All of my life I have lived in the shadow of what he had done, and yet I never knew exactly what that was. I did know that he loved me and would never harm me. As a little girl I saw these things through a looking glass from which reflected only the purest truth. One of my earliest memories goes back to a soft, sunny day when we were playing in the backyard of my parents' home. I remember him pushing me on the swing and if I close my eyes, I can still see his beige cotton trousers with the cuffs that were always a bit too wide. I loved Uncle Devereaux. I love him still.
I was seven or eight years old when my mother's only brother, escorted by two men in uniform, came to live with us. He carried one battered suitcase. I'll never forget the neighbors' stares and asides, which were more obvious than any words could ever have been. It had something to do with the way he looked, or at least that's what I overheard my mother tell my father. But even I knew that they were afraid of Uncle Devereaux because they had heard the rumors about where he had come from and why he had no family of his own. But no one at our house was afraid. He was my playmate and companion during that summer so long ago.
Neither my mother nor my father ever spoke about what he had done. That way, it was almost as if he didn't do it, whatever it was. Almost, but not quite. I discovered part of the truth that very day those two men brought him to our home. I was listening behind the kitchen door, having returned unexpectedly from the yard where I had been playing.
"The doctors say he is…um…cured…of his, er…impulses," one of them said. "We can't keep him anymore anyway. If not for you two, he would automatically have been transferred to the larger state facility."
"He's luckier than his victims were," said the other man. They will never get a second chance to do anything."
"I have to live with that all of my life," cried Uncle Devereaux. And to my parents one of the men said: "This is very generous of you people, very generous indeed."
"We didn't help him when he needed it and he's our blood," said Mother in a tone which meant the discussion was over.
"It will never happen again," sobbed Uncle Devereaux. "I have no need to do it anymore. Really I don't! I swear it!"
