Sula

Things seemed so much better in 1965. There were Black people working in the dime store downtown, and there was a Black teacher instructing junior high school students in math. The young people in town were also so different from the ones Nel had once known.

Nel hardly recognized anyone in Medallion now. There were more retirement homes, too, but few Black people lived in them. Black folks still didn’t let their old people go unless they became too unwell to manage. Sula was different—she had “put Eva away out of meanness” (165).

For 25 years, ever since Jude had left her, Nel “had pinned herself into a tiny life” (165). She had spent a bit of time considering remarriage, but no man wanted her three children, too. She also had no luck with keeping boyfriends. During the Second World War, she had a fairly long relationship with sergeant stationed near Medallion, then he was stationed elsewhere. He wrote to her for a while, then stopped. For a moment, there had been a bartender in whom she was interested at the hotel where both she and Jude had worked. Now, however, she was 55 and could no longer remember what any of it had been about.

These days, few Black people still lived up in the Bottom. White people had built television station towers in the hills and there were plans to build a golf course. Rich white people were also building homes up there. On the turn of a dime, they had changed their minds and now wanted “a hilltop house with a river view and a ring of elms” (166). The Black people were eager to get into the valley or out of town altogether. It made Nel sad to think about how they talked about community, then “left the hills to the poor, the old, the stubborn—and the rich white folks” (166). Nel wondered if the Bottom had ever really been a community. Maybe it was just a place.

When Nel arrived at Sunnydale, it was late afternoon and the air had chilled. The lobby was beautiful, but the rooms “were sterile green cages” (167). She arrived at a room that was labeled “Eva Peace.” When Nel entered and saw Eva, she couldn’t believe it. Eva appeared so small. She was stooped and frail. Her sole leg was no longer adorned, her eyes looked dull, and her lips flopped. It was the sight of “the once proud foot accustomed for over half a century to a fine well-laced shoe” and now “stuffed gracelessly into a pink terrycloth slipper” that made Nel want to cry (167).

Eva was ironing when Nel greeted her, though there was neither an iron nor clothes in her room. She asked Nel to repeat her name, then remembered that she was Wiley Wright’s daughter. Eva then asked how Nel had killed Chicken Little. Nel reminded her that it was Sula who had done that. Eva said there was no difference between them. Anyway, Nel had watched. Nel asked Eva if she thought that Nel was guilty. For some reason, she was whispering. Eva whispered back that no one would have known better than Nel. When Nel asked whom Eva had been talking to, she said that it was Plum who told her things. Nel stood to leave. Eva then confused her with Sula and offered her oranges. After Nel left the room, Eva called after her, but still called her Sula.

Nel thought back to the moment when Chicken Little flew out over the water. She had remained calm, while it was Sula who had cried. She wondered why she hadn’t felt bad, why it had even felt good to see him fall in. For years, she had been proud of the control she had exercised. Now, what had looked like “maturity, serenity, and compassion” for Sula “was only the tranquility that had [followed] a joyful stimulation” (170).

Nel walked into Beechnut Park. The colored cemetery was there. She visited the graves of Plum, Hannah, Sula, and now Pearl. For years, she had thought well of Eva. But now she wondered if the townspeople had been right all along in calling Eva mean. Eva hadn’t gone to Sula’s funeral, which Nel had mistaken for her inability to see her granddaughter lowered into a grave. In fact, no one from the Bottom had gone to her funeral. It was white people who had washed Sula’s body, dressed her, prepared her, and lowered her into the ground. Only after the white people left and Sula was buried did the Black people arrive to sing “Shall We Gather at the River” at her grave.

Nel left the cemetery. On her way out, she passed Shadrack. He was “shaggier, a little older, and still energetically mad” (173). He glanced at her. Then, he stopped and tried to remember where he had last seen her. However, the effort to remember was too much, so he moved along. It had been many years since he had sold fish, due to the river killing them all. Now, he hauled garbage for Sunnydale.

Going in her own direction, Nel suddenly stopped. She felt a twitch and burn in her eye. She called Sula’s name and gazed “at the tops of trees” (174). Talking aloud to no one, she said, for so many years, it was Jude whom she thought she had missed. Nel collapsed into a wail of despair for the friendship she had lost.