When I was seven years old, I spit out the body of Christ.

It wasn’t an act of rebellion, only the reflex of an unselfconscious girl I must have been once. My Sunday school teacher asked for a volunteer to demonstrate how to take communion, and I volunteered for everything then. She told us it was bread, but as soon as I tasted the wafer, I was sure there’d been a mistake—the sliver sticking to my tongue and then, suddenly, to my outstretched palm, had to be cardboard.