You've never drank holy water?

"If you go to catechism tonight I'll take you to get fast food."

Every Monday it was the same bribe. The same tempting incentive. My mother knows how to tug at my emptiness.

"Ok, but it has to be Taco Bell. I'm not going unless its T Bell."

I say this while I cross my arms in front of my chest like I know something. I know one thing, food will always make me do things I claim I hate.

"Fine. You know Jesus loves you Maggie. I have seen angels, and I have had one of those out of body experiences, I was floating above my body." Her sunglasses conceal what she is actually looking at. I doubt its me. Her head is to the sky, she's almost always talking to someone I can't see. She loves filling me with her ghost stories. Her ghosts are angels, my dead grandma, her dead dog. She has seen them all. Visitations from the already gone. She wants me to love Jesus so badly. She wants me to tell her I believe, that I'v seen angels too, that I will someday see my dead cat. But I can't and I don't. Because I don't, and she knows it, she uses every spare second to try and talk me into it. I am 13 years old so a buy out of double deckers and big macs work for a fair trade off. I listen while she pays for me to indulge in what I really need. Something that tastes good, feels good, makes my uncomfortable body feel at ease. Grease. Fat. Potatoes. Those replace The father, the son and the holy spirit in my religion.

We keep a white plastic bottle of "Holy Water" in our pantry. In Blue letters across the front it states "Holy Water." I drink out of it sometimes. Hoping it works like acid. Distorting reality. Saving me from the inside out. It doesn't taste holy. Its luke warm, I close my eyes and shallow. It reminds me of pond water. The way it stays warm in our kitchen, incubating its holyness. I swig straight out of the bottle and lay in my room waiting for something to happen. It never does. I never see the light. I only want more food, Wendys next time maybe? Washing fast food down with blessed pond water, if that didn't have the power to uncover dead grandmas and ghosts what did? I gave up hunting for the dead, but sometimes when I pass by a Taco bell the smell of the place reminds me to look behind me, and my mouth can almost taste the holy water in the back of my throat. Burning with the knowledge in knowing that I don't believe.