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 lemon-yellow 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?”
