The Sacrifice by Joyce Carol Oates

damn stupid not to know that white cops turn your word around on you, or say you goin for a ‘weapon’ when you’re reachin for your driver’s license so they can shoot you down dead.”
    Iglesias spoke carefully to the excited woman saying she understood her concern, but this was an entirely different situation. In theheat of confrontations, terrible mistakes sometimes happened. But allowing Iglesias to record a conversation with her daughter, in the safety of the ER, was not the same thing at all.
    Mrs. Frye said, snorting with indignation, that that was just some white folks’ bullshit.
    Iglesias said, pained, that “white folks” had nothing to do with this—with them . They could both speak frankly to her, that was why she’d come to speak with them.
    Mrs. Frye was unimpressed. She said to Sybilla she was going to get her some decent clothes to put on, and they were getting out of this place. Unless they were arrested, nobody could keep them.
    “Mrs. Frye, please—let me speak to Sybilla without recording our conversation. For just a few minutes.”
    Iglesias had no choice but to relent, the woman was about to take away the girl. Arranging for another interview would be very difficult.
    “Nah I’m thinking we better be goin. Talkin with you aint worked out like I hoped, see, ma’am, you one of them .”
    Mrs. Frye spoke contemptuously. Iglesias felt dismay.
    I am one of you, not one of them. Believe me!
    “Please, Mrs. Frye. Just a few minutes. No recording.”
    All this while Sybilla had been sitting mute and shivering. Only vaguely had she seemed to be listening to the adult women, with an air of disdain.
    Iglesias saw herself in the girl, she believed to be fourteen. She saw herself at that age, sulky, sullen, defiant and scared.
    She’d been sexually molested, too. More than once. And many times sexually harassed and threatened. But never raped, never brutally beaten. Not Ines Iglesias.
    The Fryes lived on Third Street, in that run-down neighborhood by the river. Abandoned factories, shuttered and part-burned houses,streets clogged with abandoned and rusting vehicles. Pascayne South High, lowest-ranked in the city. The Fifth Precinct, with the highest crime rate. You had to grow up swiftly there.
    In the Iglesias neighborhood, adjacent to Forest Park, there were blocks of single-family homes, neatly tended lawns and attached garages. There were streets not clogged with parked, abandoned vehicles. There was Forest Park High from which an impressive number of students went on to college and where there were no fights, knifings, rapes on or near the premises.
    But I am one of you! Please trust me .
    Though she hadn’t grown up in the inner city, Iglesias had had good reason to fear and distrust the Pascayne police. Family members, relatives, friends, neighbors had had encounters with (white) police of which you had to say the good thing was, none of these encounters had been fatal.
    Though she knew of encounters that had been fatal.
    Though she knew police officers who were racists, even now—in 1987. After the Pascayne PD had been “integrated” for twenty years.
    It was a mark of their contempt for her, she supposed—making racist remarks when she could overhear.
    Yet, racist remarks that weren’t directed toward her or her kind— light-skinned Hispanic.
    It was African-Americans they held in particular contempt— niggers.
    Though maybe behind her back, in their careless, jocular way, that exaggerated the bigotry they naturally felt in the service of humor, they referred to her as nigger , too.
    Iglesias not bad-lookin for a nigger, is she?
    Man, not bad!
    Got her an ass on her.
    I seen better.
    In a quiet urging voice Iglesias was telling Sybilla Frye how she wanted to help her. How she wanted to know who’d hurt her so badly, who the assailant or assailants were so that they could be arrested, gotten off the street.
    With a little shiver of dread Sybilla drew the blanket closer around her.