The Sacrifice

by Joyce Carol Oates

  The girl had a new name now—not a name he could pronounce. Some Arab-name. African-name. Ednetta telling him like she was embarrassed, she couldn’t pronounce the name either. And S’b’lla wearing a head scarf now, she’d have screamed with laughter seeing any friend of hers wearing on the street.

  The one thing the Black Muslims did was protect their women. Keep the women covered up, and stayin indoors all they can. Hard to see how that sassy-mouth Sybilla gon keep indoors.

  Missed her. The girl, and the younger children. And ’Netta.

  Shit, they gone from him now. Had to happen sometime. His own kids growed up, and gone. He’d never see this lifetime and they’d been on bad terms.

  He’d been seeing posters for the march. Close-up of a face that was meant to be “Sybilla Frye” but was some other black girl, Anis could tell. The picture was blurred on purpose so you mostly saw ugly swollen-shut eyes, mouth, a bloodied nose and the caption was WHITE COPS DID THIS and information about the TEN-THOUSAND-MAN MARCH scheduled for March 7 which was this day.

  The posters had appeared everywhere in Red Rock the previous week, all along Camden, on the sides of buildings and on fences, on storefronts, on doors—hurriedly torn down by Pascayne cops as well as neighborhood residents who didn’t want trouble with the Pascayne cops.

  Since there’d started to be stories in the papers and on TV about the black girl kidnapped by white cops it was a sensitive time in Red Rock. More dark-skin cops on the street, you could see that was deliberate. But any-skin-color cop is a white cop, people in Red Rock figured.

  Lookin like Washburn was blocked—why in hell? People marchin on Camden ain’t gon come down here.

  Police-cruiser blockade at Eighth Street? Also, Barnegat. Had to be, the cops had orders from the mayor to shut down Red Rock. Traffic backed up and everybody honking his damn horn and the God damn city buses detouring from Camden onto side streets too narrow for them to pass oncoming traffic. Plus kids runnin in the streets. There were looks in the cops’ faces—Anis perceived, even in the faces of dark-skin cops—like in boxers’ faces before a fight. You work yourself up, your blood is up, you ready yourself to break some motherfucker’s face, and you are ready.

  All the cops armed, and ready.

  Anis tried another block, and was stopped. God damn he wasn’t ever gon get home except to abandon his car and walk.

  And his knees hurtin so bad, fuck he could walk.

  You could see the cops was sectioning off Red Rock so people were boxed in. Except for the marchers on Camden who could walk in the street, in wide, wavering rows holding posters and pictures of “Sybilla Frye” (in fact, it was the picture on the poster, which was not “Sybilla Frye”) as well as pictures of other black faces (gunned down or incarcerated) and some of them pictures (it looked like) of black men in full-dress uniform like in the Army or Marines. Nobody could walk mostly anywhere. Driving a vehicle was impossible unless it was one of the police vehicles everywhere you looked.

  Cops boxing in Red Rock like the inhabitants was cockroaches. At the time of the 1967 riot it was reported the police chief had said that, about cockroaches, meaning black people without any doubt. He’d sworn he was misquoted but there was no doubt. White folks in Pascayne hopin there’s a “riot” tonight so the mayor can call in the National Guard, and tanks.

  Anis was seeing cops in riot gear. Cops with riot shields lining Camden Avenue so if marchers wanted to quit the march they couldn’t—had to keep moving forward.

  Along side streets Anis could see cops erecting barricades.

  If you wanted to cross a street on foot you had to make your way the length of a block to get around the barricade—except the cops were yelling at people trying to walk in the street. And if families had gotten separated from one another, cops were refusing to allow even small children to slip through the barricade. (Anis saw some small children crying, their mother on the wrong side of the barricade. Felt a flash of disgust, a woman got to be a damn fool, or drunk or high on crack bringing children out onto the street at such a time.)

  It was the old story of Red Rock and Pascayne. If you don’t tear up your place of residence, trash and burn it, nobody gon give a shit about you. But if you do that, you got to live in the rubble.

  No way to win. Anis knew that. Ten-Thousand-Man March for justice but also to “celebrate” being black. Anis had to laugh, some people believin anything.

  He was sorry he’d missed the start of the march. Had to suppose the Black Prince and his shave-head guards were at the head and (maybe) Sybilla was walking with them?—in white female robes, and one of them Muslim scarves on her head?—if she was, there’d be white-clad Sisters walking with her. Not Ednetta, they’d sent the mother away.

  If Anis had been standing at the curb watching for her, unless she’d pass within a few feet he wouldn’t have seen was the girl really her. This the way of the Kingdom of Islam, they made their women and girls dress “modest.” He guessed she’d never lift her eyes to look at him, as she would not look at any man standing at the curb.

  Never meant to hurt you so bad, S’b’lla. You know that.

  All you accomplished now, you and your damn-drunk mama, is broke up our home. Thank your little slut-ass for that.

  Her and her mother, he’d never forgive. Taken what he’d done to the girl like it was something actual he’d meant to do, and not Anis losing his temper like he did sometimes. Damn bitches knew better.

  Ednetta saying the doctors would tell the cops and the cops would come and arrest him. And Anis sayin, shit how’d anybody prove any fuckin thing. You don’t know nothin about the law, ’Netta you head up you fat ass.

  That fat-ass female! Jesus he was glad to be rid of her.

  This woman he was staying with now on Twelfth Street, never tried to get the last word. Anything Anis said, she’d agree real quick. Younger than ’Netta and a cashier at Walmart. That sick-eager look in her face, she’d be grateful for any kindness and Anis Schutt the man for such a woman.

  Everybody boxed-in here, blowing his horn. Sounding like cattle braying. Anis pressing the palm of his hand down hard against his horn though shit, he knew better, seeing cops up ahead in the street making people open their trunks. That shit Anis didn’t want nothing of, carrying his gun like he was.

  (The heavy gun he kept in the left-trouser-leg pocket of his coveralls. Anis left-handed all his life so the schoolteachers tried to teach him right but never succeeded only just made him stutter till he got out of grade school. Anytime Anis feel a stutter come on he think of them teachers an wishin he could strangle them and nothin to do with race. The coveralls loose-fitting like Anis has lost weight which maybe he has, or lost height, which definitely he has like a doctor say on TV, a man can lose one inch of his spine a year he don’t take in enough calcium.)

  It was a cop-tactic, boxing-in. They’d boxed-in pedestrians on the street in 1967 with barricades, then squeezed tighter. Like an animal pen and the animals pissin theyselves knowin they was to be slaughtered. On the highway they came up behind you in a squad car not running its siren, and another squad passing you, and goes ahead then slows down; and a third car comes up alongside you and you are boxed.

  This they did to the Hispanic boy they’d shot back in the fall on the Turnpike claiming he was going for his weapon when his hands were in full view on his steering wheel. And that boy, turned out, was a first-year National Guardsman—but the white cops not knowing that. One squad car came up behind him making no sound or signal, and the others closed in forcing him to brake onto the shoulder of the highway with a claim he’d been speeding and “reckless endangerment”—some shit like that. Meaning they wanted to shoot a dark-skin boy, like a hunter gets it into his head he wants to kill some animal.

  Since Lyander shot down like a dog. Anis has known he will kill a white cop only not when. Shit, since Anis twelve years old, he has known. The black-feather Angel of Wrath chiding him, how long he’s going to wait? And what if he dies first?
If the white cops kill him first?

  This was a sobering thought: if Anis waited too long to kill a white cop, one day it would be too late. Sorry-ass nigger ain’t you gon be embarrassed!

  It was like ’Netta’s girl. How long you gon wait before the girl havin sex right in that house, and the two of them laughin at you like you was some asshole old helpless blind man. He’d had to discipline them all, ’Netta couldn’t control even the younger children saying shit and fuck to their mama and her not able to stop them. ’Netta always bawlin sayin she loves the children too much to discipline them, feels sick if she has to whip them, and Anis say, you want me to do it, then I will. And you keep your fat face out of it then.

  This fish-net-top the girl was wearing, last summer. You could see right through it, Jesus! And skinny little straps falling off her shoulder like she didn’t notice, or didn’t give a damn. And the short-shorts all the girls wore, you could see half their asses like little half-moons, and that soft pale goose-pimple flesh there, Anis stood dead-still staring and blinking; and he’s seeing Tana just turning away from him, slim girl, the side of her face, the way she touched her hair with her hand like to stroke it, and her slim legs, and feeling weak seeing Tana and him so old now, could be his young wife’s daddy at least. A hot flush came into his face, the girl was seein him, and giggling. But it was Sybilla giggling like that, not—not the other.

  Most of the time Sybilla shrewd enough to wear a shirt over herself, and when Anis was home most of the time she’d wear her jeans that was stiff with dirt, and keep out of his way like all of the woman’s children had learned to do, like you’d keep out of the way of a bull to respect it. What he brooded on wasn’t whether the young girl was having sex—(he had to know she was, wouldn’t be normal if she wasn’t)—but whether she’d get pregnant and have a baby and the upkeep of the baby would fall on his head. Like some ugly mongrel sneaking into a yard where there’s a special-breed dog, mating with the female and you had to bring up the pups, take care of them like they were your own. Family Services checks didn’t add up to shit, everybody knew. You had to be punished for any new baby in the household, Family Services made sure of that.

  These things, and many other things triggered his rage. It was like a rim of small blue flame on a stove, turn the burner-dial fast to the left and a hot yellow flame burst out. He’d be talking with somebody could be ’Netta, or a stranger, or somebody at work, or one of the kids, and the way the person shifted his face, or wiped at his nose, Anis understood there was a judgment against him. Sybilla always trying to slide away from him, sideways on the stairs, and that scared cross-eye look to her, that freaky left-eye of her, made him mad; and worse mad, when she giggled to show she wasn’t scared, and she was scared; and it fucked him up bad, that his stepdaughter and the other kids were scared as hell of him when he tried to be nice to them, God damn they had to know, he’d heard ’Netta telling them, Anis was the main financial support of the household, but they scared as hell of him as much when he was nice to them as when he was blind drunk and wanting to slam them against the wall.

  Every time he went out, driving slow under the speed limit so the cops would not stop him, he could see them—their cop-eyes following him.

  Nigger motherfucker don’t have the balls to murder us, think we don’t know it?

  Laughing openly at Anis and other black men on the street. The cops were high on being hated, it made them excited to know how the residents of Red Rock yearned to murder them but had not the courage.

  One of the old men saying to Anis You think you’d be ashamed livin here. That shit you take from them.

  The old man scratching his crotch, laughing. Most of his teeth were missing. His jaws appeared misaligned. Anis felt the sick horror, the old man was Death. Liver spots on his skin you could see darker than his skin like paint-spots. Old man lived on the street or in vacant houses with his mattress, shopping cart and crap. A veteran of some war—“world” war—he’d had medals, a long time ago—Anis vaguely remembered unless it was another old bastard like a vulture fixing nasty eyes on him laughing at him. Then he’d start coughing, wheezing and scraping up clots of phlegm, Anis turned aside in disgust and walked away.

  That evening, he’d come home early. And there was Sybilla in the kitchen rinsing dishes in the sink sulky and careless like she’s tryin to break them to spite her mama in the next room watching TV. And seeing Anis (she ain’t expected to come home so early) she shut off the faucets and hurried upstairs to her room like a scared cat and Anis came after quiet-like not raising his voice. Why’re you hiding in here? he’d asked and the girl mumbled she was not hiding. Why are you acting like you got some secret from your daddy? and the girl mumbled she wasn’t acting like anything, she was just minding her business. And Anis said Why’d you run upstairs, didn’t say hello to your daddy? and when the girl not answer backing off and hiding her face he’d asked Why’re you acting like some guilty bitch? Won’t meet your daddy’s eyes like you’re afraid of—what? And the girl saying in her soft-scared voice she wasn’t guilty of anything, tried to lift her eyes to Anis’s face he saw this was true, and felt sorry for her, she was just a little girl begging him so. Saying If I go to school and they see I am beat-up they will ask me about it like last time and send a social worker here and Mama will get in trouble and blame me and I ain’t done nothing wrong Daddy, I swear.

  There was ’Netta calling up the stairs anxious and neither of them was hearing her.

  So Anis had mercy on the girl seeing she called him Daddy, that time.

  Nothing was so clear to him, he must kill the enemy.

  Yet, if he began to kill the enemy but not enough of the enemy, they would kill him.

  The Angel of Wrath chided him for his cowardice. Muttering to himself cursing as he dumped stinking garbage into the rear of the truck. The fury in his face was such, the other men kept their distance from Anis Schutt.

  He’d see a cop cruiser on the street, and freeze where he stood. His hands like claws inside the smelly gloves twitching, so badly he wanted to strangle those throats.

  His mind was clouded. He’d stop at the Blue Star tavern and wake in some other place.

  Then back on the sanitation truck. The smell of it, even in cold weather when the garbage was frozen, nothing could lessen the stink of the truck, in his hair, his clothes, his lungs. Seeing then a police cruiser pass and the faintness would come over him, once he’d fallen from the truck onto the street, the men shouted for the driver to stop and they hauled him to his feet, and his vision was blotched like strobe lighting but he summoned back his strength, and insisted he was all right.

  Jesus help me, I have got to kill some of them. They comin to kill me an my children.

  Jesus give me a sign? How I can do this one thing, to put my heart at rest.

  At the Blue Star seeing on TV how Pascayne cops are the highest paid in New Jersey, on account of the police union contract negotiated eighteen years ago. Cops making extra money working overtime. Cops with seniority retiring with such high pensions, the city ain’t got enough money for schools, road repair, sewers, clinics, finishing buildings started ten years ago.

  He’s waiting for a sign. Gripping the steering wheel, and his arthritic hands like claws. On Camden Avenue the marchers were still passing. Anis squinting and staring through the badly cracked side-window of the car, amazed there were so many. Feeling the reproach You a man, you be walking, too. Ten-Thousand-Man March and Anis Schutt sittin on his ass, too weak to be a man.

  Traffic was edging forward, but again stopped. He saw a street sign—EAST VENTOR. Dead-end by the river. That nasty smell of the river. Boarded-up warehouses and factories. Shouts on the street, cops surrounding a vehicle ahead. Anis steeled himself waiting for gunfire thinking If the first shot is fired, that will be a sign.

  He hadn’t practiced with the gun. Didn’t know if the damn thing would fire.

  His heart pained him, thinking of Lyander. Him and Lyander hadn’t see
n each other in almost two years, news came to Anis the boy had been shot dead. For a long time he didn’t think about it, and he didn’t let the woman talk to him about it. (A woman has a way of slipping inside a man’s grief like a hand inside his trousers, once it’s there, you aint goin to push it away even if you don’t want it. But it’s disgusting to you, and the woman goin to pay.) But now, since Sybilla an all that, he’d been thinking about Lyander and how the boy had died in the street, and the last voices he’d heard had had to be white cops shouting to one another Nigger down! Finish him.

  And later they would say Refused to throw down his weapon. Firing shots. Ordered him to stop but he would not comply.

  Later they would add Evidence of drug psychosis.

  Shameful to Anis, he’d lived so long in this city, and such a coward.

  Even now he’s thinking with a part of his brain if he can turn the damn Plymouth around, drive back where he came from, take that backstreet by the river by the railroad yard then uphill to, what is it, Depp Street, maybe the Ten-Thousand-Man marchers are past that block of Camden, and the cops have opened it . . . Trying to turn the car around and both rear wheels jolting up over a curb, there’s a fierce-looking white cop pounding the hood with a billy club and another cop shouting at him from a few feet away. God damn he hadn’t seen them.

  The cop with the club is rapping hard on the windshield like he’d like to break it. Telling Anis to put his hands where they can see them, on the steering wheel. But the other cop shouting for him to lower his window.

  Anis frozen-still behind the wheel. Cops shouting at him the way cops do, repeating their words louder, angrier-sounding and Anis’s brain like something stunned with a sledgehammer—not sure what to do except he knows it’s better to stay still than to move.