- Jade and Son have arrived in a town called Poncie, which is fourteen miles away from Eloe. They're waiting for a ride to take them the rest of the way. Jade is amazed by how small the farming communities are.
- The first place they go is the house of one of Son's boyhood friends, whose name is Soldier. Soldier can't believe his eyes when he sees that Son has come home.
- Son asks Jade to stay with Soldier's wife while he goes to see his father. He hasn't seen the old man in eight years and wants to meet him alone. Jade doesn't like it, but eventually agrees.
- When Son sees his father, the old man shows his surprise. But he quickly gets over it, and the two of them catch up and chat about what's been going on over the last eight years. It turns out that Son has been sending money orders to his father, but his dad has just been keeping most of them in a box rather than spending them. That's good money sense, Pops.
- Son's dad also catches him up on what happened after Son murdered Cheyenne. Cheyenne's mother slept with a shotgun every night after that, waiting for an opportunity to kill Son. But she died without ever getting her sweet, sweet revenge.
- Son tells his Pops what he's been doing for eight years, and then reveals that he is in Eloe with a woman. His father says that he'd be happy to give Son a roof, but Jade will have to stay with Son's aunt because Eloe is an old fashioned Christian town.
- When Son comes back to get Jade, she has her camera out and is making Soldier's children do adorable country poses in their yard and snapping pictures of them.
- When Son gets back, he snatches her camera out of her hands and tells her that she and he can't sleep under the same roof while they're in Eloe.
- Before going to sleep, Son and Jade go to a bar in nearby Poncie called Night Moves.
- When she gets back to Son's aunt's place, Jade finds that she can't sleep and goes to open the back door and look out at the night.
- The aunt, named Rosa, gets up and asks if everything is all right. She sees that Jade is naked and offers her a nightgown, which makes her the hostess with the mostess.
- Lying in bed, Jade realizes that she feels even more exposed with the nightgown on than she did naked. To pass the time, she reminds herself that she and Son will be leaving soon.
- The next morning, Jade eats breakfast with Son and his friends Soldier and Drake. When Son and Drake take Rosa to church, Soldier asks Jade if she plans on marrying Son. She says probably, which Soldier approves of. According to him, Son is the best man around and Jade would be smart to lock him down.
- Soldier mentions that Son should have never married his first wife. Jade asks if Cheyenne was pretty, and Soldier insists that she wasn't. He does say, though, that Cheyenne "had the best p—y in Florida, the absolute best" (9.125). Jade isn't all that happy to hear about this (Huh. We wonder why.) but Soldier treats it as something Jade should try to top, like it's all a big contest.
- As Jade gets up for coffee, Soldier warns her that Son doesn't like being controlled. So if she is the one controlling the relationship, she'd be advised to pull back.
- Soldier asks Jade when she and Son are leaving, and she says Sunday. Soldier says that that can't happen, because they have called up Son's boyhood friend Ernie Paul, and Ernie will be there on Monday. The guy took work off and everything.
- When Son gets home, Jade shows him the train schedule and says she's leaving. Son begs her not do, and she says that the only way she's staying another night in Eloe is to sleep in the same bed as Son. He eventually promises to sneak into Aunt Rosa's house in the middle of the night and to slip into bed next to her.
- They spend the afternoon having sex in fields and orchards, and that night, Son keeps his promise to sleep next to her.
- While she's lying in bed, though, Jade is assaulted by visions of the women from Eloe, women like Aunt Rosa, Son's ex-wife Cheyenne, Son's dead mother, and company. For Jade, the presence of these visions totally ruins having sex with Son.
- After Son falls asleep, Jade starts talking to the women in her visions. She demands to know what the women of Eloe want with her. One by one, the women start taking out their old, wrinkled breasts and showing them to her.
- She doesn't know what it's supposed to mean. It's like the black women of Eloe are calling her to be part of some primitive world that she has tried to leave behind. She wants the world of Paris and New York, not the world of Eloe with its backward country ways and "primitive" black culture.
- The most terrifying vision Jade sees is the vision of the African woman she saw in the grocery store in Paris—remember that from earlier? Jade saw an African woman in a bright yellow dress who looked at Jade and spat on the ground.
- Finally, Jade grabs Son and shakes him awake, begging him to make the women go away. Eventually, the visions retreat.
- The next morning, everyone knows that Jade and Son spent the night together. But that's not what's bothering Jade. She can't shake the feelings of uneasiness that the visions from the previous night have given her.
- Son asks Jade to stay another night in Eloe so he can see his buddy Ernie Paul. But Jade flat-out refuses. She boards a train back to New York and says she'll wait there for Son until he's back. Son doesn't like the idea of being apart, but he accepts the compromise.
- Four days later, Son still hasn't come back to Jade. She knows that he's probably just partying it up with the boys in Eloe. But after a few more days go by, she gets nervous and wonders if Son will ever come back to her.
- As the days and nights go by, Jade keeps thinking about the women who visited her in visions while she was staying in Eloe. She feels like these women are trying to pull her back into a poor, primitive life. She feels like they're trying to take away all the education, money, and success she's worked so hard for.
- When Son finally gets back to New York, he and Jade have a fight. She tries to take him as far away from Eloe as possible—not just physically, but mentally. She demands that he get a university degree and enroll in business or law school. Son doesn't want to do any of this, but Jade is determined to bring him over to her way of looking at things.
- Next, Jade suggests that they take money from Valerian Street to open up a store together. Son says there's no way he's touching one cent of Valerian's money. As far as he's concerned, Valerian has spent his whole life taking advantage of black people.
- Finally, Son agrees to go to university if Jade agrees to marry him.
- Two weeks before registration for university, Jade gets some money from some bonds that Valerian gave her when she was seventeen. She wants to use it to pay for Son's education. But again, the dude is all like, "No way that's happening."
- Finally, the two of them have it out about their views on how to life. Son accuses Jade of forgetting her race and where she comes from. Jade accuses Son of being lazy and unambitious. Essentially, she believes that the only way to move forward is to play the white man's game and to make a lot of money.
- Son says that if she keeps on her path and has a baby with a white man like Ryk (back in Paris), she'll always be a slave to white people.
- After this, Son decides he wants to tell Jade a "story." He goes on to recount the original story about the tar baby from the Tales of Br'er Rabbit. Basically, the story talks about how a farmer once created a baby out of tar in order to catch a pesky rabbit that was eating his cabbages. Br'er Rabbit got stuck in the tar baby, and the harder he tried to fight his way out, the more stuck he got.
- As he tells Jade the story, Son also rapes her. While it's happening, Jade decides that she'll have to kill Son when it's over.
- Once it's over, though, Jade just lies in bed. She doesn't think about killing Son. She just thinks about how Thanksgiving is coming up soon and how she had no place to go for dinner.
- Son leaves, then comes back four hours later. He knows that he has done something very serious and is worried that he has lost Jade forever (Huh, you think so, Son?).
- Jade opens her wallet and flings him his "original dime" and tells him to leave her and never come back.
- Son leaves again to let Jade cool off. While he's away, he decides that he has gone too far and that he needs to change his ways. When he comes back to the apartment, though, he finds that Jade is gone and her mail has piled up. He knows that he needs to find her, and the first place he'll look is back on Isle des Chevaliers.