Just as Sula's return heralded superstition and ill omens, word of her death is the best news that the people up in the Bottom have heard in a long time. Her death seems to bring prosperity and promise as the foreman constructing the New River Road tunnel declares that black workers will now be used as laborers. Another sign that Sula's dying has blessed the Bottom is the announcement that a new nursing home will be built and blacks can use the facility; old Eva Peace, Sula's grandmother, will be transferred to the new, clean home. Seemingly, all signs point to the Bottom's dark cloud being lifted now that the bewitching pariah, Sula Peace, is dead.
Hope begins to erode, however, when a sudden and unusual frost settles on the Bottom and ice paralyzes the town for days. Crops are lost and livestock are frozen; women can't get down to the valley to work, and they suffer lost wages; disease grips the young, and despair chokes the rest of the Bottom. Silently and ironically, the townspeople begin to miss Sula even though they don't realize it. Without Sula as a negative force to be reckoned with — a scapegoat — women don't know where to put their efforts. They don't have to save their children from her wickedness, their husbands are safe from her sexual advances and don't need cuddling, and the women themselves forget why they enjoyed taking care of old people the way they did when they could compare themselves to Sula, who abandoned her grandmother.
