“And that little boy who rode with me in the cart, his feet were too tore up to walk.” Miss Hannah said this, in a hollow voice, looking straight ahead, back to being stuck in between this world and the one with her brother in the water.

“That one,” Miss Clara said, pointing to the baby still slumped in my arms, “her father left her with the orphanage when he went to go and try to join the war. They told him she’d be well cared for. What’s he going to come back to now?” Miss Clara was the youngest member of the women’s club at church. There, she was given to making righteous statements that made the other women shuffle and shift, embarrassed by her blunt holiness.

“One of the girls said the white people went around and marked every colored person’s home in Manhattan,” Miss Annie said. “With red chalk, they marked it. They marked the homes of our white friends, too. So they knew who to burn.” As she spoke, she fanned herself with her hand in quick, sharp strokes, trying to shift the weight of humidity with the palm of a hand.

“What terrors,” Miss Dinah said. “Can you imagine? I mean, can you imagine, your very own neighbor marking your house to attack? Can you imagine all those people you pass in the street every day, planning for your demise?” Miss Dinah leaned forward and said, in a gruff, low voice that I suppose was meant to be that of a terror, “Mark ’em all and burn ’em down.” I’d heard Miss Dinah try on this voice before, at church meetings when she was describing certain devils, and it had always raised a laugh. But not now. The accent only curdled in the hot air.

“Surely, the governor can stop it,” Miss Clara said uncertainly. “He’ll send troops to make it stop.”

Mama looked at Miss Clara, with her high, smooth neck and clear brown skin. “You understand less than I thought you did if you think he’d lift a finger.”

Miss Clara blinked, and her cheeks darkened.

“One of the men says”—Miss Annie leaned forward, eager to stop the sadness and share what she knew—“the mayor begged the governor for help, but the governor plans to come and cheer the rioters on.”

“He’d do it,” Mama murmured.

“How can you be so hopeless?” Miss Clara said.

Miss Annie sat back in her chair again. “It is not being hopeless. We have to plan for the worst of what white folks do. Because they always choose the worst. They do what they do, and—”

“We do what we can,” Mama said. She took a sip of water from her tin cup.

“I hope the governor burns,” I said, from my seat at the corner.