This book is great so far, and it's hard for me to just pick two passages that I relate to. The first one that sticks out in my mind, is the part where Hannah comes to Eva one afternoon with the question, "Mamma, did you ever love us?"
As soon as I read it, I knew she was in for an earful from Eva. But I welcomed that earful, I couldn't wait to hear this woman's response to seemingly obvious question. So I was a little surprised when Eva first answered with, "No. I don't reckon I did. Not the way you thinkin'." Of course, that answer was somewhat facetious on Eva's part, and she went on to explain to Hannah all the hard knocks she had withstood just to keep her children alive, which, to her, was more demonstrative of "love" than any amount of playing or horsing around with the children. My favorite part of Eva's explanation was this:
"I'm talkin' 'bout 18 and 95 when I set in that house five days with you and Pearl and Plum and three beets, you snake-eyed ungrateful hussy. What would I look like leapin' 'round that little old room playin' with youngins with three beets to my name?"
... There was more to Eva's dialogue with Hannah about the subject of caring and loving for her children than this, but for some reason these few sentences are what had the greatest impact on me. I think it's because of the sad humor that Eva creates with her words. I'm not saying there's anything funny about a single mother raising her children in extreme poverty, but when Eva says, "What would I look like leapin' 'round that little old room playin' with youngins with three beets to my name?" I couldn't help but smile a little bit, imagining this poor woman dancing around a dark, one-room cabin with a pitiful little fire, the children wrapped in blankets staring at her like she's lost her mind (in my mental image, anyway.) In a way, Eva is mocking Hannah's question of "why" there was no playing, but she's also giving her an honest answer... even if it's in the form of a story she's repeated a million times before. I could actually hear the sound of her voice when I read this.
Eva reminds me of my great-grandmother, who got sick when I was just a kid, and lived the rest of her life after that with my aunt as her caretaker, in the very same house she had raised her children and grandchildren in. She rarely said anything, but if you made her angry, or asked her a question she either thought was interesting or ludicrous--- she'd let you know all about it. Like Sula's family, mother's side of the family is very matriarchal; all the men have either passed away or left for other reasons, and the women are left to care for each other and oversee things within their extended family. With the exception of my mom, basically everyone from my mother's side still lives within five miles of their childhood home. Because of this, I can easily imagine the dependency between the women in Sula's family, as well as the close bonds they have. I think it's because of these close relationships that Eva was able to answer Hannah's question the way that she did; with no frills, no sugar-coating, just pure honesty with a dose of dark humor. But like Tony Morrison states in the very beginning of this book, "... the laughter was a part of the pain."
The second passage that I really enjoyed was the part where Eva's estranged husband, BoyBoy, comes back to pay her a visit. I thought it was odd the way they interacted, without any mention of the children or the insufferable situation he left her in as a poor, single mother. Regardless, they go on exchanging pleasantries and it seems like he leaves her house on a good note, until she witnesses him whispering something into the ear of the woman in the green dress, who had been waiting against the tree during their visit. It never says specifically what BoyBoy whispered about to make the woman laugh so hard, but I'm assuming it was something about Eva. More specifically, I imagined he had made a joke about her missing leg when I first read it. The remark itself isn't important, it was Eva's reaction to it that I enjoyed the most:
"Knowing that she would hate him long and well filled her with pleasant anticipation, like when you know you are going to fall in love with someone and you wait for the happy signs. Hating BoyBoy, she could get on with it, and have the safety, the thrill, the consistency of that hatrd as long as she wanted or needed it to define and strengthen or protect her from routine vulnerabilties."
This description really hits home for me. It's hard to explain why I can relate to this passage so much, but I've never read a description of embracing anger that has been so accurate of how I personally feel about it. I think Toni Morrisson did a wonderful job explaining this, and it's hard to compete with her by building off that idea and explaining it even deeper than she already did with Eva's situation. However, I will say that I think anger is a great motivator. A negative one, but an effective one. I know there are people who can write wonderful stories and paint beautiful pictures in a state of complete happiness, but I connect more with stories and art that come from a more "angry" place. Not that the end result of their art is angry, but if what moved them to create it was a feeling of injustice or emotional damage, I find that really interesting. For Eva, I think it brought closure to her relationship with BoyBoy. Up until that point, she kept repeating the sentence, "she was not sure what she felt", but afterward, she was explicitly sure that she hated this person. And therefore she was able to move on from that place and know in the back of her mind that she was sure about something.
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