Bad Habits (4 page)

My uncle opened the door. We all breathed a sigh of relief.

“Get your butts downstairs,” he said. “No one is getting possessed, you little shit stains.” Maybe he didn’t say exactly that, but he had a very stern tone of voice and I suspect it was because he had been interrupted from his brandy once again.

With that, we were all forced to get out of our protective corner and go downstairs.

None of us spoke for the remainder of the night. How could we? We were absolutely traumatized. The fear of Satan always looming made
The Exorcist
one of the best-kept secrets of the Catholic Church.

The days that followed haunted JoJo and me. It was as if we were on death row awaiting our painful demise. It would be a very long time before we would go to the basement to wash sheets again. For now, we just laid in pee all night long. We had so many pee-stained sheets that I wouldn’t doubt if Mom went through a tub of bleach every month.

At school, I told some of my friends about our night watching
The Exorcist
. They told me the devil went by a common name in order to blend in with society. Lucifer was too obvious, so he chose the name Ben. If Ben shows up, it means Satan is near.

I ran home and told my mom about this. She laughed and told me how ridiculous that was and said I needed to stop getting so worked up about everything.

Later that week, I wanted to go spend some of my Holy Communion money, so I asked my mom to take me shopping. Even at a young age, shopping really does take a girl’s worries away.

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.

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.