“Among the many things the Spanish conquistador Ferdinand Magellan brought to Guam and the Philippines in 1521 was Catholicism,” I remembered my teacher, Mr. Chargulauf, had said on Discovery Day, March 6, last month, during a Guamanian culture lesson at school. My class had a Guamanian culture lesson once a week, and we would learn about the indigenous people of Guam, the Chamorro, who were Polynesian, just like Kim’s Hawaiian ancestors. On Discovery Day, the day Magellan landed on Guam, Mr. Chargulauf taught us about the impact the Spanish had on the Chamorro, especially the religious impact. “Because of Magellan, Catholicism became and still is a large part of Guamanian life. Even today, 98% -- that means, nearly all -- of those living on Guam are Catholic.”
Sarah had raised her hand and said, “But, Mr. Chargulauf, I’m not Catholic.”
Most of the class, including me, had turned to look at her as if she were some foreigner. Not Catholic? But everybody I knew, like Kim and all my family, were Catholic! In fact, up to that point, I had assumed Sarah was too!
“Yes, Sarah. Not all people living in Guam are Catholic; there’s that two percent.”
“That sounds pretty small. Is that bad?”
Mr. Chargulauf had laughed. “No, that just mean you seek God differently, that’s all. And even in Catholicism there are different strains; the Catholicism Magellan brought was Spanish Catholicism, which is centered upon Mary, the Virgin Mother of God. That is why the patron saint of the Philippine Islands and the Mariana Islands, which include Guam, is Mary.”
“Mary,” Sarah had said, as if trying out a new word. “Is she very important?”
And I, sitting in the front row of the class, remembered Mr. Chargulauf had stared at Sarah as if she came from another planet. “To the people of Guam and the Philippines she is.”
This explained why every Filipino home that I’d been in had a household shrine to Mary. This explained why, on my Communion Day -- today, Easter Sunday -- I had to wear a white dress, all white and frilly like a bride’s, and even a veil, because Mary, besides being the Mother of God, was also the Bride of God, which always sounded pretty weird to me.
“Oops, sorry, Mary,” I muttered. I was standing in front of my family’s -- really, my mother’s -- Marian shrine, which hung on one side of the living room wall across from the piano. The shrine, a little shelf nailed onto the wall, with sweet-smelling votive candles, plastic flowers, prayer cards, sacramental medals, and a couple of six-inch plastic statuettes of Mary, was dominated by a 10” x 22” technicolor print of Our Lady, a brown-haired, brown-eyed white woman wearing a blue gown, who was standing on a cloud while crushing a snake. She’s looking up with her arms down and slightly out, palms up, as if asking, “Why me?”
“Oops, sorry, Mary,” I said again. I couldn’t help thinking irreverent thoughts in the face of solemn moments, especially if the event was so solemn that you just expected something funny or stupid to happen, and if it didn’t, then the idea of it would pop in your head, making you want laugh even though you were supposed to be serious, especially on your Communion Day.
My Communion Day. It was strange for me to look forward to today’s mass as something special because generally nobody in my family, except for my mom, thought of mass as a special religious experience. Mass was always crowded -- we would go to the eleven o’clock mass because nobody wanted to go to the Saturday afternoon vigil mass, which was too close to Saturday night, and because nobody wanted to wake up at six on a weekend to go to seven o’clock Sunday morning mass. Even when we did wake up at nine to get ready for mass, it was still too early -- it seemed -- and my mom would yell at me and my father for dawdling. “Are you still in bed? It’s already nine-thirty! Go and take a bath!” And if we didn’t eat breakfast -- the usual frozen doughnuts, heated in the oven -- before ten, then my mom would yell at us not to eat because the one-hour-before-mass fast had begun, “and if you had got up when I told you to, then you would have had time to eat!” If I complained, my mom would reply, “When I was little, you weren’t supposed to eat until after you’d gone to mass, so stop your complaining and get dressed!” I guess that was why the Church had seven in the morning masses so that you could get it over with and then finally eat something, but what difference did it make in an hour fast? Of course, I wouldn’t ask my mom this because she would’ve just yelled at me for dawdling and to remind me to wear a nice dress, not something “raggedy” -- that’s what she called my T-shirt and jeans, my preferred attire.
I once said, “But I see other people at church wearing jeans and T-shirts!”
“We’re not other people,” was her reply.
Yes, and I would bet that other people didn’t bribe their families to go to church by promising them that they’d be going shopping afterwards, which my mother would do.
Not exactly contemplative preparation for mass, those Sunday mornings.
But today was my Communion Day, the day my classmates and I at CCD had prepared for. CCD stood for Children’s Catechism Development -- that was the first thing I learned from Sister Pauline that first Sunday school class two years ago. And I also learned that CCD came in stages, and the most important stage for a young Catholic (after baptism, that is, when you were a baby) was Communion, when you could take the Body and Blood of Christ at mass after you learned why Communion was important. Pretty serious stuff, despite the fact that the CCD book looked like a coloring and activity book and my class memorized such prayers like “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” as easily and as sing-songy as “Three Blind Mice.” But underneath the kid fun was that religious seriousness that Christ suffered for us, which my class realized as Communion Day loomed closer and Sister Pauline had brought the class to the empty church and pointed out the gilded tabernacle, recessed in the wall behind the altar
“The Body of Christ is in there,” she said in a hushed tone, her blue Celtic eyes wide and shining. “God so loved us that he came down from heaven into man-made bread so that we could have a physical presence of God’s love, his grace. And in a few weeks, you take this bread, which is God, and He will become a part of you.” And she had genuflected before the tabernacle as a sign of respect and humility of God’s love. My class, thirty-strong of spindly children, had followed, and I had wondered if God could see through the tabernacle that we were there.
But that was a few weeks ago, and today was my Communion Day. Mom didn’t have to wake me up because I was already awake by eight. And I was nervous as hell.
“Oops, sorry, Mary.” I turned away from the shrine just in time for my father to take a picture of me -- “Smile!” -- and I saw spots where my father’s face was and heard the sound of his Japanese camera’s auto-rewind.
“Damn! Grace, do we have any more film?”
I watched my father go search for film in the master bedroom, where my mom was studiously dressing my baby sister. More film to immortalize me in this miniature bride’s gown, which itched and made me look dumb. I felt just like how Mary looked in that picture -- “Why me?” -- which was probably why I had looked at the shrine in the first place, an act I never did before today because I had always thought of the shrine as part of the furniture, like a potted plant, because Mary was everywhere.
My family used to go to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, behind our house and down the hill. The building itself was a converted Quonset hut from World War II and was once probably barracks or a mess hall. But the people who re-made the building didn’t do much, so that it still looked like it should be on base or in an episode of “MASH”: a corrugated tin can laid on its side and half sunk into the ground. The inside was just as unimpressive -- plain glass windows, all wood pews and kneelers, concrete and tile floor, and, instead of air-conditioning, slow-moving ceiling fans which rocked precariously over our hands like rotating butcher knives. Our Lady of Perpetual Help must have been really unimpressive to everyone because our neighborhood closed it down and built a new church, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, down the street and on the edge of the military end of the neighborhood (the other end was civilian).
The new church didn’t have that military stamp to it, like the old one; it felt civilian: high ceilings with stained glass in the clerestory windows, cushiony seats and kneelers, red wall-to-wall carpet, and air-conditioning, which worked so well that it was a shock when you left the refrigerated inside to the tropical outside. I missed the old church because the new church was so big, even after Sarah told me that everybody said that the old church was haunted by evil ghosts and had Satanic rituals going on there at night because the ground hadn’t been re-blessed by a priest.
I had worried that I might’ve been committing a sin by missing the old church if it was now Satanic, so when my CCD class had our mandatory First Confession last Sunday (“First Confession cleans your soul for Communion,” Sister Pauline had said), I had included it in my confession just to make sure.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I had said, reciting from memory as I kneeled in the dark, tiny confessional box, my hands clasped on the little shelf in front of me. “This is my first confession. I lied to my mom about breaking one of her vases. I made my sister cry because I wouldn’t share my chocolate cookies with her. Sometimes I don’t do all of my homework. And, umm... I miss Our Lady of Perpetual Help even though my best friend Sarah said that it’s Satanic now, so it may be a sin. Is it?”
The priest, Father Gibbons, who had sat on the other side on the confessional behind a screen, had coughed and said, “Well, um, I doubt that an old church can be, uh, Satanic -- But for your sins,” he continued quickly, “are you very sorry for them and will try to do good?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Well, then. For your penance, say five Hail Marys...and devote one for your friend, um, Sarah, is it? Is she Catholic?”
“No, Father.”
“Well, then. Devote two.”
I had nearly forgotten to say those Hail Marys -- my family went shopping afterwards, and it had slipped my mind -- until today, when I woke up at seven. Father Gibbons didn’t say where I was to make penance, but I remembered my mom’s Marian shrine, so I said my five Hail Marys in front of the shrine, half-way wondering how Father Gibbons figured out how many Hail Marys he needed to give -- did he have a formula, like the TV scientists who knew how to make bubbles out of baking soda and vinegar?
“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death. Amen. Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou...”
Mother of God. Bride of God. I learned in CCD class that Mary was very young when the angel Gabriel said, “You will bear the Son of God.” Did she blink? Did she think, “Why me?” I learned that Mary, who was conceived without Original Sin -- the Immaculate Conception -- replied, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.” But she was human, after all. If a celestial being came down to earth and told you that the Holy Spirit was to come upon you such that you, a virgin, were to bear the Son of God, wouldn’t you be afraid? I would. So was Mary afraid?
“I am the handmaid of the Lord.”
Snap! My father took another picture of me, and, behind the spots, I saw my dressed-up mother, holding my dressed-up baby sister. “Ray, save some pictures for the Church!” Mom scolded.
“Let’s go,” Pa said.
In Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, I saw that it was already crowded, and my parents had to squeeze into a pew near the back of the church among some white people. Normally there were still plenty of seats, and we would sit down in our preferred place, in the middle of an empty pew in the middle of the sanctuary. When people would sit next to us, they’d leave a space dividing us from them, which would close as mass grew nearer because more people would arrive and sit down, usually Filipino families. But even though we had arrived fifteen minutes before mass, the Church was already crowded because it was Easter Sunday (and there were a lot of twice-a-year Catholics -- the other day they’d go to mass was Christmas), and because it was First Communion, and everyone and their dog wanted to see their children looking like brides and grooms, taking Bread for the first time. Plus, Father Gibbons had reserved an entire section of pews for my First Communion CCD class (thus limiting the number of available pews), and that was where I went instead of sitting next to my mom with Shell on my lap, giving my baby sister the brown plastic missal to slobber on while my mom, kneeling, would do a pre-mass prayer, her face buried in a hand, as she was wont to do, and while my father would fidget, waiting for mass to begin.
Funny. Even though we had a Marian shrine in the house, I never saw my Mom praying in front of it. I only saw her pray during Mass, and it was always that heavy-duty, buried-head-in-hands prayer, and sometimes she would do a quickie sign of the cross if she was really worried, like if there was a driving rain storm and the water was getting to close to the front door. But that was it. I guess having a permanent shrine to Mary was prayer enough in the house.
Among the sea of little girl brides, I spotted Kim, dressed identically like me except that her veil was attached to a little white tiara, shining with fake diamond studs, because Mary, while being the Mother of God and Bride of God, was also the Queen of Heaven. Even so, the tiara looked silly on Kim’s head, since her hair was tom-boy short, like mine.
“Hi, Kim,” I said. “Nice crown.”
Kim wrinkled her nose. “I feel stupid. Does your dress itch? Mine does.” She scratched at her waist. “I wish Sarah were here. It’s not fair that she’s grounded, and her mom wouldn’t let her come even though we asked her to. It’s not fair, especially with all the practicing we did.”
“Why’d you think Sarah’s mom got mad?”
Kim shrugged. “I dunno. But it’s not fair.”
A few days ago, Kim and I had gone over to Sarah’s house after school to play with Sarah’s neat stuff, like her Legos and Barbie stuff. Sarah’s family lived on the military/ civilian demarcation line in our neighborhood, so Sarah’s house looked more civilian than military -- it was A-frame single instead of longhouse duplex, and the house even had a real garage as opposed to an exposed carport.
“Hey, come on in,” Sarah said after we rang the doorbell, and Kim and I stepped inside and followed Sarah to her bedroom, which was on the other side of the living room.
As I crossed the living room, I was reminded that day just how bare Sarah’s house was. It always struck me as if the Montgomery family, which consisted of Sarah and her parents, hadn’t fully moved in. Nothing was on the white walls -- no pictures, no photographs. The living room was just a sofa, a TV, and a coffee table. No bookshelves. As for the kitchen and the other bedroom, I had no idea because Sarah never led me over there and I never had an excuse to go over there since I saw more of Sarah outside of her house than inside. I mean, obviously Sarah’s family had moved in because there weren’t any boxes lying around. But I always had a feeling those boxes really should be there, filled with pictures and photos and little knickknacks picked up whenever Sarah’s dad would transfer to a new place or came back overseas. But there weren’t even those -- knickknacks, I mean, which was a huge contrast to my house, which was filled with colorful knickknacks from every Pacific Rim country you could think of -- jade Buddhas from Taiwan, bonsai tree sculptures from Japan, etc. -- and the walls were covered with Japanese prints and photos of my family, not only my immediate family but even those in the Philippines and in California. Full and crowded.
So Sarah’s house seemed incomplete to me, and, now that I come to think of it as I sat next to Kim in our pew, Sarah’s family seemed incomplete. Sarah was an only child, and so there weren’t any siblings to fill the house. Sarah’s dad wasn’t there because he was overseas -- that was understandable. But as for Sarah’s mom, I never saw her directly; I always saw her indirectly -- a scrap of grey skirt as she quietly moved from the kitchen to the backyard, a head of dishwater blond as she passed an open doorway.
Bare and quiet was the Montgomery household, which made Sarah what I’d later learn was an “anomaly,” because, well, she was normal. I mean, all-American, sun-bleached blond , freckles-on-the-nose, Band-Aids-on-the-knees normal, like what you see on TV sit-coms. Her bedroom, which had a bed, bureau, vanity table, and toy chest, was an explosion of pink. It was also an explosion of toys -- lots of them, which was why Kim and I were there in the first place.
As we were dressing up Barbies, Kim asked, “Sarah, you wanna come to our church on Easter? Ellen and me are doing Communion for the first time, and the church is having a big Easter barbecue afterwards.”
“What’s Communion?”
“You don’t know -- oh, that’s right. You’re not Catholic. Well, in mass, you know, you get to go up to the priest, and the priest puts a piece of bread this small --” Kim made a quarter-sized circle with her fingers “in your hands, and you get to eat it.”
“How come this bread’s important? Is it like Wonder bread?”
“No, it’s smashed flat.” Kim set down her Barbie and smacked her hands together.
“And it’s supposed to be God,” I added. “That’s why it’s important.”
Sarah scratched her head. “Sounds weird. Do you, like, go up to this priest guy, and kneel and hold out your hands--” Sarah stretched out her arms as if she was about to hit a volleyball “and just wait there?”
“No,” Kim said, and she knocked over Sarah because she looked silly kneeling with her arms out, and Sarah laughed. “No, dummy, it’s like-- well, we gotta show you what it’s like. You got any Wonder bread?”
When Sarah came back with a half-loaf of white sandwich bread, Kim and I took a couple of slices out and started flattening them out. Smash smoosh smash. Then we ripped out little circles, dropping the crust onto the carpet, and piled them on top of Sarah’s bed.
“Okay, it’s like this,” Kim said. “I’ll be the priest and Ellen’ll be the com-mu-ni-cant.” Kim said the last word slowly so she wouldn’t trip over it, like she usually did in CCD. “That means, Ellen’s the one getting bread, right?”
“Right.” Sarah sat down Indian-style and looked at Kim and me.
“Okay, gimme that robe over there.” I handed Kim a bathrobe printed with Holly Hobbies all over it, and she put it on. She set the circles of bread onto a coloring book and lifted up the book like a tray while I walked to the other side of the room, next to the doorway, and waited.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Okay.”
Sarah watched me walk over to Kim slowly, with my hands clapped together, palm to palm. When I was standing just before Kim, I brought my hands down and out, with my left hand on top. Kim lifted up one Wonder bread circle and said in a deep, slow voice, “Bawwwwdeeee of Chriiiist.”
Sarah giggled, and I giggled out, “Amen!”
Kim got upset. “Hey, it’s supposed to be serious, come on!”
“Okay, okay.” I straightened myself out. “Amen,” I replied in a reverent tone, and Kim set the circle in my hand. I moved aside a little, brought the circle into my mouth with my right hand, and made the sign of the cross.
“How come you do that?” Sarah asked me.
“Do what?”
“You know, that hand thing, when you touch your head and stuff.”
“Oh, that. It’s the sign of the cross, and you do that to remind yourself that it’s God you’re dealing with.”
“Oh. Okay, can I be you now?” Sarah stood up.
“Okay.”
I sat down where Sarah was, and Sarah took my previous position. When Kim said, “Okay,” Sarah walked over slowly, palms, pressed, and then she brought down her hands.
“No, Sarah, it’s left on top. Left.”
“How come it has to be left?”
“‘Cause you want to have your right hand free to bring the bread to your mouth.”
“How come?”
“Because you use your right hand to do the sign of the cross.”
Sarah frowned, not understanding. “How come you need your right hand --”
Kim, who had been waiting with the circle raised up all this time interjected, “‘Cause that’s the rules, Sarah. Sheesh!”
Sarah switched her hands, and Kim said her “Bawwwwdeee of Christ,” and Sarah replied just as slowly, “Aaaaaameeeeen!” She put the bread in her mouth and made a sloppy sign of the cross because she did right shoulder first instead of the left.
“No, Sarah, the left first. The left!” I pointed out.
Sarah shook her head. “Right, left, left, right! How do you keep this stuff straight in your head?”
“That’s why we have CCD,” Kim said.
“Oh. Okay, can I be the priest now?”
Kim gave Sarah the robe, and as Kim walked to the doorway, Sarah snuck another circle of bread in her mouth. “Hey, does the bread you get at Communion taste like Wonder bread, you know, soft and chewy?”
“No,” I replied, “it’s supposed to be hard and chewy -- like wheat bread,”
Sarah made a face. “I’d prefer Wonder bread.”
Kim was already in front of Sarah and Sarah was about to put the Wonder bread into her hands when I noticed that her mother had been standing in the doorway, watching us.
“Sarah,” I said, “I think your Mom needs you.”
Mrs. Montgomery’s thin, pale form was clothed in a grey shift which fell below her knees, and her shoulder-length dishwater blond hair was pushed away with a headband. I had no idea how long she had been there, but her eyes, so pale a blue that it seemed almost transparent, were locked onto Sarah’s priestly form.
Sarah accidentally dropped Kim’s circle to the carpet. She left it there and set down the other circles on the bed, removed her robe, and went to her mother. Mrs. Montgomery pulled her aside so that Kim and I couldn’t see or hear anything.
“Uh-oh,” Kim whispered to me as I stood up. “I think we’re in trouble.”
“Why? We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know, but --” Kim stopped abruptly when Sarah came back inside, her eyes looking a little watery.
“My mom says I can’t play with you guys any more for a few days.”
“Why? What’d we do?” I asked.
“And what about Easter? Can you still come for our First Communion?” Kim added.
Sarah shook her head. “My mom says that it’s bad for me to do Catholic stuff because I’m not Catholic.” She glanced furtively behind her and whispered, “I think... I think she’s scared that I might catch it.”
“But we’re just pretending!” I said.
Sarah shook her head again. “You gotta leave.”
As we left, we saw no sign of Mrs. Montgomery. Kim and I didn’t understand why she grounded Sarah for playing Communion then, and we still didn’t understand why today, on our Communion Day.
I saw Father Gibbons from my pew, directing the altarboys from the sacristy, where they kept all the candles, spare hosts, and plain wine, to set up the altar. An altarboy lit the candles with this lighter shaped like a shepherd’s crook, and, after lighting the last one, he knelt on one knee in front of the altar, nearly tripping over his white cassock as he stood and half-walked, half-jogged back to the sacristy. If I were an altarboy, I would be careful about tripping over my cassock and I wouldn’t half-walk and half-jog down the aisle but walk solemnly away and I -- but I wasn’t an altarboy because I wasn’t a boy, and old-fashioned Father Gibbons didn’t allow girls to serve as acolytes because girls were traditionally barred from the altar, even though Kim once said that some churches stateside allowed altargirls.
“Please rise and turn to number 54 in your missalette. Number 54 in your missalette,” the choir leader said, and the whole congregation stood and sang in various degrees of ability the opening hymn while a procession of two white-cassocked altarboys, a white-cassocked Deacon Wood, and a gold-vestment-over-white-cassocked Father Gibbons trooped in single file toward the altar in front of the church, the procession reminding me of navy men, all in dress whites, trooping down the gangway in single file from the ship.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” said Father Gibbons as the congregation crossed themselves: head (God in thought), heart (God in soul), left, right (God on either side), and, because we were mostly Filipino, lips (kissing the cross you had just motioned).
“Amen,” the congregation replied.
Mass had begun.
The readings and the Gospel were about Christ being crucified, about his rising from the dead on the third day, about Mary Magdelene discovering the rock rolled back and his tomb empty, about the remaining eleven apostles not believing her until they saw for themselves, about Christ appearing before them after breaking bread, Communion. The homily, Father’s Gibbons sermon about the Gospel, was a contemplation about Communion. “Since today will be a First Communion for many,” he said, motioning to my CCD class, little boy grooms and little girl brides, all prepared to receive the Body and Blood of Christ.
Would the Body of Christ taste, well, meaty? I had practiced on Wonder bread, but that kind of bread was white, airy, slightly sweet, and mushy in my mouth. I knew that the host was made of unleavened wheat, but once consecrated, once becoming the Body of Christ, the Bread of Life, would it taste miraculous? Life-sustaining? As for the Blood of Christ, I hadn’t even practiced. Would it taste like wine, which I had never tasted before, or like blood? I bit my lip sometimes, and my blood tasted a little salty and tinny. Would the Blood of Christ taste like that?
We knelt before the consecration, knees in the cushioned kneelers, and we stood for the “Our Father,” little hands holding little hands.
“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. And the kingdom and the power and the glory are yours, now and forever. Amen.”
I let go of the little hands and wiped my sweaty hands on my dress.
Thy will be done. I am the handmaid of the Lord. Mary, Mary didn’t really have a choice, did she? She had to accept this greater power, this power giving promises of joy and beauty, because how could she say no? How could she say no? How could she say no to becoming the Mother of God, the Bride of God, the Queen of Heaven, and the patron saint of Guam and the Philippines, Catholic thanks to the Spanish conquistadors and the Jesuits, thanks be to God?
“Move, Ellen, it’s your turn!” I heard Kim hiss behind me.
Time to take Communion.
I walked from my pew to the center aisle, where my parents and my sister joined me from behind. We walked to the altar, taking careful, solemn steps. I held my palms together and tried not to smile because Communion was a special thing, a solemn moment. When I reached the front of the altar, where Father Gibbons was, holding a little gold plate, I moved my hands down, right over left -- no! Left over right! I quickly switched hands. Whew!
“Body of Christ,” Father Gibbons said, lifting the flat circle from the little gold plate, and I said, “Amen.” He set the stiff, brown wafer onto my left hand, and with my right -- the “clean” hand -- I put the host into my mouth.
Yuck! It tastes like cardboard! Hey, it’s sticking to the roof of my mouth! Like peanut butter! Hey, that’s what it needs -- peanut-butter and jelly Body of Christ.
I gagged a little, trying not to laugh, and covered up the tears in my eyes by crossing myself quickly, and I didn’t even bother taking Wine -- it wasn’t required since I took Bread -- which was good, or else I would’ve sprayed it through my nose.
And, as I stumbled back to my pew, I could imagine Sarah laughing if she had been there, I could see Mary laughing at the angel as if she was wondering if this was God’s joke to her, a mere girl.
© 1996 Rufel F. Ramos