The Sacrifice

Damn phone began to ring, she’d thought she’d taken the receiver off the hook. She took that precaution now.

It was true: Sybilla Frye wasn’t in the brownstone at 939 Third Street. Soon after they’d returned from St. Anne’s Hospital and before Anis had returned to the house Ednetta had taken the girl away to stay with Ednetta’s seventy-nine-year-old grandmother who lived in a ground-floor apartment in the dead end of Eleventh Street at the river.

High above Ednetta’s grandmother’s windows was I-95 northbound, the elevated Turnpike. There was a near-continuous shudder and vibration of traffic in the apartment like the breathing of a great beast. The air was a pale-cinnamon haze.

Sybilla’s great-grandmother Pearline Tice had not been informed of the nature of the terrible hurt done to the battered girl but only S’b’lla needin to spend some time with you, Grandma. Somebody act bad with her now she gon conv’lesce. She give you trouble, call me quick!

Ednetta’s other children still living at home—the younger son and daughter—were in school when the detectives came to the door. Anis had been out and Ednetta didn’t know for sure—often, she didn’t know, and could not ask—if Anis intended to be back that night for supper.

(Anis had other places he stayed, some nights. Anis had sporadic if precisely unidentified “work” that seemed to pay fairly well—judging by cash he set out on the kitchen table for Ednetta when he was in a generous mood. It was enough for Ednetta that Anis Schutt kept his clothes and things with her—meaning he’d always be coming back to her. Other places, other women were temporary.)

Now that Sybilla was out of the house, that was a calming influence on Anis.

Ednetta hadn’t told him about Sybilla hog-tied in the fish-food factory, and taken to the ER. She hadn’t told him that Sybilla had been questioned by a Pascayne PD detective. Not yet.

Anis knew some of what had happened. But not all.

It was like Lyander shot down dead over on Freund Street and his body not found until morning when the curfew lifted. You know that something has happened, it will hit you hard and irrevocably but you don’t know (yet) what it is and you are in no hurry to know.

That morning Anis had awakened late. You tiptoed around Anis sprawled naked and snoring in bed one of his muscled arms flung out like a gnarly tree limb. And his face that was an ugly-scarred not-young face twitching and grimacing in sleep. Standing above the man seeing his eyeballs shifting inside the tight-shut lids which meant he was dreaming Ednetta lapsed into a dream of her own recalling her friend from girlhood Natalia who’d murdered her common-law husband (as the newspapers would identify him) while he’d slept in just this way, gripping in both hands a revolver belonging to the man, pointing the barrel at the man’s forehead from a distance of no more than three inches then pulling the trigger. It was him or me, he’d have killed me Natalia said and though this was true, they’d convicted Natalia of “cold-blooded” second-degree murder and sent her to the women’s prison at Trenton twenty-five years to life.

Ednetta loved Anis too much for anything like that.

Even if it became necessary Ednetta wasn’t the one for anything like that.

So, you moved quiet and took care not to close any door with a click, not to waken the man. Stumbling out of the room to dress in the bathroom and not to use the faucet that squeaked, and not to flush the toilet that made too much damn noise. And if you turned on TV to see local morning news you kept the volume down almost to mute.

(Nothing on the TV about “Sybilla Frye”—yet. There’d been no official charges made, no news released to the media. Ednetta reasoned that so long as she kept away from all cops, and kept Sybilla away, there would never be this news and maybe it would all just fade away like things do.)

The younger children had learned also to hush, to be very quiet not to awaken their stepdaddy. They were gone to school by the time Anis staggered out for breakfast and by this time Sybilla would have been gone also if she’d been in the house. No reason for Anis to ask about her and he hadn’t asked. Hadn’t said a word. Silent in the kitchen devouring the breakfast Ednetta had prepared for him which was a hot breakfast—sausages fried in grease, corn bread—and strong-smelling coffee whitened with milk the way Anis liked it and he hadn’t looked at her in fury or in shame though he’d grunted in farewell rising from the table, grabbing his jacket and his cap and departing with footsteps quick for a man so heavy, like mallet-thuds on the floor.

All he’d been hearing on the street that week, had to be hearing and he hadn’t said a word to Ednetta.

Between the girl and the stepfather was a treacherous wild place Ednetta tried to avoid.

They were two of a kind, Ednetta thought: the girl, the stepfather.

She was the responsible one. She was the mother.

First thing he’d said moving into this house he’d said if these kids are under my roof with me, they are going to be disciplined by me. In Anis’s own way of speaking (which did not involve the employment of actual words you might recount, contemplate) he’d allowed her to know this. And he had his own boys he’d brought with him—big, brooding boys, not home half the time, or more than half the time, never mind them.

And Sybilla was just a young girl then, sixth grade, eleven years old, grateful to be taken up by the Tyne girls across the street, and the gorgeous Jamaican Gloria Estes who was their stepmother and braided the girls’ hair including Sybilla’s hair and it was like Sy billa adored them all and had no judgment. And the girls were running crazy-wild colliding with people on the sidewalk, elderly ladies, crippled men, that poor no-leg boy in his wheelchair in Hicks Square, giggling and screaming and in the Korean grocery two of them attracted the attention of the cashier (who was also the store owner) and another two wandered the aisles with schoolgirl innocence while slipping things into their pockets, licorice twists, salted peanuts, gummy worms, mints, no surprise the girls were caught—(disgusted Mr. Park could see the ghost-white-girls cavorting on a TV surveillance screen)—and when Anis found out that his eleven-year-old stepdaughter had been “arrested” for shoplifting with three other, older girls he’d disciplined her grimly in a way he said had to be done, it was the way his own father had done with all his children, beating the girl with his belt, a half-dozen harsh strokes, a dozen harsher strokes, and now the girl was screaming in pain and terror for her mama had never hurt her like this, even in a blind rage Ednetta had never hurt her children in such a way, but Anis who was the new stepdaddy believed in a different sort of discipline and finally Ednetta had dared to rush at the man to stop his hands terrified he’d injure her little girl seriously with the flying buckle that had inflicted hurt on her bare back, buttocks, legs, blood-oozing welts. And Anis had flung Ednetta from him to stumble stunned against a wall. And Anis had said afterward it was a good thing she’d stopped him for once he began in the way of disciplining which was his own daddy’s way it was hard to stop.

Soberly and seriously he’d told Ednetta this. He had not exaggerated. Uneasily Ednetta recalled the rumor—(not a rumor but “fact” but Ednetta didn’t want to think in such specific terms)—that Anis Schutt had beaten to death his first wife a beautiful Haitian named Tana and been convicted of second-degree manslaughter and incarcerated at Rahway for how many years exactly, Ednetta didn’t know.

So it was a warning, Ednetta thought. A warning for the heedless stepdaughter and a warning for the mother.

Don’t provoke Anis, girl. You know the man have this temper, he can’t help.

Yet it was a desperate thing, how she loved Anis Schutt. A melting sensation in the region of her heart, Jesus! First time she’d seen him, and she had not been a naïve young girl then. And thinking he was an ugly man, large blunt face like something carved in weatherworn rock and an oily black skin ten times blacker than Ednetta Frye who wasn’t what you’d call light-skin. And his eyes distinct and shiny as marbles in his head and restless, and his way of carrying himself like he was too restless to be confined in any space. And you would not ever want to cross Anis Schutt or draw his angry attention. And yet she’d stared at him, and stared. And he’d seen her, and smiled at her. And suddenly his face was changed, even boyish. Even kind-seeming.

You lookin at me, honey? You got somethin for me?

He’d been crazy for Ednetta Frye’s gat-toothed smile. Big enough space he could stick the tip of his tongue into it, almost.

He’d been what you would call an older man—not even thirty!

She’d been just seventeen.

Ednetta smiled, recalling. O Jesus.

In a woman’s life there is only one man like Anis Schutt. She’d had him, even if she lost him in some time to come she’d had him, that could not be taken from her.

What a woman would do for a man like Anis, Ednetta would do, and had done. And would keep doing, as long as she could.

What the first wife Tana might’ve done was betray. In no way did you betray Anis Schutt and not be hurt bad for doing it.

Ednetta wasn’t always sure she loved the girl. So much of herself she saw in Sybilla, the almond-shaped eyes, the gat-toothed smile—it was like herself and how could you “love” yourself?

My baby, she myself. Why I feel so bad for her, and blame her.

Soon the sons-of-bitches intruding upon Ednetta’s life returned to the brownstone at 939 Third. Ednetta saw the God-damn vehicles pulling up to the curb like her place was some kind of drive-in bank teller or fast-food restaurant. Now these were senior staff workers from Juvenile Aid, Child Protective Services, Pascayne County Family Services, and Save-Our-Children which was a white-folks’ church volunteer organization with a storefront office in Red Rock. And Sergeant Iglesias. All looking for your daughter Sybilla Frye, and with warrants. And Ednetta said, pressing the heel of her hand against her bosom, eyes brimming with hurt and indignation Ain’t I told you! My baby s’quest’d where you can’t find her.

Because they had warrants, Ednetta couldn’t keep them out. Let the sons-of-bitches search the house upstairs and down, the kids’ bedroom, her and Anis’s bedroom, Sybilla’s closet-sized bedroom with picture-posters on the wall—Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston, Prince, LL Cool J, Public Enemy. The fact was, Sybilla wasn’t there.

Girl-Cousins (#ulink_50e6538b-5edc-5f3b-b4f2-041de802e1e8)

Where’s S’b’lla?”

“They sayin S’b’lla in some hospital.”

“They sayin S’b’lla in ‘custody.’”

“S’b’lla in Juvie.”

“Nah S’b’lla ain’t in Juvie—she the one got hurt.”

Sybilla’s girl-cousin Martine and several of her friends from the neighborhood went to her house looking for her and each time Mrs. Frye sent them away—S’b’lla ain’t here. Y’all get on home.

Martine was Sybilla’s age and in Sybilla’s class at Pascayne South. Some of the rumors she’d been hearing about her cousin were so nasty, she’d had to press the palms of her hands over her ears and run away.

Through back-alleys she came to the rear of the brownstone row house in which her aunt Ednetta Frye lived with that man Anis Schutt. Thinking she would peek in the windows and see if she could see Sybilla inside, but Ednetta had drawn all the blinds down to the sills.

Martine thought, if her cousin Sybilla was dead, she would know it. That shuddery sensation like when someone walks over your grave-to-be.

All of Sybilla’s girlfriends were talking about her, wondering where she was. Sybilla was starting to hang out with older guys but it had to be in secret—Ednetta couldn’t know. (For sure, the stepfather Anis couldn’t know. That man would whip her hard with his belt and give Ednetta a few swipes, too.) Her friends wondered if this disappearance, all these rumors, had to do with that.

Or maybe there was no connection. Sybilla was just grabbed in some alley, dragged into a car or a van and driven away, kept for three days and three nights and God knows what done to her.