Read Online The Sacrifice by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
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beaten child, with a gat-toothed smile, looking almost shyly now at the police officer.
Iglesias wanted to take the girl’s hand, to comfort and encourage her. But she dared not touch her, after Sybilla had shrunk from her.
“If you saw a van, you could maybe compare it to the van they’d taken you in? You could try to describe it?”
Sybilla shook her head yes. She could try.
“When they left you in the factory cellar, they told you they would kill you, if you told anyone? Who said these words?”
Sybilla shook her head, she didn’t know.
“Did one of the men say this, or others? Did they all say this?”
Sybilla hid her face in her hands. Mrs. Frye whispered to her, and drew her hands away.
The interview had exhausted the girl. Iglesias was exhausted.
Thinking White cop! White cop.
Thinking None of this story is true. This is all a lie. The mother has coached her. The mother has beat her. The mother’s boyfriend—her own boyfriend—someone she knows . . .
Mrs. Frye was embracing her daughter. The two of them were weeping, wet-eyed.
“Ma’am, this interview over now. My girl got to get home where she safe, and her mama can take care of her.”
And there was no recording of this interview! Iglesias had known that was a mistake.
Only her notes, and the bright yellow Post-its.
Only her word.
“Mrs. Frye, if we could just—a few more minutes, and . . .”
“I said no! My daughter’s health come first, before anythin else. You got this girl to tell you somethin could get her killed, and you better not misuse it, or S’b’lla, I’m warnin you—Off’cer.”
Off’cer was spoken in indignation as Mrs. Frye heaved herself up from the gurney and gathered Sybilla into her arms. The girl was unresisting now, and hid her face in the older woman’s bosom.
Iglesias backed away sick and stunned.
“‘White cop.’”
Her very mouth seemed to have gone numb.
And how many times in the weeks and months to come would the thought come to her, remorse like a stab in the gut— But what if it is true? What if white men did debase her? And we didn’t believe her? God help me to know what is truth and what is false.
Red Rock
H og-tied and left to die.
The Frye girl, fourteen. Beaten and raped and shit-on and left to die in some factory cellar.
She sayin it was white cops. In a cop-van drivin around with a black girl they arrest like pretendin she a hooker so they use her like some sex-slave, then they rub shit on her, and write nasty words on her, and dump her and left her to die.
Except she ain’t die, she been rescued. By her own lady schoolteacher!
Aint died and tellin what the white cops done now see what the fuckers gon do, to punish themselves.
In Red Rock it began to be told. In the small storefront businesses, in the taverns, rib joints and diners of Camden Avenue, Penescott, Ventor, Twelfth. In the brownstone row houses of Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth streets and in the tenements of East Ventor, Crater, and Depp. In the several towers of the Earl Warren high-rise project on the river at Twelfth Street, its gritty-floored foyers, erraticallyoperating elevators, shadowy staircases and corridors and vast open courtyards ravaged as earth over which a Biblical pestilence has raged. In the hair salons, nail salons, wig shops, beer wine and liquor stores, groceries and pawnshops and bail-bond shops and Red Rock’s single drugstore—(a bleak Walgreens of narrow corridors and a low stamped-tin ceiling doomed for closure within the year)—at the windswept intersection of Camden and Freund. In Passaic County Family Services, Polk Memorial Medical Center, Planned Parenthood and Veterans’ Furniture Outlet and Goodwill as in the defaced bus shelters of Camden, Trenton, Crater, Jersey and West River Street. In the vicinity of the Pascayne Police Department Fifth Precinct on First Street with its commandeered side streets of white-and-green cruisers and vans parked as in a stalled but
Iglesias wanted to take the girl’s hand, to comfort and encourage her. But she dared not touch her, after Sybilla had shrunk from her.
“If you saw a van, you could maybe compare it to the van they’d taken you in? You could try to describe it?”
Sybilla shook her head yes. She could try.
“When they left you in the factory cellar, they told you they would kill you, if you told anyone? Who said these words?”
Sybilla shook her head, she didn’t know.
“Did one of the men say this, or others? Did they all say this?”
Sybilla hid her face in her hands. Mrs. Frye whispered to her, and drew her hands away.
The interview had exhausted the girl. Iglesias was exhausted.
Thinking White cop! White cop.
Thinking None of this story is true. This is all a lie. The mother has coached her. The mother has beat her. The mother’s boyfriend—her own boyfriend—someone she knows . . .
Mrs. Frye was embracing her daughter. The two of them were weeping, wet-eyed.
“Ma’am, this interview over now. My girl got to get home where she safe, and her mama can take care of her.”
And there was no recording of this interview! Iglesias had known that was a mistake.
Only her notes, and the bright yellow Post-its.
Only her word.
“Mrs. Frye, if we could just—a few more minutes, and . . .”
“I said no! My daughter’s health come first, before anythin else. You got this girl to tell you somethin could get her killed, and you better not misuse it, or S’b’lla, I’m warnin you—Off’cer.”
Off’cer was spoken in indignation as Mrs. Frye heaved herself up from the gurney and gathered Sybilla into her arms. The girl was unresisting now, and hid her face in the older woman’s bosom.
Iglesias backed away sick and stunned.
“‘White cop.’”
Her very mouth seemed to have gone numb.
And how many times in the weeks and months to come would the thought come to her, remorse like a stab in the gut— But what if it is true? What if white men did debase her? And we didn’t believe her? God help me to know what is truth and what is false.
Red Rock
H og-tied and left to die.
The Frye girl, fourteen. Beaten and raped and shit-on and left to die in some factory cellar.
She sayin it was white cops. In a cop-van drivin around with a black girl they arrest like pretendin she a hooker so they use her like some sex-slave, then they rub shit on her, and write nasty words on her, and dump her and left her to die.
Except she ain’t die, she been rescued. By her own lady schoolteacher!
Aint died and tellin what the white cops done now see what the fuckers gon do, to punish themselves.
In Red Rock it began to be told. In the small storefront businesses, in the taverns, rib joints and diners of Camden Avenue, Penescott, Ventor, Twelfth. In the brownstone row houses of Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth streets and in the tenements of East Ventor, Crater, and Depp. In the several towers of the Earl Warren high-rise project on the river at Twelfth Street, its gritty-floored foyers, erraticallyoperating elevators, shadowy staircases and corridors and vast open courtyards ravaged as earth over which a Biblical pestilence has raged. In the hair salons, nail salons, wig shops, beer wine and liquor stores, groceries and pawnshops and bail-bond shops and Red Rock’s single drugstore—(a bleak Walgreens of narrow corridors and a low stamped-tin ceiling doomed for closure within the year)—at the windswept intersection of Camden and Freund. In Passaic County Family Services, Polk Memorial Medical Center, Planned Parenthood and Veterans’ Furniture Outlet and Goodwill as in the defaced bus shelters of Camden, Trenton, Crater, Jersey and West River Street. In the vicinity of the Pascayne Police Department Fifth Precinct on First Street with its commandeered side streets of white-and-green cruisers and vans parked as in a stalled but
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