alabaster Originally, alabaster was a marble used by craftsmen to create beautifully lustered statues; today, alabaster is a granular form of the mineral gypsum, a colorless, white, or yellow mineral. White alabaster is the most highly prized.
bayonet fixed A bayonet is a weapon resembling a short sword or dagger that is attached to the muzzle of a rifle. Shadrack's bayonet is "fixed" — attached to the end of his gun and held forward, ready to stab or thrust into the enemy. During World War I, the U.S. Army used bayonets with 16-inch blades, sharpened along the full-length of the leading edge and along most of the back.
bent spoon black from steady cooking Plum is addicted to heroin; he buys it in solid form and places it on a spoon, which he then puts over a fire in order to melt it into a liquid. Because addicts are usually too shaky to hold the spoon with a pair of pliers until the heroin is liquid and ready for injection, they bend back the spoon handle like a Christmas tree ornament hook and then slip it over the side of a pan in order to keep the spoon steady.
Bert Williams In the late 1800s, Williams was a popular black comedian on the vaudeville circuit; he was the first black entertainer to become a major Broadway attraction.
Bessie Smith (d. 1937) An American singer famous for her jazz and blues singing in the 1920s, she was known as the Empress of the Blues.
bid whist a card game similar to bridge.
big Daughter Elk an important member of the ladies' auxiliary of the Elks, a men's fraternal order.
Big Mamma a southern term for "grandmother."
a bit of a cakewalk, a bit of black bottom, a bit of "messing around" The cakewalk and the black bottom are names of lively dances; messing around is a euphemism for flirting and touching.
Black Draught (pronounced "draft") a heavy salt concoction sold to poor people, who mixed it with molasses and used it as a tonic and laxative.
bottles of milk At that time, milk was delivered to homes in bottles with paper lids and left on doorsteps. Ajax steals the bottles of milk that he gives to Sula from a white family's doorstep.
bottom land The most desirable land that a person can own, true bottom land is rich and fertile and characterized by its dark, loamy texture. In the novel, years of rain and erosion have slowly washed the valuable top soil down from the surrounding hills to the true "bottom," or valley, and created this so-called bottom land, yielding far better crops than what people harvest on the nutrient-poor, hard-to-cultivate soil up in the hills.
Camels wrappers Camels was a popular brand of cigarettes in this era and one of the few brands available.
cane liquor home-brewed liquor made from sugar cane; possibly the cane was barged upriver as a trade item.
catarrh inflammation of the mucous membranes, especially of the nose or throat.
a cat's-head stickpin In southern culinary slang, a cat's-head is a big lumpy biscuit, so BoyBoy's stickpin would probably be large and ostentatious, in bad taste.
chamois a soft leather made from the hide of the chamois, a goat-like antelope native to Europe's mountainous regions.
citified straw hat The reference is to a straw hat worn for purely decorative reasons. Eva might have been able to forgive BoyBoy for having left her with three children to support, but his overly pompous return as a pretentious, quasi-sophisticated "citified" person makes her finally feel inferior enough to be able to hate him thoroughly.
Clabber Girl Baking Powder 1930s baking product with a picture of a white girl with blonde hair on the package.
The closed place in the water spread before them. Morrison uses this phrase repeatedly to refer to death; the phrase recalls Chicken Little's drowning in the river: "The water darkened and closed quickly over the place where Chicken Little sank."
Colored Only This chapter underscores the South's strict adherence to the laws of segregation. When Helene breaks one of these laws by walking through the Whites Only car of the train, she is sternly reprimanded and could have been arrested had she not apologized profusely and flashed a blindly subservient smile.
the colored ward of the hospital Because of strict segregation laws at the time, black patients were separated from white patients in all areas of the hospital, including the emergency room, regardless of the severity of a patient's injuries.
Come, chere Come here, darling.
Comment t'appelle? What's your name?
conjure woman one who deals in the "spirit" world, or the occult, and works with roots to render spells.
copperhead a poisonous North American snake with a reddish-brown body and darker crossbands on its body.
the Courier The reference is to the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the most widely circulated black newspapers at that time.
creole In New Orleans, many of the residents are Creole — that is, of mixed black, French and Spanish, and Portuguese ancestry; the Creole language contains a blend of multilingual phrases.
custard custard-colored; a mulatto color. It also means something soft and insubstantial, not firm.
