My grandmother was a witch: a species of santera from Havana, to be more exact. Not like she was decapitating chickens all over the place or anything, but she did speak in tongues and believe in demons, and in hell and especially, in the Devil, who held a good deal more sway over her beliefs and activities than God or Jesus ever did, as it still seems to me. Only now do I see the intensity of her superstitions, her prayers and novenas, her gloomy foretelling of the future, her brooding certainty about every damn thing—the evil eye, the dangers of lust, the malevolence of the occult powers roaming the world, the corresponding benevolence of saints, the rightness of the iron fist with which she ruled us all—as based in fear.

Bustillos contemplates this fear:

I've never really understood whether the Devil frightened my grandmother into being such a terror, or whether the Devil was just a name for the terrors that were already in her, for reasons I won't ever know. In any case, she seemed to believe that we're all of us born with the Devil inside us, a dark, bloody, sexually explicit figure, half torment and half pleasure, the source of every appetite, every selfish impulse; we were made to be corrupted, but grace has to be fought for every day of your life and never, ever really attained.