching grown men wearing dresses and speaking Latin. Yowser. Plus, the incense was heady. Screw the Mickey Mouse Club, my destiny was to be the bride of Christ. I attended Catholic school, daily mass, Sunday mass, and mass on holy days of obligation. I ate fish on Fridays, the Catholic form of penance in honor of the death of Jesus Christ, our lord and savior, who died on the cross for our sins. I was all for it. It wasn’t his fault I was born a sinner and he had to take the fall. I was pious but appalled by some of my new-found deities’ antics. I secretly prayed for all the babies in Limbo to be sprung free. I figured they shouldn’t be denied a place in heaven just because their parents didn’t get them baptized on time. And so, it went. I was a believer, but I didn’t think consigning newborn babies to never never land was fair. I talked to Jesus about this twisted logic all the time. I bypassed the head man in charge because it seemed to me his son was more inclined to listen to reason. I mean, Jesus wasn’t the one who practically drowned every living thing on Earth. He didn’t go around turning people into salt shakers.

Other than chastising Jesus for his collusion in the questionable treatment of newly dead babies, I was thrilled with this new, mysterious religion and pageantry. My brothers got into it, too. The three of us played Mass often. Kip was the priest, Howard was the altar boy. I was the congregation, replete with a white doily on my head, de rigueur for females until it wasn’t. When it came time in the Mass for communion, Kip served us Ritz crackers. He never got the knack of Latin and reduced Dominus vobiscum (the lord be with you) to dominoes and biscuits. Howard and I remained solemn and dutifully said, “Amen” before opening our mouths like eager baby birds to receive the Ritzy body and blood of our savior. 

My brothers worshipped the priests, but my first two years of indoctrination had me swooning over the nuns. They were all married to Jesus, a status I aspired to. Sister Margaret taught me in Kindergarten and first grade. She was a beautiful angel, and I pretended she was my mommy, even though I knew it was against the rules. You could marry Jesus, but parenthood was out of the question. Sister helped me button my little wool coat. Helped me tie my saddle shoes. All that changed in second grade when I had Sister Teresa, a terrifying nun with a hawk nose and a tight smile that began and ended on her thin lips. I didn’t think she should have been allowed to marry Jesus.

During the fall, I watched my classmates scamper to her desk with all manner of baked goods made by their mommies. It was the only thing that semi-transformed her into something reasonable. She gushed, which is to say her smile expanded just enough to show her teeth. She fussed over the children who gave her anything. I was invisible to her, and I sorely missed my nun mommy.

I longed to be like my classmates and offer homemade goodies. Wanted her to notice me. Wanted to be like the others. Wanted a mother who could forsake a beer and a cigarette for a batch of cookies. No dice. Until one weekend when I devised a plan so clever, I bounced around the house anticipating my turn in the spotlight.

   Monday came. I wore my best jumper, the one with no threads dangling from the hem. I hurried in the classroom before the bell and skidded up to Sister’s desk bursting with excitement and proffered my cookies in a used, but clean, piece of aluminum foil.

   “My mommy made these for you.” My smile was shy, but I tingled from head to toe with excitement. Let the fussing begin. I was about to belong.

   She smiled. I saw some of her teeth. They were pointy. “Thank you, Paulette,” she said and started opening the foil.

   Scarcely breathing, shifting from foot to foot, each hand squeezing fistfuls of my dress, I didn't look at her. I kept my eyes fixed on the packet. It took me a few seconds to realize that although she’d unwrapped the foil, and everyone could see the cookies, she hadn’t spoken.

   I looked up at her pinched lips. No teeth in sight and felt dread in the pit of my stomach. “See me at recess,” she said and shoved the cookie packet in the center drawer.

   Stumbling to my desk, blinking back tears, my face hot, I heard the snickers and giggles until she thwacked her ruler on her desk. “Silence!”

   I sidled up to the front of the room when the recess bell rang.

   She said, “Your mother didn’t make these cookies, did she?”

   “Oh, yes, Sister, she made them just for you.”

   “Paulette, these are Oreo cookies.”

   I looked at her blankly. I was seven, lacking in all ulterior motives. I thought it was a win-win. She gets cookies. I get praise. My mommy was normal. I said, “I don’t know what she calls them, but they are for you.”

   “Paulette, these are store-bought cookies. Your mother did not make them. Telling lies is wrong. Go home and print 100 times, I will not tell a lie." She handed me the foil. “You’re dismissed.”

   I avoided everyone all day. Threw up my lunch. Catholic guilt nibbled at me. I had lied. Sister hated me. I was surely going to H-E double hockey sticks. I endured the rest of the school year. Not even Sally with the polio leg would talk to me. I comforted myself with naming my Tiny Tears doll Teresa. I beat the crap out of her every time she cried, which was often because I constantly fed her bottles of water. 

I suppose this would have gone on forever, but in 1959, having had it with civilian life, my father slipped off to Indianapolis one weekend, got drunk, and rejoined the Navy. The five of us crammed into the Studebaker and moved to the coast. 

 After two weeks, I asked my father when we were going to church. He told me we weren’t Catholics anymore. He explained he only joined for business reasons in order to get insurance clients. It was a bunch of hooey he said.

Too late. I was eight years old, a sweet saint in the making and already determined to become a nun like Sisters Margaret and Beatrice.  Latin was my second language. The thought of marrying Jesus Christ consumed me. The thought of missing Sunday mass terrified me. I couldn’t deal with that level of mortal sin, and I was sure it would hurt my chances when I applied to convents. I had no idea what the sin or punishment for pretending to be a Catholic for business reasons was, but I figured it had to be at least a decade in purgatory, even if it wasn’t my decision.

I was so distraught, my father drove me to church every Sunday. He picked me up at the end of the service; sometimes late and smelling like beer. This went on for six months. One Sunday, he was two hours late, and I’d had enough. I told him I was done. “Atta girl,” he said. “Dominus vobiscum,” I muttered. It was just as well because the car was repossessed a few months later at Patty Jo’s wake wedding.

That night, I put my rosary and pint-sized white child bible in a cigar box and stuffed it in a drawer. Gave up my nun dreams, but on scary nights, I slipped the rosary out of the cigar box and kept it under my pillow. I kept it clenched in my fist, but I didn’t work the beads.

 At age ten, I succumbed to persistent guilt and signed myself up for Catechism classes. I loved it until the nun started explaining Vatican II. Having been a lapsed, pretend Catholic for two years, I was out of practice. I questioned these new rules, which threw out the old rules with a casual, and in my view, blasphemous, disregard. The nun told me to sit down and shut up. There would be no questioning of papal authority.

Too late. Brainwashing doesn’t last unless it’s relentless. The profane had overtaken the sacred. I decided I would marry a mortal and eat meat every Friday. Learn French instead. No more dominoes and biscuits. The Lord be with you. The bride of Christ has left the building.

That was fifty-eight years ago. I never looked back, happy to keep my own counsel. I still can’t eat Ritz crackers. My rosary is still in the cigar box, though. Just in case.