And Ednetta looking at me, that way of hers. Her face smudged like somebody rubbed his thumb over it.
Ednetta breathing quick, and her hand against her heart like it be jumping in her chest.
Sayin, Anis the terrible things they wrote on her—in dog shit on her body! Such hate for us, we are animals to them. NIGRA BITCH. KU KUX KLANN. Like they done to black people in the South—hangin from trees, cut with knives and burnt alive.
S’b’lla life be saved, she be found in the fish-factory by some neighbor. She be taken by ambulance to the hospital—St. Anne’s. She gon have face-scars all her life. They will never arrest the white cops. Some kind of nasty joke, they pretendin to “investigate.” Anis I am
so afraid
.
Coming against me the woman cryin with her eyes shut and pushin into my arms that feel like lead, so heavy. And I’m tryin to think what is the meaning of the woman’s words. What does the woman know, why the woman sayin these words?
White men done it. White cops.
Ednetta hidin her face against me. Hidin her eyes. Falling against me like she be drunk, or takin those damn pills of hers. A woman’s tears wettin my shirt, and my arms not wantin to touch her to push the woman away. That smell of her, and her stiff-greasy hair in my face. Wantin to take hold of her, the woman, sink my fingers into her fat arms, shake and shake shake
shake
like you’d shake a wailing baby to shut it up forever.
Forty years tormented by the fuckin black-feather thing like a vulture—Angel of Wrath.
Sayin
Kill you one of them white cops. You know you ain’t goin to respect yourself nor anybody else respect Anis Schutt if you ain’t accomplished this at least. Should have done when you was a boy, and they shot Lyander down in the street. And things they done to you, and you as a witness. And you ain’t no boy now, nigger.
Fifty-two years old, Christ that
old.
Never thought Anis Schutt would live so
old
.
Where the cops beat me, my throat, there’s something broke so people can’t hear me when I try to talk it’s like wind rustling in tall grasses. The doctor said
trach-y-a
.
First thing I knew this foot, this foot in a heavy boot kicking me. Can’t remember how I got there—down on the pavement. Cops must’ve grabbed me from behind and the other boys ran. Threw me down and one of them was kicking me and pressed his boot against my neck pressing pressing like he wanted to break every bone of my neck and the other cops was yellin so maybe he stop. Left me there, and somebody came along to help me up saying the cops was lookin for some other black boy you damn lucky Anis Schutt it wasn’t you.
Of my brothers an cousins Anis about the only one still alive. One son dead and the other in Rahway ain’t gon think of
that
. My girls all grown and moved away and they livin they lives without they daddy fuck them that’s all right, Anis ain’t beggin after anybody. Sisters and female cousins OK—a woman will find a way to live even if she crawl like a dog. But a man different.
How many of people I knew they’d killed or beat or incarcerated including my boys, the white cops.
Any color skin of a cop, he’s a
white cop
.
Has to be. If he isn’t, he ain’t a cop.
This black-feather thing sayin
Your time runnin out Anis. You gettin old an your sorry ass slow.
Takin them painkiller pills Ednetta gets for arthritis, fuckin bad arthritis in my hands, legs, hips. Wet weather ridin the garbage truck, Pascayne city sanitation, last time I quit walkin off the job they say
Anis you quit again you ain’t ever comin back
and I’m telling them
That’s right motherfuckers. Ain’t never comin back.
Ednetta say, This female cop come to the house lookin for S’b’lla an wantin to talk to you Anis.
All I been telling her Anis, you ain’t here a lot of the time. And that is true.
An I been telling her, you a good father to my children. And that is true.
What Ednetta wants me to say to her, I ain’t goin to say it. Fuck the woman tryin to manipulate
me
.
Like she is
savin me
. Like she is
put herself between the cops and Anis Schutt.
Ednetta a good woman if you could mash a pillow over her face when she talk too much an get excited an her eyes jumpin in her face and sweat on her face. I know, Ednetta a good woman an a Christian woman an Ednetta
love me
.
All these years I been with Ednetta she never once ask about my wife Tana or any other women.
Tana my wife I was crazy for, beat with my fists till she wasn’t screamin or movin any longer an her face broke, that had been a beautiful face. And Tana’s eyes that were beautiful eyes, that turned against me.
A flame came over my brain like the flame of the gas stove flarin
up higher than you expect. Never knew what I had done except to see the results of it, and had to know it was me and nobody else.
Anis what did you do? Anis—what did you do to your wife?
Tana my only true wife. That was long-ago. Of the women since Tana too many to count or recall. She the only one meant anything to me, my first woman I feel that way about. Crazy for that woman and when I killed her, I killed that feelin too.
Ednetta say, A woman loves a man more than her own babies if she is a real woman. Anis, that how I love
you
.
On her knees on the kitchen floor, an sobbin. Grabbin me around the legs like it’s all I can do to keep from kickin the woman away.
That girl too young to be whorin like she is, and the mother not fit to discipline her. None of this I’m gon say to the woman, she know already who to blame and that is
herself.
This was late that Friday night. Middle-of-the-night. I’d been out, and come back now. Been drinkin and that heaviness in my head, arms and legs. And the woman cryin, and wettin my shirt and my knees and beggin, Anis do you love me, please Anis you love me, an I’m not answering anything and she says again begging, Anis you love me don’t you, so I say
Shit. Yes.
After a heavy rain, and the damn river floodin. And the streets like little rivers. And our school was shut, there was oily water in the first-floor classrooms, and the lights gone out. A gang of us runnin wild on Trenton Avenue where the stores were closed early and some of the iron gratings not all the way down so you could break the glass an reach up inside like at the liquor store where people be helpin themselves but by the time we get there, everythin gone. And
there’s a squad car pulls up and the cops get out yelling at us and their guns is in their hands. There’s water in the street, rising onto the sidewalk, and river water mixed with rain rushing so your feet are almost pulled out from under you. And it’s
dark
—no light except the squad car and cops’ flashlights. And there’s a telephone pole tilted like it’s about to fall and a cable is hanging from it in the water. And the cops say to Oscar, he’s the oldest of us, and the biggest, though he ain’t more than fourteen, get over there, boy, and pick up that cable. And Oscar is tryin to laugh like he believe the cops is joking—(we don’t believe they is joking nor does Oscar)—and the cops say it again, You boy, you stupid nigger, get your ass over there an pick up that cable. And Oscar is scared, we all scared but afraid to turn our back on the white cops pointin they guns at us, to provoke them to shoot us in the back—(this had happened to people we knew, sometimes the cops tell you to run before they shoot)—but finly Oscar wades into the water, he don’t even touch the cable with his hand but only step on it beneath the water and in that instant Oscar go up in flames, it is a “live wire” he has stepped on and in an instant electrocuted and hardly time for Oscar to scream, he has fallen down burning alive into the nasty water.
And the cops yellin at us, climb back inside the squad car and drive along Trenton and are gone.
That was 1947. I was twelve years old.
You’d find the bodies in the street or in an alley where they ran and fell. The white cops had told them to run, and shot them in the back. In August 1967 they said it was the “spill-over” from Newark—“race riot.” They was waitin for Pascayne to go up in flames, the cops was practicing tear gas in a place in Red Rock behind the precinct where the tear-gas smell would make you sick, coming out of the building
and everybody in the neighborhood could smell it, the cops was hoping for a “race riot” and the mayor say on TV the police force was given instructions “shoot to kill” if there was burnin and lootin like in Newark and Detroit. And the state troopers, and the National Guard where some of the white farm-boys who’d never seen Negro faces close up were shooting their rifles into windows at those faces. After the first few hours of burning and shooting there was “martial law” in Pascayne meaning the cops could shoot anybody they wanted—any age from babies to elderly if their faces were black. There was shots fired back at them—plenty of shots. There was fires set, Molotov cocktails tossed at cop cars. There was firemen carryin guns on the firetrucks, then the trucks stopped coming into Red Rock. And fires burnin out of control. And our mothers screaming
No no no!—you are burning where we live
. And if you stepped outside into the street, if you were a black boy, no matter your age, they had the right to shoot you down dead like my brother Lyander. And if you stood by a window, and there was snipers on the roof of your house, you would be shot dead. Forty, fifty shots fired into a bedroom, and a baby and his grandmother killed. Any shots fired by the cops and soldiers including machine-gun fire, into people’s darkened windows, or lighted windows, or vehicles in the street, or at somebody in a doorway trapped there when the shooting started, or two people walking fast together to get home by curfew—“snipers” was the reason.
Came the Angel of Wrath with black-feather wings sayin in a loud voice every hour of every day since that time
You got to kill you one of them white cops Anis. You ain’t gon die a righteous death if you fail in this.
A
ll these days, then a week, two weeks—she’d waited.
Waited for a proper time. Not wanting to be intrusive or pushy. She
was not
intrusive or pushy. That was not Ada Furst’s personality.
Waited for the mother Ednetta Frye to call her, or send some word to her—at least. Some word thanking Ada Furst for saving Sybilla Frye’s life, and inviting Ada to visit the girl and her.
That poor girl Sybilla Frye?—I was the one who found her.
Hog-tied in that factory cellar. Left to die by white cops who’d beat her and raped her.
Heard her calling for help—nobody else heard.
Never shut her eyes to sleep now without hearing the girl’s plaintive cry like a trapped creature. Never shut her eyes without seeing the girl hog-tied in the cellar lying on her side, on that filthy tarpaulin.
And the girl’s (blackened, swollen) eyes shifting to her, in such hope, eagerness.
Hadn’t been for me, Sybilla Frye would be dead now.
She’d run for help. Run screaming, so a woman in the next-door apartment building called 911.
Then, she’d returned to the girl. She’d waited for the medics. She’d called to them, to direct them to the girl.
Heard her crying in the night. I knew—knew it was something terrible . . .
Red Rock was talking of nothing else except
that girl, white cops, rape, beatin and left to die
but then, after a while, people weren’t talking about Sybilla Frye so much.
Each day Ada looked eagerly through the Pascayne newspaper searching for a headline about Sybilla Frye, a photograph—her own name in print, possibly, as the person who’d rescued Sybilla—(Ada had been interviewed by police officers at the scene)—but there was nothing. Several times a day she listened to radio news, turned on TV news, but—nothing.
No arrests! They pretending nothing happened!
In virtually every issue of the
Pascayne Journal
there were news articles about assaults, rapes, murders. When a seventeen-year-old (white) girl “disappeared” from her suburban home in Summit, there had been front-page articles for days in succession. An accident on the Turnpike in which the driver of a trailer truck lost control and veered into a car containing a (white) family killing or badly injuring several children . . . Yet, so far as Ada knew, there had yet to be a single article about Sybilla Frye.
She wondered: should she contact the newspaper herself? Should she write a letter—signing her name, or anonymously?
There was the local TV station WNJN. On the six o’clock news, a glamorous African-American “anchor” rumored to have lived in Red Rock at one time. Ada wondered if she could interest this young woman in the Sybilla Frye story . . .
An outrageous assault upon a young black girl by “white cops” and not a single article in the newspaper and no arrests—of course.
Who am I?—a neighbor. Hadn’t been for me the girl would not be alive now.
Ada stood at her bedroom window. At a little distance the Passaic River moved slow as molten lead and of that hue and when she shut her eyes just slightly and stood very still she could hear beyond the beat of her heart the faint plaintive yearning cry
Help me . . . Help me.
“Ada? C’n you come help me please? Where you
at
?”
Ma calling to her, panting and breathless. She’d have to help Ma to her feet, so that Ma could use her walker to get to the bathroom. A dozen times a day, or more. She’d tried not to count.
As, subbing in a school where “Miz Furst” was known but not well-known, and some of the students recognized her, she tried not to count, during a class, those students who were paying attention to her, some of them avidly, in that shy-black-girl way that reminded her of herself, and those students who were obviously, rudely not paying attention.
Ma leaning on Ada’s arm, heavier each day.
“That Ednetta Frye—she ain’t exactly friendly to you, is she? Should’ve called you, by now.”
Words like nettles stinging Ada’s sensitive skin. Ma wheezing and mean-smiling knowing how Ada must feel about the Fryes ignoring her.