You are Puerto Rican. You are Catholic. You are a child. You go to church and Sunday school, every Sunday, every Sunday, every Sunday because you know that getting the sacraments done and over with is your only ticket into heaven. You read Are You There God, It's Me Margaret and start praying like Margaret. If you'd just been Italian and lucky you'd go to CCD on Wednesdays and get to leave school before last period.

You learn from an uptight pseudo-nun named Ms. Rose about how you should pray to God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and a patron saint of your own choosing. There's a fly motherfucker who ain't never ever EVER gonna love your ugly ass? Pray on it with Santa Rita. Going on a long trip back in time to the nether regions of Brooklyn to visit your auntsunclesgrandmothersetc who always ask heavy questions like: "M'ija, cuando te vas a casar?" but don't yet know how gay you really are? Pray on it with Saint Christopher. Pray to Jesus and ask him:

1) To give you bigger breasts (it's only fair, Christ, since I come from the biggest family of tetonas, like, EVER. Ooh, or maybe this is my test? Fuck it, gimme the tits).

2) To win the lottery.

3) To get rid of the cockroaches for ever and ever.

Aaaahhhmen...
You sit in Sunday school one day and learn that there is only one God and you must not take His name in vain and you must not worship any God but Him (and you must Always Capitalize His Name and Pronoun). This troubles you deeply — you just prayed to Saint Thomas of Aquinas to give you a snow day tomorrow. You raise your hand to ask Ms. Rose if it's okay to pray to saints and to the Blessed Virgin Mary. She says yes. You ask if this means you are worshiping false idols. She says no. But, you say, why would I be praying to someone if they weren't as powerful as God, and if they were as powerful as God why shouldn't I be worshiping them instead of God, or why does God have to take all the glory when it's really Jesus who did all the dirty work, or Paul, who got his head cut off for being Christian; why can't he get some burn? She tells you to leave and call your mother. You walk out of the classroom with the buzzing fluorescent lights and dingy linoleum tiles. Your head is hung low and she leads the class in a prayer for your soul. You feel the prayer, but in a cold and uncomfortable way, like a UTI.

You have your First Communion. You have been thirsty for your entire eight little years for the only alcohol you are allowed to taste. You wonder if you are really doing a bad thing, like when your uncle Junior let you take sips from his beer when your mom wasn't looking. You wonder, but then your little eight-year-old lips meet that golden chalice and the cheap, watered-down wine hits your lips and somewhere in the white, glowing nooks and crannies of your chaste little soul you know a deep and impenetrable bond has been formed between you and — no, not Jesus, not God, not even the Holy fucking Spirit — but alcohol, because you start to feel a miraculous warmth in your white cotton Hanes panties. You convince yourself that that feeling is Jesus and so you return to your pew and you pray. Hard and long until your mother taps your shoulder because it's time to stand now and sing some hymns. You blink many times, because you have lost yourself in your orgasmic prayer session. Everyone is proud because it looks as if you are pious, but really, you may have just had your first sexual experience without you or anyone else knowing. You are introduced to the patron feeling of all Catholics: guilt. You blush. You go to your grandmother's house and you eat cake in the shape of a Bible to celebrate. It is good. It is sweet. You wash it down with some Coke.