“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.”
