Things seemed so much better in 1965. There were Black people working in the dime store downtown, and there was a Black teacher instructing junior high school students in math. The young people in town were also so different from the ones Nel had once known.

Nel hardly recognized anyone in Medallion now. There were more retirement homes, too, but few Black people lived in them. Black folks still didn’t let their old people go unless they became too unwell to manage. Sula was different—she had “put Eva away out of meanness” (165).

For 25 years, ever since Jude had left her, Nel “had pinned herself into a tiny life” (165). She had spent a bit of time considering remarriage, but no man wanted her three children, too. She also had no luck with keeping boyfriends. During the Second World War, she had a fairly long relationship with sergeant stationed near Medallion, then he was stationed elsewhere. He wrote to her for a while, then stopped. For a moment, there had been a bartender in whom she was interested at the hotel where both she and Jude had worked. Now, however, she was 55 and could no longer remember what any of it had been about.