"Sula," Vocabulary from pages 89-137

Accompanied by a plague of robins, Sula came back to Medallion.

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.

To smile at the sheer loveliness that pressed in from the windows and touched his grief, making it a pleasure to behold.

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.

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.

Nel giggled at the remembrance of that teen-time tale.

“I’m scared of her, Nellie. That's why."

The one with the scriggly yellow lines running lopsided across the dark-blue field.

A scream not for others, not in sympathy for a burnt child, or a dead father, but a deeply personal cry for one’s own pain. A loud, strident: “Why me?”

The lilac bushes preened at the railing, but there were no lilacs yet.

Anyone who left behind that aura of fun and complicity?

This very grief that had twisted her into a curve on the floor and flayed her would be gone.

A ball of muddy strings, but without weight, fluffy but terrible in its malevolence.

Every one of them imagined the scene, each according to his own predilections—Sula underneath some white man —and it filled them with choking disgust.

There was nothing lower she could do, nothing filthier.

In that way, they regarded integration with precisely the same venom that white people did.

Sula acknowledged none of their attempts at counter- conjure or their gossip and seemed to need the services of nobody.

Once the source of their personal misfortune was identified, they had leave to protect and love one another.

Once the source of their personal misfortune was identified, they had leave to protect and love one another.

They would no more run Sula out of town than they would kill the robins that brought her back, for in their secret awareness of Him, He was not the God of three faces they sang about.

They could kill easily if provoked to anger, but not by design, which explained why they could not “mob kill” anyone.

She was completely free of ambition, with no affection for money, property or things, no greed, no desire to command attention or compliments—no ego.

If they were touched by the snake’s breath, however fatal, they were merely victims and knew how to behave in that role (just as Nel knew how to behave as the wronged wife).

But the free fall, oh no, that required— demanded—invention: a thing to do with the wings, a way of holding the legs and most of all a full surrender to the downward flight if they wished to taste their tongues or stay alive.

Nel was one of the reasons she had drifted back to Medallion, that and the boredom she found in Nashville, Detroit, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Macon and San Diego.

In a way, her strangeness, her naivete, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination.

He came regularly then, bearing gifts: clusters of black berries still on their branches, four meal-fried porgies wrapped in a salmon-colored sheet of the Pittsburgh Courier, a handful of jacks, two boxes of lime Jell-Well, a hunk of ice-wagon ice, a can of Old Dutch Geanser with the bonneted woman chasing dirt with her stick; a page of Tillie the Toiler comics, and more gleaming white bottles of milk.

His kindness to them in general was not due to a ritual of seduction (he had no need for it) but rather to the habit he acquired in dealing with his mother, who inspired thoughtfulness and generosity in all her sons.

The rest of the time, the time he was not watching his mother’s magic or thinking of airplanes, he spent in the idle pursuits of bachelors without work in small towns.

As she rocked there, swayed there, like a Georgia pine on its knees, high above the slipping, falling smile, high above the golden eyes and the velvet helmet of hair, rocking, swaying, she focused her thoughts to bar the creeping disorder that was flooding her hips.

And if I take a nail file or even Eva’s old paring knife— that will do—and scrape away at the gold, it will fall away and there will be alabaster.

Like women sitting for two hours under the marcelling irons only to wonder two days later how soon they would need another appointment.

The ribbon- tying was followed by other activity, and when Ajax came that evening, bringing her a reed whistle he had carved that morning, not only was the green ribbon still in her hair, but the bathroom was gleaming, the bed was made, and the table was set for two.

Then one day, burrowing in a dresser drawer, she found what she had been looking for: proof that he had been there, his driver’s license.

In a way, her strangeness, her naivete, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination.

Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for.

Afraid their husbands would discover that no uniqueness lay between their legs.

The fact that their own skin color was proof that it had happened in their own families was no deterrent to their bile.

She thought she liked the sootiness of sex and its comedy; she laughed a great deal during the raucous beginnings, and rejected those lovers who regarded sex as healthy or beautiful.

In their world, aberrations were as much a part of nature as grace.