dumped people they’d shot in the street and nobody found the bodies for a long time. But this girl didn’t die.
Where my baby? She s’quest’d. She aint here. She sick, and she gon get well. You leave my baby alone!
In the brownstone row house at 939 Third Street the agitated mother scarcely opened the front door but shouted through a narrow crack for would-be visitors to go away. Initially, Mrs. Frye had tried to determine who it was ringing the bell or rapping loudly at the door when the buzzer-bell failed to sound, a familiar face, relatives, girlfriends of Sybilla’s, incensed and sympathetic neighbors or strangers—so many strangers!—then in a frenzy of fear and dismay she turned them all away slamming the door in their faces.
Through the windows Ednetta Frye could be seen, a shifting shadow-shape, peeking out at the edges of the drawn blinds. Her figure was both hulking and tremulous. Muttering to herself God help us. God help us through this mis’ry.
It was known, Sybilla Frye was being kept home from school. Days in succession following the news of her discovery in the Jersey Foods factory she was absent from Pascayne High South where she was a sophomore with what school authorities were acknowledging was a spotty record—a history of sporadic and unexplained absences already since the start of the fall term after Labor Day and the previous year in ninth grade as well.
Questioned by authorities about the assaulted girl, the principal of the high school had no recollection of her nor did her teachers speak of “Sybilla Frye” with much certainty—classes at Pascayne South were overcrowded, students sat in seats not always assigned to them, Sybilla’s homeroom teacher had taken sick days in September during which time substitutes had monitored the thirty or more students in the homeroom and none of these had any clear recollection of “Sybilla Frye” still less any information about her.
Nor did Sybilla’s classmates wish to speak of her except in the most vague terms—S’b’lla be out of school, somethin happen to her.
When someone from the high school called, Ednetta Frye interrupted without listening to whatever question, request, message this stranger had for her—My daughter not livin in this house right now! She s’quest’d somewhere safe. Repeated calls, Ednetta picked up the receiver and slammed it down without listening.
Juvenile Aid of New Jersey, Child Protective Services, Passaic County Family Services—calls from these agencies, Ednetta Frye dealt with in a similar fashion. Individuals from these agencies, even those dark-skinned and female like herself, Ednetta Frye turned away brusquely from her door.
She s’quest’d where you can’t get her! Just go away an leave us like you ever give a damn for us!
The Hispanic female police detective who’d pretended to be Ednetta’s friend in the hospital ER returned, with a (male, Italian-looking) detective-companion who stared at Ednetta with an expression of barely concealed contempt. Ednetta had seen the white-and-green Pascayne PD cruiser park at the curb only a few yards away from the window at which she crouched pressing the palm of her hand into her chest as she panted in pain and apprehension—Jesus help me. Jesus send these people away—and she guessed she had no choice but to open the door to them, at least a crack, for possibly they had a search warrant? a warrant for arrest?—though which of them it might be, Sybilla, or herself, who’d be arrested, Ednetta had no idea. She was near-fainting with anxiety. High-blood-pressure pounded in her ears. As the female detective knocked Ednetta snatched open the door saying in a hoarse pleading voice what sounded to the detectives like—My baby s’quest’d! She ain’t here! Can’t talk to you now gon shut this door.
The female detective—(Ednetta hadn’t caught the name, much of what other people said in recent days flew past Ednetta’s consciousness like panicked birds whose beating wings you ducked to avoid)—tried to prevent her from shutting the door. Saying it was crucial that she speak with Sybilla, and with her. The female detective’s companion was standing beside her grim-faced staring at Ednetta through the two-inch crack between the door and the doorframe and Ednetta saw in the man’s ice pick eyes the look that signaled We know you are lying you God damn fuckin nigger bitch you will regret this.
The female detective—“Iglesias”—was trying to speak calmly to Ednetta. Seeing that Ednetta was in an excitable mood. (Both cops alert to whether the distraught and panting heavyset black woman might’ve been hiding a butcher knife behind her broad hips, or a hand gun.) Telling her that she, Iglesias, was her friend; and she’d brought with her Detective ___ —whose name Ednetta could not have heard even if she’d wanted to hear it, blood pumping in her ears; and they hoped for just a few minutes of her time, and if they could please speak with Sybilla … And Ednetta said sharply Ma’am I told you you can’t! My baby aint in this house she s’quest’d somewhere safe.
Iglesias seemed not to hear. Not to understand.
S’quest’d? “Sequestered”?
Quickly Ednetta shut the door. Her heart was pounding so hard in her billowy chest, she’d have thought it was an angry fist demanding release.
From inside Ednetta could see Iglesias and the other detective outside on the step conferring what to do. Shrewdly she reasoned that the detectives didn’t have a warrant to enter the house—if they had, they’d have entered the house; nor did they have a warrant to arrest her or Sybilla. (Could you arrest someone for being a victim? Could you arrest someone for being a victim’s mother?) Still, Ednetta was remembering the martial law days and nights of August 1967 when SWAT teams stormed Red Rock houses in a hail of bullets or threw tear gas containers or firebombs into dwellings like this in a pretext of “neutralizing” sniper fire. She hadn’t known Anis Schutt then but knew of how Anis’s (unarmed) sixteen-year-old brother Lyander had been murdered by city police for stepping outside his mother’s house on Freund Street five minutes after the 9:00 P.M. curfew. A sixty-year-old great-aunt of Ednetta’s living in a first-floor apartment in the Roosevelt project had been shot dead through a window unwisely passing in front of a blind with a harsh light behind it—another “sniper” casualty.
Iglesias was calling through cupped hands not in a threatening-cop voice but a friendly-female voice—Mrs. Frye? Please? We can just speak with you. This is crucial for our investigation.
Ednetta retreated to the rear of the house. Ednetta climbed panting and sweating to the second floor of the house. Ednetta hid away in her and Anis’s bedroom whimpering like a wounded creature sprawled on the bed covering her head with a blanket. Jesus help me. Jesus forgive me. None of this my fault Jesus!
When she revived, the house was quiet. She listened hard to hear if the detectives were knocking on the door, calling for her, but they were not.
She’d heard a vehicle in the street, pulling away. She hoped this was the police cruiser.
Damn phone began to ring, she’d thought she’d taken the receiver off the hook. She took that precaution now.
It was true: Sybilla Frye wasn’t in the brownstone at 939 Third Street. Soon after they’d returned from St. Anne’s Hospital and before Anis had returned to the house Ednetta had taken the girl away to stay with Ednetta’s seventy-nine-year-old grandmother who lived in a ground-floor apartment in the dead end of Eleventh Street at the river.
High above Ednetta’s grandmother’s
