Claudia MacTeer, now a grown woman, tells us what happened a year before the fall when no marigolds bloomed. She was nine years old then, sick with a bad cold, and was being nursed through her illness by her mother, whose constant brooding and complaining concealed enormous folds of love and concern for her daughter.
That fall, the MacTeer family — Mrs. MacTeer and her daughters, Frieda and Claudia — stretches to include two new people: Mr. Henry, who moves in after his landlady, Della Jones, becomes incapacitated from a stroke, and Pecola Breedlove, whom the county places in their home after Pecola's father, Cholly, burns down the family house. Pecola's brother moves in with another family, and her mother stays with the white family whom she works for.
Claudia fondly remembers those few days that Pecola stayed with them because she and her sister, Frieda, didn't fight. Mrs. MacTeer fumes and rants, though, when Pecola begins drinking gallon after gallon of milk — simply because the little girl likes to gaze at the golden-haired, blue-eyed, dimple-faced Shirley Temple on the special drinking cup. Claudia also recalls the awe and bewilderment she felt when she witnessed the onset of Pecola's first menstrual period. The girls' reactions range from ignorance and terror as Pecola initially wonders if she is going to die, to Frieda's authoritative reassurances, and finally to Claudia's awe and reverence for the new and different Pecola. Ironically, Pecola is not concerned with her new physical ability to bear children, but with Frieda's assurance that she is now ready to find "somebody . . . to love you." The notion of someone loving her is overwhelming to Pecola; she has never felt loved by anyone.
