When he was there he pulled everything toward himself. His absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on table tops.
It was as if she were afraid she had hallucinated him and needed proof to the contrary. Still, there was nothing of his - his own - that she could find. The red rocking chair was a rocking of his own hips as he sat in the kitchen. The mirror by the door was not a mirror by the door, it was an altar where he stood for only a moment to put on his cap before going out. An absence so decorative, so ornate, it was difficult for her to understand how she had ever endured, without falling dead or being consumed, his magnificent presence. Where were the butterflies? the blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for he had left nothing but his stunning absence. Nel’s call floated up and into the window, pulling her away from dark thoughts back into the bright, hot daylight.Įvery now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of his having ever been there.
In bewilderment, she stood at the window fingering the curtain edge, aware of a sting in her eye. She only heard Hannah’s words, and the pronouncement sent her flying up the stairs. “Well, Hester grown now and I can’t say love is exactly what I feel.” Hannah smiled and said, “Shut your mouth. The two women were fanning themselves and watching Hannah put down some dough, all talking casually about one thing and another, and had gotten around, when Sula passed by, to the problems of child rearing. On the way up the stairs, she passed the kitchen where Hannah sat with two friends, Patsy and Valentine. Nel waited on the porch of 7 Carpenter’s Road while Sula ran into the house to go to the toilet. They decided to go down by the river where the boys sometimes swam. In that mercury mood in July, Sula and Nel wandered about the Bottom barefoot looking for mischief. It was in that summer, the summer of their twelfth year, the summer of the beautiful black boys, that they became skittish, frightened and bold - all at the same time. Even their footsteps left a smell of smoke behind. The beautiful, beautiful boys who dotted the landscape like jewels, split the air with their shouts in the field, and thickened the river with their shining wet backs.
Heavy sunflowers weeping over fences iris curling and browning at the edges far away from their purple hearts ears of corn letting their auburn hair wind down to their stalks. A summer limp with the weight of blossomed things. Excerpts selected by the Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy.
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