The Sacrifice. Joyce Carol Oates

Thinking she would peek in the windows and see if she could see Sybilla inside, but Ednetta had drawn all the blinds down to the sills.

      Martine thought, if her cousin Sybilla was dead, she would know it. That shuddery sensation like when someone walks over your grave-to-be.

      All of Sybilla’s girlfriends were talking about her, wondering where she was. Sybilla was starting to hang out with older guys but it had to be in secret—Ednetta couldn’t know. (For sure, the stepfather Anis couldn’t know. That man would whip her hard with his belt and give Ednetta a few swipes, too.) Her friends wondered if this disappearance, all these rumors, had to do with that.

      Or maybe there was no connection. Sybilla was just grabbed in some alley, dragged into a car or a van and driven away, kept for three days and three nights and God knows what done to her.

      “They sayin she in the hospital now, in some ‘special care’ ward. She on ‘life support.’”

      “Nah. They sayin she run away with that Jaycee.”

      It wasn’t uncommon for a girl like Sybilla who didn’t get along well with her mother to be sent away—somewhere. Martine wondered if this was the explanation.

      Where’s S’b’lla?—Martine nagged her mother who’d told her a dozen times she didn’t know. There was something evasive in her mother’s voice that suggested to Martine that she did know. (Martine’s mother Cheryl was Ednetta’s younger sister. Bullshit Ednetta hadn’t confided in her.)

      The last time Martine went to Third Street to knock on her aunt’s door Ednetta cursed her with a choking sob God damn girl ain’t I told you! S’b’lla not here! Just go.

      For sure something had happened to Sybilla, you could tell by Ednetta’s behavior. That guilty-ravaged look in Ednetta’s face. How quick Ednetta flared up in a nasty temper.

      Whatever it was, Ednetta knew. She just wasn’t telling.

      Martine hated it when people’s mothers changed from who they were to somebody else, the look in their faces and in their eyes like they were strangers and didn’t care for you like they’d always done. A man was different, it was never surprising a man might change, and a man might change back to who he’d been, or a man might just depart and you’d never see him again. But a woman like Ednetta who was Martine’s aunt, her mother’s older sister, who’d taken care of Martine a thousand times, and had always babied and kissed her like Martine was her own daughter, and (maybe) nicer than Sybilla in fact—if a mother like Ednetta could change, that made Martine want to cry.

      “S’B’LLA?”—SOFTLY MARTINE CALLED CUPPING HER HANDS TO her mouth.

      Standing on tiptoe in the alley outside her great-grandmother’s ground-floor apartment on Eleventh Street. It was a wild chance Martine was taking but you had to figure if Sybilla had been sent away, likely it was here. Martine had been sent away to Grandma Tice’s place herself more than once, when her mother didn’t have time for her or was in the women’s shelter and Martine didn’t want to live there with her and the other pitiful beat-up women and kids.

      “S’b’lla? Hey? It’s me.”

      From where she stood in the alley, she couldn’t see into the room behind the window. But this would be Sybilla’s window if Sybilla was staying here.

      Somewhere close by a dog was barking furiously, God damn thing she’d have liked to murder. If Grandma Tice came to the window instead of Sybilla and saw her, she’d send Martine away with a scolding.

      Like a cooing pigeon Martine called gently, stubbornly—“S’b’lla! It’s Martine.”

      Suddenly the window was tugged up. And there was Sybilla leaning out to Martine looking surprised and happy—like a little girl surprised and happy.

      “M’tine! Jesus! Hi.”

      “S’b’lla! Jesus.”

      This was a shock: her girl-cousin beat-up.

      Almost, Martine might not have recognized Sybilla.

      Both Sybilla’s eyes were puffy and discolored, her upper lip was puffy and scabby, one of her eyebrows was shaved and stitched like a weird horror doll, and her hair was cut jagged like a weird horror wig. It was like Sybilla had been dragged from the rear of a vehicle like they told of black people being dragged in the terrible old days in the South or some nasty place like Texas.

      Sybilla tugged the window a few inches higher so that she could lean out, to pull Martine up and inside. Gave a little gasp of pain, blood rushing into her face must’ve been hot and heavy, and just leaning down the way she was seemed to be hurting her back. Martine grabbed hold of the window ledge and swung her legs up like a monkey, crawled through the window and fell into the room giggling into Sybilla’s arms.

      “Oh M’tine! It’s you.”

      “Yah I been missin you, S’b’lla. Why’re you here?”

      “Mama made me come here.”

      The girl-cousins were the same age. Same height and same size except Martine registered shock, hugging Sybilla tight and feeling that Sybilla was skinny.

      “Fuck baby, who hurt you so bad?”

      “Jesus, M’tine! Shh.”

      Sybilla wriggled out of Martine’s arms. Had to pull down the damn window quietly so Grandma wouldn’t hear and bust in on them.

      Pearline Tice was some ancient age but sharp-eared and sharp-eyed. People said admiringly of Pearline you can’t put anything over on that lady. She’d had seven children, twenty-one grandchildren, more great-grandchildren than anyone could count scattered through the State of New Jersey and beyond.

      “You OK, S’b’lla?”

      “Yah. Aint gonna die, I guess.”

      Sybilla climbed up onto the big bed which took up most of the room. Only a few inches so the door could be opened, and a few feet for a battered old chest of drawers and an ugly old radiator. Martine climbed up beside her breathless and dazed.