Faces of Evil. Lois Gibson
just paint full-time? You could still live by yourself.”
Of course I was way too proud and independent to take him up on that offer, but I knew from that point on that this was a man who knew how to love—unconditionally.
The youngest of seven children, Sid grew up with four older sisters and it gave him a perspective on life that was unique among men I’d encountered. He knew how to talk to a woman, how to treat her, how to care for her. Though a man’s man in every way, Sid was a nurturer.
I’d been working so hard, being so independent and brave, that I didn’t realize how much I needed nurturing. In relationships, I tend to be the giver and so many men I’d known had been only too happy to be takers. Sid knew how to take love but he also knew how to give it.
Almost as impressive to me as his ability to love unconditionally was that he had worked hard to build a career in construction plumbing, he was proud of what he did and not the least bit pretentious. (The muscles came from hard work, not from some elite fitness club.) I was so used to dating guys who lied about their incomes and tried other tactics to impress me that I fell in love with Sid’s honesty and genuineness as much as anything.
When we first started dating, Sid was living with a lovely young couple named James and Diane Denton. Diane was a stay-home mom, taking care of their first baby and Sid helped out with the rent and household expenses. Sid has always loved kids and he was terrific with their daughter, Amy—an energetic one-year-old—and it made me joyful, watching him with her. The four of us got along wonderfully well and when I was over at their house, I felt at home.
Let down my guard a bit more.
It was nice, not feeling so alone for a change. Feeling like part of a family. Being in love with a gorgeous guy. Within three weeks we knew we would be married. In fact, there wasn’t even a romantic proposal. It was just a fact that we accepted almost from the beginning.
I had found the love of my life and I was looking forward to happiness with him...but it was complicated. There were still all those demons to contend with.
With Sid, I lowered my shield a little and let myself be vulnerable. That’s when the demons get you.
Everything was just fine until the day Diane turned on the evening news.
I never watched the evening news. Never. Of course, I know now that this is one way in which some victims of violent crime deal with their attacks—they avoid news of anyone else’s violent attacks. And that’s all the local evening news is—murders, rapes, fires, violence.
I had found that watching the evening news and hearing about those violent crimes triggered all sorts of uncomfortable feelings I did not want to deal with, so I just avoided the subject altogether...until the day Diane turned on the television and I was trapped into watching with her.
That’s when I heard that a dance instructor had been raped at gunpoint in front of her students—little girls, eleven and twelve years old.
Suddenly, as if some underground cave deep inside me yawned open, out swarmed clouds of bat-like demons, driving me to an almost unrecognizable rage. All my carefully-controlled emotions burst loose in a torrent of outrage and pain and I didn’t know what to do except scream at the television.
I wanted to chase that animal down and run him over with my car. I wanted to parade him in front of that poor woman and those traumatized little girls and say, “See this? They’re gonna put him in jail, in a cage like the animal he is!”
Diane kept her composure, but she must have wondered what in the world was going on. I hadn’t been dating Sid all that long at that point, but long enough for her to know that this was just not like me.
I didn’t know, of course, that everything I was feeling was completely normal, that in fact, it was long overdue. This kind of white-hot anger is necessary for the healing process, or else it will fester inside a victim like pus in an infected sore and, like an untreated infection, can poison over time. I wasn’t just filled with rage for this poor dance instructor, I was filled with rage for me, for anyone who was forced to suffer unjustly because of another.
The announcer was droning on with a generic description of the attacker: “male, 5'10", brown hair, brown eyes.”
At that, I found myself giggling, but it was mirthless, cynical laughter. “That’s just laughable!” I cried, almost hysterical. “They’re describing half the men in Houston—you’re talking a million guys.”
They’ll never find justice for her, I anguished. She’ll be alone and afraid and lost just like...
Just like me.
I felt something building inside my chest, a physical burning, a sickness just like what I had felt that day years before after I had been raped.
Remember that Bible story about how the blind apostle Paul was walking along on the road to Damascus, when suddenly, “the scales fell away from his eyes” and he could see—not just literally, but also figuratively?
That’s what happened to me, in a manner of speaking.
I knew, just like that.
It was as if all that tumultuous, chaotic energy that was colliding within my heart and mind had suddenly focused itself with all the concentrated power of a laser beam.
All the scattergun restlessness that had driven me from city to city and job to job and man to man since the rape, the force that had pushed me almost over the brink of sanity, that had pressured me until my chest turned purple from the pain...all that energy suddenly compressed itself into one powerful lightning bolt: a knowing.
Whirling toward Diane, I said, “I could sketch that guy.”
Although I had never done a sketch of anyone based on descriptions alone, I had done thousands of portraits and I knew—almost without hesitation—I knew I could do it.
If Diane was having trouble keeping up with the thunderstorm of emotions she was observing passing over me, she kept it to herself. I still had not told her about the rape, nor was I ready to discuss the attack I had suffered at this point. But Diane seemed to accept what I was saying at face value and said, “Okay, call the police. Tell them you can do a sketch of the guy.”
In my mind flashed an image of what the police would have to say about some artist approaching them out of the blue with such a suggestion and I shook my head. “No. I’m not ready. I have to practice first.”
She nodded. “All right, then. Let me describe my mother to you and you can draw her.”
“No.” Pacing the floor, I said, “You know her face too intimately. I need to do a sketch of someone who’s a stranger to you.”
At this point, the energy was burning a hole right through my chest, or at least it felt like it. I knew that I would do anything to make this work. Instinctively I knew that if I could use my gifts and talents to help other people get justice, it would also soothe my own pain.
“Go pick out someone, anyone,” I instructed a bemused Diane. “A gas station attendant. Anyone. I’ll stay here with the baby. You come back and tell me what the guy looks like and I’ll see if I can do a sketch.”
Though she did comment that the idea was “weird,” Diane was nothing if not game. She gathered up her purse, car keys and left.
Almost immediately, I burst into tears.
I’d never seen anyone do anything like what I was proposing before. I had no idea how it was done or even where to begin.
Why did I let myself get into this? I agonized for a few moments. Why did I let these demons loose?
However, though I couldn’t articulate it at the time—not even to myself—somehow I knew that if I was able to do the sketch, it would heal me.
But if I didn’t...it would destroy me.
If