LITERARY ASSIGMENT

5 pages, not including the Works Cited page, and should be double spaced in Times New Roman 12- point font and must include: 

Save Time On Research and Writing
Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper.
Get My Paper

Toni Morrison

Sula

First published in 1973

Save Time On Research and Writing
Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper.
Get My Paper

It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they
leave you. This book is for Ford and Slade, whom I miss
although they have not left me.

“Nobody knew my rose of the world but me… I had too
much glory. They don’t want glory like that in nobody’s
heart.”

–The Rose Tattoo

Foreword

In the fifties, when I was a student, the embarrassment of
being called a politically minded writer was so acute, the
fear of critical derision for channeling one’s creativity
toward the state of social affairs so profound, it made me
wonder: Why the panic? The flight from any accusation of
revealing an awareness of the political world in one’s fiction
turned my attention to the source of the panic and the
means by which writers sought to ease it. What could be so
bad about being socially astute, politically aware in
literature? Conventional wisdom agrees that political fiction
is not art; that such work is less likely to have aesthetic
value because politics–all politics–is agenda and therefore
its presence taints aesthetic production. That wisdom,

which seems to have been unavailable to Chaucer, or
Dante, or Catullus, or Sophocles, or Shakespeare, or
Dickens, is still with us, and, in 1969 it placed an inordinate
burden on African American writers. Whether they were
wholly uninterested in politics of any sort, or whether they
were politically inclined, aware, or aggressive, the fact of
their race or the race of their characters doomed them to a
“political-only” analysis of their worth. If Phillis Wheatley
wrote “The sky is blue,” the critical question was what could
blue sky mean to a black slave woman? If Jean Toomer
wrote “The iron is hot,” the question was how accurately or
poorly he expressed chains of servitude. This burden
rested not only on the critics, but also on the reader. How
does a reader of any race situate herself or himself in order
to approach the world of a black writer? Won’t there always
be apprehension about what may be revealed, exposed
about the reader? In 1970, when I began writing _Sula,__ I
had already had the depressing experience of reading
commentary on my first novel, _The Bluest Eye,__ by both
black and white reviewers that–with two exceptions–had
little merit since the evaluation ignored precisely the
“aesthetics only” criteria it championed. If the novel was
good, it was because it was faithful to a certain kind of
politics; if it was bad, it was because it was faithless to
them. The judgment was based on whether “Black people
are–or are not–like this.” This time out, I returned the
compliment and ignored the shallowness of such views
and, again, rooted the narrative in a landscape already
tainted by the fact that it existed. Only a few people would

be interested, I thought, in any wider approach–fewer than
the tiny percentage of the fifteen hundred who had bought
the first book. But the act of writing was too personally
important for me to abandon it just because the prospects
of my being taken seriously were bleak. It may be difficult
now to imagine how it felt to be seen as a problem to be
solved rather than a writer to be read. James Baldwin,
Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston–all had
been called upon to write an essay addressing the
“problem” of being a “Negro” writer. In that no-win situation-
-inauthentic, even irresponsible, to those looking for a
politically representative canvas; marginalized by those
assessing value by how “moral” the characters were–my
only option was fidelity to my own sensibility. Further
exploration of my own interests, questions, challenges. And
since my sensibility was highly political _and__
passionately aesthetic, it would unapologetically inform the
work I did. I refused to explain, or even acknowledge, the
“problem” as anything other than an artistic one. Other
questions mattered more. What is friendship between
women when unmediated by men? What choices are
available to black women outside their own society’s
approval? What are the risks of individualism in a
determinedly individualistic, yet racially uniform and socially
static, community? Female freedom always means sexual
freedom, even when-especially when–it is seen through the
prism of economic freedom. The sexual freedom of Hannah
Peach was my entrance into the story, constructed from
shreds of memory about the way local women regarded a

certain kind of female–envy coupled with amused
approbation. Against her fairly modest claims to personal
liberty are placed conventional and anarchic ones: Eva’s
physical sacrifice for economic freedom; Nel’s
accommodation to the protection marriage promises;
Sula’s resistance to either sacrifice or accommodation.
Hannah’s claims are acceptable in her neighborhood
because they are nonfinancial and nonthreatening; she
does not disturb or deplete family resources. Because her
dependence is on another woman, Eva, who has both
money and authority, she is not competitive. But Sula,
although she does nothing so horrendous as what Eva
does, is seen by the townspeople as not just competitive,
but devouring, evil. Nel, with the most minimal demands, is
seen as the muted standard. Hannah, Nel, Eva, Sula were
points of a cross–each one a choice for characters bound
by gender and race. The nexus of that cross would be a
merging of responsibility and liberty difficult to reach, a
battle among women who are understood to be least able
to win it. Wrapped around the arms of that cross were wires
of other kinds of battles–the veteran, the orphans, the
husband, the laborers, confined to a village by the same
forces that mandated the struggle. And the only possible
triumph was that of the imagination. The job, of course, was
summoning those perceptions in language that could
express them. _Sula__ stretched my attempts to
manipulate language, to work credibly and, perhaps,
elegantly with a discredited vocabulary. To use folk
language, vernacular in a manner neither exotic nor comic,

neither minstrelized nor microscopically analyzed. I wanted
to redirect, reinvent the political, cultural, and artistic
judgments saved for African American writers. I was living
in Queens while I wrote _Sula,__ commuting to Manhattan
to an office job, leaving my children to childminders and the
public school in the fall and winter, to my parents in the
summer, and was so strapped for money that the condition
moved from debilitating stress to hilarity. Every rent
payment was an event; every shopping trip a triumph of
caution over the reckless purchase of a staple. The best
news was that this was the condition of every other
single/separated female parent I knew. The things we
traded! Time, food, money, clothes, laughter, memory–and
daring. Daring especially, because in the late sixties, with
so many dead, detained, or silenced, there could be no
turning back simply because there was no “back” back
there. Cut adrift, so to speak, we found it possible to think
up things, try things, explore. Use what was known and tried
and investigate what was not. Write a play, form a theater
company, design clothes, write fiction unencumbered by
other people’s expectations. Nobody was minding us, so
we minded ourselves. In that atmosphere of “What would
you be doing or thinking if there was no gaze or hand to
stop you?” I began to think about just what that kind of
license would have been like for us black women forty
years earlier. We were being encouraged to think of
ourselves as our own salvation, to be our own best friends.
What could that mean in 1969 that it had not meant in the
1920s? The image of the woman who was both envied and

cautioned against came to mind. Elsewhere (in an essay
“Unspeakable Things Unspoken”), I have detailed my
thoughts about developing the structure of _Sula.__
“Originally, _Sula__ opened with ‘Except for World War II,
nothing interfered with National Suicide Day.’ With some
encouragement I recognized that sentence as a false
beginning.” Falseness, in this case, meant abrupt. There
was no lobby, as it were, where the reader could be
situated before being introduced to the goings-on of the
characters. As I wrote in that essay, “The threshold
between the reader and the black-topic text need not be the
safe, welcoming lobby I persuaded myself [_Sula__]
needed at that time. My preference was the demolition of
the lobby altogether. [Of all of my books], only _Sula__ has
this ‘entrance.’ The others refuse the ‘presentation,’ refuse
the seductive safe harbor; the line of demarcation
between… them and us. Refuse, in effect, to cater to the
diminished expectations of the reader, or his or her alarm
heightened by the emotional luggage one carries into the
black-topic text…. [Although] the bulk of the opening I finally
wrote is about the community, a view of it… the view is not
from within… but from the point of view of a stranger–the
‘valley man’ who might happen to be there and to and for
whom all this is mightily strange, even exotic…. [In] my new
first sentence I am introducing an outside-the-circle reader
into the circle. I am translating the anonymous into the
specific, a ‘place’ into a ‘neighborhood’ and letting a
stranger in, through whose eyes it can be viewed.” This
deference, paid to the “white” gaze, was the one time I

addressed the “problem.” Had I begun with Shadrack, as
originally planned, I would have ignored the gentle welcome
and put the reader into immediate confrontation with his
wounded mind. It would have called greater attention to the
traumatic displacement this most wasteful capitalist war
had on black people, and thrown into relief their desperate
and desperately creative strategies of survival. In the
revised opening I tried to represent discriminatory,
prosecutorial racial oppression as well as the community’s
efforts to remain stable and healthy: the neighborhood has
been almost completely swept away by commercial
interests (a golf course), but the remains of what sustained
it (music, dancing, craft, religion, irony, wit) are what the
“valley man,” the stranger, sees–or could have seen. It is a
more inviting embrace than Shadrack’s organized public
madness–it helps to unify the neighborhood until Sula’s
anarchy challenges it. Outlaw women are fascinating–not
always for their behavior, but because historically women
are seen as naturally disruptive and their status is an illegal
one from birth if it is not under the rule of men. In much
literature a woman’s escape from male rule led to regret,
misery, if not complete disaster. In _Sula__ I wanted to
explore the consequences of what that escape might be, on
not only a conventional black society, but on female
friendship. In 1969, in Queens, snatching liberty seemed
compelling. Some of us thrived; some of us died. All of us
had a taste.

Sula

In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry
patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion
City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood. It stood
in the hills above the valley town of Medallion and spread all
the way to the river. It is called the suburbs now, but when
black people lived there it was called the Bottom. One
road, shaded by beeches, oaks, maples and chestnuts,
connected it to the valley. The beeches are gone now, and
so are the pear trees where children sat and yelled down
through the blossoms to passersby. Generous funds have
been allotted to level the stripped and faded buildings that
clutter the road from Medallion up to the golf course. They
are going to raze the Time and a Half Pool Hall, where feet
in long tan shoes once pointed down from chair rungs. A
steel ball will knock to dust Irene’s Palace of Cosmetology,
where women used to lean their heads back on sink trays
and doze while Irene lathered Nu Nile into their hair. Men in
khaki work clothes will pry loose the slats of Reba’s Grill,
where the owner cooked in her hat because she couldn’t
remember the ingredients without it. There will be nothing
left of the Bottom (the footbridge that crossed the river is
already gone), but perhaps it is just as well, since it wasn’t a
town anyway: just a neighborhood where on quiet days
people in valley houses could hear singing sometimes,
banjos sometimes, and, if a valley man happened to have
business up in those hills–collecting rent or insurance
payments–he might see a dark woman in a flowered dress
doing a bit of cakewalk, a bit of black bottom, a bit of

“messing around” to the lively notes of a mouth organ. Her
bare feet would raise the saffron dust that floated down on
the coveralls and bunion-split shoes of the man breathing
music in and out of his harmonica. The black people
watching her would laugh and rub their knees, and it would
be easy for the valley man to hear the laughter and not
notice the adult pain that rested somewhere under the
eyelids, somewhere under their head rags and soft felt
hats, somewhere in the palm of the hand, somewhere
behind the frayed lapels, somewhere in the sinew’s curve.
He’d have to stand in the back of Greater Saint Matthew’s
and let the tenor’s voice dress him in silk, or touch the
hands of the spoon carvers (who had not worked in eight
years) and let the fingers that danced on wood kiss his
skin. Otherwise the pain would escape him even though the
laughter was part of the pain. A shucking, knee-slapping,
wet-eyed laughter that could even describe and explain
how they came to be where they were. A joke. A nigger
joke. That was the way it got started. Not the town, of
course, but that part of town where the Negroes lived, the
part they called the Bottom in spite of the fact that it was up
in the hills. Just a nigger joke. The kind white folks tell when
the mill closes down and they’re looking for a little comfort
somewhere. The kind colored folks tell on themselves when
the rain doesn’t come, or comes for weeks, and they’re
looking for a little comfort somehow. A good white farmer
promised freedom and a piece of bottom land to his slave
if he would perform some very difficult chores. When the
slave completed the work, he asked the farmer to keep his

end of the bargain. Freedom was easy–the farmer had no
objection to that. But he didn’t want to give up any land. So
he told the slave that he was very sorry that he had to give
him valley land. He had hoped to give him a piece of the
Bottom. The slave blinked and said he thought valley land
was bottom land. The master said, “Oh, no! See those
hills? That’s bottom land, rich and fertile.” “But it’s high up in
the hills,” said the slave. “High up from us,” said the master,
“but when God looks down, it’s the bottom. That’s why we
call it so. It’s the bottom of heaven–best land there is.” So
the slave pressed his master to try to get him some. He
preferred it to the valley. And it was done. The nigger got
the hilly land, where planting was backbreaking, where the
soil slid down and washed away the seeds, and where the
wind lingered all through the winter. Which accounted for
the fact that white people lived on the rich valley floor in that
little river town in Ohio, and the blacks populated the hills
above it, taking small consolation in the fact that every day
they could literally look down on the white folks. Still, it was
lovely up in the Bottom. After the town grew and the farm
land turned into a village and the village into a town and the
streets of Medallion were hot and dusty with progress,
those heavy trees that sheltered the shacks up in the
Bottom were wonderful to see. And the hunters who went
there sometimes wondered in private if maybe the white
farmer was right after all. Maybe it was the bottom of
heaven. The black people would have disagreed, but they
had no time to think about it. They were mightily
preoccupied with earthly things–and each other, wondering

even as early as 1920 what Shadrack was all about, what
that little girl Sula who grew into a woman in their town was
all about, and what they themselves were all about, tucked
up there in the Bottom.

1919

Except for World War II, nothing ever interfered with the
celebration of National Suicide Day. It had taken place
every January third since 1920, although Shadrack, its
founder, was for many years the only celebrant. Blasted and
permanently astonished by the events of 1917, he had
returned to Medallion handsome but ravaged, and even the
most fastidious people in the town sometimes caught
themselves dreaming of what he must have been like a few
years back before he went off to war. A young man of
hardly twenty, his head full of nothing and his mouth
recalling the taste of lipstick, Shadrack had found himself in
December, 1917, running with his comrades across a field
in France. It was his first encounter with the enemy and he
didn’t know whether his company was running toward them
or away. For several days they had been marching,
keeping close to a stream that was frozen at its edges. At
one point they crossed it, and no sooner had he stepped
foot on the other side than the day was adangle with shouts
and explosions. Shellfire was all around him, and though he
knew that this was something called _it,__ he could not
muster up the proper feeling–the feeling that would
accommodate _it.__ He expected to be terrified or

exhilarated–to feel _something__ very strong. In fact, he felt
only the bite of a nail in his boot, which pierced the ball of
his foot whenever he came down on it. The day was cold
enough to make his breath visible, and he wondered for a
moment at the purity and whiteness of his own breath
among the dirty, gray explosions surrounding him. He ran,
bayonet fixed, deep in the great sweep of men flying across
this field. Wincing at the pain in his foot, he turned his head
a little to the right and saw the face of a soldier near him fly
off. Before he could register shock, the rest of the soldier’s
head disappeared under the inverted soup bowl of his
helmet. But stubbornly, taking no direction from the brain,
the body of the headless soldier ran on, with energy and
grace, ignoring altogether the drip and slide of brain tissue
down its back. When Shadrack opened his eyes he was
propped up in a small bed. Before him on a tray was a
large tin plate divided into three triangles. In one triangle
was rice, in another meat, and in the third stewed
tomatoes. A small round depression held a cup of whitish
liquid. Shadrack stared at the soft colors that filled these
triangles: the lumpy whiteness of rice, the quivering blood
tomatoes, the grayish-brown meat. All their repugnance
was contained in the neat balance of the triangles–a
balance that soothed him, transferred some of its
equilibrium to him. Thus reassured that the white, the red
and the brown would stay where they were–would not
explode or burst forth from their restricted zones–he
suddenly felt hungry and looked around for his hands. His
glance was cautious at first, for he had to be very careful–

anything could be anywhere. Then he noticed two lumps
beneath the beige blanket on either side of his hips. With
extreme care he lifted one arm and was relieved to find his
hand attached to his wrist. He tried the other and found it
also. Slowly he directed one hand toward the cup and, just
as he was about to spread his fingers, they began to grow
in higgledypiggledy fashion like Jack’s beanstalk all over
the tray and the bed. With a shriek he closed his eyes and
thrust his huge growing hands under the covers. Once out
of sight they seemed to shrink back to their normal size. But
the yell had brought a male nurse. “Private? We’re not
going to have any trouble today, are we? Are we, Private?”
Shadrack looked up at a balding man dressed in a
greencotton jacket and trousers. His hair was parted low on
the right side so that some twenty or thirty yellow hairs could
discreetly cover the nakedness of his head. “Come on.
Pick up that spoon. Pick it up, Private. Nobody is going to
feed you forever.” Sweat slid from Shadrack’s armpits
down his sides. He could not bear to see his hands grow
again and he was frightened of the voice in the apple-green
suit. “Pick it up, I said. There’s no point to this… ” The nurse
reached under the cover for Shadrack’s wrist to pull out the
monstrous hand. Shadrack jerked it back and overturned
the tray. In panic he raised himself to his knees and tried to
fling off and away his terrible fingers, but succeeded only in
knocking the nurse into the next bed. When they bound
Shadrack into a straitjacket, he was both relieved and
grateful, for his hands were at last hidden and confined to
whatever size they had attained. Laced and silent in his

small bed, he tried to tie the loose cords in his mind. He
wanted desperately to see his own face and connect it with
the word “private”–the word the nurse (and the others who
helped bind him) had called him. “Private” he thought was
something secret, and he wondered why they looked at him
and called him a secret. Still, if his hands behaved as they
had done, what might he expect from his face? The fear
and longing were too much for him, so he began to think of
other things. That is, he let his mind slip into whatever cave
mouths of memory it chose. He saw a window that looked
out on a river which he knew was full of fish. Someone was
speaking softly just outside the door… Shadrack’s earlier
violence had coincided with a memorandum from the
hospital executive staff in reference to the distribution of
patients in high-risk areas. There was clearly a demand for
space. The priority or the violence earned Shadrack his
release, $217 in cash, a full suit of clothes and copies of
very official-looking papers. When he stepped out of the
hospital door the grounds overwhelmed him: the cropped
shrubbery, the edged lawns, the undeviating walks.
Shadrack looked at the cement stretches: each one
leading clearheadedly to some presumably desirable
destination. There were no fences, no warnings, no
obstacles at all between concrete and green grass, so one
could easily ignore the tidy sweep of stone and cut out in
another direction–a direction of one’s own. Shadrack stood
at the foot of the hospital steps watching the heads of trees
tossing ruefully but harmlessly, since their trunks were
rooted too deeply in the earth to threaten him. Only the

walks made him uneasy. He shifted his weight, wondering
how he could get to the gate without stepping on the
concrete. While plotting his course-where he would have to
leap, where to skirt a clump of bushes–a loud guffaw
startled him. Two men were going up the steps. Then he
noticed that there were many people about, and that he
was just now seeing them, or else they had just
materialized. They were thin slips, like paper dolls floating
down the walks. Some were seated in chairs with wheels,
propelled by other paper figures from behind. All seemed
to be smoking, and their arms and legs curved in the
breeze. A good high wind would pull them up and away and
they would land perhaps among the tops of the trees.
Shadrack took the plunge. Four steps and he was on the
grass heading for the gate. He kept his head down to avoid
seeing the paper people swerving and bending here and
there, and he lost his way. When he looked up, he was
standing by a low red building separated from the main
building by a covered walkway. From somewhere came a
sweetish smell which reminded him of something painful.
He looked around for the gate and saw that he had gone
directly away from it in his complicated journey over the
grass. Just to the left of the low building was a graveled
driveway that appeared to lead outside the grounds. He
trotted quickly to it and left, at last, a haven of more than a
year, only eight days of which he fully recollected. Once on
the road, he headed west. The long stay in the hospital had
left him weak–too weak to walk steadily on the gravel
shoulders of the road. He shuffled, grew dizzy, stopped for

breath, started again, stumbling and sweating but refusing
to wipe his temples, still afraid to look at his hands.
Passengers in dark, square cars shuttered their eyes at
what they took to be a drunken man. The sun was already
directly over his head when he came to a town. A few
blocks of shaded streets and he was already at its heart–a
pretty, quietly regulated downtown. Exhausted, his feet
clotted with pain, he sat down at the curbside to take off his
shoes. He closed his eyes to avoid seeing his hands and
fumbled with the laces of the heavy high-topped shoes. The
nurse had tied them into a double knot, the way one does
for children, and Shadrack, long unaccustomed to the
manipulation of intricate things, could not get them loose.
Uncoordinated, his fingernails tore away at the knots. He
fought a rising hysteria that was not merely anxiety to free
his aching feet; his very life depended on the release of the
knots. Suddenly without raising his eyelids, he began to cry.
Twenty-two years old, weak, hot, frightened, not daring to
acknowledge the fact that he didn’t even know who or what
he was… with no past, no language, no tribe, no source, no
address book, no comb, no pencil, no clock, no pocket
handkerchief, no rug, no bed, no can opener, no faded
postcard, no soap, no key, no tobacco pouch, no soiled
underwear and nothing nothing nothing to do… he was sure
of one thing only: the unchecked monstrosity of his hands.
He cried soundlessly at the curbside of a small Midwestern
town wondering where the window was, and the river, and
the soft voices just outside the door… Through his tears he
saw the fingers joining the laces, tentatively at first, then

rapidly. The four fingers of each hand fused into the fabric,
knotted themselves and zigzagged in and out of the tiny
eyeholes. By the time the police drove up, Shadrack was
suffering from a blinding headache, which was not abated
by the comfort he felt when the policemen pulled his hands
away from what he thought was a permanent entanglement
with his shoelaces. They took him to jail, booked him for
vagrancy and intoxication, and locked him in a cell. Lying
on a cot, Shadrack could only stare helplessly at the wall,
so paralyzing was the pain in his head. He lay in this agony
for a long while and then realized he was staring at the
painted-over letters of a command to fuck himself. He
studied the phrase as the pain in his head subsided. Like
moonlight stealing under a window shade an idea
insinuated itself: his earlier desire to see his own face. He
looked for a mirror; there was none. Finally, keeping his
hands carefully behind his back he made his way to the
toilet bowl and peeped in. The water was unevenly lit by the
sun so he could make nothing out. Returning to his cot he
took the blanket and covered his head, rendering the water
dark enough to see his reflection. There in the toilet water
he saw a grave black face. A black so definite, so
unequivocal, it astonished him. He had been harboring a
skittish apprehension that he was not real–that he didn’t
exist at all. But when the blackness greeted him with its
indisputable presence, he wanted nothing more. In his joy
he took the risk of letting one edge of the blanket drop and
glanced at his hands. They were still. Courteously still.
Shadrack rose and returned to the cot, where he fell into the

first sleep of his new life. A sleep deeper than the hospital
drugs; deeper than the pits of plums, steadier than the
condor’s wing; more tranquil than the curve of eggs. The
sheriff looked through the bars at the young man with the
matted hair. He had read through his prisoner’s papers and
hailed a farmer. When Shadrack awoke, the sheriff handed
him back his papers and escorted him to the back of a
wagon. Shadrack got in and in less than three hours he was
back in Medallion, for he had been only twenty-two miles
from his window, his river, and his soft voices just outside
the door. In the back of the wagon, supported by sacks of
squash and hills of pumpkins, Shadrack began a struggle
that was to last for twelve days, a struggle to order and
focus experience. It had to do with making a place for fear
as a way of controlling it. He knew the smell of death and
was terrified of it, for he could not anticipate it. It was not
death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness
of both. In sorting it all out, he hit on the notion that if one
day a year were devoted to it, everybody could get it out of
the way and the rest of the year would be safe and free. In
this manner he instituted National Suicide Day. On the third
day of the new year, he walked through the Bottom down
Carpenter’s Road with a cowbell and a hangman’s rope
calling the people together. Telling them that this was their
only chance to kill themselves or each other. At first the
people in the town were frightened; they knew Shadrack
was crazy but that did not mean that he didn’t have any
sense or, even more important, that he had no power. His
eyes were so wild, his hair so long and matted, his voice

was so full of authority and thunder that he caused panic on
the first, or Charter, National Suicide Day in 1920. The next
one, in 1921, was less frightening but still worrisome. The
people had seen him a year now in between. He lived in a
shack on the riverbank that had once belonged to his
grandfather long time dead. On Tuesday and Friday he
sold the fish he had caught that morning, the rest of the
week he was drunk, loud, obscene, funny and outrageous.
But he never touched anybody, never fought, never
caressed. Once the people understood the boundaries and
nature of his madness, they could fit him, so to speak, into
the scheme of things. Then, on subsequent National
Suicide Days, the grown people looked out from behind
curtains as he rang his bell; a few stragglers increased their
speed, and little children screamed and ran. The tetter
heads tried goading him (although he was only four or five
years older then they) but not for long, for his curses were
stingingly personal. As time went along, the people took
less notice of these January thirds, or rather they thought
they did, thought they had no attitudes or feelings one way
or another about Shadrack’s annual solitary parade. In fact
they had simply stopped remarking on the holiday because
they had absorbed it into their thoughts, into their language,
into their lives. Someone said to a friend, “You sure was a
long time delivering that baby. How long was you in labor?”
And the friend answered, “‘Bout three days. The pains
started on Suicide Day and kept up till the following
Sunday. Was borned on Sunday. All my boys is Sunday
boys.” Some lover said to his bride-to-be, “Let’s do it after

New Years, ‘stead of before. I get paid New Year’s Eve.”
And his sweetheart answered, “OK, but make sure it ain’t
on Suicide Day. I ain’t ’bout to be listening to no cowbells
whilst the weddin’s going on.” Somebody’s grandmother
said her hens always started a laying of double yolks right
after Suicide Day. Then Reverend Deal took it up, saying
the same folks who had sense enough to avoid Shadrack’s
call were the ones who insisted on drinking themselves to
death or womanizing themselves to death. “May’s well go
on with Shad and save the Lamb the trouble of
redemption.” Easily, quietly, Suicide Day became a part of
the fabric of life up in the Bottom of Medallion, Ohio.

1920

It had to be as far away from the Sundown House as
possible. And her grandmother’s middle-aged nephew who
lived in a Northern town called Medallion was the one
chance she had to make sure it would be. The red shutters
had haunted both Helene Sabat and her grandmother for
sixteen years. Helene was born behind those shutters,
daughter of a Creole whore who worked there. The
grandmother took Helene away from the soft lights and
flowered carpets of the Sundown House and raised her
under the dolesome eyes of a multicolored Virgin Mary,
counseling her to be constantly on guard for any sign of her
mother’s wild blood. So when Wiley Wright came to visit his
Great Aunt Cecile in New Orleans, his enchantment with the
pretty Helene became a marriage proposal–under the

pressure of both women. He was a seaman (or rather a
lakeman, for he was a ship’s cook on one of the Great
Lakes lines), in port only three days out of every sixteen. He
took his bride to his home in Medallion and put her in a
lovely house with a brick porch and real lace curtains at the
window. His long absences were quite bearable for Helene
Wright, especially when, after some nine years of marriage,
her daughter was born. Her daughter was more comfort
and purpose than she had ever hoped to find in this life.
She rose grandly to the occasion of motherhood–grateful,
deep down in her heart, that the child had not inherited the
great beauty that was hers: that her skin had dusk in it, that
her lashes were substantial but not undignified in their
length, that she had taken the broad flat nose of Wiley
(although Helene expected to improve it somewhat) and his
generous lips. Under Helene’s hand the girl became
obedient and polite. Any enthusiasms that little Nel showed
were calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter’s
imagination underground. Helene Wright was an
impressive woman, at least in Medallion she was. Heavy
hair in a bun, dark eyes arched in a perpetual query about
other people’s manners. A woman who won all social
battles with presence and a conviction of the legitimacy of
her authority. Since there was no Catholic church in
Medallion then, she joined the most conservative black
church. And held sway. It was Helene who never turned her
head in church when latecomers arrived; Helene who
established the practice of seasonal altar flowers; Helene
who introduced the giving of banquets of welcome to

returning Negro veterans. She lost only one battle–the
pronunciation of her name. The people in the Bottom
refused to say Helene. They called her Helen Wright and
left it at that. All in all her life was a satisfactory one. She
loved her house and enjoyed manipulating her daughter
and her husband. She would sigh sometimes just before
falling asleep, thinking that she had indeed come far
enough away from the Sundown House. So it was with
extremely mixed emotions that she read a letter from Mr.
Henri Martin describing the illness of her grandmother, and
suggesting she come down right away. She didn’t want to
go, but could not bring herself to ignore the silent plea of the
woman who had rescued her. It was November. November,
1920. Even in Medallion there was a victorious swagger in
the legs of white men and a dull-eyed excitement in the
eyes of colored veterans. Helene thought about the trip
South with heavy misgiving but decided that she had the
best protection: her manner and her bearing, to which she
would add a beautiful dress. She bought some deep-brown
wool and threefourths of a yard of matching velvet. Out of
this she made herself a heavy but elegant dress with velvet
collar and pockets. Nel watched her mother cutting the
pattern from newspapers and moving her eyes rapidly from
a magazine model to her own hands. She watched her turn
up the kerosene lamp at sunset to sew far into the night.
The day they were ready, Helene cooked a smoked ham,
left a note for her lake-bound husband, in case he docked
early, and walked head high and arms stiff with luggage
ahead of her daughter to the train depot. It was a longer

walk than she remembered, and they saw the train
steaming up just as they turned the corner. They ran along
the track looking for the coach pointed out to them by the
colored porter. Even at that they made a mistake. Helene
and her daughter entered a coach peopled by some twenty
white men and women. Rather than go back and down the
three wooden steps again, Helene decided to spare herself
some embarrassment and walk on through to the colored
car. She carried two pieces of luggage and a string purse;
her daughter carried a covered basket of food. As they
opened the door marked COLORED ONLY, they saw a
white conductor coming toward them. It was a chilly day but
a light skim of sweat glistened on the woman’s face as she
and the little girl struggled to hold the door open, hang on to
their luggage and enter all at once. The conductor let his
eyes travel over the pale yellow woman and then stuck his
little finger into his ear, jiggling it free of wax. “What you
think you doin’, gal?” Helene looked up at him. So soon. So
soon. She hadn’t even begun the trip back. Back to her
grandmother’s house in the city where the red shutters
glowed, and already she had been called “gal.” All the old
vulnerabilities, all the old fears of being somehow flawed
gathered in her stomach and made her hands tremble. She
had heard only that one word; it dangled above her wide-
brimmed hat, which had slipped, in her exertion, from its
carefully leveled placement and was now tilted in a bit of a
jaunt over her eye. Thinking he wanted her tickets, she
quickly dropped both the cowhide suitcase and the straw
one in order to search for them in her purse. An eagerness

to please and an apology for living met in her voice. “I have
them. Right here somewhere, sir… ” The conductor looked
at the bit of wax his fingernail had retrieved. “What was you
doin’ back in there? What was you doin’ in that coach
yonder?” Helene licked her lips. “Oh… I… ” Her glance
moved beyond the white man’s face to the passengers
seated behind him. Four or five black faces were watching,
two belonging to soldiers still in their shit-colored uniforms
and peaked caps. She saw their closed faces, their locked
eyes, and turned for compassion to the gray eyes of the
conductor. “We made a mistake, sir. You see, there wasn’t
no sign. We just got in the wrong car, that’s all. Sir.” “We
don’t ‘low no mistakes on this train. Now git your butt on in
there.” He stood there staring at her until she realized that
he wanted her to move aside. Pulling Nel by the arm, she
pressed herself and her daughter into the foot space in
front of a wooden seat. Then, for no earthly reason, at least
no reason that anybody could understand, certainly no
reason that Nel understood then or later, she smiled. Like a
street pup that wags its tail at the very doorjamb of the
butcher shop he has been kicked away from only moments
before, Helene smiled. Smiled dazzlingly and coquettishly
at the salmon-colored face of the conductor. Nel looked
away from the flash of pretty teeth to the other passengers.
The two black soldiers, who had been watching the scene
with what appeared to be indifference, now looked stricken.
Behind Nel was the bright and blazing light of her mother’s
smile; before her the midnight eyes of the soldiers. She
saw the muscles of their faces tighten, a movement under

the skin from blood to marble. No change in the expression
of the eyes, but a hard wetness that veiled them as they
looked at the stretch of her mother’s foolish smile. As the
door slammed on the conductor’s exit, Helene walked down
the aisle to a seat. She looked about for a second to see
whether any of the men would help her put the suitcases in
the overhead rack. Not a man moved. Helene sat down,
fussily, her back toward the men. Nel sat opposite, facing
both her mother and the soldiers, neither of whom she
could look at. She felt both pleased and ashamed to sense
that these men, unlike her father, who worshiped his
graceful, beautiful wife, were bubbling with a hatred for her
mother that had not been there in the beginning but had
been born with the dazzling smile. In the silence that
preceded the train’s heave, she looked deeply at the folds
of her mother’s dress. There in the fall of the heavy brown
wool she held her eyes. She could not risk letting them
travel upward for fear of seeing that the hooks and eyes in
the placket of the dress had come undone and exposed the
custard-colored skin underneath. She stared at the hem,
wanting to believe in its weight but knowing that custard
was all that it hid. If this tall, proud woman, this woman who
was very particular about her friends, who slipped into
church with unequaled elegance, who could quell a
roustabout with a look, if _she__ were really custard, then
there was a chance that Nel was too. It was on that train,
shuffling toward Cincinnati, that she resolved to be on
guard–always. She wanted to make certain that no man
ever looked at her that way. That no midnight eyes or

marbled flesh would ever accost her and turn her into jelly.
For two days they rode; two days of watching sleet turn to
rain, turn to purple sunsets, and one night knotted on the
wooden seats (their heads on folded coats), trying not to
hear the snoring soldiers. When they changed trains in
Birmingham for the last leg of the trip, they discovered what
luxury they had been in through Kentucky and Tennessee,
where the rest stops had all had colored toilets. After
Birmingham there were none. Helene’s face was drawn
with the need to relieve herself, and so intense was her
distress she finally brought herself to speak about her
problem to a black woman with four children who had got
on in Tuscaloosa. “Is there somewhere we can go to use
the restroom?” The woman looked up at her and seemed
not to understand. “Ma’am?” Her eyes fastened on the thick
velvet collar, the fair skin, the high-tone voice. “The
restroom,” Helene repeated. Then, in a whisper, “The
toilet.” The woman pointed out the window and said, “Yes,
ma’am. Yonder.” Helene looked out of the window halfway
expecting to see a comfort station in the distance; instead
she saw graygreen trees leaning over tangled grass.
“Where?” “Yonder,” the woman said. “Meridian. We be
pullin’ in direc’lin.” Then she smiled sympathetically and
asked, “Kin you make it?” Helene nodded and went back
to her seat trying to think of other things–for the surest way
to have an accident would be to remember her full bladder.
At Meridian the women got out with their children. While
Helene looked about the tiny stationhouse for a door that
said COLORED WOMEN, the other woman stalked off to a

field of high grass on the far side of the track. Some white
men were leaning on the railing in front of the stationhouse.
It was not only their tongues curling around toothpicks that
kept Helene from asking information of them. She looked
around for the other woman and, seeing just the top of her
head rag in the grass, slowly realized where “yonder” was.
All of them, the fat woman and her four children, three boys
and a girl, Helene and her daughter, squatted there in the
four o’clock Meridian sun. They did it again in Ellisville,
again in Hattiesburg, and by the time they reached Slidell,
not too far from Lake Pontchartrain, Helene could not only
fold leaves as well as the fat woman, she never felt a stir as
she passed the muddy eyes of the men who stood like
wrecked Dorics under the station roofs of those towns. The
lift in spirit that such an accomplishment produced in her
quickly disappeared when the train finally pulled into New
Orleans. Cecile Sabat’s house leaned between two others
just like it on Elysian Fields. A Frenchified shotgun house, it
sported a magnificent garden in the back and a tiny
wrought-iron fence in the front. On the door hung a black
crepe wreath with purple ribbon. They were too late. Helene
reached up to touch the ribbon, hesitated, and knocked. A
man in a collarless shirt opened the door. Helene identified
herself and he said he was Henri Martin and that he was
there for the settin’-up. They stepped into the house. The
Virgin Mary clasped her hands in front of her neck three
times in the front room and once in the bedroom where
Cecile’s body lay. The old woman had died without seeing
or blessing her granddaughter. No one other than Mr.

Martin seemed to be in the house, but a sweet odor as of
gardenias told them that someone else had been. Blotting
her lashes with a white handkerchief, Helene walked
through the kitchen to the back bedroom where she had
slept for sixteen years. Nel trotted along behind, enchanted
with the smell, the candles and the strangeness. When
Helene bent to loosen the ribbons of Nel’s hat, a woman in
a yellow dress came out of the garden and onto the back
porch that opened into the bedroom. The two women
looked at each other. There was no recognition in the eyes
of either. Then Helene said, “This is your… grandmother,
Nel.” Nel looked at her mother and then quickly back at the
door they had just come out of. “No. That was your great-
grandmother. This is your grandmother. My… mother.”
Before the child could think, her words were hanging in the
gardenia air. “But she looks so young.” The woman in the
canary-yellow dress laughed and said she was forty-eight,
“an old forty-eight.” Then it was she who carried the
gardenia smell. This tiny woman with the softness and glare
of a canary. In that somber house that held four Virgin
Marys, where death sighed in every corner and candles
sputtered, the gardenia smell and canary-yellow dress
emphasized the funeral atmosphere surrounding them. The
woman smiled, glanced in the mirror and said, throwing her
voice toward Helene, “That your only one?” “Yes,” said
Helene. “Pretty. A lot like you.” “Yes. Well. She’s ten now.”
“Ten? Vrai? Small for her age, no?” Helene shrugged and
looked at her daughter’s questioning eyes. The woman in
the yellow dress leaned forward. “Come. Come, chere.”

Helene interrupted. “We have to get cleaned up. We been
three days on the train with no chance to wash or… ”
“Comment t’appelle?” “She doesn’t talk Creole.” “Then you
ask her.” “She wants to know your name, honey.” With her
head pressed into her mother’s heavy brown dress, Nel told
her and then asked, “What’s yours?” “Mine’s Rochelle.
Well. I must be going on.” She moved closer to the mirror
and stood there sweeping hair up from her neck back into
its halo-like roll, and wetting with spit the ringlets that fell
over her ears. “I been here, you know, most of the day. She
pass on yesterday. The funeral tomorrow. Henri takin’
care.” She struck a match, blew it out and darkened her
eyebrows with the burnt head. All the while Helene and Nel
watched her. The one in a rage at the folded leaves she
had endured, the wooden benches she had slept on, all to
miss seeing her grandmother and seeing instead that
painted canary who never said a word of greeting or
affection or… Rochelle continued. “I don’t know what
happen to de house. Long time paid for. You be thinkin’ on
it? Oui?” Her newly darkened eyebrows queried Helene.
“Oui.” Helene’s voice was chilly. “I be thinkin’ on it.” “Oh,
well. Not for me to say… ” Suddenly she swept around and
hugged Nel–a quick embrace tighter and harder than one
would have imagined her thin soft arms capable of. “‘Voir!
‘Voir!” and she was gone. In the kitchen, being soaped
head to toe by her mother, Nel ventured an observation.
“She smelled so nice. And her skin was so soft.” Helene
rinsed the cloth. “Much handled things are always soft.”
“What does ‘vwah’ mean?” “I don’t know,” her mother said.

“I don’t talk Creole.” She gazed at her daughter’s wet
buttocks. “And neither do you.” When they got back to
Medallion and into the quiet house they saw the note
exactly where they had left it and the ham dried out in the
icebox. “Lord, I’ve never been so glad to see this place. But
look at the dust. Get the rags, Nel. Oh, never mind. Let’s
breathe awhile first. Lord, I never thought I’d get back here
safe and sound. Whoo. Well, it’s over. Good and over.
Praise His name. Look at that. I told that old fool not to
deliver any milk and there’s the can curdled to beat all.
What gets into people? I told him not to. Well, I got other
things to worry ’bout. Got to get a fire started. I left it ready
so I wouldn’t have to do nothin’ but light it. Lord, it’s cold.
Don’t just sit there, honey. You could be pulling your nose…
” Nel sat on the red-velvet sofa listening to her mother but
remembering the smell and the tight, tight hug of the woman
in yellow who rubbed burned matches over her eyes. Late
that night after the fire was made, the cold supper eaten,
the surface dust removed, Nel lay in bed thinking of her trip.
She remembered clearly the urine running down and into
her stockings until she learned how to squat properly; the
disgust on the face of the dead woman and the sound of
the funeral drums. It had been an exhilarating trip but a
fearful one. She had been frightened of the soldiers’ eyes
on the train, the black wreath on the door, the custard
pudding she believed lurked under her mother’s heavy
dress, the feel of unknown streets and unknown people. But
she had gone on a real trip, and now she was different. She
got out of bed and lit the lamp to look in the mirror. There

was her face, plain brown eyes, three braids and the nose
her mother hated. She looked for a long time and suddenly
a shiver ran through her. “I’m me,” she whispered. “Me.” Nel
didn’t know quite what she meant, but on the other hand she
knew exactly what she meant. “I’m me. I’m not their
daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me. Me.” Each time she said the
word _me__ there was a gathering in her like power, like
joy, like fear. Back in bed with her discovery, she stared out
the window at the dark leaves of the horse chestnut. “Me,”
she murmured. And then, sinking deeper into the quilts, “I
want… I want to be… wonderful. Oh, Jesus, make me
wonderful.” The many experiences of her trip crowded in on
her. She slept. It was the last as well as the first time she
was ever to leave Medallion. For days afterward she
imagined other trips she would take, alone though, to
faraway places. Contemplating them was delicious.
Leaving Medallion would be her goal. But that was before
she met Sula, the girl she had seen for five years at
Garfield Primary but never played with, never knew,
because her mother said that Sula’s mother was sooty. The
trip, perhaps, or her new found me-ness, gave her the
strength to cultivate a friend in spite of her mother. When
Sula first visited the Wright house, Helene’s curdled scorn
turned to butter. Her daughter’s friend seemed to have none
of the mother’s slackness. Nel, who regarded the
oppressive neatness of her home with dread, felt
comfortable in it with Sula, who loved it and would sit on the
red-velvet sofa for ten to twenty minutes at a time–still as
dawn. As for Nel, she preferred Sula’s woolly house, where

a pot of something was always cooking on the stove; where
the mother, Hannah, never scolded or gave directions;
where all sorts of people dropped in; where newspapers
were stacked in the hallway, and dirty dishes left for hours
at a time in the sink, and where a one-legged grandmother
named Eva handed you goobers from deep inside her
pockets or read you a dream.

1921

Sula Peace lived in a house of many rooms that had been
built over a period of five years to the specifications of its
owner, who kept on adding things: more stairways–there
were three sets to the second floor–more rooms, doors
and stoops. There were rooms that had three doors, others
that opened out on the porch only and were inaccessible
from any other part of the house; others that you could get
to only by going through somebody’s bedroom. The creator
and sovereign of this enormous house with the four sickle-
pear trees in the front yard and the single elm in the back
yard was Eva Peace, who sat in a wagon on the third floor
directing the lives of her children, friends, strays, and a
constant stream of boarders. Fewer than nine people in the
town remembered when Eva had two legs, and her oldest
child, Hannah, was not one of them. Unless Eva herself
introduced the subject, no one ever spoke of her disability;
they pretended to ignore it, unless, in some mood of fancy,
she began some fearful story about it–generally to entertain
children. How the leg got up by itself one day and walked

on off. How she hobbled after it but it ran too fast. Or how
she had a corn on her toe and it just grew and grew and
grew until her whole foot was a corn and then it traveled on
up her leg and wouldn’t stop growing until she put a red rag
at the top but by that time it was already at her knee.
Somebody said Eva stuck it under a train and made them
pay off. Another said she sold it to a hospital for $10,000–
at which Mr. Reed opened his eyes and asked, “Nigger gal
legs goin’ for $10,000 a _piece?__” as though he could
understand $10,000 a _pair__–but for _one?__ Whatever
the fate of her lost leg, the remaining one was magnificent.
It was stockinged and shod at all times and in all weather.
Once in a while she got a felt slipper for Christmas or her
birthday, but they soon disappeared, for Eva always wore a
black laced-up shoe that came well above her ankle. Nor
did she wear overlong dresses to disguise the empty place
on her left side. Her dresses were mid-calf so that her one
glamorous leg was always in view as well as the long fall of
space below her left thigh. One of her men friends had
fashioned a kind of wheelchair for her: a rocking-chair top
fitted into a large child’s wagon. In this contraption she
wheeled around the room, from bedside to dresser to the
balcony that opened out the north side of her room or to the
window that looked out on the back yard. The wagon was
so low that children who spoke to her standing up were eye
level with her, and adults, standing or sitting, had to look
down at her. But they didn’t know it. They all had the
impression that they were looking up at her, up into the
open distances of her eyes, up into the soft black of her

nostrils and up at the crest of her chin. Eva had married a
man named BoyBoy and had three children: Hannah, the
eldest, and Eva, whom she named after herself but called
Pearl, and a son named Ralph, whom she called Plum.
After five years of a sad and disgruntled marriage BoyBoy
took off. During the time they were together he was very
much preoccupied with other women and not home much.
He did whatever he could that he liked, and he liked
womanizing best, drinking second, and abusing Eva third.
When he left in November, Eva had $1.65, five eggs, three
beets and no idea of what or how to feel. The children
needed her; she needed money, and needed to get on with
her life. But the demands of feeding her three children were
so acute she had to postpone her anger for two years until
she had both the time and the energy for it. She was
confused and desperately hungry. There were very few
black families in those low hills then. The Suggs, who lived
two hundred yards down the road, brought her a warm bowl
of peas, as soon as they found out, and a plate of cold
bread. She thanked them and asked if they had a little milk
for the older ones. They said no, but Mrs. Jackson, they
knew, had a cow still giving. Eva took a bucket over and
Mrs. Jackson told her to come back and fill it up in the
morning, because the evening milking had already been
done. In this way, things went on until near December.
People were very willing to help, but Eva felt she would
soon run her welcome out; winters were hard and her
neighbors were not that much better off. She would lie in
bed with the baby boy, the two girls wrapped in quilts on the

floor, thinking. The oldest child, Hannah, was five and too
young to take care of the baby alone, and any housework
Eva could find would keep her away from them from five
thirty or earlier in the morning until dark–way past eight. The
white people in the valley weren’t rich enough then to want
maids; they were small farmers and tradesmen and wanted
hard-labor help if anything. She thought also of returning to
some of her people in Virginia, but to come home dragging
three young ones would have to be a step one rung before
death for Eva. She would have to scrounge around and beg
through the winter, until her baby was at least nine months
old, then she could plant and maybe hire herself out to
valley farms to weed or sow or feed stock until something
steadier came along at harvest time. She thought she had
probably been a fool to let BoyBoy haul her away from her
people, but it had seemed so right at the time. He worked
for a white carpenter and toolsmith who insisted on
BoyBoy’s accompanying him when he went West and set
up in a squinchy little town called Medallion. BoyBoy
brought his new wife and built them a one-room cabin sixty
feet back from the road that wound up out of the valley, on
up into the hills and was named for the man he worked for.
They lived there a year before they had an outhouse.
Sometime before the middle of December, the baby, Plum,
stopped having bowel movements. Eva massaged his
stomach and gave him warm water. Something must be
wrong with my milk, she thought. Mrs. Suggs gave her
castor oil, but even that didn’t work. He cried and fought so
they couldn’t get much down his throat anyway. He seemed

in great pain and his shrieks were pitched high in outrage
and suffering. At one point, maddened by his own crying,
he gagged, choked and looked as though he was
strangling to death. Eva rushed to him and kicked over the
earthen slop jar, washing a small area of the floor with the
child’s urine. She managed to soothe him, but when he took
up the cry again late that night, she resolved to end his
misery once and for all. She wrapped him in blankets, ran
her finger around the crevices and sides of the lard can and
stumbled to the outhouse with him. Deep in its darkness
and freezing stench she squatted down, turned the baby
over on her knees, exposed his buttocks and shoved the
last bit of food she had in the world (besides three beets)
up his ass. Softening the insertion with the dab of lard, she
probed with her middle finger to loosen his bowels. Her
fingernail snagged what felt like a pebble; she pulled it out
and others followed. Plum stopped crying as the black hard
stools ricocheted onto the frozen ground. And now that it
was over, Eva squatted there wondering why she had come
all the way out there to free his stools, and what was she
doing down on her haunches with her beloved baby boy
warmed by her body in the almost total darkness, her shins
and teeth freezing, her nostrils assailed. She shook her
head as though to juggle her brains around, then said
aloud, “Uh uh. Nooo.” Thereupon she returned to the house
and her bed. As the grateful Plum slept, the silence allowed
her to think. Two days later she left all of her children with
Mrs. Suggs, saying she would be back the next day.
Eighteen months later she swept down from a wagon with

two crutches, a new black pocketbook, and one leg. First
she reclaimed her children, next she gave the surprised
Mrs. Suggs a ten-dollar bill, later she started building a
house on Carpenter’s Road, sixty feet from BoyBoy’s one-
room cabin, which she rented out. When Plum was three
years old, BoyBoy came back to town and paid her a visit.
When Eva got the word that he was on his way, she made
some lemonade. She had no idea what she would do or
feel during that encounter. Would she cry, cut his throat, beg
him to make love to her? She couldn’t imagine. So she just
waited to see. She stirred lemonade in a green pitcher and
waited. BoyBoy danced up the steps and knocked on the
door. “Come on in,” she hollered. He opened the door and
stood smiling, a picture of prosperity and good will. His
shoes were a shiny orange, and he had on a citified straw
hat, a light-blue suit, and a cat’s-head stickpin in his tie. Eva
smiled and told him to sit himself down. He smiled too.
“How you been, girl?” “Pretty fair. What you know good?”
When she heard those words come out of her own mouth
she knew that their conversation would start off polite.
Although it remained to be seen whether she would still run
the ice pick through the cat’s-head pin. “Have some
lemonade.” “Don’t mind if I do.” He swept his hat off with a
satisfied gesture. His nails were long and shiny. “Sho is
hot, and I been runnin’ around all day.” Eva looked out of the
screen door and saw a woman in a pea-green dress
leaning on the smallest pear tree. Glancing back at him,
she was reminded of Plum’s face when he managed to get
the meat out of a walnut all by himself. Eva smiled again,

and poured the lemonade. Their conversation was easy:
she catching him up on all the gossip, he asking about this
one and that one, and like everybody else avoiding any
reference to her leg. It was like talking to somebody’s
cousin who just stopped by to say howdy before getting on
back to wherever he came from. BoyBoy didn’t ask to see
the children, and Eva didn’t bring them into the
conversation. After a while he rose to go. Talking about his
appointments and exuding an odor of new money and
idleness, he danced down the steps and strutted toward the
peagreen dress. Eva watched. She looked at the back of
his neck and the set of his shoulders. Underneath all of that
shine she saw defeat in the stalk of his neck and the
curious tight way he held his shoulders. But still she was not
sure what she felt. Then he leaned forward and whispered
into the ear of the woman in the green dress. She was still
for a moment and then threw back her head and laughed. A
high-pitched big-city laugh that reminded Eva of Chicago. It
hit her like a sledge hammer, and it was then that she knew
what to feel. A liquid trail of hate flooded her chest.
Knowing that she would hate him long and well filled her
with pleasant anticipation, like when you know you are
going to fall in love with someone and you wait for the
happy signs. Hating BoyBoy, she could get on with it, and
have the safety, the thrill, the consistency of that hatred as
long as she wanted or needed it to define and strengthen
her or protect her from routine vulnerabilities. (Once when
Hannah accused her of hating colored people, Eva said
she only hated one, Hannah’s father BoyBoy, and it was

hating him that kept her alive and happy.) Happy or not,
after BoyBoy’s visit she began her retreat to her bedroom,
leaving the bottom of the house more and more to those
who lived there: cousins who were passing through, stray
folks, and the many, many newly married couples she let
rooms to with housekeeping privileges, and after 1910 she
didn’t willingly set foot on the stairs but once and that was to
light a fire, the smoke of which was in her hair for years.
Among the tenants in that big old house were the children
Eva took in. Operating on a private scheme of preference
and prejudice, she sent off for children she had seen from
the balcony of her bedroom or whose circumstances she
had heard about from the gossipy old men who came to
play checkers or read the _Courier,__ or write her number.
In 1921, when her granddaughter Sula was eleven, Eva had
three such children. They came with woolen caps and
names given to them by their mothers, or grandmothers, or
somebody’s best friend. Eva snatched the caps off their
heads and ignored their names. She looked at the first
child closely, his wrists, the shape of his head and the
temperament that showed in his eyes and said, “Well. Look
at Dewey. My my mymymy.” When later that same year she
sent for a child who kept falling down off the porch across
the street, she said the same thing. Somebody said, “But,
Miss Eva, you calls the other one Dewey.” “So? This here’s
another one.” When the third one was brought and Eva said
“Dewey” again, everybody thought she had simply run out
of names or that her faculties had finally softened. “How is
anybody going to tell them apart?” Hannah asked her.

“What you need to tell them apart for? They’s all deweys.”
When Hannah asked the question it didn’t sound very
bright, because each dewey was markedly different from
the other two. Dewey one was a deeply black boy with a
beautiful head and the golden eyes of chronic jaundice.
Dewey two was light-skinned with freckles everywhere and
a head of tight red hair. Dewey three was half Mexican with
chocolate skin and black bangs. Besides, they were one
and two years apart in age. It was Eva saying things like,
“Send one of them deweys out to get me some Garret, if
they don’t have Garret, get Buttercup,” or, “Tell them
deweys to cut out that noise,” or, “Come here, you dewey
you,” and, “Send me a dewey,” that gave Hannah’s
question its weight. Slowly each boy came out of whatever
cocoon he was in at the time his mother or somebody gave
him away, and accepted Eva’s view, becoming in fact as
well as in name a dewey–joining with the other two to
become a trinity with a plural name… inseparable, loving
nothing and no one but themselves. When the handle from
the icebox fell off, all the deweys got whipped, and in dry-
eyed silence watched their own feet as they turned their
behinds high up into the air for the stroke. When the golden-
eyed dewey was ready for school he would not go without
the others. He was seven, freckled dewey was five, and
Mexican dewey was only four. Eva solved the problem by
having them all sent off together. Mr. Buckland Reed said,
“But one of them’s only four.” “How you know? They all
come here the same year,” Eva said. “But that one there
was one year old when he came, and that was three years

ago.” “You don’t know how old he was when he come here
and neither do the teacher. Send ’em.” The teacher was
startled but not unbelieving, for she had long ago given up
trying to fathom the ways of the colored people in town. So
when Mrs. Reed said that their names were Dewey King,
that they were cousins, and all were six years old, the
teacher gave only a tiny sigh and wrote them in the record
book for the first grade. She too thought she would have no
problem distinguishing among them, because they looked
nothing alike, but like everyone else before her, she
gradually found that she could not tell one from the other.
The deweys would not allow it. They got all mixed up in her
head, and finally she could not literally believe her eyes.
They spoke with one voice, thought with one mind, and
maintained an annoying privacy. Stouthearted, surly, and
wholly unpredictable, the deweys remained a mystery not
only during all of their lives in Medallion but after as well.
The deweys came in 1921, but the year before Eva had
given a small room off the kitchen to Tar Baby, a beautiful,
slight, quiet man who never spoke above a whisper. Most
people said he was half white, but Eva said he was all
white. That she knew blood when she saw it, and he didn’t
have none. When he first came to Medallion, the people
called him Pretty Johnnie, but Eva looked at his milky skin
and cornsilk hair and out of a mixture of fun and meanness
called him Tar Baby. He was a mountain boy who stayed to
himself, bothering no one, intent solely on drinking himself
to death. At first he worked in a poultry market, and after
wringing the necks of chickens all day, he came home and

drank until he slept. Later he began to miss days at work
and frequently did not have his rent money. When he lost
his job altogether, he would go out in the morning, scrounge
around for money doing odd jobs, bumming or whatever,
and come home to drink. Because he was no bother, ate
little, required nothing, and was a lover of cheap wine, no
one found him a nuisance. Besides, he frequently went to
Wednesday-night prayer meetings and sang with the
sweetest hill voice imaginable “In the Sweet By-and-By.”
He sent the deweys out for his liquor and spent most of his
time in a heap on the floor or sitting in a chair staring at the
wall. Hannah worried about him a little, but only a very little.
For it soon became clear that he simply wanted a place to
die privately but not quite alone. No one thought of
suggesting to him that he pull himself together or see a
doctor or anything. Even the women at prayer meeting who
cried when he sang “In the Sweet By-and-By” never tried to
get him to participate in the church activities. They just
listened to him sing, wept and thought very graphically of
their own imminent deaths. The people either accepted his
own evaluation of his life, or were indifferent to it. There
was, however, a measure of contempt in their indifference,
for they had little patience with people who took themselves
that seriously. Seriously enough to try to die. And it was
natural that he, after all, became the first one to join
Shadrack–Tar Baby and the deweys–on National Suicide
Day. Under Eva’s distant eye, and prey to her
idiosyncrasies, her own children grew up stealthily: Pearl
married at fourteen and moved to Flint, Michigan, from

where she posted frail letters to her mother with two dollars
folded into the writing paper. Sad little nonsense letters
about minor troubles, her husband’s job and who the
children favored. Hannah married a laughing man named
Rekus who died when their daughter Sula was about three
years old, at which time Hannah moved back into her
mother’s big house prepared to take care of it and her
mother forever. With the exception of BoyBoy, those Peace
women loved all men. It was manlove that Eva bequeathed
to her daughters. Probably, people said, because there
were no men in the house, no men to run it. But actually that
was not true. The Peace women simply loved maleness, for
its own sake. Eva, old as she was, and with one leg, had a
regular flock of gentleman callers, and although she did not
participate in the act of love, there was a good deal of
teasing and pecking and laughter. The men wanted to see
her lovely calf, that neat shoe, and watch the focusing that
sometimes swept down out of the distances in her eyes.
They wanted to see the joy in her face as they settled down
to play checkers, knowing that even when she beat them,
as she almost always did, somehow, in her presence, it
was they who had won something. They would read the
newspaper aloud to her and make observations on its
content, and Eva would listen feeling no obligation to agree
and, in fact, would take them to task about their
interpretation of events. But she argued with them with such
an absence of bile, such a concentration of manlove, that
they felt their convictions solidified by her disagreement.
With other people’s affairs Eva was equally prejudiced

about men. She fussed interminably with the brides of the
newly wed couples for not getting their men’s supper ready
on time; about how to launder shirts, press them, etc. “Yo’
man be here direc’lin. Ain’t it ’bout time you got busy?” “Aw,
Miss Eva. It’ll be ready. We just having spaghetti.” “Again?”
Eva’s eyebrows fluted up and the newlywed pressed her
lips together in shame. Hannah simply refused to live
without the attentions of a man, and after Rekus’ death had
a steady sequence of lovers, mostly the husbands of her
friends and neighbors. Her flirting was sweet, low and
guileless. Without ever a pat of the hair, a rush to change
clothes or a quick application of paint, with no gesture
whatsoever, she rippled with sex. In her same old print
wraparound, barefoot in the summer, in the winter her feet
in a man’s leather slippers with the backs flattened under
her heels, she made men aware of her behind, her slim
ankles, the dewsmooth skin and the incredible length of
neck. Then the smile-eyes, the turn of the head–all so
welcoming, light and playful. Her voice trailed, dipped and
bowed; she gave a chord to the simplest words. Nobody,
but nobody, could say “hey sugar” like Hannah. When he
heard it, the man tipped his hat down a little over his eyes,
hoisted his trousers and thought about the hollow place at
the base of her neck. And all this without the slightest
confusion about work and responsibilities. While Eva
tested and argued with her men, leaving them feeling as
though they had been in combat with a worthy, if amiable,
foe, Hannah rubbed no edges, made no demands, made
the man feel as though he were complete and wonderful

just as he was–he didn’t need fixing–and so he relaxed and
swooned in the Hannah-light that shone on him simply
because he was. If the man entered and Hannah was
carrying a coal scuttle up from the basement, she handled it
in such a way that it became a gesture of love. He made no
move to help her with it simply because he wanted to see
how her thighs looked when she bent to put it down,
knowing that she wanted him to see them too. But since in
that crowded house there were no places for private and
spontaneous lovemaking, Hannah would take the man
down into the cellar in the summer where it was cool back
behind the coal bin and the newspapers, or in the winter
they would step into the pantry and stand up against the
shelves she had filled with canned goods, or lie on the flour
sack just under the rows of tiny green peppers. When those
places were not available, she would slip into the seldom-
used parlor, or even up to her bedroom. She liked the last
place least, not because Sula slept in the room with her but
because her love mate’s tendency was always to fall asleep
afterward and Hannah was fastidious about whom she
slept with. She would fuck practically anything, but sleeping
with someone implied for her a measure of trust and a
definite commitment. So she ended up a daylight lover, and
it was only once actually that Sula came home from school
and found her mother in the bed, curled spoon in the arms
of a man. Seeing her step so easily into the pantry and
emerge looking precisely as she did when she entered,
only happier, taught Sula that sex was pleasant and
frequent, but otherwise unremarkable. Outside the house,

where children giggled about underwear, the message was
different. So she watched her mother’s face and the face of
the men when they opened the pantry door and made up
her own mind. Hannah exasperated the women in the town-
-the “good” women, who said, “One thing I can’t stand is a
nasty woman” the whores, who were hard put to find trade
among black men anyway and who resented Hannah’s
generosity; the middling women, who had both husbands
and affairs, because Hannah seemed too unlike them,
having no passion attached to her relationships and being
wholly incapable of jealousy. Hannah’s friendships with
women were, of course, seldom and short-lived, and the
newly married couples whom her mother took in soon
learned what a hazard she was. She could break up a
marriage before it had even become one–she would make
love to the new groom and wash his wife’s dishes all in an
afternoon. What she wanted, after Rekus died, and what
she succeeded in having more often than not, was some
touching every day. The men, surprisingly, never gossiped
about her. She was unquestionably a kind and generous
woman and that, coupled with her extraordinary beauty and
funky elegance of manner, made them defend her and
protect her from any vitriol that newcomers or their wives
might spill. Eva’s last child, Plum, to whom she hoped to
bequeath everything, floated in a constant swaddle of love
and affection, until 1917 when he went to war. He returned
to the States in 1919 but did not get back to Medallion until
1920. He wrote letters from New York, Washington, D.C.,
and Chicago full of promises of homecomings, but there

was obviously something wrong. Finally some two or three
days after Christmas, he arrived with just the shadow of his
old dip-down walk. His hair had been neither cut nor
combed in months, his clothes were pointless and he had
no socks. But he did have a black bag, a paper sack, and a
sweet, sweet smile. Everybody welcomed him and gave
him a warm room next to Tar Baby’s and waited for him to
tell them whatever it was he wanted them to know. They
waited in vain for his telling but not long for the knowing. His
habits were much like Tar Baby’s but there were no bottles,
and Plum was sometimes cheerful and animated. Hannah
watched and Eva waited. Then he began to steal from
them, take trips to Cincinnati and sleep for days in his room
with the record player going. He got even thinner, since he
ate only snatches of things at beginnings or endings of
meals. It was Hannah who found the bent spoon black from
steady cooking. So late one night in 1921, Eva got up from
her bed and put on her clothes. Hoisting herself up on her
crutches, she was amazed to find that she could still
manage them, although the pain in her armpits was severe.
She practiced a few steps around the room, and then
opened the door. Slowly, she manipulated herself down the
long flights of stairs, two crutches under her left arm, the
right hand grasping the banister. The sound of her foot
booming in comparison to the delicate pat of the crutch tip.
On each landing she stopped for breath. Annoyed at her
physical condition, she closed her eyes and removed the
crutches from under her arms to relieve the unaccustomed
pressure. At the foot of the stairs she redistributed her

weight between the crutches and swooped on through the
front room, to the dining room, to the kitchen, swinging and
swooping like a giant heron, so graceful sailing about in its
own habitat but awkward and comical when it folded its
wings and tried to walk. With a swing and a swoop she
arrived at Plum’s door and pushed it open with the tip of
one crutch. He was lying in bed barely visible in the light
coming from a single bulb. Eva swung over to the bed and
propped her crutches at its foot. She sat down and
gathered Plum into her arms. He woke, but only slightly.
“Hey, man. Hey. You holdin’ me, Mamma?” His voice was
drowsy and amused. He chuckled as though he had heard
some private joke. Eva held him closer and began to rock.
Back and forth she rocked him, her eyes wandering around
his room. There in the corner was a half-eaten store-bought
cherry pie. Balled-up candy wrappers and empty pop
bottles peeped from under the dresser. On the floor by her
foot was a glass of strawberry crush and a _Liberty__
magazine. Rocking, rocking, listening to Plum’s occasional
chuckles, Eva let her memory spin, loop and fall. Plum in
the tub that time as she leaned over him. He reached up
and dripped water into her bosom and laughed. She was
angry, but not too, and laughed with him. “Mamma, you so
purty. You so purty, Mamma.” Eva lifted her tongue to the
edge of her lip to stop the tears from running into her mouth.
Rocking, rocking. Later she laid him down and looked at
him a long time. Suddenly she was thirsty and reached for
the glass of strawberry crush. She put it to her lips and
discovered it was blood-tainted water and threw it to the

floor. Plum woke up and said, “Hey, Mamma, whyn’t you go
on back to bed? I’m all right. Didn’t I tell you? I’m all right. Go
on, now.” “I’m going, Plum,” she said. She shifted her
weight and pulled her crutches toward her. Swinging and
swooping, she left his room. She dragged herself to the
kitchen and made grating noises. Plum on the rim of a
warm light sleep was still chuckling. Mamma. She sure was
somethin’. He felt twilight. Now there seemed to be some
kind of wet light traveling over his legs and stomach with a
deeply attractive smell. It wound itself–this wet light–all
about him, splashing and running into his skin. He opened
his eyes and saw what he imagined was the great wing of
an eagle pouring a wet lightness over him. Some kind of
baptism, some kind of blessing, he thought. Everything is
going to be all right, it said. Knowing that it was so he
closed his eyes and sank back into the bright hole of sleep.
Eva stepped back from the bed and let the crutches rest
under her arms. She rolled a bit of newspaper into a tight
stick about six inches long, lit it and threw it onto the bed
where the kerosene-soaked Plum lay in snug delight.
Quickly, as the _whoosh__ of flames engulfed him, she shut
the door and made her slow and painful journey back to the
top of the house. Just as she got to the third landing she
could hear Hannah and some child’s voice. She swung
along, not even listening to the voices of alarm and the
cries of the deweys. By the time she got to her bed
someone was bounding up the stairs after her. Hannah
opened the door. “Plum! Plum! He’s burning, Mamma! We
can’t even open the door! Mamma!” Eva looked into

Hannah’s eyes. “Is? My baby? Burning?” The two women
did not speak, for the eyes of each were enough for the
other. Then Hannah closed hers and ran toward the voices
of neighbors calling for water.

1922

It was too cool for ice cream. A hill wind was blowing dust
and empty Camels wrappers about their ankles. It pushed
their dresses into the creases of their behinds, then lifted
the hems to peek at their cotton underwear. They were on
their way to Edna Finch’s Mellow House, an ice-cream
parlor catering to nice folks–where even children would feel
comfortable, you know, even though it was right next to
Reba’s Grill and just one block down from the Time and a
Half Pool Hall. It sat in the curve of Carpenter’s Road,
which, in four blocks, made up all the sporting life available
in the Bottom. Old men and young ones draped themselves
in front of the Elmira Theater, Irene’s Palace of
Cosmetology, the pool hall, the grill and the other sagging
business enterprises that lined the street. On sills, on
stoops, on crates and broken chairs they sat tasting their
teeth and waiting for something to distract them. Every
passerby, every motorcar, every alteration in stance caught
their attention and was commented on. Particularly they
watched women. When a woman approached, the older
men tipped their hats; the younger ones opened and closed
their thighs. But all of them, whatever their age, watched her
retreating view with interest. Nel and Sula walked through

this valley of eyes chilled by the wind and heated by the
embarrassment of appraising stares. The old men looked
at their stalklike legs, dwelled on the cords in the backs of
their knees and remembered old dance steps they had not
done in twenty years. In their lust, which age had turned to
kindness, they moved their lips as though to stir up the taste
of young sweat on tight skin. Pig meat. The words were in
all their minds. And one of them, one of the young ones,
said it aloud. Softly but definitively and there was no
mistaking the compliment. His name was Ajax, a twenty-
one-year-old pool haunt of sinister beauty. Graceful and
economical in every movement, he held a place of envy
with men of all ages for his magnificently foul mouth. In fact
he seldom cursed, and the epithets he chose were dull,
even harmless. His reputation was derived from the way he
handled the words. When he said “hell” he hit the _h__ with
his lungs and the impact was greater than the achievement
of the most imaginative foul mouth in the town. He could say
“shit” with a nastiness impossible to imitate. So, when he
said “pig meat” as Nel and Sula passed, they guarded their
eyes lest someone see their delight. It was not really Edna
Finch’s ice cream that made them brave the stretch of
those panther eyes. Years later their own eyes would glaze
as they cupped their chins in remembrance of the inchworm
smiles, the squatting haunches, the track-rail legs
straddling broken chairs. The creamcolored trousers
marking with a mere seam the place where the mystery
curled. Those smooth vanilla crotches invited them; those
lemon-yellow gabardines beckoned to them. They moved

toward the ice-cream parlor like tightrope walkers, as
thrilled by the possibility of a slip as by the maintenance of
tension and balance. The least sideways glance, the
merest toe stub, could pitch them into those creamy
haunches spread wide with welcome. Somewhere beneath
all of that daintiness, chambered in all that neatness, lay the
thing that clotted their dreams. Which was only fitting, for it
was in dreams that the two girls had first met. Long before
Edna Finch’s Mellow House opened, even before they
marched through the chocolate halls of Garfield Primary
School out onto the playground and stood facing each other
through the ropes of the one vacant swing (“Go on.” “No.
You go.”), they had already made each other’s
acquaintance in the delirium of their noon dreams. They
were solitary little girls whose loneliness was so profound it
intoxicated them and sent them stumbling into
Technicolored visions that always included a presence, a
someone, who, quite like the dreamer, shared the delight of
the dream. When Nel, an only child, sat on the steps of her
back porch surrounded by the high silence of her mother’s
incredibly orderly house, feeling the neatness pointing at
her back, she studied the poplars and fell easily into a
picture of herself lying on a flowered bed, tangled in her
own hair, waiting for some fiery prince. He approached but
never quite arrived. But always, watching the dream along
with her, were some smiling sympathetic eyes. Someone
as interested as she herself in the flow of her imagined hair,
the thickness of the mattress of flowers, the voile sleeves
that closed below her elbows in gold-threaded cuffs.

Similarly, Sula, also an only child, but wedged into a
household of throbbing disorder constantly awry with things,
people, voices and the slamming of doors, spent hours in
the attic behind a roll of linoleum galloping through her own
mind on a gray-and-white horse tasting sugar and smelling
roses in full view of a someone who shared both the taste
and the speed. So when they met, first in those chocolate
halls and next through the ropes of the swing, they felt the
ease and comfort of old friends. Because each had
discovered years before that they were neither white nor
male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to
them, they had set about creating something else to be.
Their meeting was fortunate, for it let them use each other
to grow on. Daughters of distant mothers and
incomprehensible fathers (Sula’s because he was dead;
Nel’s because he wasn’t), they found in each other’s eyes
the intimacy they were looking for. Nel Wright and Sula
Peace were both twelve in 1922, wishbone thin and easy-
assed. Nel was the color of wet sandpaper–just dark
enough to escape the blows of the pitch-black truebloods
and the contempt of old women who worried about such
things as bad blood mixtures and knew that the origins of a
mule and a mulatto were one and the same. Had she been
any lighter-skinned she would have needed either her
mother’s protection on the way to school or a streak of
mean to defend herself. Sula was a heavy brown with large
quiet eyes, one of which featured a birthmark that spread
from the middle of the lid toward the eyebrow, shaped
something like a stemmed rose. It gave her otherwise plain

face a broken excitement and blue-blade threat like the
keloid scar of the razored man who sometimes played
checkers with her grandmother. The birthmark was to grow
darker as the years passed, but now it was the same
shade as her gold-flecked eyes, which, to the end, were as
steady and clean as rain. Their friendship was as intense
as it was sudden. They found relief in each other’s
personality. Although both were unshaped, formless things,
Nel seemed stronger and more consistent than Sula, who
could hardly be counted on to sustain any emotion for more
than three minutes. Yet there was one time when that was
not true, when she held on to a mood for weeks, but even
that was in defense of Nel. Four white boys in their early
teens, sons of some newly arrived Irish people,
occasionally entertained themselves in the afternoon by
harassing black schoolchildren. With shoes that pinched
and woolen knickers that made red rings on their calves,
they had come to this valley with their parents believing as
they did that it was a promised land–green and shimmering
with welcome. What they found was a strange accent, a
pervasive fear of their religion and firm resistance to their
attempts to find work. With one exception the older
residents of Medallion scorned them. The one exception
was the black community. Although some of the Negroes
had been in Medallion before the Civil War (the town didn’t
even have a name then), if they had any hatred for these
newcomers it didn’t matter because it didn’t show. As a
matter of fact, baiting them was the one activity that the
white Protestant residents concurred in. In part their place

in this world was secured only when they echoed the old
residents’ attitude toward blacks. These particular boys
caught Nel once, and pushed her from hand to hand until
they grew tired of the frightened helpless face. Because of
that incident, Nel’s route home from school became
elaborate. She, and then Sula, managed to duck them for
weeks until a chilly day in November when Sula said, “Let’s
us go on home the shortest way.” Nel blinked, but
acquiesced. They walked up the street until they got to the
bend of Carpenter’s Road where the boys lounged on a
disused well. Spotting their prey, the boys sauntered
forward as though there were nothing in the world on their
minds but the gray sky. Hardly able to control their grins,
they stood like a gate blocking the path. When the girls
were three feet in front of the boys, Sula reached into her
coat pocket and pulled out Eva’s paring knife. The boys
stopped short, exchanged looks and dropped all pretense
of innocence. This was going to be better than they thought.
They were going to try and fight back, and with a knife.
Maybe they could get an arm around one of their waists, or
tear… Sula squatted down in the dirt road and put
everything down on the ground: her lunchpail, her reader,
her mittens, her slate. Holding the knife in her right hand,
she pulled the slate toward her and pressed her left
forefinger down hard on its edge. Her aim was determined
but inaccurate. She slashed off only the tip of her finger.
The four boys stared open-mouthed at the wound and the
scrap of flesh, like a button mushroom, curling in the cherry
blood that ran into the corners of the slate. Sula raised her

eyes to them. Her voice was quiet. “If I can do that to
myself, what you suppose I’ll do to you?” The shifting dirt
was the only way Nel knew that they were moving away; she
was looking at Sula’s face, which seemed miles and miles
away. But toughness was not their quality–
adventuresomeness was–and a mean determination to
explore everything that interested them, from one-eyed
chickens high-stepping in their penned yards to Mr.
Buckland Reed’s gold teeth, from the sound of sheets
flapping in the wind to the labels on Tar Baby’s wine bottles.
And they had no priorities. They could be distracted from
watching a fight with mean razors by the glorious smell of
hot tar being poured by roadmen two hundred yards away.
In the safe harbor of each other’s company they could afford
to abandon the ways of other people and concentrate on
their own perceptions of things. When Mrs. Wright
reminded Nel to pull her nose, she would do it
enthusiastically but without the least hope in the world.
“While you sittin’ there, honey, go ‘head and pull your nose.”
“It hurts, Mamma.” “Don’t you want a nice nose when you
grow up?” After she met Sula, Nel slid the clothespin under
the blanket as soon as she got in the bed. And although
there was still the hateful hot comb to suffer through each
Saturday evening, its consequences–smooth hair–no
longer interested her. Joined in mutual admiration they
watched each day as though it were a movie arranged for
their amusement. The new theme they were now
discovering was men. So they met regularly, without even
planning it, to walk down the road to Edna Finch’s Mellow

House, even though it was too cool for ice cream. Then
summer came. A summer limp with the weight of
blossomed things. Heavy sunflowers weeping over fences;
iris curling and browning at the edges far away from their
purple hearts; ears of corn letting their auburn hair wind
down to their stalks. And the boys. The beautiful, beautiful
boys who dotted the landscape like jewels, split the air with
their shouts in the field, and thickened the river with their
shining wet backs. Even their footsteps left a smell of
smoke behind. It was in that summer, the summer of their
twelfth year, the summer of the beautiful black boys, that
they became skittish, frightened and bold–all at the same
time. In that mercury mood in July, Sula and Nel wandered
about the Bottom barefoot looking for mischief. They
decided to go down by the river where the boys sometimes
swam. Nel waited on the porch of 7 Carpenter’s Road while
Sula ran into the house to go to the toilet. On the way up the
stairs, she passed the kitchen where Hannah sat with two
friends, Patsy and Valentine. The two women were fanning
themselves and watching Hannah put down some dough,
all talking casually about one thing and another, and had
gotten around, when Sula passed by, to the problems of
child rearing. “They a pain.” “Yeh. Wish I’d listened to
mamma. She told me not to have ’em too soon.” “Any time
atall is too soon for me.” “Oh, I don’t know. My Rudy minds
his daddy. He just wild with me. Be glad when he growed
and gone.” Hannah smiled and said, “Shut your mouth. You
love the ground he pee on.” “Sure I do. But he still a pain.
Can’t help loving your own child. No matter what they do.”

“Well, Hester grown now and I can’t say love is exactly what
I feel.” “Sure you do. You love her, like I love Sula. I just don’t
like her. That’s the difference.” “Guess so. Likin’ them is
another thing.” “Sure. They different people, you know… ”
She only heard Hannah’s words, and the pronouncement
sent her flying up the stairs. In bewilderment, she stood at
the window fingering the curtain edge, aware of a sting in
her eye. Nel’s call floated up and into the window, pulling
her away from dark thoughts back into the bright, hot
daylight. They ran most of the way. Heading toward the
wide part of the river where trees grouped themselves in
families darkening the earth below. They passed some
boys swimming and clowning in the water, shrouding their
words in laughter. They ran in the sunlight, creating their
own breeze, which pressed their dresses into their damp
skin. Reaching a kind of square of four leaf-locked trees
which promised cooling, they flung themselves into the four-
cornered shade to taste their lip sweat and contemplate the
wildness that had come upon them so suddenly. They lay in
the grass, their foreheads almost touching, their bodies
stretched away from each other at a 180-degree angle.
Sula’s head rested on her arm, an undone braid coiled
around her wrist. Nel leaned on her elbows and worried
long blades of grass with her fingers. Underneath their
dresses flesh tightened and shivered in the high coolness,
their small breasts just now beginning to create some
pleasant discomfort when they were lying on their
stomachs. Sula lifted her head and joined Nel in the grass
play. In concert, without ever meeting each other’s eyes,

they stroked the blades up and down, up and down. Nel
found a thick twig and, with her thumbnail, pulled away its
bark until it was stripped to a smooth, creamy innocence.
Sula looked about and found one too. When both twigs
were undressed Nel moved easily to the next stage and
began tearing up rooted grass to make a bare spot of
earth. When a generous clearing was made, Sula traced
intricate patterns in it with her twig. At first Nel was content
to do the same. But soon she grew impatient and poked
her twig rhythmically and intensely into the earth, making a
small neat hole that grew deeper and wider with the least
manipulation of her twig. Sula copied her, and soon each
had a hole the size of a cup. Nel began a more strenuous
digging and, rising to her knee, was careful to scoop out
the dirt as she made her hole deeper. Together they
worked until the two holes were one and the same. When
the depression was the size of a small dishpan, Nel’s twig
broke. With a gesture of disgust she threw the pieces into
the hole they had made. Sula threw hers in too. Nel saw a
bottle cap and tossed it in as well. Each then looked around
for more debris to throw into the hole: paper, bits of glass,
butts of cigarettes, until all of the small defiling things they
could find were collected there. Carefully they replaced the
soil and covered the entire grave with uprooted grass.
Neither one had spoken a word. They stood up, stretched,
then gazed out over the swift dull water as an unspeakable
restlessness and agitation held them. At the same instant
each girl heard footsteps in the grass. A little boy in too big
knickers was coming up from the lower bank of the river.

He stopped when he saw them and picked his nose. “Your
mamma tole you to stop eatin’ snot, Chicken,” Nel hollered
at him through cupped hands. “Shut up,” he said, still
picking. “Come up here and say that.” “Leave him ‘lone,
Nel. Come here, Chicken. Lemme show you something.”
“Naw.” “You scared we gone take your bugger away?”
“Leave him ‘lone, I said. Come on, Chicken. Look. I’ll help
you climb a tree.” Chicken looked at the tree Sula was
pointing to–a big double beech with low branches and lots
of bends for sitting. He moved slowly toward her. “Come
on, Chicken, I’ll help you up.” Still picking his nose, his eyes
wide, he came to where they were standing. Sula took him
by the hand and coaxed him along. When they reached the
base of the beech, she lifted him to the first branch, saying,
“Go on. Go on. I got you.” She followed the boy, steadying
him, when he needed it, with her hand and her reassuring
voice. When they were as high as they could go, Sula
pointed to the far side of the river. “See? Bet you never saw
that far before, did you?” “Uh uh.” “Now look down there.”
They both leaned a little and peered through the leaves at
Nel standing below, squinting up at them. From their height
she looked small and foreshortened. Chicken Little
laughed. “Y’all better come on down before you break your
neck,” Nel hollered. “I ain’t never coming down,” the boy
hollered back. “Yeah. We better. Come on, Chicken.”
“Naw. Lemme go.” “Yeah, Chicken. Come on, now.” Sula
pulled his leg gently. “Lemme go.” “OK, I’m leavin’ you.”
She started on. “Wait!” he screamed. Sula stopped and
together they slowly worked their way down. Chicken was

still elated. “I was way up there, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I? I’m a tell
my brovver.” Sula and Nel began to mimic him: “I’m a tell
my brovver; I’m a tell my brovver.” Sula picked him up by his
hands and swung him outward then around and around. His
knickers ballooned and his shrieks of frightened joy startled
the birds and the fat grasshoppers. When he slipped from
her hands and sailed away out over the water they could
still hear his bubbly laughter. The water darkened and
closed quickly over the place where Chicken Little sank.
The pressure of his hard and tight little fingers was still in
Sula’s palms as she stood looking at the closed place in
the water. They expected him to come back up, laughing.
Both girls stared at the water. Nel spoke first. “Somebody
saw.” A figure appeared briefly on the opposite shore. The
only house over there was Shadrack’s. Sula glanced at Nel.
Terror widened her nostrils. Had he seen? The water was
so peaceful now. There was nothing but the baking sun and
something newly missing. Sula cupped her face for an
instant, then turned and ran up to the little plank bridge that
crossed the river to Shadrack’s house. There was no path.
It was as though neither Shadrack nor anyone else ever
came this way. Her running was swift and determined, but
when she was close to the three little steps that led to his
porch, fear crawled into her stomach and only the
something newly missing back there in the river made it
possible for her to walk up the three steps and knock at the
door. No one answered. She started back, but thought
again of the peace of the river. Shadrack would be inside,
just behind the door ready to pounce on her. Still she could

not go back. Ever so gently she pushed the door with the
tips of her fingers and heard only the hinges weep. More.
And then she was inside. Alone. The neatness, the order
startled her, but more surprising was the restfulness.
Everything was so tiny, so common, so unthreatening.
Perhaps this was not the house of the Shad. The terrible
Shad who walked about with his penis out, who peed in
front of ladies and girl-children, the only black who could
curse white people and get away with it, who drank in the
road from the mouth of the bottle, who shouted and shook
in the streets. This cottage? This sweet old cottage? With
its made-up bed? With its rag rug and wooden table? Sula
stood in the middle of the little room and in her wonder
forgot what she had come for until a sound at the door
made her jump. He was there in the doorway looking at her.
She had not heard his coming and now he was looking at
her. More in embarrassment than terror she averted her
glance. When she called up enough courage to look back
at him, she saw his hand resting upon the door frame. His
fingers, barely touching the wood, were arranged in a
graceful arc. Relieved and encouraged (no one with hands
like that, no one with fingers that curved around wood so
tenderly could kill her), she walked past him out of the door,
feeling his gaze turning, turning with her. At the edge of the
porch, gathering the wisps of courage that were fast leaving
her, she turned once more to look at him, to ask him… had
he…? He was smiling, a great smile, heavy with lust and
time to come. He nodded his head as though answering a
question, and said, in a pleasant conversational tone, a

tone of cooled butter, “Always.” Sula fled down the steps,
and shot through the greenness and the baking sun back to
Nel and the dark closed place in the water. There she
collapsed in tears. Nel quieted her. “Sh, sh. Don’t, don’t.
You didn’t mean it. It ain’t your fault. Sh. Sh. Come on, le’s
go, Sula. Come on, now. Was he there? Did he see?
Where’s the belt to your dress?” Sula shook her head while
she searched her waist for the belt. Finally she stood up
and allowed Nel to lead her away. “He said, ‘Always.
Always.'” “What?” Sula covered her mouth as they walked
down the hill. Always. He had answered a question she had
not asked, and its promise licked at her feet. A bargeman,
poling away from the shore, found Chicken late that
afternoon stuck in some rocks and weeds, his knickers
ballooning about his legs. He would have left him there but
noticed that it was a child, not an old black man, as it first
appeared, and he prodded the body loose, netted it and
hauled it aboard. He shook his head in disgust at the kind
of parents who would drown their own children. When, he
wondered, will those people ever be anything but animals,
fit for nothing but substitutes for mules, only mules didn’t kill
each other the way niggers did. He dumped Chicken Little
into a burlap sack and tossed him next to some egg crates
and boxes of wool cloth. Later, sitting down to smoke on an
empty lard tin, still bemused by God’s curse and the terrible
burden his own kind had of elevating Ham’s sons, he
suddenly became alarmed by the thought that the corpse in
this heat would have a terrible odor, which might get into
the fabric of his woolen cloth. He dragged the sack away

and hooked it over the side, so that the Chicken’s body was
half in and half out of the water. Wiping the sweat from his
neck, he reported his find to the sheriff at Porter’s Landing,
who said they didn’t have no niggers in their county, but that
some lived in those hills ‘cross the river, up above
Medallion. The bargeman said he couldn’t go all the way
back there, it was every bit of two miles. The sheriff said
whyn’t he throw it on back into the water. The bargeman
said he never shoulda taken it out in the first place. Finally
they got the man who ran the ferry twice a day to agree to
take it over in the morning. That was why Chicken Little was
missing for three days and didn’t get to the embalmer’s until
the fourth day, by which time he was unrecognizable to
almost everybody who once knew him, and even his mother
wasn’t deep down sure, except that it just had to be him
since nobody could find him. When she saw his clothes
lying on the table in the basement of the mortuary, her
mouth snapped shut, and when she saw his body her mouth
flew wide open again and it was seven hours before she
was able to close it and make the first sound. So the coffin
was closed. The Junior Choir, dressed in white, sang
“Nearer My God to Thee” and “Precious Memories,” their
eyes fastened on the songbooks they did not need, for this
was the first time their voices had presided at a real-life
event. Nel and Sula did not touch hands or look at each
other during the funeral. There was a space, a
separateness, between them. Nel’s legs had turned to
granite and she expected the sheriff or Reverend Deal’s
pointing finger at any moment. Although she knew she had

“done nothing,” she felt convicted and hanged right there in
the pew–two rows down from her parents in the children’s
section. Sula simply cried. Soundlessly and with no heaving
and gasping for breath, she let the tears roll into her mouth
and slide down her chin to dot the front of her dress. As
Reverend Deal moved into his sermon, the hands of the
women unfolded like pairs of raven’s wings and flew high
above their hats in the air. They did not hear all of what he
said; they heard the one word, or phrase, or inflection that
was for them the connection between the event and
themselves. For some it was the term “Sweet Jesus.” And
they saw the Lamb’s eye and the truly innocent victim:
themselves. They acknowledged the innocent child hiding
in the corner of their hearts, holding a sugarand-butter
sandwich. That one. The one who lodged deep in their fat,
thin, old, young skin, and was the one the world had hurt. Or
they thought of their son newly killed and remembered his
legs in short pants and wondered where the bullet went in.
Or they remembered how dirty the room looked when their
father left home and wondered if that is the way the slim,
young Jew felt, he who for them was both son and lover and
in whose downy face they could see the sugar-and-butter
sandwiches and feel the oldest and most devastating pain
there is: not the pain of childhood, but the remembrance of
it. Then they left their pews. For with some emotions one
has to stand. They spoke, for they were full and needed to
say. They swayed, for the rivulets of grief or of ecstasy must
be rocked. And when they thought of all that life and death
locked into that little closed coffin they danced and

screamed, not to protest God’s will but to acknowledge it
and confirm once more their conviction that the only way to
avoid the Hand of God is to get in it. In the colored part of
the cemetery, they sank Chicken Little in between his
grandfather and an aunt. Butterflies flew in and out of the
bunches of field flowers now loosened from the top of the
bier and lying in a small heap at the edge of the grave. The
heat had gone, but there was still no breeze to lift the hair of
the willows. Nel and Sula stood some distance away from
the grave, the space that had sat between them in the pews
had dissolved. They held hands and knew that only the
coffin would lie in the earth; the bubbly laughter and the
press of fingers in the palm would stay aboveground
forever. At first, as they stood there, their hands were
clenched together. They relaxed slowly until during the walk
back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as
that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a
summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the
winter.

1923

The second strange thing was Hannah’s coming into her
mother’s room with an empty bowl and a peck of Kentucky
Wonders and saying, “Mamma, did you ever love us?” She
sang the words like a small child saying a piece at Easter,
then knelt to spread a newspaper on the floor and set the
basket on it; the bowl she tucked in the space between her
legs. Eva, who was just sitting there fanning herself with the

cardboard fan from Mr. Hodges’ funeral parlor, listened to
the silence that followed Hannah’s words, then said, “Scat!”
to the deweys who were playing chain gang near the
window. With the shoelaces of each of them tied to the
laces of the others, they stumbled and tumbled out of Eva’s
room. “Now,” Eva looked up across from her wagon at her
daughter. “Give me that again. Flat out to fit my head.” “I
mean, did you? You know. When we was little.” Eva’s hand
moved snail-like down her thigh toward her stump, but
stopped short of it to realign a pleat. “No. I don’t reckon I
did. Not the way you thinkin’.” “Oh, well. I was just
wonderin’.” Hannah appeared to be through with the
subject. “An evil wonderin’ if I ever heard one.” Eva was not
through. “I didn’t mean nothing by it, Mamma.” “What you
mean you didn’t _mean__ nothing by it? How you gone not
mean something by it?” Hannah pinched the tips off the
Kentucky Wonders and snapped their long pods. What with
the sound of the cracking and snapping and her swift-
fingered movements, she seemed to be playing a
complicated instrument. Eva watched her a moment and
then said, “You gone can them?” “No. They for tonight.”
“Thought you was gone can some.” “Uncle Paul ain’t
brought me none yet. A peck ain’t enough to can. He say he
got two bushels for me.” “Triflin’.” “Oh, he all right.” “Sho he
all right. Everybody all right. ‘Cept Mamma. Mamma the
only one ain’t all right. Cause she didn’t _love__ us.”
“Awww, Mamma.” “Awww, Mamma? Awww, Mamma? You
settin’ here with your healthy-ass self and ax me did I love
you? Them big old eyes in your head would a been two

holes full of maggots if I hadn’t.” “I didn’t mean that,
Mamma. I know you fed us and all. I was talkin’ ’bout
something else. Like. Like. Playin’ with us. Did you ever,
you know, play with us?” “Play? Wasn’t nobody playin’ in
1895. Just ’cause you got it good now you think it was
always this good? was a killer, girl. Things was bad.
Niggers was dying like flies. Stepping tall, ain’t you? Uncle
Paul gone bring me _two__ bushels. Yeh. And they’s a
melon downstairs, ain’t they? And I bake every Saturday,
and Shad brings fish on Friday, and they’s a pork barrel full
of meal, and we float eggs in a crock of vinegar… ”
“Mamma, what you talkin’ ’bout?” “I’m talkin’ ’bout 18 and
95 when I set in that house five days with you and Pearl and
Plum and three beets, you snake-eyed ungrateful hussy.
What would I look like leapin’ ’round that little old room
playin’ with youngins with three beets to my name?” “I know
’bout them beets, Mamma. You told us that a million times.”
“Yeah? Well? Don’t that count? Ain’t that love? You want me
to tinkle you under the jaw and forget ’bout them sores in
your mouth? Pearl was shittin’ worms and I was supposed
to play rang-around-the-rosie?” “But Mamma, they had to
be some time when you wasn’t thinkin’ ’bout… ” “No time.
They wasn’t no time. Not none. Soon as I got one day done
here come a night. With you all coughin’ and me watchin’ so
TB wouldn’t take you off and if you was sleepin’ quiet I
thought, O Lord, they dead and put my hand over your
mouth to feel if the breath was comin’ what you talkin’ ’bout
did I love you girl I stayed alive for you can’t you get that
through your thick head or what is that between your ears,

heifer?” Hannah had enough beans now. With some
tomatoes and hot bread, she thought, that would be enough
for everybody, especially since the deweys didn’t eat
vegetables no how and Eva never made them and Tar
Baby was living off air and music these days. She picked
up the basket and stood with it and the bowl of beans over
her mother. Eva’s face was still asking her last question.
Hannah looked into her mother’s eyes. “But what about
Plum? What’d you kill Plum for, Mamma?” It was a
Wednesday in August and the ice wagon was coming and
coming. You could hear bits of the driver’s song. Now Mrs.
Jackson would be tipping down her porch steps. “Jes a
piece. You got a lil ole piece layin’ ’round in there you could
spare?” And as he had since the time of the pigeons, the
iceman would hand her a lump of ice saying, “Watch it now,
Mrs. Jackson. That straw’ll tickle your pretty neck to death.”
Eva listened to the wagon coming and thought about what it
must be like in the icehouse. She leaned back a little and
closed her eyes trying to see the insides of the icehouse. It
was a dark, lovely picture in this heat, until it reminded her
of that winter night in the outhouse holding her baby in the
dark, her fingers searching for his asshole and the last bit
of lard scooped from the sides of the can, held deliberately
on the tip of her middle finger, the last bit of lard to keep
from hurting him when she slid her finger in and all because
she had broken the slop jar and the rags had frozen. The
last food staple in the house she had rammed up her
baby’s behind to keep from hurting him too much when she
opened up his bowels to pull the stools out. He had been

screaming fit to kill, but when she found his hole at last and
stuck her finger up in it, the shock was so great he was
suddenly quiet. Even now on the hottest day anyone in
Medallion could remember–a day so hot flies slept and
cats were splaying their fur like quills, a day so hot pregnant
wives leaned up against trees and cried, and women
remembering some three-month-old hurt put ground glass
in their lovers’ food and the men looked at the food and
wondered if there was glass in it and ate it anyway because
it was too hot to resist eating it–even on this hottest of days
in the hot spell, Eva shivered from the biting cold and
stench of that outhouse. Hannah was waiting. Watching her
mother’s eyelids. When Eva spoke at last it was with two
voices. Like two people were talking at the same time,
saying the same thing, one a fraction of a second behind
the other. “He give me such a time. Such a time. Look like
he didn’t even want to be born. But he come on out. Boys is
hard to bear. You wouldn’t know that but they is. It was such
a carryin’ on to get him born and to keep him alive. Just to
keep his little heart beating and his little old lungs cleared
and look like when he came back from that war he wanted
to git back in. After all that carryin’ on, just gettin’ him out
and keepin’ him alive, he wanted to crawl back in my womb
and well… I ain’t got the room no more even if he could do it.
There wasn’t space for him in my womb. And he was
crawlin’ back. Being helpless and thinking baby thoughts
and dreaming baby dreams and messing up his pants
again and smiling all the time. I had room enough in my
heart, but not in my womb, not no more. I birthed him once. I

couldn’t do it again. He was growed, a big old thing.
Godhavemercy, I couldn’t birth him twice. I’d be laying here
at night and he be downstairs in that room, but when I
closed my eyes I’d see him… six feet tall smilin’ and crawlin’
up the stairs quietlike so I wouldn’t hear and opening the
door soft so I wouldn’t hear and he’d be creepin’ to the bed
trying to spread my legs trying to get back up in my womb.
He was a man, girl, a big old growed-up man. I didn’t have
that much room. I kept on dreaming it. Dreaming it and I
knowed it was true. One night it wouldn’t be no dream. It’d
be true and I would have done it, would have let him if I’d’ve
had the room but a big man can’t be a baby all wrapped up
inside his mamma no more; he suffocate. I done everything
I could to make him leave me and go on and live and be a
man but he wouldn’t and I had to keep him out so I just
thought of a way he could die like a man not all scrunched
up inside my womb, but like a man.” Eva couldn’t see
Hannah clearly for the tears, but she looked up at her
anyway and said, by way of apology or explanation or
perhaps just by way of neatness, “But I held him close first.
Real close. Sweet Plum. My baby boy.” Long after Hannah
turned and walked out of the room, Eva continued to call his
name while her fingers lined up the pleats in her dress.
Hannah went off to the kitchen, her old man’s slippers
plopping down the stairs and over the hardwood floors. She
turned the spigot on, letting water break up the tight knots of
Kentucky Wonders and float them to the top of the bowl.
She swirled them about with her fingers, poured the water
off and repeated the process. Each time the green tubes

rose to the surface she felt elated and collected whole
handfuls at a time to drop in twos and threes back into the
water. Through the window over the sink she could see the
deweys still playing chain gang; their ankles bound one to
the other, they tumbled, struggled back to their feet and
tried to walk single file. Hens strutted by with one
suspicious eye on the deweys, another on the brick
fireplace where sheets and mason jars were boiled. Only
the deweys could play in this heat. Hannah put the Kentucky
Wonders over the fire and, struck by a sudden sleepiness,
she went off to lie down in the front room. It was even hotter
there, for the windows were shut to keep out the sunlight.
Hannah straightened the shawl that draped the couch and
lay down. She dreamed of a wedding in a red bridal gown
until Sula came in and woke her. But before the second
strange thing, there had been the wind, which was the first.
The very night before the day Hannah had asked Eva if she
had ever loved them, the wind tore over the hills rattling
roofs and loosening doors. Everything shook, and although
the people were frightened they thought it meant rain and
welcomed it. Windows fell out and trees lost arms. People
waited up half the night for the first crack of lightning. Some
had even uncovered barrels to catch the rain water, which
they loved to drink and cook in. They waited in vain, for no
lightning no thunder no rain came. The wind just swept
through, took what dampness there was out of the air,
messed up the yards, and went on. The hills of the Bottom,
as always, protected the valley part of town where the white
people lived, and the next morning all the people were

grateful because there was a dryer heat. So they set about
their work early, for it was canning time, and who knew but
what the wind would come back this time with a cooling
rain. The men who worked in the valley got up at four thirty
in the morning and looked at the sky where the sun was
already rising like a hot white bitch. They beat the brims of
their hats against their legs before putting them on and
trudged down the road like old promises nobody wanted
kept. On Thursday, when Hannah brought Eva her fried
tomatoes and soft scrambled eggs with the white left out for
good luck, she mentioned her dream of the wedding in the
red dress. Neither one bothered to look it up for they both
knew the number was 522. Eva said she’d play it when Mr.
Buckland Reed came by. Later she would remember it as
the third strange thing. She had thought it odd even then,
but the red in the dream confused her. But she wasn’t
certain that it was third or not because Sula was acting up,
fretting the deweys and meddling the newly married couple.
Because she was thirteen, everybody supposed her nature
was coming down, but it was hard to put up with her sulking
and irritation. The birthmark over her eye was getting
darker and looked more and more like a stem and rose.
She was dropping things and eating food that belonged to
the newly married couple and started in to worrying
everybody that the deweys needed a bath and she was
going to give it to them. The deweys, who went wild at the
thought of water, were crying and thundering all over the
house like colts. “We ain’t got to, do we? Do we got to do
what she says? It ain’t Saturday.” They even woke up Tar

Baby, who came out of his room to look at them and then
left the house in search of music. Hannah ignored them and
kept on bringing mason jars out of the cellar and washing
them. Eva banged on the floor with her stick but nobody
came. By noon it was quiet. The deweys had escaped,
Sula was either in her room or gone off somewhere. The
newly married couple, energized by their morning
lovemaking, had gone to look for a day’s work happily
certain that they would find none. The air all over the Bottom
got heavy with peeled fruit and boiling vegetables. Fresh
corn, tomatoes, string beans, melon rinds. The women, the
children and the old men who had no jobs were putting up
for a winter they understood so well. Peaches were stuffed
into jars and black cherries (later, when it got cooler, they
would put up jellies and preserves). The greedy canned as
many as forty-two a day even though some of them, like
Mrs. Jackson, who ate ice, had jars from 1920. Before she
trundled her wagon over to the dresser to get her comb,
Eva looked out the window and saw Hannah bending to
light the yard fire. And that was the fifth (or fourth, if you
didn’t count Sula’s craziness) strange thing. She couldn’t
find her comb. Nobody moved stuff in Eva’s room except to
clean and then they put everything right back. But Eva
couldn’t find it anywhere. One hand pulling her braids loose,
the other searching the dresser drawers, she had just
begun to get irritated when she felt it in her blouse drawer.
Then she trundled back to the window to catch a breeze, if
one took a mind to come by, while she combed her hair.
She rolled up to the window and it was then she saw

Hannah burning. The flames from the yard fire were licking
the blue cotton dress, making her dance. Eva knew there
was time for nothing in this world other than the time it took
to get there and cover her daughter’s body with her own.
She lifted her heavy frame up on her good leg, and with
fists and arms smashed the windowpane. Using her stump
as a support on the window sill, her good leg as a lever,
she threw herself out of the window. Cut and bleeding she
clawed the air trying to aim her body toward the flaming,
dancing figure. She missed and came crashing down
some twelve feet from Hannah’s smoke. Stunned but still
conscious, Eva dragged herself toward her firstborn, but
Hannah, her senses lost, went flying out of the yard
gesturing and bobbing like a sprung jack-in-the-box. Mr.
and Mrs. Suggs, who had set up their canning apparatus in
their front yard, saw her running, dancing toward them. They
whispered, “Jesus, Jesus,” and together hoisted up their
tub of water in which tight red tomatoes floated and threw it
on the smoke-and-flame-bound woman. The water did put
out the flames, but it also made steam, which seared to
sealing all that was left of the beautiful Hannah Peace. She
lay there on the wooden sidewalk planks, twitching lightly
among the smashed tomatoes, her face a mask of agony
so intense that for years the people who gathered ’round
would shake their heads at the recollection of it. Somebody
covered her legs with a shirt. A woman unwrapped her
head rag and placed it on Hannah’s shoulder. Somebody
else ran to Dick’s Fresh Food and Sundries to call the
ambulance. The rest stood there as helpless as sunflowers

leaning on a fence. The deweys came and stepped in the
tomatoes, their eyes raked with wonder. Two cats sidled
through the legs of the crowd, sniffing the burned flesh. The
vomiting of a young girl finally broke the profound silence
and caused the women to talk to each other and to God. In
the midst of calling Jesus they heard the hollow clang of the
ambulance bell struggling up the hill, but not the “Help me,
ya’ll” that the dying woman whispered. Then somebody
remembered to go and see about Eva. They found her on
her stomach by the forsythia bushes calling Hannah’s name
and dragging her body through the sweet peas and clover
that grew under the forsythia by the side of the house.
Mother and daughter were placed on stretchers and carried
to the ambulance. Eva was wide awake. The blood from
her face cuts filled her eyes so she could not see, could
only smell the familiar odor of cooked flesh. Hannah died
on the way to the hospital. Or so they said. In any case, she
had already begun to bubble and blister so badly that the
coffin had to be kept closed at the funeral and the women
who washed the body and dressed it for death wept for her
burned hair and wrinkled breasts as though they
themselves had been her lovers. When Eva got to the
hospital they put her stretcher on the floor, so preoccupied
with the hot and bubbling flesh of the other (some of them
had never seen so extreme a burn case before) they forgot
Eva, who would have bled to death except Old Willy Fields,
the orderly, saw blood staining his just-mopped floors and
went to find out where it was coming from. Recognizing Eva
at once he shouted to a nurse, who came to see if the

bloody one-legged black woman was alive or dead. From
then on Willy boasted that he had saved Eva’s life–an
indisputable fact which she herself admitted and for which
she cursed him every day for thirty-seven years thereafter
and would have cursed him for the rest of her life except by
then she was already ninety years old and forgot things.
Lying in the colored ward of the hospital, which was a
screened corner of a larger ward, Eva mused over the
perfection of the judgment against her. She remembered
the wedding dream and recalled that weddings always
meant death. And the red gown, well that was the fire, as
she should have known. She remembered something else
too, and try as she might to deny it, she knew that as she
lay on the ground trying to drag herself through the sweet
peas and clover to get to Hannah, she had seen Sula
standing on the back porch just looking. When Eva, who
was never one to hide the faults of her children, mentioned
what she thought she’d seen to a few friends, they said it
was natural. Sula was probably struck dumb, as anybody
would be who saw her own mamma burn up. Eva said yes,
but inside she disagreed and remained convinced that
Sula had watched Hannah burn not because she was
paralyzed, but because she was interested.

1927

Old people were dancing with little children. Young boys
with their sisters, and the church women who frowned on
any bodily expression of joy (except when the hand of God

commanded it) tapped their feet. Somebody (the groom’s
father, everybody said) had poured a whole pint jar of cane
liquor into the punch, so even the men who did not sneak
out the back door to have a shot, as well as the women who
let nothing stronger than Black Draught enter their blood,
were tipsy. A small boy stood at the Victrola turning its
handle and smiling at the sound of Bert Williams’ “Save a
Little Dram for Me.” Even Helene Wright had mellowed with
the cane, waving away apologies for drinks spilled on her
rug and paying no attention whatever to the chocolate cake
lying on the arm of her red-velvet sofa. The tea roses above
her left breast had slipped from the brooch that fastened
them and were hanging heads down. When her husband
called her attention to the children wrapping themselves
into her curtains, she merely smiled and said, “Oh, let them
be.” She was not only a little drunk, she was weary and had
been for weeks. Her only child’s wedding–the culmination
of all she had been, thought or done in this world-had
dragged from her energy and stamina even she did not
know she possessed. Her house had to be thoroughly
cleaned, chickens had to be plucked, cakes and pies
made, and for weeks she, her friends and her daughter had
been sewing. Now it was all happening and it took only a
little cane juice to snap the cords of fatigue and damn the
white curtains that she had pinned on the stretcher only the
morning before. Once this day was over she would have a
lifetime to rattle around in that house and repair the
damage. A real wedding, in a church, with a real reception
afterward, was rare among the people of the Bottom.

Expensive for one thing, and most newlyweds just went to
the courthouse if they were not particular, or had the
preacher come in and say a few words if they were. The
rest just “took up” with one another. No invitations were
sent. There was no need for that formality. Folks just came,
bringing a gift if they had one, none if they didn’t. Except for
those who worked in valley houses, most of them had never
been to a big wedding; they simply assumed it was rather
like a funeral except afterward you didn’t have to walk all the
way out to Beechnut Cemetery. This wedding offered a
special attraction, for the bridegroom was a handsome,
well-liked man–the tenor of Mount Zion’s Men’s Quartet,
who had an enviable reputation among the girls and a
comfortable one among men. His name was Jude Greene,
and with the pick of some eight or ten girls who came
regularly to services to hear him sing, he had chosen Nel
Wright. He wasn’t really aiming to get married. He was
twenty then, and although his job as a waiter at the Hotel
Medallion was a blessing to his parents and their seven
other children, it wasn’t nearly enough to support a wife. He
had brought the subject up first on the day the word got out
that the town was building a new road, tarmac, that would
wind through Medallion on down to the river, where a great
new bridge was to be built to connect Medallion to Porter’s
Landing, the town on the other side. The war over, a fake
prosperity was still around. In a state of euphoria, with a
hunger for more and more, the council of founders cast its
eye toward a future that would certainly include trade from
cross-river towns. Towns that needed more than a house

raft to get to the merchants of Medallion. Work had already
begun on the New River Road (the city had always meant to
name it something else, something wonderful, but ten years
later when the bridge idea was dropped for a tunnel it was
still called the New River Road). Along with a few other
young black men, Jude had gone down to the shack where
they were hiring. Three old colored men had already been
hired, but not for the road work, just to do the picking up,
food bringing and other small errands. These old men were
close to feeble, not good for much else, and everybody was
pleased they were taken on; still it was a shame to see
those white men laughing with the grandfathers but shying
away from the young black men who could tear that road
up. The men like Jude who could do real work. Jude himself
longed more than anybody else to be taken. Not just for the
good money, more for the work itself. He wanted to swing
the pick or kneel down with the string or shovel the gravel.
His arms ached for something heavier than trays, for
something dirtier than peelings; his feet wanted the heavy
work shoes, not the thin-soled black shoes that the hotel
required. More than anything he wanted the camaraderie of
the road men: the lunch buckets, the hollering, the body
movement that in the end produced something real,
something he could point to. “I built that road,” he could say.
How much better sundown would be than the end of a day
in the restaurant, where a good day’s work was marked by
the number of dirty plates and the weight of the garbage
bin. “I built that road.” People would walk over his sweat for
years. Perhaps a sledge hammer would come crashing

down on his foot, and when people asked him how come
he limped, he could say, “Got that building the New Road.”
It was while he was full of such dreams, his body already
feeling the rough work clothes, his hands already curved to
the pick handle, that he spoke to Nel about getting married.
She seemed receptive but hardly anxious. It was after he
stood in lines for six days running and saw the gang boss
pick out thin-armed white boys from the Virginia hills and
the bull-necked Greeks and Italians and heard over and
over, “Nothing else today. Come back tomorrow,” that he
got the message. So it was rage, rage and a determination
to take on a man’s role anyhow that made him press Nel
about settling down. He needed some of his appetites
filled, some posture of adulthood recognized, but mostly he
wanted someone to care about his hurt, to care very
deeply. Deep enough to hold him, deep enough to rock
him, deep enough to ask, “How you feel? You all right?
Want some coffee?” And if he were to be a man, that
someone could no longer be his mother. He chose the girl
who had always been kind, who had never seemed hell-
bent to marry, who made the whole venture seem like his
idea, his conquest. The more he thought about marriage,
the more attractive it became. Whatever his fortune,
whatever the cut of his garment, there would always be the
hem–the tuck and fold that hid his raveling edges; a
someone sweet, industrious and loyal to shore him up. And
in return he would shelter her, love her, grow old with her.
Without that someone he was a waiter hanging around a
kitchen like a woman. With her he was head of a household

pinned to an unsatisfactory job out of necessity. The two of
them together would make one Jude. His fears lest his
burst dream of road building discourage her were never
realized. Nel’s indifference to his hints about marriage
disappeared altogether when she discovered his pain.
Jude could see himself taking shape in her eyes. She
actually wanted to help, to soothe, and was it true what Ajax
said in the Time and a Half Pool Hall? That “all they want,
man, is they own misery. Ax em to die for you and they
yours for life.” Whether he was accurate in general, Ajax
was right about Nel. Except for an occasional leadership
role with Sula, she had no aggression. Her parents had
succeeded in rubbing down to a dull glow any sparkle or
splutter she had. Only with Sula did that quality have free
rein, but their friendship was so close, they themselves had
difficulty distinguishing one’s thoughts from the other’s.
During all of her girlhood the only respite Nel had had from
her stern and undemonstrative parents was Sula. When
Jude began to hover around, she was flattered–all the girls
liked him–and Sula made the enjoyment of his attentions
keener simply because she seemed always to want Nel to
shine. They never quarreled, those two, the way some
girlfriends did over boys, or competed against each other
for them. In those days a compliment to one was a
compliment to the other, and cruelty to one was a challenge
to the other. Nel’s response to Jude’s shame and anger
selected her away from Sula. And greater than her
friendship was this new feeling of being needed by
someone who saw her singly. She didn’t even know she

had a neck until Jude remarked on it, or that her smile was
anything but the spreading of her lips until he saw it as a
small miracle. Sula was no less excited about the wedding.
She thought it was the perfect thing to do following their
graduation from general school. She wanted to be the
bridesmaid. No others. And she encouraged Mrs. Wright to
go all out, even to borrowing Eva’s punch bowl. In fact, she
handled most of the details very efficiently, capitalizing on
the fact that most people were anxious to please her since
she had lost her mamma only a few years back and they
still remembered the agony in Hannah’s face and the blood
on Eva’s. So they danced up in the Bottom on the second
Saturday in June, danced at the wedding where everybody
realized for the first time that except for their magnificent
teeth, the deweys would never grow. They had been forty-
eight inches tall for years now, and while their size was
unusual it was not unheard of. The realization was based on
the fact that they remained boys in mind. Mischievous,
cunning, private and completely unhousebroken, their
games and interests had not changed since Hannah had
them all put into the first grade together. Nel and Jude, who
had been the stars all during the wedding, were forgotten
finally as the reception melted into a dance, a feed, a
gossip session, a playground and a love nest. For the first
time that day they relaxed and looked at each other, and
liked what they saw. They began to dance, pressed in
among the others, and each one turned his thoughts to the
night that was coming on fast. They had taken a
housekeeping room with one of Jude’s aunts (over the

protest of Mrs. Wright, who had rooms to spare, but Nel
didn’t want to make love to her husband in her mother’s
house) and were getting restless to go there. As if reading
her thoughts, Jude leaned down and whispered, “Me too.”
Nel smiled and rested her cheek on his shoulder. The veil
she wore was too heavy to allow her to feel the core of the
kiss he pressed on her head. When she raised her eyes to
him for one more look of reassurance, she saw through the
open door a slim figure in blue, gliding, with just a hint of a
strut, down the path toward the road. One hand was
pressed to the head to hold down the large hat against the
warm June breeze. Even from the rear Nel could tell that it
was Sula and that she was smiling; that something deep
down in that litheness was amused. It would be ten years
before they saw each other again, and their meeting would
be thick with birds.

1937

Accompanied by a plague of robins, Sula came back to
Medallion. The little yam-breasted shuddering birds were
everywhere, exciting very small children away from their
usual welcome into a vicious stoning. Nobody knew why or
from where they had come. What they did know was that
you couldn’t go anywhere without stepping in their pearly
shit, and it was hard to hang up clothes, pull weeds or just
sit on the front porch when robins were flying and dying all
around you. Although most of the people remembered the
time when the sky was black for two hours with clouds and

clouds of pigeons, and although they were accustomed to
excesses in nature–too much heat, too much cold, too little
rain, rain to flooding–they still dreaded the way a relatively
trivial phenomenon could become sovereign in their lives
and bend their minds to its will. In spite of their fear, they
reacted to an oppressive oddity, or what they called evil
days, with an acceptance that bordered on welcome. Such
evil must be avoided, they felt, and precautions must
naturally be taken to protect themselves from it. But they let
it run its course, fulfill itself, and never invented ways either
to alter it, to annihilate it or to prevent its happening again.
So also were they with people. What was taken by
outsiders to be slackness, slovenliness or even generosity
was in fact a full recognition of the legitimacy of forces other
than good ones. They did not believe doctors could heal–
for them, none ever had done so. They did not believe
death was accidental–life might be, but death was
deliberate. They did not believe Nature was ever askew–
only inconvenient. Plague and drought were as “natural” as
springtime. If milk could curdle, God knows robins could fall.
The purpose of evil was to survive it and they determined
(without ever knowing they had made up their minds to do
it) to survive floods, white people, tuberculosis, famine and
ignorance. They knew anger well but not despair, and they
didn’t stone sinners for the same reason they didn’t commit
suicide–it was beneath them. Sula stepped off the
Cincinnati Flyer into the robin shit and began the long climb
up into the Bottom. She was dressed in a manner that was
as close to a movie star as anyone would ever see. A black

crepe dress splashed with pink and yellow zinnias, foxtails,
a black felt hat with the veil of net lowered over one eye. In
her right hand was a black purse with a beaded clasp and
in her left a red leather traveling case, so small, so
charming–no one had seen anything like it ever before,
including the mayor’s wife and the music teacher, both of
whom had been to Rome. Walking up the hill toward
Carpenter’s Road, the heels and sides of her pumps edged
with drying bird shit, she attracted the glances of old men
sitting on stone benches in front of the courthouse,
housewives throwing buckets of water on their sidewalks,
and high school students on their way home for lunch. By
the time she reached the Bottom, the news of her return
had brought the black people out on their porches or to
their windows. There were scattered hellos and nods but
mostly stares. A little boy ran up to her saying, “Carry yo’
bag, ma’am?” Before Sula could answer his mother had
called him, “You, John. Get back in here.” At Eva’s house
there were four dead robins on the walk. Sula stopped and
with her toe pushed them into the bordering grass. Eva
looked at Sula pretty much the same way she had looked at
BoyBoy that time when he returned after he’d left her
without a dime or a prospect of one. She was sitting in her
wagon, her back to the window she had jumped out of (now
all boarded up) setting fire to the hair she had combed out
of her head. When Sula opened the door she raised her
eyes and said, “I might have knowed them birds meant
something. Where’s your coat?” Sula threw herself on Eva’s
bed. “The rest of my stuff will be on later.” “I should hope so.

Them little old furry tails ain’t going to do you no more good
than they did the fox that was wearing them.” “Don’t you say
hello to nobody when you ain’t seen them for ten years?” “If
folks let somebody know where they is and when they
coming, then other folks can get ready for them. If they
don’t–if they just pop in all sudden like–then they got to take
whatever mood they find.” “How you been doing, Big
Mamma?” “Gettin’ by. Sweet of you to ask. You was quick
enough when you wanted something. When you needed a
little change or… ” “Don’t talk to me about how much you
gave me, Big Mamma, and how much I owe you or none of
that.” “Oh? I ain’t supposed to mention it?” “OK. Mention it.”
Sula shrugged and turned over on her stomach, her
buttocks toward Eva. “You ain’t been in this house ten
seconds and already you starting something.” “Takes two,
Big Mamma.” “Well, don’t let your mouth start nothing that
your ass can’t stand. When you gone to get married? You
need to have some babies. It’ll settle you.” “I don’t want to
make somebody else. I want to make myself.” “Selfish.
Ain’t no woman got no business floatin’ around without no
man.” “You did.” “Not by choice.” “Mamma did.” “Not by
choice, I said. It ain’t right for you to want to stay off by
yourself. You need… I’m a tell you what you need.” Sula sat
up. “I need you to shut your mouth.” “Don’t nobody talk to
me like that. Don’t nobody… ” “This body does. Just ’cause
you was bad enough to cut off your own leg you think you
got a right to kick everybody with the stump.” “Who said I
cut off my leg?” “Well, you stuck it under a train to collect
insurance.” “Hold on, you lyin’ heifer!” “I aim to.” “Bible say

honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long
upon the land thy God giveth thee.” “Mamma must have
skipped that part. Her days wasn’t too long.” “Pus mouth!
God’s going to strike you!” “Which God? The one watched
you burn Plum?” “Don’t talk to me about no burning. You
watched your own mamma. You crazy roach! You the one
should have been burnt!” “But I ain’t. Got that? I ain’t. Any
more fires in this house, I’m lighting them!” “Hellfire don’t
need lighting and it’s already burning in you… ” “Whatever’s
burning in me is mine!” “Amen!” “And I’ll split this town in
two and everything in it before I’ll let you put it out!” “Pride
goeth before a fall.” “What the hell do I care about falling?”
“Amazing Grace.” “You sold your life for twenty-three
dollars a month.” “You throwed yours away.” “It’s mine to
throw.” “One day you gone need it.” “But not you. I ain’t
never going to need you. And you know what? Maybe one
night when you dozing in that wagon flicking flies and
swallowing spit, maybe I’ll just tip on up here with some
kerosene and–who knows–you may make the brightest
flame of them all.” So Eva locked her door from then on.
But it did no good. In April two men came with a stretcher
and she didn’t even have time to comb her hair before they
strapped her to a piece of canvas. When Mr. Buckland
Reed came by to pick up the number, his mouth sagged at
the sight of Eva being carried out and Sula holding some
papers against the wall, at the bottom of which, just above
the word “guardian,” she very carefully wrote Miss Sula
Mae Peace. * * * Nel alone noticed the peculiar quality of
the May that followed the leaving of the birds. It had a

sheen, a glimmering as of green, rain-soaked Saturday
nights (lit by the excitement of newly installed street lights);
of lemonyellow afternoons bright with iced drinks and
splashes of daffodils. It showed in the damp faces of her
children and the river-smoothness of their voices. Even her
own body was not immune to the magic. She would sit on
the floor to sew as she had done as a girl, fold her legs up
under her or do a little dance that fitted some tune in her
head. There were easy sun-washed days and purple dusks
in which Tar Baby sang “Abide With Me” at prayer
meetings, his lashes darkened by tears, his silhouette limp
with regret against the whitewashed walls of Greater Saint
Matthew’s. Nel listened and was moved to smile. To smile
at the sheer loveliness that pressed in from the windows
and touched his grief, making it a pleasure to behold.
Although it was she alone who saw this magic, she did not
wonder at it. She knew it was all due to Sula’s return to the
Bottom. It was like getting the use of an eye back, having a
cataract removed. Her old friend had come home. Sula.
Who made her laugh, who made her see old things with
new eyes, in whose presence she felt clever, gentle and a
little raunchy. Sula, whose past she had lived through and
with whom the present was a constant sharing of
perceptions. Talking to Sula had always been a
conversation with herself. Was there anyone else before
whom she could never be foolish? In whose view
inadequacy was mere idiosyncrasy, a character trait rather
than a deficiency? Anyone who left behind that aura of fun
and complicity? Sula never competed; she simply helped

others define themselves. Other people seemed to turn
their volume on and up when Sula was in the room. More
than any other thing, humor returned. She could listen to the
crunch of sugar underfoot that the children had spilled
without reaching for the switch; and she forgot the tear in
the living-room window shade. Even Nel’s love for Jude,
which over the years had spun a steady gray web around
her heart, became a bright and easy affection, a
playfulness that was reflected in their lovemaking. Sula
would come by of an afternoon, walking along with her fluid
stride, wearing a plain yellow dress the same way her
mother, Hannah, had worn those too-big house dresses–
with a distance, an absence of a relationship to clothes
which emphasized everything the fabric covered. When she
scratched the screen door, as in the old days, and stepped
inside, the dishes piled in the sink looked as though they
belonged there; the dust on the lamps sparkled; the hair
brush lying on the “good” sofa in the living room did not
have to be apologetically retrieved, and Nel’s grimy
intractable children looked like three wild things happily
insouciant in the May shine. “Hey, girl.” The rose mark over
Sula’s eye gave her glance a suggestion of startled
pleasure. It was darker than Nel remembered. “Hey
yourself. Come on in here.” “How you doin’?” Sula moved a
pile of ironed diapers from a chair and sat down. “Oh, I ain’t
strangled nobody yet so I guess I’m all right.” “Well, if you
change your mind call me.” “Somebody need killin’?” “Half
this town need it.” “And the other half?” “A drawn-out
disease.” “Oh, come on. Is Medallion that bad?” “Didn’t

nobody tell you?” “You been gone too long, Sula.” “Not too
long, but maybe too far.” “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Nel dipped her fingers into the bowl of water and sprinkled
a diaper. “Oh, I don’t know.” “Want some cool tea?”
“Mmmm. Lots of ice, I’m burnin’ up.” “Iceman don’t come
yet, but it’s good and cold.” “That’s fine.” “Hope I didn’t
speak too soon. Kids run in and out of here so much.” Nel
bent to open the icebox. “You puttin’ it on, Nel. Jude must
be wore out.” “_Jude__ must be wore out? You don’t care
nothin’ ’bout my back, do you?” “Is that where it’s at, in your
back?” “Hah! Jude thinks it’s everywhere.” “He’s right, it is
everywhere. Just be glad he found it, wherever it is.
Remember John L.?” “When Shirley said he got her down
by the well and tried to stick it in her hip?” Nel giggled at the
remembrance of that teen-time tale. “She should have been
grateful. Have you seen her since you been back?” “Mmm.
Like a ox.” “That was one dumb nigger, John L.” “Maybe.
Maybe he was just sanitary.” “Sanitary?” “Well. Think about
it. Suppose Shirley was all splayed out in front of you?
Wouldn’t you go for the hipbone instead?” Nel lowered her
head onto crossed arms while tears of laughter dripped
into the warm diapers. Laughter that weakened her knees
and pressed her bladder into action. Her rapid soprano
and Sula’s dark sleepy chuckle made a duet that frightened
the cat and made the children run in from the back yard,
puzzled at first by the wild free sounds, then delighted to
see their mother stumbling merrily toward the bathroom,
holding on to her stomach, fairly singing through the
laughter: “Aw. Aw. Lord. Sula. Stop.” And the other one, the

one with the scary black thing over her eye, laughing softly
and egging their mother on: “Neatness counts. You know
what cleanliness is next to… ” “Hush.” Nel’s plea was
clipped off by the slam of the bathroom door. “What y’all
laughing at?” “Old time-y stuff. Long gone, old time-y stuff.”
“Tell us.” “Tell _you?__” The black mark leaped. “Uh huh.
Tell us.” “What tickles us wouldn’t tickle you.” “Uh huh, it
would.” “Well, we was talking about some people we used
to know when we was little.” “Was my mamma little?” “Of
course.” “What happened?” “Well, some old boy we knew
name John L. and a girl name… ” Damp-faced, Nel
stepped back into the kitchen. She felt new, soft and new. It
had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping
laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be.
So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she
had learned to be content with these past few years. “O
Lord, Sula. You haven’t changed none.” She wiped her
eyes. “What was all that about, anyway? All that scramblin’
we did trying to do it and not do it at the same time?”
“Beats me. Such a simple thing.” “But we sure made a lot
out of it, and the boys were dumber than we were.”
“Couldn’t nobody be dumber than I was.” “Stop lying. All of
’em liked you best.” “Yeah? Where are they?” “They still
here. You the one went off.” “Didn’t I, though?” “Tell me
about it. The big city.” “Big is all it is. A big Medallion.” “No.
I mean the life. The nightclubs, and parties… ” “I was in
college, Nellie. No nightclubs on campus.” “Campus? That
what they call it? Well. You wasn’t in no college for–what–
ten years now? And you didn’t write to nobody. How come

you never wrote?” “You never did either.” “Where was I
going to write to? All I knew was that you was in Nashville. I
asked Miss Peace about you once or twice.” “What did
_she__ say?” “I couldn’t make much sense out of her. You
know she been gettin’ stranger and stranger after she come
out the hospital. How is she anyway?” “Same, I guess. Not
so hot.” “No? Laura, I know, was doing her cooking and
things. Is she still?” “No. I put her out.” “Put her out? What
for?” “She made me nervous.” “But she was doing it for
nothing, Sula.” “That’s what you think. She was stealing
right and left.” “Since when did you get froggy about folks’
stealing?” Sula smiled. “OK. I lied. You wanted a reason.”
“Well, give me the real one.” “I don’t know the real one. She
just didn’t belong in that house. Digging around in the
cupboards, picking up pots and ice picks… ” “You sure
have changed. That house was always full of people
digging in cupboards and carrying on.” “That’s the reason,
then.” “Sula. Come on, now.” “You’ve changed too. I didn’t
used to have to explain everything to you.” Nel blushed.
“Who’s feeding the deweys and Tar Baby? You?” “Sure
me. Anyway Tar Baby don’t eat and the deweys still crazy.”
“I heard one of ’em’s mamma came to take him back but
didn’t know which was hern.” “Don’t nobody know.” “And
Eva? You doing the work for her too?” “Well, since you
haven’t heard it, let me tell you. Eva’s real sick. I had her put
where she could be watched and taken care of.” “Where
would that be?” “Out by Beechnut.” “You mean that home
the white church run? Sula! That ain’t no place for Eva. All
them women is dirt poor with no people at all. Mrs. Wilkens

and them. They got dropsy and can’t hold their water–crazy
as loons. Eva’s odd, but she got sense. I don’t think that’s
right, Sula.” “I’m scared of her, Nellie. That’s why… ”
“Scared? Of Eva?” “You don’t know her. Did you know she
burnt Plum?” “Oh, I heard that years ago. But nobody put no
stock in it.” “They should have. It’s true. I saw it. And when I
got back here she was planning to do it to me too.” “Eva? I
can’t hardly believe that. She almost died trying to get to
your mother.” Sula leaned forward, her elbows on the table.
“You ever known me to lie to you?” “No. But you could be
mistaken. Why would Eva… ” “All I know is I’m scared. And
there’s no place else for me to go. We all that’s left, Eva
and me. I guess I should have stayed gone. I didn’t know
what else to do. Maybe I should have talked to you about it
first. You always had better sense than me. Whenever I was
scared before, you knew just what to do.” The closed place
in the water spread before them. Nel put the iron on the
stove. The situation was clear to her now. Sula, like always,
was incapable of making any but the most trivial decisions.
When it came to matters of grave importance, she behaved
emotionally and irresponsibly and left it to others to
straighten out. And when fear struck her, she did
unbelievable things. Like that time with her finger. Whatever
those hunkies did, it wouldn’t have been as bad as what
she did to herself. But Sula was so scared she had
mutilated herself, to protect herself. “What should I do,
Nellie? Take her back and sleep with my door locked
again?” “No. I guess it’s too late anyway. But let’s work out
a plan for taking care of her. So she won’t be messed

over.” “Anything you say.” “What about money? She got
any?” Sula shrugged. “The checks come still. It’s not much,
like it used to be. Should I have them made over to me?”
“Can you? Do it, then. We can arrange for her to have
special comforts. That place is a mess, you know. A doctor
don’t never set foot in there. I ain’t figured out yet how they
stay alive in there as long as they do.” “Why don’t I have the
checks made over to you, Nellie? You better at this than I
am.” “Oh no. People will say I’m scheming. You the one to
do it. Was there insurance from Hannah?” “Yes. Plum too.
He had all that army insurance.” “Any of it left?” “Well I went
to college on some. Eva banked the rest. I’ll look into it,
though.” “… and explain it all to the bank people.” “Will you
go down with me?” “Sure. It’s going to be all right.” “I’m glad
I talked to you ’bout this. It’s been bothering me.” “Well,
tongues will wag, but so long as we know the truth, it don’t
matter.” Just at that moment the children ran in announcing
the entrance of their father. Jude opened the back door and
walked into the kitchen. He was still a very good-looking
man, and the only difference Sula could see was the thin
pencil mustache under his nose, and a part in his hair.
“Hey, Jude. What you know good?” “White man running it–
nothing good.” Sula laughed while Nel, high-tuned to his
moods, ignored her husband’s smile saying, “Bad day,
honey?” “Same old stuff,” he replied and told them a brief
tale of some personal insult done him by a customer and
his boss–a whiney tale that peaked somewhere between
anger and a lapping desire for comfort. He ended it with the
observation that a Negro man had a hard row to hoe in this

world. He expected his story to dovetail into milkwarm
commiseration, but before Nel could excrete it, Sula said
she didn’t know about that–it looked like a pretty good life
to her. “Say what?” Jude’s temper flared just a bit as he
looked at this friend of his wife’s, this slight woman, not
exactly plain, but not fine either, with a copperhead over her
eye. As far as he could tell, she looked like a woman
roaming the country trying to find some man to burden
down with a lot of lip and a lot of mouths. Sula was smiling.
“I mean, I don’t know what the fuss is about. I mean,
everything in the world loves you. White men love you. They
spend so much time worrying about your penis they forget
their own. The only thing they want to do is cut off a nigger’s
privates. And if that ain’t love and respect I don’t know what
is. And white women? They chase you all to every corner of
the earth, feel for you under every bed. I knew a white
woman wouldn’t leave the house after 6 o’clock for fear one
of you would snatch her. Now ain’t that love? They think
rape soon’s they see you, and if they don’t get the rape they
looking for, they scream it anyway just so the search won’t
be in vain. Colored women worry themselves into bad
health just trying to hang on to your cuffs. Even little children-
white and black, boys and girls–spend all their childhood
eating their hearts out ’cause they think you don’t love them.
And if that ain’t enough, you love yourselves. Nothing in this
world loves a black man more than another black man. You
hear of solitary white men, but niggers? Can’t stay away
from one another a whole day. So. It looks to me like you
the envy of the world.” Jude and Nel were laughing, he

saying, “Well, if that’s the only way they got to show it–cut
off my balls and throw me in jail–I’d just as soon they left me
alone.” But thinking that Sula had an odd way of looking at
things and that her wide smile took some of the sting from
that rattlesnake over her eye. A funny woman, he thought,
not that bad-looking. But he could see why she wasn’t
married; she stirred a man’s mind maybe, but not his body.
* * * He left his tie. The one with the scriggly yellow lines
running lopsided across the dark-blue field. It hung over the
top of the closet door pointing steadily downward while it
waited with every confidence for Jude to return. Could he
be gone if his tie is still here? He will remember it and
come back and then she would… uh. Then she could… tell
him. Sit down quietly and tell him. “But Jude,” she would
say, “you _knew__ me. All those days and years, Jude, you
_knew__ me. My ways and my hands and how my stomach
folded and how we tried to get Mickey to nurse and how
about that time when the landlord said… but you said… and I
cried, Jude. You knew me and had listened to the things I
said in the night, and heard me in the bathroom and
laughed at my raggedy girdle and I laughed too because I
knew you too, Jude. So how could you leave me when you
knew me?” But they had been down on all fours naked, not
touching except their lips right down there on the floor
where the tie is pointing to, on all fours like (uh huh, go on,
say it) like dogs. Nibbling at each other, not even touching,
not even looking at each other, just their lips, and when I
opened the door they didn’t even look for a minute and I
thought the reason they are not looking up is because they

are not doing that. So it’s all right. I am just standing here.
They are not doing that. I am just standing here and seeing
it, but they are not really doing it. But then they did look up.
Or you did. You did, Jude. And if only you had not looked at
me the way the soldiers did on the train, the way you look at
the children when they come in while you are listening to
Gabriel Heatter and break your train of thought–not
focusing exactly but giving them an instant, a piece of time,
to remember what they are doing, what they are
interrupting, and to go on back to wherever they were and
let you listen to Gabriel Heatter. And I did not know how to
move my feet or fix my eyes or what. I just stood there
seeing it and smiling, because maybe there was some
explanation, something important that I did not know about
that would have made it all right. I waited for Sula to look up
at me any minute and say one of those lovely college words
like _aesthetic__ or _rapport,__ which I never understood
but which I loved because they sounded so comfortable
and firm. And finally you just got up and started putting on
your clothes and your privates were hanging down, so soft,
and you buckled your pants belt but forgot to button the fly
and she was sitting on the bed not even bothering to put on
her clothes because actually she didn’t need to because
somehow she didn’t look naked to me, only you did. Her
chin was in her hand and she sat like a visitor from out of
town waiting for the hosts to get some quarreling done and
over with so the card game could continue and me wanting
her to leave so I could tell you privately that you had
forgotten to button your fly because I didn’t want to say it in

front of her, Jude. And even when you began to talk, I
couldn’t hear because I was worried about you not knowing
that your fly was open and scared too because your eyes
looked like the soldiers’ that time on the train when my
mother turned to custard. Remember how big that bedroom
was? Jude? How when we moved here we said, Well, at
least we got us a real big bedroom, but it was small then,
Jude, and so shambly, and maybe it was that way all along
but it would have been better if I had gotten the dust out
from under the bed because I was ashamed of it in that
small room. And then you walked past me saying, “I’ll be
back for my things.” And you did but you left your tie. The
clock was ticking. Nel looked at it and realized that it was
two thirty, only forty-five minutes before the children would
be home and she hadn’t even felt anything right or sensible
and now there was no time or wouldn’t be until nighttime
when they were asleep and she could get into bed and
maybe she could do it then. Think. But who could think in
that bed where _they__ had been and where they _also__
had been and where only she was now? She looked
around for a place to be. A small place. The closet? No.
Too dark. The bathroom. It was both small and bright, and
she wanted to be in a very small, very bright place. Small
enough to contain her grief. Bright enough to throw into
relief the dark things that cluttered her. Once inside, she
sank to the tile floor next to the toilet. On her knees, her
hand on the cold rim of the bathtub, she waited for
something to happen… inside. There was stirring, a
movement of mud and dead leaves. She thought of the

women at Chicken Little’s funeral. The women who
shrieked over the bier and at the lip of the open grave.
What she had regarded since as unbecoming behavior
seemed fitting to her now; they were screaming at the neck
of God, his giant nape, the vast back-of-the-head that he
had turned on them in death. But it seemed to her now that
it was not a fist-shaking grief they were keening but rather a
simple obligation to say something, do something, feel
something about the dead. They could not let that heart-
smashing event pass unrecorded, unidentified. It was
poisonous, unnatural to let the dead go with a mere
whimpering, a slight murmur, a rose bouquet of good taste.
Good taste was out of place in the company of death, death
itself was the essence of bad taste. And there must be
much rage and saliva in its presence. The body must move
and throw itself about, the eyes must roll, the hands should
have no peace, and the throat should release all the
yearning, despair and outrage that accompany the stupidity
of loss. “The real hell of Hell is that it is forever.” Sula said
that. She said doing anything forever and ever was hell. Nel
didn’t understand it then, but now in the bathroom, trying to
feel, she thought, “If I could be sure that I could stay here in
this small white room with the dirty tile and water gurgling in
the pipes and my head on the cool rim of this bathtub and
never have to go out the door, I would be happy. If I could be
certain that I never had to get up and flush the toilet, go in
the kitchen, watch my children grow up and die, see my
food chewed on my plate… Sula was wrong. Hell ain’t things
lasting forever. Hell is change.” Not only did men leave and

children grow up and die, but even the misery didn’t last.
One day she wouldn’t even have that. This very grief that
had twisted her into a curve on the floor and flayed her
would be gone. She would lose that too. “Why, even in hate
here I am thinking of what Sula said.” Hunched down in the
small bright room Nel waited. Waited for the oldest cry. A
scream not for others, not in sympathy for a burnt child, or a
dead father, but a deeply personal cry for one’s own pain. A
loud, strident: “Why me?” She waited. The mud shifted, the
leaves stirred, the smell of overripe green things enveloped
her and announced the beginnings of her very own howl.
But it did not come. The odor evaporated; the leaves were
still, the mud settled. And finally there was nothing, just a
flake of something dry and nasty in her throat. She stood up
frightened. There was something just to the right of her, in
the air, just out of view. She could not see it, but she knew
exactly what it looked like. A gray ball hovering just there.
Just there. To the right. Quiet, gray, dirty. A ball of muddy
strings, but without weight, fluffy but terrible in its
malevolence. She knew she could not look, so she closed
her eyes and crept past it out of the bathroom, shutting the
door behind her. Sweating with fear, she stepped to the
kitchen door and onto the back porch. The lilac bushes
preened at the railing, but there were no lilacs yet. Wasn’t it
time? Surely it was time. She looked over the fence to Mrs.
Rayford’s yard. Hers were not in bloom either. Was it too
late? She fastened on this question with enthusiasm, all the
time aware of something she was not thinking. It was the
only way she could get her mind off the flake in her throat.

She spent a whole summer with the gray ball, the little ball
of fur and string and hair always floating in the light near her
but which she did not see because she never looked. But
that was the terrible part, the effort it took not to look. But it
was there anyhow, just to the right of her head and maybe
further down by her shoulder, so when the children went to a
monster movie at the Elmira Theater and came home and
said, “Mamma, can you sleep with us tonight?” she said all
right and got into bed with the two boys, who loved it, but
the girl did not. For a long time she could not stop getting in
the bed with her children and told herself each time that
they might dream a dream about dragons and would need
her to comfort them. It was so nice to think about their scary
dreams and not about a ball of fur. She even hoped their
dreams would rub off on her and give her the wonderful
relief of a nightmare so she could stop going around
scared to turn her head this way or that lest she see it. That
was the scary part–seeing it. It was not coming at her; it
never did that, or tried to pounce on her. It just floated there
for the seeing, if she wanted to, and O my God for the
touching if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to see it, ever,
for if she saw it, who could tell but what she might actually
touch it, or want to, and then what would happen if she
actually reached out her hand and touched it? Die probably,
but no worse than that. Dying was OK because it was sleep
and there wasn’t no gray ball in death, was there? Was
there? She would have to ask somebody about that,
somebody she could confide in and who knew a lot of
things, like Sula, for Sula would know or if she didn’t she

would say something funny that would make it all right. Ooo
no, not Sula. Here she was in the midst of it, hating it,
scared of it, and again she thought of Sula as though they
were still friends and talked things over. That was too much.
To lose Jude and not have Sula to talk to about it because
it was Sula that he had left her for. Now her thighs were
really empty. And it was then that what those women said
about never looking at another man made some sense to
her, for the real point, the heart of what they said, was the
word _looked.__ Not to promise never to make love to
another man, not to refuse to marry another man, but to
promise and know that she could never afford to look
again, to see and accept the way in which their heads cut
the air or see moons and tree limbs framed by their necks
and shoulders… never to look, for now she could not risk
looking–and anyway, so what? For now her thighs were
truly empty and dead too, and it was Sula who had taken
the life from them and Jude who smashed her heart and the
both of them who left her with no thighs and no heart just her
brain raveling away. And what am I supposed to do with
these old thighs now, just walk up and down these rooms?
What good are they, Jesus? They will never give me the
peace I need to get from sunup to sundown, what good are
they, are you trying to tell me that I am going to have to go
all the way through these days all the way, O my god, to that
box with four handles with never nobody settling down
between my legs even if I sew up those old pillow cases
and rinse down the porch and feed my children and beat
the rugs and haul the coal up out of the bin even then

nobody, O Jesus, I could be a mule or plow the furrows with
my hands if need be or hold these rickety walls up with my
back if need be if I knew that somewhere in this world in the
pocket of some night I could open my legs to some cowboy
lean hips but you are trying to tell me no and O my sweet
Jesus what kind of cross is that?

1939

When the word got out about Eva being put in Sunnydale,
the people in the Bottom shook their heads and said Sula
was a roach. Later, when they saw how she took Jude, then
ditched him for others, and heard how he bought a bus
ticket to Detroit (where he bought but never mailed birthday
cards to his sons), they forgot all about Hannah’s easy ways
(or their own) and said she was a bitch. Everybody
remembered the plague of robins that announced her
return, and the tale about her watching Hannah burn was
stirred up again. But it was the men who gave her the final
label, who fingerprinted her for all time. They were the ones
who said she was guilty of the unforgivable thing–the thing
for which there was no understanding, no excuse, no
compassion. The route from which there was no way back,
the dirt that could not ever be washed away. They said that
Sula slept with white men. It may not have been true, but it
certainly could have been. She was obviously capable of it.
In any case, all minds were closed to her when that word
was passed around. It made the old women draw their lips
together; made small children look away from her in shame;

made young men fantasize elaborate torture for her–just to
get the saliva back in their mouths when they saw her.
Every one of them imagined the scene, each according to
his own predilections–Sula underneath some white man–
and it filled them with choking disgust. There was nothing
lower she could do, nothing filthier. The fact that their own
skin color was proof that it had happened in their own
families was no deterrent to their bile. Nor was the
willingness of black men to lie in the beds of white women a
consideration that might lead them toward tolerance. They
insisted that all unions between white men and black
women be rape; for a black woman to be willing was
literally unthinkable. In that way, they regarded integration
with precisely the same venom that white people did. So
they laid broomsticks across their doors at night and
sprinkled salt on porch steps. But aside from one or two
unsuccessful efforts to collect the dust from her footsteps,
they did nothing to harm her. As always the black people
looked at evil stony-eyed and let it run. Sula acknowledged
none of their attempts at counterconjure or their gossip and
seemed to need the services of nobody. So they watched
her far more closely than they watched any other roach or
bitch in the town, and their alertness was gratified. Things
began to happen. First off, Teapot knocked on her door to
see if she had any bottles. He was the five-year-old son of
an indifferent mother, all of whose interests sat around the
door of the Time and a Half Pool Hall. Her name was Betty
but she was called Teapot’s Mamma because being his
mamma was precisely her major failure. When Sula said

no, the boy turned around and fell down the steps. He
couldn’t get up right away and Sula went to help him. His
mother, just then tripping home, saw Sula bending over her
son’s pained face. She flew into a fit of concerned, if
drunken, motherhood, and dragged Teapot home. She told
everybody that Sula had pushed him, and talked so strongly
about it she was forced to abide by the advice of her
friends and take him to the county hospital. The two dollars
she hated to release turned out to be well spent, for Teapot
did have a fracture, although the doctor said poor diet had
contributed substantially to the daintiness of his bones.
Teapot’s Mamma got a lot of attention anyway and
immersed herself in a role she had shown no inclination for:
motherhood. The very idea of a grown woman hurting her
boy kept her teeth on edge. She became the most devoted
mother: sober, clean and industrious. No more nickels for
Teapot to go to Dick’s for a breakfast of Mr. Goodbars and
soda pop: no more long hours of him alone or wandering
the roads while she was otherwise engaged. Her change
was a distinct improvement, although little Teapot did miss
those quiet times at Dick’s. Other things happened. Mr.
Finley sat on his porch sucking chicken bones, as he had
done for thirteen years, looked up, saw Sula, choked on a
bone and died on the spot. That incident, and Teapot’s
Mamma, cleared up for everybody the meaning of the
birthmark over her eye; it was not a stemmed rose, or a
snake, it was Hannah’s ashes marking her from the very
beginning. She came to their church suppers without
underwear, bought their steaming platters of food and

merely picked at it–relishing nothing, exclaiming over no
one’s ribs or cobbler. They believed that she was laughing
at their God. And the fury she created in the women of the
town was incredible–for she would lay their husbands once
and then no more. Hannah had been a nuisance, but she
was complimenting the women, in a way, by wanting their
husbands. Sula was trying them out and discarding them
without any excuse the men could swallow. So the women,
to justify their own judgment, cherished their men more,
soothed the pride and vanity Sula had bruised. Among the
weighty evidence piling up was the fact that Sula did not
look her age. She was near thirty and, unlike them, had lost
no teeth, suffered no bruises, developed no ring of fat at the
waist or pocket at the back of her neck. It was rumored that
she had had no childhood diseases, was never known to
have chicken pox, croup or even a runny nose. She had
played rough as a child–where were the scars? Except for
a funny-shaped finger and that evil birthmark, she was free
of any normal signs of vulnerability. Some of the men, who
as boys had dated her, remembered that on picnics neither
gnats nor mosquitoes would settle on her. Patsy, Hannah’s
one-time friend, agreed and said not only that, but she had
witnessed the fact that when Sula drank beer she never
belched. The most damning evidence, however, came from
Dessie, who was a big Daughter Elk and knew things. At
one of the social meetings she revealed something to her
friends. “Yeh, well I noticed something long time ago. Ain’t
said nothing ’bout it ’cause I wasn’t sure what it meant.
Well… I did mention it to Ivy but not nobody else. I

disremember how long ago. ‘Bout a month or two I guess
’cause I hadn’t put down my new linoleum yet. Did you see
it, Cora? It’s that kind we saw in the catalogue.” “Naw.”
“Get on with it, Dessie.” “Well, Cora was with me when we
looked in the catalogue… ” “We all know ’bout your
linoleum. What we don’t know is… ” “OK. Let me tell it, will
you? Just before the linoleum come I was out front and
seed Shadrack carryin’ on as usual… up by the well…
walkin’ ’round it salutin’ and carryin’ on. You know how he
does… hollerin’ commands and… ” “Will you get on with it?”
“Who’s tellin’ this? Me or you?” “You.” “Well, let me tell it
then. Like I say, he was just cuttin’ up as usual when Miss
Sula Mae walks by on the other side of the road. And quick
as that”–she snapped her fingers-“he stopped and cut on
over ‘cross the road, steppin’ over to her like a tall turkey in
short corn. And guess what? He tips his hat.” “Shadrack
don’t wear no hat.” “I know that but he tipped it anyway. You
know what I mean. He acted like he had a hat and reached
up for it and tipped it at her. Now you know Shadrack ain’t
civil to nobody!” “Sure ain’t.” “Even when you buyin’ his fish
he’s cussin’. If you ain’t got the right change he cussin’ you.
If you act like a fish ain’t too fresh he snatch it out of your
hand like he doin’ you the favor.” “Well, everybody know he
a reprobate.” “Yeh, so how come he tip his hat to Sula?
How come he don’t cuss her?” “Two devils.” “Exactly!”
“What’d she do when he tipped it? Smile and give him a
curtsey?” “No, and that was the other thing. It was the first
time I see her look anything but hateful. Like she smellin’
you with her eyes and don’t like your soap. When he tipped

his hat she put her hand on her throat for a minute and
_cut__ out. Went runnin’ on up the road to home. And him
still standin’ there tippin’ away. And–this the point I was
comin’ to–when I went back in the house a big sty come on
my eye. And I ain’t never had no sty before. Never!” “That’s
’cause you saw it.” “Exactly.” “Devil all right.” “No two ways
about it,” Dessie said, and she popped the rubber band off
the deck of cards to settle them down for a nice long game
of bid whist. Their conviction of Sula’s evil changed them in
accountable yet mysterious ways. Once the source of their
personal misfortune was identified, they had leave to
protect and love one another. They began to cherish their
husbands and wives, protect their children, repair their
homes and in general band together against the devil in
their midst. In their world, aberrations were as much a part
of nature as grace. It was not for them to expel or annihilate
it. They would no more run Sula out of town than they would
kill the robins that brought her back, for in their secret
awareness of Him, He was not the God of three faces they
sang about. They knew quite well that He had four, and that
the fourth explained Sula. They had lived with various forms
of evil all their days, and it wasn’t that they believed God
would take care of them. It was rather that they knew God
had a brother and that brother hadn’t spared God’s son, so
why should he spare them? There was no creature so
ungodly as to make them destroy it. They could kill easily if
provoked to anger, but not by design, which explained why
they could not “mob kill” anyone. To do so was not only
unnatural, it was undignified. The presence of evil was

something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived,
outwitted, triumphed over. Their evidence against Sula was
contrived, but their conclusions about her were not. Sula
was distinctly different. Eva’s arrogance and Hannah’s self-
indulgence merged in her and, with a twist that was all her
own imagination, she lived out her days exploring her own
thoughts and emotions, giving them full rein, feeling no
obligation to please anybody unless their pleasure pleased
her. As willing to feel pain as to give pain, to feel pleasure
as to give pleasure, hers was an experimental life–ever
since her mother’s remarks sent her flying up those stairs,
ever since her one major feeling of responsibility had been
exorcised on the bank of a river with a closed place in the
middle. The first experience taught her there was no other
that you could count on; the second that there was no self to
count on either. She had no center, no speck around which
to grow. In the midst of a pleasant conversation with
someone she might say, “Why do you chew with your mouth
open?” not because the answer interested her but because
she wanted to see the person’s face change rapidly. She
was completely free of ambition, with no affection for
money, property or things, no greed, no desire to command
attention or compliments–no ego. For that reason she felt
no compulsion to verify herself–be consistent with herself.
She had clung to Nel as the closest thing to both an other
and a self, only to discover that she and Nel were not one
and the same thing. She had no thought at all of causing
Nel pain when she bedded down with Jude. They had
always shared the affection of other people: compared how

a boy kissed, what line he used with one and then the other.
Marriage, apparently, had changed all that, but having had
no intimate knowledge of marriage, having lived in a house
with women who thought all men available, and selected
from among them with a care only for their tastes, she was
ill prepared for the possessiveness of the one person she
felt close to. She knew well enough what other women said
and felt, or said they felt. But she and Nel had always seen
through them. They both knew that those women were not
jealous of other women; that they were only afraid of losing
their jobs. Afraid their husbands would discover that no
uniqueness lay between their legs. Nel was the one person
who had wanted nothing from her, who had accepted all
aspects of her. Now she wanted everything, and all
because of _that.__ Nel was the first person who had been
real to her, whose name she knew, who had seen as she
had the slant of life that made it possible to stretch it to its
limits. Now Nel was one of _them.__ One of the spiders
whose only thought was the next rung of the web, who
dangled in dark dry places suspended by their own spittle,
more terrified of the free fall than the snake’s breath below.
Their eyes so intent on the wayward stranger who trips into
their net, they were blind to the cobalt on their own backs,
the moonshine fighting to pierce their corners. If they were
touched by the snake’s breath, however fatal, they were
merely victims and knew how to behave in that role (just as
Nel knew how to behave as the wronged wife). But the free
fall, oh no, that required-demanded–invention: a thing to do
with the wings, a way of holding the legs and most of all a

full surrender to the downward flight if they wished to taste
their tongues or stay alive. But alive was what they, and now
Nel, did not want to be. Too dangerous. Now Nel belonged
to the town and all of its ways. She had given herself over to
them, and the flick of their tongues would drive her back
into her little dry corner where she would cling to her spittle
high above the breath of the snake and the fall. It had
surprised her a little and saddened her a good deal when
Nel behaved the way the others would have. Nel was one of
the reasons she had drifted back to Medallion, that and the
boredom she found in Nashville, Detroit, New Orleans, New
York, Philadelphia, Macon and San Diego. All those cities
held the same people, working the same mouths, sweating
the same sweat. The men who took her to one or another of
those places had merged into one large personality: the
same language of love, the same entertainments of love,
the same cooling of love. Whenever she introduced her
private thoughts into their rubbings or goings, they hooded
their eyes. They taught her nothing but love tricks, shared
nothing but worry, gave nothing but money. She had been
looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to
discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never
be–for a woman. And that no one would ever be that
version of herself which she sought to reach out to and
touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood
and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn
the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become
as intimate with their own selves as she was. In a way, her
strangeness, her naïveté, her craving for the other half of

her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination.
Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance,
or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous
curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have
exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim
for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And
like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous. She
had lied only once in her life–to Nel about the reason for
putting Eva out, and she could lie to her only because she
cared about her. When she had come back home, social
conversation was impossible for her because she could not
lie. She could not say to those old acquaintances, “Hey,
girl, you looking good,” when she saw how the years had
dusted their bronze with ash, the eyes that had once
opened wide to the moon bent into grimy sickles of
concern. The narrower their lives, the wider their hips.
Those with husbands had folded themselves into starched
coffins, their sides bursting with other people’s skinned
dreams and bony regrets. Those without men were like
sour-tipped needles featuring one constant empty eye.
Those with men had had the sweetness sucked from their
breath by ovens and steam kettles. Their children were like
distant but exposed wounds whose aches were no less
intimate because separate from their flesh. They had
looked at the world and back at their children, back at the
world and back again at their children, and Sula knew that
one clear young eye was all that kept the knife away from
the throat’s curve. She was pariah, then, and knew it. Knew
that they despised her and believed that they framed their

hatred as disgust for the easy way she lay with men. Which
was true. She went to bed with men as frequently as she
could. It was the only place where she could find what she
was looking for: misery and the ability to feel deep sorrow.
She had not always been aware that it was sadness that
she yearned for. Lovemaking seemed to her, at first, the
creation of a special kind of joy. She thought she liked the
sootiness of sex and its comedy; she laughed a great deal
during the raucous beginnings, and rejected those lovers
who regarded sex as healthy or beautiful. Sexual aesthetics
bored her. Although she did not regard sex as ugly
(ugliness was boring also), she liked to think of it as
wicked. But as her experiences multiplied she realized that
not only was it not wicked, it was not necessary for her to
conjure up the idea of wickedness in order to participate
fully. During the lovemaking she found and needed to find
the cutting edge. When she left off cooperating with her
body and began to assert herself in the act, particles of
strength gathered in her like steel shavings drawn to a
spacious magnetic center, forming a tight cluster that
nothing, it seemed, could break. And there was utmost
irony and outrage in lying under someone, in a position of
surrender, feeling her own abiding strength and limitless
power. But the cluster did break, fall apart, and in her panic
to hold it together she leaped from the edge into
soundlessness and went down howling, howling in a
stinging awareness of the endings of things: an eye of
sorrow in the midst of all that hurricane rage of joy. There, in
the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of

time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no
meaning. For loneliness assumed the absence of other
people, and the solitude she found in that desperate terrain
had never admitted the possibility of other people. She
wept then. Tears for the deaths of the littlest things: the
castaway shoes of children; broken stems of marsh grass
battered and drowned by the sea; prom photographs of
dead women she never knew; wedding rings in pawnshop
windows; the tidy bodies of Cornish hens in a nest of rice.
When her partner disengaged himself, she looked up at
him in wonder trying to recall his name; and he looked
down at her, smiling with tender understanding of the state
of tearful gratitude to which he believed he had brought her.
She waiting impatiently for him to turn away and settle into
a wet skim of satisfaction and light disgust, leaving her to
the postcoital privateness in which she met herself,
welcomed herself, and joined herself in matchless harmony.
At twenty-nine she knew it would be no other way for her,
but she had not counted on the footsteps on the porch, and
the beautiful black face that stared at her through the blue-
glass window. Ajax. Looking for all the world as he had
seventeen years ago when he had called her pig meat. He
was twenty-one then, she twelve. A universe of time
between them. Now she was twenty-nine, he thirty-eight,
and the lemon-yellow haunches seemed not so far away
after all. She opened the heavy door and saw him standing
on the other side of the screen door with two quarts of milk
tucked into his arms like marble statues. He smiled and
said, “I been lookin’ all over for you.” “Why?” she asked.

“To give you these,” and he nodded toward one of the
quarts of milk. “I don’t like milk,” she said. “But you like
bottles don’t you?” He held one up. “Ain’t that pretty?” And
indeed it was. Hanging from his fingers, framed by a slick
blue sky, it looked precious and clean and permanent. She
had the distinct impression that he had done something
dangerous to get them. Sula ran her fingernails over the
screen thoughtfully for a second and then, laughing, she
opened the screen door. Ajax came in and headed straight
for the kitchen. Sula followed slowly. By the time she got to
the door he had undone the complicated wire cap and was
letting the cold milk run into his mouth. Sula watched him–
or rather the rhythm in his throat-with growing interest.
When he had had enough, he poured the rest into the sink,
rinsed the bottle out and presented it to her. She took the
bottle with one hand and his wrist with the other and pulled
him into the pantry. There was no need to go there, for not a
soul was in the house, but the gesture came to Hannah’s
daughter naturally. There in the pantry, empty now of flour
sacks, void of row upon row of canned goods, free forever
of strings of tiny green peppers, holding the wet milk bottle
tight in her arm she stood wide-legged against the wall and
pulled from his track-lean hips all the pleasure her thighs
could hold. He came regularly then, bearing gifts: clusters of
black berries still on their branches, four meal-fried porgies
wrapped in a salmon-colored sheet of the Pittsburgh
_Courier,__ a handful of jacks, two boxes of lime Jell-Well,
a hunk of ice-wagon ice, a can of Old Dutch Cleanser with
the bonneted woman chasing dirt with her stick; a page of

Tillie the Toiler comics, and more gleaming white bottles of
milk. Contrary to what anybody would have suspected from
just seeing him lounging around the pool hall, or shooting at
Mr. Finley for beating his own dog, or calling filthy
compliments to passing women, Ajax was very nice to
women. His women, of course, knew it, and it provoked
them into murderous battles over him in the streets,
brawling thick-thighed women with knives disturbed many a
Friday night with their bloodletting and attracted whooping
crowds. On such occasions Ajax stood, along with the
crowd, and viewed the fighters with the same golden-eyed
indifference with which he watched old men playing
checkers. Other than his mother, who sat in her shack with
six younger sons working roots, he had never met an
interesting woman in his life. His kindness to them in
general was not due to a ritual of seduction (he had no
need for it) but rather to the habit he acquired in dealing
with his mother, who inspired thoughtfulness and generosity
in all her sons. She was an evil conjure woman, blessed
with seven adoring children whose joy it was to bring her
the plants, hair, underclothing, fingernail parings, white
hens, blood, camphor, pictures, kerosene and footstep dust
that she needed, as well as to order Van Van, High John
the Conqueror, Little John to Chew, Devil’s Shoe String,
Chinese Wash, Mustard Seed and the Nine Herbs from
Cincinnati. She knew about the weather, omens, the living,
the dead, dreams and all illnesses and made a modest
living with her skills. Had she any teeth or ever straightened
her back, she would have been the most gorgeous thing

alive, worthy of her sons’ worship for her beauty alone, if not
for the absolute freedom she allowed them (known in some
quarters as neglect) and the weight of her hoary
knowledge. This woman Ajax loved, and after her–
airplanes. There was nothing in between. And when he was
not sitting enchanted listening to his mother’s words, he
thought of airplanes, and pilots, and the deep sky that held
them both. People thought that those long trips he took to
large cities in the state were for some sophisticated good
times they could not imagine but only envy; actually he was
leaning against the barbed wire of airports, or nosing
around hangars just to hear the talk of the men who were
fortunate enough to be in the trade. The rest of the time, the
time he was not watching his mother’s magic or thinking of
airplanes, he spent in the idle pursuits of bachelors without
work in small towns. He had heard all the stories about
Sula, and they aroused his curiosity. Her elusiveness and
indifference to established habits of behavior reminded him
of his mother, who was as stubborn in her pursuits of the
occult as the women of Greater Saint Matthew’s were in the
search for redeeming grace. So when his curiosity was
high enough he picked two bottles of milk off the porch of
some white family and went to see her, suspecting that this
was perhaps the only other woman he knew whose life was
her own, who could deal with life efficiently, and who was
not interested in nailing him. Sula, too, was curious. She
knew nothing about him except the word he had called out
to her years ago and the feeling he had excited in her then.
She had grown quite accustomed to the clichés of other

people’s lives as well as her own increasing dissatisfaction
with Medallion. If she could have thought of a place to go,
she probably would have left, but that was before Ajax
looked at her through the blue glass and held the milk aloft
like a trophy. But it was not the presents that made her
wrap him up in her thighs. They were charming, of course
(especially the jar of butterflies he let loose in the bedroom),
but her real pleasure was the fact that he talked to her. They
had genuine conversations. He did not speak down to her
or at her, nor content himself with puerile questions about
her life or monologues of his own activities. Thinking she
was possibly brilliant, like his mother, he seemed to expect
brilliance from her, and she delivered. And in all of it, he
listened more than he spoke. His clear comfort at being in
her presence, his lazy willingness to tell her all about fixes
and the powers of plants, his refusal to baby or protect her,
his assumption that she was both tough and wise–all of that
coupled with a wide generosity of spirit only occasionally
erupting into vengeance sustained Sula’s interest and
enthusiasm. His idea of bliss (on earth as opposed to bliss
in the sky) was a long bath in piping-hot water–his head on
the cool white rim, his eyes closed in reverie. “Soaking in
hot water give you a bad back.” Sula stood in the doorway
looking at his knees glistening just at the surface of the
soap-gray water. “Soaking in Sula give me a bad back.”
“Worth it?” “Don’t know yet. Go ‘way.” “Airplanes?”
“Airplanes.” “Lindbergh know about you?” “Go ‘way.” She
went and waited for him in Eva’s high bed, her head turned
to the boarded-up window. She was smiling, thinking how

like Jude’s was his craving to do the white man’s work,
when two deweys came in with their beautiful teeth and
said, “We sick.” Sula turned her head slowly and
murmured, “Get well.” “We need some medicine.” “Look in
the bathroom.” “Ajax in there.” “Then wait.” “We sick now.”
Sula leaned over the bed, picked up a shoe and threw it at
them. “Cocksucker!” they screamed, and she leaped out of
the bed naked as a yard dog. She caught the redheaded
dewey by his shirt and held him by the heels over the
banister until he wet his pants. The other dewey was joined
by the third, and they delved into their pockets for stones,
which they threw at her. Sula, ducking and tottering with
laughter, carried the wet dewey to the bedroom and when
the other two followed her, deprived of all weapons except
their teeth, Sula had dropped the first dewey on the bed
and was fishing in her purse. She gave each of them a
dollar bill which they snatched and then scooted off down
the stairs to Dick’s to buy the catarrh remedy they loved to
drink. Ajax came sopping wet into the room and lay down
on the bed to let the air dry him. They were both still for a
long time until he reached out and touched her arm. He
liked for her to mount him so he could see her towering
above him and call soft obscenities up into her face. As she
rocked there, swayed there, like a Georgia pine on its
knees, high above the slipping, falling smile, high above the
golden eyes and the velvet helmet of hair, rocking, swaying,
she focused her thoughts to bar the creeping disorder that
was flooding her hips. She looked down, down from what
seemed an awful height at the head of the man whose

lemon-yellow gabardines had been the first sexual
excitement she’d known. Letting her thoughts dwell on his
face in order to confine, for just a while longer, the drift of
her flesh toward the high silence of orgasm. _If I take a
chamois and rub real hard on the bone, right on the__
_ledge of your cheek bone, some of the black will
disappear. It will__ _flake away into the chamois and
underneath there will be gold__ _leaf. I can see it shining
through the black. I know it is__ _there…__ How high she
was over his wand-lean body, how slippery was his sliding
sliding smile. _And if I take a nail file or even Eva’s old
paring knife–__ _that will do–and scrape away at the gold,
it will fall away__ _and there will be alabaster. The
alabaster is what gives__ _your face its planes, its curves.
That is why your mouth__ _smiling does not reach your
eyes. Alabaster is giving it a__ _gravity that resists a total
smile.__ The height and the swaying dizzied her, so she
bent down and let her breasts graze his chest. _Then I can
take a chisel and small tap hammer and tap__ _away at
the alabaster. It will crack then like ice under the__ _pick,
and through the breaks I will see the loam, fertile,__ _free of
pebbles and twigs. For it is the loam that is giving__ _you
that smell.__ She slipped her hands under his armpits, for it
seemed as though she would not be able to dam the
spread of weakness she felt under her skin without holding
on to something. _I will put my hand deep into your soil, lift
it, sift it__ _with my fingers, feel its warm surface and dewy
chill__ _below.__ She put her head under his chin with no
hope in the world of keeping anything at all at bay. _I will

water your soil, keep it rich and moist. But how much?__
_How much water to keep the loam moist? And how much
loam__ _will I need to keep my water still? And when do the
two make__ _mud?__ He swallowed her mouth just as her
thighs had swallowed his genitals, and the house was very,
very quiet. * * * Sula began to discover what possession
was. Not love, perhaps, but possession or at least the
desire for it. She was astounded by so new and alien a
feeling. First there was the morning of the night before
when she actually wondered if Ajax would come by that day.
Then there was an afternoon when she stood before the
mirror finger-tracing the laugh lines around her mouth and
trying to decide whether she was good-looking or not. She
ended this deep perusal by tying a green ribbon in her hair.
The green silk made a rippling whisper as she slid it into
her hair–a whisper that could easily have been Hannah’s
chuckle, a soft slow nasal hiss she used to emit when
something amused her. Like women sitting for two hours
under the marcelling irons only to wonder two days later
how soon they would need another appointment. The
ribbon-tying was followed by other activity, and when Ajax
came that evening, bringing her a reed whistle he had
carved that morning, not only was the green ribbon still in
her hair, but the bathroom was gleaming, the bed was
made, and the table was set for two. He gave her the reed
whistle, unlaced his shoes and sat in the rocking chair in
the kitchen. Sula walked toward him and kissed his mouth.
He ran his fingers along the nape of her neck. “I bet you
ain’t even missed Tar Baby, have you?” he asked.

“Missed? No. Where is he?” Ajax smiled at her delicious
indifference. “Jail.” “Since when?” “Last Saturday.”
“Picked up for drunk?” “Little bit more than that,” he
answered and went ahead to tell her about his own
involvement in another of Tar Baby’s misfortunes. On
Saturday afternoon Tar Baby had stumbled drunk into traffic
on the New River Road. A woman driver swerved to avoid
him and hit another car. When the police came, they
recognized the woman as the mayor’s niece and arrested
Tar Baby. Later, after the word got out, Ajax and two other
men went to the station to see about him. At first they
wouldn’t let them in. But they relented after Ajax and the
other two just stood around for one hour and a half and
repeated their request at regular intervals. When they finally
got permission to go in and looked in at him in the cell, he
was twisted up in a corner badly beaten and dressed in
nothing but extremely soiled underwear. Ajax and the other
men asked the officer why Tar Baby couldn’t have back his
clothes. “It ain’t right,” they said, “to let a grown man lay
around in his own shit.” The policeman, obviously in
agreement with Eva, who had always maintained that Tar
Baby was white, said that if the prisoner didn’t like to live in
shit, he should come down out of those hills, and live like a
decent white man. More words were exchanged, hot words
and dark, and the whole thing ended with the arraignment
of the three black men, and an appointment to appear in
civil court Thursday next. Ajax didn’t seem too bothered by
any of it. More annoyed and inconvenienced than anything
else. He had had several messes with the police, mostly in

gambling raids, and regarded them as the natural hazards
of Negro life. But Sula, the green ribbon shining in her hair,
was flooded with an awareness of the impact of the outside
world on Ajax. She stood up and arranged herself on the
arm of the rocking chair. Putting her fingers deep into the
velvet of his hair, she murmured, “Come on. Lean on me.”
Ajax blinked. Then he looked swiftly into her face. In her
words, in her voice, was a sound he knew well. For the first
time he saw the green ribbon. He looked around and saw
the gleaming kitchen and the table set for two and detected
the scent of the nest. Every hackle on his body rose, and he
knew that very soon she would, like all of her sisters before
her, put to him the death-knell question “Where you been?”
His eyes dimmed with a mild and momentary regret. He
stood and mounted the stairs with her and entered the
spotless bathroom where the dust had been swept from
underneath the claw-foot tub. He was trying to remember
the date of the air show in Dayton. As he came into the
bedroom, he saw Sula lying on fresh white sheets, wrapped
in the deadly odor of freshly applied cologne. He dragged
her under him and made love to her with the steadiness
and the intensity of a man about to leave for Dayton. Every
now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of
his having ever been there. Where were the butterflies? the
blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for
he had left nothing but his stunning absence. An absence
so decorative, so ornate, it was difficult for her to
understand how she had ever endured, without falling dead
or being consumed, his magnificent presence. The mirror

by the door was not a mirror by the door, it was an altar
where he stood for only a moment to put on his cap before
going out. The red rocking chair was a rocking of his own
hips as he sat in the kitchen. Still, there was nothing of his–
his own–that she could find. It was as if she were afraid she
had hallucinated him and needed proof to the contrary. His
absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the
furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of
rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on table tops.
When he was there he pulled everything toward himself. Not
only her eyes and all her senses but also inanimate things
seemed to exist because of him, backdrops to his
presence. Now that he had gone, these things, so long
subdued by his presence, were glamorized in his wake.
Then one day, burrowing in a dresser drawer, she found
what she had been looking for: proof that he had been
there, his driver’s license. It contained just what she needed
for verification–his vital statistics: Born 1901, height 5’11’ ‘,
weight 152 lbs., eyes brown, hair black, color black. Oh
yes, skin black. Very black. So black that only a steady
careful rubbing with steel wool would remove it, and as it
was removed there was the glint of gold leaf and under the
gold leaf the cold alabaster and deep, deep down under
the cold alabaster more black only this time the black of
warm loam. But what was this? Albert Jacks? His name
was Albert Jacks? A. Jacks. She had thought it was Ajax.
All those years. Even from the time she walked by the pool
hall and looked away from him sitting astride a wooden
chair, looked away to keep from seeing the wide space of

intolerable orderliness between his legs; the openness that
held no sign, no sign at all, of the animal that lurked in his
trousers; looked away from the insolent nostrils and the
smile that kept slipping and falling, falling, falling so she
wanted to reach out with her hand to catch it before it fell to
the pavement and was sullied by the cigarette butts and
bottle caps and spittle at his feet and the feet of other men
who sat or stood around outside the pool hall, calling,
singing out to her and Nel and grown women too with lyrics
like _pig meat__ and _brown sugar__ and _jailbait__ and
_O Lord,__ _what have I done to deserve the wrath,__ and
_Take me, Jesus, I__ _have seen the promised land,__
and _Do, Lord, remember me__ in voices mellowed by
hopeless passion into gentleness. Even then, when she
and Nel were trying hard not to dream of him and not to
think of him when they touched the softness in their
underwear or undid their braids as soon as they left home
to let the hair bump and wave around their ears, or
wrapped the cotton binding around their chests so the
nipples would not break through their blouses and give him
cause to smile his slipping, falling smile, which brought the
blood rushing to their skin. And even later, when for the first
time in her life she had lain in bed with a man and said his
name involuntarily or said it truly meaning _him,__ the
name she was screaming and saying was not his at all.
Sula stood with a worn slip of paper in her fingers and said
aloud to no one, “I didn’t even know his name. And if I didn’t
know his name, then there is nothing I did know and I have
known nothing ever at all since the one thing I wanted was

to know his name so how could he help but leave me since
he was making love to a woman who didn’t even know his
name. “When I was a little girl the heads of my paper dolls
came off, and it was a long time before I discovered that my
own head would not fall off if I bent my neck. I used to walk
around holding it very stiff because I thought a strong wind
or a heavy push would snap my neck. Nel was the one who
told me the truth. But she was wrong. I did not hold my head
stiff enough when I met him and so I lost it just like the dolls.
“It’s just as well he left. Soon I would have torn the flesh from
his face just to see if I was right about the gold and nobody
would have understood that kind of curiosity. They would
have believed that I wanted to hurt him just like the little boy
who fell down the steps and broke his leg and the people
think I pushed him just because I looked at it.” Holding the
driver’s license she crawled into bed and fell into a sleep
full of dreams of cobalt blue. When she awoke, there was a
melody in her head she could not identify or recall ever
hearing before. “Perhaps I made it up,” she thought. Then it
came to her–the name of the song and all its lyrics just as
she had heard it many times before. She sat on the edge of
the bed thinking, “There aren’t any more new songs and I
have sung all the ones there are. I have sung them all. I have
sung all the songs there are.” She lay down again on the
bed and sang a little wandering tune made up of the words
_I have__ _sung all the songs all the songs I have sung all
the songs there__ _are__ until, touched by her own lullaby,
she grew drowsy, and in the hollow of near-sleep she
tasted the acridness of gold, left the chill of alabaster and

smelled the dark, sweet stench of loam.

1940

“I heard you was sick. Anything I can do for you?” She had
practiced not just the words but the tone, the pitch of her
voice. It should be calm, matter-of-fact, but strong in
sympathy–for the illness though, not for the patient. The
sound of her voice as she heard it in her head betrayed no
curiosity, no pride, just the inflection of any good woman
come to see about a sick person who, incidentally, had
such visits from nobody else. For the first time in three
years she would be looking at the stemmed rose that hung
over the eye of her enemy. Moreover, she would be doing it
with the taste of Jude’s exit in her mouth, with the
resentment and shame that even yet pressed for release in
her stomach. She would be facing the black rose that Jude
had kissed and looking at the nostrils of the woman who
had twisted her love for her own children into something so
thick and monstrous she was afraid to show it lest it break
loose and smother them with its heavy paw. A cumbersome
bear-love that, given any rein, would suck their breath away
in its crying need for honey. Because Jude’s leaving was so
complete, the full responsibility of the household was Nel’s.
There were no more fifty dollars in brown envelopes to
count on, so she took to cleaning rather than fret away the
tiny seaman’s pension her parents lived on. And just this
past year she got a better job working as a chambermaid
in the same hotel Jude had worked in. The tips were only

fair, but the hours were good–she was home when the
children got out of school. At thirty her hot brown eyes had
turned to agate, and her skin had taken on the sheen of
maple struck down, split and sanded at the height of its
green. Virtue, bleak and drawn, was her only mooring. It
brought her to Number 7 Carpenter’s Road and the door
with the blue glass; it helped her to resist scratching the
screen as in days gone by; it hid from her the true motives
for her charity, and, finally, it gave her voice the timbre she
wanted it to have: free of delight or a lip-smacking “I told
you so” with which the news of Sula’s illness had been
received up in the Bottom–free of the least hint of
retribution. Now she stood in Eva’s old bedroom, looking
down at that dark rose, aware of the knife-thin arms sliding
back and forth over the quilt and the boarded-up window
Eva had jumped out of. Sula looked up and without a
second’s pause followed Nel’s example of leaving out the
greeting when she spoke. “As a matter of fact, there is. I
got a prescription. Nathan usually goes for me but he…
school don’t let out till three. Could you run it over to the
drugstore?” “Where is it?” Nel was glad to have a concrete
errand. Conversation would be difficult. (Trust Sula to pick
up a relationship exactly where it lay.) “Look in my bag. No.
Over there.” Nel walked to the dresser and opened the
purse with the beaded clasp. She saw only a watch and the
folded prescription down inside. No wallet, no change
purse. She turned to Sula: “Where’s your… ” But Sula was
looking at the boarded-up window. Something in her eye
right there in the corner stopped Nel from completing her

question. That and the slight flare of the nostrils–a shadow
of a snarl. Nel took the piece of paper and picked up her
own purse, saying, “OK. I’ll be right back.” As soon as the
door was shut, Sula breathed through her mouth. While Nel
was in the room the pain had increased. Now that this new
pain killer, the one she had been holding in reserve, was on
the way her misery was manageable. She let a piece of her
mind lay on Nel. It was funny, sending Nel off to that
drugstore right away like that, after she had not seen her to
speak to for years. The drugstore was where Edna Finch’s
Mellow House used to be years back when they were girls.
Where they used to go, the two of them, hand in hand, for
the 18-cent ice-cream sundaes, past the Time and a Half
Pool Hall, where the sprawling men said “pig meat,” and
they sat in that cool room with the marble-top tables and ate
the first ice-cream sundaes of their lives. Now Nel was
going back there alone and Sula was waiting for the
medicine the doctor said not to take until the pain got really
bad. And she supposed “really bad” was now. Although you
could never tell. She wondered for an instant what Nellie
wanted; why she had come. Did she want to gloat? Make
up? Following this line of thought required more
concentration than she could muster. Pain was greedy; it
demanded all of her attention. But it was good that this new
medicine, the reserve, would be brought to her by her old
friend. Nel, she remembered, always thrived on a crisis.
The closed place in the water; Hannah’s funeral. Nel was
the best. When Sula imitated her, or tried to, those long
years ago, it always ended up in some action noteworthy

not for its coolness but mostly for its being bizarre. The one
time she tried to protect Nel, she had cut off her own finger
tip and earned not Nel’s gratitude but her disgust. From
then on she had let her emotions dictate her behavior. She
could hear Nel’s footsteps long before she opened the door
and put the medicine on the table near the bed. As Sula
poured the liquid into a sticky spoon, Nel began the
sickroom conversation. “You look fine, Sula.” “You lying,
Nellie. I look bad.” She gulped the medicine. “No. I haven’t
seen you for a long time, but you look… ” “You don’t have to
do that, Nellie. It’s going to be all right.” “What ails you?
Have they said?” Sula licked the corners of her lips. “You
want to talk about that?” Nel smiled, slightly, at the
bluntness she had forgotten. “No. No, I don’t, but you sure
you should be staying up here alone?” “Nathan comes by.
The deweys sometimes, and Tar Baby… ” “That ain’t help,
Sula. You need to be with somebody grown. Somebody
who can… ” “I’d rather be here, Nellie.” “You know you don’t
have to be proud with me.” “Proud?” Sula’s laughter broke
through the phlegm. “What you talking about? I like my own
dirt, Nellie. I’m not proud. You sure have forgotten me.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But you a woman and you alone.” “And
you? Ain’t you alone?” “I’m not sick. I work.” “Yes. Of course
you do. Work’s good for you, Nellie. It don’t do nothing for
me.” “You never _had__ to.” “I never would.” “There’s
something to say for it, Sula. ‘Specially if you don’t want
people to have to do for you.” “Neither one, Nellie. Neither
one.” “You can’t have it all, Sula.” Nel was getting
exasperated with her arrogance, with her lying at death’s

door still smart-talking. “Why? I can do it all, why can’t I have
it all?” “You _can’t__ do it all. You a woman and a colored
woman at that. You can’t act like a man. You can’t be
walking around all independent-like, doing whatever you
like, taking what you want, leaving what you don’t.” “You
repeating yourself.” “How repeating myself?” “You say I’m a
woman and colored. Ain’t that the same as being a man?”
“I don’t think so and you wouldn’t either if you had children.”
“Then I really would act like what you call a man. Every man
I ever knew left his children.” “Some were taken.” “Wrong,
Nellie. The word is ‘left.'” “You still going to know everything,
ain’t you?” “I don’t know everything, I just do everything.”
“Well, you don’t do what I do.” “You think I don’t know what
your life is like just because I ain’t living it? I know what
every colored woman in this country is doing.” “What’s
that?” “Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying
like a stump. Me, I’m going down like one of those
redwoods. I sure did live in this world.” “Really? What have
you got to show for it?” “Show? To who? Girl, I got my mind.
And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me.” “Lonely,
ain’t it?” “Yes. But my lonely is _mine.__ Now your lonely is
somebody else’s. Made by somebody else and handed to
you. Ain’t that something? A secondhand lonely.” Nel sat
back on the little wooden chair. Anger skipped but she
realized that Sula was probably just showing off. No telling
what shape she was really in, but there was no point in
saying anything other than what was the truth. “I always
understood how you could take a man. Now I understand
why you can’t keep none.” “Is that what I’m supposed to do?

Spend my life keeping a man?” “They worth keeping,
Sula.” “They ain’t worth more than me. And besides, I never
loved no man because he was worth it. Worth didn’t have
nothing to do with it.” “What did?” “My mind did. That’s all.”
“Well I guess that’s it. You own the world and the rest of us
is renting. You ride the pony and we shovel the shit. I didn’t
come up here for this kind of talk, Sula… ” “No?” “No. I
come to see about you. But now that you opened it up, I
may as well close it.” Nel’s fingers closed around the brass
rail of the bed. Now she would ask her. “How come you did
it, Sula?” There was a silence but Nel felt no obligation to fill
it. Sula stirred a little under the covers. She looked bored
as she sucked her teeth. “Well, there was this space in front
of me, behind me, in my head. Some space. And Jude
filled it up. That’s all. He just filled up the space.” “You mean
you didn’t even love him?” The feel of the brass was in Nel’s
mouth. “It wasn’t even loving him?” Sula looked toward the
boarded-up window again. Her eyes fluttered as if she
were about to fall off into sleep. “But… ” Nel held her
stomach in. “But what about me? What about me? Why
didn’t you think about me? Didn’t I count? I never hurt you.
What did you take him for if you didn’t love him and why
didn’t you think about me?” And then, “I was good to you,
Sula, why don’t that matter?” Sula turned her head away
from the boarded window. Her voice was quiet and the
stemmed rose over her eye was very dark. “It matters, Nel,
but only to you. Not to anybody else. Being good to
somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You
don’t get nothing for it.” Nel took her hands from the brass

railing. She was annoyed with herself. Finally when she had
gotten the nerve to ask the question, the right question, it
made no difference. Sula couldn’t give her a sensible
answer because she didn’t know. Would be, in fact, the last
to know. Talking to her about right and wrong was like
talking to the deweys. She picked at the fringe on Sula’s
bedspread and said softly, “We were friends.” “Oh, yes.
Good friends,” Sula said. “And you didn’t love me enough
to leave him alone. To let him love me. You had to take him
away.” “What you mean take him away? I didn’t kill him, I
just fucked him. If we were such good friends, how come
you couldn’t get over it?” “You laying there in that bed
without a dime or a friend to your name having done all the
dirt you did in this town and you still expect folks to love
you?” Sula raised herself up on her elbows. Her face
glistened with the dew of fever. She opened her mouth as
though to say something, then fell back on the pillows and
sighed. “Oh, they’ll love me all right. It will take time, but
they’ll love me.” The sound of her voice was as soft and
distant as the look in her eyes. “After all the old women
have lain with the teen-agers; when all the young girls have
slept with their old drunken uncles; after all the black men
fuck all the white ones; when all the white women kiss all the
black ones; when the guards have raped all the jailbirds
and after all the whores make love to their grannies; after all
the faggots get their mothers’ trim; when Lindbergh sleeps
with Bessie Smith and Norma Shearer makes it with Stepin
Fetchit; after all the dogs have fucked all the cats and every
weathervane on every barn flies off the roof to mount the

hogs… then there’ll be a little love left over for me. And I
know just what it will feel like.” She closed her eyes then
and thought of the wind pressing her dress between her
legs as she ran up the bank of the river to four leaf-locked
trees and the digging of holes in the earth. Embarrassed,
irritable and a little bit ashamed, Nel rose to go. “Goodbye,
Sula. I don’t reckon I’ll be back.” She opened the door and
heard Sula’s low whisper. “Hey, girl.” Nel paused and
turned her head but not enough to see her. “How you
know?” Sula asked. “Know what?” Nel still wouldn’t look at
her. “About who was good. How you know it was you?”
“What you mean?” “I mean maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it
was me.” Nel took two steps out the door and closed it
behind her. She walked down the hall and down the four
flights of steps. The house billowed around her light then
dark, full of presences without sounds. The deweys, Tar
Baby, the newly married couples, Mr. Buckland Reed,
Patsy, Valentine, and the beautiful Hannah Peace. Where
were they? Eva out at the old folks’ home, the deweys living
anywhere, Tar Baby steeped in wine, and Sula upstairs in
Eva’s bed with a boarded-up window and an empty
pocketbook on the dresser. * * * When Nel closed the door,
Sula reached for more medicine. Then she turned the pillow
over to its cool side and thought about her old friend. “So
she will walk on down that road, her back so straight in that
old green coat, the strap of her handbag pushed back all
the way to the elbow, thinking how much I have cost her and
never remember the days when we were two throats and
one eye and we had no price.” Pictures drifted through her

head as lightly as dandelion spores: the blue eagle that
swallowed the E of the Sherman’s Mellowe wine that Tar
Baby drank; the pink underlid of Hannah’s eye as she
probed for a fleck of coal dust or a lash. She thought of
looking out of the windows of all those trains and buses,
looking at the feet and backs of all those people. Nothing
was ever different. They were all the same. All of the words
and all of the smiles, every tear and every gag just
something to do. “That’s the same sun I looked at when I
was twelve, the same pear trees. If I live a hundred years
my urine will flow the same way, my armpits and breath will
smell the same. My hair will grow from the same holes. I
didn’t mean anything. I never meant anything. I stood there
watching her burn and was thrilled. I wanted her to keep on
jerking like that, to keep on dancing.” Then she had the
dream again. The Clabber Girl Baking Powder lady was
smiling and beckoning to her, one hand under her apron.
When Sula came near she disintegrated into white dust,
which Sula was hurriedly trying to stuff into the pockets of
her blue-flannel housecoat. The disintegration was awful to
see, but worse was the feel of the powder–its starchy
slipperiness as she tried to collect it by handfuls. The more
she scooped, the more it billowed. At last it covered her,
filled her eyes, her nose, her throat, and she woke gagging
and overwhelmed with the smell of smoke. Pain took hold.
First a fluttering as of doves in her stomach, then a kind of
burning, followed by a spread of thin wires to other parts of
her body. Once the wires of liquid pain were in place, they
jelled and began to throb. She tried concentrating on the

throbs, identifying them as waves, hammer strokes, razor
edges or small explosions. Soon even the variety of the
pain bored her and there was nothing to do, for it was
joined by fatigue so great she could not make a fist or fight
the taste of oil at the back of her tongue. Several times she
tried to cry out, but the fatigue barely let her open her lips,
let alone take the deep breath necessary to scream. So
she lay there wondering how soon she would gather
enough strength to lift her arm and push the rough quilt
away from her chin and whether she should turn her cheek
to the cooler side of the pillow now or wait till her face was
thoroughly soaked and the move would be more refreshing.
But she was reluctant to move her face for another reason.
If she turned her head, she would not be able to see the
boarded-up window Eva jumped out of. And looking at
those four wooden planks with the steel rod slanting across
them was the only peace she had. The sealed window
soothed her with its sturdy termination, its unassailable
finality. It was as though for the first time she was
completely alone–where she had always wanted to be–free
of the possibility of distraction. It would be here, only here,
held by this blind window high above the elm tree, that she
might draw her legs up to her chest, close her eyes, put her
thumb in her mouth and float over and down the tunnels, just
missing the dark walls, down, down until she met a rain
scent and would know the water was near, and she would
curl into its heavy softness and it would envelop her, carry
her, and wash her tired flesh always. Always. Who said
that? She tried hard to think. Who was it that had promised

her a sleep of water always? The effort to recall was too
great; it loosened a knot in her chest that turned her
thoughts again to the pain. While in this state of weary
anticipation, she noticed that she was not breathing, that
her heart had stopped completely. A crease of fear touched
her breast, for any second there was sure to be a violent
explosion in her brain, a gasping for breath. Then she
realized, or rather she sensed, that there was not going to
be any pain. She was not breathing because she didn’t
have to. Her body did not need oxygen. She was dead.
Sula felt her face smiling. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she
thought, “it didn’t even hurt. Wait’ll I tell Nel.”

1919

The death of Sula Peace was the best news folks up in the
Bottom had had since the promise of work at the tunnel. Of
the few who were not afraid to witness the burial of a witch
and who had gone to the cemetery, some had come just to
verify her being put away but stayed to sing “Shall We
Gather at the River” for politeness’ sake, quite unaware of
the bleak promise of their song. Others came to see that
nothing went awry, that the shallowminded and small-
hearted kept their meanness at bay, and that the entire
event be characterized by that abiding gentleness of spirit
to which they themselves had arrived by the simple
determination not to let anything–anything at all: not failed
crops, not rednecks, lost jobs, sick children, rotten
potatoes, broken pipes, bug-ridden flour, third-class coal,

educated social workers, thieving insurance men, garlic-
ridden hunkies, corrupt Catholics, racist Protestants,
cowardly Jews, slaveholding Moslems, jackleg nigger
preachers, squeamish Chinamen, cholera, dropsy or the
Black Plague, let alone a strange woman–keep them from
their God. In any case, both the raw-spirited and the gentle
who came–not to the white funeral parlor but to the colored
part of the Beechnut Cemetery–felt that either _because__
Sula was dead or just _after__ she was dead a brighter
day was dawning. There were signs. The rumor that the
tunnel spanning the river would use Negro workers became
an announcement. Planned, abandoned and replanned for
years, this project had finally begun in 1937. For three
years there were rumors that blacks would work it, and
hope was high in spite of the fact that the River Road
leading to the tunnel had encouraged similar hopes in but
had ended up being built entirely by white labor–hillbillies
and immigrants taking even the lowest jobs. But the tunnel
itself was another matter. The craft work–no, they would not
get that. But it was a major job, and the government
seemed to favor opening up employment to black workers.
It meant black men would not have to sweep Medallion to
eat, or leave the town altogether for the steel mills in Akron
and along Lake Erie. The second sign was the construction
begun on an old people’s home. True, it was more
renovation than construction, but the blacks were free, or so
it was said, to occupy it. Some said that the very transfer of
Eva from the ramshackle house that passed for a colored
women’s nursing home to the bright new one was a clear

sign of the mystery of God’s ways, His mighty thumb having
been seen at Sula’s throat. So it was with a strong sense of
hope that the people in the Bottom watched October close.
Then Medallion turned silver. It seemed sudden, but actually
there had been days and days of no snow–just frost–when,
late one afternoon, a rain fell and froze. Way down
Carpenter’s Road, where the concrete sidewalks started,
children hurried to the sliding places before shopkeepers
and old women sprinkled stove ashes, like ancient onyx,
onto the new-minted silver. They hugged trees simply to
hold for a moment all that life and largeness stilled in glass,
and gazed at the sun pressed against the gray sky like a
worn doubloon, wondering all the while if the world were
coming to an end. Grass stood blade by blade, shocked
into separateness by an ice that held for days. Late-
harvesting things were ruined, of course, and fowl died of
both chill and rage. Cider turned to ice and split the jugs,
forcing the men to drink their cane liquor too soon. It was
better down in the valley, since, as always, the hills
protected it, but up in the Bottom black folks suffered
heavily in their thin houses and thinner clothes. The icecold
wind bled what little heat they had through windowpanes
and ill-fitting doors. For days on end they were virtually
housebound, venturing out only to coal bins or right next
door for the trading of vital foodstuffs. Never to the stores.
No deliveries were being made anyway, and when they
were, the items were saved for better-paying white
customers. Women could not make it down the icy slopes
and therefore missed days of wages they sorely needed.

The consequence of all that ice was a wretched
Thanksgiving of tiny tough birds, heavy pork cakes, and
pithy sweet potatoes. By the time the ice began to melt and
the first barge was seen shuddering through the ice skim
on the river, everybody under fifteen had croup, or scarlet
fever, and those over had chilblains, rheumatism, pleurisy,
earaches and a world of other ailments. Still it was not
those illnesses or even the ice that marked the beginning of
the trouble, that self-fulfilled prophecy that Shadrack carried
on his tongue. As soon as the silvering began, long before
the cider cracked the jugs, there was something wrong. A
falling away, a dislocation was taking place. Hard on the
heels of the general relief that Sula’s death brought a
restless irritability took hold. Teapot, for example, went into
the kitchen and asked his mother for some sugar-butter-
bread. She got up to fix it and found that she had no butter,
only oleomargarine. Too tired to mix the saffron-colored
powder into the hard cake of oleo, she simply smeared the
white stuff on the bread and sprinkled the sugar over it.
Teapot tasted the difference and refused to eat it. This
keenest of insults that a mother can feel, the rejection by a
child of her food, bent her into fury and she beat him as she
had not done since Sula knocked him down the steps. She
was not alone. Other mothers who had defended their
children from Sula’s malevolence (or who had defended
their positions as mothers from Sula’s scorn for the role)
now had nothing to rub up against. The tension was gone
and so was the reason for the effort they had made. Without
her mockery, affection for others sank into flaccid disrepair.

Daughters who had complained bitterly about the
responsibilities of taking care of their aged mothers-in-law
had altered when Sula locked Eva away, and they began
cleaning those old women’s spittoons without a murmur.
Now that Sula was dead and done with, they returned to a
steeping resentment of the burdens of old people. Wives
uncoddled their husbands; there seemed no further need to
reinforce their vanity. And even those Negroes who had
moved down from Canada to Medallion, who remarked
every chance they got that they had never been slaves, felt
a loosening of the reactionary compassion for
Southernborn blacks Sula had inspired in them. They
returned to their original claims of superiority. The normal
meanness that the winter brought was compounded by the
small-spiritedness that hunger and scarlet fever produced.
Even a definite and witnessed interview of four colored
men (and the promise of more in the spring) at the tunnel
site could not break the cold vise of that lean and bitter
year’s end. Christmas came one morning and haggled
everybody’s nerves like a dull ax–too shabby to cut clean
but too heavy to ignore. The children lay wall-eyed on
creaking beds or pallets near the stove, sucking
peppermint and oranges in between coughs while their
mothers stomped the floors in rage at the cakes that did not
rise because the stove fire had been so stingy; at the curled
bodies of men who chose to sleep the day away rather than
face the silence made by the absence of Lionel trains,
drums, crybaby dolls and rocking horses. Teen-agers
sneaked into the Elmira Theater in the afternoon and let

Tex Ritter free them from the recollection of their fathers’
shoes, yawning in impotence under the bed. Some of them
had a bottle of wine, which they drank at the feet of the
glittering Mr. Ritter, making such a ruckus the manager had
to put them out. The white people who came with Christmas
bags of rock candy and old clothes were hard put to get a
_Yes’m, thank you,__ out of those sullen mouths. Just as
the ice lingered in October, so did the phlegm of
December–which explained the enormous relief brought on
by the first three days of 1941. It was as though the season
had exhausted itself, for on January first the temperature
shot up to sixty-one degrees and slushed the whiteness
overnight. On January second drab patches of grass could
be seen in the fields. On January third the sun came out–
and so did Shadrack with his rope, his bell and his childish
dirge. He had spent the night before watching a tiny moon.
The people, the voices that kept him company, were with
him less and less. Now there were long periods when he
heard nothing except the wind in the trees and the plop of
buckeyes on the earth. In the winter, when the fish were too
hard to get to, he did picking-up jobs for small
businessmen (nobody would have him in or even near their
homes), and thereby continued to have enough money for
liquor. Yet the drunk times were becoming deeper but more
seldom. It was as though he no longer needed to drink to
forget whatever it was he could not remember. Now he
could not remember that he had ever forgotten anything.
Perhaps that was why for the first time after that cold day in
France he was beginning to miss the presence of other

people. Shadrack had improved enough to feel lonely. If he
was lonely before, he didn’t know it because the noise he
kept up, the roaring, the busyness, protected him from
knowing it. Now the compulsion to activity, to filling up the
time when he was not happily fishing on the riverbank, had
dwindled. He sometimes fell asleep before he got drunk;
sometimes spent whole days looking at the river and the
sky; and more and more he relinquished the military habits
of cleanliness in his shack. Once a bird flew into his door–
one of the robins during the time there was a plague of
them. It stayed, looking for an exit, for the better part of an
hour. When the bird found the window and flew away,
Shadrack was grieved and actually waited and watched for
its return. During those days of waiting, he did not make his
bed, or sweep, or shake out the little rag-braid rug, and
almost forgot to slash with his fish knife the passing day on
his calendar. When he did return to housekeeping, it was
not with the precision he had always insisted upon. The
messier his house got, the lonelier he felt, and it was harder
and harder to conjure up sergeants, and orderlies, and
invading armies; harder and harder to hear the gunfire and
keep the platoon marching in time. More frequently now he
looked at and fondled the one piece of evidence that he
once had a visitor in his house: a child’s purple-and-white
belt. The one the little girl left behind when she came to see
him. Shadrack remembered the scene clearly. He had
stepped into the door and there was a tear-stained face
turning, turning toward him; eyes hurt and wondering; mouth
parted in an effort to ask a question. She had wanted

something–from him. Not fish, not work, but something only
he could give. She had a tadpole over her eye (that was
how he knew she was a friend–she had the mark of the fish
he loved), and one of her braids had come undone. But
when he looked at her face he had seen also the skull
beneath, and thinking she saw it too–knew it was there and
was afraid–he tried to think of something to say to comfort
her, something to stop the hurt from spilling out of her eyes.
So he had said “always,” so she would not have to be
afraid of the change–the falling away of skin, the drip and
slide of blood, and the exposure of bone underneath. He
had said “always” to convince her, assure her, of
permanency. It worked, for when he said it her face lit up
and the hurt did leave. She ran then, carrying his
knowledge, but her belt fell off and he kept it as a memento.
It hung on a nail near his bed–unfrayed, unsullied after all
those years, with only the permanent bend in the fabric
made by its long life on a nail. It was pleasant living with that
sign of a visitor, his only one. And after a while he was able
to connect the belt with the face, the tadpole-overthe-eye-
face that he sometimes saw up in the Bottom. His visitor,
his company, his guest, his social life, his woman, his
daughter, his friend–they all hung there on a nail near his
bed. Now he stared at the tiny moon floating high over the
ice-choked river. His loneliness had dropped down
somewhere around his ankles. Some other feeling
possessed him. A feeling that touched his eyes and made
him blink. He had seen her again months? weeks? ago.
Raking leaves for Mr. Hodges, he had gone into the cellar

for two bushel baskets to put them in. In the hallway he
passed an open door leading to a small room. She lay on a
table there. It was surely the same one. The same little-girl
face, same tadpole over the eye. So he had been wrong.
Terribly wrong. No “always” at all. Another dying away of
someone whose face he knew. It was then he began to
suspect that all those years of rope hauling and bell ringing
were never going to do any good. He might as well sit
forever on his riverbank and stare out of the window at the
moon. By his day-slashed calendar he knew that tomorrow
was the day. And for the first time he did not want to go. He
wanted to stay with the purple-and-white belt. Not go. Not
go. Still, when the day broke in an incredible splash of sun,
he gathered his things. In the early part of the afternoon,
drenched in sunlight and certain that this would be the last
time he would invite them to end their lives neatly and
sweetly, he walked over the rickety bridge and on into the
Bottom. But it was not heartfelt this time, not loving this
time, for he no longer cared whether he helped them or not.
His rope was improperly tied; his bell had a tinny
unimpassioned sound. His visitor was dead and would
come no more. Years later people would quarrel about who
had been the first to go. Most folks said it was the deweys,
but one or two knew better, knew that Dessie and Ivy had
been first. Said that Dessie had opened her door first and
stood there shielding her eyes from the sun while watching
Shadrack coming down the road. She laughed. Maybe the
sun; maybe the clots of green showing in the hills promising
so much; maybe the contrast between Shadrack’s doomy,

gloomy bell glinting in all that sweet sunshine. Maybe just a
brief moment, for once, of not feeling fear, of looking at
death in the sunshine and being unafraid. She laughed.
Upstairs, Ivy heard her and looked to see what caused the
thick music that rocked her neighbor’s breasts. Then Ivy
laughed too. Like the scarlet fever that had touched
everybody and worn them down to gristle, their laughter
infected Carpenter’s Road. Soon children were jumping
about giggling and men came to the porches to chuckle. By
the time Shadrack reached the first house, he was facing a
line of delighted faces. Never before had they laughed.
Always they had shut their doors, pulled down the shades
and called their children out of the road. It frightened him,
this glee, but he stuck to his habit–singing his song, ringing
his bell and holding fast to his rope. The deweys with their
magnificent teeth ran out from Number 7 and danced a little
jig around the befuddled Shadrack, then cut into a wild
aping of his walk, his song and his bell-ringing. By now
women were holding their stomachs, and the men were
slapping their knees. It was Mrs. Jackson, who ate ice, who
tripped down off her porch and marched–actually marched-
along behind him. The scene was so comic the people
walked into the road to make sure they saw it all. In that way
the parade started. Everybody, Dessie, Tar Baby, Patsy,
Mr. Buckland Reed, Teapot’s Mamma, Valentine, the
deweys, Mrs. Jackson, Irene, the proprietor of the Palace of
Cosmetology, Reba, the Herrod brothers and flocks of
teen-agers got into the mood and, laughing, dancing,
calling to one another, formed a pied piper’s band behind

Shadrack. As the initial group of about twenty people
passed more houses, they called to the people standing in
doors and leaning out of windows to join them; to help them
open further this slit in the veil, this respite from anxiety,
from dignity, from gravity, from the weight of that very adult
pain that had undergirded them all those years before.
Called to them to come out and play in the sunshine–as
though the sunshine would last, as though there really was
hope. The same hope that kept them picking beans for
other farmers; kept them from finally leaving as they talked
of doing; kept them knee-deep in other people’s dirt; kept
them excited about other people’s wars; kept them
solicitous of white people’s children; kept them convinced
that some magic “government” was going to lift them up,
out and away from that dirt, those beans, those wars.
Some, of course, like Helene Wright, would not go. She
watched the ruckus with characteristic scorn. Others, who
understood the Spirit’s touch which made them dance, who
understood whole families bending their backs in a field
while singing as from one throat, who understood the
ecstasy of river baptisms under suns just like this one, did
not understand this curious disorder, this headless display
and so refused also to go. Nevertheless, the sun splashed
on a larger and larger crowd that strutted, skipped,
marched, and shuffled down the road. When they got down
to where the sidewalk started, some of them stopped and
decided to turn back, too embarrassed to enter the white
part of town whooping like banshees. But except for three
or four, the fainthearted were put to shame by the more

aggressive and abandoned, and the parade danced down
Main Street past Woolworth’s and the old poultry house,
turned right and moved on down the New River Road. At
the mouth of the tunnel excavation, in a fever pitch of
excitement and joy, they saw the timber, the bricks, the
steel ribs and the tacky wire gate that glittered under ice
struck to diamond in the sun. It dazzled them, at first, and
they were suddenly quiet. Their hooded eyes swept over
the place where their hope had lain since 1927. There was
the promise: leaf-dead. The teeth unrepaired, the coal
credit cut off, the chest pains unattended, the school shoes
unbought, the rush-stuffed mattresses, the broken toilets,
the leaning porches, the slurred remarks and the
staggering childish malevolence of their employers. All
there in blazing sunlit ice rapidly becoming water. Like
antelopes they leaped over the little gate–a wire barricade
that was never intended to bar anything but dogs, rabbits
and stray children–and led by the tough, the enraged and
the young they picked up the lengths of timber and thin steel
ribs and smashed the bricks they would never fire in
yawning kilns, split the sacks of limestone they had not
mixed or even been allowed to haul; tore the wire mesh,
tipped over wheelbarrows and rolled forepoles down the
bank, where they sailed far out on the icebound river. Old
and young, women and children, lame and hearty, they
killed, as best they could, the tunnel they were forbidden to
build. They didn’t mean to go in, to actually go down into the
lip of the tunnel, but in their need to kill it all, all of it, to wipe
from the face of the earth the work of the thin-armed

Virginia boys, the bull-necked Greeks and the knife-faced
men who waved the leaf-dead promise, they went too
deep, too far… A lot of them died there. The earth, now
warm, shifted; the first forepole slipped; loose rock fell from
the face of the tunnel and caused a shield to give way. They
found themselves in a chamber of water, deprived of the
sun that had brought them there. With the first crack and
whoosh of water, the clamber to get out was so fierce that
others who were trying to help were pulled to their deaths.
Pressed up against steel ribs and timber blocks young
boys strangled when the oxygen left them to join the water.
Outside, others watched in terror as ice split and earth
shook beneath their feet. Mrs. Jackson, weighing less than
100 pounds, slid down the bank and met with an open
mouth the ice she had craved all her life. Tar Baby, Dessie,
Ivy, Valentine, the Herrod boys, some of Ajax’s younger
brothers and the deweys (at least it was supposed; their
bodies were never found)–all died there. Mr. Buckland
Reed escaped, so did Patsy and her two boys, as well as
some fifteen or twenty who had not gotten close enough to
fall, or whose timidity would not let them enter an unfinished
tunnel. And all the while Shadrack stood there. Having
forgotten his song and his rope, he just stood there high up
on the bank ringing, ringing his bell.

1965

Things were so much better in 1965. Or so it seemed. You
could go downtown and see colored people working in the

dime store behind the counters, even handling money with
cash-register keys around their necks. And a colored man
taught mathematics at the junior high school. The young
people had a look about them that everybody said was new
but which reminded Nel of the deweys, whom nobody had
ever found. Maybe, she thought, they had gone off and
seeded the land and growed up in these young people in
the dime store with the cash-register keys around their
necks. They were so different, these young people. So
different from the way she remembered them forty years
ago. Jesus, there were some beautiful boys in 1921! Look
like the whole world was bursting at the seams with them.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old. Jesus, they were fine.
L. P., Paul Freeman and his brother Jake, Mrs. Scott’s
twins–and Ajax had a whole flock of younger brothers. They
hung out of attic windows, rode on car fenders, delivered
the coal, moved into Medallion and moved out, visited
cousins, plowed, hoisted, lounged on the church steps,
careened on the school playground. The sun heated them
and the moon slid down their backs. God, the world was
_full__ of beautiful boys in 1921. Nothing like these kids.
Everything had changed. Even the whores were better then:
tough, fat, laughing women with burns on their cheeks and
wit married to their meanness: or widows couched in small
houses in the woods with eight children to feed and no
man. These modern-day whores were pale and dull before
those women. These little clothes-crazy things were always
embarrassed. Nasty but shamed. They didn’t know what
shameless was. They should have known those silvery

widows in the woods who would get up from the dinner
table and walk into the trees with a customer with as much
embarrassment as a calving mare. Lord, how time flies.
She hardly recognized anybody in the town any more. Now
there was another old people’s home. Look like this town
just kept on building homes for old people. Every time they
built a road they built a old folks’ home. You’d think folks
was living longer, but the fact of it was, they was just being
put out faster. Nel hadn’t seen the insides of this most
recent one yet, but it was her turn in Circle Number 5 to visit
some of the old women there. The pastor visited them
regularly, but the circle thought private visits were nice too.
There were just nine colored women out there, the same
nine that had been in the other one. But a lot of white ones.
White people didn’t fret about putting their old ones away. It
took a lot for black people to let them go, and even if
somebody was old and alone, others did the dropping by,
the floor washing, the cooking. Only when they got crazy
and unmanageable were they let go. Unless it was
somebody like Sula, who put Eva away out of meanness. It
was true that Eva was foolish in the head, but not so bad as
to need locking up. Nel was more than a little curious to see
her. She had been really active in church only a year or
less, and that was because the children were grown now
and took up less time and less space in her mind. For over
twenty-five years since Jude walked out she had pinned
herself into a tiny life. She spent a little time trying to marry
again, but nobody wanted to take her on with three children,
and she simply couldn’t manage the business of keeping

boyfriends. During the war she had had a rather long
relationship with a sergeant stationed at the camp twenty
miles down river from Medallion, but then he got called
away and everything was reduced to a few letters–then
nothing. Then there was a bartender at the hotel. But now
she was fiftyfive and hard put to remember what all that had
been about. It didn’t take long, after Jude left, for her to see
what the future would be. She had looked at her children
and knew in her heart that that would be all. That they were
all she would ever know of love. But it was a love that, like a
pan of syrup kept too long on the stove, had cooked out,
leaving only its odor and a hard, sweet sludge, impossible
to scrape off. For the mouths of her children quickly forgot
the taste of her nipples, and years ago they had begun to
look past her face into the nearest stretch of sky. In the
meantime the Bottom had collapsed. Everybody who had
made money during the war moved as close as they could
to the valley, and the white people were buying down river,
cross river, stretching Medallion like two strings on the
banks. Nobody colored lived much up in the Bottom any
more. White people were building towers for television
stations up there and there was a rumor about a golf course
or something. Anyway, hill land was more valuable now,
and those black people who had moved down right after
the war and in the fifties couldn’t afford to come back even
if they wanted to. Except for the few blacks still huddled by
the river bend, and some undemolished houses on
Carpenter’s Road, only rich white folks were building
homes in the hills. Just like that, they had changed their

minds and instead of keeping the valley floor to themselves,
now they wanted a hilltop house with a river view and a ring
of elms. The black people, for all their new look, seemed
awfully anxious to get to the valley, or leave town, and
abandon the hills to whoever was interested. It was sad,
because the Bottom had been a real place. These young
ones kept talking about the community, but they left the hills
to the poor, the old, the stubborn–and the rich white folks.
Maybe it hadn’t been a community, but it had been a place.
Now there weren’t any places left, just separate houses with
separate televisions and separate telephones and less and
less dropping by. These were the same thoughts she
always had when she walked down into the town. One of
the last true pedestrians, Nel walked the shoulder road
while cars slipped by. Laughed at by her children, she still
walked wherever she wanted to go, allowing herself to
accept rides only when the weather required it. Now she
went straight through the town and turned left at its farthest
end, along a tree-lined walk that turned into a country road
farther on and passed the cemetery, Beechnut Park. When
she got to Sunnydale, the home for the aged, it was already
four o’clock and turning chill. She would be glad to sit down
with those old birds and rest her feet. A red-haired lady at
the desk gave her a pass card and pointed to a door that
opened onto a corridor of smaller doors. It looked like what
she imagined a college dormitory to be. The lobby was
luxurious–modern–but the rooms she peeped into were
sterile green cages. There was too much light everywhere;
it needed some shadows. The third door, down the hall,

had a little name tag over it that read EVA PEACE. Nel
twisted the knob and rapped a little on the door at the same
time, then listened a moment before she opened it. At first
she couldn’t believe it. She seemed so small, sitting at that
table in a black-vinyl chair. All the heaviness had gone and
the height. Her once beautiful leg had no stocking and the
foot was in a slipper. Nel wanted to cry-not for Eva’s milk-
dull eyes or her floppy lips, but for the once proud foot
accustomed for over a half century to a fine well-laced
shoe, now stuffed gracelessly into a pink terrycloth slipper.
“Good evening, Miss Peace. I’m Nel Greene come to pay a
call on you. You remember me, don’t you?” Eva was ironing
and dreaming of stairwells. She had neither iron nor clothes
but did not stop her fastidious lining up of pleats or
pressing out of wrinkles even when she acknowledged
Nel’s greeting. “Howdy. Sit down.” “Thank you.” Nel sat on
the edge of the little bed. “You’ve got a pretty room, a real
pretty room, Miss Peace.” “You eat something funny
today?” “Ma’am?” “Some chop suey? Think back.” “No,
ma’am.” “No? Well, you gone be sick later on.” “But I didn’t
have no chop suey.” “You think I come all the way over here
for you to tell me that? I can’t make visits too often. You
should have some respect for old people.” “But Miss
Peace, I’m visiting _you__. This is _your__ room.” Nel
smiled. “What you say your name was?” “Nel Greene.”
“Wiley Wright’s girl?” “Uh huh. You do remember. That
makes me feel good, Miss Peace. You remember me and
my father.” “Tell me how you killed that little boy.” “What?
What little boy?” “The one you threw in the water. I got

oranges. How did you get him to go in the water?” “I didn’t
throw no little boy in the river. That was Sula.” “You. Sula.
What’s the difference? You was there. You watched, didn’t
you? Me, I never would’ve watched.” “You’re confused, Miss
Peace. I’m Nel. Sula’s dead.” “It’s awful cold in the water.
Fire is warm. How did you get him in?” Eva wet her
forefinger and tested the iron’s heat. “Who told you all these
lies? Miss Peace? Who told you? Why are you telling lies
on me?” “I got oranges. I don’t drink they old orange juice.
They puts something in it.” “Why are you trying to make out
like I did it?” Eva stopped ironing and looked at Nel. For
the first time her eyes looked sane. “You think I’m guilty?”
Nel was whispering. Eva whispered back, “Who would
know that better than you?” “I want to know who you been
talking to.” Nel forced herself to speak normally. “Plum.
Sweet Plum. He tells me things.” Eva laughed a light, tinkly
giggle–girlish. “I’ll be going now, Miss Peace.” Nel stood.
“You ain’t answered me yet.” “I don’t know what you’re
talking about.” “Just alike. Both of you. Never was no
difference between you. Want some oranges? It’s better for
you than chop suey. Sula? I got oranges.” Nel walked
hurriedly down the hall, Eva calling after her, “Sula?” Nel
couldn’t see the other women today. That woman had upset
her. She handed her pass back to the lady, avoiding her
look of surprise. Outside she fastened her coat against the
rising wind. The top button was missing so she covered her
throat with her hand. A bright space opened in her head
and memory seeped into it. Standing on the riverbank in a
purple-and-white dress, Sula swinging Chicken Little

around and around. His laughter before the hand-slip and
the water closing quickly over the place. What had she felt
then, watching Sula going around and around and then the
little boy swinging out over the water? Sula had cried and
cried when she came back from Shadrack’s house. But Nel
had remained calm. _”Shouldn’t we tell?”__ _”Did he
see?”__ _”I don’t know. No.”__ _”Let’s go. We can’t bring
him back.”__ What did old Eva mean by _you watched?__
How could she help seeing it? She was right there. But Eva
didn’t say _see,__ she said _watched.__ “I did not watch it.
I just saw it.” But it was there anyway, as it had always
been, the old feeling and the old question. The good feeling
she had had when Chicken’s hands slipped. She hadn’t
wondered about that in years. “Why didn’t I feel bad when it
happened? How come it felt so good to see him fall?” All
these years she had been secretly proud of her calm,
controlled behavior when Sula was uncontrollable, her
compassion for Sula’s frightened and shamed eyes. Now it
seemed that what she had thought was maturity, serenity
and compassion was only the tranquillity that follows a joyful
stimulation. Just as the water closed peacefully over the
turbulence of Chicken Little’s body, so had contentment
washed over her enjoyment. She was walking too fast. Not
watching where she placed her feet, she got into the weeds
by the side of the road. Running almost, she approached
Beechnut Park. Just over there was the colored part of the
cemetery. She went in. Sula was buried there along with
Plum, Hannah and now Pearl. With the same disregard for
name changes by marriage that the black people of

Medallion always showed, each flat slab had one word
carved on it. Together they read like a chant: PEACE
1895–1921, PEACE 1890– 1923, PEACE 1910–1940,
PEACE 1892–1959. They were not dead people. They
were words. Not even words. Wishes, longings. All these
years she had been harboring good feelings about Eva;
sharing, she believed, her loneliness and unloved state as
no one else could or did. She, after all, was the only one
who really understood why Eva refused to attend Sula’s
funeral. The others thought they knew; thought the
grandmother’s reasons were the same as their own–that to
pay respect to someone who had caused them so much
pain was beneath them. Nel, who did go, believed Eva’s
refusal was not due to pride or vengeance but to a plain
unwillingness to see the swallowing of her own flesh into the
dirt, a determination not to let the eyes see what the heart
could not hold. Now, however, after the way Eva had just
treated her, accused her, she wondered if the townspeople
hadn’t been right the first time. Eva _was__ mean. Sula had
even said so. There was no good reason for her to speak
so. Feebleminded or not. Old. Whatever. Eva knew what
she was doing. Always had. She had stayed away from
Sula’s funeral and accused Nel of drowning Chicken Little
for spite. The same spite that galloped all over the Bottom.
That made every gesture an offense, every off-center smile
a threat, so that even the bubbles of relief that broke in the
chest of practically everybody when Sula died did not
soften their spite and allow them to go to Mr. Hodges’
funeral parlor or send flowers from the church or bake a

yellow cake. She thought about Nathan opening the
bedroom door the day she had visited her, and finding the
body. He said he knew she was dead right away not
because her eyes were open but because her mouth was. It
looked to him like a giant yawn that she never got to finish.
He had run across the street to Teapot’s Mamma, who,
when she heard the news, said, “Ho!” like the conductor on
the train when it was about to take off except louder, and
then did a little dance. None of the women left their quilt
patches in disarray to run to the house. Nobody left the
clothes halfway through the wringer to run to the house.
Even the men just said “uhn,” when they heard. The day
passed and no one came. The night slipped into another
day and the body was still lying in Eva’s bed gazing at the
ceiling trying to complete a yawn. It was very strange, this
stubbornness about Sula. For even when China, the most
rambunctious whore in the town, died (whose black son
and white son said, when they heard she was dying, “She
ain’t dead yet?”), even then everybody stopped what they
were doing and turned out in numbers to put the fallen sister
away. It was Nel who finally called the hospital, then the
mortuary, then the police, who were the ones to come. So
the white people took over. They came in a police van and
carried the body down the steps past the four pear trees
and into the van for all the world as with Hannah. When the
police asked questions nobody gave them any information.
It took them hours to find out the dead woman’s first name.
The call was for a Miss Peace at 7 Carpenter’s Road. So
they left with that: a body, a name and an address. The

white people had to wash her, dress her, prepare her and
finally lower her. It was all done elegantly, for it was
discovered that she had a substantial death policy. Nel
went to the funeral parlor, but was so shocked by the closed
coffin she stayed only a few minutes. The following day Nel
walked to the burying and found herself the only black
person there, steeling her mind to the roses and pulleys. It
was only when she turned to leave that she saw the cluster
of black folk at the lip of the cemetery. Not coming in, not
dressed for mourning, but there waiting. Not until the white
folks left–the gravediggers, Mr. and Mrs. Hodges, and their
young son who assisted them–did those black people from
up in the Bottom enter with hooded hearts and filed eyes to
sing “Shall We Gather at the River” over the curved earth
that cut them off from the most magnificent hatred they had
ever known. Their question clotted the October air, Shall
We Gather at the River? The beautiful, the beautiful river?
Perhaps Sula answered them even then, for it began to
rain, and the women ran in tiny leaps through the grass for
fear their straightened hair would beat them home. Sadly,
heavily, Nel left the colored part of the cemetery. Further
along the road Shadrack passed her by. A little shaggier, a
little older, still energetically mad, he looked at the woman
hurrying along the road with the sunset in her face. He
stopped. Trying to remember where he had seen her
before. The effort of recollection was too much for him and
he moved on. He had to haul some trash out at Sunnydale
and it would be good and dark before he got home. He
hadn’t sold fish in a long time now. The river had killed them

all. No more silver-gray flashes, no more flat, wide,
unhurried look. No more slowing down of gills. No more
tremor on the line. Shadrack and Nel moved in opposite
directions, each thinking separate thoughts about the past.
The distance between them increased as they both
remembered gone things. Suddenly Nel stopped. Her eye
twitched and burned a little. “Sula?” she whispered, gazing
at the tops of trees. “Sula?” Leaves stirred; mud shifted;
there was the smell of overripe green things. A soft ball of
fur broke and scattered like dandelion spores in the
breeze. “All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing
Jude.” And the loss pressed down on her chest and came
up into her throat. “We was girls together,” she said as
though explaining something. “O Lord, Sula,” she cried,
“girl, girl, girlgirlgirl.” It was a fine cry–loud and long–but it
had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of
sorrow.

The End

Toni Morrison

Sula

First published in 1973

It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they
leave you. This book is for Ford and Slade, whom I miss
although they have not left me.

“Nobody knew my rose of the world but me… I had too
much glory. They don’t want glory like that in nobody’s
heart.”

–The Rose Tattoo

Foreword

In the fifties, when I was a student, the embarrassment of
being called a politically minded writer was so acute, the
fear of critical derision for channeling one’s creativity
toward the state of social affairs so profound, it made me
wonder: Why the panic? The flight from any accusation of
revealing an awareness of the political world in one’s fiction
turned my attention to the source of the panic and the
means by which writers sought to ease it. What could be so
bad about being socially astute, politically aware in
literature? Conventional wisdom agrees that political fiction
is not art; that such work is less likely to have aesthetic
value because politics–all politics–is agenda and therefore
its presence taints aesthetic production. That wisdom,

which seems to have been unavailable to Chaucer, or
Dante, or Catullus, or Sophocles, or Shakespeare, or
Dickens, is still with us, and, in 1969 it placed an inordinate
burden on African American writers. Whether they were
wholly uninterested in politics of any sort, or whether they
were politically inclined, aware, or aggressive, the fact of
their race or the race of their characters doomed them to a
“political-only” analysis of their worth. If Phillis Wheatley
wrote “The sky is blue,” the critical question was what could
blue sky mean to a black slave woman? If Jean Toomer
wrote “The iron is hot,” the question was how accurately or
poorly he expressed chains of servitude. This burden
rested not only on the critics, but also on the reader. How
does a reader of any race situate herself or himself in order
to approach the world of a black writer? Won’t there always
be apprehension about what may be revealed, exposed
about the reader? In 1970, when I began writing _Sula,__ I
had already had the depressing experience of reading
commentary on my first novel, _The Bluest Eye,__ by both
black and white reviewers that–with two exceptions–had
little merit since the evaluation ignored precisely the
“aesthetics only” criteria it championed. If the novel was
good, it was because it was faithful to a certain kind of
politics; if it was bad, it was because it was faithless to
them. The judgment was based on whether “Black people
are–or are not–like this.” This time out, I returned the
compliment and ignored the shallowness of such views
and, again, rooted the narrative in a landscape already
tainted by the fact that it existed. Only a few people would

be interested, I thought, in any wider approach–fewer than
the tiny percentage of the fifteen hundred who had bought
the first book. But the act of writing was too personally
important for me to abandon it just because the prospects
of my being taken seriously were bleak. It may be difficult
now to imagine how it felt to be seen as a problem to be
solved rather than a writer to be read. James Baldwin,
Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston–all had
been called upon to write an essay addressing the
“problem” of being a “Negro” writer. In that no-win situation-
-inauthentic, even irresponsible, to those looking for a
politically representative canvas; marginalized by those
assessing value by how “moral” the characters were–my
only option was fidelity to my own sensibility. Further
exploration of my own interests, questions, challenges. And
since my sensibility was highly political _and__
passionately aesthetic, it would unapologetically inform the
work I did. I refused to explain, or even acknowledge, the
“problem” as anything other than an artistic one. Other
questions mattered more. What is friendship between
women when unmediated by men? What choices are
available to black women outside their own society’s
approval? What are the risks of individualism in a
determinedly individualistic, yet racially uniform and socially
static, community? Female freedom always means sexual
freedom, even when-especially when–it is seen through the
prism of economic freedom. The sexual freedom of Hannah
Peach was my entrance into the story, constructed from
shreds of memory about the way local women regarded a

certain kind of female–envy coupled with amused
approbation. Against her fairly modest claims to personal
liberty are placed conventional and anarchic ones: Eva’s
physical sacrifice for economic freedom; Nel’s
accommodation to the protection marriage promises;
Sula’s resistance to either sacrifice or accommodation.
Hannah’s claims are acceptable in her neighborhood
because they are nonfinancial and nonthreatening; she
does not disturb or deplete family resources. Because her
dependence is on another woman, Eva, who has both
money and authority, she is not competitive. But Sula,
although she does nothing so horrendous as what Eva
does, is seen by the townspeople as not just competitive,
but devouring, evil. Nel, with the most minimal demands, is
seen as the muted standard. Hannah, Nel, Eva, Sula were
points of a cross–each one a choice for characters bound
by gender and race. The nexus of that cross would be a
merging of responsibility and liberty difficult to reach, a
battle among women who are understood to be least able
to win it. Wrapped around the arms of that cross were wires
of other kinds of battles–the veteran, the orphans, the
husband, the laborers, confined to a village by the same
forces that mandated the struggle. And the only possible
triumph was that of the imagination. The job, of course, was
summoning those perceptions in language that could
express them. _Sula__ stretched my attempts to
manipulate language, to work credibly and, perhaps,
elegantly with a discredited vocabulary. To use folk
language, vernacular in a manner neither exotic nor comic,

neither minstrelized nor microscopically analyzed. I wanted
to redirect, reinvent the political, cultural, and artistic
judgments saved for African American writers. I was living
in Queens while I wrote _Sula,__ commuting to Manhattan
to an office job, leaving my children to childminders and the
public school in the fall and winter, to my parents in the
summer, and was so strapped for money that the condition
moved from debilitating stress to hilarity. Every rent
payment was an event; every shopping trip a triumph of
caution over the reckless purchase of a staple. The best
news was that this was the condition of every other
single/separated female parent I knew. The things we
traded! Time, food, money, clothes, laughter, memory–and
daring. Daring especially, because in the late sixties, with
so many dead, detained, or silenced, there could be no
turning back simply because there was no “back” back
there. Cut adrift, so to speak, we found it possible to think
up things, try things, explore. Use what was known and tried
and investigate what was not. Write a play, form a theater
company, design clothes, write fiction unencumbered by
other people’s expectations. Nobody was minding us, so
we minded ourselves. In that atmosphere of “What would
you be doing or thinking if there was no gaze or hand to
stop you?” I began to think about just what that kind of
license would have been like for us black women forty
years earlier. We were being encouraged to think of
ourselves as our own salvation, to be our own best friends.
What could that mean in 1969 that it had not meant in the
1920s? The image of the woman who was both envied and

cautioned against came to mind. Elsewhere (in an essay
“Unspeakable Things Unspoken”), I have detailed my
thoughts about developing the structure of _Sula.__
“Originally, _Sula__ opened with ‘Except for World War II,
nothing interfered with National Suicide Day.’ With some
encouragement I recognized that sentence as a false
beginning.” Falseness, in this case, meant abrupt. There
was no lobby, as it were, where the reader could be
situated before being introduced to the goings-on of the
characters. As I wrote in that essay, “The threshold
between the reader and the black-topic text need not be the
safe, welcoming lobby I persuaded myself [_Sula__]
needed at that time. My preference was the demolition of
the lobby altogether. [Of all of my books], only _Sula__ has
this ‘entrance.’ The others refuse the ‘presentation,’ refuse
the seductive safe harbor; the line of demarcation
between… them and us. Refuse, in effect, to cater to the
diminished expectations of the reader, or his or her alarm
heightened by the emotional luggage one carries into the
black-topic text…. [Although] the bulk of the opening I finally
wrote is about the community, a view of it… the view is not
from within… but from the point of view of a stranger–the
‘valley man’ who might happen to be there and to and for
whom all this is mightily strange, even exotic…. [In] my new
first sentence I am introducing an outside-the-circle reader
into the circle. I am translating the anonymous into the
specific, a ‘place’ into a ‘neighborhood’ and letting a
stranger in, through whose eyes it can be viewed.” This
deference, paid to the “white” gaze, was the one time I

addressed the “problem.” Had I begun with Shadrack, as
originally planned, I would have ignored the gentle welcome
and put the reader into immediate confrontation with his
wounded mind. It would have called greater attention to the
traumatic displacement this most wasteful capitalist war
had on black people, and thrown into relief their desperate
and desperately creative strategies of survival. In the
revised opening I tried to represent discriminatory,
prosecutorial racial oppression as well as the community’s
efforts to remain stable and healthy: the neighborhood has
been almost completely swept away by commercial
interests (a golf course), but the remains of what sustained
it (music, dancing, craft, religion, irony, wit) are what the
“valley man,” the stranger, sees–or could have seen. It is a
more inviting embrace than Shadrack’s organized public
madness–it helps to unify the neighborhood until Sula’s
anarchy challenges it. Outlaw women are fascinating–not
always for their behavior, but because historically women
are seen as naturally disruptive and their status is an illegal
one from birth if it is not under the rule of men. In much
literature a woman’s escape from male rule led to regret,
misery, if not complete disaster. In _Sula__ I wanted to
explore the consequences of what that escape might be, on
not only a conventional black society, but on female
friendship. In 1969, in Queens, snatching liberty seemed
compelling. Some of us thrived; some of us died. All of us
had a taste.

Sula

In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry
patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion
City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood. It stood
in the hills above the valley town of Medallion and spread all
the way to the river. It is called the suburbs now, but when
black people lived there it was called the Bottom. One
road, shaded by beeches, oaks, maples and chestnuts,
connected it to the valley. The beeches are gone now, and
so are the pear trees where children sat and yelled down
through the blossoms to passersby. Generous funds have
been allotted to level the stripped and faded buildings that
clutter the road from Medallion up to the golf course. They
are going to raze the Time and a Half Pool Hall, where feet
in long tan shoes once pointed down from chair rungs. A
steel ball will knock to dust Irene’s Palace of Cosmetology,
where women used to lean their heads back on sink trays
and doze while Irene lathered Nu Nile into their hair. Men in
khaki work clothes will pry loose the slats of Reba’s Grill,
where the owner cooked in her hat because she couldn’t
remember the ingredients without it. There will be nothing
left of the Bottom (the footbridge that crossed the river is
already gone), but perhaps it is just as well, since it wasn’t a
town anyway: just a neighborhood where on quiet days
people in valley houses could hear singing sometimes,
banjos sometimes, and, if a valley man happened to have
business up in those hills–collecting rent or insurance
payments–he might see a dark woman in a flowered dress
doing a bit of cakewalk, a bit of black bottom, a bit of

“messing around” to the lively notes of a mouth organ. Her
bare feet would raise the saffron dust that floated down on
the coveralls and bunion-split shoes of the man breathing
music in and out of his harmonica. The black people
watching her would laugh and rub their knees, and it would
be easy for the valley man to hear the laughter and not
notice the adult pain that rested somewhere under the
eyelids, somewhere under their head rags and soft felt
hats, somewhere in the palm of the hand, somewhere
behind the frayed lapels, somewhere in the sinew’s curve.
He’d have to stand in the back of Greater Saint Matthew’s
and let the tenor’s voice dress him in silk, or touch the
hands of the spoon carvers (who had not worked in eight
years) and let the fingers that danced on wood kiss his
skin. Otherwise the pain would escape him even though the
laughter was part of the pain. A shucking, knee-slapping,
wet-eyed laughter that could even describe and explain
how they came to be where they were. A joke. A nigger
joke. That was the way it got started. Not the town, of
course, but that part of town where the Negroes lived, the
part they called the Bottom in spite of the fact that it was up
in the hills. Just a nigger joke. The kind white folks tell when
the mill closes down and they’re looking for a little comfort
somewhere. The kind colored folks tell on themselves when
the rain doesn’t come, or comes for weeks, and they’re
looking for a little comfort somehow. A good white farmer
promised freedom and a piece of bottom land to his slave
if he would perform some very difficult chores. When the
slave completed the work, he asked the farmer to keep his

end of the bargain. Freedom was easy–the farmer had no
objection to that. But he didn’t want to give up any land. So
he told the slave that he was very sorry that he had to give
him valley land. He had hoped to give him a piece of the
Bottom. The slave blinked and said he thought valley land
was bottom land. The master said, “Oh, no! See those
hills? That’s bottom land, rich and fertile.” “But it’s high up in
the hills,” said the slave. “High up from us,” said the master,
“but when God looks down, it’s the bottom. That’s why we
call it so. It’s the bottom of heaven–best land there is.” So
the slave pressed his master to try to get him some. He
preferred it to the valley. And it was done. The nigger got
the hilly land, where planting was backbreaking, where the
soil slid down and washed away the seeds, and where the
wind lingered all through the winter. Which accounted for
the fact that white people lived on the rich valley floor in that
little river town in Ohio, and the blacks populated the hills
above it, taking small consolation in the fact that every day
they could literally look down on the white folks. Still, it was
lovely up in the Bottom. After the town grew and the farm
land turned into a village and the village into a town and the
streets of Medallion were hot and dusty with progress,
those heavy trees that sheltered the shacks up in the
Bottom were wonderful to see. And the hunters who went
there sometimes wondered in private if maybe the white
farmer was right after all. Maybe it was the bottom of
heaven. The black people would have disagreed, but they
had no time to think about it. They were mightily
preoccupied with earthly things–and each other, wondering

even as early as 1920 what Shadrack was all about, what
that little girl Sula who grew into a woman in their town was
all about, and what they themselves were all about, tucked
up there in the Bottom.

1919

Except for World War II, nothing ever interfered with the
celebration of National Suicide Day. It had taken place
every January third since 1920, although Shadrack, its
founder, was for many years the only celebrant. Blasted and
permanently astonished by the events of 1917, he had
returned to Medallion handsome but ravaged, and even the
most fastidious people in the town sometimes caught
themselves dreaming of what he must have been like a few
years back before he went off to war. A young man of
hardly twenty, his head full of nothing and his mouth
recalling the taste of lipstick, Shadrack had found himself in
December, 1917, running with his comrades across a field
in France. It was his first encounter with the enemy and he
didn’t know whether his company was running toward them
or away. For several days they had been marching,
keeping close to a stream that was frozen at its edges. At
one point they crossed it, and no sooner had he stepped
foot on the other side than the day was adangle with shouts
and explosions. Shellfire was all around him, and though he
knew that this was something called _it,__ he could not
muster up the proper feeling–the feeling that would
accommodate _it.__ He expected to be terrified or

exhilarated–to feel _something__ very strong. In fact, he felt
only the bite of a nail in his boot, which pierced the ball of
his foot whenever he came down on it. The day was cold
enough to make his breath visible, and he wondered for a
moment at the purity and whiteness of his own breath
among the dirty, gray explosions surrounding him. He ran,
bayonet fixed, deep in the great sweep of men flying across
this field. Wincing at the pain in his foot, he turned his head
a little to the right and saw the face of a soldier near him fly
off. Before he could register shock, the rest of the soldier’s
head disappeared under the inverted soup bowl of his
helmet. But stubbornly, taking no direction from the brain,
the body of the headless soldier ran on, with energy and
grace, ignoring altogether the drip and slide of brain tissue
down its back. When Shadrack opened his eyes he was
propped up in a small bed. Before him on a tray was a
large tin plate divided into three triangles. In one triangle
was rice, in another meat, and in the third stewed
tomatoes. A small round depression held a cup of whitish
liquid. Shadrack stared at the soft colors that filled these
triangles: the lumpy whiteness of rice, the quivering blood
tomatoes, the grayish-brown meat. All their repugnance
was contained in the neat balance of the triangles–a
balance that soothed him, transferred some of its
equilibrium to him. Thus reassured that the white, the red
and the brown would stay where they were–would not
explode or burst forth from their restricted zones–he
suddenly felt hungry and looked around for his hands. His
glance was cautious at first, for he had to be very careful–

anything could be anywhere. Then he noticed two lumps
beneath the beige blanket on either side of his hips. With
extreme care he lifted one arm and was relieved to find his
hand attached to his wrist. He tried the other and found it
also. Slowly he directed one hand toward the cup and, just
as he was about to spread his fingers, they began to grow
in higgledypiggledy fashion like Jack’s beanstalk all over
the tray and the bed. With a shriek he closed his eyes and
thrust his huge growing hands under the covers. Once out
of sight they seemed to shrink back to their normal size. But
the yell had brought a male nurse. “Private? We’re not
going to have any trouble today, are we? Are we, Private?”
Shadrack looked up at a balding man dressed in a
greencotton jacket and trousers. His hair was parted low on
the right side so that some twenty or thirty yellow hairs could
discreetly cover the nakedness of his head. “Come on.
Pick up that spoon. Pick it up, Private. Nobody is going to
feed you forever.” Sweat slid from Shadrack’s armpits
down his sides. He could not bear to see his hands grow
again and he was frightened of the voice in the apple-green
suit. “Pick it up, I said. There’s no point to this… ” The nurse
reached under the cover for Shadrack’s wrist to pull out the
monstrous hand. Shadrack jerked it back and overturned
the tray. In panic he raised himself to his knees and tried to
fling off and away his terrible fingers, but succeeded only in
knocking the nurse into the next bed. When they bound
Shadrack into a straitjacket, he was both relieved and
grateful, for his hands were at last hidden and confined to
whatever size they had attained. Laced and silent in his

small bed, he tried to tie the loose cords in his mind. He
wanted desperately to see his own face and connect it with
the word “private”–the word the nurse (and the others who
helped bind him) had called him. “Private” he thought was
something secret, and he wondered why they looked at him
and called him a secret. Still, if his hands behaved as they
had done, what might he expect from his face? The fear
and longing were too much for him, so he began to think of
other things. That is, he let his mind slip into whatever cave
mouths of memory it chose. He saw a window that looked
out on a river which he knew was full of fish. Someone was
speaking softly just outside the door… Shadrack’s earlier
violence had coincided with a memorandum from the
hospital executive staff in reference to the distribution of
patients in high-risk areas. There was clearly a demand for
space. The priority or the violence earned Shadrack his
release, $217 in cash, a full suit of clothes and copies of
very official-looking papers. When he stepped out of the
hospital door the grounds overwhelmed him: the cropped
shrubbery, the edged lawns, the undeviating walks.
Shadrack looked at the cement stretches: each one
leading clearheadedly to some presumably desirable
destination. There were no fences, no warnings, no
obstacles at all between concrete and green grass, so one
could easily ignore the tidy sweep of stone and cut out in
another direction–a direction of one’s own. Shadrack stood
at the foot of the hospital steps watching the heads of trees
tossing ruefully but harmlessly, since their trunks were
rooted too deeply in the earth to threaten him. Only the

walks made him uneasy. He shifted his weight, wondering
how he could get to the gate without stepping on the
concrete. While plotting his course-where he would have to
leap, where to skirt a clump of bushes–a loud guffaw
startled him. Two men were going up the steps. Then he
noticed that there were many people about, and that he
was just now seeing them, or else they had just
materialized. They were thin slips, like paper dolls floating
down the walks. Some were seated in chairs with wheels,
propelled by other paper figures from behind. All seemed
to be smoking, and their arms and legs curved in the
breeze. A good high wind would pull them up and away and
they would land perhaps among the tops of the trees.
Shadrack took the plunge. Four steps and he was on the
grass heading for the gate. He kept his head down to avoid
seeing the paper people swerving and bending here and
there, and he lost his way. When he looked up, he was
standing by a low red building separated from the main
building by a covered walkway. From somewhere came a
sweetish smell which reminded him of something painful.
He looked around for the gate and saw that he had gone
directly away from it in his complicated journey over the
grass. Just to the left of the low building was a graveled
driveway that appeared to lead outside the grounds. He
trotted quickly to it and left, at last, a haven of more than a
year, only eight days of which he fully recollected. Once on
the road, he headed west. The long stay in the hospital had
left him weak–too weak to walk steadily on the gravel
shoulders of the road. He shuffled, grew dizzy, stopped for

breath, started again, stumbling and sweating but refusing
to wipe his temples, still afraid to look at his hands.
Passengers in dark, square cars shuttered their eyes at
what they took to be a drunken man. The sun was already
directly over his head when he came to a town. A few
blocks of shaded streets and he was already at its heart–a
pretty, quietly regulated downtown. Exhausted, his feet
clotted with pain, he sat down at the curbside to take off his
shoes. He closed his eyes to avoid seeing his hands and
fumbled with the laces of the heavy high-topped shoes. The
nurse had tied them into a double knot, the way one does
for children, and Shadrack, long unaccustomed to the
manipulation of intricate things, could not get them loose.
Uncoordinated, his fingernails tore away at the knots. He
fought a rising hysteria that was not merely anxiety to free
his aching feet; his very life depended on the release of the
knots. Suddenly without raising his eyelids, he began to cry.
Twenty-two years old, weak, hot, frightened, not daring to
acknowledge the fact that he didn’t even know who or what
he was… with no past, no language, no tribe, no source, no
address book, no comb, no pencil, no clock, no pocket
handkerchief, no rug, no bed, no can opener, no faded
postcard, no soap, no key, no tobacco pouch, no soiled
underwear and nothing nothing nothing to do… he was sure
of one thing only: the unchecked monstrosity of his hands.
He cried soundlessly at the curbside of a small Midwestern
town wondering where the window was, and the river, and
the soft voices just outside the door… Through his tears he
saw the fingers joining the laces, tentatively at first, then

rapidly. The four fingers of each hand fused into the fabric,
knotted themselves and zigzagged in and out of the tiny
eyeholes. By the time the police drove up, Shadrack was
suffering from a blinding headache, which was not abated
by the comfort he felt when the policemen pulled his hands
away from what he thought was a permanent entanglement
with his shoelaces. They took him to jail, booked him for
vagrancy and intoxication, and locked him in a cell. Lying
on a cot, Shadrack could only stare helplessly at the wall,
so paralyzing was the pain in his head. He lay in this agony
for a long while and then realized he was staring at the
painted-over letters of a command to fuck himself. He
studied the phrase as the pain in his head subsided. Like
moonlight stealing under a window shade an idea
insinuated itself: his earlier desire to see his own face. He
looked for a mirror; there was none. Finally, keeping his
hands carefully behind his back he made his way to the
toilet bowl and peeped in. The water was unevenly lit by the
sun so he could make nothing out. Returning to his cot he
took the blanket and covered his head, rendering the water
dark enough to see his reflection. There in the toilet water
he saw a grave black face. A black so definite, so
unequivocal, it astonished him. He had been harboring a
skittish apprehension that he was not real–that he didn’t
exist at all. But when the blackness greeted him with its
indisputable presence, he wanted nothing more. In his joy
he took the risk of letting one edge of the blanket drop and
glanced at his hands. They were still. Courteously still.
Shadrack rose and returned to the cot, where he fell into the

first sleep of his new life. A sleep deeper than the hospital
drugs; deeper than the pits of plums, steadier than the
condor’s wing; more tranquil than the curve of eggs. The
sheriff looked through the bars at the young man with the
matted hair. He had read through his prisoner’s papers and
hailed a farmer. When Shadrack awoke, the sheriff handed
him back his papers and escorted him to the back of a
wagon. Shadrack got in and in less than three hours he was
back in Medallion, for he had been only twenty-two miles
from his window, his river, and his soft voices just outside
the door. In the back of the wagon, supported by sacks of
squash and hills of pumpkins, Shadrack began a struggle
that was to last for twelve days, a struggle to order and
focus experience. It had to do with making a place for fear
as a way of controlling it. He knew the smell of death and
was terrified of it, for he could not anticipate it. It was not
death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness
of both. In sorting it all out, he hit on the notion that if one
day a year were devoted to it, everybody could get it out of
the way and the rest of the year would be safe and free. In
this manner he instituted National Suicide Day. On the third
day of the new year, he walked through the Bottom down
Carpenter’s Road with a cowbell and a hangman’s rope
calling the people together. Telling them that this was their
only chance to kill themselves or each other. At first the
people in the town were frightened; they knew Shadrack
was crazy but that did not mean that he didn’t have any
sense or, even more important, that he had no power. His
eyes were so wild, his hair so long and matted, his voice

was so full of authority and thunder that he caused panic on
the first, or Charter, National Suicide Day in 1920. The next
one, in 1921, was less frightening but still worrisome. The
people had seen him a year now in between. He lived in a
shack on the riverbank that had once belonged to his
grandfather long time dead. On Tuesday and Friday he
sold the fish he had caught that morning, the rest of the
week he was drunk, loud, obscene, funny and outrageous.
But he never touched anybody, never fought, never
caressed. Once the people understood the boundaries and
nature of his madness, they could fit him, so to speak, into
the scheme of things. Then, on subsequent National
Suicide Days, the grown people looked out from behind
curtains as he rang his bell; a few stragglers increased their
speed, and little children screamed and ran. The tetter
heads tried goading him (although he was only four or five
years older then they) but not for long, for his curses were
stingingly personal. As time went along, the people took
less notice of these January thirds, or rather they thought
they did, thought they had no attitudes or feelings one way
or another about Shadrack’s annual solitary parade. In fact
they had simply stopped remarking on the holiday because
they had absorbed it into their thoughts, into their language,
into their lives. Someone said to a friend, “You sure was a
long time delivering that baby. How long was you in labor?”
And the friend answered, “‘Bout three days. The pains
started on Suicide Day and kept up till the following
Sunday. Was borned on Sunday. All my boys is Sunday
boys.” Some lover said to his bride-to-be, “Let’s do it after

New Years, ‘stead of before. I get paid New Year’s Eve.”
And his sweetheart answered, “OK, but make sure it ain’t
on Suicide Day. I ain’t ’bout to be listening to no cowbells
whilst the weddin’s going on.” Somebody’s grandmother
said her hens always started a laying of double yolks right
after Suicide Day. Then Reverend Deal took it up, saying
the same folks who had sense enough to avoid Shadrack’s
call were the ones who insisted on drinking themselves to
death or womanizing themselves to death. “May’s well go
on with Shad and save the Lamb the trouble of
redemption.” Easily, quietly, Suicide Day became a part of
the fabric of life up in the Bottom of Medallion, Ohio.

1920

It had to be as far away from the Sundown House as
possible. And her grandmother’s middle-aged nephew who
lived in a Northern town called Medallion was the one
chance she had to make sure it would be. The red shutters
had haunted both Helene Sabat and her grandmother for
sixteen years. Helene was born behind those shutters,
daughter of a Creole whore who worked there. The
grandmother took Helene away from the soft lights and
flowered carpets of the Sundown House and raised her
under the dolesome eyes of a multicolored Virgin Mary,
counseling her to be constantly on guard for any sign of her
mother’s wild blood. So when Wiley Wright came to visit his
Great Aunt Cecile in New Orleans, his enchantment with the
pretty Helene became a marriage proposal–under the

pressure of both women. He was a seaman (or rather a
lakeman, for he was a ship’s cook on one of the Great
Lakes lines), in port only three days out of every sixteen. He
took his bride to his home in Medallion and put her in a
lovely house with a brick porch and real lace curtains at the
window. His long absences were quite bearable for Helene
Wright, especially when, after some nine years of marriage,
her daughter was born. Her daughter was more comfort
and purpose than she had ever hoped to find in this life.
She rose grandly to the occasion of motherhood–grateful,
deep down in her heart, that the child had not inherited the
great beauty that was hers: that her skin had dusk in it, that
her lashes were substantial but not undignified in their
length, that she had taken the broad flat nose of Wiley
(although Helene expected to improve it somewhat) and his
generous lips. Under Helene’s hand the girl became
obedient and polite. Any enthusiasms that little Nel showed
were calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter’s
imagination underground. Helene Wright was an
impressive woman, at least in Medallion she was. Heavy
hair in a bun, dark eyes arched in a perpetual query about
other people’s manners. A woman who won all social
battles with presence and a conviction of the legitimacy of
her authority. Since there was no Catholic church in
Medallion then, she joined the most conservative black
church. And held sway. It was Helene who never turned her
head in church when latecomers arrived; Helene who
established the practice of seasonal altar flowers; Helene
who introduced the giving of banquets of welcome to

returning Negro veterans. She lost only one battle–the
pronunciation of her name. The people in the Bottom
refused to say Helene. They called her Helen Wright and
left it at that. All in all her life was a satisfactory one. She
loved her house and enjoyed manipulating her daughter
and her husband. She would sigh sometimes just before
falling asleep, thinking that she had indeed come far
enough away from the Sundown House. So it was with
extremely mixed emotions that she read a letter from Mr.
Henri Martin describing the illness of her grandmother, and
suggesting she come down right away. She didn’t want to
go, but could not bring herself to ignore the silent plea of the
woman who had rescued her. It was November. November,
1920. Even in Medallion there was a victorious swagger in
the legs of white men and a dull-eyed excitement in the
eyes of colored veterans. Helene thought about the trip
South with heavy misgiving but decided that she had the
best protection: her manner and her bearing, to which she
would add a beautiful dress. She bought some deep-brown
wool and threefourths of a yard of matching velvet. Out of
this she made herself a heavy but elegant dress with velvet
collar and pockets. Nel watched her mother cutting the
pattern from newspapers and moving her eyes rapidly from
a magazine model to her own hands. She watched her turn
up the kerosene lamp at sunset to sew far into the night.
The day they were ready, Helene cooked a smoked ham,
left a note for her lake-bound husband, in case he docked
early, and walked head high and arms stiff with luggage
ahead of her daughter to the train depot. It was a longer

walk than she remembered, and they saw the train
steaming up just as they turned the corner. They ran along
the track looking for the coach pointed out to them by the
colored porter. Even at that they made a mistake. Helene
and her daughter entered a coach peopled by some twenty
white men and women. Rather than go back and down the
three wooden steps again, Helene decided to spare herself
some embarrassment and walk on through to the colored
car. She carried two pieces of luggage and a string purse;
her daughter carried a covered basket of food. As they
opened the door marked COLORED ONLY, they saw a
white conductor coming toward them. It was a chilly day but
a light skim of sweat glistened on the woman’s face as she
and the little girl struggled to hold the door open, hang on to
their luggage and enter all at once. The conductor let his
eyes travel over the pale yellow woman and then stuck his
little finger into his ear, jiggling it free of wax. “What you
think you doin’, gal?” Helene looked up at him. So soon. So
soon. She hadn’t even begun the trip back. Back to her
grandmother’s house in the city where the red shutters
glowed, and already she had been called “gal.” All the old
vulnerabilities, all the old fears of being somehow flawed
gathered in her stomach and made her hands tremble. She
had heard only that one word; it dangled above her wide-
brimmed hat, which had slipped, in her exertion, from its
carefully leveled placement and was now tilted in a bit of a
jaunt over her eye. Thinking he wanted her tickets, she
quickly dropped both the cowhide suitcase and the straw
one in order to search for them in her purse. An eagerness

to please and an apology for living met in her voice. “I have
them. Right here somewhere, sir… ” The conductor looked
at the bit of wax his fingernail had retrieved. “What was you
doin’ back in there? What was you doin’ in that coach
yonder?” Helene licked her lips. “Oh… I… ” Her glance
moved beyond the white man’s face to the passengers
seated behind him. Four or five black faces were watching,
two belonging to soldiers still in their shit-colored uniforms
and peaked caps. She saw their closed faces, their locked
eyes, and turned for compassion to the gray eyes of the
conductor. “We made a mistake, sir. You see, there wasn’t
no sign. We just got in the wrong car, that’s all. Sir.” “We
don’t ‘low no mistakes on this train. Now git your butt on in
there.” He stood there staring at her until she realized that
he wanted her to move aside. Pulling Nel by the arm, she
pressed herself and her daughter into the foot space in
front of a wooden seat. Then, for no earthly reason, at least
no reason that anybody could understand, certainly no
reason that Nel understood then or later, she smiled. Like a
street pup that wags its tail at the very doorjamb of the
butcher shop he has been kicked away from only moments
before, Helene smiled. Smiled dazzlingly and coquettishly
at the salmon-colored face of the conductor. Nel looked
away from the flash of pretty teeth to the other passengers.
The two black soldiers, who had been watching the scene
with what appeared to be indifference, now looked stricken.
Behind Nel was the bright and blazing light of her mother’s
smile; before her the midnight eyes of the soldiers. She
saw the muscles of their faces tighten, a movement under

the skin from blood to marble. No change in the expression
of the eyes, but a hard wetness that veiled them as they
looked at the stretch of her mother’s foolish smile. As the
door slammed on the conductor’s exit, Helene walked down
the aisle to a seat. She looked about for a second to see
whether any of the men would help her put the suitcases in
the overhead rack. Not a man moved. Helene sat down,
fussily, her back toward the men. Nel sat opposite, facing
both her mother and the soldiers, neither of whom she
could look at. She felt both pleased and ashamed to sense
that these men, unlike her father, who worshiped his
graceful, beautiful wife, were bubbling with a hatred for her
mother that had not been there in the beginning but had
been born with the dazzling smile. In the silence that
preceded the train’s heave, she looked deeply at the folds
of her mother’s dress. There in the fall of the heavy brown
wool she held her eyes. She could not risk letting them
travel upward for fear of seeing that the hooks and eyes in
the placket of the dress had come undone and exposed the
custard-colored skin underneath. She stared at the hem,
wanting to believe in its weight but knowing that custard
was all that it hid. If this tall, proud woman, this woman who
was very particular about her friends, who slipped into
church with unequaled elegance, who could quell a
roustabout with a look, if _she__ were really custard, then
there was a chance that Nel was too. It was on that train,
shuffling toward Cincinnati, that she resolved to be on
guard–always. She wanted to make certain that no man
ever looked at her that way. That no midnight eyes or

marbled flesh would ever accost her and turn her into jelly.
For two days they rode; two days of watching sleet turn to
rain, turn to purple sunsets, and one night knotted on the
wooden seats (their heads on folded coats), trying not to
hear the snoring soldiers. When they changed trains in
Birmingham for the last leg of the trip, they discovered what
luxury they had been in through Kentucky and Tennessee,
where the rest stops had all had colored toilets. After
Birmingham there were none. Helene’s face was drawn
with the need to relieve herself, and so intense was her
distress she finally brought herself to speak about her
problem to a black woman with four children who had got
on in Tuscaloosa. “Is there somewhere we can go to use
the restroom?” The woman looked up at her and seemed
not to understand. “Ma’am?” Her eyes fastened on the thick
velvet collar, the fair skin, the high-tone voice. “The
restroom,” Helene repeated. Then, in a whisper, “The
toilet.” The woman pointed out the window and said, “Yes,
ma’am. Yonder.” Helene looked out of the window halfway
expecting to see a comfort station in the distance; instead
she saw graygreen trees leaning over tangled grass.
“Where?” “Yonder,” the woman said. “Meridian. We be
pullin’ in direc’lin.” Then she smiled sympathetically and
asked, “Kin you make it?” Helene nodded and went back
to her seat trying to think of other things–for the surest way
to have an accident would be to remember her full bladder.
At Meridian the women got out with their children. While
Helene looked about the tiny stationhouse for a door that
said COLORED WOMEN, the other woman stalked off to a

field of high grass on the far side of the track. Some white
men were leaning on the railing in front of the stationhouse.
It was not only their tongues curling around toothpicks that
kept Helene from asking information of them. She looked
around for the other woman and, seeing just the top of her
head rag in the grass, slowly realized where “yonder” was.
All of them, the fat woman and her four children, three boys
and a girl, Helene and her daughter, squatted there in the
four o’clock Meridian sun. They did it again in Ellisville,
again in Hattiesburg, and by the time they reached Slidell,
not too far from Lake Pontchartrain, Helene could not only
fold leaves as well as the fat woman, she never felt a stir as
she passed the muddy eyes of the men who stood like
wrecked Dorics under the station roofs of those towns. The
lift in spirit that such an accomplishment produced in her
quickly disappeared when the train finally pulled into New
Orleans. Cecile Sabat’s house leaned between two others
just like it on Elysian Fields. A Frenchified shotgun house, it
sported a magnificent garden in the back and a tiny
wrought-iron fence in the front. On the door hung a black
crepe wreath with purple ribbon. They were too late. Helene
reached up to touch the ribbon, hesitated, and knocked. A
man in a collarless shirt opened the door. Helene identified
herself and he said he was Henri Martin and that he was
there for the settin’-up. They stepped into the house. The
Virgin Mary clasped her hands in front of her neck three
times in the front room and once in the bedroom where
Cecile’s body lay. The old woman had died without seeing
or blessing her granddaughter. No one other than Mr.

Martin seemed to be in the house, but a sweet odor as of
gardenias told them that someone else had been. Blotting
her lashes with a white handkerchief, Helene walked
through the kitchen to the back bedroom where she had
slept for sixteen years. Nel trotted along behind, enchanted
with the smell, the candles and the strangeness. When
Helene bent to loosen the ribbons of Nel’s hat, a woman in
a yellow dress came out of the garden and onto the back
porch that opened into the bedroom. The two women
looked at each other. There was no recognition in the eyes
of either. Then Helene said, “This is your… grandmother,
Nel.” Nel looked at her mother and then quickly back at the
door they had just come out of. “No. That was your great-
grandmother. This is your grandmother. My… mother.”
Before the child could think, her words were hanging in the
gardenia air. “But she looks so young.” The woman in the
canary-yellow dress laughed and said she was forty-eight,
“an old forty-eight.” Then it was she who carried the
gardenia smell. This tiny woman with the softness and glare
of a canary. In that somber house that held four Virgin
Marys, where death sighed in every corner and candles
sputtered, the gardenia smell and canary-yellow dress
emphasized the funeral atmosphere surrounding them. The
woman smiled, glanced in the mirror and said, throwing her
voice toward Helene, “That your only one?” “Yes,” said
Helene. “Pretty. A lot like you.” “Yes. Well. She’s ten now.”
“Ten? Vrai? Small for her age, no?” Helene shrugged and
looked at her daughter’s questioning eyes. The woman in
the yellow dress leaned forward. “Come. Come, chere.”

Helene interrupted. “We have to get cleaned up. We been
three days on the train with no chance to wash or… ”
“Comment t’appelle?” “She doesn’t talk Creole.” “Then you
ask her.” “She wants to know your name, honey.” With her
head pressed into her mother’s heavy brown dress, Nel told
her and then asked, “What’s yours?” “Mine’s Rochelle.
Well. I must be going on.” She moved closer to the mirror
and stood there sweeping hair up from her neck back into
its halo-like roll, and wetting with spit the ringlets that fell
over her ears. “I been here, you know, most of the day. She
pass on yesterday. The funeral tomorrow. Henri takin’
care.” She struck a match, blew it out and darkened her
eyebrows with the burnt head. All the while Helene and Nel
watched her. The one in a rage at the folded leaves she
had endured, the wooden benches she had slept on, all to
miss seeing her grandmother and seeing instead that
painted canary who never said a word of greeting or
affection or… Rochelle continued. “I don’t know what
happen to de house. Long time paid for. You be thinkin’ on
it? Oui?” Her newly darkened eyebrows queried Helene.
“Oui.” Helene’s voice was chilly. “I be thinkin’ on it.” “Oh,
well. Not for me to say… ” Suddenly she swept around and
hugged Nel–a quick embrace tighter and harder than one
would have imagined her thin soft arms capable of. “‘Voir!
‘Voir!” and she was gone. In the kitchen, being soaped
head to toe by her mother, Nel ventured an observation.
“She smelled so nice. And her skin was so soft.” Helene
rinsed the cloth. “Much handled things are always soft.”
“What does ‘vwah’ mean?” “I don’t know,” her mother said.

“I don’t talk Creole.” She gazed at her daughter’s wet
buttocks. “And neither do you.” When they got back to
Medallion and into the quiet house they saw the note
exactly where they had left it and the ham dried out in the
icebox. “Lord, I’ve never been so glad to see this place. But
look at the dust. Get the rags, Nel. Oh, never mind. Let’s
breathe awhile first. Lord, I never thought I’d get back here
safe and sound. Whoo. Well, it’s over. Good and over.
Praise His name. Look at that. I told that old fool not to
deliver any milk and there’s the can curdled to beat all.
What gets into people? I told him not to. Well, I got other
things to worry ’bout. Got to get a fire started. I left it ready
so I wouldn’t have to do nothin’ but light it. Lord, it’s cold.
Don’t just sit there, honey. You could be pulling your nose…
” Nel sat on the red-velvet sofa listening to her mother but
remembering the smell and the tight, tight hug of the woman
in yellow who rubbed burned matches over her eyes. Late
that night after the fire was made, the cold supper eaten,
the surface dust removed, Nel lay in bed thinking of her trip.
She remembered clearly the urine running down and into
her stockings until she learned how to squat properly; the
disgust on the face of the dead woman and the sound of
the funeral drums. It had been an exhilarating trip but a
fearful one. She had been frightened of the soldiers’ eyes
on the train, the black wreath on the door, the custard
pudding she believed lurked under her mother’s heavy
dress, the feel of unknown streets and unknown people. But
she had gone on a real trip, and now she was different. She
got out of bed and lit the lamp to look in the mirror. There

was her face, plain brown eyes, three braids and the nose
her mother hated. She looked for a long time and suddenly
a shiver ran through her. “I’m me,” she whispered. “Me.” Nel
didn’t know quite what she meant, but on the other hand she
knew exactly what she meant. “I’m me. I’m not their
daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me. Me.” Each time she said the
word _me__ there was a gathering in her like power, like
joy, like fear. Back in bed with her discovery, she stared out
the window at the dark leaves of the horse chestnut. “Me,”
she murmured. And then, sinking deeper into the quilts, “I
want… I want to be… wonderful. Oh, Jesus, make me
wonderful.” The many experiences of her trip crowded in on
her. She slept. It was the last as well as the first time she
was ever to leave Medallion. For days afterward she
imagined other trips she would take, alone though, to
faraway places. Contemplating them was delicious.
Leaving Medallion would be her goal. But that was before
she met Sula, the girl she had seen for five years at
Garfield Primary but never played with, never knew,
because her mother said that Sula’s mother was sooty. The
trip, perhaps, or her new found me-ness, gave her the
strength to cultivate a friend in spite of her mother. When
Sula first visited the Wright house, Helene’s curdled scorn
turned to butter. Her daughter’s friend seemed to have none
of the mother’s slackness. Nel, who regarded the
oppressive neatness of her home with dread, felt
comfortable in it with Sula, who loved it and would sit on the
red-velvet sofa for ten to twenty minutes at a time–still as
dawn. As for Nel, she preferred Sula’s woolly house, where

a pot of something was always cooking on the stove; where
the mother, Hannah, never scolded or gave directions;
where all sorts of people dropped in; where newspapers
were stacked in the hallway, and dirty dishes left for hours
at a time in the sink, and where a one-legged grandmother
named Eva handed you goobers from deep inside her
pockets or read you a dream.

1921

Sula Peace lived in a house of many rooms that had been
built over a period of five years to the specifications of its
owner, who kept on adding things: more stairways–there
were three sets to the second floor–more rooms, doors
and stoops. There were rooms that had three doors, others
that opened out on the porch only and were inaccessible
from any other part of the house; others that you could get
to only by going through somebody’s bedroom. The creator
and sovereign of this enormous house with the four sickle-
pear trees in the front yard and the single elm in the back
yard was Eva Peace, who sat in a wagon on the third floor
directing the lives of her children, friends, strays, and a
constant stream of boarders. Fewer than nine people in the
town remembered when Eva had two legs, and her oldest
child, Hannah, was not one of them. Unless Eva herself
introduced the subject, no one ever spoke of her disability;
they pretended to ignore it, unless, in some mood of fancy,
she began some fearful story about it–generally to entertain
children. How the leg got up by itself one day and walked

on off. How she hobbled after it but it ran too fast. Or how
she had a corn on her toe and it just grew and grew and
grew until her whole foot was a corn and then it traveled on
up her leg and wouldn’t stop growing until she put a red rag
at the top but by that time it was already at her knee.
Somebody said Eva stuck it under a train and made them
pay off. Another said she sold it to a hospital for $10,000–
at which Mr. Reed opened his eyes and asked, “Nigger gal
legs goin’ for $10,000 a _piece?__” as though he could
understand $10,000 a _pair__–but for _one?__ Whatever
the fate of her lost leg, the remaining one was magnificent.
It was stockinged and shod at all times and in all weather.
Once in a while she got a felt slipper for Christmas or her
birthday, but they soon disappeared, for Eva always wore a
black laced-up shoe that came well above her ankle. Nor
did she wear overlong dresses to disguise the empty place
on her left side. Her dresses were mid-calf so that her one
glamorous leg was always in view as well as the long fall of
space below her left thigh. One of her men friends had
fashioned a kind of wheelchair for her: a rocking-chair top
fitted into a large child’s wagon. In this contraption she
wheeled around the room, from bedside to dresser to the
balcony that opened out the north side of her room or to the
window that looked out on the back yard. The wagon was
so low that children who spoke to her standing up were eye
level with her, and adults, standing or sitting, had to look
down at her. But they didn’t know it. They all had the
impression that they were looking up at her, up into the
open distances of her eyes, up into the soft black of her

nostrils and up at the crest of her chin. Eva had married a
man named BoyBoy and had three children: Hannah, the
eldest, and Eva, whom she named after herself but called
Pearl, and a son named Ralph, whom she called Plum.
After five years of a sad and disgruntled marriage BoyBoy
took off. During the time they were together he was very
much preoccupied with other women and not home much.
He did whatever he could that he liked, and he liked
womanizing best, drinking second, and abusing Eva third.
When he left in November, Eva had $1.65, five eggs, three
beets and no idea of what or how to feel. The children
needed her; she needed money, and needed to get on with
her life. But the demands of feeding her three children were
so acute she had to postpone her anger for two years until
she had both the time and the energy for it. She was
confused and desperately hungry. There were very few
black families in those low hills then. The Suggs, who lived
two hundred yards down the road, brought her a warm bowl
of peas, as soon as they found out, and a plate of cold
bread. She thanked them and asked if they had a little milk
for the older ones. They said no, but Mrs. Jackson, they
knew, had a cow still giving. Eva took a bucket over and
Mrs. Jackson told her to come back and fill it up in the
morning, because the evening milking had already been
done. In this way, things went on until near December.
People were very willing to help, but Eva felt she would
soon run her welcome out; winters were hard and her
neighbors were not that much better off. She would lie in
bed with the baby boy, the two girls wrapped in quilts on the

floor, thinking. The oldest child, Hannah, was five and too
young to take care of the baby alone, and any housework
Eva could find would keep her away from them from five
thirty or earlier in the morning until dark–way past eight. The
white people in the valley weren’t rich enough then to want
maids; they were small farmers and tradesmen and wanted
hard-labor help if anything. She thought also of returning to
some of her people in Virginia, but to come home dragging
three young ones would have to be a step one rung before
death for Eva. She would have to scrounge around and beg
through the winter, until her baby was at least nine months
old, then she could plant and maybe hire herself out to
valley farms to weed or sow or feed stock until something
steadier came along at harvest time. She thought she had
probably been a fool to let BoyBoy haul her away from her
people, but it had seemed so right at the time. He worked
for a white carpenter and toolsmith who insisted on
BoyBoy’s accompanying him when he went West and set
up in a squinchy little town called Medallion. BoyBoy
brought his new wife and built them a one-room cabin sixty
feet back from the road that wound up out of the valley, on
up into the hills and was named for the man he worked for.
They lived there a year before they had an outhouse.
Sometime before the middle of December, the baby, Plum,
stopped having bowel movements. Eva massaged his
stomach and gave him warm water. Something must be
wrong with my milk, she thought. Mrs. Suggs gave her
castor oil, but even that didn’t work. He cried and fought so
they couldn’t get much down his throat anyway. He seemed

in great pain and his shrieks were pitched high in outrage
and suffering. At one point, maddened by his own crying,
he gagged, choked and looked as though he was
strangling to death. Eva rushed to him and kicked over the
earthen slop jar, washing a small area of the floor with the
child’s urine. She managed to soothe him, but when he took
up the cry again late that night, she resolved to end his
misery once and for all. She wrapped him in blankets, ran
her finger around the crevices and sides of the lard can and
stumbled to the outhouse with him. Deep in its darkness
and freezing stench she squatted down, turned the baby
over on her knees, exposed his buttocks and shoved the
last bit of food she had in the world (besides three beets)
up his ass. Softening the insertion with the dab of lard, she
probed with her middle finger to loosen his bowels. Her
fingernail snagged what felt like a pebble; she pulled it out
and others followed. Plum stopped crying as the black hard
stools ricocheted onto the frozen ground. And now that it
was over, Eva squatted there wondering why she had come
all the way out there to free his stools, and what was she
doing down on her haunches with her beloved baby boy
warmed by her body in the almost total darkness, her shins
and teeth freezing, her nostrils assailed. She shook her
head as though to juggle her brains around, then said
aloud, “Uh uh. Nooo.” Thereupon she returned to the house
and her bed. As the grateful Plum slept, the silence allowed
her to think. Two days later she left all of her children with
Mrs. Suggs, saying she would be back the next day.
Eighteen months later she swept down from a wagon with

two crutches, a new black pocketbook, and one leg. First
she reclaimed her children, next she gave the surprised
Mrs. Suggs a ten-dollar bill, later she started building a
house on Carpenter’s Road, sixty feet from BoyBoy’s one-
room cabin, which she rented out. When Plum was three
years old, BoyBoy came back to town and paid her a visit.
When Eva got the word that he was on his way, she made
some lemonade. She had no idea what she would do or
feel during that encounter. Would she cry, cut his throat, beg
him to make love to her? She couldn’t imagine. So she just
waited to see. She stirred lemonade in a green pitcher and
waited. BoyBoy danced up the steps and knocked on the
door. “Come on in,” she hollered. He opened the door and
stood smiling, a picture of prosperity and good will. His
shoes were a shiny orange, and he had on a citified straw
hat, a light-blue suit, and a cat’s-head stickpin in his tie. Eva
smiled and told him to sit himself down. He smiled too.
“How you been, girl?” “Pretty fair. What you know good?”
When she heard those words come out of her own mouth
she knew that their conversation would start off polite.
Although it remained to be seen whether she would still run
the ice pick through the cat’s-head pin. “Have some
lemonade.” “Don’t mind if I do.” He swept his hat off with a
satisfied gesture. His nails were long and shiny. “Sho is
hot, and I been runnin’ around all day.” Eva looked out of the
screen door and saw a woman in a pea-green dress
leaning on the smallest pear tree. Glancing back at him,
she was reminded of Plum’s face when he managed to get
the meat out of a walnut all by himself. Eva smiled again,

and poured the lemonade. Their conversation was easy:
she catching him up on all the gossip, he asking about this
one and that one, and like everybody else avoiding any
reference to her leg. It was like talking to somebody’s
cousin who just stopped by to say howdy before getting on
back to wherever he came from. BoyBoy didn’t ask to see
the children, and Eva didn’t bring them into the
conversation. After a while he rose to go. Talking about his
appointments and exuding an odor of new money and
idleness, he danced down the steps and strutted toward the
peagreen dress. Eva watched. She looked at the back of
his neck and the set of his shoulders. Underneath all of that
shine she saw defeat in the stalk of his neck and the
curious tight way he held his shoulders. But still she was not
sure what she felt. Then he leaned forward and whispered
into the ear of the woman in the green dress. She was still
for a moment and then threw back her head and laughed. A
high-pitched big-city laugh that reminded Eva of Chicago. It
hit her like a sledge hammer, and it was then that she knew
what to feel. A liquid trail of hate flooded her chest.
Knowing that she would hate him long and well filled her
with pleasant anticipation, like when you know you are
going to fall in love with someone and you wait for the
happy signs. Hating BoyBoy, she could get on with it, and
have the safety, the thrill, the consistency of that hatred as
long as she wanted or needed it to define and strengthen
her or protect her from routine vulnerabilities. (Once when
Hannah accused her of hating colored people, Eva said
she only hated one, Hannah’s father BoyBoy, and it was

hating him that kept her alive and happy.) Happy or not,
after BoyBoy’s visit she began her retreat to her bedroom,
leaving the bottom of the house more and more to those
who lived there: cousins who were passing through, stray
folks, and the many, many newly married couples she let
rooms to with housekeeping privileges, and after 1910 she
didn’t willingly set foot on the stairs but once and that was to
light a fire, the smoke of which was in her hair for years.
Among the tenants in that big old house were the children
Eva took in. Operating on a private scheme of preference
and prejudice, she sent off for children she had seen from
the balcony of her bedroom or whose circumstances she
had heard about from the gossipy old men who came to
play checkers or read the _Courier,__ or write her number.
In 1921, when her granddaughter Sula was eleven, Eva had
three such children. They came with woolen caps and
names given to them by their mothers, or grandmothers, or
somebody’s best friend. Eva snatched the caps off their
heads and ignored their names. She looked at the first
child closely, his wrists, the shape of his head and the
temperament that showed in his eyes and said, “Well. Look
at Dewey. My my mymymy.” When later that same year she
sent for a child who kept falling down off the porch across
the street, she said the same thing. Somebody said, “But,
Miss Eva, you calls the other one Dewey.” “So? This here’s
another one.” When the third one was brought and Eva said
“Dewey” again, everybody thought she had simply run out
of names or that her faculties had finally softened. “How is
anybody going to tell them apart?” Hannah asked her.

“What you need to tell them apart for? They’s all deweys.”
When Hannah asked the question it didn’t sound very
bright, because each dewey was markedly different from
the other two. Dewey one was a deeply black boy with a
beautiful head and the golden eyes of chronic jaundice.
Dewey two was light-skinned with freckles everywhere and
a head of tight red hair. Dewey three was half Mexican with
chocolate skin and black bangs. Besides, they were one
and two years apart in age. It was Eva saying things like,
“Send one of them deweys out to get me some Garret, if
they don’t have Garret, get Buttercup,” or, “Tell them
deweys to cut out that noise,” or, “Come here, you dewey
you,” and, “Send me a dewey,” that gave Hannah’s
question its weight. Slowly each boy came out of whatever
cocoon he was in at the time his mother or somebody gave
him away, and accepted Eva’s view, becoming in fact as
well as in name a dewey–joining with the other two to
become a trinity with a plural name… inseparable, loving
nothing and no one but themselves. When the handle from
the icebox fell off, all the deweys got whipped, and in dry-
eyed silence watched their own feet as they turned their
behinds high up into the air for the stroke. When the golden-
eyed dewey was ready for school he would not go without
the others. He was seven, freckled dewey was five, and
Mexican dewey was only four. Eva solved the problem by
having them all sent off together. Mr. Buckland Reed said,
“But one of them’s only four.” “How you know? They all
come here the same year,” Eva said. “But that one there
was one year old when he came, and that was three years

ago.” “You don’t know how old he was when he come here
and neither do the teacher. Send ’em.” The teacher was
startled but not unbelieving, for she had long ago given up
trying to fathom the ways of the colored people in town. So
when Mrs. Reed said that their names were Dewey King,
that they were cousins, and all were six years old, the
teacher gave only a tiny sigh and wrote them in the record
book for the first grade. She too thought she would have no
problem distinguishing among them, because they looked
nothing alike, but like everyone else before her, she
gradually found that she could not tell one from the other.
The deweys would not allow it. They got all mixed up in her
head, and finally she could not literally believe her eyes.
They spoke with one voice, thought with one mind, and
maintained an annoying privacy. Stouthearted, surly, and
wholly unpredictable, the deweys remained a mystery not
only during all of their lives in Medallion but after as well.
The deweys came in 1921, but the year before Eva had
given a small room off the kitchen to Tar Baby, a beautiful,
slight, quiet man who never spoke above a whisper. Most
people said he was half white, but Eva said he was all
white. That she knew blood when she saw it, and he didn’t
have none. When he first came to Medallion, the people
called him Pretty Johnnie, but Eva looked at his milky skin
and cornsilk hair and out of a mixture of fun and meanness
called him Tar Baby. He was a mountain boy who stayed to
himself, bothering no one, intent solely on drinking himself
to death. At first he worked in a poultry market, and after
wringing the necks of chickens all day, he came home and

drank until he slept. Later he began to miss days at work
and frequently did not have his rent money. When he lost
his job altogether, he would go out in the morning, scrounge
around for money doing odd jobs, bumming or whatever,
and come home to drink. Because he was no bother, ate
little, required nothing, and was a lover of cheap wine, no
one found him a nuisance. Besides, he frequently went to
Wednesday-night prayer meetings and sang with the
sweetest hill voice imaginable “In the Sweet By-and-By.”
He sent the deweys out for his liquor and spent most of his
time in a heap on the floor or sitting in a chair staring at the
wall. Hannah worried about him a little, but only a very little.
For it soon became clear that he simply wanted a place to
die privately but not quite alone. No one thought of
suggesting to him that he pull himself together or see a
doctor or anything. Even the women at prayer meeting who
cried when he sang “In the Sweet By-and-By” never tried to
get him to participate in the church activities. They just
listened to him sing, wept and thought very graphically of
their own imminent deaths. The people either accepted his
own evaluation of his life, or were indifferent to it. There
was, however, a measure of contempt in their indifference,
for they had little patience with people who took themselves
that seriously. Seriously enough to try to die. And it was
natural that he, after all, became the first one to join
Shadrack–Tar Baby and the deweys–on National Suicide
Day. Under Eva’s distant eye, and prey to her
idiosyncrasies, her own children grew up stealthily: Pearl
married at fourteen and moved to Flint, Michigan, from

where she posted frail letters to her mother with two dollars
folded into the writing paper. Sad little nonsense letters
about minor troubles, her husband’s job and who the
children favored. Hannah married a laughing man named
Rekus who died when their daughter Sula was about three
years old, at which time Hannah moved back into her
mother’s big house prepared to take care of it and her
mother forever. With the exception of BoyBoy, those Peace
women loved all men. It was manlove that Eva bequeathed
to her daughters. Probably, people said, because there
were no men in the house, no men to run it. But actually that
was not true. The Peace women simply loved maleness, for
its own sake. Eva, old as she was, and with one leg, had a
regular flock of gentleman callers, and although she did not
participate in the act of love, there was a good deal of
teasing and pecking and laughter. The men wanted to see
her lovely calf, that neat shoe, and watch the focusing that
sometimes swept down out of the distances in her eyes.
They wanted to see the joy in her face as they settled down
to play checkers, knowing that even when she beat them,
as she almost always did, somehow, in her presence, it
was they who had won something. They would read the
newspaper aloud to her and make observations on its
content, and Eva would listen feeling no obligation to agree
and, in fact, would take them to task about their
interpretation of events. But she argued with them with such
an absence of bile, such a concentration of manlove, that
they felt their convictions solidified by her disagreement.
With other people’s affairs Eva was equally prejudiced

about men. She fussed interminably with the brides of the
newly wed couples for not getting their men’s supper ready
on time; about how to launder shirts, press them, etc. “Yo’
man be here direc’lin. Ain’t it ’bout time you got busy?” “Aw,
Miss Eva. It’ll be ready. We just having spaghetti.” “Again?”
Eva’s eyebrows fluted up and the newlywed pressed her
lips together in shame. Hannah simply refused to live
without the attentions of a man, and after Rekus’ death had
a steady sequence of lovers, mostly the husbands of her
friends and neighbors. Her flirting was sweet, low and
guileless. Without ever a pat of the hair, a rush to change
clothes or a quick application of paint, with no gesture
whatsoever, she rippled with sex. In her same old print
wraparound, barefoot in the summer, in the winter her feet
in a man’s leather slippers with the backs flattened under
her heels, she made men aware of her behind, her slim
ankles, the dewsmooth skin and the incredible length of
neck. Then the smile-eyes, the turn of the head–all so
welcoming, light and playful. Her voice trailed, dipped and
bowed; she gave a chord to the simplest words. Nobody,
but nobody, could say “hey sugar” like Hannah. When he
heard it, the man tipped his hat down a little over his eyes,
hoisted his trousers and thought about the hollow place at
the base of her neck. And all this without the slightest
confusion about work and responsibilities. While Eva
tested and argued with her men, leaving them feeling as
though they had been in combat with a worthy, if amiable,
foe, Hannah rubbed no edges, made no demands, made
the man feel as though he were complete and wonderful

just as he was–he didn’t need fixing–and so he relaxed and
swooned in the Hannah-light that shone on him simply
because he was. If the man entered and Hannah was
carrying a coal scuttle up from the basement, she handled it
in such a way that it became a gesture of love. He made no
move to help her with it simply because he wanted to see
how her thighs looked when she bent to put it down,
knowing that she wanted him to see them too. But since in
that crowded house there were no places for private and
spontaneous lovemaking, Hannah would take the man
down into the cellar in the summer where it was cool back
behind the coal bin and the newspapers, or in the winter
they would step into the pantry and stand up against the
shelves she had filled with canned goods, or lie on the flour
sack just under the rows of tiny green peppers. When those
places were not available, she would slip into the seldom-
used parlor, or even up to her bedroom. She liked the last
place least, not because Sula slept in the room with her but
because her love mate’s tendency was always to fall asleep
afterward and Hannah was fastidious about whom she
slept with. She would fuck practically anything, but sleeping
with someone implied for her a measure of trust and a
definite commitment. So she ended up a daylight lover, and
it was only once actually that Sula came home from school
and found her mother in the bed, curled spoon in the arms
of a man. Seeing her step so easily into the pantry and
emerge looking precisely as she did when she entered,
only happier, taught Sula that sex was pleasant and
frequent, but otherwise unremarkable. Outside the house,

where children giggled about underwear, the message was
different. So she watched her mother’s face and the face of
the men when they opened the pantry door and made up
her own mind. Hannah exasperated the women in the town-
-the “good” women, who said, “One thing I can’t stand is a
nasty woman” the whores, who were hard put to find trade
among black men anyway and who resented Hannah’s
generosity; the middling women, who had both husbands
and affairs, because Hannah seemed too unlike them,
having no passion attached to her relationships and being
wholly incapable of jealousy. Hannah’s friendships with
women were, of course, seldom and short-lived, and the
newly married couples whom her mother took in soon
learned what a hazard she was. She could break up a
marriage before it had even become one–she would make
love to the new groom and wash his wife’s dishes all in an
afternoon. What she wanted, after Rekus died, and what
she succeeded in having more often than not, was some
touching every day. The men, surprisingly, never gossiped
about her. She was unquestionably a kind and generous
woman and that, coupled with her extraordinary beauty and
funky elegance of manner, made them defend her and
protect her from any vitriol that newcomers or their wives
might spill. Eva’s last child, Plum, to whom she hoped to
bequeath everything, floated in a constant swaddle of love
and affection, until 1917 when he went to war. He returned
to the States in 1919 but did not get back to Medallion until
1920. He wrote letters from New York, Washington, D.C.,
and Chicago full of promises of homecomings, but there

was obviously something wrong. Finally some two or three
days after Christmas, he arrived with just the shadow of his
old dip-down walk. His hair had been neither cut nor
combed in months, his clothes were pointless and he had
no socks. But he did have a black bag, a paper sack, and a
sweet, sweet smile. Everybody welcomed him and gave
him a warm room next to Tar Baby’s and waited for him to
tell them whatever it was he wanted them to know. They
waited in vain for his telling but not long for the knowing. His
habits were much like Tar Baby’s but there were no bottles,
and Plum was sometimes cheerful and animated. Hannah
watched and Eva waited. Then he began to steal from
them, take trips to Cincinnati and sleep for days in his room
with the record player going. He got even thinner, since he
ate only snatches of things at beginnings or endings of
meals. It was Hannah who found the bent spoon black from
steady cooking. So late one night in 1921, Eva got up from
her bed and put on her clothes. Hoisting herself up on her
crutches, she was amazed to find that she could still
manage them, although the pain in her armpits was severe.
She practiced a few steps around the room, and then
opened the door. Slowly, she manipulated herself down the
long flights of stairs, two crutches under her left arm, the
right hand grasping the banister. The sound of her foot
booming in comparison to the delicate pat of the crutch tip.
On each landing she stopped for breath. Annoyed at her
physical condition, she closed her eyes and removed the
crutches from under her arms to relieve the unaccustomed
pressure. At the foot of the stairs she redistributed her

weight between the crutches and swooped on through the
front room, to the dining room, to the kitchen, swinging and
swooping like a giant heron, so graceful sailing about in its
own habitat but awkward and comical when it folded its
wings and tried to walk. With a swing and a swoop she
arrived at Plum’s door and pushed it open with the tip of
one crutch. He was lying in bed barely visible in the light
coming from a single bulb. Eva swung over to the bed and
propped her crutches at its foot. She sat down and
gathered Plum into her arms. He woke, but only slightly.
“Hey, man. Hey. You holdin’ me, Mamma?” His voice was
drowsy and amused. He chuckled as though he had heard
some private joke. Eva held him closer and began to rock.
Back and forth she rocked him, her eyes wandering around
his room. There in the corner was a half-eaten store-bought
cherry pie. Balled-up candy wrappers and empty pop
bottles peeped from under the dresser. On the floor by her
foot was a glass of strawberry crush and a _Liberty__
magazine. Rocking, rocking, listening to Plum’s occasional
chuckles, Eva let her memory spin, loop and fall. Plum in
the tub that time as she leaned over him. He reached up
and dripped water into her bosom and laughed. She was
angry, but not too, and laughed with him. “Mamma, you so
purty. You so purty, Mamma.” Eva lifted her tongue to the
edge of her lip to stop the tears from running into her mouth.
Rocking, rocking. Later she laid him down and looked at
him a long time. Suddenly she was thirsty and reached for
the glass of strawberry crush. She put it to her lips and
discovered it was blood-tainted water and threw it to the

floor. Plum woke up and said, “Hey, Mamma, whyn’t you go
on back to bed? I’m all right. Didn’t I tell you? I’m all right. Go
on, now.” “I’m going, Plum,” she said. She shifted her
weight and pulled her crutches toward her. Swinging and
swooping, she left his room. She dragged herself to the
kitchen and made grating noises. Plum on the rim of a
warm light sleep was still chuckling. Mamma. She sure was
somethin’. He felt twilight. Now there seemed to be some
kind of wet light traveling over his legs and stomach with a
deeply attractive smell. It wound itself–this wet light–all
about him, splashing and running into his skin. He opened
his eyes and saw what he imagined was the great wing of
an eagle pouring a wet lightness over him. Some kind of
baptism, some kind of blessing, he thought. Everything is
going to be all right, it said. Knowing that it was so he
closed his eyes and sank back into the bright hole of sleep.
Eva stepped back from the bed and let the crutches rest
under her arms. She rolled a bit of newspaper into a tight
stick about six inches long, lit it and threw it onto the bed
where the kerosene-soaked Plum lay in snug delight.
Quickly, as the _whoosh__ of flames engulfed him, she shut
the door and made her slow and painful journey back to the
top of the house. Just as she got to the third landing she
could hear Hannah and some child’s voice. She swung
along, not even listening to the voices of alarm and the
cries of the deweys. By the time she got to her bed
someone was bounding up the stairs after her. Hannah
opened the door. “Plum! Plum! He’s burning, Mamma! We
can’t even open the door! Mamma!” Eva looked into

Hannah’s eyes. “Is? My baby? Burning?” The two women
did not speak, for the eyes of each were enough for the
other. Then Hannah closed hers and ran toward the voices
of neighbors calling for water.

1922

It was too cool for ice cream. A hill wind was blowing dust
and empty Camels wrappers about their ankles. It pushed
their dresses into the creases of their behinds, then lifted
the hems to peek at their cotton underwear. They were on
their way to Edna Finch’s Mellow House, an ice-cream
parlor catering to nice folks–where even children would feel
comfortable, you know, even though it was right next to
Reba’s Grill and just one block down from the Time and a
Half Pool Hall. It sat in the curve of Carpenter’s Road,
which, in four blocks, made up all the sporting life available
in the Bottom. Old men and young ones draped themselves
in front of the Elmira Theater, Irene’s Palace of
Cosmetology, the pool hall, the grill and the other sagging
business enterprises that lined the street. On sills, on
stoops, on crates and broken chairs they sat tasting their
teeth and waiting for something to distract them. Every
passerby, every motorcar, every alteration in stance caught
their attention and was commented on. Particularly they
watched women. When a woman approached, the older
men tipped their hats; the younger ones opened and closed
their thighs. But all of them, whatever their age, watched her
retreating view with interest. Nel and Sula walked through

this valley of eyes chilled by the wind and heated by the
embarrassment of appraising stares. The old men looked
at their stalklike legs, dwelled on the cords in the backs of
their knees and remembered old dance steps they had not
done in twenty years. In their lust, which age had turned to
kindness, they moved their lips as though to stir up the taste
of young sweat on tight skin. Pig meat. The words were in
all their minds. And one of them, one of the young ones,
said it aloud. Softly but definitively and there was no
mistaking the compliment. His name was Ajax, a twenty-
one-year-old pool haunt of sinister beauty. Graceful and
economical in every movement, he held a place of envy
with men of all ages for his magnificently foul mouth. In fact
he seldom cursed, and the epithets he chose were dull,
even harmless. His reputation was derived from the way he
handled the words. When he said “hell” he hit the _h__ with
his lungs and the impact was greater than the achievement
of the most imaginative foul mouth in the town. He could say
“shit” with a nastiness impossible to imitate. So, when he
said “pig meat” as Nel and Sula passed, they guarded their
eyes lest someone see their delight. It was not really Edna
Finch’s ice cream that made them brave the stretch of
those panther eyes. Years later their own eyes would glaze
as they cupped their chins in remembrance of the inchworm
smiles, the squatting haunches, the track-rail legs
straddling broken chairs. The creamcolored trousers
marking with a mere seam the place where the mystery
curled. Those smooth vanilla crotches invited them; those
lemon-yellow gabardines beckoned to them. They moved

toward the ice-cream parlor like tightrope walkers, as
thrilled by the possibility of a slip as by the maintenance of
tension and balance. The least sideways glance, the
merest toe stub, could pitch them into those creamy
haunches spread wide with welcome. Somewhere beneath
all of that daintiness, chambered in all that neatness, lay the
thing that clotted their dreams. Which was only fitting, for it
was in dreams that the two girls had first met. Long before
Edna Finch’s Mellow House opened, even before they
marched through the chocolate halls of Garfield Primary
School out onto the playground and stood facing each other
through the ropes of the one vacant swing (“Go on.” “No.
You go.”), they had already made each other’s
acquaintance in the delirium of their noon dreams. They
were solitary little girls whose loneliness was so profound it
intoxicated them and sent them stumbling into
Technicolored visions that always included a presence, a
someone, who, quite like the dreamer, shared the delight of
the dream. When Nel, an only child, sat on the steps of her
back porch surrounded by the high silence of her mother’s
incredibly orderly house, feeling the neatness pointing at
her back, she studied the poplars and fell easily into a
picture of herself lying on a flowered bed, tangled in her
own hair, waiting for some fiery prince. He approached but
never quite arrived. But always, watching the dream along
with her, were some smiling sympathetic eyes. Someone
as interested as she herself in the flow of her imagined hair,
the thickness of the mattress of flowers, the voile sleeves
that closed below her elbows in gold-threaded cuffs.

Similarly, Sula, also an only child, but wedged into a
household of throbbing disorder constantly awry with things,
people, voices and the slamming of doors, spent hours in
the attic behind a roll of linoleum galloping through her own
mind on a gray-and-white horse tasting sugar and smelling
roses in full view of a someone who shared both the taste
and the speed. So when they met, first in those chocolate
halls and next through the ropes of the swing, they felt the
ease and comfort of old friends. Because each had
discovered years before that they were neither white nor
male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to
them, they had set about creating something else to be.
Their meeting was fortunate, for it let them use each other
to grow on. Daughters of distant mothers and
incomprehensible fathers (Sula’s because he was dead;
Nel’s because he wasn’t), they found in each other’s eyes
the intimacy they were looking for. Nel Wright and Sula
Peace were both twelve in 1922, wishbone thin and easy-
assed. Nel was the color of wet sandpaper–just dark
enough to escape the blows of the pitch-black truebloods
and the contempt of old women who worried about such
things as bad blood mixtures and knew that the origins of a
mule and a mulatto were one and the same. Had she been
any lighter-skinned she would have needed either her
mother’s protection on the way to school or a streak of
mean to defend herself. Sula was a heavy brown with large
quiet eyes, one of which featured a birthmark that spread
from the middle of the lid toward the eyebrow, shaped
something like a stemmed rose. It gave her otherwise plain

face a broken excitement and blue-blade threat like the
keloid scar of the razored man who sometimes played
checkers with her grandmother. The birthmark was to grow
darker as the years passed, but now it was the same
shade as her gold-flecked eyes, which, to the end, were as
steady and clean as rain. Their friendship was as intense
as it was sudden. They found relief in each other’s
personality. Although both were unshaped, formless things,
Nel seemed stronger and more consistent than Sula, who
could hardly be counted on to sustain any emotion for more
than three minutes. Yet there was one time when that was
not true, when she held on to a mood for weeks, but even
that was in defense of Nel. Four white boys in their early
teens, sons of some newly arrived Irish people,
occasionally entertained themselves in the afternoon by
harassing black schoolchildren. With shoes that pinched
and woolen knickers that made red rings on their calves,
they had come to this valley with their parents believing as
they did that it was a promised land–green and shimmering
with welcome. What they found was a strange accent, a
pervasive fear of their religion and firm resistance to their
attempts to find work. With one exception the older
residents of Medallion scorned them. The one exception
was the black community. Although some of the Negroes
had been in Medallion before the Civil War (the town didn’t
even have a name then), if they had any hatred for these
newcomers it didn’t matter because it didn’t show. As a
matter of fact, baiting them was the one activity that the
white Protestant residents concurred in. In part their place

in this world was secured only when they echoed the old
residents’ attitude toward blacks. These particular boys
caught Nel once, and pushed her from hand to hand until
they grew tired of the frightened helpless face. Because of
that incident, Nel’s route home from school became
elaborate. She, and then Sula, managed to duck them for
weeks until a chilly day in November when Sula said, “Let’s
us go on home the shortest way.” Nel blinked, but
acquiesced. They walked up the street until they got to the
bend of Carpenter’s Road where the boys lounged on a
disused well. Spotting their prey, the boys sauntered
forward as though there were nothing in the world on their
minds but the gray sky. Hardly able to control their grins,
they stood like a gate blocking the path. When the girls
were three feet in front of the boys, Sula reached into her
coat pocket and pulled out Eva’s paring knife. The boys
stopped short, exchanged looks and dropped all pretense
of innocence. This was going to be better than they thought.
They were going to try and fight back, and with a knife.
Maybe they could get an arm around one of their waists, or
tear… Sula squatted down in the dirt road and put
everything down on the ground: her lunchpail, her reader,
her mittens, her slate. Holding the knife in her right hand,
she pulled the slate toward her and pressed her left
forefinger down hard on its edge. Her aim was determined
but inaccurate. She slashed off only the tip of her finger.
The four boys stared open-mouthed at the wound and the
scrap of flesh, like a button mushroom, curling in the cherry
blood that ran into the corners of the slate. Sula raised her

eyes to them. Her voice was quiet. “If I can do that to
myself, what you suppose I’ll do to you?” The shifting dirt
was the only way Nel knew that they were moving away; she
was looking at Sula’s face, which seemed miles and miles
away. But toughness was not their quality–
adventuresomeness was–and a mean determination to
explore everything that interested them, from one-eyed
chickens high-stepping in their penned yards to Mr.
Buckland Reed’s gold teeth, from the sound of sheets
flapping in the wind to the labels on Tar Baby’s wine bottles.
And they had no priorities. They could be distracted from
watching a fight with mean razors by the glorious smell of
hot tar being poured by roadmen two hundred yards away.
In the safe harbor of each other’s company they could afford
to abandon the ways of other people and concentrate on
their own perceptions of things. When Mrs. Wright
reminded Nel to pull her nose, she would do it
enthusiastically but without the least hope in the world.
“While you sittin’ there, honey, go ‘head and pull your nose.”
“It hurts, Mamma.” “Don’t you want a nice nose when you
grow up?” After she met Sula, Nel slid the clothespin under
the blanket as soon as she got in the bed. And although
there was still the hateful hot comb to suffer through each
Saturday evening, its consequences–smooth hair–no
longer interested her. Joined in mutual admiration they
watched each day as though it were a movie arranged for
their amusement. The new theme they were now
discovering was men. So they met regularly, without even
planning it, to walk down the road to Edna Finch’s Mellow

House, even though it was too cool for ice cream. Then
summer came. A summer limp with the weight of
blossomed things. Heavy sunflowers weeping over fences;
iris curling and browning at the edges far away from their
purple hearts; ears of corn letting their auburn hair wind
down to their stalks. And the boys. The beautiful, beautiful
boys who dotted the landscape like jewels, split the air with
their shouts in the field, and thickened the river with their
shining wet backs. Even their footsteps left a smell of
smoke behind. It was in that summer, the summer of their
twelfth year, the summer of the beautiful black boys, that
they became skittish, frightened and bold–all at the same
time. In that mercury mood in July, Sula and Nel wandered
about the Bottom barefoot looking for mischief. They
decided to go down by the river where the boys sometimes
swam. Nel waited on the porch of 7 Carpenter’s Road while
Sula ran into the house to go to the toilet. On the way up the
stairs, she passed the kitchen where Hannah sat with two
friends, Patsy and Valentine. The two women were fanning
themselves and watching Hannah put down some dough,
all talking casually about one thing and another, and had
gotten around, when Sula passed by, to the problems of
child rearing. “They a pain.” “Yeh. Wish I’d listened to
mamma. She told me not to have ’em too soon.” “Any time
atall is too soon for me.” “Oh, I don’t know. My Rudy minds
his daddy. He just wild with me. Be glad when he growed
and gone.” Hannah smiled and said, “Shut your mouth. You
love the ground he pee on.” “Sure I do. But he still a pain.
Can’t help loving your own child. No matter what they do.”

“Well, Hester grown now and I can’t say love is exactly what
I feel.” “Sure you do. You love her, like I love Sula. I just don’t
like her. That’s the difference.” “Guess so. Likin’ them is
another thing.” “Sure. They different people, you know… ”
She only heard Hannah’s words, and the pronouncement
sent her flying up the stairs. In bewilderment, she stood at
the window fingering the curtain edge, aware of a sting in
her eye. Nel’s call floated up and into the window, pulling
her away from dark thoughts back into the bright, hot
daylight. They ran most of the way. Heading toward the
wide part of the river where trees grouped themselves in
families darkening the earth below. They passed some
boys swimming and clowning in the water, shrouding their
words in laughter. They ran in the sunlight, creating their
own breeze, which pressed their dresses into their damp
skin. Reaching a kind of square of four leaf-locked trees
which promised cooling, they flung themselves into the four-
cornered shade to taste their lip sweat and contemplate the
wildness that had come upon them so suddenly. They lay in
the grass, their foreheads almost touching, their bodies
stretched away from each other at a 180-degree angle.
Sula’s head rested on her arm, an undone braid coiled
around her wrist. Nel leaned on her elbows and worried
long blades of grass with her fingers. Underneath their
dresses flesh tightened and shivered in the high coolness,
their small breasts just now beginning to create some
pleasant discomfort when they were lying on their
stomachs. Sula lifted her head and joined Nel in the grass
play. In concert, without ever meeting each other’s eyes,

they stroked the blades up and down, up and down. Nel
found a thick twig and, with her thumbnail, pulled away its
bark until it was stripped to a smooth, creamy innocence.
Sula looked about and found one too. When both twigs
were undressed Nel moved easily to the next stage and
began tearing up rooted grass to make a bare spot of
earth. When a generous clearing was made, Sula traced
intricate patterns in it with her twig. At first Nel was content
to do the same. But soon she grew impatient and poked
her twig rhythmically and intensely into the earth, making a
small neat hole that grew deeper and wider with the least
manipulation of her twig. Sula copied her, and soon each
had a hole the size of a cup. Nel began a more strenuous
digging and, rising to her knee, was careful to scoop out
the dirt as she made her hole deeper. Together they
worked until the two holes were one and the same. When
the depression was the size of a small dishpan, Nel’s twig
broke. With a gesture of disgust she threw the pieces into
the hole they had made. Sula threw hers in too. Nel saw a
bottle cap and tossed it in as well. Each then looked around
for more debris to throw into the hole: paper, bits of glass,
butts of cigarettes, until all of the small defiling things they
could find were collected there. Carefully they replaced the
soil and covered the entire grave with uprooted grass.
Neither one had spoken a word. They stood up, stretched,
then gazed out over the swift dull water as an unspeakable
restlessness and agitation held them. At the same instant
each girl heard footsteps in the grass. A little boy in too big
knickers was coming up from the lower bank of the river.

He stopped when he saw them and picked his nose. “Your
mamma tole you to stop eatin’ snot, Chicken,” Nel hollered
at him through cupped hands. “Shut up,” he said, still
picking. “Come up here and say that.” “Leave him ‘lone,
Nel. Come here, Chicken. Lemme show you something.”
“Naw.” “You scared we gone take your bugger away?”
“Leave him ‘lone, I said. Come on, Chicken. Look. I’ll help
you climb a tree.” Chicken looked at the tree Sula was
pointing to–a big double beech with low branches and lots
of bends for sitting. He moved slowly toward her. “Come
on, Chicken, I’ll help you up.” Still picking his nose, his eyes
wide, he came to where they were standing. Sula took him
by the hand and coaxed him along. When they reached the
base of the beech, she lifted him to the first branch, saying,
“Go on. Go on. I got you.” She followed the boy, steadying
him, when he needed it, with her hand and her reassuring
voice. When they were as high as they could go, Sula
pointed to the far side of the river. “See? Bet you never saw
that far before, did you?” “Uh uh.” “Now look down there.”
They both leaned a little and peered through the leaves at
Nel standing below, squinting up at them. From their height
she looked small and foreshortened. Chicken Little
laughed. “Y’all better come on down before you break your
neck,” Nel hollered. “I ain’t never coming down,” the boy
hollered back. “Yeah. We better. Come on, Chicken.”
“Naw. Lemme go.” “Yeah, Chicken. Come on, now.” Sula
pulled his leg gently. “Lemme go.” “OK, I’m leavin’ you.”
She started on. “Wait!” he screamed. Sula stopped and
together they slowly worked their way down. Chicken was

still elated. “I was way up there, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I? I’m a tell
my brovver.” Sula and Nel began to mimic him: “I’m a tell
my brovver; I’m a tell my brovver.” Sula picked him up by his
hands and swung him outward then around and around. His
knickers ballooned and his shrieks of frightened joy startled
the birds and the fat grasshoppers. When he slipped from
her hands and sailed away out over the water they could
still hear his bubbly laughter. The water darkened and
closed quickly over the place where Chicken Little sank.
The pressure of his hard and tight little fingers was still in
Sula’s palms as she stood looking at the closed place in
the water. They expected him to come back up, laughing.
Both girls stared at the water. Nel spoke first. “Somebody
saw.” A figure appeared briefly on the opposite shore. The
only house over there was Shadrack’s. Sula glanced at Nel.
Terror widened her nostrils. Had he seen? The water was
so peaceful now. There was nothing but the baking sun and
something newly missing. Sula cupped her face for an
instant, then turned and ran up to the little plank bridge that
crossed the river to Shadrack’s house. There was no path.
It was as though neither Shadrack nor anyone else ever
came this way. Her running was swift and determined, but
when she was close to the three little steps that led to his
porch, fear crawled into her stomach and only the
something newly missing back there in the river made it
possible for her to walk up the three steps and knock at the
door. No one answered. She started back, but thought
again of the peace of the river. Shadrack would be inside,
just behind the door ready to pounce on her. Still she could

not go back. Ever so gently she pushed the door with the
tips of her fingers and heard only the hinges weep. More.
And then she was inside. Alone. The neatness, the order
startled her, but more surprising was the restfulness.
Everything was so tiny, so common, so unthreatening.
Perhaps this was not the house of the Shad. The terrible
Shad who walked about with his penis out, who peed in
front of ladies and girl-children, the only black who could
curse white people and get away with it, who drank in the
road from the mouth of the bottle, who shouted and shook
in the streets. This cottage? This sweet old cottage? With
its made-up bed? With its rag rug and wooden table? Sula
stood in the middle of the little room and in her wonder
forgot what she had come for until a sound at the door
made her jump. He was there in the doorway looking at her.
She had not heard his coming and now he was looking at
her. More in embarrassment than terror she averted her
glance. When she called up enough courage to look back
at him, she saw his hand resting upon the door frame. His
fingers, barely touching the wood, were arranged in a
graceful arc. Relieved and encouraged (no one with hands
like that, no one with fingers that curved around wood so
tenderly could kill her), she walked past him out of the door,
feeling his gaze turning, turning with her. At the edge of the
porch, gathering the wisps of courage that were fast leaving
her, she turned once more to look at him, to ask him… had
he…? He was smiling, a great smile, heavy with lust and
time to come. He nodded his head as though answering a
question, and said, in a pleasant conversational tone, a

tone of cooled butter, “Always.” Sula fled down the steps,
and shot through the greenness and the baking sun back to
Nel and the dark closed place in the water. There she
collapsed in tears. Nel quieted her. “Sh, sh. Don’t, don’t.
You didn’t mean it. It ain’t your fault. Sh. Sh. Come on, le’s
go, Sula. Come on, now. Was he there? Did he see?
Where’s the belt to your dress?” Sula shook her head while
she searched her waist for the belt. Finally she stood up
and allowed Nel to lead her away. “He said, ‘Always.
Always.'” “What?” Sula covered her mouth as they walked
down the hill. Always. He had answered a question she had
not asked, and its promise licked at her feet. A bargeman,
poling away from the shore, found Chicken late that
afternoon stuck in some rocks and weeds, his knickers
ballooning about his legs. He would have left him there but
noticed that it was a child, not an old black man, as it first
appeared, and he prodded the body loose, netted it and
hauled it aboard. He shook his head in disgust at the kind
of parents who would drown their own children. When, he
wondered, will those people ever be anything but animals,
fit for nothing but substitutes for mules, only mules didn’t kill
each other the way niggers did. He dumped Chicken Little
into a burlap sack and tossed him next to some egg crates
and boxes of wool cloth. Later, sitting down to smoke on an
empty lard tin, still bemused by God’s curse and the terrible
burden his own kind had of elevating Ham’s sons, he
suddenly became alarmed by the thought that the corpse in
this heat would have a terrible odor, which might get into
the fabric of his woolen cloth. He dragged the sack away

and hooked it over the side, so that the Chicken’s body was
half in and half out of the water. Wiping the sweat from his
neck, he reported his find to the sheriff at Porter’s Landing,
who said they didn’t have no niggers in their county, but that
some lived in those hills ‘cross the river, up above
Medallion. The bargeman said he couldn’t go all the way
back there, it was every bit of two miles. The sheriff said
whyn’t he throw it on back into the water. The bargeman
said he never shoulda taken it out in the first place. Finally
they got the man who ran the ferry twice a day to agree to
take it over in the morning. That was why Chicken Little was
missing for three days and didn’t get to the embalmer’s until
the fourth day, by which time he was unrecognizable to
almost everybody who once knew him, and even his mother
wasn’t deep down sure, except that it just had to be him
since nobody could find him. When she saw his clothes
lying on the table in the basement of the mortuary, her
mouth snapped shut, and when she saw his body her mouth
flew wide open again and it was seven hours before she
was able to close it and make the first sound. So the coffin
was closed. The Junior Choir, dressed in white, sang
“Nearer My God to Thee” and “Precious Memories,” their
eyes fastened on the songbooks they did not need, for this
was the first time their voices had presided at a real-life
event. Nel and Sula did not touch hands or look at each
other during the funeral. There was a space, a
separateness, between them. Nel’s legs had turned to
granite and she expected the sheriff or Reverend Deal’s
pointing finger at any moment. Although she knew she had

“done nothing,” she felt convicted and hanged right there in
the pew–two rows down from her parents in the children’s
section. Sula simply cried. Soundlessly and with no heaving
and gasping for breath, she let the tears roll into her mouth
and slide down her chin to dot the front of her dress. As
Reverend Deal moved into his sermon, the hands of the
women unfolded like pairs of raven’s wings and flew high
above their hats in the air. They did not hear all of what he
said; they heard the one word, or phrase, or inflection that
was for them the connection between the event and
themselves. For some it was the term “Sweet Jesus.” And
they saw the Lamb’s eye and the truly innocent victim:
themselves. They acknowledged the innocent child hiding
in the corner of their hearts, holding a sugarand-butter
sandwich. That one. The one who lodged deep in their fat,
thin, old, young skin, and was the one the world had hurt. Or
they thought of their son newly killed and remembered his
legs in short pants and wondered where the bullet went in.
Or they remembered how dirty the room looked when their
father left home and wondered if that is the way the slim,
young Jew felt, he who for them was both son and lover and
in whose downy face they could see the sugar-and-butter
sandwiches and feel the oldest and most devastating pain
there is: not the pain of childhood, but the remembrance of
it. Then they left their pews. For with some emotions one
has to stand. They spoke, for they were full and needed to
say. They swayed, for the rivulets of grief or of ecstasy must
be rocked. And when they thought of all that life and death
locked into that little closed coffin they danced and

screamed, not to protest God’s will but to acknowledge it
and confirm once more their conviction that the only way to
avoid the Hand of God is to get in it. In the colored part of
the cemetery, they sank Chicken Little in between his
grandfather and an aunt. Butterflies flew in and out of the
bunches of field flowers now loosened from the top of the
bier and lying in a small heap at the edge of the grave. The
heat had gone, but there was still no breeze to lift the hair of
the willows. Nel and Sula stood some distance away from
the grave, the space that had sat between them in the pews
had dissolved. They held hands and knew that only the
coffin would lie in the earth; the bubbly laughter and the
press of fingers in the palm would stay aboveground
forever. At first, as they stood there, their hands were
clenched together. They relaxed slowly until during the walk
back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as
that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a
summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the
winter.

1923

The second strange thing was Hannah’s coming into her
mother’s room with an empty bowl and a peck of Kentucky
Wonders and saying, “Mamma, did you ever love us?” She
sang the words like a small child saying a piece at Easter,
then knelt to spread a newspaper on the floor and set the
basket on it; the bowl she tucked in the space between her
legs. Eva, who was just sitting there fanning herself with the

cardboard fan from Mr. Hodges’ funeral parlor, listened to
the silence that followed Hannah’s words, then said, “Scat!”
to the deweys who were playing chain gang near the
window. With the shoelaces of each of them tied to the
laces of the others, they stumbled and tumbled out of Eva’s
room. “Now,” Eva looked up across from her wagon at her
daughter. “Give me that again. Flat out to fit my head.” “I
mean, did you? You know. When we was little.” Eva’s hand
moved snail-like down her thigh toward her stump, but
stopped short of it to realign a pleat. “No. I don’t reckon I
did. Not the way you thinkin’.” “Oh, well. I was just
wonderin’.” Hannah appeared to be through with the
subject. “An evil wonderin’ if I ever heard one.” Eva was not
through. “I didn’t mean nothing by it, Mamma.” “What you
mean you didn’t _mean__ nothing by it? How you gone not
mean something by it?” Hannah pinched the tips off the
Kentucky Wonders and snapped their long pods. What with
the sound of the cracking and snapping and her swift-
fingered movements, she seemed to be playing a
complicated instrument. Eva watched her a moment and
then said, “You gone can them?” “No. They for tonight.”
“Thought you was gone can some.” “Uncle Paul ain’t
brought me none yet. A peck ain’t enough to can. He say he
got two bushels for me.” “Triflin’.” “Oh, he all right.” “Sho he
all right. Everybody all right. ‘Cept Mamma. Mamma the
only one ain’t all right. Cause she didn’t _love__ us.”
“Awww, Mamma.” “Awww, Mamma? Awww, Mamma? You
settin’ here with your healthy-ass self and ax me did I love
you? Them big old eyes in your head would a been two

holes full of maggots if I hadn’t.” “I didn’t mean that,
Mamma. I know you fed us and all. I was talkin’ ’bout
something else. Like. Like. Playin’ with us. Did you ever,
you know, play with us?” “Play? Wasn’t nobody playin’ in
1895. Just ’cause you got it good now you think it was
always this good? was a killer, girl. Things was bad.
Niggers was dying like flies. Stepping tall, ain’t you? Uncle
Paul gone bring me _two__ bushels. Yeh. And they’s a
melon downstairs, ain’t they? And I bake every Saturday,
and Shad brings fish on Friday, and they’s a pork barrel full
of meal, and we float eggs in a crock of vinegar… ”
“Mamma, what you talkin’ ’bout?” “I’m talkin’ ’bout 18 and
95 when I set in that house five days with you and Pearl and
Plum and three beets, you snake-eyed ungrateful hussy.
What would I look like leapin’ ’round that little old room
playin’ with youngins with three beets to my name?” “I know
’bout them beets, Mamma. You told us that a million times.”
“Yeah? Well? Don’t that count? Ain’t that love? You want me
to tinkle you under the jaw and forget ’bout them sores in
your mouth? Pearl was shittin’ worms and I was supposed
to play rang-around-the-rosie?” “But Mamma, they had to
be some time when you wasn’t thinkin’ ’bout… ” “No time.
They wasn’t no time. Not none. Soon as I got one day done
here come a night. With you all coughin’ and me watchin’ so
TB wouldn’t take you off and if you was sleepin’ quiet I
thought, O Lord, they dead and put my hand over your
mouth to feel if the breath was comin’ what you talkin’ ’bout
did I love you girl I stayed alive for you can’t you get that
through your thick head or what is that between your ears,

heifer?” Hannah had enough beans now. With some
tomatoes and hot bread, she thought, that would be enough
for everybody, especially since the deweys didn’t eat
vegetables no how and Eva never made them and Tar
Baby was living off air and music these days. She picked
up the basket and stood with it and the bowl of beans over
her mother. Eva’s face was still asking her last question.
Hannah looked into her mother’s eyes. “But what about
Plum? What’d you kill Plum for, Mamma?” It was a
Wednesday in August and the ice wagon was coming and
coming. You could hear bits of the driver’s song. Now Mrs.
Jackson would be tipping down her porch steps. “Jes a
piece. You got a lil ole piece layin’ ’round in there you could
spare?” And as he had since the time of the pigeons, the
iceman would hand her a lump of ice saying, “Watch it now,
Mrs. Jackson. That straw’ll tickle your pretty neck to death.”
Eva listened to the wagon coming and thought about what it
must be like in the icehouse. She leaned back a little and
closed her eyes trying to see the insides of the icehouse. It
was a dark, lovely picture in this heat, until it reminded her
of that winter night in the outhouse holding her baby in the
dark, her fingers searching for his asshole and the last bit
of lard scooped from the sides of the can, held deliberately
on the tip of her middle finger, the last bit of lard to keep
from hurting him when she slid her finger in and all because
she had broken the slop jar and the rags had frozen. The
last food staple in the house she had rammed up her
baby’s behind to keep from hurting him too much when she
opened up his bowels to pull the stools out. He had been

screaming fit to kill, but when she found his hole at last and
stuck her finger up in it, the shock was so great he was
suddenly quiet. Even now on the hottest day anyone in
Medallion could remember–a day so hot flies slept and
cats were splaying their fur like quills, a day so hot pregnant
wives leaned up against trees and cried, and women
remembering some three-month-old hurt put ground glass
in their lovers’ food and the men looked at the food and
wondered if there was glass in it and ate it anyway because
it was too hot to resist eating it–even on this hottest of days
in the hot spell, Eva shivered from the biting cold and
stench of that outhouse. Hannah was waiting. Watching her
mother’s eyelids. When Eva spoke at last it was with two
voices. Like two people were talking at the same time,
saying the same thing, one a fraction of a second behind
the other. “He give me such a time. Such a time. Look like
he didn’t even want to be born. But he come on out. Boys is
hard to bear. You wouldn’t know that but they is. It was such
a carryin’ on to get him born and to keep him alive. Just to
keep his little heart beating and his little old lungs cleared
and look like when he came back from that war he wanted
to git back in. After all that carryin’ on, just gettin’ him out
and keepin’ him alive, he wanted to crawl back in my womb
and well… I ain’t got the room no more even if he could do it.
There wasn’t space for him in my womb. And he was
crawlin’ back. Being helpless and thinking baby thoughts
and dreaming baby dreams and messing up his pants
again and smiling all the time. I had room enough in my
heart, but not in my womb, not no more. I birthed him once. I

couldn’t do it again. He was growed, a big old thing.
Godhavemercy, I couldn’t birth him twice. I’d be laying here
at night and he be downstairs in that room, but when I
closed my eyes I’d see him… six feet tall smilin’ and crawlin’
up the stairs quietlike so I wouldn’t hear and opening the
door soft so I wouldn’t hear and he’d be creepin’ to the bed
trying to spread my legs trying to get back up in my womb.
He was a man, girl, a big old growed-up man. I didn’t have
that much room. I kept on dreaming it. Dreaming it and I
knowed it was true. One night it wouldn’t be no dream. It’d
be true and I would have done it, would have let him if I’d’ve
had the room but a big man can’t be a baby all wrapped up
inside his mamma no more; he suffocate. I done everything
I could to make him leave me and go on and live and be a
man but he wouldn’t and I had to keep him out so I just
thought of a way he could die like a man not all scrunched
up inside my womb, but like a man.” Eva couldn’t see
Hannah clearly for the tears, but she looked up at her
anyway and said, by way of apology or explanation or
perhaps just by way of neatness, “But I held him close first.
Real close. Sweet Plum. My baby boy.” Long after Hannah
turned and walked out of the room, Eva continued to call his
name while her fingers lined up the pleats in her dress.
Hannah went off to the kitchen, her old man’s slippers
plopping down the stairs and over the hardwood floors. She
turned the spigot on, letting water break up the tight knots of
Kentucky Wonders and float them to the top of the bowl.
She swirled them about with her fingers, poured the water
off and repeated the process. Each time the green tubes

rose to the surface she felt elated and collected whole
handfuls at a time to drop in twos and threes back into the
water. Through the window over the sink she could see the
deweys still playing chain gang; their ankles bound one to
the other, they tumbled, struggled back to their feet and
tried to walk single file. Hens strutted by with one
suspicious eye on the deweys, another on the brick
fireplace where sheets and mason jars were boiled. Only
the deweys could play in this heat. Hannah put the Kentucky
Wonders over the fire and, struck by a sudden sleepiness,
she went off to lie down in the front room. It was even hotter
there, for the windows were shut to keep out the sunlight.
Hannah straightened the shawl that draped the couch and
lay down. She dreamed of a wedding in a red bridal gown
until Sula came in and woke her. But before the second
strange thing, there had been the wind, which was the first.
The very night before the day Hannah had asked Eva if she
had ever loved them, the wind tore over the hills rattling
roofs and loosening doors. Everything shook, and although
the people were frightened they thought it meant rain and
welcomed it. Windows fell out and trees lost arms. People
waited up half the night for the first crack of lightning. Some
had even uncovered barrels to catch the rain water, which
they loved to drink and cook in. They waited in vain, for no
lightning no thunder no rain came. The wind just swept
through, took what dampness there was out of the air,
messed up the yards, and went on. The hills of the Bottom,
as always, protected the valley part of town where the white
people lived, and the next morning all the people were

grateful because there was a dryer heat. So they set about
their work early, for it was canning time, and who knew but
what the wind would come back this time with a cooling
rain. The men who worked in the valley got up at four thirty
in the morning and looked at the sky where the sun was
already rising like a hot white bitch. They beat the brims of
their hats against their legs before putting them on and
trudged down the road like old promises nobody wanted
kept. On Thursday, when Hannah brought Eva her fried
tomatoes and soft scrambled eggs with the white left out for
good luck, she mentioned her dream of the wedding in the
red dress. Neither one bothered to look it up for they both
knew the number was 522. Eva said she’d play it when Mr.
Buckland Reed came by. Later she would remember it as
the third strange thing. She had thought it odd even then,
but the red in the dream confused her. But she wasn’t
certain that it was third or not because Sula was acting up,
fretting the deweys and meddling the newly married couple.
Because she was thirteen, everybody supposed her nature
was coming down, but it was hard to put up with her sulking
and irritation. The birthmark over her eye was getting
darker and looked more and more like a stem and rose.
She was dropping things and eating food that belonged to
the newly married couple and started in to worrying
everybody that the deweys needed a bath and she was
going to give it to them. The deweys, who went wild at the
thought of water, were crying and thundering all over the
house like colts. “We ain’t got to, do we? Do we got to do
what she says? It ain’t Saturday.” They even woke up Tar

Baby, who came out of his room to look at them and then
left the house in search of music. Hannah ignored them and
kept on bringing mason jars out of the cellar and washing
them. Eva banged on the floor with her stick but nobody
came. By noon it was quiet. The deweys had escaped,
Sula was either in her room or gone off somewhere. The
newly married couple, energized by their morning
lovemaking, had gone to look for a day’s work happily
certain that they would find none. The air all over the Bottom
got heavy with peeled fruit and boiling vegetables. Fresh
corn, tomatoes, string beans, melon rinds. The women, the
children and the old men who had no jobs were putting up
for a winter they understood so well. Peaches were stuffed
into jars and black cherries (later, when it got cooler, they
would put up jellies and preserves). The greedy canned as
many as forty-two a day even though some of them, like
Mrs. Jackson, who ate ice, had jars from 1920. Before she
trundled her wagon over to the dresser to get her comb,
Eva looked out the window and saw Hannah bending to
light the yard fire. And that was the fifth (or fourth, if you
didn’t count Sula’s craziness) strange thing. She couldn’t
find her comb. Nobody moved stuff in Eva’s room except to
clean and then they put everything right back. But Eva
couldn’t find it anywhere. One hand pulling her braids loose,
the other searching the dresser drawers, she had just
begun to get irritated when she felt it in her blouse drawer.
Then she trundled back to the window to catch a breeze, if
one took a mind to come by, while she combed her hair.
She rolled up to the window and it was then she saw

Hannah burning. The flames from the yard fire were licking
the blue cotton dress, making her dance. Eva knew there
was time for nothing in this world other than the time it took
to get there and cover her daughter’s body with her own.
She lifted her heavy frame up on her good leg, and with
fists and arms smashed the windowpane. Using her stump
as a support on the window sill, her good leg as a lever,
she threw herself out of the window. Cut and bleeding she
clawed the air trying to aim her body toward the flaming,
dancing figure. She missed and came crashing down
some twelve feet from Hannah’s smoke. Stunned but still
conscious, Eva dragged herself toward her firstborn, but
Hannah, her senses lost, went flying out of the yard
gesturing and bobbing like a sprung jack-in-the-box. Mr.
and Mrs. Suggs, who had set up their canning apparatus in
their front yard, saw her running, dancing toward them. They
whispered, “Jesus, Jesus,” and together hoisted up their
tub of water in which tight red tomatoes floated and threw it
on the smoke-and-flame-bound woman. The water did put
out the flames, but it also made steam, which seared to
sealing all that was left of the beautiful Hannah Peace. She
lay there on the wooden sidewalk planks, twitching lightly
among the smashed tomatoes, her face a mask of agony
so intense that for years the people who gathered ’round
would shake their heads at the recollection of it. Somebody
covered her legs with a shirt. A woman unwrapped her
head rag and placed it on Hannah’s shoulder. Somebody
else ran to Dick’s Fresh Food and Sundries to call the
ambulance. The rest stood there as helpless as sunflowers

leaning on a fence. The deweys came and stepped in the
tomatoes, their eyes raked with wonder. Two cats sidled
through the legs of the crowd, sniffing the burned flesh. The
vomiting of a young girl finally broke the profound silence
and caused the women to talk to each other and to God. In
the midst of calling Jesus they heard the hollow clang of the
ambulance bell struggling up the hill, but not the “Help me,
ya’ll” that the dying woman whispered. Then somebody
remembered to go and see about Eva. They found her on
her stomach by the forsythia bushes calling Hannah’s name
and dragging her body through the sweet peas and clover
that grew under the forsythia by the side of the house.
Mother and daughter were placed on stretchers and carried
to the ambulance. Eva was wide awake. The blood from
her face cuts filled her eyes so she could not see, could
only smell the familiar odor of cooked flesh. Hannah died
on the way to the hospital. Or so they said. In any case, she
had already begun to bubble and blister so badly that the
coffin had to be kept closed at the funeral and the women
who washed the body and dressed it for death wept for her
burned hair and wrinkled breasts as though they
themselves had been her lovers. When Eva got to the
hospital they put her stretcher on the floor, so preoccupied
with the hot and bubbling flesh of the other (some of them
had never seen so extreme a burn case before) they forgot
Eva, who would have bled to death except Old Willy Fields,
the orderly, saw blood staining his just-mopped floors and
went to find out where it was coming from. Recognizing Eva
at once he shouted to a nurse, who came to see if the

bloody one-legged black woman was alive or dead. From
then on Willy boasted that he had saved Eva’s life–an
indisputable fact which she herself admitted and for which
she cursed him every day for thirty-seven years thereafter
and would have cursed him for the rest of her life except by
then she was already ninety years old and forgot things.
Lying in the colored ward of the hospital, which was a
screened corner of a larger ward, Eva mused over the
perfection of the judgment against her. She remembered
the wedding dream and recalled that weddings always
meant death. And the red gown, well that was the fire, as
she should have known. She remembered something else
too, and try as she might to deny it, she knew that as she
lay on the ground trying to drag herself through the sweet
peas and clover to get to Hannah, she had seen Sula
standing on the back porch just looking. When Eva, who
was never one to hide the faults of her children, mentioned
what she thought she’d seen to a few friends, they said it
was natural. Sula was probably struck dumb, as anybody
would be who saw her own mamma burn up. Eva said yes,
but inside she disagreed and remained convinced that
Sula had watched Hannah burn not because she was
paralyzed, but because she was interested.

1927

Old people were dancing with little children. Young boys
with their sisters, and the church women who frowned on
any bodily expression of joy (except when the hand of God

commanded it) tapped their feet. Somebody (the groom’s
father, everybody said) had poured a whole pint jar of cane
liquor into the punch, so even the men who did not sneak
out the back door to have a shot, as well as the women who
let nothing stronger than Black Draught enter their blood,
were tipsy. A small boy stood at the Victrola turning its
handle and smiling at the sound of Bert Williams’ “Save a
Little Dram for Me.” Even Helene Wright had mellowed with
the cane, waving away apologies for drinks spilled on her
rug and paying no attention whatever to the chocolate cake
lying on the arm of her red-velvet sofa. The tea roses above
her left breast had slipped from the brooch that fastened
them and were hanging heads down. When her husband
called her attention to the children wrapping themselves
into her curtains, she merely smiled and said, “Oh, let them
be.” She was not only a little drunk, she was weary and had
been for weeks. Her only child’s wedding–the culmination
of all she had been, thought or done in this world-had
dragged from her energy and stamina even she did not
know she possessed. Her house had to be thoroughly
cleaned, chickens had to be plucked, cakes and pies
made, and for weeks she, her friends and her daughter had
been sewing. Now it was all happening and it took only a
little cane juice to snap the cords of fatigue and damn the
white curtains that she had pinned on the stretcher only the
morning before. Once this day was over she would have a
lifetime to rattle around in that house and repair the
damage. A real wedding, in a church, with a real reception
afterward, was rare among the people of the Bottom.

Expensive for one thing, and most newlyweds just went to
the courthouse if they were not particular, or had the
preacher come in and say a few words if they were. The
rest just “took up” with one another. No invitations were
sent. There was no need for that formality. Folks just came,
bringing a gift if they had one, none if they didn’t. Except for
those who worked in valley houses, most of them had never
been to a big wedding; they simply assumed it was rather
like a funeral except afterward you didn’t have to walk all the
way out to Beechnut Cemetery. This wedding offered a
special attraction, for the bridegroom was a handsome,
well-liked man–the tenor of Mount Zion’s Men’s Quartet,
who had an enviable reputation among the girls and a
comfortable one among men. His name was Jude Greene,
and with the pick of some eight or ten girls who came
regularly to services to hear him sing, he had chosen Nel
Wright. He wasn’t really aiming to get married. He was
twenty then, and although his job as a waiter at the Hotel
Medallion was a blessing to his parents and their seven
other children, it wasn’t nearly enough to support a wife. He
had brought the subject up first on the day the word got out
that the town was building a new road, tarmac, that would
wind through Medallion on down to the river, where a great
new bridge was to be built to connect Medallion to Porter’s
Landing, the town on the other side. The war over, a fake
prosperity was still around. In a state of euphoria, with a
hunger for more and more, the council of founders cast its
eye toward a future that would certainly include trade from
cross-river towns. Towns that needed more than a house

raft to get to the merchants of Medallion. Work had already
begun on the New River Road (the city had always meant to
name it something else, something wonderful, but ten years
later when the bridge idea was dropped for a tunnel it was
still called the New River Road). Along with a few other
young black men, Jude had gone down to the shack where
they were hiring. Three old colored men had already been
hired, but not for the road work, just to do the picking up,
food bringing and other small errands. These old men were
close to feeble, not good for much else, and everybody was
pleased they were taken on; still it was a shame to see
those white men laughing with the grandfathers but shying
away from the young black men who could tear that road
up. The men like Jude who could do real work. Jude himself
longed more than anybody else to be taken. Not just for the
good money, more for the work itself. He wanted to swing
the pick or kneel down with the string or shovel the gravel.
His arms ached for something heavier than trays, for
something dirtier than peelings; his feet wanted the heavy
work shoes, not the thin-soled black shoes that the hotel
required. More than anything he wanted the camaraderie of
the road men: the lunch buckets, the hollering, the body
movement that in the end produced something real,
something he could point to. “I built that road,” he could say.
How much better sundown would be than the end of a day
in the restaurant, where a good day’s work was marked by
the number of dirty plates and the weight of the garbage
bin. “I built that road.” People would walk over his sweat for
years. Perhaps a sledge hammer would come crashing

down on his foot, and when people asked him how come
he limped, he could say, “Got that building the New Road.”
It was while he was full of such dreams, his body already
feeling the rough work clothes, his hands already curved to
the pick handle, that he spoke to Nel about getting married.
She seemed receptive but hardly anxious. It was after he
stood in lines for six days running and saw the gang boss
pick out thin-armed white boys from the Virginia hills and
the bull-necked Greeks and Italians and heard over and
over, “Nothing else today. Come back tomorrow,” that he
got the message. So it was rage, rage and a determination
to take on a man’s role anyhow that made him press Nel
about settling down. He needed some of his appetites
filled, some posture of adulthood recognized, but mostly he
wanted someone to care about his hurt, to care very
deeply. Deep enough to hold him, deep enough to rock
him, deep enough to ask, “How you feel? You all right?
Want some coffee?” And if he were to be a man, that
someone could no longer be his mother. He chose the girl
who had always been kind, who had never seemed hell-
bent to marry, who made the whole venture seem like his
idea, his conquest. The more he thought about marriage,
the more attractive it became. Whatever his fortune,
whatever the cut of his garment, there would always be the
hem–the tuck and fold that hid his raveling edges; a
someone sweet, industrious and loyal to shore him up. And
in return he would shelter her, love her, grow old with her.
Without that someone he was a waiter hanging around a
kitchen like a woman. With her he was head of a household

pinned to an unsatisfactory job out of necessity. The two of
them together would make one Jude. His fears lest his
burst dream of road building discourage her were never
realized. Nel’s indifference to his hints about marriage
disappeared altogether when she discovered his pain.
Jude could see himself taking shape in her eyes. She
actually wanted to help, to soothe, and was it true what Ajax
said in the Time and a Half Pool Hall? That “all they want,
man, is they own misery. Ax em to die for you and they
yours for life.” Whether he was accurate in general, Ajax
was right about Nel. Except for an occasional leadership
role with Sula, she had no aggression. Her parents had
succeeded in rubbing down to a dull glow any sparkle or
splutter she had. Only with Sula did that quality have free
rein, but their friendship was so close, they themselves had
difficulty distinguishing one’s thoughts from the other’s.
During all of her girlhood the only respite Nel had had from
her stern and undemonstrative parents was Sula. When
Jude began to hover around, she was flattered–all the girls
liked him–and Sula made the enjoyment of his attentions
keener simply because she seemed always to want Nel to
shine. They never quarreled, those two, the way some
girlfriends did over boys, or competed against each other
for them. In those days a compliment to one was a
compliment to the other, and cruelty to one was a challenge
to the other. Nel’s response to Jude’s shame and anger
selected her away from Sula. And greater than her
friendship was this new feeling of being needed by
someone who saw her singly. She didn’t even know she

had a neck until Jude remarked on it, or that her smile was
anything but the spreading of her lips until he saw it as a
small miracle. Sula was no less excited about the wedding.
She thought it was the perfect thing to do following their
graduation from general school. She wanted to be the
bridesmaid. No others. And she encouraged Mrs. Wright to
go all out, even to borrowing Eva’s punch bowl. In fact, she
handled most of the details very efficiently, capitalizing on
the fact that most people were anxious to please her since
she had lost her mamma only a few years back and they
still remembered the agony in Hannah’s face and the blood
on Eva’s. So they danced up in the Bottom on the second
Saturday in June, danced at the wedding where everybody
realized for the first time that except for their magnificent
teeth, the deweys would never grow. They had been forty-
eight inches tall for years now, and while their size was
unusual it was not unheard of. The realization was based on
the fact that they remained boys in mind. Mischievous,
cunning, private and completely unhousebroken, their
games and interests had not changed since Hannah had
them all put into the first grade together. Nel and Jude, who
had been the stars all during the wedding, were forgotten
finally as the reception melted into a dance, a feed, a
gossip session, a playground and a love nest. For the first
time that day they relaxed and looked at each other, and
liked what they saw. They began to dance, pressed in
among the others, and each one turned his thoughts to the
night that was coming on fast. They had taken a
housekeeping room with one of Jude’s aunts (over the

protest of Mrs. Wright, who had rooms to spare, but Nel
didn’t want to make love to her husband in her mother’s
house) and were getting restless to go there. As if reading
her thoughts, Jude leaned down and whispered, “Me too.”
Nel smiled and rested her cheek on his shoulder. The veil
she wore was too heavy to allow her to feel the core of the
kiss he pressed on her head. When she raised her eyes to
him for one more look of reassurance, she saw through the
open door a slim figure in blue, gliding, with just a hint of a
strut, down the path toward the road. One hand was
pressed to the head to hold down the large hat against the
warm June breeze. Even from the rear Nel could tell that it
was Sula and that she was smiling; that something deep
down in that litheness was amused. It would be ten years
before they saw each other again, and their meeting would
be thick with birds.

1937

Accompanied by a plague of robins, Sula came back to
Medallion. The little yam-breasted shuddering birds were
everywhere, exciting very small children away from their
usual welcome into a vicious stoning. Nobody knew why or
from where they had come. What they did know was that
you couldn’t go anywhere without stepping in their pearly
shit, and it was hard to hang up clothes, pull weeds or just
sit on the front porch when robins were flying and dying all
around you. Although most of the people remembered the
time when the sky was black for two hours with clouds and

clouds of pigeons, and although they were accustomed to
excesses in nature–too much heat, too much cold, too little
rain, rain to flooding–they still dreaded the way a relatively
trivial phenomenon could become sovereign in their lives
and bend their minds to its will. In spite of their fear, they
reacted to an oppressive oddity, or what they called evil
days, with an acceptance that bordered on welcome. Such
evil must be avoided, they felt, and precautions must
naturally be taken to protect themselves from it. But they let
it run its course, fulfill itself, and never invented ways either
to alter it, to annihilate it or to prevent its happening again.
So also were they with people. What was taken by
outsiders to be slackness, slovenliness or even generosity
was in fact a full recognition of the legitimacy of forces other
than good ones. They did not believe doctors could heal–
for them, none ever had done so. They did not believe
death was accidental–life might be, but death was
deliberate. They did not believe Nature was ever askew–
only inconvenient. Plague and drought were as “natural” as
springtime. If milk could curdle, God knows robins could fall.
The purpose of evil was to survive it and they determined
(without ever knowing they had made up their minds to do
it) to survive floods, white people, tuberculosis, famine and
ignorance. They knew anger well but not despair, and they
didn’t stone sinners for the same reason they didn’t commit
suicide–it was beneath them. Sula stepped off the
Cincinnati Flyer into the robin shit and began the long climb
up into the Bottom. She was dressed in a manner that was
as close to a movie star as anyone would ever see. A black

crepe dress splashed with pink and yellow zinnias, foxtails,
a black felt hat with the veil of net lowered over one eye. In
her right hand was a black purse with a beaded clasp and
in her left a red leather traveling case, so small, so
charming–no one had seen anything like it ever before,
including the mayor’s wife and the music teacher, both of
whom had been to Rome. Walking up the hill toward
Carpenter’s Road, the heels and sides of her pumps edged
with drying bird shit, she attracted the glances of old men
sitting on stone benches in front of the courthouse,
housewives throwing buckets of water on their sidewalks,
and high school students on their way home for lunch. By
the time she reached the Bottom, the news of her return
had brought the black people out on their porches or to
their windows. There were scattered hellos and nods but
mostly stares. A little boy ran up to her saying, “Carry yo’
bag, ma’am?” Before Sula could answer his mother had
called him, “You, John. Get back in here.” At Eva’s house
there were four dead robins on the walk. Sula stopped and
with her toe pushed them into the bordering grass. Eva
looked at Sula pretty much the same way she had looked at
BoyBoy that time when he returned after he’d left her
without a dime or a prospect of one. She was sitting in her
wagon, her back to the window she had jumped out of (now
all boarded up) setting fire to the hair she had combed out
of her head. When Sula opened the door she raised her
eyes and said, “I might have knowed them birds meant
something. Where’s your coat?” Sula threw herself on Eva’s
bed. “The rest of my stuff will be on later.” “I should hope so.

Them little old furry tails ain’t going to do you no more good
than they did the fox that was wearing them.” “Don’t you say
hello to nobody when you ain’t seen them for ten years?” “If
folks let somebody know where they is and when they
coming, then other folks can get ready for them. If they
don’t–if they just pop in all sudden like–then they got to take
whatever mood they find.” “How you been doing, Big
Mamma?” “Gettin’ by. Sweet of you to ask. You was quick
enough when you wanted something. When you needed a
little change or… ” “Don’t talk to me about how much you
gave me, Big Mamma, and how much I owe you or none of
that.” “Oh? I ain’t supposed to mention it?” “OK. Mention it.”
Sula shrugged and turned over on her stomach, her
buttocks toward Eva. “You ain’t been in this house ten
seconds and already you starting something.” “Takes two,
Big Mamma.” “Well, don’t let your mouth start nothing that
your ass can’t stand. When you gone to get married? You
need to have some babies. It’ll settle you.” “I don’t want to
make somebody else. I want to make myself.” “Selfish.
Ain’t no woman got no business floatin’ around without no
man.” “You did.” “Not by choice.” “Mamma did.” “Not by
choice, I said. It ain’t right for you to want to stay off by
yourself. You need… I’m a tell you what you need.” Sula sat
up. “I need you to shut your mouth.” “Don’t nobody talk to
me like that. Don’t nobody… ” “This body does. Just ’cause
you was bad enough to cut off your own leg you think you
got a right to kick everybody with the stump.” “Who said I
cut off my leg?” “Well, you stuck it under a train to collect
insurance.” “Hold on, you lyin’ heifer!” “I aim to.” “Bible say

honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long
upon the land thy God giveth thee.” “Mamma must have
skipped that part. Her days wasn’t too long.” “Pus mouth!
God’s going to strike you!” “Which God? The one watched
you burn Plum?” “Don’t talk to me about no burning. You
watched your own mamma. You crazy roach! You the one
should have been burnt!” “But I ain’t. Got that? I ain’t. Any
more fires in this house, I’m lighting them!” “Hellfire don’t
need lighting and it’s already burning in you… ” “Whatever’s
burning in me is mine!” “Amen!” “And I’ll split this town in
two and everything in it before I’ll let you put it out!” “Pride
goeth before a fall.” “What the hell do I care about falling?”
“Amazing Grace.” “You sold your life for twenty-three
dollars a month.” “You throwed yours away.” “It’s mine to
throw.” “One day you gone need it.” “But not you. I ain’t
never going to need you. And you know what? Maybe one
night when you dozing in that wagon flicking flies and
swallowing spit, maybe I’ll just tip on up here with some
kerosene and–who knows–you may make the brightest
flame of them all.” So Eva locked her door from then on.
But it did no good. In April two men came with a stretcher
and she didn’t even have time to comb her hair before they
strapped her to a piece of canvas. When Mr. Buckland
Reed came by to pick up the number, his mouth sagged at
the sight of Eva being carried out and Sula holding some
papers against the wall, at the bottom of which, just above
the word “guardian,” she very carefully wrote Miss Sula
Mae Peace. * * * Nel alone noticed the peculiar quality of
the May that followed the leaving of the birds. It had a

sheen, a glimmering as of green, rain-soaked Saturday
nights (lit by the excitement of newly installed street lights);
of lemonyellow afternoons bright with iced drinks and
splashes of daffodils. It showed in the damp faces of her
children and the river-smoothness of their voices. Even her
own body was not immune to the magic. She would sit on
the floor to sew as she had done as a girl, fold her legs up
under her or do a little dance that fitted some tune in her
head. There were easy sun-washed days and purple dusks
in which Tar Baby sang “Abide With Me” at prayer
meetings, his lashes darkened by tears, his silhouette limp
with regret against the whitewashed walls of Greater Saint
Matthew’s. Nel listened and was moved to smile. To smile
at the sheer loveliness that pressed in from the windows
and touched his grief, making it a pleasure to behold.
Although it was she alone who saw this magic, she did not
wonder at it. She knew it was all due to Sula’s return to the
Bottom. It was like getting the use of an eye back, having a
cataract removed. Her old friend had come home. Sula.
Who made her laugh, who made her see old things with
new eyes, in whose presence she felt clever, gentle and a
little raunchy. Sula, whose past she had lived through and
with whom the present was a constant sharing of
perceptions. Talking to Sula had always been a
conversation with herself. Was there anyone else before
whom she could never be foolish? In whose view
inadequacy was mere idiosyncrasy, a character trait rather
than a deficiency? Anyone who left behind that aura of fun
and complicity? Sula never competed; she simply helped

others define themselves. Other people seemed to turn
their volume on and up when Sula was in the room. More
than any other thing, humor returned. She could listen to the
crunch of sugar underfoot that the children had spilled
without reaching for the switch; and she forgot the tear in
the living-room window shade. Even Nel’s love for Jude,
which over the years had spun a steady gray web around
her heart, became a bright and easy affection, a
playfulness that was reflected in their lovemaking. Sula
would come by of an afternoon, walking along with her fluid
stride, wearing a plain yellow dress the same way her
mother, Hannah, had worn those too-big house dresses–
with a distance, an absence of a relationship to clothes
which emphasized everything the fabric covered. When she
scratched the screen door, as in the old days, and stepped
inside, the dishes piled in the sink looked as though they
belonged there; the dust on the lamps sparkled; the hair
brush lying on the “good” sofa in the living room did not
have to be apologetically retrieved, and Nel’s grimy
intractable children looked like three wild things happily
insouciant in the May shine. “Hey, girl.” The rose mark over
Sula’s eye gave her glance a suggestion of startled
pleasure. It was darker than Nel remembered. “Hey
yourself. Come on in here.” “How you doin’?” Sula moved a
pile of ironed diapers from a chair and sat down. “Oh, I ain’t
strangled nobody yet so I guess I’m all right.” “Well, if you
change your mind call me.” “Somebody need killin’?” “Half
this town need it.” “And the other half?” “A drawn-out
disease.” “Oh, come on. Is Medallion that bad?” “Didn’t

nobody tell you?” “You been gone too long, Sula.” “Not too
long, but maybe too far.” “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Nel dipped her fingers into the bowl of water and sprinkled
a diaper. “Oh, I don’t know.” “Want some cool tea?”
“Mmmm. Lots of ice, I’m burnin’ up.” “Iceman don’t come
yet, but it’s good and cold.” “That’s fine.” “Hope I didn’t
speak too soon. Kids run in and out of here so much.” Nel
bent to open the icebox. “You puttin’ it on, Nel. Jude must
be wore out.” “_Jude__ must be wore out? You don’t care
nothin’ ’bout my back, do you?” “Is that where it’s at, in your
back?” “Hah! Jude thinks it’s everywhere.” “He’s right, it is
everywhere. Just be glad he found it, wherever it is.
Remember John L.?” “When Shirley said he got her down
by the well and tried to stick it in her hip?” Nel giggled at the
remembrance of that teen-time tale. “She should have been
grateful. Have you seen her since you been back?” “Mmm.
Like a ox.” “That was one dumb nigger, John L.” “Maybe.
Maybe he was just sanitary.” “Sanitary?” “Well. Think about
it. Suppose Shirley was all splayed out in front of you?
Wouldn’t you go for the hipbone instead?” Nel lowered her
head onto crossed arms while tears of laughter dripped
into the warm diapers. Laughter that weakened her knees
and pressed her bladder into action. Her rapid soprano
and Sula’s dark sleepy chuckle made a duet that frightened
the cat and made the children run in from the back yard,
puzzled at first by the wild free sounds, then delighted to
see their mother stumbling merrily toward the bathroom,
holding on to her stomach, fairly singing through the
laughter: “Aw. Aw. Lord. Sula. Stop.” And the other one, the

one with the scary black thing over her eye, laughing softly
and egging their mother on: “Neatness counts. You know
what cleanliness is next to… ” “Hush.” Nel’s plea was
clipped off by the slam of the bathroom door. “What y’all
laughing at?” “Old time-y stuff. Long gone, old time-y stuff.”
“Tell us.” “Tell _you?__” The black mark leaped. “Uh huh.
Tell us.” “What tickles us wouldn’t tickle you.” “Uh huh, it
would.” “Well, we was talking about some people we used
to know when we was little.” “Was my mamma little?” “Of
course.” “What happened?” “Well, some old boy we knew
name John L. and a girl name… ” Damp-faced, Nel
stepped back into the kitchen. She felt new, soft and new. It
had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping
laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be.
So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she
had learned to be content with these past few years. “O
Lord, Sula. You haven’t changed none.” She wiped her
eyes. “What was all that about, anyway? All that scramblin’
we did trying to do it and not do it at the same time?”
“Beats me. Such a simple thing.” “But we sure made a lot
out of it, and the boys were dumber than we were.”
“Couldn’t nobody be dumber than I was.” “Stop lying. All of
’em liked you best.” “Yeah? Where are they?” “They still
here. You the one went off.” “Didn’t I, though?” “Tell me
about it. The big city.” “Big is all it is. A big Medallion.” “No.
I mean the life. The nightclubs, and parties… ” “I was in
college, Nellie. No nightclubs on campus.” “Campus? That
what they call it? Well. You wasn’t in no college for–what–
ten years now? And you didn’t write to nobody. How come

you never wrote?” “You never did either.” “Where was I
going to write to? All I knew was that you was in Nashville. I
asked Miss Peace about you once or twice.” “What did
_she__ say?” “I couldn’t make much sense out of her. You
know she been gettin’ stranger and stranger after she come
out the hospital. How is she anyway?” “Same, I guess. Not
so hot.” “No? Laura, I know, was doing her cooking and
things. Is she still?” “No. I put her out.” “Put her out? What
for?” “She made me nervous.” “But she was doing it for
nothing, Sula.” “That’s what you think. She was stealing
right and left.” “Since when did you get froggy about folks’
stealing?” Sula smiled. “OK. I lied. You wanted a reason.”
“Well, give me the real one.” “I don’t know the real one. She
just didn’t belong in that house. Digging around in the
cupboards, picking up pots and ice picks… ” “You sure
have changed. That house was always full of people
digging in cupboards and carrying on.” “That’s the reason,
then.” “Sula. Come on, now.” “You’ve changed too. I didn’t
used to have to explain everything to you.” Nel blushed.
“Who’s feeding the deweys and Tar Baby? You?” “Sure
me. Anyway Tar Baby don’t eat and the deweys still crazy.”
“I heard one of ’em’s mamma came to take him back but
didn’t know which was hern.” “Don’t nobody know.” “And
Eva? You doing the work for her too?” “Well, since you
haven’t heard it, let me tell you. Eva’s real sick. I had her put
where she could be watched and taken care of.” “Where
would that be?” “Out by Beechnut.” “You mean that home
the white church run? Sula! That ain’t no place for Eva. All
them women is dirt poor with no people at all. Mrs. Wilkens

and them. They got dropsy and can’t hold their water–crazy
as loons. Eva’s odd, but she got sense. I don’t think that’s
right, Sula.” “I’m scared of her, Nellie. That’s why… ”
“Scared? Of Eva?” “You don’t know her. Did you know she
burnt Plum?” “Oh, I heard that years ago. But nobody put no
stock in it.” “They should have. It’s true. I saw it. And when I
got back here she was planning to do it to me too.” “Eva? I
can’t hardly believe that. She almost died trying to get to
your mother.” Sula leaned forward, her elbows on the table.
“You ever known me to lie to you?” “No. But you could be
mistaken. Why would Eva… ” “All I know is I’m scared. And
there’s no place else for me to go. We all that’s left, Eva
and me. I guess I should have stayed gone. I didn’t know
what else to do. Maybe I should have talked to you about it
first. You always had better sense than me. Whenever I was
scared before, you knew just what to do.” The closed place
in the water spread before them. Nel put the iron on the
stove. The situation was clear to her now. Sula, like always,
was incapable of making any but the most trivial decisions.
When it came to matters of grave importance, she behaved
emotionally and irresponsibly and left it to others to
straighten out. And when fear struck her, she did
unbelievable things. Like that time with her finger. Whatever
those hunkies did, it wouldn’t have been as bad as what
she did to herself. But Sula was so scared she had
mutilated herself, to protect herself. “What should I do,
Nellie? Take her back and sleep with my door locked
again?” “No. I guess it’s too late anyway. But let’s work out
a plan for taking care of her. So she won’t be messed

over.” “Anything you say.” “What about money? She got
any?” Sula shrugged. “The checks come still. It’s not much,
like it used to be. Should I have them made over to me?”
“Can you? Do it, then. We can arrange for her to have
special comforts. That place is a mess, you know. A doctor
don’t never set foot in there. I ain’t figured out yet how they
stay alive in there as long as they do.” “Why don’t I have the
checks made over to you, Nellie? You better at this than I
am.” “Oh no. People will say I’m scheming. You the one to
do it. Was there insurance from Hannah?” “Yes. Plum too.
He had all that army insurance.” “Any of it left?” “Well I went
to college on some. Eva banked the rest. I’ll look into it,
though.” “… and explain it all to the bank people.” “Will you
go down with me?” “Sure. It’s going to be all right.” “I’m glad
I talked to you ’bout this. It’s been bothering me.” “Well,
tongues will wag, but so long as we know the truth, it don’t
matter.” Just at that moment the children ran in announcing
the entrance of their father. Jude opened the back door and
walked into the kitchen. He was still a very good-looking
man, and the only difference Sula could see was the thin
pencil mustache under his nose, and a part in his hair.
“Hey, Jude. What you know good?” “White man running it–
nothing good.” Sula laughed while Nel, high-tuned to his
moods, ignored her husband’s smile saying, “Bad day,
honey?” “Same old stuff,” he replied and told them a brief
tale of some personal insult done him by a customer and
his boss–a whiney tale that peaked somewhere between
anger and a lapping desire for comfort. He ended it with the
observation that a Negro man had a hard row to hoe in this

world. He expected his story to dovetail into milkwarm
commiseration, but before Nel could excrete it, Sula said
she didn’t know about that–it looked like a pretty good life
to her. “Say what?” Jude’s temper flared just a bit as he
looked at this friend of his wife’s, this slight woman, not
exactly plain, but not fine either, with a copperhead over her
eye. As far as he could tell, she looked like a woman
roaming the country trying to find some man to burden
down with a lot of lip and a lot of mouths. Sula was smiling.
“I mean, I don’t know what the fuss is about. I mean,
everything in the world loves you. White men love you. They
spend so much time worrying about your penis they forget
their own. The only thing they want to do is cut off a nigger’s
privates. And if that ain’t love and respect I don’t know what
is. And white women? They chase you all to every corner of
the earth, feel for you under every bed. I knew a white
woman wouldn’t leave the house after 6 o’clock for fear one
of you would snatch her. Now ain’t that love? They think
rape soon’s they see you, and if they don’t get the rape they
looking for, they scream it anyway just so the search won’t
be in vain. Colored women worry themselves into bad
health just trying to hang on to your cuffs. Even little children-
white and black, boys and girls–spend all their childhood
eating their hearts out ’cause they think you don’t love them.
And if that ain’t enough, you love yourselves. Nothing in this
world loves a black man more than another black man. You
hear of solitary white men, but niggers? Can’t stay away
from one another a whole day. So. It looks to me like you
the envy of the world.” Jude and Nel were laughing, he

saying, “Well, if that’s the only way they got to show it–cut
off my balls and throw me in jail–I’d just as soon they left me
alone.” But thinking that Sula had an odd way of looking at
things and that her wide smile took some of the sting from
that rattlesnake over her eye. A funny woman, he thought,
not that bad-looking. But he could see why she wasn’t
married; she stirred a man’s mind maybe, but not his body.
* * * He left his tie. The one with the scriggly yellow lines
running lopsided across the dark-blue field. It hung over the
top of the closet door pointing steadily downward while it
waited with every confidence for Jude to return. Could he
be gone if his tie is still here? He will remember it and
come back and then she would… uh. Then she could… tell
him. Sit down quietly and tell him. “But Jude,” she would
say, “you _knew__ me. All those days and years, Jude, you
_knew__ me. My ways and my hands and how my stomach
folded and how we tried to get Mickey to nurse and how
about that time when the landlord said… but you said… and I
cried, Jude. You knew me and had listened to the things I
said in the night, and heard me in the bathroom and
laughed at my raggedy girdle and I laughed too because I
knew you too, Jude. So how could you leave me when you
knew me?” But they had been down on all fours naked, not
touching except their lips right down there on the floor
where the tie is pointing to, on all fours like (uh huh, go on,
say it) like dogs. Nibbling at each other, not even touching,
not even looking at each other, just their lips, and when I
opened the door they didn’t even look for a minute and I
thought the reason they are not looking up is because they

are not doing that. So it’s all right. I am just standing here.
They are not doing that. I am just standing here and seeing
it, but they are not really doing it. But then they did look up.
Or you did. You did, Jude. And if only you had not looked at
me the way the soldiers did on the train, the way you look at
the children when they come in while you are listening to
Gabriel Heatter and break your train of thought–not
focusing exactly but giving them an instant, a piece of time,
to remember what they are doing, what they are
interrupting, and to go on back to wherever they were and
let you listen to Gabriel Heatter. And I did not know how to
move my feet or fix my eyes or what. I just stood there
seeing it and smiling, because maybe there was some
explanation, something important that I did not know about
that would have made it all right. I waited for Sula to look up
at me any minute and say one of those lovely college words
like _aesthetic__ or _rapport,__ which I never understood
but which I loved because they sounded so comfortable
and firm. And finally you just got up and started putting on
your clothes and your privates were hanging down, so soft,
and you buckled your pants belt but forgot to button the fly
and she was sitting on the bed not even bothering to put on
her clothes because actually she didn’t need to because
somehow she didn’t look naked to me, only you did. Her
chin was in her hand and she sat like a visitor from out of
town waiting for the hosts to get some quarreling done and
over with so the card game could continue and me wanting
her to leave so I could tell you privately that you had
forgotten to button your fly because I didn’t want to say it in

front of her, Jude. And even when you began to talk, I
couldn’t hear because I was worried about you not knowing
that your fly was open and scared too because your eyes
looked like the soldiers’ that time on the train when my
mother turned to custard. Remember how big that bedroom
was? Jude? How when we moved here we said, Well, at
least we got us a real big bedroom, but it was small then,
Jude, and so shambly, and maybe it was that way all along
but it would have been better if I had gotten the dust out
from under the bed because I was ashamed of it in that
small room. And then you walked past me saying, “I’ll be
back for my things.” And you did but you left your tie. The
clock was ticking. Nel looked at it and realized that it was
two thirty, only forty-five minutes before the children would
be home and she hadn’t even felt anything right or sensible
and now there was no time or wouldn’t be until nighttime
when they were asleep and she could get into bed and
maybe she could do it then. Think. But who could think in
that bed where _they__ had been and where they _also__
had been and where only she was now? She looked
around for a place to be. A small place. The closet? No.
Too dark. The bathroom. It was both small and bright, and
she wanted to be in a very small, very bright place. Small
enough to contain her grief. Bright enough to throw into
relief the dark things that cluttered her. Once inside, she
sank to the tile floor next to the toilet. On her knees, her
hand on the cold rim of the bathtub, she waited for
something to happen… inside. There was stirring, a
movement of mud and dead leaves. She thought of the

women at Chicken Little’s funeral. The women who
shrieked over the bier and at the lip of the open grave.
What she had regarded since as unbecoming behavior
seemed fitting to her now; they were screaming at the neck
of God, his giant nape, the vast back-of-the-head that he
had turned on them in death. But it seemed to her now that
it was not a fist-shaking grief they were keening but rather a
simple obligation to say something, do something, feel
something about the dead. They could not let that heart-
smashing event pass unrecorded, unidentified. It was
poisonous, unnatural to let the dead go with a mere
whimpering, a slight murmur, a rose bouquet of good taste.
Good taste was out of place in the company of death, death
itself was the essence of bad taste. And there must be
much rage and saliva in its presence. The body must move
and throw itself about, the eyes must roll, the hands should
have no peace, and the throat should release all the
yearning, despair and outrage that accompany the stupidity
of loss. “The real hell of Hell is that it is forever.” Sula said
that. She said doing anything forever and ever was hell. Nel
didn’t understand it then, but now in the bathroom, trying to
feel, she thought, “If I could be sure that I could stay here in
this small white room with the dirty tile and water gurgling in
the pipes and my head on the cool rim of this bathtub and
never have to go out the door, I would be happy. If I could be
certain that I never had to get up and flush the toilet, go in
the kitchen, watch my children grow up and die, see my
food chewed on my plate… Sula was wrong. Hell ain’t things
lasting forever. Hell is change.” Not only did men leave and

children grow up and die, but even the misery didn’t last.
One day she wouldn’t even have that. This very grief that
had twisted her into a curve on the floor and flayed her
would be gone. She would lose that too. “Why, even in hate
here I am thinking of what Sula said.” Hunched down in the
small bright room Nel waited. Waited for the oldest cry. A
scream not for others, not in sympathy for a burnt child, or a
dead father, but a deeply personal cry for one’s own pain. A
loud, strident: “Why me?” She waited. The mud shifted, the
leaves stirred, the smell of overripe green things enveloped
her and announced the beginnings of her very own howl.
But it did not come. The odor evaporated; the leaves were
still, the mud settled. And finally there was nothing, just a
flake of something dry and nasty in her throat. She stood up
frightened. There was something just to the right of her, in
the air, just out of view. She could not see it, but she knew
exactly what it looked like. A gray ball hovering just there.
Just there. To the right. Quiet, gray, dirty. A ball of muddy
strings, but without weight, fluffy but terrible in its
malevolence. She knew she could not look, so she closed
her eyes and crept past it out of the bathroom, shutting the
door behind her. Sweating with fear, she stepped to the
kitchen door and onto the back porch. The lilac bushes
preened at the railing, but there were no lilacs yet. Wasn’t it
time? Surely it was time. She looked over the fence to Mrs.
Rayford’s yard. Hers were not in bloom either. Was it too
late? She fastened on this question with enthusiasm, all the
time aware of something she was not thinking. It was the
only way she could get her mind off the flake in her throat.

She spent a whole summer with the gray ball, the little ball
of fur and string and hair always floating in the light near her
but which she did not see because she never looked. But
that was the terrible part, the effort it took not to look. But it
was there anyhow, just to the right of her head and maybe
further down by her shoulder, so when the children went to a
monster movie at the Elmira Theater and came home and
said, “Mamma, can you sleep with us tonight?” she said all
right and got into bed with the two boys, who loved it, but
the girl did not. For a long time she could not stop getting in
the bed with her children and told herself each time that
they might dream a dream about dragons and would need
her to comfort them. It was so nice to think about their scary
dreams and not about a ball of fur. She even hoped their
dreams would rub off on her and give her the wonderful
relief of a nightmare so she could stop going around
scared to turn her head this way or that lest she see it. That
was the scary part–seeing it. It was not coming at her; it
never did that, or tried to pounce on her. It just floated there
for the seeing, if she wanted to, and O my God for the
touching if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to see it, ever,
for if she saw it, who could tell but what she might actually
touch it, or want to, and then what would happen if she
actually reached out her hand and touched it? Die probably,
but no worse than that. Dying was OK because it was sleep
and there wasn’t no gray ball in death, was there? Was
there? She would have to ask somebody about that,
somebody she could confide in and who knew a lot of
things, like Sula, for Sula would know or if she didn’t she

would say something funny that would make it all right. Ooo
no, not Sula. Here she was in the midst of it, hating it,
scared of it, and again she thought of Sula as though they
were still friends and talked things over. That was too much.
To lose Jude and not have Sula to talk to about it because
it was Sula that he had left her for. Now her thighs were
really empty. And it was then that what those women said
about never looking at another man made some sense to
her, for the real point, the heart of what they said, was the
word _looked.__ Not to promise never to make love to
another man, not to refuse to marry another man, but to
promise and know that she could never afford to look
again, to see and accept the way in which their heads cut
the air or see moons and tree limbs framed by their necks
and shoulders… never to look, for now she could not risk
looking–and anyway, so what? For now her thighs were
truly empty and dead too, and it was Sula who had taken
the life from them and Jude who smashed her heart and the
both of them who left her with no thighs and no heart just her
brain raveling away. And what am I supposed to do with
these old thighs now, just walk up and down these rooms?
What good are they, Jesus? They will never give me the
peace I need to get from sunup to sundown, what good are
they, are you trying to tell me that I am going to have to go
all the way through these days all the way, O my god, to that
box with four handles with never nobody settling down
between my legs even if I sew up those old pillow cases
and rinse down the porch and feed my children and beat
the rugs and haul the coal up out of the bin even then

nobody, O Jesus, I could be a mule or plow the furrows with
my hands if need be or hold these rickety walls up with my
back if need be if I knew that somewhere in this world in the
pocket of some night I could open my legs to some cowboy
lean hips but you are trying to tell me no and O my sweet
Jesus what kind of cross is that?

1939

When the word got out about Eva being put in Sunnydale,
the people in the Bottom shook their heads and said Sula
was a roach. Later, when they saw how she took Jude, then
ditched him for others, and heard how he bought a bus
ticket to Detroit (where he bought but never mailed birthday
cards to his sons), they forgot all about Hannah’s easy ways
(or their own) and said she was a bitch. Everybody
remembered the plague of robins that announced her
return, and the tale about her watching Hannah burn was
stirred up again. But it was the men who gave her the final
label, who fingerprinted her for all time. They were the ones
who said she was guilty of the unforgivable thing–the thing
for which there was no understanding, no excuse, no
compassion. The route from which there was no way back,
the dirt that could not ever be washed away. They said that
Sula slept with white men. It may not have been true, but it
certainly could have been. She was obviously capable of it.
In any case, all minds were closed to her when that word
was passed around. It made the old women draw their lips
together; made small children look away from her in shame;

made young men fantasize elaborate torture for her–just to
get the saliva back in their mouths when they saw her.
Every one of them imagined the scene, each according to
his own predilections–Sula underneath some white man–
and it filled them with choking disgust. There was nothing
lower she could do, nothing filthier. The fact that their own
skin color was proof that it had happened in their own
families was no deterrent to their bile. Nor was the
willingness of black men to lie in the beds of white women a
consideration that might lead them toward tolerance. They
insisted that all unions between white men and black
women be rape; for a black woman to be willing was
literally unthinkable. In that way, they regarded integration
with precisely the same venom that white people did. So
they laid broomsticks across their doors at night and
sprinkled salt on porch steps. But aside from one or two
unsuccessful efforts to collect the dust from her footsteps,
they did nothing to harm her. As always the black people
looked at evil stony-eyed and let it run. Sula acknowledged
none of their attempts at counterconjure or their gossip and
seemed to need the services of nobody. So they watched
her far more closely than they watched any other roach or
bitch in the town, and their alertness was gratified. Things
began to happen. First off, Teapot knocked on her door to
see if she had any bottles. He was the five-year-old son of
an indifferent mother, all of whose interests sat around the
door of the Time and a Half Pool Hall. Her name was Betty
but she was called Teapot’s Mamma because being his
mamma was precisely her major failure. When Sula said

no, the boy turned around and fell down the steps. He
couldn’t get up right away and Sula went to help him. His
mother, just then tripping home, saw Sula bending over her
son’s pained face. She flew into a fit of concerned, if
drunken, motherhood, and dragged Teapot home. She told
everybody that Sula had pushed him, and talked so strongly
about it she was forced to abide by the advice of her
friends and take him to the county hospital. The two dollars
she hated to release turned out to be well spent, for Teapot
did have a fracture, although the doctor said poor diet had
contributed substantially to the daintiness of his bones.
Teapot’s Mamma got a lot of attention anyway and
immersed herself in a role she had shown no inclination for:
motherhood. The very idea of a grown woman hurting her
boy kept her teeth on edge. She became the most devoted
mother: sober, clean and industrious. No more nickels for
Teapot to go to Dick’s for a breakfast of Mr. Goodbars and
soda pop: no more long hours of him alone or wandering
the roads while she was otherwise engaged. Her change
was a distinct improvement, although little Teapot did miss
those quiet times at Dick’s. Other things happened. Mr.
Finley sat on his porch sucking chicken bones, as he had
done for thirteen years, looked up, saw Sula, choked on a
bone and died on the spot. That incident, and Teapot’s
Mamma, cleared up for everybody the meaning of the
birthmark over her eye; it was not a stemmed rose, or a
snake, it was Hannah’s ashes marking her from the very
beginning. She came to their church suppers without
underwear, bought their steaming platters of food and

merely picked at it–relishing nothing, exclaiming over no
one’s ribs or cobbler. They believed that she was laughing
at their God. And the fury she created in the women of the
town was incredible–for she would lay their husbands once
and then no more. Hannah had been a nuisance, but she
was complimenting the women, in a way, by wanting their
husbands. Sula was trying them out and discarding them
without any excuse the men could swallow. So the women,
to justify their own judgment, cherished their men more,
soothed the pride and vanity Sula had bruised. Among the
weighty evidence piling up was the fact that Sula did not
look her age. She was near thirty and, unlike them, had lost
no teeth, suffered no bruises, developed no ring of fat at the
waist or pocket at the back of her neck. It was rumored that
she had had no childhood diseases, was never known to
have chicken pox, croup or even a runny nose. She had
played rough as a child–where were the scars? Except for
a funny-shaped finger and that evil birthmark, she was free
of any normal signs of vulnerability. Some of the men, who
as boys had dated her, remembered that on picnics neither
gnats nor mosquitoes would settle on her. Patsy, Hannah’s
one-time friend, agreed and said not only that, but she had
witnessed the fact that when Sula drank beer she never
belched. The most damning evidence, however, came from
Dessie, who was a big Daughter Elk and knew things. At
one of the social meetings she revealed something to her
friends. “Yeh, well I noticed something long time ago. Ain’t
said nothing ’bout it ’cause I wasn’t sure what it meant.
Well… I did mention it to Ivy but not nobody else. I

disremember how long ago. ‘Bout a month or two I guess
’cause I hadn’t put down my new linoleum yet. Did you see
it, Cora? It’s that kind we saw in the catalogue.” “Naw.”
“Get on with it, Dessie.” “Well, Cora was with me when we
looked in the catalogue… ” “We all know ’bout your
linoleum. What we don’t know is… ” “OK. Let me tell it, will
you? Just before the linoleum come I was out front and
seed Shadrack carryin’ on as usual… up by the well…
walkin’ ’round it salutin’ and carryin’ on. You know how he
does… hollerin’ commands and… ” “Will you get on with it?”
“Who’s tellin’ this? Me or you?” “You.” “Well, let me tell it
then. Like I say, he was just cuttin’ up as usual when Miss
Sula Mae walks by on the other side of the road. And quick
as that”–she snapped her fingers-“he stopped and cut on
over ‘cross the road, steppin’ over to her like a tall turkey in
short corn. And guess what? He tips his hat.” “Shadrack
don’t wear no hat.” “I know that but he tipped it anyway. You
know what I mean. He acted like he had a hat and reached
up for it and tipped it at her. Now you know Shadrack ain’t
civil to nobody!” “Sure ain’t.” “Even when you buyin’ his fish
he’s cussin’. If you ain’t got the right change he cussin’ you.
If you act like a fish ain’t too fresh he snatch it out of your
hand like he doin’ you the favor.” “Well, everybody know he
a reprobate.” “Yeh, so how come he tip his hat to Sula?
How come he don’t cuss her?” “Two devils.” “Exactly!”
“What’d she do when he tipped it? Smile and give him a
curtsey?” “No, and that was the other thing. It was the first
time I see her look anything but hateful. Like she smellin’
you with her eyes and don’t like your soap. When he tipped

his hat she put her hand on her throat for a minute and
_cut__ out. Went runnin’ on up the road to home. And him
still standin’ there tippin’ away. And–this the point I was
comin’ to–when I went back in the house a big sty come on
my eye. And I ain’t never had no sty before. Never!” “That’s
’cause you saw it.” “Exactly.” “Devil all right.” “No two ways
about it,” Dessie said, and she popped the rubber band off
the deck of cards to settle them down for a nice long game
of bid whist. Their conviction of Sula’s evil changed them in
accountable yet mysterious ways. Once the source of their
personal misfortune was identified, they had leave to
protect and love one another. They began to cherish their
husbands and wives, protect their children, repair their
homes and in general band together against the devil in
their midst. In their world, aberrations were as much a part
of nature as grace. It was not for them to expel or annihilate
it. They would no more run Sula out of town than they would
kill the robins that brought her back, for in their secret
awareness of Him, He was not the God of three faces they
sang about. They knew quite well that He had four, and that
the fourth explained Sula. They had lived with various forms
of evil all their days, and it wasn’t that they believed God
would take care of them. It was rather that they knew God
had a brother and that brother hadn’t spared God’s son, so
why should he spare them? There was no creature so
ungodly as to make them destroy it. They could kill easily if
provoked to anger, but not by design, which explained why
they could not “mob kill” anyone. To do so was not only
unnatural, it was undignified. The presence of evil was

something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived,
outwitted, triumphed over. Their evidence against Sula was
contrived, but their conclusions about her were not. Sula
was distinctly different. Eva’s arrogance and Hannah’s self-
indulgence merged in her and, with a twist that was all her
own imagination, she lived out her days exploring her own
thoughts and emotions, giving them full rein, feeling no
obligation to please anybody unless their pleasure pleased
her. As willing to feel pain as to give pain, to feel pleasure
as to give pleasure, hers was an experimental life–ever
since her mother’s remarks sent her flying up those stairs,
ever since her one major feeling of responsibility had been
exorcised on the bank of a river with a closed place in the
middle. The first experience taught her there was no other
that you could count on; the second that there was no self to
count on either. She had no center, no speck around which
to grow. In the midst of a pleasant conversation with
someone she might say, “Why do you chew with your mouth
open?” not because the answer interested her but because
she wanted to see the person’s face change rapidly. She
was completely free of ambition, with no affection for
money, property or things, no greed, no desire to command
attention or compliments–no ego. For that reason she felt
no compulsion to verify herself–be consistent with herself.
She had clung to Nel as the closest thing to both an other
and a self, only to discover that she and Nel were not one
and the same thing. She had no thought at all of causing
Nel pain when she bedded down with Jude. They had
always shared the affection of other people: compared how

a boy kissed, what line he used with one and then the other.
Marriage, apparently, had changed all that, but having had
no intimate knowledge of marriage, having lived in a house
with women who thought all men available, and selected
from among them with a care only for their tastes, she was
ill prepared for the possessiveness of the one person she
felt close to. She knew well enough what other women said
and felt, or said they felt. But she and Nel had always seen
through them. They both knew that those women were not
jealous of other women; that they were only afraid of losing
their jobs. Afraid their husbands would discover that no
uniqueness lay between their legs. Nel was the one person
who had wanted nothing from her, who had accepted all
aspects of her. Now she wanted everything, and all
because of _that.__ Nel was the first person who had been
real to her, whose name she knew, who had seen as she
had the slant of life that made it possible to stretch it to its
limits. Now Nel was one of _them.__ One of the spiders
whose only thought was the next rung of the web, who
dangled in dark dry places suspended by their own spittle,
more terrified of the free fall than the snake’s breath below.
Their eyes so intent on the wayward stranger who trips into
their net, they were blind to the cobalt on their own backs,
the moonshine fighting to pierce their corners. If they were
touched by the snake’s breath, however fatal, they were
merely victims and knew how to behave in that role (just as
Nel knew how to behave as the wronged wife). But the free
fall, oh no, that required-demanded–invention: a thing to do
with the wings, a way of holding the legs and most of all a

full surrender to the downward flight if they wished to taste
their tongues or stay alive. But alive was what they, and now
Nel, did not want to be. Too dangerous. Now Nel belonged
to the town and all of its ways. She had given herself over to
them, and the flick of their tongues would drive her back
into her little dry corner where she would cling to her spittle
high above the breath of the snake and the fall. It had
surprised her a little and saddened her a good deal when
Nel behaved the way the others would have. Nel was one of
the reasons she had drifted back to Medallion, that and the
boredom she found in Nashville, Detroit, New Orleans, New
York, Philadelphia, Macon and San Diego. All those cities
held the same people, working the same mouths, sweating
the same sweat. The men who took her to one or another of
those places had merged into one large personality: the
same language of love, the same entertainments of love,
the same cooling of love. Whenever she introduced her
private thoughts into their rubbings or goings, they hooded
their eyes. They taught her nothing but love tricks, shared
nothing but worry, gave nothing but money. She had been
looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to
discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never
be–for a woman. And that no one would ever be that
version of herself which she sought to reach out to and
touch with an ungloved hand. There was only her own mood
and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn
the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become
as intimate with their own selves as she was. In a way, her
strangeness, her naïveté, her craving for the other half of

her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination.
Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance,
or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous
curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have
exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim
for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And
like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous. She
had lied only once in her life–to Nel about the reason for
putting Eva out, and she could lie to her only because she
cared about her. When she had come back home, social
conversation was impossible for her because she could not
lie. She could not say to those old acquaintances, “Hey,
girl, you looking good,” when she saw how the years had
dusted their bronze with ash, the eyes that had once
opened wide to the moon bent into grimy sickles of
concern. The narrower their lives, the wider their hips.
Those with husbands had folded themselves into starched
coffins, their sides bursting with other people’s skinned
dreams and bony regrets. Those without men were like
sour-tipped needles featuring one constant empty eye.
Those with men had had the sweetness sucked from their
breath by ovens and steam kettles. Their children were like
distant but exposed wounds whose aches were no less
intimate because separate from their flesh. They had
looked at the world and back at their children, back at the
world and back again at their children, and Sula knew that
one clear young eye was all that kept the knife away from
the throat’s curve. She was pariah, then, and knew it. Knew
that they despised her and believed that they framed their

hatred as disgust for the easy way she lay with men. Which
was true. She went to bed with men as frequently as she
could. It was the only place where she could find what she
was looking for: misery and the ability to feel deep sorrow.
She had not always been aware that it was sadness that
she yearned for. Lovemaking seemed to her, at first, the
creation of a special kind of joy. She thought she liked the
sootiness of sex and its comedy; she laughed a great deal
during the raucous beginnings, and rejected those lovers
who regarded sex as healthy or beautiful. Sexual aesthetics
bored her. Although she did not regard sex as ugly
(ugliness was boring also), she liked to think of it as
wicked. But as her experiences multiplied she realized that
not only was it not wicked, it was not necessary for her to
conjure up the idea of wickedness in order to participate
fully. During the lovemaking she found and needed to find
the cutting edge. When she left off cooperating with her
body and began to assert herself in the act, particles of
strength gathered in her like steel shavings drawn to a
spacious magnetic center, forming a tight cluster that
nothing, it seemed, could break. And there was utmost
irony and outrage in lying under someone, in a position of
surrender, feeling her own abiding strength and limitless
power. But the cluster did break, fall apart, and in her panic
to hold it together she leaped from the edge into
soundlessness and went down howling, howling in a
stinging awareness of the endings of things: an eye of
sorrow in the midst of all that hurricane rage of joy. There, in
the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of

time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no
meaning. For loneliness assumed the absence of other
people, and the solitude she found in that desperate terrain
had never admitted the possibility of other people. She
wept then. Tears for the deaths of the littlest things: the
castaway shoes of children; broken stems of marsh grass
battered and drowned by the sea; prom photographs of
dead women she never knew; wedding rings in pawnshop
windows; the tidy bodies of Cornish hens in a nest of rice.
When her partner disengaged himself, she looked up at
him in wonder trying to recall his name; and he looked
down at her, smiling with tender understanding of the state
of tearful gratitude to which he believed he had brought her.
She waiting impatiently for him to turn away and settle into
a wet skim of satisfaction and light disgust, leaving her to
the postcoital privateness in which she met herself,
welcomed herself, and joined herself in matchless harmony.
At twenty-nine she knew it would be no other way for her,
but she had not counted on the footsteps on the porch, and
the beautiful black face that stared at her through the blue-
glass window. Ajax. Looking for all the world as he had
seventeen years ago when he had called her pig meat. He
was twenty-one then, she twelve. A universe of time
between them. Now she was twenty-nine, he thirty-eight,
and the lemon-yellow haunches seemed not so far away
after all. She opened the heavy door and saw him standing
on the other side of the screen door with two quarts of milk
tucked into his arms like marble statues. He smiled and
said, “I been lookin’ all over for you.” “Why?” she asked.

“To give you these,” and he nodded toward one of the
quarts of milk. “I don’t like milk,” she said. “But you like
bottles don’t you?” He held one up. “Ain’t that pretty?” And
indeed it was. Hanging from his fingers, framed by a slick
blue sky, it looked precious and clean and permanent. She
had the distinct impression that he had done something
dangerous to get them. Sula ran her fingernails over the
screen thoughtfully for a second and then, laughing, she
opened the screen door. Ajax came in and headed straight
for the kitchen. Sula followed slowly. By the time she got to
the door he had undone the complicated wire cap and was
letting the cold milk run into his mouth. Sula watched him–
or rather the rhythm in his throat-with growing interest.
When he had had enough, he poured the rest into the sink,
rinsed the bottle out and presented it to her. She took the
bottle with one hand and his wrist with the other and pulled
him into the pantry. There was no need to go there, for not a
soul was in the house, but the gesture came to Hannah’s
daughter naturally. There in the pantry, empty now of flour
sacks, void of row upon row of canned goods, free forever
of strings of tiny green peppers, holding the wet milk bottle
tight in her arm she stood wide-legged against the wall and
pulled from his track-lean hips all the pleasure her thighs
could hold. He came regularly then, bearing gifts: clusters of
black berries still on their branches, four meal-fried porgies
wrapped in a salmon-colored sheet of the Pittsburgh
_Courier,__ a handful of jacks, two boxes of lime Jell-Well,
a hunk of ice-wagon ice, a can of Old Dutch Cleanser with
the bonneted woman chasing dirt with her stick; a page of

Tillie the Toiler comics, and more gleaming white bottles of
milk. Contrary to what anybody would have suspected from
just seeing him lounging around the pool hall, or shooting at
Mr. Finley for beating his own dog, or calling filthy
compliments to passing women, Ajax was very nice to
women. His women, of course, knew it, and it provoked
them into murderous battles over him in the streets,
brawling thick-thighed women with knives disturbed many a
Friday night with their bloodletting and attracted whooping
crowds. On such occasions Ajax stood, along with the
crowd, and viewed the fighters with the same golden-eyed
indifference with which he watched old men playing
checkers. Other than his mother, who sat in her shack with
six younger sons working roots, he had never met an
interesting woman in his life. His kindness to them in
general was not due to a ritual of seduction (he had no
need for it) but rather to the habit he acquired in dealing
with his mother, who inspired thoughtfulness and generosity
in all her sons. She was an evil conjure woman, blessed
with seven adoring children whose joy it was to bring her
the plants, hair, underclothing, fingernail parings, white
hens, blood, camphor, pictures, kerosene and footstep dust
that she needed, as well as to order Van Van, High John
the Conqueror, Little John to Chew, Devil’s Shoe String,
Chinese Wash, Mustard Seed and the Nine Herbs from
Cincinnati. She knew about the weather, omens, the living,
the dead, dreams and all illnesses and made a modest
living with her skills. Had she any teeth or ever straightened
her back, she would have been the most gorgeous thing

alive, worthy of her sons’ worship for her beauty alone, if not
for the absolute freedom she allowed them (known in some
quarters as neglect) and the weight of her hoary
knowledge. This woman Ajax loved, and after her–
airplanes. There was nothing in between. And when he was
not sitting enchanted listening to his mother’s words, he
thought of airplanes, and pilots, and the deep sky that held
them both. People thought that those long trips he took to
large cities in the state were for some sophisticated good
times they could not imagine but only envy; actually he was
leaning against the barbed wire of airports, or nosing
around hangars just to hear the talk of the men who were
fortunate enough to be in the trade. The rest of the time, the
time he was not watching his mother’s magic or thinking of
airplanes, he spent in the idle pursuits of bachelors without
work in small towns. He had heard all the stories about
Sula, and they aroused his curiosity. Her elusiveness and
indifference to established habits of behavior reminded him
of his mother, who was as stubborn in her pursuits of the
occult as the women of Greater Saint Matthew’s were in the
search for redeeming grace. So when his curiosity was
high enough he picked two bottles of milk off the porch of
some white family and went to see her, suspecting that this
was perhaps the only other woman he knew whose life was
her own, who could deal with life efficiently, and who was
not interested in nailing him. Sula, too, was curious. She
knew nothing about him except the word he had called out
to her years ago and the feeling he had excited in her then.
She had grown quite accustomed to the clichés of other

people’s lives as well as her own increasing dissatisfaction
with Medallion. If she could have thought of a place to go,
she probably would have left, but that was before Ajax
looked at her through the blue glass and held the milk aloft
like a trophy. But it was not the presents that made her
wrap him up in her thighs. They were charming, of course
(especially the jar of butterflies he let loose in the bedroom),
but her real pleasure was the fact that he talked to her. They
had genuine conversations. He did not speak down to her
or at her, nor content himself with puerile questions about
her life or monologues of his own activities. Thinking she
was possibly brilliant, like his mother, he seemed to expect
brilliance from her, and she delivered. And in all of it, he
listened more than he spoke. His clear comfort at being in
her presence, his lazy willingness to tell her all about fixes
and the powers of plants, his refusal to baby or protect her,
his assumption that she was both tough and wise–all of that
coupled with a wide generosity of spirit only occasionally
erupting into vengeance sustained Sula’s interest and
enthusiasm. His idea of bliss (on earth as opposed to bliss
in the sky) was a long bath in piping-hot water–his head on
the cool white rim, his eyes closed in reverie. “Soaking in
hot water give you a bad back.” Sula stood in the doorway
looking at his knees glistening just at the surface of the
soap-gray water. “Soaking in Sula give me a bad back.”
“Worth it?” “Don’t know yet. Go ‘way.” “Airplanes?”
“Airplanes.” “Lindbergh know about you?” “Go ‘way.” She
went and waited for him in Eva’s high bed, her head turned
to the boarded-up window. She was smiling, thinking how

like Jude’s was his craving to do the white man’s work,
when two deweys came in with their beautiful teeth and
said, “We sick.” Sula turned her head slowly and
murmured, “Get well.” “We need some medicine.” “Look in
the bathroom.” “Ajax in there.” “Then wait.” “We sick now.”
Sula leaned over the bed, picked up a shoe and threw it at
them. “Cocksucker!” they screamed, and she leaped out of
the bed naked as a yard dog. She caught the redheaded
dewey by his shirt and held him by the heels over the
banister until he wet his pants. The other dewey was joined
by the third, and they delved into their pockets for stones,
which they threw at her. Sula, ducking and tottering with
laughter, carried the wet dewey to the bedroom and when
the other two followed her, deprived of all weapons except
their teeth, Sula had dropped the first dewey on the bed
and was fishing in her purse. She gave each of them a
dollar bill which they snatched and then scooted off down
the stairs to Dick’s to buy the catarrh remedy they loved to
drink. Ajax came sopping wet into the room and lay down
on the bed to let the air dry him. They were both still for a
long time until he reached out and touched her arm. He
liked for her to mount him so he could see her towering
above him and call soft obscenities up into her face. As she
rocked there, swayed there, like a Georgia pine on its
knees, high above the slipping, falling smile, high above the
golden eyes and the velvet helmet of hair, rocking, swaying,
she focused her thoughts to bar the creeping disorder that
was flooding her hips. She looked down, down from what
seemed an awful height at the head of the man whose

lemon-yellow gabardines had been the first sexual
excitement she’d known. Letting her thoughts dwell on his
face in order to confine, for just a while longer, the drift of
her flesh toward the high silence of orgasm. _If I take a
chamois and rub real hard on the bone, right on the__
_ledge of your cheek bone, some of the black will
disappear. It will__ _flake away into the chamois and
underneath there will be gold__ _leaf. I can see it shining
through the black. I know it is__ _there…__ How high she
was over his wand-lean body, how slippery was his sliding
sliding smile. _And if I take a nail file or even Eva’s old
paring knife–__ _that will do–and scrape away at the gold,
it will fall away__ _and there will be alabaster. The
alabaster is what gives__ _your face its planes, its curves.
That is why your mouth__ _smiling does not reach your
eyes. Alabaster is giving it a__ _gravity that resists a total
smile.__ The height and the swaying dizzied her, so she
bent down and let her breasts graze his chest. _Then I can
take a chisel and small tap hammer and tap__ _away at
the alabaster. It will crack then like ice under the__ _pick,
and through the breaks I will see the loam, fertile,__ _free of
pebbles and twigs. For it is the loam that is giving__ _you
that smell.__ She slipped her hands under his armpits, for it
seemed as though she would not be able to dam the
spread of weakness she felt under her skin without holding
on to something. _I will put my hand deep into your soil, lift
it, sift it__ _with my fingers, feel its warm surface and dewy
chill__ _below.__ She put her head under his chin with no
hope in the world of keeping anything at all at bay. _I will

water your soil, keep it rich and moist. But how much?__
_How much water to keep the loam moist? And how much
loam__ _will I need to keep my water still? And when do the
two make__ _mud?__ He swallowed her mouth just as her
thighs had swallowed his genitals, and the house was very,
very quiet. * * * Sula began to discover what possession
was. Not love, perhaps, but possession or at least the
desire for it. She was astounded by so new and alien a
feeling. First there was the morning of the night before
when she actually wondered if Ajax would come by that day.
Then there was an afternoon when she stood before the
mirror finger-tracing the laugh lines around her mouth and
trying to decide whether she was good-looking or not. She
ended this deep perusal by tying a green ribbon in her hair.
The green silk made a rippling whisper as she slid it into
her hair–a whisper that could easily have been Hannah’s
chuckle, a soft slow nasal hiss she used to emit when
something amused her. Like women sitting for two hours
under the marcelling irons only to wonder two days later
how soon they would need another appointment. The
ribbon-tying was followed by other activity, and when Ajax
came that evening, bringing her a reed whistle he had
carved that morning, not only was the green ribbon still in
her hair, but the bathroom was gleaming, the bed was
made, and the table was set for two. He gave her the reed
whistle, unlaced his shoes and sat in the rocking chair in
the kitchen. Sula walked toward him and kissed his mouth.
He ran his fingers along the nape of her neck. “I bet you
ain’t even missed Tar Baby, have you?” he asked.

“Missed? No. Where is he?” Ajax smiled at her delicious
indifference. “Jail.” “Since when?” “Last Saturday.”
“Picked up for drunk?” “Little bit more than that,” he
answered and went ahead to tell her about his own
involvement in another of Tar Baby’s misfortunes. On
Saturday afternoon Tar Baby had stumbled drunk into traffic
on the New River Road. A woman driver swerved to avoid
him and hit another car. When the police came, they
recognized the woman as the mayor’s niece and arrested
Tar Baby. Later, after the word got out, Ajax and two other
men went to the station to see about him. At first they
wouldn’t let them in. But they relented after Ajax and the
other two just stood around for one hour and a half and
repeated their request at regular intervals. When they finally
got permission to go in and looked in at him in the cell, he
was twisted up in a corner badly beaten and dressed in
nothing but extremely soiled underwear. Ajax and the other
men asked the officer why Tar Baby couldn’t have back his
clothes. “It ain’t right,” they said, “to let a grown man lay
around in his own shit.” The policeman, obviously in
agreement with Eva, who had always maintained that Tar
Baby was white, said that if the prisoner didn’t like to live in
shit, he should come down out of those hills, and live like a
decent white man. More words were exchanged, hot words
and dark, and the whole thing ended with the arraignment
of the three black men, and an appointment to appear in
civil court Thursday next. Ajax didn’t seem too bothered by
any of it. More annoyed and inconvenienced than anything
else. He had had several messes with the police, mostly in

gambling raids, and regarded them as the natural hazards
of Negro life. But Sula, the green ribbon shining in her hair,
was flooded with an awareness of the impact of the outside
world on Ajax. She stood up and arranged herself on the
arm of the rocking chair. Putting her fingers deep into the
velvet of his hair, she murmured, “Come on. Lean on me.”
Ajax blinked. Then he looked swiftly into her face. In her
words, in her voice, was a sound he knew well. For the first
time he saw the green ribbon. He looked around and saw
the gleaming kitchen and the table set for two and detected
the scent of the nest. Every hackle on his body rose, and he
knew that very soon she would, like all of her sisters before
her, put to him the death-knell question “Where you been?”
His eyes dimmed with a mild and momentary regret. He
stood and mounted the stairs with her and entered the
spotless bathroom where the dust had been swept from
underneath the claw-foot tub. He was trying to remember
the date of the air show in Dayton. As he came into the
bedroom, he saw Sula lying on fresh white sheets, wrapped
in the deadly odor of freshly applied cologne. He dragged
her under him and made love to her with the steadiness
and the intensity of a man about to leave for Dayton. Every
now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of
his having ever been there. Where were the butterflies? the
blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for
he had left nothing but his stunning absence. An absence
so decorative, so ornate, it was difficult for her to
understand how she had ever endured, without falling dead
or being consumed, his magnificent presence. The mirror

by the door was not a mirror by the door, it was an altar
where he stood for only a moment to put on his cap before
going out. The red rocking chair was a rocking of his own
hips as he sat in the kitchen. Still, there was nothing of his–
his own–that she could find. It was as if she were afraid she
had hallucinated him and needed proof to the contrary. His
absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the
furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of
rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on table tops.
When he was there he pulled everything toward himself. Not
only her eyes and all her senses but also inanimate things
seemed to exist because of him, backdrops to his
presence. Now that he had gone, these things, so long
subdued by his presence, were glamorized in his wake.
Then one day, burrowing in a dresser drawer, she found
what she had been looking for: proof that he had been
there, his driver’s license. It contained just what she needed
for verification–his vital statistics: Born 1901, height 5’11’ ‘,
weight 152 lbs., eyes brown, hair black, color black. Oh
yes, skin black. Very black. So black that only a steady
careful rubbing with steel wool would remove it, and as it
was removed there was the glint of gold leaf and under the
gold leaf the cold alabaster and deep, deep down under
the cold alabaster more black only this time the black of
warm loam. But what was this? Albert Jacks? His name
was Albert Jacks? A. Jacks. She had thought it was Ajax.
All those years. Even from the time she walked by the pool
hall and looked away from him sitting astride a wooden
chair, looked away to keep from seeing the wide space of

intolerable orderliness between his legs; the openness that
held no sign, no sign at all, of the animal that lurked in his
trousers; looked away from the insolent nostrils and the
smile that kept slipping and falling, falling, falling so she
wanted to reach out with her hand to catch it before it fell to
the pavement and was sullied by the cigarette butts and
bottle caps and spittle at his feet and the feet of other men
who sat or stood around outside the pool hall, calling,
singing out to her and Nel and grown women too with lyrics
like _pig meat__ and _brown sugar__ and _jailbait__ and
_O Lord,__ _what have I done to deserve the wrath,__ and
_Take me, Jesus, I__ _have seen the promised land,__
and _Do, Lord, remember me__ in voices mellowed by
hopeless passion into gentleness. Even then, when she
and Nel were trying hard not to dream of him and not to
think of him when they touched the softness in their
underwear or undid their braids as soon as they left home
to let the hair bump and wave around their ears, or
wrapped the cotton binding around their chests so the
nipples would not break through their blouses and give him
cause to smile his slipping, falling smile, which brought the
blood rushing to their skin. And even later, when for the first
time in her life she had lain in bed with a man and said his
name involuntarily or said it truly meaning _him,__ the
name she was screaming and saying was not his at all.
Sula stood with a worn slip of paper in her fingers and said
aloud to no one, “I didn’t even know his name. And if I didn’t
know his name, then there is nothing I did know and I have
known nothing ever at all since the one thing I wanted was

to know his name so how could he help but leave me since
he was making love to a woman who didn’t even know his
name. “When I was a little girl the heads of my paper dolls
came off, and it was a long time before I discovered that my
own head would not fall off if I bent my neck. I used to walk
around holding it very stiff because I thought a strong wind
or a heavy push would snap my neck. Nel was the one who
told me the truth. But she was wrong. I did not hold my head
stiff enough when I met him and so I lost it just like the dolls.
“It’s just as well he left. Soon I would have torn the flesh from
his face just to see if I was right about the gold and nobody
would have understood that kind of curiosity. They would
have believed that I wanted to hurt him just like the little boy
who fell down the steps and broke his leg and the people
think I pushed him just because I looked at it.” Holding the
driver’s license she crawled into bed and fell into a sleep
full of dreams of cobalt blue. When she awoke, there was a
melody in her head she could not identify or recall ever
hearing before. “Perhaps I made it up,” she thought. Then it
came to her–the name of the song and all its lyrics just as
she had heard it many times before. She sat on the edge of
the bed thinking, “There aren’t any more new songs and I
have sung all the ones there are. I have sung them all. I have
sung all the songs there are.” She lay down again on the
bed and sang a little wandering tune made up of the words
_I have__ _sung all the songs all the songs I have sung all
the songs there__ _are__ until, touched by her own lullaby,
she grew drowsy, and in the hollow of near-sleep she
tasted the acridness of gold, left the chill of alabaster and

smelled the dark, sweet stench of loam.

1940

“I heard you was sick. Anything I can do for you?” She had
practiced not just the words but the tone, the pitch of her
voice. It should be calm, matter-of-fact, but strong in
sympathy–for the illness though, not for the patient. The
sound of her voice as she heard it in her head betrayed no
curiosity, no pride, just the inflection of any good woman
come to see about a sick person who, incidentally, had
such visits from nobody else. For the first time in three
years she would be looking at the stemmed rose that hung
over the eye of her enemy. Moreover, she would be doing it
with the taste of Jude’s exit in her mouth, with the
resentment and shame that even yet pressed for release in
her stomach. She would be facing the black rose that Jude
had kissed and looking at the nostrils of the woman who
had twisted her love for her own children into something so
thick and monstrous she was afraid to show it lest it break
loose and smother them with its heavy paw. A cumbersome
bear-love that, given any rein, would suck their breath away
in its crying need for honey. Because Jude’s leaving was so
complete, the full responsibility of the household was Nel’s.
There were no more fifty dollars in brown envelopes to
count on, so she took to cleaning rather than fret away the
tiny seaman’s pension her parents lived on. And just this
past year she got a better job working as a chambermaid
in the same hotel Jude had worked in. The tips were only

fair, but the hours were good–she was home when the
children got out of school. At thirty her hot brown eyes had
turned to agate, and her skin had taken on the sheen of
maple struck down, split and sanded at the height of its
green. Virtue, bleak and drawn, was her only mooring. It
brought her to Number 7 Carpenter’s Road and the door
with the blue glass; it helped her to resist scratching the
screen as in days gone by; it hid from her the true motives
for her charity, and, finally, it gave her voice the timbre she
wanted it to have: free of delight or a lip-smacking “I told
you so” with which the news of Sula’s illness had been
received up in the Bottom–free of the least hint of
retribution. Now she stood in Eva’s old bedroom, looking
down at that dark rose, aware of the knife-thin arms sliding
back and forth over the quilt and the boarded-up window
Eva had jumped out of. Sula looked up and without a
second’s pause followed Nel’s example of leaving out the
greeting when she spoke. “As a matter of fact, there is. I
got a prescription. Nathan usually goes for me but he…
school don’t let out till three. Could you run it over to the
drugstore?” “Where is it?” Nel was glad to have a concrete
errand. Conversation would be difficult. (Trust Sula to pick
up a relationship exactly where it lay.) “Look in my bag. No.
Over there.” Nel walked to the dresser and opened the
purse with the beaded clasp. She saw only a watch and the
folded prescription down inside. No wallet, no change
purse. She turned to Sula: “Where’s your… ” But Sula was
looking at the boarded-up window. Something in her eye
right there in the corner stopped Nel from completing her

question. That and the slight flare of the nostrils–a shadow
of a snarl. Nel took the piece of paper and picked up her
own purse, saying, “OK. I’ll be right back.” As soon as the
door was shut, Sula breathed through her mouth. While Nel
was in the room the pain had increased. Now that this new
pain killer, the one she had been holding in reserve, was on
the way her misery was manageable. She let a piece of her
mind lay on Nel. It was funny, sending Nel off to that
drugstore right away like that, after she had not seen her to
speak to for years. The drugstore was where Edna Finch’s
Mellow House used to be years back when they were girls.
Where they used to go, the two of them, hand in hand, for
the 18-cent ice-cream sundaes, past the Time and a Half
Pool Hall, where the sprawling men said “pig meat,” and
they sat in that cool room with the marble-top tables and ate
the first ice-cream sundaes of their lives. Now Nel was
going back there alone and Sula was waiting for the
medicine the doctor said not to take until the pain got really
bad. And she supposed “really bad” was now. Although you
could never tell. She wondered for an instant what Nellie
wanted; why she had come. Did she want to gloat? Make
up? Following this line of thought required more
concentration than she could muster. Pain was greedy; it
demanded all of her attention. But it was good that this new
medicine, the reserve, would be brought to her by her old
friend. Nel, she remembered, always thrived on a crisis.
The closed place in the water; Hannah’s funeral. Nel was
the best. When Sula imitated her, or tried to, those long
years ago, it always ended up in some action noteworthy

not for its coolness but mostly for its being bizarre. The one
time she tried to protect Nel, she had cut off her own finger
tip and earned not Nel’s gratitude but her disgust. From
then on she had let her emotions dictate her behavior. She
could hear Nel’s footsteps long before she opened the door
and put the medicine on the table near the bed. As Sula
poured the liquid into a sticky spoon, Nel began the
sickroom conversation. “You look fine, Sula.” “You lying,
Nellie. I look bad.” She gulped the medicine. “No. I haven’t
seen you for a long time, but you look… ” “You don’t have to
do that, Nellie. It’s going to be all right.” “What ails you?
Have they said?” Sula licked the corners of her lips. “You
want to talk about that?” Nel smiled, slightly, at the
bluntness she had forgotten. “No. No, I don’t, but you sure
you should be staying up here alone?” “Nathan comes by.
The deweys sometimes, and Tar Baby… ” “That ain’t help,
Sula. You need to be with somebody grown. Somebody
who can… ” “I’d rather be here, Nellie.” “You know you don’t
have to be proud with me.” “Proud?” Sula’s laughter broke
through the phlegm. “What you talking about? I like my own
dirt, Nellie. I’m not proud. You sure have forgotten me.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But you a woman and you alone.” “And
you? Ain’t you alone?” “I’m not sick. I work.” “Yes. Of course
you do. Work’s good for you, Nellie. It don’t do nothing for
me.” “You never _had__ to.” “I never would.” “There’s
something to say for it, Sula. ‘Specially if you don’t want
people to have to do for you.” “Neither one, Nellie. Neither
one.” “You can’t have it all, Sula.” Nel was getting
exasperated with her arrogance, with her lying at death’s

door still smart-talking. “Why? I can do it all, why can’t I have
it all?” “You _can’t__ do it all. You a woman and a colored
woman at that. You can’t act like a man. You can’t be
walking around all independent-like, doing whatever you
like, taking what you want, leaving what you don’t.” “You
repeating yourself.” “How repeating myself?” “You say I’m a
woman and colored. Ain’t that the same as being a man?”
“I don’t think so and you wouldn’t either if you had children.”
“Then I really would act like what you call a man. Every man
I ever knew left his children.” “Some were taken.” “Wrong,
Nellie. The word is ‘left.'” “You still going to know everything,
ain’t you?” “I don’t know everything, I just do everything.”
“Well, you don’t do what I do.” “You think I don’t know what
your life is like just because I ain’t living it? I know what
every colored woman in this country is doing.” “What’s
that?” “Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying
like a stump. Me, I’m going down like one of those
redwoods. I sure did live in this world.” “Really? What have
you got to show for it?” “Show? To who? Girl, I got my mind.
And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me.” “Lonely,
ain’t it?” “Yes. But my lonely is _mine.__ Now your lonely is
somebody else’s. Made by somebody else and handed to
you. Ain’t that something? A secondhand lonely.” Nel sat
back on the little wooden chair. Anger skipped but she
realized that Sula was probably just showing off. No telling
what shape she was really in, but there was no point in
saying anything other than what was the truth. “I always
understood how you could take a man. Now I understand
why you can’t keep none.” “Is that what I’m supposed to do?

Spend my life keeping a man?” “They worth keeping,
Sula.” “They ain’t worth more than me. And besides, I never
loved no man because he was worth it. Worth didn’t have
nothing to do with it.” “What did?” “My mind did. That’s all.”
“Well I guess that’s it. You own the world and the rest of us
is renting. You ride the pony and we shovel the shit. I didn’t
come up here for this kind of talk, Sula… ” “No?” “No. I
come to see about you. But now that you opened it up, I
may as well close it.” Nel’s fingers closed around the brass
rail of the bed. Now she would ask her. “How come you did
it, Sula?” There was a silence but Nel felt no obligation to fill
it. Sula stirred a little under the covers. She looked bored
as she sucked her teeth. “Well, there was this space in front
of me, behind me, in my head. Some space. And Jude
filled it up. That’s all. He just filled up the space.” “You mean
you didn’t even love him?” The feel of the brass was in Nel’s
mouth. “It wasn’t even loving him?” Sula looked toward the
boarded-up window again. Her eyes fluttered as if she
were about to fall off into sleep. “But… ” Nel held her
stomach in. “But what about me? What about me? Why
didn’t you think about me? Didn’t I count? I never hurt you.
What did you take him for if you didn’t love him and why
didn’t you think about me?” And then, “I was good to you,
Sula, why don’t that matter?” Sula turned her head away
from the boarded window. Her voice was quiet and the
stemmed rose over her eye was very dark. “It matters, Nel,
but only to you. Not to anybody else. Being good to
somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You
don’t get nothing for it.” Nel took her hands from the brass

railing. She was annoyed with herself. Finally when she had
gotten the nerve to ask the question, the right question, it
made no difference. Sula couldn’t give her a sensible
answer because she didn’t know. Would be, in fact, the last
to know. Talking to her about right and wrong was like
talking to the deweys. She picked at the fringe on Sula’s
bedspread and said softly, “We were friends.” “Oh, yes.
Good friends,” Sula said. “And you didn’t love me enough
to leave him alone. To let him love me. You had to take him
away.” “What you mean take him away? I didn’t kill him, I
just fucked him. If we were such good friends, how come
you couldn’t get over it?” “You laying there in that bed
without a dime or a friend to your name having done all the
dirt you did in this town and you still expect folks to love
you?” Sula raised herself up on her elbows. Her face
glistened with the dew of fever. She opened her mouth as
though to say something, then fell back on the pillows and
sighed. “Oh, they’ll love me all right. It will take time, but
they’ll love me.” The sound of her voice was as soft and
distant as the look in her eyes. “After all the old women
have lain with the teen-agers; when all the young girls have
slept with their old drunken uncles; after all the black men
fuck all the white ones; when all the white women kiss all the
black ones; when the guards have raped all the jailbirds
and after all the whores make love to their grannies; after all
the faggots get their mothers’ trim; when Lindbergh sleeps
with Bessie Smith and Norma Shearer makes it with Stepin
Fetchit; after all the dogs have fucked all the cats and every
weathervane on every barn flies off the roof to mount the

hogs… then there’ll be a little love left over for me. And I
know just what it will feel like.” She closed her eyes then
and thought of the wind pressing her dress between her
legs as she ran up the bank of the river to four leaf-locked
trees and the digging of holes in the earth. Embarrassed,
irritable and a little bit ashamed, Nel rose to go. “Goodbye,
Sula. I don’t reckon I’ll be back.” She opened the door and
heard Sula’s low whisper. “Hey, girl.” Nel paused and
turned her head but not enough to see her. “How you
know?” Sula asked. “Know what?” Nel still wouldn’t look at
her. “About who was good. How you know it was you?”
“What you mean?” “I mean maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it
was me.” Nel took two steps out the door and closed it
behind her. She walked down the hall and down the four
flights of steps. The house billowed around her light then
dark, full of presences without sounds. The deweys, Tar
Baby, the newly married couples, Mr. Buckland Reed,
Patsy, Valentine, and the beautiful Hannah Peace. Where
were they? Eva out at the old folks’ home, the deweys living
anywhere, Tar Baby steeped in wine, and Sula upstairs in
Eva’s bed with a boarded-up window and an empty
pocketbook on the dresser. * * * When Nel closed the door,
Sula reached for more medicine. Then she turned the pillow
over to its cool side and thought about her old friend. “So
she will walk on down that road, her back so straight in that
old green coat, the strap of her handbag pushed back all
the way to the elbow, thinking how much I have cost her and
never remember the days when we were two throats and
one eye and we had no price.” Pictures drifted through her

head as lightly as dandelion spores: the blue eagle that
swallowed the E of the Sherman’s Mellowe wine that Tar
Baby drank; the pink underlid of Hannah’s eye as she
probed for a fleck of coal dust or a lash. She thought of
looking out of the windows of all those trains and buses,
looking at the feet and backs of all those people. Nothing
was ever different. They were all the same. All of the words
and all of the smiles, every tear and every gag just
something to do. “That’s the same sun I looked at when I
was twelve, the same pear trees. If I live a hundred years
my urine will flow the same way, my armpits and breath will
smell the same. My hair will grow from the same holes. I
didn’t mean anything. I never meant anything. I stood there
watching her burn and was thrilled. I wanted her to keep on
jerking like that, to keep on dancing.” Then she had the
dream again. The Clabber Girl Baking Powder lady was
smiling and beckoning to her, one hand under her apron.
When Sula came near she disintegrated into white dust,
which Sula was hurriedly trying to stuff into the pockets of
her blue-flannel housecoat. The disintegration was awful to
see, but worse was the feel of the powder–its starchy
slipperiness as she tried to collect it by handfuls. The more
she scooped, the more it billowed. At last it covered her,
filled her eyes, her nose, her throat, and she woke gagging
and overwhelmed with the smell of smoke. Pain took hold.
First a fluttering as of doves in her stomach, then a kind of
burning, followed by a spread of thin wires to other parts of
her body. Once the wires of liquid pain were in place, they
jelled and began to throb. She tried concentrating on the

throbs, identifying them as waves, hammer strokes, razor
edges or small explosions. Soon even the variety of the
pain bored her and there was nothing to do, for it was
joined by fatigue so great she could not make a fist or fight
the taste of oil at the back of her tongue. Several times she
tried to cry out, but the fatigue barely let her open her lips,
let alone take the deep breath necessary to scream. So
she lay there wondering how soon she would gather
enough strength to lift her arm and push the rough quilt
away from her chin and whether she should turn her cheek
to the cooler side of the pillow now or wait till her face was
thoroughly soaked and the move would be more refreshing.
But she was reluctant to move her face for another reason.
If she turned her head, she would not be able to see the
boarded-up window Eva jumped out of. And looking at
those four wooden planks with the steel rod slanting across
them was the only peace she had. The sealed window
soothed her with its sturdy termination, its unassailable
finality. It was as though for the first time she was
completely alone–where she had always wanted to be–free
of the possibility of distraction. It would be here, only here,
held by this blind window high above the elm tree, that she
might draw her legs up to her chest, close her eyes, put her
thumb in her mouth and float over and down the tunnels, just
missing the dark walls, down, down until she met a rain
scent and would know the water was near, and she would
curl into its heavy softness and it would envelop her, carry
her, and wash her tired flesh always. Always. Who said
that? She tried hard to think. Who was it that had promised

her a sleep of water always? The effort to recall was too
great; it loosened a knot in her chest that turned her
thoughts again to the pain. While in this state of weary
anticipation, she noticed that she was not breathing, that
her heart had stopped completely. A crease of fear touched
her breast, for any second there was sure to be a violent
explosion in her brain, a gasping for breath. Then she
realized, or rather she sensed, that there was not going to
be any pain. She was not breathing because she didn’t
have to. Her body did not need oxygen. She was dead.
Sula felt her face smiling. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she
thought, “it didn’t even hurt. Wait’ll I tell Nel.”

1919

The death of Sula Peace was the best news folks up in the
Bottom had had since the promise of work at the tunnel. Of
the few who were not afraid to witness the burial of a witch
and who had gone to the cemetery, some had come just to
verify her being put away but stayed to sing “Shall We
Gather at the River” for politeness’ sake, quite unaware of
the bleak promise of their song. Others came to see that
nothing went awry, that the shallowminded and small-
hearted kept their meanness at bay, and that the entire
event be characterized by that abiding gentleness of spirit
to which they themselves had arrived by the simple
determination not to let anything–anything at all: not failed
crops, not rednecks, lost jobs, sick children, rotten
potatoes, broken pipes, bug-ridden flour, third-class coal,

educated social workers, thieving insurance men, garlic-
ridden hunkies, corrupt Catholics, racist Protestants,
cowardly Jews, slaveholding Moslems, jackleg nigger
preachers, squeamish Chinamen, cholera, dropsy or the
Black Plague, let alone a strange woman–keep them from
their God. In any case, both the raw-spirited and the gentle
who came–not to the white funeral parlor but to the colored
part of the Beechnut Cemetery–felt that either _because__
Sula was dead or just _after__ she was dead a brighter
day was dawning. There were signs. The rumor that the
tunnel spanning the river would use Negro workers became
an announcement. Planned, abandoned and replanned for
years, this project had finally begun in 1937. For three
years there were rumors that blacks would work it, and
hope was high in spite of the fact that the River Road
leading to the tunnel had encouraged similar hopes in but
had ended up being built entirely by white labor–hillbillies
and immigrants taking even the lowest jobs. But the tunnel
itself was another matter. The craft work–no, they would not
get that. But it was a major job, and the government
seemed to favor opening up employment to black workers.
It meant black men would not have to sweep Medallion to
eat, or leave the town altogether for the steel mills in Akron
and along Lake Erie. The second sign was the construction
begun on an old people’s home. True, it was more
renovation than construction, but the blacks were free, or so
it was said, to occupy it. Some said that the very transfer of
Eva from the ramshackle house that passed for a colored
women’s nursing home to the bright new one was a clear

sign of the mystery of God’s ways, His mighty thumb having
been seen at Sula’s throat. So it was with a strong sense of
hope that the people in the Bottom watched October close.
Then Medallion turned silver. It seemed sudden, but actually
there had been days and days of no snow–just frost–when,
late one afternoon, a rain fell and froze. Way down
Carpenter’s Road, where the concrete sidewalks started,
children hurried to the sliding places before shopkeepers
and old women sprinkled stove ashes, like ancient onyx,
onto the new-minted silver. They hugged trees simply to
hold for a moment all that life and largeness stilled in glass,
and gazed at the sun pressed against the gray sky like a
worn doubloon, wondering all the while if the world were
coming to an end. Grass stood blade by blade, shocked
into separateness by an ice that held for days. Late-
harvesting things were ruined, of course, and fowl died of
both chill and rage. Cider turned to ice and split the jugs,
forcing the men to drink their cane liquor too soon. It was
better down in the valley, since, as always, the hills
protected it, but up in the Bottom black folks suffered
heavily in their thin houses and thinner clothes. The icecold
wind bled what little heat they had through windowpanes
and ill-fitting doors. For days on end they were virtually
housebound, venturing out only to coal bins or right next
door for the trading of vital foodstuffs. Never to the stores.
No deliveries were being made anyway, and when they
were, the items were saved for better-paying white
customers. Women could not make it down the icy slopes
and therefore missed days of wages they sorely needed.

The consequence of all that ice was a wretched
Thanksgiving of tiny tough birds, heavy pork cakes, and
pithy sweet potatoes. By the time the ice began to melt and
the first barge was seen shuddering through the ice skim
on the river, everybody under fifteen had croup, or scarlet
fever, and those over had chilblains, rheumatism, pleurisy,
earaches and a world of other ailments. Still it was not
those illnesses or even the ice that marked the beginning of
the trouble, that self-fulfilled prophecy that Shadrack carried
on his tongue. As soon as the silvering began, long before
the cider cracked the jugs, there was something wrong. A
falling away, a dislocation was taking place. Hard on the
heels of the general relief that Sula’s death brought a
restless irritability took hold. Teapot, for example, went into
the kitchen and asked his mother for some sugar-butter-
bread. She got up to fix it and found that she had no butter,
only oleomargarine. Too tired to mix the saffron-colored
powder into the hard cake of oleo, she simply smeared the
white stuff on the bread and sprinkled the sugar over it.
Teapot tasted the difference and refused to eat it. This
keenest of insults that a mother can feel, the rejection by a
child of her food, bent her into fury and she beat him as she
had not done since Sula knocked him down the steps. She
was not alone. Other mothers who had defended their
children from Sula’s malevolence (or who had defended
their positions as mothers from Sula’s scorn for the role)
now had nothing to rub up against. The tension was gone
and so was the reason for the effort they had made. Without
her mockery, affection for others sank into flaccid disrepair.

Daughters who had complained bitterly about the
responsibilities of taking care of their aged mothers-in-law
had altered when Sula locked Eva away, and they began
cleaning those old women’s spittoons without a murmur.
Now that Sula was dead and done with, they returned to a
steeping resentment of the burdens of old people. Wives
uncoddled their husbands; there seemed no further need to
reinforce their vanity. And even those Negroes who had
moved down from Canada to Medallion, who remarked
every chance they got that they had never been slaves, felt
a loosening of the reactionary compassion for
Southernborn blacks Sula had inspired in them. They
returned to their original claims of superiority. The normal
meanness that the winter brought was compounded by the
small-spiritedness that hunger and scarlet fever produced.
Even a definite and witnessed interview of four colored
men (and the promise of more in the spring) at the tunnel
site could not break the cold vise of that lean and bitter
year’s end. Christmas came one morning and haggled
everybody’s nerves like a dull ax–too shabby to cut clean
but too heavy to ignore. The children lay wall-eyed on
creaking beds or pallets near the stove, sucking
peppermint and oranges in between coughs while their
mothers stomped the floors in rage at the cakes that did not
rise because the stove fire had been so stingy; at the curled
bodies of men who chose to sleep the day away rather than
face the silence made by the absence of Lionel trains,
drums, crybaby dolls and rocking horses. Teen-agers
sneaked into the Elmira Theater in the afternoon and let

Tex Ritter free them from the recollection of their fathers’
shoes, yawning in impotence under the bed. Some of them
had a bottle of wine, which they drank at the feet of the
glittering Mr. Ritter, making such a ruckus the manager had
to put them out. The white people who came with Christmas
bags of rock candy and old clothes were hard put to get a
_Yes’m, thank you,__ out of those sullen mouths. Just as
the ice lingered in October, so did the phlegm of
December–which explained the enormous relief brought on
by the first three days of 1941. It was as though the season
had exhausted itself, for on January first the temperature
shot up to sixty-one degrees and slushed the whiteness
overnight. On January second drab patches of grass could
be seen in the fields. On January third the sun came out–
and so did Shadrack with his rope, his bell and his childish
dirge. He had spent the night before watching a tiny moon.
The people, the voices that kept him company, were with
him less and less. Now there were long periods when he
heard nothing except the wind in the trees and the plop of
buckeyes on the earth. In the winter, when the fish were too
hard to get to, he did picking-up jobs for small
businessmen (nobody would have him in or even near their
homes), and thereby continued to have enough money for
liquor. Yet the drunk times were becoming deeper but more
seldom. It was as though he no longer needed to drink to
forget whatever it was he could not remember. Now he
could not remember that he had ever forgotten anything.
Perhaps that was why for the first time after that cold day in
France he was beginning to miss the presence of other

people. Shadrack had improved enough to feel lonely. If he
was lonely before, he didn’t know it because the noise he
kept up, the roaring, the busyness, protected him from
knowing it. Now the compulsion to activity, to filling up the
time when he was not happily fishing on the riverbank, had
dwindled. He sometimes fell asleep before he got drunk;
sometimes spent whole days looking at the river and the
sky; and more and more he relinquished the military habits
of cleanliness in his shack. Once a bird flew into his door–
one of the robins during the time there was a plague of
them. It stayed, looking for an exit, for the better part of an
hour. When the bird found the window and flew away,
Shadrack was grieved and actually waited and watched for
its return. During those days of waiting, he did not make his
bed, or sweep, or shake out the little rag-braid rug, and
almost forgot to slash with his fish knife the passing day on
his calendar. When he did return to housekeeping, it was
not with the precision he had always insisted upon. The
messier his house got, the lonelier he felt, and it was harder
and harder to conjure up sergeants, and orderlies, and
invading armies; harder and harder to hear the gunfire and
keep the platoon marching in time. More frequently now he
looked at and fondled the one piece of evidence that he
once had a visitor in his house: a child’s purple-and-white
belt. The one the little girl left behind when she came to see
him. Shadrack remembered the scene clearly. He had
stepped into the door and there was a tear-stained face
turning, turning toward him; eyes hurt and wondering; mouth
parted in an effort to ask a question. She had wanted

something–from him. Not fish, not work, but something only
he could give. She had a tadpole over her eye (that was
how he knew she was a friend–she had the mark of the fish
he loved), and one of her braids had come undone. But
when he looked at her face he had seen also the skull
beneath, and thinking she saw it too–knew it was there and
was afraid–he tried to think of something to say to comfort
her, something to stop the hurt from spilling out of her eyes.
So he had said “always,” so she would not have to be
afraid of the change–the falling away of skin, the drip and
slide of blood, and the exposure of bone underneath. He
had said “always” to convince her, assure her, of
permanency. It worked, for when he said it her face lit up
and the hurt did leave. She ran then, carrying his
knowledge, but her belt fell off and he kept it as a memento.
It hung on a nail near his bed–unfrayed, unsullied after all
those years, with only the permanent bend in the fabric
made by its long life on a nail. It was pleasant living with that
sign of a visitor, his only one. And after a while he was able
to connect the belt with the face, the tadpole-overthe-eye-
face that he sometimes saw up in the Bottom. His visitor,
his company, his guest, his social life, his woman, his
daughter, his friend–they all hung there on a nail near his
bed. Now he stared at the tiny moon floating high over the
ice-choked river. His loneliness had dropped down
somewhere around his ankles. Some other feeling
possessed him. A feeling that touched his eyes and made
him blink. He had seen her again months? weeks? ago.
Raking leaves for Mr. Hodges, he had gone into the cellar

for two bushel baskets to put them in. In the hallway he
passed an open door leading to a small room. She lay on a
table there. It was surely the same one. The same little-girl
face, same tadpole over the eye. So he had been wrong.
Terribly wrong. No “always” at all. Another dying away of
someone whose face he knew. It was then he began to
suspect that all those years of rope hauling and bell ringing
were never going to do any good. He might as well sit
forever on his riverbank and stare out of the window at the
moon. By his day-slashed calendar he knew that tomorrow
was the day. And for the first time he did not want to go. He
wanted to stay with the purple-and-white belt. Not go. Not
go. Still, when the day broke in an incredible splash of sun,
he gathered his things. In the early part of the afternoon,
drenched in sunlight and certain that this would be the last
time he would invite them to end their lives neatly and
sweetly, he walked over the rickety bridge and on into the
Bottom. But it was not heartfelt this time, not loving this
time, for he no longer cared whether he helped them or not.
His rope was improperly tied; his bell had a tinny
unimpassioned sound. His visitor was dead and would
come no more. Years later people would quarrel about who
had been the first to go. Most folks said it was the deweys,
but one or two knew better, knew that Dessie and Ivy had
been first. Said that Dessie had opened her door first and
stood there shielding her eyes from the sun while watching
Shadrack coming down the road. She laughed. Maybe the
sun; maybe the clots of green showing in the hills promising
so much; maybe the contrast between Shadrack’s doomy,

gloomy bell glinting in all that sweet sunshine. Maybe just a
brief moment, for once, of not feeling fear, of looking at
death in the sunshine and being unafraid. She laughed.
Upstairs, Ivy heard her and looked to see what caused the
thick music that rocked her neighbor’s breasts. Then Ivy
laughed too. Like the scarlet fever that had touched
everybody and worn them down to gristle, their laughter
infected Carpenter’s Road. Soon children were jumping
about giggling and men came to the porches to chuckle. By
the time Shadrack reached the first house, he was facing a
line of delighted faces. Never before had they laughed.
Always they had shut their doors, pulled down the shades
and called their children out of the road. It frightened him,
this glee, but he stuck to his habit–singing his song, ringing
his bell and holding fast to his rope. The deweys with their
magnificent teeth ran out from Number 7 and danced a little
jig around the befuddled Shadrack, then cut into a wild
aping of his walk, his song and his bell-ringing. By now
women were holding their stomachs, and the men were
slapping their knees. It was Mrs. Jackson, who ate ice, who
tripped down off her porch and marched–actually marched-
along behind him. The scene was so comic the people
walked into the road to make sure they saw it all. In that way
the parade started. Everybody, Dessie, Tar Baby, Patsy,
Mr. Buckland Reed, Teapot’s Mamma, Valentine, the
deweys, Mrs. Jackson, Irene, the proprietor of the Palace of
Cosmetology, Reba, the Herrod brothers and flocks of
teen-agers got into the mood and, laughing, dancing,
calling to one another, formed a pied piper’s band behind

Shadrack. As the initial group of about twenty people
passed more houses, they called to the people standing in
doors and leaning out of windows to join them; to help them
open further this slit in the veil, this respite from anxiety,
from dignity, from gravity, from the weight of that very adult
pain that had undergirded them all those years before.
Called to them to come out and play in the sunshine–as
though the sunshine would last, as though there really was
hope. The same hope that kept them picking beans for
other farmers; kept them from finally leaving as they talked
of doing; kept them knee-deep in other people’s dirt; kept
them excited about other people’s wars; kept them
solicitous of white people’s children; kept them convinced
that some magic “government” was going to lift them up,
out and away from that dirt, those beans, those wars.
Some, of course, like Helene Wright, would not go. She
watched the ruckus with characteristic scorn. Others, who
understood the Spirit’s touch which made them dance, who
understood whole families bending their backs in a field
while singing as from one throat, who understood the
ecstasy of river baptisms under suns just like this one, did
not understand this curious disorder, this headless display
and so refused also to go. Nevertheless, the sun splashed
on a larger and larger crowd that strutted, skipped,
marched, and shuffled down the road. When they got down
to where the sidewalk started, some of them stopped and
decided to turn back, too embarrassed to enter the white
part of town whooping like banshees. But except for three
or four, the fainthearted were put to shame by the more

aggressive and abandoned, and the parade danced down
Main Street past Woolworth’s and the old poultry house,
turned right and moved on down the New River Road. At
the mouth of the tunnel excavation, in a fever pitch of
excitement and joy, they saw the timber, the bricks, the
steel ribs and the tacky wire gate that glittered under ice
struck to diamond in the sun. It dazzled them, at first, and
they were suddenly quiet. Their hooded eyes swept over
the place where their hope had lain since 1927. There was
the promise: leaf-dead. The teeth unrepaired, the coal
credit cut off, the chest pains unattended, the school shoes
unbought, the rush-stuffed mattresses, the broken toilets,
the leaning porches, the slurred remarks and the
staggering childish malevolence of their employers. All
there in blazing sunlit ice rapidly becoming water. Like
antelopes they leaped over the little gate–a wire barricade
that was never intended to bar anything but dogs, rabbits
and stray children–and led by the tough, the enraged and
the young they picked up the lengths of timber and thin steel
ribs and smashed the bricks they would never fire in
yawning kilns, split the sacks of limestone they had not
mixed or even been allowed to haul; tore the wire mesh,
tipped over wheelbarrows and rolled forepoles down the
bank, where they sailed far out on the icebound river. Old
and young, women and children, lame and hearty, they
killed, as best they could, the tunnel they were forbidden to
build. They didn’t mean to go in, to actually go down into the
lip of the tunnel, but in their need to kill it all, all of it, to wipe
from the face of the earth the work of the thin-armed

Virginia boys, the bull-necked Greeks and the knife-faced
men who waved the leaf-dead promise, they went too
deep, too far… A lot of them died there. The earth, now
warm, shifted; the first forepole slipped; loose rock fell from
the face of the tunnel and caused a shield to give way. They
found themselves in a chamber of water, deprived of the
sun that had brought them there. With the first crack and
whoosh of water, the clamber to get out was so fierce that
others who were trying to help were pulled to their deaths.
Pressed up against steel ribs and timber blocks young
boys strangled when the oxygen left them to join the water.
Outside, others watched in terror as ice split and earth
shook beneath their feet. Mrs. Jackson, weighing less than
100 pounds, slid down the bank and met with an open
mouth the ice she had craved all her life. Tar Baby, Dessie,
Ivy, Valentine, the Herrod boys, some of Ajax’s younger
brothers and the deweys (at least it was supposed; their
bodies were never found)–all died there. Mr. Buckland
Reed escaped, so did Patsy and her two boys, as well as
some fifteen or twenty who had not gotten close enough to
fall, or whose timidity would not let them enter an unfinished
tunnel. And all the while Shadrack stood there. Having
forgotten his song and his rope, he just stood there high up
on the bank ringing, ringing his bell.

1965

Things were so much better in 1965. Or so it seemed. You
could go downtown and see colored people working in the

dime store behind the counters, even handling money with
cash-register keys around their necks. And a colored man
taught mathematics at the junior high school. The young
people had a look about them that everybody said was new
but which reminded Nel of the deweys, whom nobody had
ever found. Maybe, she thought, they had gone off and
seeded the land and growed up in these young people in
the dime store with the cash-register keys around their
necks. They were so different, these young people. So
different from the way she remembered them forty years
ago. Jesus, there were some beautiful boys in 1921! Look
like the whole world was bursting at the seams with them.
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old. Jesus, they were fine.
L. P., Paul Freeman and his brother Jake, Mrs. Scott’s
twins–and Ajax had a whole flock of younger brothers. They
hung out of attic windows, rode on car fenders, delivered
the coal, moved into Medallion and moved out, visited
cousins, plowed, hoisted, lounged on the church steps,
careened on the school playground. The sun heated them
and the moon slid down their backs. God, the world was
_full__ of beautiful boys in 1921. Nothing like these kids.
Everything had changed. Even the whores were better then:
tough, fat, laughing women with burns on their cheeks and
wit married to their meanness: or widows couched in small
houses in the woods with eight children to feed and no
man. These modern-day whores were pale and dull before
those women. These little clothes-crazy things were always
embarrassed. Nasty but shamed. They didn’t know what
shameless was. They should have known those silvery

widows in the woods who would get up from the dinner
table and walk into the trees with a customer with as much
embarrassment as a calving mare. Lord, how time flies.
She hardly recognized anybody in the town any more. Now
there was another old people’s home. Look like this town
just kept on building homes for old people. Every time they
built a road they built a old folks’ home. You’d think folks
was living longer, but the fact of it was, they was just being
put out faster. Nel hadn’t seen the insides of this most
recent one yet, but it was her turn in Circle Number 5 to visit
some of the old women there. The pastor visited them
regularly, but the circle thought private visits were nice too.
There were just nine colored women out there, the same
nine that had been in the other one. But a lot of white ones.
White people didn’t fret about putting their old ones away. It
took a lot for black people to let them go, and even if
somebody was old and alone, others did the dropping by,
the floor washing, the cooking. Only when they got crazy
and unmanageable were they let go. Unless it was
somebody like Sula, who put Eva away out of meanness. It
was true that Eva was foolish in the head, but not so bad as
to need locking up. Nel was more than a little curious to see
her. She had been really active in church only a year or
less, and that was because the children were grown now
and took up less time and less space in her mind. For over
twenty-five years since Jude walked out she had pinned
herself into a tiny life. She spent a little time trying to marry
again, but nobody wanted to take her on with three children,
and she simply couldn’t manage the business of keeping

boyfriends. During the war she had had a rather long
relationship with a sergeant stationed at the camp twenty
miles down river from Medallion, but then he got called
away and everything was reduced to a few letters–then
nothing. Then there was a bartender at the hotel. But now
she was fiftyfive and hard put to remember what all that had
been about. It didn’t take long, after Jude left, for her to see
what the future would be. She had looked at her children
and knew in her heart that that would be all. That they were
all she would ever know of love. But it was a love that, like a
pan of syrup kept too long on the stove, had cooked out,
leaving only its odor and a hard, sweet sludge, impossible
to scrape off. For the mouths of her children quickly forgot
the taste of her nipples, and years ago they had begun to
look past her face into the nearest stretch of sky. In the
meantime the Bottom had collapsed. Everybody who had
made money during the war moved as close as they could
to the valley, and the white people were buying down river,
cross river, stretching Medallion like two strings on the
banks. Nobody colored lived much up in the Bottom any
more. White people were building towers for television
stations up there and there was a rumor about a golf course
or something. Anyway, hill land was more valuable now,
and those black people who had moved down right after
the war and in the fifties couldn’t afford to come back even
if they wanted to. Except for the few blacks still huddled by
the river bend, and some undemolished houses on
Carpenter’s Road, only rich white folks were building
homes in the hills. Just like that, they had changed their

minds and instead of keeping the valley floor to themselves,
now they wanted a hilltop house with a river view and a ring
of elms. The black people, for all their new look, seemed
awfully anxious to get to the valley, or leave town, and
abandon the hills to whoever was interested. It was sad,
because the Bottom had been a real place. These young
ones kept talking about the community, but they left the hills
to the poor, the old, the stubborn–and the rich white folks.
Maybe it hadn’t been a community, but it had been a place.
Now there weren’t any places left, just separate houses with
separate televisions and separate telephones and less and
less dropping by. These were the same thoughts she
always had when she walked down into the town. One of
the last true pedestrians, Nel walked the shoulder road
while cars slipped by. Laughed at by her children, she still
walked wherever she wanted to go, allowing herself to
accept rides only when the weather required it. Now she
went straight through the town and turned left at its farthest
end, along a tree-lined walk that turned into a country road
farther on and passed the cemetery, Beechnut Park. When
she got to Sunnydale, the home for the aged, it was already
four o’clock and turning chill. She would be glad to sit down
with those old birds and rest her feet. A red-haired lady at
the desk gave her a pass card and pointed to a door that
opened onto a corridor of smaller doors. It looked like what
she imagined a college dormitory to be. The lobby was
luxurious–modern–but the rooms she peeped into were
sterile green cages. There was too much light everywhere;
it needed some shadows. The third door, down the hall,

had a little name tag over it that read EVA PEACE. Nel
twisted the knob and rapped a little on the door at the same
time, then listened a moment before she opened it. At first
she couldn’t believe it. She seemed so small, sitting at that
table in a black-vinyl chair. All the heaviness had gone and
the height. Her once beautiful leg had no stocking and the
foot was in a slipper. Nel wanted to cry-not for Eva’s milk-
dull eyes or her floppy lips, but for the once proud foot
accustomed for over a half century to a fine well-laced
shoe, now stuffed gracelessly into a pink terrycloth slipper.
“Good evening, Miss Peace. I’m Nel Greene come to pay a
call on you. You remember me, don’t you?” Eva was ironing
and dreaming of stairwells. She had neither iron nor clothes
but did not stop her fastidious lining up of pleats or
pressing out of wrinkles even when she acknowledged
Nel’s greeting. “Howdy. Sit down.” “Thank you.” Nel sat on
the edge of the little bed. “You’ve got a pretty room, a real
pretty room, Miss Peace.” “You eat something funny
today?” “Ma’am?” “Some chop suey? Think back.” “No,
ma’am.” “No? Well, you gone be sick later on.” “But I didn’t
have no chop suey.” “You think I come all the way over here
for you to tell me that? I can’t make visits too often. You
should have some respect for old people.” “But Miss
Peace, I’m visiting _you__. This is _your__ room.” Nel
smiled. “What you say your name was?” “Nel Greene.”
“Wiley Wright’s girl?” “Uh huh. You do remember. That
makes me feel good, Miss Peace. You remember me and
my father.” “Tell me how you killed that little boy.” “What?
What little boy?” “The one you threw in the water. I got

oranges. How did you get him to go in the water?” “I didn’t
throw no little boy in the river. That was Sula.” “You. Sula.
What’s the difference? You was there. You watched, didn’t
you? Me, I never would’ve watched.” “You’re confused, Miss
Peace. I’m Nel. Sula’s dead.” “It’s awful cold in the water.
Fire is warm. How did you get him in?” Eva wet her
forefinger and tested the iron’s heat. “Who told you all these
lies? Miss Peace? Who told you? Why are you telling lies
on me?” “I got oranges. I don’t drink they old orange juice.
They puts something in it.” “Why are you trying to make out
like I did it?” Eva stopped ironing and looked at Nel. For
the first time her eyes looked sane. “You think I’m guilty?”
Nel was whispering. Eva whispered back, “Who would
know that better than you?” “I want to know who you been
talking to.” Nel forced herself to speak normally. “Plum.
Sweet Plum. He tells me things.” Eva laughed a light, tinkly
giggle–girlish. “I’ll be going now, Miss Peace.” Nel stood.
“You ain’t answered me yet.” “I don’t know what you’re
talking about.” “Just alike. Both of you. Never was no
difference between you. Want some oranges? It’s better for
you than chop suey. Sula? I got oranges.” Nel walked
hurriedly down the hall, Eva calling after her, “Sula?” Nel
couldn’t see the other women today. That woman had upset
her. She handed her pass back to the lady, avoiding her
look of surprise. Outside she fastened her coat against the
rising wind. The top button was missing so she covered her
throat with her hand. A bright space opened in her head
and memory seeped into it. Standing on the riverbank in a
purple-and-white dress, Sula swinging Chicken Little

around and around. His laughter before the hand-slip and
the water closing quickly over the place. What had she felt
then, watching Sula going around and around and then the
little boy swinging out over the water? Sula had cried and
cried when she came back from Shadrack’s house. But Nel
had remained calm. _”Shouldn’t we tell?”__ _”Did he
see?”__ _”I don’t know. No.”__ _”Let’s go. We can’t bring
him back.”__ What did old Eva mean by _you watched?__
How could she help seeing it? She was right there. But Eva
didn’t say _see,__ she said _watched.__ “I did not watch it.
I just saw it.” But it was there anyway, as it had always
been, the old feeling and the old question. The good feeling
she had had when Chicken’s hands slipped. She hadn’t
wondered about that in years. “Why didn’t I feel bad when it
happened? How come it felt so good to see him fall?” All
these years she had been secretly proud of her calm,
controlled behavior when Sula was uncontrollable, her
compassion for Sula’s frightened and shamed eyes. Now it
seemed that what she had thought was maturity, serenity
and compassion was only the tranquillity that follows a joyful
stimulation. Just as the water closed peacefully over the
turbulence of Chicken Little’s body, so had contentment
washed over her enjoyment. She was walking too fast. Not
watching where she placed her feet, she got into the weeds
by the side of the road. Running almost, she approached
Beechnut Park. Just over there was the colored part of the
cemetery. She went in. Sula was buried there along with
Plum, Hannah and now Pearl. With the same disregard for
name changes by marriage that the black people of

Medallion always showed, each flat slab had one word
carved on it. Together they read like a chant: PEACE
1895–1921, PEACE 1890– 1923, PEACE 1910–1940,
PEACE 1892–1959. They were not dead people. They
were words. Not even words. Wishes, longings. All these
years she had been harboring good feelings about Eva;
sharing, she believed, her loneliness and unloved state as
no one else could or did. She, after all, was the only one
who really understood why Eva refused to attend Sula’s
funeral. The others thought they knew; thought the
grandmother’s reasons were the same as their own–that to
pay respect to someone who had caused them so much
pain was beneath them. Nel, who did go, believed Eva’s
refusal was not due to pride or vengeance but to a plain
unwillingness to see the swallowing of her own flesh into the
dirt, a determination not to let the eyes see what the heart
could not hold. Now, however, after the way Eva had just
treated her, accused her, she wondered if the townspeople
hadn’t been right the first time. Eva _was__ mean. Sula had
even said so. There was no good reason for her to speak
so. Feebleminded or not. Old. Whatever. Eva knew what
she was doing. Always had. She had stayed away from
Sula’s funeral and accused Nel of drowning Chicken Little
for spite. The same spite that galloped all over the Bottom.
That made every gesture an offense, every off-center smile
a threat, so that even the bubbles of relief that broke in the
chest of practically everybody when Sula died did not
soften their spite and allow them to go to Mr. Hodges’
funeral parlor or send flowers from the church or bake a

yellow cake. She thought about Nathan opening the
bedroom door the day she had visited her, and finding the
body. He said he knew she was dead right away not
because her eyes were open but because her mouth was. It
looked to him like a giant yawn that she never got to finish.
He had run across the street to Teapot’s Mamma, who,
when she heard the news, said, “Ho!” like the conductor on
the train when it was about to take off except louder, and
then did a little dance. None of the women left their quilt
patches in disarray to run to the house. Nobody left the
clothes halfway through the wringer to run to the house.
Even the men just said “uhn,” when they heard. The day
passed and no one came. The night slipped into another
day and the body was still lying in Eva’s bed gazing at the
ceiling trying to complete a yawn. It was very strange, this
stubbornness about Sula. For even when China, the most
rambunctious whore in the town, died (whose black son
and white son said, when they heard she was dying, “She
ain’t dead yet?”), even then everybody stopped what they
were doing and turned out in numbers to put the fallen sister
away. It was Nel who finally called the hospital, then the
mortuary, then the police, who were the ones to come. So
the white people took over. They came in a police van and
carried the body down the steps past the four pear trees
and into the van for all the world as with Hannah. When the
police asked questions nobody gave them any information.
It took them hours to find out the dead woman’s first name.
The call was for a Miss Peace at 7 Carpenter’s Road. So
they left with that: a body, a name and an address. The

white people had to wash her, dress her, prepare her and
finally lower her. It was all done elegantly, for it was
discovered that she had a substantial death policy. Nel
went to the funeral parlor, but was so shocked by the closed
coffin she stayed only a few minutes. The following day Nel
walked to the burying and found herself the only black
person there, steeling her mind to the roses and pulleys. It
was only when she turned to leave that she saw the cluster
of black folk at the lip of the cemetery. Not coming in, not
dressed for mourning, but there waiting. Not until the white
folks left–the gravediggers, Mr. and Mrs. Hodges, and their
young son who assisted them–did those black people from
up in the Bottom enter with hooded hearts and filed eyes to
sing “Shall We Gather at the River” over the curved earth
that cut them off from the most magnificent hatred they had
ever known. Their question clotted the October air, Shall
We Gather at the River? The beautiful, the beautiful river?
Perhaps Sula answered them even then, for it began to
rain, and the women ran in tiny leaps through the grass for
fear their straightened hair would beat them home. Sadly,
heavily, Nel left the colored part of the cemetery. Further
along the road Shadrack passed her by. A little shaggier, a
little older, still energetically mad, he looked at the woman
hurrying along the road with the sunset in her face. He
stopped. Trying to remember where he had seen her
before. The effort of recollection was too much for him and
he moved on. He had to haul some trash out at Sunnydale
and it would be good and dark before he got home. He
hadn’t sold fish in a long time now. The river had killed them

all. No more silver-gray flashes, no more flat, wide,
unhurried look. No more slowing down of gills. No more
tremor on the line. Shadrack and Nel moved in opposite
directions, each thinking separate thoughts about the past.
The distance between them increased as they both
remembered gone things. Suddenly Nel stopped. Her eye
twitched and burned a little. “Sula?” she whispered, gazing
at the tops of trees. “Sula?” Leaves stirred; mud shifted;
there was the smell of overripe green things. A soft ball of
fur broke and scattered like dandelion spores in the
breeze. “All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing
Jude.” And the loss pressed down on her chest and came
up into her throat. “We was girls together,” she said as
though explaining something. “O Lord, Sula,” she cried,
“girl, girl, girlgirlgirl.” It was a fine cry–loud and long–but it
had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of
sorrow.

The End

Order a unique copy of this paper

600 words
We'll send you the first draft for approval by September 11, 2018 at 10:52 AM
Total price:
$26
Top Academic Writers Ready to Help
with Your Research Proposal

Order your essay today and save 25% with the discount code GREEN