The Sacrifice. Joyce Carol Oates

was five of them—men. Men not boys. Nobody she knew, from the neighborhood or her school. That’s all she told me, she’s too scared.” Mrs. Frye smiled a sharp mirthless smile revealing a gap between her two front teeth like an exclamation mark.

      Iglesias tried again with Sybilla. “So—you say—it was five men? No one you recognized? Could you begin at the beginning, please? Your mother says you went missing on Thursday …”

      Slowly then, as if each word were a painful pebble in her mouth, Sybilla began to speak in a hoarse whisper. She was squirming inside the blanket, looking not at the police officer who’d fixed her face into an expression of extreme solicitude and interest but staring at the floor. There appeared to be a slight cast in her left eye. Perhaps this was why she didn’t look up. Iglesias could not determine if the girl was genuinely frightened or if there was something childishly resistant and even defiant about her—an attitude that had to do less with Iglesias than with the mother who remained at all times close beside her, half-sitting on the examination table, a physical presence that must have been virtually overwhelming to the girl yet from which she had no recourse.

      Iglesias could see that, though Sybilla’s eyes were swollen and discolored, these were Ednetta Frye’s eyes: thick-lashed, so dark as to appear black, large and deep-set. During her hurried briefing Iglesias had been told that the victim was possibly mentally defective, maybe retarded, which was why it was so difficult to communicate with her, but Iglesias didn’t think this was true.

      Iglesias asked Sybilla to repeat what she’d said, a little louder. She was leaning close, to listen.

      In the hoarse slow whisper Sybilla recounted how she’d been coming home from school Thursday afternoon when somebody, some men, came up behind her with a canvas they lowered over her head and grabbed her and dragged her away in a van and kept her there for three days—she thought it was three days, she wasn’t sure because she was not conscious all the time—and punched and kicked her and did things to her and laughed at her when she was crying and later put mud and dog shit onto her and wrote on her “nasty words” and tied her up and left her in the factory cellar saying there were “other nigras” in that place who had died there.

      Starting to cry now, and Mrs. Frye squeezed her hand, and for a moment it didn’t seem that Sybilla would continue.

      Iglesias asked if she’d been able to see faces? Could she describe the men—their age, race? Were they known to her?

      Sybilla shook her head, they weren’t known to her. She seemed about to say more, then stopped.

      “You’re sure that these men are not known to you, Sybilla? Could you describe any of them?”

      Sybilla stared at the floor. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled over her bruised cheeks.

      “Did they hurt you sexually?”

      Sybilla sat very still staring at the floor. Her face was shiny now with tears.

      Mrs. Frye said, gently urging, “S’b’lla, honey, you got to tell this lady, see? You got to tell her what you can. You aint told me all of it, has you?—you know you aint. Now, you tell her.”

      “Did they rape you, Sybilla?”

      Sybilla shook her head just slightly, yes.

      “More than one man, you’ve said?”

      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.