breathing of a great beast. The air was a pale-cinnamon haze.
Sybilla’s great-grandmother Pearline Tice had not been informed of the nature of the terrible hurt done to the battered girl but only S’b’lla needin to spend some time with you, Grandma. Somebody act bad with her now she gon conv’lesce. She give you trouble, call me quick!
Ednetta’s other children still living at home—the younger son and daughter—were in school when the detectives came to the door. Anis had been out and Ednetta didn’t know for sure—often, she didn’t know, and could not ask—if Anis intended to be back that night for supper.
(Anis had other places he stayed, some nights. Anis had sporadic if precisely unidentified “work” that seemed to pay fairly well—judging by cash he set out on the kitchen table for Ednetta when he was in a generous mood. It was enough for Ednetta that Anis Schutt kept his clothes and things with her—meaning he’d always be coming back to her. Other places, other women were temporary.)
Now that Sybilla was out of the house, that was a calming influence on Anis.
Ednetta hadn’t told him about Sybilla hog-tied in the fish-food factory, and taken to the ER. She hadn’t told him that Sybilla had been questioned by a Pascayne PD detective. Not yet.
Anis knew some of what had happened. But not all.
It was like Lyander shot down dead over on Freund Street and his body not found until morning when the curfew lifted. You know that something has happened, it will hit you hard and irrevocably but you don’t know (yet) what it is and you are in no hurry to know.
That morning Anis had awakened late. You tiptoed around Anis sprawled naked and snoring in bed one of his muscled arms flung out like a gnarly tree limb. And his face that was an ugly-scarred not-young face twitching and grimacing in sleep. Standing above the man seeing his eyeballs shifting inside the tight-shut lids which meant he was dreaming Ednetta lapsed into a dream of her own recalling her friend from girlhood Natalia who’d murdered her common-law husband (as the newspapers would identify him) while he’d slept in just this way, gripping in both hands a revolver belonging to the man, pointing the barrel at the man’s forehead from a distance of no more than three inches then pulling the trigger. It was him or me, he’d have killed me Natalia said and though this was true, they’d convicted Natalia of “cold-blooded” second-degree murder and sent her to the women’s prison at Trenton twenty-five years to life.
Ednetta loved Anis too much for anything like that.
Even if it became necessary Ednetta wasn’t the one for anything like that.
So, you moved quiet and took care not to close any door with a click, not to waken the man. Stumbling out of the room to dress in the bathroom and not to use the faucet that squeaked, and not to flush the toilet that made too much damn noise. And if you turned on TV to see local morning news you kept the volume down almost to mute.
(Nothing on the TV about “Sybilla Frye”—yet. There’d been no official charges made, no news released to the media. Ednetta reasoned that so long as she kept away from all cops, and kept Sybilla away, there would never be this news and maybe it would all just fade away like things do.)
The younger children had learned also to hush, to be very quiet not to awaken their stepdaddy. They were gone to school by the time Anis staggered out for breakfast and by this time Sybilla would have been gone also if she’d been in the house. No reason for Anis to ask about her and he hadn’t asked. Hadn’t said a word. Silent in the kitchen devouring the breakfast Ednetta had prepared for him which was a hot breakfast—sausages fried in grease, corn bread—and strong-smelling coffee whitened with milk the way Anis liked it and he hadn’t looked at her in fury or in shame though he’d grunted in farewell rising from the table, grabbing his jacket and his cap and departing with footsteps quick for a man so heavy, like mallet-thuds on the floor.
All he’d been hearing on the street that week, had to be hearing and he hadn’t said a word to Ednetta.
Between the girl and the stepfather was a treacherous wild place Ednetta tried to avoid.
They were two of a kind, Ednetta thought: the girl, the stepfather.
She was the responsible one. She was the mother.
First thing he’d said moving into this house he’d said if these kids are under my roof with me, they are going to be disciplined by me. In Anis’s own way of speaking (which did not involve the employment of actual words you might recount, contemplate) he’d allowed her to know this. And he had his own boys he’d brought with him—big, brooding boys, not home half the time, or more than half the time, never mind them.
And Sybilla was just a young girl then, sixth grade, eleven years old, grateful to be taken up by the Tyne girls across the street, and the gorgeous Jamaican Gloria Estes who was their stepmother and braided the girls’ hair including Sybilla’s hair and it was like Sy billa adored them all and had no judgment. And the girls were running crazy-wild colliding with people on the sidewalk, elderly ladies, crippled men, that poor no-leg boy in his wheelchair in Hicks Square, giggling and screaming and in the Korean grocery two of them attracted the attention of the cashier (who was also the store owner) and another two wandered the aisles with schoolgirl innocence while slipping things into their pockets, licorice twists, salted peanuts, gummy worms, mints, no surprise the girls were caught—(disgusted Mr. Park could see the ghost-white-girls cavorting on a TV surveillance screen)—and when Anis found out that his eleven-year-old stepdaughter had been “arrested” for shoplifting with three other, older girls he’d disciplined her grimly in a way he said had to be done, it was the way his own father had done with all his children, beating the girl with his belt, a half-dozen harsh strokes, a dozen harsher strokes, and now the girl was screaming in pain and terror for her mama had never hurt her like this, even in a blind rage Ednetta had never hurt her children in such a way, but Anis who was the new stepdaddy believed in a different sort of discipline and finally Ednetta had dared to rush at the man to stop his hands terrified he’d injure her little girl seriously with the flying buckle that had inflicted hurt on her bare back, buttocks, legs, blood-oozing welts. And Anis had flung Ednetta from him to stumble stunned against a wall. And Anis had said afterward it was a good thing she’d stopped him for once he began in the way of disciplining which was his own daddy’s way it was hard to stop.
Soberly and seriously he’d told Ednetta this. He had not exaggerated. Uneasily Ednetta recalled the rumor—(not a rumor but “fact” but Ednetta didn’t want to think in such specific terms)—that Anis Schutt had beaten to death his first wife a beautiful Haitian named Tana and been convicted of second-degree manslaughter and incarcerated at Rahway for how many years exactly, Ednetta didn’t know.
So it was a warning, Ednetta thought. A warning for the heedless stepdaughter and a warning for the mother.
Don’t provoke Anis, girl. You know the man have this temper, he can’t help.
Yet it was a desperate thing, how she loved Anis Schutt. A melting sensation in the region of her heart, Jesus! First time she’d seen him, and she had not been a naïve young girl then. And thinking he was an ugly man, large blunt face like something carved in weatherworn rock and an oily black skin ten times blacker than Ednetta Frye who wasn’t what you’d call light-skin. And his eyes distinct and shiny as marbles in his head and restless, and his way of carrying himself like he was too restless to be confined in any space. And you would not ever want to cross Anis Schutt or draw his angry attention. And yet she’d stared at him, and stared. And he’d seen her, and smiled at her. And suddenly his face was changed, even boyish. Even kind-seeming.
