Summary

Chapter two takes the reader back 20 years, to the summer of 1973, when August was eight years old. Her mother started to hear voices and her father moved her and her brother to Brooklyn by the time August was ten. Chapter 2 proceeds along a more linear track, covering the summer that she and her brother spent trapped inside their third-floor apartment, watching life happen on the streets below.

For August, the streets of Brooklyn were a new word, where “the people were all beautiful in some way” (17-18). Watching from the window, August saw three girls about her own age: Sylvia, Gigi, and Angela. Their unity confused August, because her own mother taught her that she should not trust other women. She and her brother were often left alone while their father was at work.

At this point, they were still Christians “wondering what it...