The Sacrifice Read online

  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.

  “Like you hadn’t anything to do with them—like they’s forgotten you. I’d be feelin real funny about that, Ad’, if I was you.”

  Stiff-smiling Ada said, “Well, Ma. I’m not you.”

  Two or three times a week Ada Furst was called by the Pascayne public school district to substitute-teach. In most cases the calls were last-minute for the teachers she was replacing “called in sick” just an hour or two before they were due to arrive at their schools.

  Hello? Ada? Can you come to Edson Elementary by 8:30 A.M., sixth-grade class? The teacher is . . .

  Yes of course! Yes thank you. I’ll be there.

  Occasionally Ada was summoned to teach elsewhere in the city, from time to time even in one of the predominantly white suburbs, but never so frequently as in Red Rock. Only logical, Ada thought. Red Rock was where she lived.

  The Red Rock schools were the poorest in the city. No surprise there, either.

  Most teachers in Red Rock public schools were black. A few Hispanics, a scattering of whites. It did not go unremarked that most of the principals were white.

  Ada didn’t want to speculate whether the checks she received for her substitute-teaching were lower than the checks other substitute-teachers received for the same essential work, for instance white teachers. Ada didn’t want to speculate how much lower her checks were than the checks full-time teachers received.

  She had a reputation as a good, reliable teacher. Even if “Miz Furst” couldn’t always maintain control in her classrooms, if older students sometimes disobeyed and disrespected her, she could be relied upon to teach those students who wanted to be taught, and to protect them against their aggressive classmates; she could be relied upon to show up on time, to keep careful attendance records, to fill out required forms.

  She was well-groomed. She dressed attractively. She was courteous, she was intelligent and she was nice.

  Since Sybilla Frye, however, Ada Furst was drawn to speak of the abused girl to whoever would listen to her—teachers, administrators—in the schools in which she was subbing. Where previously Ada had been a quiet person, friendly but unassuming, now she was vehement. That poor girl! Kidnapped, beaten and raped and left to die. And there has been nothing in the newspaper—at all. And no arrests. Ada spoke with the aggrieved air of one who believes herself among sympathetic listeners and was stunned and baffled when she was met with a very different sort of response.

  She was cautioned not to speak of “Sybilla Frye” within earshot of any students. Above all, not to alarm and upset any of her young girl students.

  At Edson Elementary a friend who taught eighth grade science took Ada aside to warn her that the Sybilla Frye “situation” was maybe not a good subject for Ada to be discussing, so much; and when Ada asked why, her friend’s reply was evasive.

  “There might be something wrong about it, Ada. No one is sure.”

  “‘Wrong about it’?—what do you mean?”

  “Something about the girl’s story. And the mother’s story. What we’ve been hearing . . . Things that can’t be corroborated.”

  “Of course they can’t be ‘corroborated’—the girl is too terrified to give police a statement, when her rapists are white cops.”

  It was unlike Ada Furst to speak so passionately on any subject. It was unlike Ada Furst to feel that, so frustrated, so confused, she might burst into tears at any moment.

  “Well. You don’t want people here to think you might be talking to your students about Sybilla Frye, Ada. You need to maintain an air of professionalism . . .”

  “I am! I do! ‘Professionalism’—I do.”

  Ada went away hurt, resentful. She hated it that her black teacher-colleagues were so timid.

  Ada had always thought that integration was the highest social goal for black Americans. Her heroes had been Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Booker T. Washington, Medgar Evers, the three civil rights activists who’d been murdered in Mississippi in 1964, President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, President Lyndon Johnson . . .

  The most eventful incident of Ada’s life had been the passage of the Civil Rights Act when she’d been eighteen, in the summer of 1964—the struggle of President Johnson to get the legislation passed over the opposition of Southern racist senators. At Pascayne High South in those years there had been a black social studies teacher who’d made the civil rights campaign her subject and had been enormously influential, at least with serious students like Ada Furst.

  Ada recalled the great excitement in Red Rock when the bill had finally been passed. Lyndon Johnson had been everyone’s hero at the time. Memories were strong of John F. Kennedy who’d been assassinated for championing black people. Then, Reverend King Jr.—of course. Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X—assassinated for their beliefs in social justice. Medgar Evers who’d been among the earliest to die.

  Her social studies teacher had said that if you knew your history, you would be empowered by this knowledge. And if you failed to know your history, you would be deprived of power.

  As a girl Ada had been told by her grandmother of how the factories on the Passaic River had been mostly textile mills at one time. How in the 1930s hundreds of strikers at the Pascayne mills had marched over the Pitcairn bridge and helmeted police were waiting for them with clubs, firing at the unarmed workers. It had been like war—the workers were led by Communist u
nion-organizers who wanted to unionize the mills—the police were on the side of the factory owners. A strike meant martial law, police shot to kill.

  Like the 1967 “race riot” in Pascayne except those were white cops beating, shooting, and killing white men—immigrant Poles, Hungarians, Ukrainians. Negroes hardly figured in the strike except as strike-breakers hired by the cynical factory management which was not only a dangerous sort of employment but temporary—when the strike was settled, no strike-breaker would be allowed to join a union, and no non-union worker could get a job.

  Ada’s grandmother had known black men who’d been killed, maimed or paralyzed in the striking wars of the 1930s. Ada had thought it was lucky her grandfather hadn’t been one of them.

  Ada’s grandparents had come north to New Jersey from rural Georgia, where they’d been dirt-poor and in fear of their lives. (They’d come from Dundee County which had the highest frequency of lynchings in Georgia.) They’d lived in Newark, Passaic, and finally Pascayne. Ada had loved them and missed them, still. Her grandmother had been nicer to her than her mother had ever been. Her grandfather had been one of those fishermen down by the docks, in his old age—except, when Ada’s grandfather had fished in the Passaic River, the river hadn’t been so polluted as it was now.

  Younger people didn’t care so much about their family histories any longer. “Colored” history was a bore to them, or an embarrassment. It had become a school thing—like special holidays nobody gave a damn about except they meant no school. Hearing of people who’d migrated north from a backwoods place like Georgia, looking for work in a place like Pascayne, New Jersey—boring. Most of the grandparents of schoolchildren Ada taught had migrated north to New Jersey in the 1940s to work in defense plants, and when defense-manufacturing ceased at the end of the war, there’d been little factory work for black workers since (white) veterans were given back their old jobs. Same with women who’d worked in these factories. Being a woman, and being black—that was the most disadvantaged you could be.

  Now, younger generations scarcely knew the names of Booker T. Washington, King, Kennedy, Malcolm X. They had little interest in civil rights activists whether white or black. They knew and revered the names of athletes and rock musicians, movie actors—these were the black Americans who dominated the culture, not politicians or civil rights activists who’d been martyred for the cause.

  The rude kinds of boys and girls Ada sometimes had to teach, or had to try to teach, in schools like Pascayne South High didn’t give a damn as they’d tell you almost to your face. She’d had disastrous classes at the high school ending with her screaming at students to sit down, take their proper desks, be quiet—totally out of control until another teacher or the principal’s assistant came to her rescue.

  It made Ada uneasy to recall that Sybilla Frye had been in one of those classes that had raged out of control. She couldn’t remember clearly but—yes, she thought so.

  If you didn’t stop them from rebelling immediately, Ada had been warned, you would lose the class. Oh but she’d tried!—she had tried.

  Jeering mouths, narrowed eyes, shrill laughter—like wild creatures the adolescents were, united in opposition to “Miz Furst.” She’d pleaded for them to settle down, almost she’d begged them—Don’t do this to me! Please don’t! I want so badly to love you.

  She’d waited. And finally, she couldn’t wait any longer.

  On a weekday morning when by 11:00 A.M. the phone hadn’t rung to summon her to work and she was feeling anxious, lonely, and—didn’t know what else! Boiling mad.

  Told Ma she was “going out.” Kahola’s children had been given breakfast and sent off to school. She had only housework including laundry (which she hated: so much of it, and the kids’ clothes so dirty, and Ma’s so smelly) with which to occupy herself. A young woman of her intelligence, talents, idealism, motivation—whom teachers had praised.

  God damned unfair.

  It was nearing Hallowe’en. Lurid orange plastic pumpkins in Walgreens window, ugly black silhouette-witches. In long-ago times “witches” were unmarried females of a certain age. God damned unjust.

  Ada walked to 393 Third Street. A mile or less, and some of the walk along the riverfront. She tried not to think If they wanted to see you they’d have called you. She preferred to think that Sybilla had never told Ednetta about her, Ada Furst. The more she thought about it, the more convinced Ada was that Sybilla hadn’t known her name, and in the confusion and fear of that time she’d forgotten Ada entirely.

  If there’d been newspaper articles. Possibly, a photo of Ada Furst would have been published.

  She was bringing the abused girl a little gift. Not one she’d bought but something she’d owned herself, and had prized for years.

  As Ada approached the row house in which Ednetta lived with her family, which was two houses down from the intersection with Union Street, she saw a man leaving the house—had to be Anis Schutt.

  Ada knew of Anis Schutt, a little. His wife he’d killed with his fists and the (white) prosecutor had allowed him to plead guilty to manslaughter.

  Black-on-black crime. Hard for white folks to take seriously in the courts.

  Anis Schutt had been incarcerated in Rahway. At the most, he’d been away seven to ten years.

  Though Ada was hanging back the bull-necked black man sighted her. Stopped in his tracks and stared at her without smiling.

  “You comin here? You a friend of ’Netta?”

  Ada stammered no, not a friend exactly—a neighbor . . .

  “You from the city, eh? Pass’c County?”

  Ada shook her head no, she was just a—a neighbor . . .

  No matter how casually she dressed, Ada looked like a schoolteacher. Canny Anis Schutt had no difficulty identifying her as someone allied with them.

  Anis Schutt in a frayed leather jacket, open to show his high, hard-looking stomach. He was bare-headed, with dense nappy stone-colored hair trimmed close to his skull. Ada felt slightly faint seeing the big mangled-looking fingers.

  As a girl she’d seen Anis Schutt in the street. Younger then, seeming taller, with a dark pitted yet handsome face like that famous (white) actor—Richard Burton. And the man’s eyes alert, bemused.

  “You comin to see the girl?”—Anis Schutt spoke sneeringly.

  Ada tried to behave as if she hadn’t heard this question, or hadn’t quite understood it. She was thinking it wasn’t too late to cross the street and walk away briskly—not too fast—as if she had other business on Third Street. (But she’d admitted to coming to see Ednetta, hadn’t she? The raw blunt way Anis Schutt stared at her was driving all her thoughts out of her mind.)

  “I ast—you comin to see my stepdaughter?”

  Ada stammered yes, she hoped so. If Sybilla was home . . .

  “You sure you ain’t no police officer? Social worker? Psychol’gist?”

  “Just a neighbor, Mr. Schutt.”

  Mr. Schutt. The words seemed to placate the black man as one might placate a dangerous animal in the most obvious of ways.

  Anis Schutt climbed into a vehicle parked at the curb. Its chassis was riddled with rust like bullets and its back rear fender was hanging low. Yet, the vehicle exuded an air of crude street-glamour. Ada felt a sexual shudder at the thought of Anis Schutt pulling her into that car with him, laughing as he settled her into the passenger’s seat, shut the door and drove away.

  She’d heard that Anis Schutt worked for the county. Sanitation services, roadwork. But maybe that hadn’t been for a while.

  On the front door at 393 Third Street was a tinsel Christmas wreath from a previous year. On the stoop, rotted newspapers and flyers. She had an impression of someone just inside the door staring at her and so she maintained her stiff-friendly smile.

  She rang the doorbell. A buzzer sounded inside. This is a mistake! These are not my kind of people.

  Third Street had not recovered from the fires and break-ins of 1967. Ada had had a school friend who�
��d lived on this street when the houses hadn’t been so run-down and shabby.

  Small ravaged lawns, cracked sidewalks. It was a surprise to see that several houses in the block appeared to be vacant.

  Entire blocks in Red Rock could be ravaged in this way. Houses without tenants were always burning. They became crack-houses, squatters moved in. Graffiti covered the facades like crazed screams. Bodies began to be found on the premises. Ada felt a revulsion for this place in which she’d lived her life until now—she could only bear it if she believed it would be temporary.

  The door was finally opened, as if in exasperation. There stood Ednetta Frye in a soiled chenille robe staring at her. Ednetta’s hair was tied up in a scarf so tight it had caused her forehead to pucker.

  “Yah? What d’you want?”

  Awkwardly Ada introduced herself: “Maybe you remember me? Ada Furst? I—I live over on Ventor, by the fish-food factory . . .”

  Ednetta blinked at her slowly. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, reddened.

  “I’m not with the city or the county, I’m just—one of your neighbors. You know my sister Kahola, I think? I’m—Ada.”

  Ednetta’s expression showed no recognition. Maybe there were ill feelings between Ednetta and Kahola—maybe Ednetta resented being reminded of Ada’s sister.

  Damn she wished she hadn’t dressed so attractively for this visit! That was poor judgment. Shouldn’t have brushed her hair and fastened it with a barrette like a schoolgirl.

  With an eager smile she stammered: “I was the one—Ada Furst—who found your daughter in the factory cellar. I heard her calling for help and I—I found her . . . I ran to get help.”

  “‘Ada Furst.’” Ednetta pronounced the name doubtfully. “Was you the one called the ambulance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was you at the hospital with all them?”

  “No—I wasn’t allowed to come to the hospital with Sybilla. I found her, and I untied her, and I ran for help . . .”

  “Jesus! You the one saved my girl’s life, I guess.”