He had not ever ripped out the throat of any human being with his teeth. But he’d seen throats slashed with knives. Once, with a machete.
His shoes had been splattered with blood. More than once, in his lifetime.
But always black blood. Not yet the blood of the enemy.
The police officers continued to examine the vehicle, front and back, glove compartment, beneath the seats, every square inch of the trunk. He was kneeling now on the dirty pavement, hands on his head. It was a matter of shame to him, his knees were excruciating in pain. His ruined knees, his arthritic knees, shooting pains that left him dazed and breathless running from the base of his spine into his legs and through the length of his (kneeling, bent) legs into his very feet. He bit his lower lip to keep from sobbing aloud. He had never felt such pain, he could not bear it. Leaping from the sanitation truck, he’d been a young man when the pains had first started years ago. Drinking helped. Heavy drinking helped most. Painkiller pills. His right knee, and his right thigh, and later both his knees and both his thighs. And his fingers were becoming gnarled like claws. And the nails were splitting, so dry. The woman kissed his hands. The woman’s warm breath on his hands. She was forgiving him, he knew. But she had no right to forgive him. The woman had no right to forgive
him
.
The examination of his vehicle had netted them nothing. The elder of the officers handed back his driver’s license with a look of contempt.
“Lucky this time, Schutt.”
The black-feather Angel of Wrath whispered to him gloating
Lucky this time, Schutt. Ain’t you shamed.
On ruined legs he struggled to rise but could not. At last crawling to his car to hoist himself erect he hoped the cops hadn’t observed as they’d driven away.
T
he intrusions at 939 Third Street were fewer now. Telephone calls from city-county agencies. Unannounced visits.
Search warrant from Passaic County Family Services.
Social worker visit.
Ednetta Frye? I need to see your daughter Sybilla immediately.
Questioned by agency officers the girl replied in a voice so hushed, you could barely hear her words.
Weeks after the (alleged) assault her face was still slightly bruised and her upper lip appeared swollen. There was a sickle-shaped scab in her left eyebrow. In her left eye, a just-perceptible cast that gave her a sly drifting impudent look.
A girl of fifteen, lanky-limbed, attractive but wary-looking, unsmiling. Her fingernails had been polished sparkly-purple and there were gold studs in her ears. She sighed often, shifted in her seat.
She’d been “returned home”—as Mrs. Frye explained—after having stayed with her great-grandmother Pearline Tice who lived over on Eleventh Street for several weeks—“S’b’lla been convales’in, an she feelin good now.”
The mother was eager and attentive to the officers’ questions even as the girl appeared sulky and withdrawn.
When the girl failed to reply to a question the mother murmured
S’b’lla!
and the girl roused herself to answer in monosyllables.
Agency officers visiting the Frye household at 939 Third Street were disappointed, baffled—for it seemed, Sybilla Frye was refusing now to speak of
what had happened
to her the previous month.
Stiffly Mrs. Frye said, “We aint gon talk about
that
. No more.”
And, “We got ‘freedom of speech’—we exercisin that.”
Some questions the girl didn’t seem to hear. These questions were repeated carefully and the girl mumbled vague replies or shrugged her shoulders with downcast eyes. You would think—almost—that Sybilla Frye was
mentally impaired
but medical records and school records did not indicate this.
It was surmised that the girl had been
traumatized
. Psychological therapy, counseling were strongly advised for both the girl and her mother but had been refused, adamantly by the mother who’d drawn in the minister of her church and a Red Rock physician, in fact a chiropractor with strong opinions about “psycho”-therapy.
In her chair the girl shifted restlessly as if to avoid the stinging of small ants. She sighed, swiped at her nose with the edge of her hand, didn’t trouble to conceal a yawn. From time to time she cast a narrow sidelong glance at her mother, unreadable to outsiders.
The pouty mouth twitched in amusement, or in anger?—this wasn’t clear.
Asked if she was
being coerced
in any way the girl shook her head vigorously
No.
Asked if she knew what
coerced
meant the girl shook her head vigorously
Yes.
“Seem like what you doin with me now, ma’am. ‘C’erced.’”
That drifting left gaze, detached and mocking even as the girl spoke in a way to placate the anxious mother.
“Yes ma’am. I am feelin OK. Yes I am goin back to school soon. You c’n write all that shit down.”
It was the first week of November, Ednetta brought Sybilla back home. Soon then, Sybilla returned to Pascayne South High.
But late morning of Sybilla’s first school day since her long absence Ednetta heard a thudding noise in the front hall—and a door slammed hard—and there came Sybilla into the kitchen to toss her backpack onto a counter, scowling. “Don’t you scold me, Mama. I am
home
. I am not takin any more shit.”
Ednetta had been afraid of this. Ednetta knew her daughter’s headstrong ways and her unpredictable behavior since—what the mother called
that nastiness happened to you
. But Ednetta professed surprise and disappointment asking what had happened at school and Sybilla said there was God damn boys pressin against her in the hall and knockin into her on the stairs, God damn assholes lookin at her like she was some kind of slut. And her asshole teachers not much better lookin at her too.
“I told them go fuck themselves. Just walked out.”
“Well girl, you can’t ‘just walk out.’ You aren’t old enough to quit school.”
“I’m gon get a job an make some money. Grandma said she could find work for me. There’s a lady in her building has two little children an the person who was takin care of them got sick. I can do that.”
“S’b’lla, you
too young
.”
“Fuck ‘young’! There’s girls my age had babies by now, an you know it. Fuck you lookin at me like I am crazy, Mama—
you
the crazy one, got us into this shit.”
Sybilla spoke with a peculiar sort of elation. She’d picked up her backpack and let it fall again now, onto the floor. She kicked the backpack shouting with laughter and stamped her feet until Ednetta hugged her tight, to calm her.
Very still mother and daughter stood panting and hot-faced. It made Ednetta uneasy that Sybilla was her height now—Ednetta stood somewhat stooped as if her body was settling in upon itself while Sybilla stood wiry and straight.
Sybilla giggled and said, quietly, “Where’s
he
?”
“I told you. He ain’t here.”
“Where, then?”
Ednetta shrugged. “He ain’t say.”
“He comin back here tonight?”
“No.”
“He been callin you?”
“No.”
Sybilla pushed out of Ednetta’s arms. “Bullshit, Mama. You must be simple, thinkin I would believe
you
.”
Carelessly Sybilla rummaged in the refrigerator. Lifted a quart container of milk and drank from it before Ednetta could stop her. Took up a jar of grape jam, slices of bread, and a bread knife, and ran back into her bedroom and slammed the door shut.
Ednetta stood in the hall calling after her. Inside the room, Sybilla screamed what sounded like
Fuck fuck fuck you big fat Mama ass
then lapsed into a fit of laughter, or coughing.
“If you go to the police and make a formal charge, as I think you should, Ednetta—they will have to investigate. They will at least have to pretend to investigate. It may get in the media then—it may receive some attention. But if you don’t, then the police will never act—they will claim they don’t have enough evidence, and they don’t have a cooperating witness. They might even know who hurt your daughter in this outrageous way, but they won’t investigate. We can’t tolerate such injustice in our community—this is 1987, not 1967.”
The woman from Crisis Ministry, speaking to Ednetta in a fast-clip way like she was scolding Ednetta. A light-skin black woman with fussy speech sounding like a radio or TV voice.
Or, no—maybe this was the woman from NAACP. Maybe a lawyer? Same way of scolding like Ednetta Frye was some rural-South fool had to be set right.
“Mrs. Frye? If you’re reluctant or afraid to go alone with your daughter, I will accompany you. I’ll bring two or three of my colleagues, in fact. We will
march into
the police station here in Red Rock—I’ve done it in the past, and you do get attention.”
Ednetta said evasively, stroking her arm, “Well. That might maybe happen . . . Trouble is, S’b’lla not feelin like she want to ‘cooperate.’ That girl, it’s hard for me to get to her sometimes, she fifteen years old . . .”
“I need to talk to Sybilla, Mrs. Frye. I’d thought she would be home this morning—I thought you’d said so. But I can come back. We have to move ahead with this, and quickly. The longer a crime goes uninvestigated, the less likely the perpetrator or perpetrators will be found.”
God damn, Ednetta hated this female! “Herring-bone” pantsuit and lace-up grannie shoes, eyeglasses, not a touch of makeup on her face that had to be young like early thirties, and a sneering look to her mouth.
A lawyer is the worst kind of son-bitch
she’d heard Anis remark,
he get paid for just talkin an you can’t shut his mouth.
Had to be, the females were no different than the males.
Ednetta had been crinkling her face to show that she was listening. Saying in a dull-whining voice, “Ma’am, nobody expect justice from the racist cops an pros’cutors anyway. The thing that would happen is, S’b’lla get in more trouble, all kinds of nasty attention and threats. Her whole family get in trouble. Already at the school her teachers look at her funny—she refusin to go back, and I’m gon get in trouble for
that
. These ‘white cops’—God knows how many of them they are, and how high-ranking. They could drive by in the street here an shoot in our windows, like they did in ’67. They could harass S’b’lla so she runs away from home—she that desp’rate! They could harass
me
. And Anis, the police always stopping him and friskin him, askin where he live, where he goin, pretendin they don’t know who in hell he
is
. One of these days, Anis say he gon take his gun and blow some white cop’s head off. Get him a shotgun, and go to war.”
The female lawyer stared at Ednetta and didn’t speak for a moment.
“Mrs. Frye, I don’t think that’s a good idea. To think that way, or to talk that way. Is Mr. Schutt your husband?”
“Yes, he is my husband.”
“You don’t want him to provoke the police, do you? There’s strain enough in Red Rock without provoking more. My suggestion is that you allow the NAACP to take up your case, and I will drive you to police headquarters—not the precinct here, but headquarters, at Flint Square across the river. I think that’s a much better idea than the Red Rock precinct. There, your daughter will file formal charges of abduction, aggravated assault, rape, with evidence from the hospital. You may be correct—the local police won’t conduct a serious investigation. But there are other police forces in New Jersey, for instance the
state police. If this is a ‘hate crime’—as it obviously is, with obscene racist epithets written on your daughter’s body—the FBI should already be involved.”
Ednetta was staring at the floor. Caressing her arm slowly, to ease the arthritic pain in her joints. The woman’s sharp voice had rattled by like a freight train.
Thinking how Anis had said of lawyers
They will sell you out to the pros’cutors. Telling you one thing an they make a deal with the other law’ers behind your back.
“Ma’am, it’s one thing for you to say all this, but somethin else for S’b’lla and me. You ain’t got to live with it. You gettin some salary at the NA’CP, but we ain’t gettin any salary to be spendin all that time at the police station where S’b’lla be treated like some freak an insulted. Who is goin to protect my daughter, when all this start?
You?
”
“We can certainly try to protect your daughter, and you. We could arrange for a place for her to live . . .”
“‘Place for her to live’—where? S’b’lla got to live
here
. Her family here, and her school an friends. Bad enough people talkin about her now, without anything in the paper or on TV. There’s people lookin at me like I was some leper already.”
The female lawyer stared at Ednetta. She removed her wire-rimmed eyeglasses to stare at Ednetta more closely.
“But—you want justice for your daughter, don’t you, Mrs. Frye? You don’t want these rapists to remain free, do you?”
“Ain’t what I want, ma’am. It’s what the mother of a black girl in Pascayne got to expect.”
“But, Mrs. Frye, I don’t understand. Just a few minutes ago . . .”
Ednetta was on her feet. Ednetta would usher the astonished female out of her house with flurried gestures of her hands as you’d drive away annoying chickens.
“Mrs. Frye, please—”
“Excuse me, ma’am! The migr’n headache come over me! Good-bye.”
Shut the door behind the stunned-looking woman almost catching her heels. Stood at the front window peering around the edge of the blind to make sure the woman got into her car and drove away. Ednetta was quivering with laughter.
Ednetta was thinking how, before this
nasty thing
happened, just back in September she’d been a young woman yet. Skin around her eyes not so saggy, and her breath not so short, and in the street she’d looked good in men’s eyes, and laughed back at them they whistled in her direction, or made some wise remark leaving her feeling damn good.
But now—things had got strange. Unpredictable day to day.
The car was gone from the curb. Ednetta had to think for a moment who it had been, in her living room. Mashed her knuckles against her mouth, laughing aloud.