The Sacrifice

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Politely Iglesias requested if she might ask Sybilla just a question or two?—and Pearline Tice said sharply that Iglesias should ask her, and she would ask the girl.

  In this way Iglesias conducted a kind of interview with the girl—hardly an “interview” of any substance.

  Asking if Sybilla could provide any further descriptions of the white cops, or of the van in which she’d been kept; and if she would allow a doctor to come to her, to examine her, since the examination at St. Anne’s ER had not been completed.

  Pearline Tice shut the bedroom door while she conferred with Sybilla. Whatever the elderly woman and her great-granddaughter said together, in lowered voices, Iglesias couldn’t hear. She thought But I have found her, at least. She is still alive.

  Iglesias had learned about Pearline Tice by questioning some of Ednetta Frye’s neighbors. When she’d arrived at the weatherworn old sandstone apartment building on Eleventh Street, that looked at a little distance as if it were uninhabited, she’d had the impression that Sybilla Frye had been out of bed, and watching TV in the front room; when Pearline Tice admitted Iglesias into the apartment, the TV had been switched off and Sybilla had hurriedly retreated to a back bedroom.

  “Off’cer, S’b’lla not feelin strong enough to talk right now. Ednetta has got to be here, if S’b’lla be ‘questioned.’ So, I’m askin you to leave.”

  Already! Asked to leave.

  Iglesias was accustomed to interviewing individuals who lied to her, who claimed forgetfulness, and sometimes ill health. A police officer expects dishonesty. A police officer is not naïve. Yet, in the matter of Sybilla Frye, Iglesias was baffled. She didn’t believe the girl’s story—yet, there was a story, which she was determined to expose. She protested to Pearline Tice that at least Sybilla Frye should be examined by a doctor, more thoroughly than she’d been examined in the ER. There’d been no rape kit, and now it was too late. There was the risk of infection, sexually transmitted diseases, complications following the girl’s injuries . . .

  “S’b’lla been examined by a doctor, her mother take her to. She all right and just restin now, I’m tryin to explain.”

  “A doctor? A private doctor? Who? I need his name, please . . .”

  “You need to ask Ednetta about that.”

  Mrs. Tice spoke stubbornly. Iglesias made a note—Doctor?

  The mother had taken Sybilla to a black doctor in the neighborhood, very likely. Iglesias hoped this doctor was competent. She had a dread of Sybilla Frye infected with HIV and not knowing until it was too late.

  Over Pearline Tice’s shoulder, not more than five feet away, the girl in the bed gazed at Iglesias with heavy-lidded slow-blinking eyes; not overtly defiant or impudent, yet with a subtle twist of her puffy upper lip, that suggested a sneering little smile. Can’t make me talk to you! Can’t make me do any fucking thing I don’t want to do.

  A single window in the room and no furnishings except a bureau. The air was overheated, and smelled of the girl’s hot body and bedclothes that needed changing.

  Iglesias tried to address the girl over the great-grandmother’s shoulder, but Pearline Tice blocked her and shut the door, firmly.

  “Off’cer, this girl not a ‘criminal’—this girl was hurt. You and anybody else got no right to harass her. Please leave my home, now.”

  “Mrs. Tice, may I speak with you? Your great-granddaughter was found badly beaten, she has accused ‘white cops’ of having repeatedly raped her, beaten her, left her to die . . . You must understand that she needs further medical treatment, and she should have psychological counseling; whoever hurt her has committed a serious felony, and must be apprehended. We can’t just—pretend that nothing has happened . . .”

  Pearline Tice escorted Iglesias to the door. The elderly woman was scarcely five feet tall, frail-bodied, yet suffused with the strength of indignation.

  “Mrs. Tice, how much do you know of what happened to Sybilla? What did they tell you?”

  Pearline Tice had opened the door to the hall and was waiting for Iglesias to depart. Her face was a mass of fine wrinkles, like a soft glove that has been crumpled. Her hair was silvery white, thin, plaited shoulder-length. Her eyes were intelligent, alert, wary. Iglesias understood that the elderly Mrs. Tice was by nature a polite, gracious woman—it was painful to her to be rude to a visitor.

  White cop. White cops. The enemy.

  In a lowered voice, as if reading Iglesias’s thoughts, and touching Iglesias’s elbow in a grandmotherly gesture, Pearline Tice said, “How you come to be one of them, Off’cer? You have got to know the Pascayne PD, they racist and vicious to black folks however they can get away with it. They still killin us, treat us like animals like in the ‘riot’ in ’67—not so many of us being killed like in the past, so they call that ‘progress.’ If S’b’lla tells what they did to her, she would not ever be safe in Red Rock. And her mother, and anybody in her family. Our minister say, if she ‘bear witness’ it will be on TV and in the papers. But if she ‘bear witness’ she will be in danger. It will be hard for her to return to school where everybody talking about her. Say there are police officers—like you—wantin to help her. But they would never find the ones who hurt her, we know that. No white cops is ever gon be ‘arrested’ for hurtin a black girl. By this time they probly been transferred to some other police department downstate in some southern county of New Jersey where the Klan still rides.” Mrs. Tice laughed. Still she was gripping Iglesias’s elbow in an oddly intimate gesture.

  “Mrs. Tice, if nothing is done, whoever hurt Sybilla will get away with it. If she’s been sexually assaulted—he will do it again. Or—they will do it again.”

  Now gravely Mrs. Tice said, “Yes ma’am. They will do it again. Nobody gonna stop that.”

  Angel of Wrath

  Ednetta sayin to me, Anis my daughter is hurt bad.

  It was white men hurt Sybilla, she sayin white cops—five, six of them that kidnapped her and hid her away, raped and beat her, and hog-tied her in the cellar of the fish-food factory leavin her to die.

  And she looking at me. Scared, and her eyes wet with tears, and her face kind of melted-looking, and her mouth like something bruised.

  Anis? You hear me?—it was white men done it.

  And I’m—I am—in the kitchen of the house. Dragged a chair around, and leaning on the back of the chair heavy enough to break it. Damn leg hurting so, the pain come so fast.

  Anis? That’s where she was. S’b’lla missin, the white cops arrested her on the street she say. S’b’lla comin home from school Thursday, an they arrested her. And all that while when she was gone, the white cops had her.

  Anis, it was when I was lookin for her. All that time, lookin for S’b’lla on the street and beggin people help me find her an she be captive to these men.

  And Ednetta looking at me, that way of hers. Her face smudged like somebody rubbed his thumb over it.

  Ednetta breathing quick, and her hand against her heart like it be jumping in her chest.

  Sayin, Anis the terrible things they wrote on her—in dog shit on her body! Such hate for us, we are animals to them. NIGRA BITCH. KU KUX KLANN. Like they done to black people in the South—hangin from trees, cut with knives and burnt alive.

  S’b’lla life be saved, she be found in the fish-factory by some neighbor. She be taken by ambulance to the hospital—St. Anne’s. She gon have face-scars all her life. They will never arrest the white cops. Some kind of nasty joke, they pretendin to “investigate.” Anis I am so afraid.

  Coming against me the woman cryin with her eyes shut and pushin into my arms that feel like lead, so heavy. And I’m tryin to think what is the meaning of the woman’s words. What does the woman know, why the woman sayin these words? White men done it. White cops.

  Ednetta hidin her face against me. Hidin her eyes. Falling against me like she be drunk, or takin those damn pills of hers. A woman’s tears wettin my shirt, and my arms not wantin to touch her to push the woman away. That
smell of her, and her stiff-greasy hair in my face. Wantin to take hold of her, the woman, sink my fingers into her fat arms, shake and shake shake shake like you’d shake a wailing baby to shut it up forever.

  Forty years tormented by the fuckin black-feather thing like a vulture—Angel of Wrath.

  Sayin Kill you one of them white cops. You know you ain’t goin to respect yourself nor anybody else respect Anis Schutt if you ain’t accomplished this at least. Should have done when you was a boy, and they shot Lyander down in the street. And things they done to you, and you as a witness. And you ain’t no boy now, nigger.

  Fifty-two years old, Christ that old.

  Never thought Anis Schutt would live so old.

  Where the cops beat me, my throat, there’s something broke so people can’t hear me when I try to talk it’s like wind rustling in tall grasses. The doctor said trach-y-a.

  First thing I knew this foot, this foot in a heavy boot kicking me. Can’t remember how I got there—down on the pavement. Cops must’ve grabbed me from behind and the other boys ran. Threw me down and one of them was kicking me and pressed his boot against my neck pressing pressing like he wanted to break every bone of my neck and the other cops was yellin so maybe he stop. Left me there, and somebody came along to help me up saying the cops was lookin for some other black boy you damn lucky Anis Schutt it wasn’t you.

  Of my brothers an cousins Anis about the only one still alive. One son dead and the other in Rahway ain’t gon think of that. My girls all grown and moved away and they livin they lives without they daddy fuck them that’s all right, Anis ain’t beggin after anybody. Sisters and female cousins OK—a woman will find a way to live even if she crawl like a dog. But a man different.

  How many of people I knew they’d killed or beat or incarcerated including my boys, the white cops.

  Any color skin of a cop, he’s a white cop.

  Has to be. If he isn’t, he ain’t a cop.

  This black-feather thing sayin Your time runnin out Anis. You gettin old an your sorry ass slow.

  Takin them painkiller pills Ednetta gets for arthritis, fuckin bad arthritis in my hands, legs, hips. Wet weather ridin the garbage truck, Pascayne city sanitation, last time I quit walkin off the job they say Anis you quit again you ain’t ever comin back and I’m telling them That’s right motherfuckers. Ain’t never comin back.

  Ednetta say, This female cop come to the house lookin for S’b’lla an wantin to talk to you Anis.

  All I been telling her Anis, you ain’t here a lot of the time. And that is true.

  An I been telling her, you a good father to my children. And that is true.

  What Ednetta wants me to say to her, I ain’t goin to say it. Fuck the woman tryin to manipulate me.

  Like she is savin me. Like she is put herself between the cops and Anis Schutt.

  Ednetta a good woman if you could mash a pillow over her face when she talk too much an get excited an her eyes jumpin in her face and sweat on her face. I know, Ednetta a good woman an a Christian woman an Ednetta love me.

  All these years I been with Ednetta she never once ask about my wife Tana or any other women.

  Tana my wife I was crazy for, beat with my fists till she wasn’t screamin or movin any longer an her face broke, that had been a beautiful face. And Tana’s eyes that were beautiful eyes, that turned against me.

  A flame came over my brain like the flame of the gas stove flarin up higher than you expect. Never knew what I had done except to see the results of it, and had to know it was me and nobody else.

  Anis what did you do? Anis—what did you do to your wife?

  Tana my only true wife. That was long-ago. Of the women since Tana too many to count or recall. She the only one meant anything to me, my first woman I feel that way about. Crazy for that woman and when I killed her, I killed that feelin too.

  Ednetta say, A woman loves a man more than her own babies if she is a real woman. Anis, that how I love you.

  On her knees on the kitchen floor, an sobbin. Grabbin me around the legs like it’s all I can do to keep from kickin the woman away.

  That girl too young to be whorin like she is, and the mother not fit to discipline her. None of this I’m gon say to the woman, she know already who to blame and that is herself.

  This was late that Friday night. Middle-of-the-night. I’d been out, and come back now. Been drinkin and that heaviness in my head, arms and legs. And the woman cryin, and wettin my shirt and my knees and beggin, Anis do you love me, please Anis you love me, an I’m not answering anything and she says again begging, Anis you love me don’t you, so I say Shit. Yes.

  After a heavy rain, and the damn river floodin. And the streets like little rivers. And our school was shut, there was oily water in the first-floor classrooms, and the lights gone out. A gang of us runnin wild on Trenton Avenue where the stores were closed early and some of the iron gratings not all the way down so you could break the glass an reach up inside like at the liquor store where people be helpin themselves but by the time we get there, everythin gone. And there’s a squad car pulls up and the cops get out yelling at us and their guns is in their hands. There’s water in the street, rising onto the sidewalk, and river water mixed with rain rushing so your feet are almost pulled out from under you. And it’s dark—no light except the squad car and cops’ flashlights. And there’s a telephone pole tilted like it’s about to fall and a cable is hanging from it in the water. And the cops say to Oscar, he’s the oldest of us, and the biggest, though he ain’t more than fourteen, get over there, boy, and pick up that cable. And Oscar is tryin to laugh like he believe the cops is joking—(we don’t believe they is joking nor does Oscar)—and the cops say it again, You boy, you stupid nigger, get your ass over there an pick up that cable. And Oscar is scared, we all scared but afraid to turn our back on the white cops pointin they guns at us, to provoke them to shoot us in the back—(this had happened to people we knew, sometimes the cops tell you to run before they shoot)—but finly Oscar wades into the water, he don’t even touch the cable with his hand but only step on it beneath the water and in that instant Oscar go up in flames, it is a “live wire” he has stepped on and in an instant electrocuted and hardly time for Oscar to scream, he has fallen down burning alive into the nasty water.

  And the cops yellin at us, climb back inside the squad car and drive along Trenton and are gone.

  That was 1947. I was twelve years old.

  You’d find the bodies in the street or in an alley where they ran and fell. The white cops had told them to run, and shot them in the back. In August 1967 they said it was the “spill-over” from Newark—“race riot.” They was waitin for Pascayne to go up in flames, the cops was practicing tear gas in a place in Red Rock behind the precinct where the tear-gas smell would make you sick, coming out of the building and everybody in the neighborhood could smell it, the cops was hoping for a “race riot” and the mayor say on TV the police force was given instructions “shoot to kill” if there was burnin and lootin like in Newark and Detroit. And the state troopers, and the National Guard where some of the white farm-boys who’d never seen Negro faces close up were shooting their rifles into windows at those faces. After the first few hours of burning and shooting there was “martial law” in Pascayne meaning the cops could shoot anybody they wanted—any age from babies to elderly if their faces were black. There was shots fired back at them—plenty of shots. There was fires set, Molotov cocktails tossed at cop cars. There was firemen carryin guns on the firetrucks, then the trucks stopped coming into Red Rock. And fires burnin out of control. And our mothers screaming No no no!—you are burning where we live. And if you stepped outside into the street, if you were a black boy, no matter your age, they had the right to shoot you down dead like my brother Lyander. And if you stood by a window, and there was snipers on the roof of your house, you would be shot dead. Forty, fifty shots fired into a bedroom, and a baby and his grandmother killed. Any shots fired by the cops and soldiers includin
g machine-gun fire, into people’s darkened windows, or lighted windows, or vehicles in the street, or at somebody in a doorway trapped there when the shooting started, or two people walking fast together to get home by curfew—“snipers” was the reason.

  Came the Angel of Wrath with black-feather wings sayin in a loud voice every hour of every day since that time You got to kill you one of them white cops Anis. You ain’t gon die a righteous death if you fail in this.

  The Good Neighbor

  All these days, then a week, two weeks—she’d waited.

  Waited for a proper time. Not wanting to be intrusive or pushy. She was not intrusive or pushy. That was not Ada Furst’s personality.

  Waited for the mother Ednetta Frye to call her, or send some word to her—at least. Some word thanking Ada Furst for saving Sybilla Frye’s life, and inviting Ada to visit the girl and her.

  That poor girl Sybilla Frye?—I was the one who found her.

  Hog-tied in that factory cellar. Left to die by white cops who’d beat her and raped her.

  Heard her calling for help—nobody else heard.

  Never shut her eyes to sleep now without hearing the girl’s plaintive cry like a trapped creature. Never shut her eyes without seeing the girl hog-tied in the cellar lying on her side, on that filthy tarpaulin.

  And the girl’s (blackened, swollen) eyes shifting to her, in such hope, eagerness.

  Hadn’t been for me, Sybilla Frye would be dead now.

  She’d run for help. Run screaming, so a woman in the next-door apartment building called 911.

  Then, she’d returned to the girl. She’d waited for the medics. She’d called to them, to direct them to the girl.

  Heard her crying in the night. I knew—knew it was something terrible . . .

  Red Rock was talking of nothing else except that girl, white cops, rape, beatin and left to die but then, after a while, people weren’t talking about Sybilla Frye so much.