Milkman goes to Guitar's apartment to wait for Hagar, who has stalked him for the last six months, ever since he sent her the Christmas note breaking off their relationship, and has threatened to kill him. Having survived her bungled attempts on his life thus far, Milkman has resigned himself to death. As he lounges in Guitar's bed, he recalls a conversation he had with his mother a week earlier, after he followed her on one of her secretive trips to Fairfield Cemetery to visit her father's grave.
Milkman hears Hagar breaking into Guitar's apartment and awakens from his daydreams, but he doesn't move from the bed, not even when she makes a half-hearted attempt to kill him with a butcher knife. Finally, realizing that she is unable to follow through with her plan to kill him, he rises from the bed, condescendingly pats Hagar on the cheek, and walks away in disgust, only slightly wounded.
Ruth, who only a week earlier had learned from Freddie about Hagar's repeated attempts to murder Milkman, resolves to stop Hagar. She goes to Pilate's house and confronts her niece. Pilate intervenes and, determined to distract Ruth from Hagar's attempts to kill Milkman, tells Ruth stories about her birth (Pilate's) and childhood, her father's death, and her physical and emotional split with Macon. She also describes her wandering lifestyle and her decision — following her granddaughter's birth — to leave Virginia and move her family to Michigan. Pilate hoped to reconcile with her brother, but Macon was cold and angry, ashamed of her, Reba, and Hagar.
