Sula

by Toni Morrison

It was rather that they knew God had a brother and that brother hadn’t spared God’s son, so why should he spare them?

They both knew that those women were not jealous of other women; that they were only afraid of losing their jobs. Afraid their husbands would discover that no uniqueness lay between their legs.

She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be—for a woman.

And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.

Although she did not regard sex as ugly (ugliness was boring also), she liked to think of it as wicked.

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.

I will water your soil, keep it rich and moist. But how much? How much water to keep the loam moist? And how much loam will I need to keep my water still? And when do the two make mud?

He dragged her under him and made love to her with the steadiness and the intensity of a man about to leave for Dayton.

Every now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of his having ever been there.

Pain was greedy; it demanded all of her attention.

“Show? To who? Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me.”

“Yes. But my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else’s. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain’t that something? A secondhand lonely.”

Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don’t get nothing for it.”

Sula felt her face smiling. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she thought, “it didn’t even hurt. Wait’ll I tell Nel.”

They were not dead people. They were words. Not even words. Wishes, longings.

“Sula?” she whispered, gazing at the tops of trees. “Sula?”

“All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude.” And the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. “We was girls together,” she said as though explaining something. “O Lord, Sula,” she cried, “girl, girl, girlgirlgirl.”