The Sacrifice Page 13

  Born within minutes of each other, the twins did not—at first glance—closely resemble each other. Six minutes older than Byron, Marus behaved as if these six minutes had given him a mandate of authority in their twinness which Byron, quieter by nature, self-effacing and given to irony, didn’t contest. There was no competing with Marus Mudrick—you were a follower, a disciple, or an enemy; in Byron’s case, you were a younger brother.

  Both brothers had suffered from birth injuries that caused their upper spines to be slightly twisted and stunted their growth: Marus never grew beyond five feet five, Byron was at least an inch shorter. Marus compensated for this “short” stature by wearing shoes with substantial heels, standing very straight and holding his head high, speaking clearly and decisively, often in a loud, assured, preacherly voice; his staffers and associates were chosen partly for their height, and it was rare, except in celebrity-photographs, that Marus allowed himself to be photographed with individuals who were taller than he.

  Byron, who professed himself bemused by his brother’s vanity, yet not wholly unsympathetic with it, compensated for his stature by immersing himself in his work, in which he exerted, at times, an extraordinary will—he liked to think of himself as a pit bull that never barks but sinks his teeth in his opponent’s ankle and will not be pried loose. Where Marus thrived upon attention, thrilled to be heard, to be seen, to be photographed and on TV, even to be reviled and attacked so long as he was able to exert influence in the cause of advancing his race, Byron was content to win court cases and to negotiate settlements behind the scenes, out of the glare of publicity.

  Because of their spinal condition and short stature the Mudrick twins were classified 4F for the U.S. draft, and were not called up for service in the Vietnam War. Marus was (publicly) sympathetic with black draft resisters (like Cassius Clay) but overall not so sympathetic with the white-radical-led anti-war movement of the late 1960s which he believed might be “Communist”-inspired as well as a movement generated by “hippies” who didn’t give Marus Mudrick the respect and recognition to which he was accustomed in the black community. Byron, a believer in black patriotism, in the wake of the Paul Robeson scandal careful to identify himself as an “enemy of communism,” had nonetheless defended a number of young black conscientious objectors in the 1960s, without much success in keeping them out of federal prisons. Of black activist attorneys, Byron Mudrick was hated less than most, for his cordial, professional, and non-declamatory manner; even politicians, public officials, and judges who sided against him, whose (covert) racism made of Byron Mudrick an ideological enemy, were courteous to the man, and admiring of his courtroom skills. He liked to joke that he should have cards printed—THE MUDRICK BROTHER PEOPLE COME TO FOR HELP WITH MARUS.

  FIVE WEEKS AFTER SYBILLA HAD BEEN FOUND IN THE FISH-food factory, Ednetta Frye was introduced to Reverend Marus Mudrick.

  It was the pastor of Ednetta’s church, Reverend Denis, who brought the two together. He’d told Ednetta that “someone very special, one of our great black Americans” wanted to meet her.

  Why’d this person want to meet her? Ednetta asked, frightened.

  Ednetta knew of Marus Mudrick of course. Not only had she heard Reverend Mudrick preach in Reverend Denis’s church on several occasions, but she’d been seeing his photograph in newspapers for more than twenty years; she’d read admiring articles on the dynamic civil-rights-activist-minister and interviews with him in such publications as Ebony, Essence, and Black Digest. The Pascayne newspaper had reported on Marus Mudrick’s “illegal” protest marches and “inflammatory” public addresses in the state capitol, and in Newark; in any white publication, Reverend Marus Mudrick was likely to be denounced as “race-baiting.” Since girlhood Ednetta had revered Adam Clayton Powell, like everyone she knew; she knew that Marus Mudrick had been a young protégé of Powell.

  Ednetta felt that she might faint when Reverend Mudrick took her hand in his and gazed into her eyes with an expression of tender interest and concern. Her nostrils took in his fragrant hair pomade, and his cologne. She had never seen, at close quarters, so suavely handsome a man, so elegantly masculine a man; she was conscious of his dazzling-white smile, his burnished, caramel-colored skin, the fine-trimmed mustache on his upper lip. Reverend Mudrick wore a three-piece suit of a dark, soft wool, with a waistcoat in a lighter fabric, a white silk shirt and a rich, resplendent salmon-colored silk tie. On his right hand he wore a gold signet ring and on his left wrist, a gold stretch-band watch. His gold cuff links engraved MCM glittered. His voice was low, sibilant. Mrs. Frye, Ednetta, your daughter Sybilla—Ednetta’s breath grew short, and her eyes brimmed with moisture so sharp it hurt.

  In the front room of Reverend Denis’s house adjacent to the AME church on Seventh Street, Marus Mudrick spoke with Ednetta Frye for more than an hour, explaining his “mission” in seeking her out; his outrage over the “race-rape” of her daughter by white police officers; and his conviction that he was the one to secure “justice for her daughter, and for her.”

  Though scarcely taller than Ednetta, and much shorter than Anis Schutt, Marus Mudrick exuded an air of remarkable authority. He spoke intensely and with passion. His gestures were grandiloquent. His very soul seemed to quiver with heat. Several times Ednetta tried to draw breath to speak but stammered and fell silent, overcome by the man’s personality.

  He’d been sent to her by a “direct action of God,” he said. To her, and to her daughter Sybilla.

  As soon as he’d learned of the outrage that had befallen them, and of how Pascayne police were ignoring the case. And of the white news boycott of the case.

  A fourteen-year-old black girl. Kidnapped, beaten and raped and left to die in that terrible place by white cops; and their superiors protecting the rapists; and the white-establishment media choking off all news pertaining to the rape.

  Such was—almost—worse than murder. Nothing like this would be countenanced in any civilized society, in any true democracy but only in a Nazi-racist state.

  Marus Mudrick was breathing quickly. His air of excited good news confused Ednetta for she felt responsible for it, and uneasy—why hadn’t Reverend Denis warned her that she would be meeting Marus Mudrick! (She’d supposed it would be another of the dreary social-worker types with nappy hair, flat-heeled shoes, short-filed fingernails who’d been coming around for the past month.)

  She’d dressed hurriedly to come to Reverend Denis’s. At least, her clothes were decent—recent purchases, and not wrinkled: suede trousers tight at the waist, “fox”-fur jacket, V-neck tinsel sweater and around her neck the plain gold chain and cross she’d been wearing since age ten when her grandma Pearline had given it to her. And she’d had Chloe at the Jubilee Salon do her hair, that had been looking like a rat’s nest for the past month. And on her feet, high-heeled shoes not those damn sneakers she’d been wearing because of her bunions. And makeup—After Dark lip-gloss.

  The look that passed between them, Reverend Mudrick, and Ednetta Frye—like a match-flame, so quick.

  The Reverend clearly thinking Here is a beautiful woman where I was expecting a fat middle-age Mama.

  Ednetta was too distracted to ask Marus Mudrick how he’d heard about her daughter and her but Marus Mudrick explained that “evil news” travels fast and that he had his finger on the pulse of injustice suffered by blacks especially in the State of New Jersey where his Care Ministry was located. Soon as he’d heard of the outrage perpetrated upon Sybilla Frye, he’d contacted Reverend Denis who was one of his oldest and most trusted friends in the cause of black justice.

  Now, Ednetta was truly feeling faint. Reverend Mudrick helped her to a chair, and pulled up a chair so close before her, their knees touched.

  Marus Mudrick paused in his excited speech to tell Ednetta that he’d heard—from Reverend Denis—that Ednetta had a beautiful contralto singing voice—like Marian Anderson. He’d heard that Ednetta didn’t sing with the church choir any longer—and that everyone missed her.
He had a love for music, too—he’d begun singing solos in church as a little boy, in Virginia—the old gospels, hymns—he’d taken up the saxophone in high school—his great hero was Charlie Parker—but he hadn’t much spirit for music any longer, in these turbulent times.

  In the 1960s, the enemy assassinated black leaders. In the 1980s, the enemy was more insidious—“Like they sittin on our chests, cutting off our oxygen. One day you wake up and you ain’t alive—you a zombie—but don’t know it.”

  Seeing that Ednetta Frye was looking dazed—(this was an effect he often had upon women of a certain age)—Marus Mudrick said in a lowered voice, “You might not know, Mrs. Frye, but the original zombies were blacks—slave-blacks—in the Caribbean. They were poor innocents drugged, and buried alive, and made to believe they had died, then dug up by their cruel masters, and made to ‘live’—that’s to say, to work for the slave-master. So long as they thought they were dead—they were dead. But they worked—they had no other life except to work. In the old days, a zombie had no one to free him—but now, in 1987, a zombie has no excuse to remain enslaved.”

  Ednetta had never heard anyone speak more persuasively. She recalled Reverend Mudrick’s impassioned sermons from the pulpit in the AME church—you went away convinced that Reverend Mudrick was right, though it was sometimes difficult to explain exactly what he’d said.

  Now, Marus outlined his proposed “crusade” for Ednetta and her daughter as their “spiritual advisor.” He would be working closely with his younger brother Byron, a noted civil rights attorney qualified to practice law in New Jersey, he said; he and Byron Mudrick had worked on many cases together. “We will begin by calling a press conference in Newark, as soon as possible, but no later than next Monday, and demanding an investigation into the Pascayne police department that has been ‘derelict’ and ‘obfuscatory’ in pursuing justice for your daughter. We may then move to the state capitol at Trenton where I have contacts in the legislature, and where I might petition to see the governor. As soon as you designate Byron as your ‘legal counsel,’ he will demand to see all pertinent records—Pascayne PD, the local ER. If the FBI has been on the case, seeing that this is a ‘hate crime,’ we will acquire their records, too. We will begin with an assault on the white enemy, and we will never let up.”

  Ednetta’s heart was beating so quickly, she could barely draw breath. She could barely comprehend what the man was saying, only that he was speaking in an urgent, intimate manner to her.

  This renowned black minister—this black celebrity—was addressing Ednetta Frye in a way no one had ever addressed Ednetta Frye in her entire life; even in her silly girlhood fantasies in which such celebrity-figures as Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Diana Ross had addressed her. (Singing in her room, swaying in front of a mirror, and there came Diana Ross to invite Ednetta to join the Supremes, to take the place of poor Florence Ballard—It would mean giving up your Pascayne life, and touring with us. But you got the voice for it, Ednetta! And the looks.)

  “I want to meet your daughter, Mrs. Frye. Will you take me to her, now?”

  “N-now?”

  “Yes. I’ve come to Pascayne today, having canceled several important engagements, to speak to you, and to your daughter Sybilla. Will you take me to her, Sister Ednetta?”

  Sister Ednetta! Ednetta felt a melting sensation in the region of her heart.

  “Reverend Denis says you live close by, sister. I have a car—we can drive.”

  “But—they will kill us, Rev’nd Mudrick. The white cops—they threatened S’b’lla, and all her fam’ly—”

  “But now, Marus Mudrick will protect you. No more ‘they’ to terrify black women—there is Marus Mudrick. Soon as they learn that I have taken up your cause, they will back off.”

  “Rev’end, I—I don’t know where S’b’lla is . . .”

  “You have heard of Joan of Arc? The French peasant girl who became a martyr, and a saint?”

  Ednetta nodded, uncertain.

  “‘Joan of Arc’—just a young girl when the visions came to her, sent by God. Your daughter is—how old, Ednetta? Fourteen?”

  “S’b’lla fifteen . . .”

  “We will raise the consciousness of white America, through the exposure of what was done to Sybilla Frye—your daughter is a martyr now, but she will be a saint one day.”

  Ednetta nodded slowly. She felt the dazed lethargy of a creature mesmerized by a cobra—the handsome sleekly glistening head, the “piercing” eyes.

  “But—S’b’lla say she don’t want to talk about it, any more—S’b’lla a young girl, you know how they are . . .” Ednetta’s voice trailed off weakly.

  “Not only will you be protected from the white swine, and elevated above them in the consciousness of America, but you will be handsomely rewarded, Sister Ednetta. Sybilla’s story—Sybilla’s ‘exclusive interviews’—lawsuits filed against the Pascayne Police Department, Passaic County, the district attorney’s office—for failure to prosecute a crime and to protect a minor . . . Do you recall the march my associates and I led, in 1984, in Newark, protesting the police-murder of the black former Marine hero Tyrell Rourke on the Turnpike? We were 2,300 strong marching past phalanxes of the Gestapo, jeered-at, threatened by white racists, but we had our signs, and we had our protest songs, and we had God on our side—the black side of history. That march was on the front page of the New York Times and on every news channel in the region. And what do you think the Rourke family was offered in settlement from the State of New Jersey, Sister Ednetta?”

  Marus Mudrick spoke so triumphantly, Ednetta feared that he would discover how little she knew of black history even during her own lifetime.

  “The sum was two point five million dollars, Sister Ednetta. That was the overall settlement, to be divided among a number of individuals. But—two point five million. Think of it! Prior to this, most protest marches were ‘disbanded’ by the police—possibly, there were bottles and rocks thrown, and a few gunshots fired, and the police rushed in to ‘quell the riot.’ The State of New Jersey had to consider that the white racists were getting off easy, this time. And the gang rape of a fourteen-year-old black girl on her way home from school by ‘white cops’ in Passaic County in 1987, will be worth more, I predict.”

  Ednetta was feeling so dazed now, she had to clutch at Marus Mudrick’s arm.

  “But, Rev’end—S’b’lla say she never saw any faces. Or maybe just one—a ‘yellow-hair’ man—S’b’lla say he had a ‘badge’—but she never saw it close up, you know? It was all like—S’b’lla say—some kind of nasty dream, you can’t explain to another person.”

  “Which is why I need to speak with Sybilla, Sister Ednetta. This very day.”

  “But—I’m tryin to say—S’b’lla ain’t . . .” Ednetta’s voice trailed off weakly.

  “We will broker Sybilla’s interviews, and yours, Sister Ednetta, in this tri-state area: Newark, New York City, Philadelphia. Pascayne will be the hub. I promise, Sister Ednetta—your life will be transformed, in a way you could never have imagined.”

  In his sonorous, sibilant voice Reverend Mudrick spoke. It seemed to Ednetta that he hadn’t heard a single word she’d said.

  In desperation she looked to white-haired Reverend Denis, sitting close by, his hands clasped over his belly, eyelids shut as if he were lightly dozing. Ednetta wondered if her pastor, too, had fallen under the spell of Marus Mudrick’s mesmerizing speech.

  “’Scuse me Rev’end Denis, what you thinkin? You think S’b’lla is up to this—talkin to people? Being ‘interviewed’ . . .”

  Slowly, gravely Reverend Denis shook his head. It wasn’t clear if he meant no, or if he was admitting to having no idea.

  “My baby S’b’lla—she ain’t—ain’t always—ain’t what you’d call a girl who obeys her mother, see, Rev’end Mudrick? She, like, ‘headstrong’—how she got herself in this nasty situation, prob’ly . . .”

  “I will talk with Sybilla, and we will mo
ve forward. Next Monday at the latest, we will call a press conference at my headquarters in Newark. I insist that—”

  But abruptly Ednetta was on her feet. Damn weak-ankled in these high-heeled shoes with a tiny strap, the very shoes of vanity her heart accused her, faux crocodile skin. Sybilla had tried them on jamming her big feet in the high heels as she’s jeering Shit Mama, these shoes too sexy for some old lady like you.

  Ednetta stammered: “I’m just rememberin—my grandma, she needs me to drop by the house. She feelin poorly an she needs me now. Some other time, Rev’end Mudrick, we c’n talk—maybe . . . Right now, ’scuse me, Rev’end Denis, Rev’end Mudrick, I’m havin to leave.”

  Before Marus Mudrick could protest, and snatch up her icy-stricken hands in his, Ednetta stumbled out of the room.

  “Sister Ednetta! My dear, wait.”

  But she fled! Fled Reverend Mudrick!

  Astonished, the minister in the three-piece dark-wool suit stood in the doorway of Reverend Denis’s house, calling after Ednetta. She could imagine his bright eyes snapping in alarm, and in rage. She could imagine his fingers twitching with an urge to catch hold of her, and haul her back inside the house. For Ednetta knew men well: you did not ever cross even the weakest of them, and Marus Mudrick was of the strongest.