Have you been watching the local news? Have you been listening around town to the way people -- especially mothers -- are still responding to events surrounding the death of 3-year-old Crystal Figueroa? The conversations are less and less about Crystal. The real focus is on Crystal's mother, Gladys.

One response is kill her. Death sentence. Life imprisonment or capital punishment? "Whichever would make her suffer more," said a mom friend of mine.

Another woman on the local news suggested that Crystal's mother be brought back to the neighborhood and given a public beating by local moms. "Let's see how she likes that," the woman said simply.

But the majority of responses are stunned, drop-jawed incredulity. How could Crystal's mother -- any mother -- side with a loser boyfriend over her own critically injured daughter? How could it make sense to any mother that nurturing the ties of loyalty to any man matters more than the ebbing life of a child?

Equally fascinating, by the way, is the relative absence of strident commentary regarding the role of Marc The Boyfriend. It's as if we presuppose his moral dereliction. Sure. Men, given sufficient opportunity, tend to eat their young. Everybody knows that. His alleged wickedness might anger us, but it doesn't shock and surprise us.

Gladys shocked and surprised us. Taboo City. Andrea Yates; Susan Smith; Sophie, from the novel "Sophie's Choice"; and Sybil's mom, from the famous multiple-personality case -- Gladys has, in our public discussion, joined the company of a circle of women who haunt the human psyche more powerfully than any boogeyman.

She betrayed the mother archetype. And we are left reeling.

But this week I met a courageous mother walking an uncommon path. In the wake of Crystal's death, she has eschewed both fantasies of vengeance and the paralysis of moral dismay. Instead, she opted for self-examination.

The year is 1955. She has been married one month. She brings a 6-year-old daughter and a 2-year-old son to this new union by way of a previous marriage that ended in divorce. The birth father, following the common cultural script of his day, has, for all purposes, categorically withdrawn from the lives of his children. The new husband is willing to adopt the two wee ones and call them his own.

Her new man is an up-and-coming surgeon. He is handsome and charming. Virtually guaranteed breadwinner. She thinks she has won the lottery.

Today the newly constellated family is picnicking. The 2-year-old boy begins to whine, cling, then cry. He reaches for his mother, who reaches back.

The new husband instructs her not to do that. He informs her, like a stern father would inform a not-very-bright daughter, that coddling the boy is a terrible mistake.

"But I don't know how else to make him stop crying," the woman says.

"I do," says the man.

The man crouches down in front of the whimpering boy. He takes his thumb and forefinger, and grabs the fleshy baby fat of the boy's abdomen. He turns it 180 degrees, like it was a knob on the stove. He bellows at the boy to stop crying.

"My son did stop crying," the woman tells me. "His eyes went wide. He seemed to suck the tears right back up into his head."

And the picnic continued, like nothing at all unusual had just happened.

And, 18 years later -- or, more accurately, countless occasions of cruelty, humiliation, verbal degradation and occasional physical abuse later -- the woman leaves the man and files for divorce.

Eighteen years later.

"You understand," the now-81-year-old woman tells me, "that I'm going to die never completely forgiving myself. I should have told him right then and there that I'd made a terrible mistake, taken my children, and left him. But I didn't."

Her face is grave. "I remember thinking how embarrassing it would be to face my family and friends with a second divorce," she says. "I remember hoping my husband would change."

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas. Contact him at skalas@review journal.com.