Читать книгу The Sacrifice - Joyce Carol Oates - Страница 16

“These men abducted you, kept you captive in a van, beat and raped you, intermittently for three days and three nights? Where was the van parked, do you have any idea?”

Sybilla shook her head, she didn’t know.

“Could you describe the van? Inside, outside?”

Sybilla shook her head slowly, she wasn’t sure.

Sybilla smiled, a nervous twitch of a smile. How like a child she looked, a badly beaten child, with a gat-toothed smile, looking almost shyly now at the police officer.

Iglesias wanted to take the girl’s hand, to comfort and encourage her. But she dared not touch her, after Sybilla had shrunk from her.

“If you saw a van, you could maybe compare it to the van they’d taken you in? You could try to describe it?”

Sybilla shook her head yes. She could try.

“When they left you in the factory cellar, they told you they would kill you, if you told anyone? Who said these words?”

Sybilla shook her head, she didn’t know.

“Did one of the men say this, or others? Did they all say this?”

Sybilla hid her face in her hands. Mrs. Frye whispered to her, and drew her hands away.

The interview had exhausted the girl. Iglesias was exhausted.

Thinking White cop! White cop.

Thinking None of this story is true. This is all a lie. The mother has coached her. The mother has beat her. The mother’s boyfriend—her own boyfriend—someone she knows …

Mrs. Frye was embracing her daughter. The two of them were weeping, wet-eyed.

“Ma’am, this interview over now. My girl got to get home where she safe, and her mama can take care of her.”

And there was no recording of this interview! Iglesias had known that was a mistake.

Only her notes, and the bright yellow Post-its.

Only her word.

“Mrs. Frye, if we could just—a few more minutes, and …”

“I said no! My daughter’s health come first, before anythin else. You got this girl to tell you somethin could get her killed, and you better not misuse it, or S’b’lla, I’m warnin you—Off’cer.”

Off’cer was spoken in indignation as Mrs. Frye heaved herself up from the gurney and gathered Sybilla into her arms. The girl was unresisting now, and hid her face in the older woman’s bosom.

Iglesias backed away sick and stunned.

“‘White cop.’”

Her very mouth seemed to have gone numb.

And how many times in the weeks and months to come would the thought come to her, remorse like a stab in the gut—But what if it is true? What if white men did debase her? And we didn’t believe her? God help me to know what is truth and what is false.