Chapter 7

After an absence of ten years, Sula returns to the Bottom. Looking like a movie star, in a foxtail stole and a black crepe dress splashed with color, she climbs homeward, up to the Bottom. Earlier that same day, the Bottom suffered a bizarre plague of robins, and because of the townspeople's long concern with signs of nature as representing omens, they see Sula's return as a portent of evil, a parallel to the plague of robins.

Sula's reunion with her grandmother, Eva, is extremely confrontational. Sula accuses Eva of burning Plum to death, which causes Eva again to recall seeing Sula's own passive complicity in Hannah's burning to death. Amidst this frenzy of accusations, Sula threatens to douse Eva with kerosene some night while the old woman sleeps. Terrified of Sula's threat, Eva decides to keep her bedroom door locked as long as Sula is in the house.

By April, Sula has assigned herself as Eva's guardian and has committed Eva to a nursing home. The black community is stunned; no one commits family to a nursing home. Now, more than ever, the townspeople are convinced that Sula is evil personified.

Nel and Sula slip back into their friendship with ease, humor, and a deeply satisfying pleasure. Nel questions Sula's decision to place Eva in a nursing home. She tries to understand Sula's fear of the old woman and gently coaxes her to find a better solution for her grandmother. Nel's husband, Jude, is intrigued by Sula's unpredictability and odd philosophy about life.

When Nel discovers Sula and Jude naked together, she realizes that her marriage is destroyed and that Sula has irreparably ruptured their friendship. Jude abandons his marriage, and Nel suffers deep, emotional trauma over the loss of both her husband and her best friend. Nel's relationships with both Sula and Jude always meant, for her, a fusion of each of these strong, independent personalities with her own timid, less-secure identity; with Sula — and with Jude — Nel was able to create one significant person. After the breakup of her marriage to Jude and her friendship with Sula, she is emotionally shattered and, for a while, seems to be on the verge of emotional despair.