The Sacrifice

by Joyce Carol Oates

  But it was the only way, the way of desperation, and fear and shame—to walk out of the room breaking the spell of the man’s eyes not daring a backward glance.

  The Temptation

  Like to escaped with my life. Jesus!”

  She was laughing telling whoever she met. Whoever came by the house. Even Anis Schutt, she’d debated telling. You know Rev’end Marus Mudrick? He come to Pasc’n to meet with me specially today.

  But no, Ednetta knew better than to tell Anis Schutt.

  Anything of her private life, her private-womanly-life, she’d never have told Anis Schutt or any damn man.

  Martyr. Saint. Joan of Arc.

  Sister Ednetta. Will protect you.

  Could not sleep for hearing the man’s velvety words! With Anis snoring and snuffling beside her yet she heard the other’s voice like the very voice of Jesus.

  In her veins flowed something molten-hot, behind her eyelids her seared and blinded eyes filled with tears of such emotion, Ednetta could not have said if it was excitement, or fear, or simple gratitude she was feeling like when Jesus touches you to raise you from the dead, returns the breath to you like Jairus’s daughter you would not doubt Jesus but fall to your knees weeping Jesus thank you for my life O Jesus thank you for my life restored to me.

  Never had Ednetta met anyone like Marus Mudrick. Her soul felt ravaged, slaked. Like Anis Schutt that first time when Anis had been young, and Ednetta had been young, delicate and succulent as a newly ripened peach, which had not been, Ednetta thought, for a long time now.

  Black justice. Two point five million.

  The Seduction

  Doorbell, and Ednetta in her chenille robe peering to see who the hell it was.

  “Ma’am? Is this ‘Sister Ednetta Frye’?”

  Sister! Blindly Ednetta took the pen from the delivery man’s fingers, and signed the receipt.

  Blindly signed, and blindly stumbled into the kitchen with a bouquet of one dozen long-stemmed bloodred roses in her arms from your friend & protector Reverend Marus C. Mudrick.

  “Jesus, Mama! They be bringing that shit to the wrong house, an you gon have to pay for it!”—Sybilla laughed.

  Ednetta was feeling too faint to argue with the girl. Just too—too faint—and her heart pounding so hard—it was easier to set the delicate flowers in the sink and search for a vase while Sybilla jeered and mocked as if the sight of the roses was frightening to her, too.

  “Got to be the first time anybody sent flowers here.”

  Seeing her mother’s stricken smile, and the way Ednetta slumped into a chair as if her legs had given way beneath her, Sybilla quieted and searched for the card, that had fallen into the sink.

  “Mama, who the fuck’s this—‘Reverend Marus C. Mudrick.’ Ain’t that some famous name like ‘Martin Luther King’?”

  Ednetta shook her head yes.

  “What’s some famous rev’end want with you, Mama?”

  “Not me, S’b’lla. You.”

  She was determined to say no. Yet somehow, she said yes.

  Sybilla had said no! Fucking no, Mama. Yet somehow, Sybilla too said yes.

  Arrangements were made for Ednetta Frye and her daughter Sybilla to be brought by limousine to the headquarters of the Care Ministry of Central New Jersey, on Fort Street, Newark. A Lincoln Town Car, shiny-black as a hearse, driven by a uniformed driver, bore the apprehensive mother and daughter dressed as for Sunday church services to what had been a private home, a red-brick Federalist town house, in a once-exclusive neighborhood of Newark now mostly small businesses, medical offices, and churches in need of renovation.

  In the Care Ministry, Ednetta and Sybilla were seated in Reverend Mudrick’s outer office which was staffed by young light-skinned black women so attractive, so stylishly dressed, personable as TV anchors, both mother and daughter stared in abashed silence. The outer office appeared to have been a dining room at one time: the white ceiling was high, and ornately molded; there was a single crystal chandelier, and an elegant marble floor, just slightly begrimed but impressive. A curved staircase led to the second floor—very likely, the Reverend’s private quarters. Prominent on the walls were dozens of framed photographs at which Ednetta and Sybilla stared in amazement: there, at various stages of his life, and always smiling broadly, was Reverend Marus Mudrick with Charlie Parker (“Harlem, 1954”), Mahalia Jackson (“Harlem, 1957”), Jackie Robinson (“NYC, 1963”), Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (“Alabama State Capitol 1964”), U.S. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell (“Washington, D.C., 1965”), Reverend Jesse Jackson (“Newark, 1969”), Aretha Franklin (“Harlem, 1974”), Muhammad Ali (“NYC, 1977”), New Jersey governor Brendan Byrne (“Trenton, 1980”), Sammy Davis Jr. (“Las Vegas, 1982”), James Brown (“Newark, 1983”), Diana Ross (“NYC, 1984”), former president Jimmy Carter (“NYC, 1985”), Bill Cosby (“NYC, 1985”), Tina Turner (“NYC, 1986”), Michael Jackson (“Newark, 1986”), Whitney Houston (“LA, 1987”) . . . Sybilla had gone to stand before the more recent of these, whispering to Ednetta: “Ohh Mama, look here—Whitn’y Houst’n? Michael Jackson? Jesus.”

  Also prominent in the Reverend’s outer office were plaques and medallions commemorating “New Jersey Citizen of the Year Reverend Marus Mudrick”—“New Jersey Black Outreach Honor Roll Reverend Marus Mudrick”—“New Jersey Hall of Fame Reverend Marus Mudrick”—as well as a number of framed honorary doctorate diplomas from Rutgers-Newark, Rutgers-Camden, Trenton State, Stockton State, Bloomfield College, and Howard University.

  “Mama, I’m scared. What’s this Rev’end want with us?”

  Ednetta took Sybilla’s hand which was icy-cold and seemed small to her, a child’s hand.

  “Honey, I got some idea. We gon be all right.”

  After forty suspenseful minutes, one of the smiling young women escorted Ednetta and Sybilla into Reverend Mudrick’s office. At once the Reverend came to them to take their hands, each in turn. For a portly man he was light on his feet, nimble as a boxer. His smile was quick and dazzling-white with the most subtle hint of a gold filling in an upper incisor. A pungent scent wafted from his oiled hair. “Sister Ednetta! So good to see you again.” And there was Sybilla looking very young and dazed. “And this is—Sybilla? ‘The little lady who will start a great war’—we hope!”

  Side by side mother and daughter were seated facing Reverend Mudrick across the expanse of his gleaming mahogany desk. Abashed and mostly silent for the better part of the next hour they listened to the Reverend speak. He began—quietly—by explaining that black women were “race victims”—“potential prey” for white men—“all black women, at all times.” During slave-times, black females were the actual possessions of white masters, and their “white-bastard spawn” were possessions; these white “masters” still existed in America. Where there were whites, there were masters.

  “You, Sybilla, are a race victim, a martyr, and a sacrifice. But you will be our saint—our Joan of Arc.”

  Sybilla licked her lips, uncertain how to reply. Martyr? Sacrifice? Saint? She had heard of Joan of Arc, but vaguely.

  “What was done to you, Sister Sybilla, was an unspeakable crime. And that is the issue—it is unspeakable by the white press, the white cops, the white politicians, the whited sepulcher. But that which is unspeakable by the white enemy is speakable by us. That is my mission, Sister Sybilla—Sister Ednetta. That is why I have brought you to the Care Ministry today.”

  Enthralled and intimidated by these words which were both matter-of-fact and beautifully modulated, like speech you might hear from the pulpit, or on TV, mother and daughter sat scarcely breathing.

  Marus Mudrick’s desk was the largest desk either Ednetta or Sybilla had ever seen, and made of the most elegant wood; it was piled with important-looking letters, papers, documents. Even the phone was unusual—a black phone, but trimmed in gold. In a corner of the room was an American flag on an eight-foot pole, hanging at half-mast; on the walls more photographs and diplomas.

 
“You are wondering why the flag is at half-mast, Sister Ednetta and Sister Sybilla? It is at half-mast in perpetuity—to commemorate the thousands of lynched black men and women in the history of the United States—the unspoken history. What was done to you, Sister Sybilla, is a kind of lynching—except you have lived to name your accusers, and to see justice done.” Marus Mudrick paused, seeing that his listeners were rapt with—was it awe of him? shyness of him, who represented to them a way of being, even of speaking, utterly foreign to them?—or was it female unease, anxiety, in the presence of a dominant male?

  “When you are unjustly and cruelly treated, your instinct is to retreat—to ‘turn the other cheek’; but such an instinct is contrary to God’s plan for the black people. Jesus said, ‘I bring not peace but a sword’—this is the Jesus to which the black people must cling. Our martyred brother Reverend King knew, as Gandhi knew, that you cannot meet force with force when the oppressor will slay you—your strategy must be a different way, that of passivity, strategic ‘non-violence.’ This was not an ideal situation for many civil rights activists who were murdered or beaten in the South in the early days of the crusade—but there was the ‘Dream’—and it came to be, in time. ‘We shall overcome’—and we did, to a degree. But you cannot confront an enemy like Hitler with ‘passivity’—‘non-violence’—such a man will destroy you. Strategies must be modulated, to meet changing situations. The 1960s were a time of struggle that is—in some quarters—past; in 1987, in confronting the enemy, we will use a different strategy. Yes—one day soon we may march—we may ‘demonstrate’ in the streets—but initially, we will use white weapons against the white enemy—the media.”

  A poisonous merriment shone in Marus Mudrick’s eyes. Ednetta could not have named it but was thrilled to see it. She clutched at Sybilla’s icy-cold hand to comfort the girl. How touchingly small the hand felt to her. Her child!

  As the Reverend continued to speak, his voice grew louder by degrees, and more declamatory; you could hear the preacherly cadences, with a faint trace of a Virginia accent, beneath the percussive rapid-fire New Jersey accent.

  “Sister Ednetta, and Sister Sybilla—know this: whites were livin in caves, when the black race built empires. The ancient world was ours. Out of the bowels of Africa—our empires. Philosophy, math, astrology—before Socrates and the Greek queers, we had taught these. We had discovered and refined these. All of the arts—painting and sculpture, speech, music—music be our special gift, all the world know that!—the black race originated, and the paler races replicated. This is plain-fact history—you aint gon find in any white-folks history book!”

  Ednetta said hesitantly, “I heard this. Yessir.”

  “In this campaign for justice, Reverend Marus Mudrick vows that he will extract victory from the jaws of humiliation and defeat, and he will protect both the mother and the daughter from further harm by the white rapists. He will raise you to a level far beyond anything you know—you will no longer be martyrs but saints. Tell me, Sister Sybilla, what was done to you, exactly as you recall.”

  Ednetta, holding Sybilla’s hand, felt her daughter flinch as if she’d been slapped.

  Sybilla turned to Ednetta like a little girl, hiding her face in Mama’s neck. Whispering Mama no, I can’t.

  Though Reverend Mudrick urged Sybilla to speak, gently, without a hint of impatience, Sybilla cringed against her mother, and would not even look at him.

  Reverend Mudrick exchanged a glance with Ednetta. Curtly the Reverend nodded, and frowned. “Sister Ednetta, tell your daughter please speak.”

  But Sybilla refused. Now turned awkwardly in her seat, hiding against her mother who was trying both to comfort her, and to urge her to answer Marus Mudrick. But Sybilla only just wept Mama no! Don’t make me, Mama.

  Ednetta said, apologetically, “Rev’end, I tried to tell you—my girl been hurt bad, an in her mind she have bad dreams and memories—we was hopin they would heal, an go away. Tried to explain—”

  “Yes, but you are here now in the office of the Care Ministry of Central New Jersey, as others have failed you and will fail you. And we are deliberating strategy, Sister Ednetta. There is no doubt in my mind—in my soul—that we are going forward with this campaign. We are not going backward, we are not admitting defeat. You will cooperate with us—for the sake of black liberation. Each black individual has a ‘small’ destiny, and a ‘large’ destiny. The one is just the personal life but the other is the life of the race—where you matter to your race. In some of us, the small, personal life is sacrificed to the larger life—Jackie Robinson, for instance, ‘integrating’ Major League Baseball—the courage of that great man!—enduring years of abuse from the most ignorant vicious brayin racists who’d have lynched him if they could’ve got to him. There was a great man, and a great black man—for Robinson, the sacrifice was not in vain but an alteration of history. For your daughter, the sacrifice will not be in vain—I am certain. The fact is, Sybilla Frye was kidnapped, raped, beaten and left to die by white police officers in early October of this year, when she was fourteen years old and returning home from school—that is the essence of the terrible crime, Sister Ednetta—yes?”

  Ednetta, hugging Sybilla, pressing her face against the girl’s hair, shuddered. It wasn’t clear that she’d heard Reverend Mudrick’s question. Mother and daughter huddled together as if very cold.

  “Sister Ednetta? The accusation is a true one, is it not?”

  Ednetta, not meeting Reverend Mudrick’s eye, nodded yes.

  Adding then, still not meeting the man’s eye, that Sybilla was fifteen, not fourteen.

  “In the simplest terms: the black girl was attacked by white cops. Yes?”

  Hesitantly, Ednetta nodded yes.

  “There have been no arrests, and hardly any investigation by the Pascayne police, or by any law enforcement officers?”

  Ednetta nodded yes.

  “No coverage of the case in the local media. In any media.”

  Ednetta nodded yes.

  “But there are medical records? At the Pascayne ER?”

  Ednetta nodded yes.

  Reverend Mudrick contemplated the mother and daughter before him for several seconds, brooding and silent. Ednetta was uneasily aware of the man’s attention, and did not dare to lift her eyes to his.

  He don’t believe us! He will let us go.

  But then, Reverend Mudrick drew in a deep breath. Ednetta dared to glance up at him, and saw that he was smiling.

  How handsome Marus Mudrick was! Especially when he smiled, and you felt his approval, his manly affection, sweeping over you.

  A warm melting submissive sensation. Like kneeling to take Jesus into your heart—you didn’t know you would do it, you didn’t want to do it, the risk of ruining stockings if you knelt on the church floor, but then suddenly a sensation like weeping rose in your chest, into your throat, you began to bawl, you were on your knees bawling to Jesus to come into your heart.

  In a kindly voice Reverend Mudrick was saying, as if something had been decided: “Dear Sister Ednetta! And dear Sister Sybilla! My brother Byron—the revered civil rights attorney-at-law Byron Mudrick—will work with me on this crusade for justice. Next time we meet, Byron will have some questions for you. If Sybilla doesn’t care to discuss this traumatic incident, she will not be obliged to. We are here to protect, not intimidate. All questions I need answered I can ask you, Sister Ednetta. That will be sufficient. I promise to shield you and your daughter from harm—we will control all access to Sybilla—as she is a minor, as well as a rape victim, it is not up to her to be interrogated; she will not be required to answer police questions, to ‘testify,’ or ‘swear on a Bible’—that white-folks shit they use to intimidate us. It will be the court of public opinion we gon apply to, not the Nazi-racist-swine court that ain’t gon give a black man justice unless it is dragged out of his white-honky ass.” With the timing of a TV comedian the Reverend slurred these last words, in comic-black-menace dialect. Ednet
ta was too startled to respond but Sybilla, huddling in her arms, laughed.

  “There will be media ‘interest’—requests for interviews—many people wanting to purchase your story—both your stories. The mother’s story in such a case is almost as interesting as the victim’s story—you will see. We will be discreet about this. We will look before we leap. We will not leap. The kind of white folks we gon appeal to is likin to punish white folks—not themselves—but other white folks. The feeling is, white folks want to think they are ‘friends of the Negro’—while they neighbors are racist cracker-swine. Jews the most like this, they anxious they ain’t ‘hundred-percent white.” Reverend Mudrick laughed heartily now, seeing the look of bafflement in Ednetta Frye’s face.

  It seemed that the Reverend had a document for them to sign—“Not a contract per se but a ‘letter of agreement’ drawn up by my brother Byron. Before you leave, Sister Ednetta, and Sister Sybilla, I will ask you to sign this—here is a pen . . . I’ll call in my assistant to witness our signatures.”

  Ednetta took the contract from the Reverend’s fingers and looked at it warily.

  “As your daughter is a minor, Sister Ednetta, you will sign beside her name as her guardian, as well as by your own name. D’you see?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “The ‘letter of agreement’ is a formality only. It addresses the issue of ‘exclusivity’—that, so long as Reverend Marus Mudrick and Attorney-at-Law Byron Mudrick are your representatives, you will not engage with any other ‘representatives’; and you will follow our strategy at all times.”

  Sybilla burrowed deeper into Ednetta’s embrace. “Mama! What’m I spost to do?”

  “You will do only as you are told,” Marus Mudrick said in his kindly voice, as if he were speaking to a small child and not a big girl of fifteen as tall as her mother. “You will not need to make decisions, ever: I will make them. My brother Byron will be your ‘legal counsel.’ If it’s required for anyone to talk to the police, or prosecutors, or the media—Byron and I will talk to them. Your mother will give your statement to me, and we will work on it. We will perfect it. The ‘kidnapping’—‘inside the police van’—the ‘white cops’—what they did to you, and how many times; how long you were kept captive, and where you were found; the injuries you sustained, which are in the medical files at the hospital ER. We will practice your statement until you have memorized it and you will not ever have to re-think it, or re-word it, Sister Sybilla. That is my promise.”