Things Too Huge to Fix by Saying Sorry by Susan Vaught

came down here to die. She just don’t know it yet.” She wiggled her fingers at all the students from up North, who had crowded into the front of the sanctuary. “None of them really understands Mississippi, or what they gettin’ into, CiCi. It bothers my conscience.”
    I ignored my aunt’s opinions and kept my eyes on the girl. After a few minutes, she just looked scared. My own conscience nudged me. I stood, then closed the few steps between myself and the girl, and I stuck out my hand. “CiCi Robinson,” I said. “I teach school over in Holly Springs.”
    â€œLeslie Marks,” the girl said as we shook. “I just graduated from Ohio State University. I moved down here to help.”
    You’re White was about all I could think, but I couldn’t for the life of me understand why I was thinking that, because I wasn’t prejudiced, at least I didn’t think I was, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. “Come on, then,” I told her. “Work on these mailers with us.”
    A CHILL RIPPLED THROUGH THE silent classroom, and I shivered. Air conditioner. Had to be. But . . .
    No sunlight crept around the heavy drapes pulled over the windows, and a rolled blanket across the bottom of the door blocked any glow from the hallway. The air smelled like dust and perfume and turpentine from soaking paintbrushes. Indriand I sat cross-legged on our floor mats, gripping each other’s hands as Naomi Manchester from Square Books shined a flashlight under her chin. She had brown eyes and dark, arched eyebrows. In the spooky light, her M-shaped mouth looked huge, and her teeth seemed way, way too white.
    â€œThe year was 1862, and Mississippi writhed in the grip of the Civil War.” Her quiet words sat in the air around her, and I imagined cannon smoke, the flash of rifle fire, and men shouting and running for their lives. I held my breath. I was pretty sure Indri was holding hers, too.
    â€œEighty miles northeast of where we’re sitting, twenty-four thousand Americans lay dying on the battlefields of Shiloh, Tennessee.” Ms. Manchester’s dark hair glittered in the yellow beam of the flashlight. She had it pulled into a bun, and her cheeks flushed as she shifted her gaze from me to Indri to the next person in the listening circle. “Confederate troops limped back to Corinth, Mississippi, then fled farther south, to this campus.”
    I glanced to my left and right. This building was old. Had the soldiers come here? Was I sitting in the exact spot where some guy bled to death, or had his brains run right out on the floor? Another fit of shivers made my teeth chatter.
    â€œWhy did the North and the South fight like that anyway?” Sheila behind me asked before Ms. Manchester could start talking again.
    â€œDuh,” said Bobby, who was sitting on my left. “Over slavery. Everybody knows that.”
    Ms. Manchester looked around the room as she answered. “There were many, many reasons for the Civil War, but disagreement over the moral soundness of slavery was a big one.”
    â€œWhy did they have to kill each other, though?” Sheila said. “Couldn’t the people who had slaves just release them and apologize?”
    â€œI think there are things too huge and awful to fix by just saying sorry ,” Indri said. “Like kidnapping people and making them into slaves, and torturing them for three hundred years just because they were Black instead of White.”
    â€œBe niiice,” I whispered to Indri.
    â€œThat was nice,” she shot back.
    â€œIndri has the gist of it,” Ms. Manchester said. “The problems between northern states and southern states had grown so deep and gone on so long that they couldn’t be sorted out by talking—or at least that’s what everyone believed. So the war began. Then, in May 1861, Company A of the 11th Mississippi Infantry Regiment in the