Completely absorbed in the play, I feel an ease suffuse my entire being. For those cherished minutes, the armor that encases my spirit loosens and I am wholly open to the moment. Then, as if on Pegasus’s wings, I feel a presence floating with me in the room, next to the red velvet sofa, in front of the fish tank, which faces the bay window. When I look for it, it is just me, alone in the softly lit room. I see no one, though I feel and hear a gentle essence. Her voice is so familiar that when she speaks, it’s as if the words were my own.

Michele, you are okay. You will be okay. You will be safe. Your mother will be safe. Your brother and sister will be safe.

Security was perhaps the only thing I ever wanted, and up to that point it had remained a long-ungranted wish.

The benediction continues: You will live. You must. Your mother will live. Your brother and sister will live. You will grow to see that you will help many people. You will grow to do great service. You must.

I sit on the floor, the ponies strewn about me, momentarily forgotten. I feel my eyes widen more with each word. It is the stupor in the face of answered prayer, the astonishment of gratitude. For once, nothing in me is afraid. And just like that, as soon as she has arrived, she is gone. Just one message, and then she vanished.

I knew about guardian angels from TV shows. They are always visions in white gowns with expansive wings who float on beds of cumulus clouds. There was no visual for mine, just a voice that sounded clear and sure, an articulation that permeated the room. I can’t contain my excitement—I fully believe this message has been from an angel. For the first time in my life I am spilling over with joy. I sprint upstairs to my mother to let her know that we will survive.

It is this very message that buttressed me for the next two decades of my life. On so many days, when all signs pointed away from my not only thriving but surviving, I remembered the angel’s whispers and felt saved.

I cannot count how many times I longed to be rescued in my father’s homes. The beauty of this one, on its large, tree-lined, and well-manicured lot, belied the chaos raging within.

You couldn’t hear it from the street. Just the day before the angel came, I had been in my room with my sister, in the midst of a stuffed animal caucus, while our brother, John, was in his room, stereo blaring the latest ’80s R&B hits. Then I felt my brother’s door bang open and the floor shake as he sprinted down the stairs. My sister and I stopped cold and locked eyes. My blood curdled for a terrifying moment. I heard something wooden fall, feet scuffling across the floor downstairs, and a body thrown against a wall. Then my mother’s scream—“Stop!”—was immediately cut off as she was strangled mute.

I had to go downstairs. I had to stop it. I had to help my older brother, who was on his way into the fray. I had to stop my father from killing my mother.

Honestly, I don’t know what’s worse: constructing an image of the brutality in your mind’s eye or actually bearing witness to it. At seven, I didn’t have the power to choose. At seven, you attach in the only way you know how: You think you love even the attacker, the one who hurts you and your family. At seven, you blame yourself. In that split second, as I waited, frozen in terror, I knew only that at any given time, everything I wanted and everything I cherished could be taken from me. I knew that I didn’t deserve to be happy because although I couldn’t understand what and I couldn’t understand how or why, I knew that I must have done something terribly wrong. I knew that I had to run downstairs to save a life, but I couldn’t face yet again the terror in which, somehow, I had played a pivotal role.

Seconds later, I was on the stairs, my younger sister right behind me. Toward the bottom, she stopped short and lost her balance, causing her to accidentally nudge me farther down. I clung to the banister to keep from falling. We stood there, afraid to enter the scene.

After summoning my courage, I walked into the kitchen to see my mother standing alone, bracing herself against the wall. My brother stood in the middle of the room. Two chairs and a broom were strewn across the floor, and shards of shattered glass were everywhere. My father was gone, and the front door was wide-open.

“Be careful, girls. Don’t step on the glass! Go get shoes!” my mother cried out, gasping.

My brother walked over to the chairs and began to right them.

“Oh my, I’ve lost my earring. Dern!” my mother exclaimed. It was an allowable expletive employed by my grandparents. My mother’s parents were Southern, so this was likely the regional variation of “darn.”

“Where in the world is that earring?” my mother continued, acting as if that were the most important detail of the scene we confronted. For her, it was.

My sister had already gone upstairs, put on shoes, and was now hard at work peering into every nook and cranny of the kitchen.

My mother picked up the broom and began sweeping up the glass. “Careful, kids, watch where you step. Gosh, I hope I don’t sweep up that earring.”

I, too, retrieved my shoes and returned to help. I went to the open front door and looked outside. There was no one. In keeping with my indoctrination, I closed the door firmly to seal the secrets inside.

Within minutes, my sister had found the sapphire stud earring that had rolled under the corner of the Oriental rug in the foyer.

“My goodness, how did it get over there?” my mother asked. “I knew it—good old Eagle Eyes gets it again! Thank you, my darling.” She plucked the earring from my sister’s small palm and gave her a hug. “I’ll find another backing. That’s less important. I must have an extra upstairs.”

She put the earring on the counter so she could finish sweeping up the glass. As she bent toward the dustpan, her hair fell forward, and when she brushed it back, I could see red marks on her neck. The nail of her index finger was broken, and the ragged edge was covered in dried blood. She winced a little as the pressure from the dustpan dug into her bruised finger.

My brother balled up his fists and silently climbed the stairs—a moment later I heard him resume listening to his latest vinyl album: Prince’s Purple Rain. While my sister sat quivering with my mother in the kitchen, I went into the foyer and sat on the bottom step of the staircase. I waited in the event my father returned. I waited in case my sister cried. I waited for my fluttering heart to be still. I waited even after my mother had put the broom away, retrieved her sapphire earring from the counter, and walked past me to go upstairs to her room. I waited for the discussion our family would never have.

And, really, what kind of discussion would it have been? Would we have all gathered in the living room, we three children on the sofa and a parent seated at either end in antique chairs?

If he were to have spoken the truth, here is what my father would have said:

I come from a place of deep shame and self-loathing. I never learned to forgive my parents for abandoning me, so I never learned to love. Instead of taking the time to heal from my past traumas, I chose to distract myself by marrying before I was fit to be in a relationship of any kind. Every day, by not making a better choice, the right choice, I choose to tether myself to this dysfunction. Because of this, I have made a choice to continue that cycle of pain and suffering. For this reason, I have decided to rob myself of health and genuine connection. For this same reason, I choose to terrorize you and rob you of any sense of security and childhood. It won’t stop until decades from now, when I finally walk out of your lives. And yes, I know that I am wrong. It’s true that I should have committed none of this violence. You will or will not find your own closure as you wish. You will or will not find your own healing as you wish. As for me, I will run from this place. I will hide from myself beneath the cloak of Christianity. I will let these silent compartments of denial and hurt imprison me in this life. That hell is my temple.

In turn, my mother would have said the following:

I learned in my formative years to be codependent and so never truly developed the tenor of my own voice. I tell myself I am helping a broken man. What I’m really doing is finding someone to validate my low self-esteem, then imprinting that dysfunction onto the next generation. I fill up this void with fancy, attractive possessions. I found a man who can give us things. Don’t you all want nice things? I realize that when you children finally escape this house, you will not know what it means to sleep through the night without fear. You will not know what it means to love from a place of absolute self-possession. It will be up to you later to decide if and how you will learn these skills on your own. As for me, I will allow all this to lay the groundwork for me to live a smaller life than I ever wanted for myself or for my children. I can’t face my own pain. I can’t face that my inaction to make a better choice, the right choice, has led to the harm of myself and my children. It is true that I should have left . . . And yet, I choose to stay here now in spite of it all. Be well, my children, be well.