Five days after Mr. ________ hears about Shug's being sick and hears her being belittled and damned in church, he returns with her in the back of his wagon. We realize that Mr.________ may be unfeeling and mean toward Celie, but he deeply cares for Shug. Shug is "family" to him; he and Shug have three children together. (He and Celie have none.) In fact, note that Mr. ________ immediately tells Harpo that Shug (and not Annie Julia) should have been Harpo's mother.
As for Shug, the first thing we read about the Queen Honeybee's arrival is Celie's sight of "one of her foots . . . poking out" of the wagon. This is clearly not the entrance of a "queen." Yet, despite the fact that Shug looks literally ill to Celie, Shug looks dazzlingly dressed for the occasion. In contrast, as we read Celie's description of Shug, we get a completely different picture of her. She seems to be something that has already passed over to the next world and returned. She staggers toward Celie with a caked, yellowed, powdered black face smeared with red rouge, her chest heaving with black beads, chicken hawk feathers curving down one cheek, and clutching a snakeskin bag. To Celie, Shug may be ill, but she still seems to be a beautiful creature, "so stylish it like the trees all round the house draw themself up tall for a better look." To us, in contrast, Shug seems to be deteriorating, going downhill fast in body and soul.
Shug's body may be sick, but we soon see that her spirit is clearly intact; in fact, her first words to Celie are loud, cackling, and cruel — particularly when we consider how much Celie reveres this woman. "You sure is ugly," Shug tells Celie, which is probably the most dramatically reinforced proof that Celie has ever had of her own ugliness. She remembers that Fonso called her ugly, but here, Shug proclaims that Celie sure is ugly.
