This chapter focuses on the importance of omens to the people living in the Bottom. Morrison baits our curiosity by beginning the chapter, "The second strange thing . . ." The second? We don't yet know what the first strange thing is, but by the end of the chapter Morrison's lengthy list of odd occurrences gives us valuable insights into the intensely superstitious beliefs in the Bottom. These strange things include a choking dry wind; Eva's missing comb, which previously has never been out of place; Hannah's fiery red dress in her wedding dream, superstitiously believed to foretell a death; and Sula's sullen, shifting mood and her shadowy, changing birthmark.
Morrison purposely presents events out of order to highlight the disordered nature of the Bottom. Nothing is the way it should be. Eva identifies the source of this disorder, this evil, in her haunting, matter-of-fact recollection of Sula's passivity as her mother burns to death. She condemns Sula for watching as Hannah is consumed by flames rather than seeing her mother as the woman who gave birth to her — and trying to put out the fire that ignites her flesh. Eva implies that Sula has a disturbing, unnatural curiosity about her mother's burning body. All the signs were evident — the dreams, the omens, the coincidences — that prefigured Hannah's tragedy. And, according to Eva, the source of the disorder lies in Sula.
