He ends the relationship, leaving her devastated. He has also been feeling tired of Hagar, with whom he has been having a relationship for years. Milkman begins to feel disgust around all women, including Ruth. That night, he tells Milkman that years earlier he caught Ruth kissing her dying father’s fingers, and implies that the two of them were in an incestuous relationship. Macon is secretly proud of his son for standing up to him. Milkman immediately pushes Macon into the radiator and tells him he’ll kill him if he touches Ruth again. Several years later, Ruth angers Macon while the family is eating dinner and he hits her. Soon after, Macon puts Milkman to work as a rent collector.

Their father was illiterate, and accidentally took the name “Macon Dead” because the registrar at the Freedman’s Bureau misinterpreted what he said about his own father having died in Macon. Macon calls Pilate a “snake,” and reveals that he and Pilate grew up on a huge farm with their father. Later, Macon is angry with Milkman for visiting Pilate, but Milkman stands up to his father. Guitar takes Milkman to meet Pilate, whom Milkman has been forbidden to see and who lives with her daughter, Reba, and her granddaughter, Hagar. When Milkman is 12, he meets a slightly older boy named Guitar. One day, Freddie, a janitor and errand-runner who works for Macon Dead II, sees Ruth breastfeeding her son, and calls the son Milkman - the nickname sticks. When she’s alone in the house, she breastfeeds her son, Macon Dead III, even though he’s a bit too old for breastfeeding. Though Ruth makes some efforts to get close to Macon early in their marriage, she eventually gives up, retreating into her own memories of her father. Macon was once close with his sister, Pilate, but a mysterious incident in a cave has left them estranged. In addition to the boy Ruth gives birth to in the hospital, they have two daughters, First Corinthians and Lena - Macon names the daughters by randomly choosing a name from the Bible. Ruth is married to Macon Dead II, a cold, often violent man who has built up quite a bit of wealth and acts as a landlord for much of the town.

Shortly after this mysterious incident, a woman named Ruth, the daughter of Doctor Foster, for whom Not Doctor Street is named, becomes the first Black woman to give birth in Mercy Hospital. Smith jumps off the Mercy Hospital, located in an unnamed town in Michigan on the so-called Not Doctor Street. The novel begins in 1931 with the suicide of an insurance agent named Robert Smith.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison