The Sacrifice. Joyce Carol Oates

a sort of filthy scribbling. Cruelly her legs were drawn up behind her back, hog-tied.

      Ada was telling the girl she was here, now. She would take care of her, now. The girl would be all right.

      “Is it—Sybilla? Sybilla Frye?”

      Feebly the girl tried to free herself, moaning. Ada pulled at the ropes binding her wrists and her ankles, which were thin ropes, like clothesline—tugged at them until a knot came loose and she could lift the girl in her arms, into a partially sitting position on the filthy tarpaulin. The stench of dog shit was overwhelming. The girl was shivering in terror. Saying what sounded like They say they gon come back an kill me—don let em kill me! When Ada tried to lift her farther, out of the filth on the tarpulin, the girl began to squirm and fight her, panting. She seemed not to know who Ada was. Her eyes rolled back in her head. She fell back heavily, as if lifeless. Ada would not wonder at how readily the knotted rope had come loose, at this time. Ada was begging the girl: “Don’t die! Oh—don’t die!”

       Yes I saw she was Sybilla Frye. I saw that right away.

      Ada Furst ran stumbling and screaming for help.

      A first-floor resident in her building called 911.

      An ambulance from St. Anne’s Hospital, two miles away on the other side of the river, arrived in sixteen minutes.

      The first query on the street would be—She goin to live?

      Then—Who done this to that girl?

       “White Cop”

      OCTOBER 7, 1987

      Jesus help me

      Say they gon kill me, I tell anybody Dear Jesus help me, they hurt me so bad and they will do worse they say next time my mama they gon hurt bad an my lit sister an any nigra they find where I live, they told me they will murder us all

      They was hopin I would die, they leave me in this place to die sayin you be eaten by beetles nasty black cunt you deserve to die you are SO UGLY

      Thought I heard say there was other dead nigras in this place they was laughin about where they drag me thinkin I would not live this like cellar-place they say, you will die here an beetles eat you only just bones left nobody gon recognize by the time those beetles finish with you

      They had white faces an one of them a badge like a cop would wear or a state trooper an they had guns an one of them, he put that gun barrel up inside me and it hurt so bad I was crying so bad they said Nigra cunt you stop that bawlin, we gon pull this trigger an all yo’ insides gon come splashin out your ugly nappy head

      And they laugh, laugh some more

      All the time they be laughin like they are high on somethin smokin crack, I could smell

      The Pis’cyne cops they con-fis-cu-ate the crack an smoke it for themselves, why they are crazy to kill black people they white bosses tell them, you give us our percent of the money we be OK how you behave

      Grabbed me from behind where I was walkin from school in the alley behind the car wash on Camden some kind of canvas they pulled down over my head like a hood and I was screamin but couldn’t get free to breathe Thought I would die an was cryin Mama! Mama! till they stuffed a rag in my mouth near to choking me O Jesus

      It was in the back of a van it was a police van, I think there was a siren they were laughin to use a cop can use a siren any time he wishes they drove to underneath the bridge I could hear the echo up under the bridge I could recognize that sound like when we were little and played there, and put our hands to our mouths and called up under the bridge and it was like pigeons cooing and the echo coming back and the water lapping except now, I could not hear any echo the white men were laughin at me took turns kicking and beating and strangling me raped me like with they guns and fingers sayin they would not put their pricks in a dirty nasty disease nigra cunt they jerked themselves off onto my face that’s what they done they said, swallow that, you ignorant nigra bitch how many times how many of them they was who hurt me, I could not see I thought five, maybe five—their faces were white faces—there was a badge this one was wearin, shiny spit-in-your-face badge like a cop wear or a state trooper an they laughin at me sayin nobody will believe a dirty nigra cunt taking her word against the word of decent white men

      The van, they drove somewhere else then here was maybe other men came into it it was a night and a day and a night I was hurt so bad, my eyes was puffed shut I was fainted from the bad hurt and bleedin up inside me it was all sore and bleedin and my mouth, and my throat they’d stuck the gun barrel down into my throat too there was more than one of them did it they said, this is what you like black nigra cunt aint it

      Tied me so tight like you’d tie a hog no water and no food, they was hopin I would weaken and die some of them went away, an other ones came in their place Nigra hoar of babyland they was laughin

      I could not see their faces mostly I heard their voices

      There was one of them, a young one he was sayin why dint they let him blow out the nigra cunt’s brains he would do it, he said

      In my hair and on my body they smeared dog shit to shame me when they was don with me two of them dragged me from the van to that place in the cellar they put they foot on the back of my head to press into the earth they would leave me there, they said beetles would eat me and nobody give a damn about some ugly nappy lit nigra girl if she live or die and nobody believe her, that a joke to think!

      O Jesus help me I am afraid to die, Jesus help me I have been a bad girl is this how I am punished, Jesus an Jesus say, the last shall be first an the first shall be last an a litl child shall lead them AMEN

       St. Anne’s Emergency

      OCTOBER 7, 1987

      She’d been left to die.

      She’d been beaten, and raped, and left to die.

      She’d been hog-tied, beaten and raped and left to die.

      Just a girl, a young black girl. Dragged into the cellar of the old fish-factory and if she hadn’t worked the gag out of her mouth, to call for help, she’d have died there in all that filth.

      It was that 911 call. That call you’d been waiting for.

      You’d expect it to be late Saturday night. Or Friday night. Could be Thursday night. You would not expect the call to be Sunday morning.

      And that neighborhood by the river, East Ventor and Depp. Those blocks east of Camden Avenue. High-crime area the newspapers call it. After the fires and looting of August 1967 spilling over from the massive riot in Newark, the neighborhood hadn’t ever recovered, Camden Avenue west for five or six miles looking like a war zone twenty years later, shuttered storefronts, dilapidated and abandoned houses, burnt-out shells of houses, littered vacant lots and crudely hand-lettered signs for rent for sale that looked as if they’d been there for years.

      Many times, the calls come too late. The gunfire-victim is dead, bled out in the street. The baby has suffocated, or has been burnt to death in a spillage of boiling water off a stove. Or the baby’s brains have been shaken past repair. Or there’s been a “gas accident.” Or a child has discovered a (loaded) firearm wanting to play with his younger sister. Or a man has returned to his home at the wrong time. Or a drug deal has gone wrong. (This is frequent.) Or a drug dose has gone wrong. (This is frequent.) Or a space heater has caught fire. Or a carelessly flung burning cigarette has caught fire. Or a woman has swallowed Drano and has lain down to die. Or a gang of boys has exchanged multiple shots with another gang of boys. Or a pit bull maddened by hunger has attacked, sunk its fangs into an ankle and will not release the crushed bones until shots from a police service revolver are fired into its brain.