SULA Massucco Reading Notes PDF

SULA Massucco Reading Notes Foreword: xi: the embarrassment of being called a politically-minded writer - “channeling one’s creativity toward the state of social affairs” … why the panic? xii: People asked, in their demands for literature, for aesthetics only, but judged, in their reviews of litera...

SULA Massucco Reading Notes Foreword: xi: the embarrassment of being called a politically-minded writer - “channeling one’s creativity toward the state of social affairs” … why the panic? xii: People asked, in their demands for literature, for aesthetics only, but judged, in their reviews of literature, on the moral correctness of characters in accordance with whether or not it “got black people right” xiii: Morrison is writing out of her own personal compulsion; her sensibility is highly political and passionately aesthetic - she is only interested in “the problem of the black writer” as an artistic question; other questions: - “What is friendship between women when unmediated by men?” - “What choices are available to black women outside their own society’s approval?” - “What are the risks of individualism in a determinedly individualistic, yet racially uniform and socially static, community?” “Female freedom always means sexual freedom” → Hannah Peach! (envy coupled with amused approbation) Hannah, Nel, Eva, Sula = points on a cross xiv: responsibility and liberty in a merging/balance; also, language! Folk language/vernacular - neither comic nor exotic - She tells of the context of writing Sula - Manhattan, broke, single mother, traded stories with other daring single mothers (look up why so many in the late sixties were “dead, detained, or silenced”) xv: the triumph of creativity: “Nobody was minding us, so we minded ourselves.” “What would you be doing or thinking if there was no gaze or mind to stop you?” What would that have been like forty years earlier? Be our own salvation, our own best friend… the woman both envied and cautioned against. xvi: the “lobby” of the opening allows the outsider to enter into the vision of the community PART ONE: 3: above the valley town of Medallion there was a neighborhood called the Bottom - the destruction, detail by detail of what was once black culture 4: the music and dancing that someone could have seen; the laughter and the adult pain, the touch, the sound, the lack of work (8 years) 5: the “joke” that originated the Bottom - “the bottom of heaven” - in a river town in Ohio, literally looking down on the white folks 6: but maybe it really was the bottom of heaven? What was Shadrack all about? What was Sula all about? What were they themselves all about, tucked up there in the Bottom? 1919: 7: National Suicide Day - (nothing ever interfered except for WWII); every Jan 3 since 1920; Shadrack = “blasted and permanently astonished by the events of 1917…”; in battle “it” happened, but he only feels the bite of a nail 8: sees a soldier’s face blown off; wakes up in hospital, “anything could be anywhere”... triangle tray SULA Massucco Reading Notes 9: nurse tries to get Shad to eat with his monstrously growing hands… knocks over tray, grateful for the straight jacket! 10: thinks about being called “Private” and wants to connect it to his own face. Need for space: released with $217, clothes, papers; overwhelmed by the grounds and the lack of warnings… 11: struggles to walk off the grounds - gets himself out of the gate; weak from over a year in the hospital 12: people drive by and look away from what they think is a drunken man; devastating breakdown on the side of the road when he can’t get his shoes untied - 22 years old; No past, no language, no tribe, no address book… 13: police drive up, book him for vagrancy and intoxication; splitting headache in jail, subsides as he stares at “Go fuck yourself”; then manages to see his reflection in the toilet and feels joy - “He wanted nothing more.” 14: first sleep of his new life; as he rides in a wagon up to Medallion, he tries to put order to experience - makes a time and place for death, so that it is no longer unexpected. National Suicide Day. Tells everyone on Jan. 3 that it’s their only chance to kill themselves or each other. 15: “Once the people knew the boundaries and nature of his madness, they could fit him, so to speak, into the scheme of things.” 16: after a few years, people had absorbed Suicide Day into their own thoughts and calendars and way of being. 1920: 17: Sundown House w/ red shutters in the South, a Creole whore gives birth to Helene Sabat. (and the need to get away from it…) Her grandmother raises her “under the dolesome eyes of a multicolored Virgin Mary, counseling her to be constantly on guard for any sign of her mother’s wild blood. Marriage to Wiley Wright at 16 so she can get out! He puts her in a house in Medallion, is gone 13 days out of every 16. She’s fine with it, has a daughter after nine years. 18: Helene’s process of breaking her daughter Nel’s spirit - her looks that she’s happy aren’t too good! Plans to “improve” her nose. 19: Gets a letter saying her grandmother is dying, doesn’t want to go back but feels obligated. Goes back South in November, 1920. Makes a heavy but elegant dress out of brown wool and velvet. Take the train, almost late, looking for the colored car. 20: The fiasco of crossing the whites only car. The conductor calls her “gal.” Her hat has tilted, she looks for her tickets - eagerness to please. 21: Black people watching in “shit-colored” uniforms. Conductor is rude, Helene SMILES! Shifts to Nel’s POV - she looks away and sees the response of the black onlookers. 22: they sit down, Nel faces the men, can’t look at her mother’s skin, the brown cloth hides only custard - she feels she might too be only custard! Resolves to make sure no man ever looks at her that way. (which men is she talking about here?) 23: they rode for two days. When they get to Birmingham, AL, they realize it was better in Tennessee and Kentucky because there were colored toilets. 24: They have to pee in the fields, and eventually she gets good at it. But she feels horrid again when she gets to New Orleans. Cecile Sabat’s house - already a mourning wreath on the door. Too late! SULA Massucco Reading Notes 25: Virgin Mary 3 times in the front room and 1 in the bedroom, where Cecile’s body lies. Moving through the house, there is a smell of gardenias - it comes from Nel’s mother! Canary yellow dress, 48. 26: conversation between Helene, Nel, and Rochelle (Nel asks her name) - She doesn’t talk Creole. Helene in rage about missing her Grandmother, interacting with Rochelle, and the folded leaves 27: Nel likes Rochelle - strong hug - “smelled so nice. And her skin was so soft.” “Much handled things are always soft.” Vwah? I don’t know, I don’t talk Creole. And neither do you! Back to Medallion, Helene gets bustling. 28: Nel thinks long about her trip – late at night, she discovers her “me-ness”; feels power 29: Thinks she’ll take many trips, but that was her first and last. She meets Sula - Helene had said Sula’s mother was “sooty” but then likes Sula, who makes Nel’s house feel more like a home. And Nel prefers Sula’s house, where Hannah never scolded, and Eva the one-legged grandmother gives out goobers and dream interpretations. 1921 30: Where Sula Peace lived: a house that was built over 5 years, piece by piece, by Eva Peace. Eva directs the lives of her children, strays, friends, and boarders. Her oldest child is Hannah - she’s not one of the “fewer than 9” people who remember when Eva had two legs. 31: rumors that she stuck her leg under a train for the pay off - or that she sold it to a hospital for $10,000. She rides around in a wagon, has one good-looking leg, always seems like she’s above folks and that they have to look up to her. Married a man named BoyBoy and had three children: 32: Hannah, Eva (called Pearl), and Ralph (called Plum). Married 5 years then BoyBoy leaves (he liked womanizing, drinking, and abusing Eva). She had $1.65, five eggs, three beets… no time to feel, delays her anger two years. Another black family brings peas and bread - she bums milk off a cow, knows people won’t be able to help in the winter. 33: Hannah = 5, too young to watch the babies, so Eva can’t work. She regret leaving her people with BoyBoy, who had come to Medallion following his employer and built a one-room cabin (a year before they had an outhouse). In December, Plum stops having bowel movements and nothing works (his screams are horrible) 34: Cries so hard he chokes, she knocks over the slop jar - that night, resolves to end his suffering. Takes a finger of lard, sticks her finger up his ass! Snags a pebble and frees hard stools that come ricocheting out. She realizes she came out into the freezing night & outhouse to do this. Shakes her head and says “uh uh. Nooooo.” Thinks in bed. Then leaves her kids with Mrs. Suggs and comes back 18 months later with money (one leg, crutches, a new pocketbook) gives Mrs. Suggs a $10 bill)! 35: picks up her kids, starts building a house sixty feet from the cabin, which she rents out. When Plum is 3, BoyBoy pays a visit. Polite & friendly. She makes & offers lemonade. (There’s a woman waiting under the pear tree). 36: They chat, he seems like a satisfied child. When he leaves, she can see he’s somewhat defeated - laughs with the woman under the tree and Eva feels that she will hate him long and well. 37: When Hannah accuses her of hating colored people, she says she only hates one, BoyBoy. But she retreats to the upstairs of the house, (downstairs for the cousins, strays, and newly-wed boarders) and only goes down the stairs once after 1910, to light a fire. She accumulates children that she sees and SULA Massucco Reading Notes likes from her balcony (learns of their circumstances from the old men who gossip). In 1921 Sula is eleven and Eva has three adopted children, calls all of them Dewey. 38: People think she’s crazy - how to tell them apart? Why tell them apart? They’re all deweys. Her treatment of them as a unit is accepted by the boys as well - they meld. 39: sends them all to school together the same year, even though they’re 7 (black), 5 (freckled), and 4 (Mexican). Deweys are indistinguishable at school. They came in 1921, but Tar Baby comes to board in 1920 - beautiful, slight, never speaks above a whisper. People say he’s half-white, but people say he’s all white. 40: People called him Pretty Johnnie, but Eva calls him Tar Baby out of fun and meanness. He’s a mountain boy, stays to himself, intent on drinking himself to death. Can’t keep his job, bothers no one, sings sweetly at the Wednesday night church meetings - eats little, Hannah worries about him, but it seems he just wants a place to die privately but not alone. People leave him be, but have contempt for how seriously he takes himself. 41: Natural that he became the first to join Shadrack on NSD… and the Deweys (?). Pearl married at 14 and moved to Flint, Michigan - writes letters with tiny news and $2. Hannah married a laughing man named Rekus - he dies when Sula is 3 and Hannah comes back to Eva forever. The Peace women all love men - love maleness! Eva has tons of gentleman callers. 42: Eva disagrees yet clearly expresses manlove - even when talking with others, she has a preference for men: insults wives who are under-caring, scolds them on cooking and laundering. Hannah has a constant stream of lovers (usually the husbands of friends and neighbors). No artifice - she “ripples with sex” 43: Hannah makes men feel good, makes no demands, just loves on them - makes love to them in the cellar in the summer and the pantry in the winter. Sometimes the parlor, in a pinch up to her bedroom - but she didn’t like to sleep with them… 44: sleep implied trust and commitment - she is a daylight lover. Sula only finds her in bed once. Seeing Hannah step into the pantry and come out exactly the same, only happier, teaches Sula that sex is pleasant and frequent, but otherwise unremarkable. Has to make up her own mind, since outside the house kids giggled about underwear. Hannah & the women in town have a strained relationship - especially the newlywed boarders… Hannah wants some touching every day. The men never talk bad about her - they defend her. 45: Plum, Eva’s heir and favorite, swaddled in love until he goes to war in 1917 - back in US in 1919, back in Medallion in 1920. Writes from NYC, DC, and Chicago - something wrong. He comes back, is given a room, but seems like Tar Baby, with no bottles. Hannah finds the black/bent spoon. In 1921, Eva gets up late at night, gets dressed, uses crutches 46: Moves with difficulty down the stairs. Swoops (like an awkward heron) through the rooms to Plum’s room. Cradles him and rocks him, looking around the room, Plum chuckles. She has memories of him as a child 47: Blood-tainted water, she’s crying. He tries to send her back to bed. She gets something from the kitchen, a baptism he feels (an eagle spreading a wet lightness over him). She lights a newspaper stick and throws it onto the kerosene-soaked Plum. SULA Massucco Reading Notes 48: She moves back up the stairs quickly - gets to bed and Hannah bursts in to tell her what’s happening - “Is? My baby? Burning?” “The eyes of each were enough for the other.” Hannah backs down. 1922 49: too cool for ice cream, but they’re heading to Edna Finch’s Mellow House anyway. The cheeky wind is blowing… men, young and old, are draped along the part of Carpenter’s Road. They comment upon everything - in particular, women. 50: Nel & Sula walk through this valley of eyes - “Pig meat,” Ajax says - he has a “sinister beauty” and a “magnificently foul mouth” - delights the girls with his comment; they walk that road to enjoy the tension of being near the men’s crotches. 51: they met in “dreams,” both only children - Nel dreaming of lying on a flowered bed, waiting for some fiery prince, but with someone equally as interested in her own self. 52: Sula too had been dreaming of galloping on a horse, tasting sugar, smelling roses, in full view of someone who shared it all! “Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them, they had set about creating something else to be. Their meeting was fortunate, for it let them use each other to grow on. Daughters of distant mothers and incomprehensible fathers (Sula’s because he was dead; Nel’s because he wasn’t), they found in each other’s eyes the intimacy they were looking for.” Sula & Nel were 12 in 1922. Nel is just dark enough to avoid harm; Sula is a “heavy brown” with a birthmark in the shape of a stemmed rose. Sula’s “gold-flecked eyes, which, to the end, were as steady and clean as rain.” 53: Found relief in each other’s personality. Nel = stronger and more consistent than Sula. Trouble with the Irish white teenagers (newly arrived, trouble with fear of their religion and resistance to giving them work). Anti-black racism brings people together… 54: Nel gets pushed around once, so they start to avoid them, but then one day Sula says let’s go home - she cuts the tip of her own finger off to threaten the boys 55: If I’ll do that to myself, what do you think I’ll do to you? More adventuresome than tough. They want to explore everything. Nel no longer cares about pulling her nose or having smooth hair. They watch each day like a movie - the latest theme is men! 56: Walking often for ice cream, for that reason. Then summer came - weight of blossoming things. Mostly the world is full of beautiful, beautiful boys. They decide to go to the river to see if they boys are swimming. Sula runs into the house for the toilet as Nel waits - Hannah in the kitchen with Patsy and Valentine, Hannah making dough, they talk of child rearing. “They a pain.” 57: You love the ground he pee on - sure, but loving and liking are two different things (“You love her, like I love Sula. I just don’t like her. That’s the difference.”) Stands at the window, sting in her eye. Nel calls and they run to the river. 58: Pass boys, find a four-cornered shade, fling themselves down. The work of playing in the dirt. Stripping, clearing, digging, burying. 59: a grave… Stand, look around. Little boy is around, picking his nose. Chicken - Sula helps him climb a tree. SULA Massucco Reading Notes 60: Chicken Little and Sula up in a tree - they climb way up and Chicken is super excited when they get down. Sula takes him by the hands and swings him around - 61: He slips from her hands and lands in the river. Water closes around him. Nel says, “Somebody saw.” Sula runs over to Shadrack’s place, scared, knocks - pushes in, no Shad 62: Shadrack is standing in the doorway - has nice hands. Says “Always” - Sula flees and collapses in tears near Nel - Nel says “You didn’t mean it.” 63: Asks Sula if Shad had seen anything - “He said ‘Always’” - answered a question she had not asked… A bargeman pulls Chicken Little out of the river - thinks horrendously racist things as he assumes the parents drowned him. Worried the body will stink. 64: Reports it to the Sheriff of Porter’s Landing - says there are no Black people there but there are some above Medallion. Gets the ferryman to take the body back over there. So Chicken Little was missing for three days and on the fourth his body is beyond recognition. Closed casket. Nel and Sula do not touch during the funeral 65: Nel thinks the sheriff or Reverend is going to point at them any minute, even though she hasn’t “done nothing.” Sula just cried and cried. Everybody in the congregation feels personally involved in the death - thinks of Jesus - moved to rise out of the pews, sway, rocking the grief and ecstasy. 66: They bury Chicken Little - butterflies, flowers, space between Nel and Sula has dissolved - the body goes underground, but the laughter and the press of his hands will stay with them. By the time they get home, seem girlfriends again, wondering what happens to butterflies in winter. 1923 67: Hannah goes into Eva’s room with a peck of beans and asks “Mamma, did you ever love us?” - Eva sends Dewey’s away (playing chain gang); asks again - Eva moves hand towards stump, answers “No,” Hannah is done with the topic, Eva is not, calls it evil 68: Hannah is prepping beans - talk of canning, Eva upset by the question - 1895 was a killer! She kept them alive, nobody was playing. 69: Talk of the three beets. “Snake-eyed ungrateful hussy.” Eva insults her - defensive, Hannah has enough beans, she stands. 70: Hannah: “What’d you kill Plum for, Mamma?” Eva leans back, closes her eyes, listens to the ice truck coming, and remembers the night in the outhouse. 71: Shivers at the memory; Hannah is waiting. Eva tells how hard it was to give birth to Plum. And then how there wasn’t space to let him back into her womb as a grown man. 72: She couldn’t let him back in and he wouldn’t go out and be a man, so she thought of a way he could die like a man - “But I held him close first.” Hannah leaves, Eva is crying and calling Plum’s name as she smoothes the pleats (missing leg). Hannah rinses the beans; watches the Deweys playing in the yard. 73: Hannah puts the Kentucky Wonders over the fire and takes a nap, dreams of a wedding in a red bridal gown - Sula wakes her. The first strange thing had been the wind, which swept through but didn’t bring lightning or rain. At least there’s a drier heat afterwards, and the people get up early to work - it’s canning time. 74: Chaos in the house - Sula’s meddling and irritating, Hannah tells Eva of the dream, omen for playing the number 522; third strange thing? Ignoring the Deweys, washing mason jars. SULA Massucco Reading Notes 75: Hannah is lighting the yard fire, Eva searches for her comb, comes back and sees Hannah burning, Eva breaks the window, hurls herself out of the window to try to cover Hannah’s burning body with her own. 76: Eva misses Hannah, tries to claw towards her, Hannah hurtles out of the yard, the Suggs douse her with tomato water, “which seared to sealing all that was left of the beautiful Hannah Peace.” Hannah lays there dying, people are stunned and disgusted, ambulance comes. 77: Eva and Hannah loaded into ambulance; Hannah dies on the way there - Eva is saved by Willy Fields. Closed casket for Hannah. 78: While in the hospital, “Eva mused over the perfection of the judgment against her.” The wedding, the red (for fire) and Sula, just watching. When Eva tells friends, they say Sula was in shock. But Eva knows Sula was watching that way because she was interested. 1927 79: People having a great time at Nel’s wedding. Even Helene has chilled out (someone put a pint of cane liquor in the punch!) 80: rare to have a real wedding! Jude Greene - had his pick of girls, special attraction (tenor, 20 years old) 81: Jude wants work - not as a waiter at the hotel, but as a construction worker on the New River Road. Denied work 82: When he is excited about the work, he mentions marriage to Nel; when he is enraged by not getting offered the work, he presses Nel about settling down 83: Nel responds well to his despair, has no aggression except for an occasional leadership role with Sula. Sula makes Jude’s attentions to Nel even more enjoyable. “Greater than her friendship was this new feeling of being needed by someone who saw her singly.” Sula thought the wedding was the perfect way to follow up their graduation from general school. Sula handled most of the details - people were eager to please her since she had lost her mamma. People danced at the wedding; they realized the Deweys would never grow. 84: Nel and Jude relax at last, look at each other and like what they see. Are eager to go to their newly reserved room. “The veil she wore was too heavy to allow her to feel the core of the kiss he pressed on her head.” Nel sees Sula striding down the path to the road. “It would be ten years before they saw each other again, and their meeting would be thick with birds.” PART TWO 1937 89: “Accompanied by a plague of robins, Sula came back to Medallion.” (Symbolism: good luck, rebirth, new beginnings) - but there are so many that they excite “away from usual welcome into a vicious stoning.” The people react with an acceptance that borders on welcome. 90: That’s the way they always react: shows a full recognition of the legitimacy of forces other than good ones. No despair: stoning sinners and suicide are beneath them. Sula comes off the Cincinnati Flyer into the robin shit dressed like a movie star. SULA Massucco Reading Notes 91: People hear she’s coming, but it’s not a warm welcome. 4 dead robins on Eva’s walk. Eva is sitting with her back to the boarded up window, setting fire to the hair she had combed out of her head. Looks at Sula the way she looked at BoyBoy… Testy conversation about coat, greetings 92-93: amazing verbal showdown between Eva and Sula! 94: Threatens Eva - she starts to lock her door. But Sula has her carried off anyway, and instates herself as the official guardian: “Miss Sula Mae Peace”. – Nel notices the quality of the May, so lovely. 95: Nel knows the magic is due to Sula’s return, like getting the use of an eye back. Description of the depth of the friendship. Sula enhances everyone’s being of themselves. Nel’s life is easier and brighter in every way. Sula comes over in a plain yellow dress (like Hannah in her house dresses) and scratches the screen. 96-97: Chat between Nel and Sula - making jokes about where the female sex is located; laughter makes Nel have to pee, delights the children. (they’re scared of the mark over her eye) 98-99: Kids want to know what they were laughing about - Nel feels new; why did we scramble so much to do it and not do it at the same time? Talk of where Sula went, no way to write; Sula got rid of Laura, the woman who had taken care of Eva (she was stealing?). 100-101: Says she’s caring for Tar Baby and the deweys, admits she had Eva put away, Nel is scandalized - Sula admits to having acted too fast, out of fear. Nel realizes Sula is the same - makes irrational emotional decisions on big things when she’s scared. Nel says, let’s make a plan 102: They make a bit of a plan of what to do with Eva’s money; Jude comes home. 103: Jude tells a story of an insult at work, looking for commiseration, but Sula jumps in to say it looks like a pretty good life to her. Jude flares up, thinking the mark over her eye is a copperhead shape. Speech about how every group of people is worried about black men 104-105: Jude and Nel crack up over Sula’s story; Jude thinks the wide smile does something to take the sting out of the rattlesnake over her eye - but she stirs a man’s mind and not his body But now Nel is there and Jude has left… seems Jude has betrayed Nel by sleeping with Sula, Nel walked in on them and it took a minute for them to look up at her. 106: the aftermath of walking in - Jude dresses and leaves and Nel can only think about his unbuttoned fly; Sula sits naked, unconcerned. Nel realizes kids will be home soon and she hasn’t felt anything yet 107: Nel takes refuge in the bathroom because it is small and bright, and she thinks of the public, visceral act of mourning, like at Chicken Little’s funeral. 108: Hell is not forever, like Sula says, but change, according to Nel. She waits for her very own howl to rise inside her, but it never comes. 109: Just to the right of her is a hovering gray ball of muddy strings. It stays the whole summer; she starts sleeping with her children because they sometimes have nightmares (2 boys love it, girl does not) 110: Doesn’t want to see, God forbid touch the gray ball. But it’s not there in death, is it? Would like to ask Sula, since she knows a lot of things, but she can’t ask Sula. Too much, to lose Jude and not have Sula to talk to about it, since Jude left her for Sula! Understands when women say “they’ll never look at another man” 111: The horrible thoughts of Nel about the emptiness of her thighs and the horror of having to go through the rest of her life with “never nobody settling down between my legs” SULA Massucco Reading Notes 1939 112: people heard that Eva was in Sunnydale and they say Sula is a roach. Also, how she took Jude, then abandoned him for others and he took a bus to Detroit - forgot about Hannah and their own behavior and called her a bitch. Remembered robins and the story of her watching Hannah burn. The men say Sula sleeps with white men! Inexcusable… 113: The black townsfolk and their hypocrisy about integration (any sex between white man and black woman must be rape); they guard against her, but mostly just look at “evil” and let it happen. But stuff happens: Teapot knocks on her door 114: Teapot’s mamma (Betty) sees Sula helping Teapot up after he falls down the steps and accuses Sula of pushing him. He has a broken leg, but it was mostly poor nutrition - mother hatred makes a sober nurturer out of his mother. Mr. Finley sees Sula, chokes on a chicken bone and dies. The birthmark = Hannah’s ashes marking her! She seems to snub the women’s food 115: Sula infuriates the women because she has sex with their husbands once and then discards them. Sula has not aged, is rumored to have had no diseases, shows no bodily vulnerability (except for odd finger and birth mark), insects leave her alone, when she drinks beer she doesn’t belch 116-117: Dessie says she once saw Shadrack go over to Sula and tip his hat to her - and Sula, instead of looking hateful as she usually does, put a hand to her throat and ran off. Then Dessie got a sty on her eye - two devils! Now that people know Sula is evil, they feel they have permission to protect each other. 118: Even though they know of her as evil, they would never drive her out or do her in: they understand her as part of God - God’s brother, who had not spared God’s son. Even though people arrived at their understanding of Sula in a false way, they were right that she was different. Combo of Eva’s arrogance and Hannah’s self-indulgence, with a twist. (Gorgeous passage on Sula living in the exploration of her own thoughts and emotions - an experimental life.) 119: Two foundational moments: hearing Hannah’s words about loving not liking, and seeing the river close over Chicken: there is no other to count on; there is no self to count on either. “She had clung to Nel as the closest thing to both an other and a self, only to discover that she and Nel were not one and the same thing.” Sula is incredulous at how Nel reacted to her bedding of Jude. 120: GORGEOUS and damning description of the wives that are like spiders progressing across the rungs of their web, afraid more of the free fall than the snake’s fangs below - easier to be the wronged wife than have to figure out how to handle the falling sensation. Sula is surprised and sad at Nel’s reaction - she had come back to Medallion partially for Nel after drifting to all the different cities 121: Took Sula a long time to realize that a lover could never be a comrade for a woman. She wanted a friend. She had only once lied, to Nel about putting Eva out, and only because she cared for her. Couldn’t lie to anyone else, so failed social relations 122-123: Omg, the description of women and how bad they look - “Their children were like distant but exposed wounds whose aches were no less intimate because separate from their flesh…(implication here of Medea-like possibility).” Sula has sex often in search of misery and sorrow. She feels the gathering of strength in the cutting edge and jumps off - meets herself in postcoital sadness. She thinks this is the way it will be for her, since she’s 29 SULA Massucco Reading Notes 124: but she didn’t expect Ajax! Age issue: he’s 38, she’s 29, 17 years ago she was 12 and he was 21 when he said “pig meat” - he seduces her by drinking milk then gifting her the glass bottle 125: she pulls him into the pantry; he comes regularly thereafter, bearing small gifts. Ajax is very nice to women, and they fight over him viciously 126: Ajax watches the women fight over him, but the only woman he has ever found interesting is his mother. She is an evil conjure woman with 7 adoring children. They bring her all the things she needs for her spells and magic, and order all her herbs. She would have been the most gorgeous thing alive if she’d had teeth or stood up straight. Ajax loves his mother and AIRPLANES 127: He hangs around airports and eaves drops on the pilots, wishes he could be involved. He is interested in Sula because the talk about her reminds him of his mother - she’s interested too, not for the gifts, but because he really talks to her 128: Beautiful paragraph about how he seemed to expect brilliance from her and she delivered - no babying or protecting, full listening. He loves piping-hot baths. Odd scene of the Deweys crashing in on Sula in bed, asking for medicine 129: she gives the deweys a dollar each and they go by cough medicine because they like to drink it. Ajax comes in, paragraph on how he likes to have sex, with her on top towering above him like a tree. 130-131: they have sex, Sula trying to hold on to some sense of order, interspersed with an italicized description of moving down through the layers of the body, black to gold to alabaster to loam, swallowing each other Sula starts to feel the pull of possession - wonders if he’ll come, looks in the mirror, ribbon in her hair 132-133: She scrubs the house; Ajax comes and gives her a whistle, talks of Tar Baby - he caused a car accident with the Mayor’s niece and got arrested. Ajax and others go to the station to ask about him - find him badly beaten in dirty underwear in a cell. “If he doesn’t like to live in shit, he should come down out of those hills…” Ajax and others called before court. Sula tries to comfort him - he detects the scent of nest and his hackles raise 134: “He dragged her under him and made love to her with the steadiness and intensity of a man about to leave for Dayton.” (airshow) She looks around and wonders if there is any sign of him ever having been there. Everything seems sharper and stinging without him, since it all had been a backdrop to him when he was there. 135-136: one day she finds his driver’s license in a drawer: thinks about his dark black, and the gold alabaster and loam. But his name is Albert Jacks! She thinks about how that whole time, ever since she and Nel were girls and he was the origin of their sexual dreaming, she had not known his name! “So how could he help but leave me since he was making love to a woman who didn’t even know his name.” 136-137: Beautiful speech about paper dolls who lost their heads; It’s just as well he left, since sooner or later she would’ve torn the flesh from his face to see about the gold, and “the people think I pushed him just because I looked at it.” Goes to bed, wakes with a song in her head, and realizes “she has sung all the songs there are.” SULA Massucco Reading Notes 1940: 138: “I heard you was sick.” - Nel going to visit the sick Sula, has rehearsed the words and tone. Preparing herself to look at the stemmed rose over the eye of her enemy. The way Sula’s luring away of Jude has twisted Nel’s love of her children into something dangerous and monstrous 139: Nel is a quintessential single mother, works as a chambermaid in the hotel Jude used to be a waiter at - she’s 30, looks like a maple split and sanded at the height of its green. Virtue is the center of her existence. She resists expressing the “I told you so” that the rest of the town feels at the news of Sula’s illness. Asks if she can do anything for Sula, Sula says she needs a prescription filled. 140: Sula thinks with relief about the pain medicine on its way, drugstore where the Mellow House (icecream) used to be; why did Nellie come? 141: Nel had always thrived on a crisis - Sula, when she tried to imitate her, did bizarre things. Nel gives the medicine, tries to ask formalities, Sula cuts to the chase. 142-143: Conversation between Nel & Sula: You can’t be here alone, you should admit you’ve gone too far and need help; I can do it all, why can’t I have it all? I like my own dirt; you’re a woman and colored; ain’t that the same as being a man? If you had children… every man I know left his children - taken - left! - every colored woman in this country is dying - but them like a stump, me like a redwood! What have you got to show for it? SHOW? TO WHO? My lonely is mine. Nel almost angry 144: How come you did it, Sula? You didn’t even love him? I was good to you, Sula. 145: Being good is just like being mean: risky. We were friends - I didn’t kill him, I just fucked him. How come you couldn’t get over it? You laying there … having done all the dirt you did in this town and you still expect folks to love you? Oh, they’ll love me alright… after all the odd couples have coupled… 146: there’ll be a little love left over for me, and I know just what it’ll feel like (thinks of the wind pressing her dress and going to the shade square to dig little holes. Nel gets up to go. How do you know you were the good one, not me? Sula asks. The house “billows” around Nel as she leaves, full of presences of all the people gone. 147: Nel leaves and Sula thinks of her. She knows Nel will think of how much Sula has cost her, and not of the times they were fused. Thinks of random images - nothing was ever different, her self same self. Watching Hannah burn, wanting her to keep on dancing. Dreams of the Baking Powder lady, trying to collect the dust. Wakes up and submits to the pain and fatigue. Wants to keep looking at the boarded up window. 148: Thinks about drawing her legs up, sucking her thumb and floating in the water which would wash her flesh always - where did the promise of always come from? All of a sudden she realizes she is not breathing, heart not beating. She is dead. “Well, I’ll be damned, it didn’t even hurt. Wait’ll I tell Nel.” 1941: 150: The death of Sula Peace = best news for folks. Some came to witness the burial of a witch, others to make sure no evil meddling took place. 151: The tunnel would use black workers; there would be an old people’s home (Eva gets transferred there - God’s thumb was at Sula’s throat). But then Medallion turned to silver 152: Wild freezing rain that covers everything in ice - everyone suffers, misses wages, gets sick. SULA Massucco Reading Notes 153: Sula’s death released an irritability: Teapot refuses his mother’s food and she beats him. Other mothers do the same. 154: Women rekindle their resentment of mothers-in-law, wives uncoddled husbands, Canadian blacks returned to a sense of superiority. Christmas is a weight, full of meagerness and shame. 155: The first days of 1941 bring relief since the grass is visible, and out comes Shadrack - His voices and visions are fewer, more silence in his world. More forgetfulness. 156: Shadrack’s growing, aching loneliness. He once had a robin in his house; he struggled to keep up his housekeeping (military habits) once it leaves. He treasures the one piece of evidence that he ever had a visitor: Sula’s belt. (She had a tadpole over one eye - the mark of the fish he loved) 157: He could sense the skull beneath her flesh, and thinks she knew of it too, so he said to her “Always,” to convince and assure her of permanency. Lives with her belt. He had seen her around town; then he saw her laid out at the morgue 158: he had been wrong: no “always” - another dying away of someone whose face he knew - suspects his Suicide Day will never do any good. First to go? Dessie? The Deweys? 159: People start to laugh at the coming of Shadrack on a sunny day. A parade starts up 160: - hope drives some of them, others refrain or refuse (Helene Wright); 161: The parade gets to the site of the tunnel excavation. They see all that they have suffered due to being denied work in the materials and they DESTROY everything as a mob. “They killed the tunnel they were forbidden to build.” 162: They went into the lip of the tunnel, they went too far, a lot of them died there. Horrific scene of suffocation, drowning, sliding to meet the ice. Shadrack up above, ringing, ringing his bell. 1965: 163: Things (seem) so much better in 1965 - colored people working in the dime store, teaching. Young people have a new look (Nel thinks it looks like the Deweys…) in 1921 the boys were beautiful! 164: The new young kids were changed. Even the whores were different - they used to be tough and shameless; the new pale whores are nasty, clothes-crazy, and full of shame. A new old folks home - not living longer, just put out faster… Nel visits as part of a church circle 165: Sula put Eva out out of meanness. Nel curious to see Eva - thinks about her own lack of love - no new husband, though she tried a while; her love of her children feels reductive. The Bottom had collapsed - everybody that made money during the way moved close to the Valley 166: Now hill land was more valuable and no black people could afford to move back up. “These young ones kept talking about the community, but they left the hills to the poor, the old, the stubborn–and the rick white folks. Maybe it hadn’t been a community, but it had been a place.” Nel = one of the last true pedestrians. 167: Nel glad to sit down with the old birds and rest her feet. The place “needed some shadows” and has “sterile green cages”. Nel wants to weep for Eva when she sees her foot in a terrycloth slipper. Eva is “ironing” 168: Eva asks her if she ate something funny - mixes up who’s visiting whom - remembers Wiley Wright - asks how she killed the little boy - Nel gets alarmed - “You. Sula. What’s the difference? You was there. You watched, didn’t you? Me, I never would’ve watched.” - “It’s awfully cold in the water. Fire is warm.” SULA Massucco Reading Notes 169: Nel is upset - Plum tells her things! Leaves the home, has memories of the scene with Chicken Little. 170: “I did not watch it. I just saw it.” “Why didn’t I feel bad when it happened? How come it felt so good to see him fall?” Nel has a realization about her supposed maturity, serenity, compassion - it was just tranquility after a joyful stimulation. Moves quickly, unthinking, into the cemetery 171: Peace 1895-1921, Peace 1890-1923, Peace 1910-1940, Peace 1892-1959 → a chant. Eva was mean! 172: Nathan had found Sula the day of Nel’s visit, told Teapot’s mamma who did a dance, no women left off their work to gather, Eventually Nel had to call the hospital, the mortuary, the police. 173: The white people had to wash, dress, prepare, bury. She had a substantial death policy. Nel was the only black person at the burial. The other black people wait outside and enter at the end to sing at the grave. People run off in the rain. Nel leaves and passes Shadrack, who can’t remember why he recognizes her face 174: no more fish in the river, Nel stops - eye twitches and burns. Sula? The soft ball bursts! “All that time, I thought I was missing Jude.” O Lord, Sula, girl, girl, girlgirlgirl.