Satan is not a cartoon devil with horns and a pointy tale. He is a soulless menace that takes human form so that he may walk among us, wreaking havoc and destroying lives, virtually undetected.
The first time I came face to face with pure evil was when I saw it in my father’s eyes. He was cruel and abusive, taking delight in every moment of pain and anguish that he caused his wife and four children. Perpetually bored, he created increasingly more devastating ways to torture us.
Oh, he could play the role of devoted husband and father when he wanted to. No one noticed the desperation so clearly etched on our little faces or the haunted, vacant expression worn by my mother. No one questioned why rarely a month went by without one of the Purdy children ending up in the emergency room. At least, I like to think that no one noticed. Because, to consider the alternative, that people knew and did nothing to rescue us from the hell that we were mired in, is just too unbearable to contemplate.
Watching my father die wasn’t as difficult as I’d thought it would be. Once he fell through that rickety wooden step leading down to the basement – and his liquor – it was a twenty-foot drop straight down to the concrete floor below. Later, I learned that he’d broken his pelvis and his left leg. He cracked open his head and bled into his cranium. It was a miracle he didn’t break his neck and, had someone actually bothered to call for an ambulance, he would have lived on to torment us for years to come. But no one made that call.
My father lay unconscious for the first hour. After that, there was some moaning. Within a few hours he was lucid, in horrific pain, and furious. We ate dinner at the kitchen table in silence, his seat empty as he screamed obscenities at us from the ground below. My mother sent my brother and sisters to bed while I sat up with her. She could have turned on the television set or the radio, but she chose to sit on the couch and knit our winter scarves. My father raged on, though, with less verve as he bled into his brain.
“Will we go to hell, Mama?” I asked, breaking the silence of our vigil.
She considered me for a long moment before speaking.
“Trudy,” she began, looking at me as her hands continued their work unwatched. “In the Book of Genesis, God tells us that He will hold us accountable for the reckoning of a man who sheds the blood of another man. You see, God made us in His own image. We are, in a sense, a part of God. So when one person attacks another, he is attacking God. And the Lord Almighty is quite clear on the subject when He says ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image.’”
She paused for a moment, trying to gauge whether or not I was grasping what she was telling me.
“You and I and your brother and sisters are devout children of God,” she continued after a moment, “and when your father attacks us, he is attacking God. That is unacceptable in the eyes of our Lord, and in my eyes as well. So, no, my love, I do not believe we will go to hell … though I do believe your father will be there before the first morning light.”
And she was right. My father died in the early hours of the morning. She called the sheriff just after dawn and reported that her husband had fallen through a rotten stair tread in the middle of the night and she’d found him when she woke up to make breakfast.
My father had sown the wind and he reaped the whirlwind, with a little help from me and a handsaw. It was God’s will and I was his instrument.
Now, all of these years later, I sit in a rocking chair, holding that man’s great-grandson. The sweet little redheaded boy rests his head against my chest, one hand clutching a button on my sweater while he sucks on the thumb of the other. He tries, unsuccessfully, to fend off the sleep that is tugging at his eyelids.
I’ve decided to take Julia and Matthew up on their offer, and I will relocate here to Long Island to help them with the new baby and to get to know David. It will be difficult to leave the home I shared with Danny, but for now at least, the most important thing is to stay close to this child. I will nurture him and teach him and love him, as any grandmother would. But, then again, I am not just any grandmother. Every time I gaze into those hazel eyes of his, I will be watching closely and looking deeply. Because I know only too well what evil looks like.
I know how to spot the heart of the devil within the eyes of an angel.
Dear Heavenly Father, when You called upon me to be Your instrument against the evil within my father, I obeyed, and saw to it that trip down to the cellar would be his last.
When You called upon me to be Your instrument against the evil within my son, I obeyed once more, seeing to it that he would never get up off that floor to harm another human being.
Lord, I pray that this little lamb is an innocent, untouched by the sins of his father and great-grandfather. But, should this not be the case, I pray that You will call upon me once again to be Your instrument against evil. I pray that you will, once more, give me the strength to do what needs to be done. And I will forever be Your willing servant.
Amen.