he tithed

He was five when his mother, the village whore, dressed him in girl’s clothes and kept him so garbed when her “friends” came to visit. The humiliation would be complete when she’d refuse to allow him to use the bathroom and he would wet his pants. He left her at 13, traveled to Ellis Island and the New World by himself. He told no one about any of that which he left, and why would he? But he would never forget it and simmered in him a harshness and violence that no one understood, because they only knew what they saw. He lived to be 101 years old, outlasting his wife and four children, two of whom he assaulted, sexually. On his deathbed he asked for his Savior’s forgiveness and the priest awarded it with a loving smile, never knowing the depth and breadth of his evil, not that it would have made a difference. After all, he tithed. His epitaph read, “In loving memory …”