The Sacrifice. Joyce Carol Oates

three days and three nights and wherever she’d been there were people who knew more than they were revealing and she’d come to take her daughter home, now.

       They took my baby from me, now I’m bringin my baby home can’t none of you stop me.

      The Pascayne police officers set her off worse. When an officer from Child Protective Services tried to speak with Mrs. Frye she backed off stretching her arms out as if to keep the man from assaulting her. She was saying You aint gon arrest me, you aint gon put cuffs on me, you leave me alone seein what you done to my baby aint that enough for you.

      Mrs. Frye’s fear of the police officers appeared to be genuine.

      By this time Sybilla Frye was sitting up on the gurney with her knees raised against her chest trying to hide herself with the crinkly white paper and making a noise like Nnn-nnn-nnn—like she was so frightened, she was shivering convulsively. You could hear her teeth chatter. And now she was crying, like a child Mama don let them take me, Mama take me home …

      The mud and dog-feces had been removed from the girl’s hair.

      We’d had to cut and clip some of her hair in order to get this matter out. It would be charged afterward that we had defiled and disfigured Sybilla Frye—we had deliberately cut her hair in a careless and jagged fashion.

      Her body covered in filth had been washed but the racist slurs in black Magic Marker ink remained on her torso and abdomen, more or less indecipherable.

      (It would be recorded in the ER photos that these words had been written upside-down on Sybilla Frye’s body.)

      (Well, you’d think—as if Sybilla Frye had written the words herself, right? But a clever assailant might’ve written the words on her body standing behind her so that she could read the words. Or—he’d written the words upside-down purposefully so the victim would be accused of lying. That was possible.)

      (Seeing the racist words on the girl’s body we’d had to notify the FBI right then. This is protocol if there is a probable “hate crime” as there certainly was in this case.)

      In an emergency unit in a city like Pascayne, New Jersey, you are half the time reporting crimes and taking such photos for forensic use. If your patient dies, you may be the only witnesses.

      The FBI had to be notified immediately which the ER administrator did without either the injured girl or her mother knowing at the time.

      Mrs. Frye was demanding to speak with her daughter “in private” if we wouldn’t release the girl so she could take her home. Dr. D___ allowed this.

      Mrs. Frye jerked the curtain shut around the cubicle.

      For some minutes, Mrs. Frye and Sybilla whispered together.

      Police officers were asking the ER staff and the EMTs what had happened and we told them what we knew: Mrs. Frye had ID’d her daughter who was “Sybilla Frye”—“fourteen years old”—(in fact, it would be revealed later that Sybilla Frye was actually fifteen: she’d been born in September 1972); the girl had been assaulted and had sustained a number of injuries; she’d been struck by fists and kicked, but she didn’t seem to have been attacked with any weapons; cuts in her face had been made with a fist or fists, not a sharp instrument; there were no gunshot wounds; her face, torso, belly, legs and thighs were bruised, and there appeared to be evidence of bruising in the vaginal area, but without a pelvic exam it wasn’t possible to determine if there had been sexual penetration or any deposit of semen.

      Skin samples taken from the girl’s body would be tested for DNA and these might contain semen. Other tests would be run, to determine if a sexual offense had been committed.

      Mrs. Frye had claimed that her daughter had been “kidnapped” and “locked up” somewhere for three days and three nights. During this time, Mrs. Frye had been looking for the girl “everywhere she knew” but no one had seen her. Then, that morning, Sybilla Frye had been discovered by a woman who lived near the Jersey Foods factory, who’d heard the girl “crying and moaning” in the night.

      So far, Sybilla Frye had not identified nor even described her assailant or assailants. She had not communicated with the ER staff at all.

      She had not allowed a pelvic exam, nor had she consented to a blood test.

      Despite the mother’s claim that she’d been kept captive somewhere for three days, Sybilla Frye did not appear malnourished or dehydrated.

      This is some of what we told Pascayne police.

      After approximately ten minutes of whispered consultation, Mrs. Frye drew back the curtain. She was deeply moved; her face was bright with tears. She’d been wiping her daughter’s face with tissues and now she was demanding that she be allowed to take her daughter home, it was a “free country” and unless they was arrested she was taking S’billa home.

      (Ednetta Frye would afterward claim that she’d had to clean her daughter of mud and dog shit herself, the ER staff had not “touched a cloth” to Sybilla. She would claim that she’d carried her baby in her arms out of the ER, filth still in the girl’s hair and on her body, and her body naked, covered in only a “nasty” blanket as the ER staff had cut off her clothes for “evidence.”)

      An officer from Juvenile Aid had arrived. But Mrs. Frye refused to allow Sybilla to speak to this woman, as she’d refused to allow Sybilla to speak to the officer from Child Protective Services.

      It was explained to Mrs. Frye that since a crime or crimes had been committed, Sybilla would have to be interviewed by police officers—she would have to give a “statement”—when she was well enough … Mrs. Frye said indignantly That girl aint gon be “well enough” for a long time so you just let her alone right now. I’m warnin you—let my baby an me alone, we gon home right now or I’m gon sue this hospital an every one of you for kidnap and false imprisonment.

      But finally Mrs. Frye relented, saying she would allow Sybilla to talk to a cop—One of her own kind, and a woman—if you have one in that Pas’cyne PD.

       The Interview

      It was not an ideal interview. It did not last beyond twenty stammered minutes.

      It would be the most frustrating interview of her career as a police officer.

      She’d been bluntly told that a black girl beaten and (possibly) gang-raped had requested a black woman police officer to interview her at the St. Anne’s ER.

      Getting the summons at her desk in the precinct station late Sunday morning she’d said, D’you think I’m black enough, sir?—in such a droll-rueful way her commanding officer couldn’t take offense.

      She couldn’t take offense, she understood the circumstances.

      She was not minority hiring. She didn’t think so.

      She’d been on the Pascayne police force for eleven years. She had a degree from Passaic State College and extra credits in criminology and statistics as well as her police training at the New Jersey Academy. She was thirty-six years old, recently promoted to detective in the Pascayne PD.

      As a newly promoted detective she worked with an older detective on most cases. This would be an exception.

      Iglesias did not check black when filling out appropriate official forms. Iglesias did not think of herself as a person of color though she acknowledged, seeing herself in reflective surfaces beside those colleagues of hers who were white, that she might’ve been, to the superficial eye, a light-skinned Hispanic.

      Her (Puerto Rican–American) mother wasn’t her biological mother. Her (African-American) father wasn’t her biological father. Where they’d adopted her, a Catholic agency in Newark, there was a preponderance