When I actually went to First Holy Communion, the real Body of Christ stuck to the roof of my mouth, and it wouldn't come off. When nobody was looking, I wormed my index finger into my mouth and gave it a scrape.

Nun shrieks went off all around me. You have touched the Body of Christ, they yelled. I didn't really think so. If I had touched the Body of Christ, I think it would have felt something like chicken, but this felt like a dry old wafer even though it had been in my mouth for ten minutes.

A big nun grabbed me and frog-marched me into the sacristy. When Mass was over, the priest came in, took one look at me sitting there with big nun holding my hand in the air, got a bottle, and poured water over my hand while he said something like "bunkum umkun, eat a punkin." Then I was released to my family.

Dad had that serious, furrowed look on his face, which meant he wanted to laugh really hard, but couldn't because he was afraid Mom would kill him when she killed me for making a rumpus. Happily, she declared we'd had "enough excitement for one day," so all I had to do was sit on the front porch all afternoon and behave.

I sat in the middle of the porch swing in my white organdy First Holy Communion dress and veil. I started swinging and humming low. Then I swung higher and sang louder. Then without any warning, the old swing chains were creaking and bouncing, and I was yelling, "OH, MAY-REE, WE CROWN THEE WITH BLOS-SOMS TODAY."

MAY-REE. That's how the nuns told us to say "Mary" when we sang. It brought Mom instantly to the screen door.

"I thought I told you to behave," she said. "Get off the swing and sit on the glider. Listen to the baseball game with your father."

The radio was turned louder, and Dad was dispatched to the front porch to listen to the ballgame with me. Fortunately, there was a rain delay, so Dad filled me in on his theory of baseball: The more Italians a team had, the better it was. The Yankees had DiMaggio, Rizzuto, and Berra. That is why they always won the World Series. The Dodgers had the second most Italians, Furillo and Campanella. They had one less Italian than the Yankees, which is why the Yankees always beat them in the World Series. Dad wasn't just saying it because he was Italian. He was saying it because it was true.

The rain delay continued. I could tell it was a long time since Dad had to behave. He was squiggling around on the glider worse than I was. Finally, he held his right leg straight out so he could get his hand in his trouser pocket. He pulled out a quarter. He laid it in the palm of his hand and showed it to me.

He said, "Hocus pocus, dominocus," and the quarter disappeared.

"SAY THAT AGAIN," I shouted, as I about jumped out of my seat. He thought I meant him to do the trick over, so he pulled the quarter from behind my ear this time, and said, "Hocus pocus, dominocus."

Dad thought I was excited by his magic tricks. I wasn't. He'd done the same tricks a million times. But I never noticed the words before. They were the same words the priest said when he turned wafers into the Body of Christ in church, the same words he used to purify me after I scraped the Body of Christ off the roof of my mouth.

Hocus pocus, dominocus, I whispered over and over to myself. I didn't want to forget them. They were the words that disappeared things and changed them into other things. This was useful information. I'd try them right away on baby brother. If they worked, I'd try them on my homeroom teacher, the one who gave me a "U" in conduct for no reason at all on my last report card.

Marcia Mascolini retired from teaching business communication for money to write flash fiction for fun and glory. Her stories have appeared in Retrozine, the Green Tricycle, Naked Humorists, Newtopia and other journals.

Hocus, Pocus, Dominocus was first published in the June edition of Front Street Review.