She struggles to resist him, but when Crown kisses her, she embraces him and lets him carry her off. After the picnic, Crown, who is hiding in the woods, confronts Bess when she is alone. Porgy then tells Bess that she is now his woman and she agrees to stay with him. On the day of a church picnic, Sportin' Life again tempts Bess to go to New York and offers her happy dust, but Porgy threatens to break his neck unless he leaves Bess alone. When they balk, Frazier accuses them of living in sin, and Porgy reluctantly pays the amount. One day, lawyer Frazier comes to give Bess a divorce from Crown so she can marry Porgy, for which Porgy pays him a dollar, but when Frazier learns that Bess never married Crown, he demands an extra half-dollar. Bess continues to live with Porgy, and the neighbors soon notice that he is happier. After Serena pleads with the undertaker to accept the fifteen dollars she has collected and let her pay the rest when she earns it, and he agrees to bury the body. The detective warns Serena that if Robbins is not buried by the next day, the board of health will turn his body over to medical students. Peter is then locked up as a material witness until Crown is caught. When a white detective accuses old "honey man" Peter of the murder and threatens him, Peter reveals that he saw Crown kill Robbins. Serena, the God-fearing woman who was married to Robbins, tries to collect money from the community to pay for her husband's burial, and although she refuses Bess's contribution, Porgy encourages the neighbors to be generous and Bess collects their offerings. Desperate, Bess knocks at Porgy's door, he agrees to let her stay. When the police arrive, Bess tries to take refuge with her neighbors, but they all turn her away. Sportin' Life suggests that they leave for New York together, but Bess turns him down in disgust. Bess sends Crown away to protect him from the police, then asks Sportin' Life for some happy dust.
When Robbins, one of the dice players, wins his point, a fight ensues in which Crown kills Robbins with a blow. When Crown and Bess come to the courtyard and Crown joins the dice game, Sportin' Life, a slick drug pusher, sells Crown some "happy dust," or cocaine, against Bess's wishes, and Crown snorts it. The women declare that Porgy, a cripple who gets around on a cart pulled by a goat, is "soft on Bess," but Porgy denies this and laments that the life of a cripple is meant to be lonesome. At Catfish Row, the courtyard home to a southern, African-American fishing community, the men shoot dice one evening while the women gossip about the wanton Bess, who for five years has lived with Crown, a local bully.
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