Sula

When the people in the Bottom heard that Sula had put Eva in Sunnydale, they called her a roach. When they found out about her taking Jude, then left him, they called her a bitch. They then remembered how a “plague of robins [had] announced her return” and that she had watched her mother burn to death (112). It was the men, however, who levied the worst accusation against her—that she slept with white men. The thought of Sula lying under a white man filled them all with loathing and disgust. Everyone forgot that their skin colors were evidence that the same had occurred in their own families. They also overlooked how Black men were sometimes willing to sleep with white women. The conclusion was that all unions between Black women and white men had to have been rape; no Black woman could ever be willing.

To protect themselves against the evil they were sure Sula had brought, “they laid broomsticks across their doors at night and sprinkled salt on porch steps,” but no one ever tried to harm her (113). Then, they watched her closely. Soon, things happened. First, five-year-old Teapot knocked on her door to ask if she had any empty bottles. When the child turned to leave, emptyhanded, he tripped. His drunken mother, Betty, was stumbling home when she saw Sula bending over to help him. Frantic, Betty took Teapot home. At the urging of others, Betty had the boy examined at the county hospital. Teapot, she learned, had a fracture, which the doctor attributed to a poor diet. The news, coupled with the idea that Sula had hurt her child, turned Betty into a devoted mother.

Then, Mr. Finley was on his porch sucking on chicken bones, something he had done every day for 13 years. One day, he “saw Sula, choked on a bone and died on the spot” (114). She infuriated the women in town by bedding their husbands and discarding them indifferently. Unlike her mother, she seemed disinterested in men. This made the women hold their men closer to soothe their wounded pride and vanity.

People also whispered about how Sula didn’t look her true age. She was almost 30 but hadn’t yet lost teeth or suffered bruises. She was still slim and, except for the strange-looking finger, she had no scars. Dessie, a neighbor, told a story about how Shadrack, who was never civil to anyone, one day tipped his hat to Sula. She and the listener, Cora, concluded that Sula and Shadrack were both devils. When asked what Sula did in response to Shadrack’s gesture, Dessie said that she “put her hand on her throat for a minute” then ran away (117). She then told Cora that, when she got home, she saw that she had a big stye on her eye, despite not ever having one before. Cora insisted that it was because Dessie had witnessed evil.

The community agreed that “evil was something to be first recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed over” (117). Sula, meanwhile, had not intended to cause Nel pain by sleeping with Jude. All their young lives together they had shared boys and compared notes about them. Marriage, clearly, made things different. However, Sula had no understanding of marriage and had been raised in a house in which the women thought all men were available to them. Sula and Nel had both known why women worried about those like Sula and Hannah: They were “afraid of losing their jobs” (119). They worried that their husbands would discover that nothing remarkable existed between their legs. Now, Nel was like those fearful women. She was like everyone else in town. This fact saddened and surprised Sula. Nel, after all, was one of the reasons why Sula had gone back to Medallion. She was also bored by all the major cities she visited, finding the same people in each of them. She also hadn’t met any worthwhile men in any of the places in which she stayed. What she really wanted was a friend. It took her some time to discover that “a lover was not a comrade and could never be—for a woman” (12).

Conversation with those in Medallion, particularly the women, was difficult because Sula lacked the ability to lie. She could not tell women that they looked good “when she saw how the years had dusted their bronze with ash” (121). Sula knew that most of them were still living only for their children. She also knew that the women loathed her but made it about her easy ways with men.

It was true that Sula liked sex—"the sootiness of sex and its comedy” (122). She laughed a lot during the act, but she also liked to think it was wicked, at first. Then, when she collected many experiences, she realized that it was not at all wicked and that she didn’t need to make it so to be interested.

Now, at 29, she became reacquainted with Ajax, who was 38. He stood on the other side of her screen door on the porch, holding two glass bottles of milk. He said that he had been looking for Sula, intending to give her the bottles. She opened the door. She watched as he drank milk from one of the bottles. When he had had his fill, he poured the rest down the sink, rinsed it out, and handed it to her. Sula accepted the gift with one hand and pulled him into the pantry with the other.

Soon, Ajax began to visit regularly, always bearing gifts. He gave her freshly-picked blackberries, a can of Old Dutch Cleanser, a page of Tillie the Toiler comics, more bottles of milk, and other things.

They were curious about each other. While Ajax had heard things about Sula, Sula had heard nothing about him or from him since he had called her “pigmeat” so many years ago. Soon, she found herself enjoying his conversations with her. He never condescended to her, asked her dull questions about her life, or gave long monologues about himself. Believing that she was brilliant, as his mother was, “he seemed to expect brilliance from her, and she delivered” (127). So, he listened more than he talked. He also liked to take baths in her clawfoot tub.

While making love to him afterwards, Sula regarded Ajax’s face. She wondered what would happen if she took her chamois and rubbed his cheekbone hard. She wondered if the blackness of his skin would disappear and reveal gold leaf underneath. She sensed that Ajax was golden beneath his skin. She then thought that if she took a nail file or a paring knife and scraped away the gold, she would find alabaster, figuring that stone gave his face “its planes, its curves” (130). After chiseling away the alabaster, she pondered, she was sure that she would find loam, which she would keep “rich and moist” (130). Loam, she thought, must have given him his earthy smell.

Not long thereafter, Sula discovered what possession felt like. The feeling surprised her. She began to wonder if Ajax would come by. She also started examining herself more, wondering if she was attractive. She solved the problem by tying a green ribbon in her hair. When Ajax arrived that particular evening, Sula greeted him with a kiss. Ajax asked if she had heard about Tar Baby, who had been in jail since last Saturday. He had stumbled drunk into New River Road and was nearly hit by a car driven by the mayor’s niece. When the police arrived and recognized the woman, they arrested Tar Baby. Ajax went with two other men to the police station. When they were finally allowed to see him, they saw that Tar Baby had been beaten up and was wearing “nothing but extremely soiled underwear” (132). Ajax and the other men admonished the police for his condition. The attending policeman said that if Tar Baby didn’t like living in shit, he should have come down into the valley and “[lived] like a decent white man” (132). The three men argued with the police, and the whole affair ended with the three Black men being arraigned. Ajax and the others were due to appear in civil court the following Thursday. Ajax, however, wasn’t bothered, just annoyed. He had had enough run-ins with the police to know that they were just “natural hazards of Negro life” (132).

Sula tried to comfort Ajax. She ran her fingers through his hair and encouraged him to lean on her. Ajax was startled. He looked up at her and saw the green ribbon in her hair. He also noticed how clean the house was and that the table had been set for two. Soon, he thought, she would start asking him about his whereabouts after he arrived. He went upstairs with her, but his mind was on the upcoming “air show in Dayton” (133). He made love to Sula with intensity, knowing he would soon leave her.

When she realized that he was gone for good, she felt his absence everywhere. One day, in a dresser drawer, she found his driver’s license and learned that his name was Albert Jacks; his nickname was A. Jacks—not Ajax. It dawned on her that she was missing a man whose name she didn’t even know.