The Sacrifice

Sybilla shook her head yes.

“You told your mother—five men?”

Sybilla shook her head yes.

“Not boys but men.”

Sybilla shook her head yes.

“And not men you know?”

Sybilla shook her head no.

“Can you describe them? Just—anything.”

Sybilla stared at the floor. Mrs. Frye was crowded close beside her now, an arm around the girl’s shoulders.

“The color of their skin? You said they used the word nigra—”

Mrs. Frye urged her to speak. “Come on, girl! Was they black men, or—some other? Who’d be sayin ‘nigra’ except some other?”

Sybilla stared at the floor. She didn’t seem resistant or defiant now, but exhausted. Iglesias worried that the girl was about to faint or lapse into some sort of mental state like catatonia.

Once, interviewing a stricken and near-mute girl of twelve, Iglesias had given the girl Post-its upon which to write, and the girl had done so. Iglesias gave Sybilla a (bright yellow, cheering) Post-it pad and a pencil to write on and, after some hesitation, Sybilla printed:

WHITE COP

“‘White cop’—”

Iglesias tried not to show the surprise she felt.

Mrs. Frye took the Post-it from Iglesias’s hand, read it and began to wail as if white cop was a death sentence.

Iglesias asked if the “white cop” had hurt Sybilla?

Sybilla shook her head yes.

“Was just one of the men ‘white’—or a ‘cop’?”

Sybilla shook her head to indicate she didn’t know.

“How did you know the man was a ‘cop,’ Sybilla?”

Sybilla wrote on the Post-it:

WEAR A BAGDE

“He was ‘wearing a badge’? When he raped you, he was ‘wearing a badge’?”

Sybilla shook her head, she didn’t know. Thought so, yes.

Her eyelids were drooping, her mouth was slack with exhaustion.

“Were any of the others ‘wearing a badge’?”

Sybilla shook her head, she didn’t know.

“Could you describe him? The ‘white cop’?”

Sybilla printed on a Post-it:

YELOW HAIR

“Could you say what his approximate age was?”

Sybilla shook her head, uncertain.

“Thirty? Thirty-five?”

Sybilla shook her head.

“My age is thirty-six. Was he older or younger than me, do you think?”

Sybilla squinted at Iglesias. Her left eye seemed to be losing focus but her right eye was fixed on Iglesias. On a Post-it she wrote:

AGE 30

“Were the other men ‘white’ also? Could you see?”

Sybilla printed on the Post-it:

THEY WHITE

Sybilla took back the Post-it and printed:

THEY ALL WHITE

“These men abducted you, kept you captive in a van, beat and raped you, intermittently for three days and three nights? Where was the van parked, do you have any idea?”

Sybilla shook her head, she didn’t know.

“Could you describe the van? Inside, outside?”

Sybilla shook her head slowly, she wasn’t sure.

Sybilla smiled, a nervous twitch of a smile. How like a child she looked, a badly 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.