After an absence of ten years, Sula returns to the Bottom. Looking like a movie star, in a foxtail stole and a black crepe dress splashed with color, she climbs homeward, up to the Bottom. Earlier that same day, the Bottom suffered a bizarre plague of robins, and because of the townspeople's long concern with signs of nature as representing omens, they see Sula's return as a portent of evil, a parallel to the plague of robins.
Sula's reunion with her grandmother, Eva, is extremely confrontational. Sula accuses Eva of burning Plum to death, which causes Eva again to recall seeing Sula's own passive complicity in Hannah's burning to death. Amidst this frenzy of accusations, Sula threatens to douse Eva with kerosene some night while the old woman sleeps. Terrified of Sula's threat, Eva decides to keep her bedroom door locked as long as Sula is in the house.
By April, Sula has assigned herself as Eva's guardian and has committed Eva to a nursing home. The black community is stunned; no one commits family to a nursing home. Now, more than ever, the townspeople are convinced that Sula is evil personified.
