Summary

Ernestine takes Tish for a drink, narration interjecting the formal, legal-language charge of rape brought against Fonny and a description of how the Puerto Rican Mrs. Rogers had been brought to America by her white husband and left on her own with three children. Narration also describes the circumstances of the rape in terms of the geography of the part of the city in which it happened, and how it was impossible, in that context, for Officer Bell to have seen what he says he saw.

Ernestine then explains to Tish that Mrs. Rogers has likely come to believe what she told the police about it being Fonny who raped her because for her, it is easier than trying to live with not knowing who it was, and to face the pain of what happened. She...