Sula

By the time Nel and Sula were 12, they had legs like stalks and necks like cords, which drew the attention of old male passersby who remembered “the taste of young sweat on tight skin” (49). A 21-year-old named Ajax looked at Nel and Sula and said what was on the minds of the other men: he called the girls “pig meat.” The girls walked through this cordon of men to get to Edna Finch’s Mellow House, an ice-cream shop.

The girls bonded over their solitariness, over being the only child in their respective families. When they met, it seemed as though they had always been friends. They were both the “[d]aughters of distant mothers and incomprehensible fathers” (51). With each other, they found the intimacy they craved.

It was 1922. Four Irish boys, around 13 or 14, entertained themselves by harassing Black schoolchildren in the early afternoons. They had come with their parents, believing that America was a welcoming promised land. Instead, they were met by aversions to their accent, to their Catholicism, and to their wishes to find work. Only Black people didn’t scorn them. But, to belong to the wider white community, the Irish “echoed the old [Medallion] residents’ attitude toward blacks” (53). Once, these boys got hold of Nel, got into a circle, and pushed her around until they grew tired of the game. She and Sula managed to stay out of their way by taking other routes home, until one cool day Sula announced that they would walk home the quickest way.

Once Sula and Nel arrived at the bend in Carpenter’s Road, they spotted the boys. When they were only several feet away from the bullies, Sula “reached into her coat pocket and pulled out Eva’s paring knife” (53). The boys became eager for what they thought was going to turn into an interesting fight. Then, Sula squatted down in the road, put her things down, held the knife in her right hand and pressed her left forefinger down on her slate. Pressing her finger onto the slate, she sliced off the tip of her finger. The four boys stared in astonishment. Sula then looked up at them. In a quiet voice, she told them that, if she could do such a thing to herself, what might she have been capable of doing to them? The boys moved away quickly.

Despite this act of self-mutilation, neither girl was tough; they were adventurous. They gawked at one-eyed chickens, examined the labels on Tar Baby’s wine bottles, watched men fight with razors, and observed workers tarring roads. Nel still obediently pulled her nose at home, but she did it hopelessly. She was no longer interested in the smooth hair that the hot comb gave her.

In the summer, the girls wandered around town barefoot. One day, Nel waited on Sula’s front porch while Sula ran into the house to use the toilet. Hannah sat in the kitchen with her friends, Patsy and Valentine. They were talking and, by the time Sula passed to leave, they were on the subject of raising children. All the women agreed that childrearing was a pain. Hannah shared that she loved Sula. She just didn’t like her. Hannah’s words sent Sula back up the stairs. She felt “a sting in her eye” (57). Then, she heard Nel’s voice, which pulled her away from her thoughts and back out into the summer sun.

The girls ran toward the river. When they arrived at its banks, they laid in the grass. Their budding breasts caused some discomfort when they rolled onto their stomachs. They made clearings and holes in the grass before tossing trash into the holes. They then covered the holes, as though they were graveyards for discarded objects.

A small boy “in too big knickers” walked toward Sula and Nel before stopping to pick his nose (59). It was Chicken Little. Sula beckoned him, saying that she would show him how to climb a tree. She helped him up. When they got as high as they could, she pointed toward the river. When it was time to come down, Chicken refused. Afraid that he would be unable to climb back down himself, he relented and followed Sula down. He was excited to have gotten so far by himself and said that he’d tell his “brovver” the news. Sula and Nel mocked his speech impediment. Then, Sula picked Chicken up by the hands and swung him until he flew out over and into the river. The water closed quickly over the boy. Nel and Sula watched, expecting that he would reemerge, but he didn’t.

Nel broke the silence between them, worrying that someone had seen what had happened. The only house across the river was Shadrack’s. Sula ran toward the shack. She knocked on the door, but no one answered. She pushed it and discovered that it was open. She was inside, alone. She was startled by the neatness of Shadrack’s abode. This did not seem to be the home of a man who walked around flashing women and girls. This did not seem to be the house of the man who got drunk and shouted at people in the street. It was a charming little cottage with a “made-up bed […] rag rug and wooden table” (62).

A sound startled her. It was Shadrack, looking at her from the doorway. She looked away from him, embarrassed. When she finally looked up, she saw his hand resting “in a graceful arc” in the door frame (62). No one with such graceful hands, she thought, could harm her. She walked past him and toward the door. She turned once, as though to ask him something. He smiled, nodded, and said, “Always.” His pronouncement caused Sula to flee. When she got back to Nel, she began to weep. Nel tried to soothe her. Sula told her what Shadrack had said. The promise of his answer to a question she had not asked “licked at her feet” (62).

Later that afternoon, a bargeman found Chicken Little’s body. The bargeman had initially thought that it was the body of an old Black man, which made him want to leave it there. When he saw it was a child, he fished it out. He shook his head, disgusted with Black people for being capable of drowning their own children. He put Chicken into a sack and tossed him next to some egg crates and boxes. Later, while sitting and thinking about “the terrible burden his own kind had of elevating Ham’s sons,” he worried about what the summer heat would do to the body (63). He hooked Chicken’s body to the side of the boat, where it dipped in and out of the water. The bargeman then reported his finding to the sheriff at Porter’s Landing, who said that the boy must have come from Medallion because there were no Black people in their county. The bargeman didn’t want to travel the two miles to Medallion. The sheriff advised him to throw the body back into the river, while the bargeman cursed himself for fishing it out in the first place. Finally, they got the ferryman to take it to Medallion in the morning.

For these reasons, Chicken Little had been missing for three days. By the time he got to the embalmer’s on the fourth, he was barely recognizable to his own mother. It was only when she saw his clothes that she knew. Nel and Sula went to Chicken Little’s funeral. They stood beside each other, but they never touched or looked at each other. Nel made herself very still, expecting the sheriff or Reverend Deal to point her out at any moment. Sula cried soundlessly. After the service, they lowered Chicken Little’s body into a plot in the cemetery’s Black section. He rested between his grandfather and an aunt. The girls stood away from the grave. They held hands—first, tightly, then in a gentle clasp as they walked back home.