The Sacrifice. Joyce Carol Oates

still less any information about her.

      Nor did Sybilla’s classmates wish to speak of her except in the most vague terms—S’b’lla be out of school, somethin happen to her.

      When someone from the high school called, Ednetta Frye interrupted without listening to whatever question, request, message this stranger had for her—My daughter not livin in this house right now! She s’quest’d somewhere safe. Repeated calls, Ednetta picked up the receiver and slammed it down without listening.

      Juvenile Aid of New Jersey, Child Protective Services, Passaic County Family Services—calls from these agencies, Ednetta Frye dealt with in a similar fashion. Individuals from these agencies, even those dark-skinned and female like herself, Ednetta Frye turned away brusquely from her door.

       She s’quest’d where you can’t get her! Just go away an leave us like you ever give a damn for us!

      The Hispanic female police detective who’d pretended to be Ednetta’s friend in the hospital ER returned, with a (male, Italian-looking) detective-companion who stared at Ednetta with an expression of barely concealed contempt. Ednetta had seen the white-and-green Pascayne PD cruiser park at the curb only a few yards away from the window at which she crouched pressing the palm of her hand into her chest as she panted in pain and apprehension—Jesus help me. Jesus send these people away—and she guessed she had no choice but to open the door to them, at least a crack, for possibly they had a search warrant? a warrant for arrest?—though which of them it might be, Sybilla, or herself, who’d be arrested, Ednetta had no idea. She was near-fainting with anxiety. High-blood-pressure pounded in her ears. As the female detective knocked Ednetta snatched open the door saying in a hoarse pleading voice what sounded to the detectives like—My baby s’quest’d! She ain’t here! Can’t talk to you now gon shut this door.

      The female detective—(Ednetta hadn’t caught the name, much of what other people said in recent days flew past Ednetta’s consciousness like panicked birds whose beating wings you ducked to avoid)—tried to prevent her from shutting the door. Saying it was crucial that she speak with Sybilla, and with her. The female detective’s companion was standing beside her grim-faced staring at Ednetta through the two-inch crack between the door and the doorframe and Ednetta saw in the man’s ice pick eyes the look that signaled We know you are lying you God damn fuckin nigger bitch you will regret this.

      The female detective—“Iglesias”—was trying to speak calmly to Ednetta. Seeing that Ednetta was in an excitable mood. (Both cops alert to whether the distraught and panting heavyset black woman might’ve been hiding a butcher knife behind her broad hips, or a hand gun.) Telling her that she, Iglesias, was her friend; and she’d brought with her Detective ___ —whose name Ednetta could not have heard even if she’d wanted to hear it, blood pumping in her ears; and they hoped for just a few minutes of her time, and if they could please speak with Sybilla … And Ednetta said sharply Ma’am I told you you can’t! My baby aint in this house she s’quest’d somewhere safe.

      Iglesias seemed not to hear. Not to understand.

       S’quest’d? “Sequestered”?

      Quickly Ednetta shut the door. Her heart was pounding so hard in her billowy chest, she’d have thought it was an angry fist demanding release.

      From inside Ednetta could see Iglesias and the other detective outside on the step conferring what to do. Shrewdly she reasoned that the detectives didn’t have a warrant to enter the house—if they had, they’d have entered the house; nor did they have a warrant to arrest her or Sybilla. (Could you arrest someone for being a victim? Could you arrest someone for being a victim’s mother?) Still, Ednetta was remembering the martial law days and nights of August 1967 when SWAT teams stormed Red Rock houses in a hail of bullets or threw tear gas containers or firebombs into dwellings like this in a pretext of “neutralizing” sniper fire. She hadn’t known Anis Schutt then but knew of how Anis’s (unarmed) sixteen-year-old brother Lyander had been murdered by city police for stepping outside his mother’s house on Freund Street five minutes after the 9:00 P.M. curfew. A sixty-year-old great-aunt of Ednetta’s living in a first-floor apartment in the Roosevelt project had been shot dead through a window unwisely passing in front of a blind with a harsh light behind it—another “sniper” casualty.

      Iglesias was calling through cupped hands not in a threatening-cop voice but a friendly-female voice—Mrs. Frye? Please? We can just speak with you. This is crucial for our investigation.

      Ednetta retreated to the rear of the house. Ednetta climbed panting and sweating to the second floor of the house. Ednetta hid away in her and Anis’s bedroom whimpering like a wounded creature sprawled on the bed covering her head with a blanket. Jesus help me. Jesus forgive me. None of this my fault Jesus!

      When she revived, the house was quiet. She listened hard to hear if the detectives were knocking on the door, calling for her, but they were not.

      She’d heard a vehicle in the street, pulling away. She hoped this was the police cruiser.

      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