first vintage international edition, june 2004

Copyright © 1987, 2004 by Toni Morrison

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American

Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by

B E LOVE D Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York,

and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited,
Toronto. Originally published in slightly different form in hardcover
in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York, in 1987.
a n o v e l b y
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International
and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Toni Morrison The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Morrison, Toni.
Beloved.
I. Title.
PS3563.08749B4 1987
813'.54
86-46157

vintage international eISBN: 978-0-307-38862-9

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Sixty Million
and more
I will call them my people,
which were not my people;
and her beloved,
which was not beloved.

romans 9:25
 f o r e w o r d

was a book that I thought needed doing, I found an author

to write it. My enthusiasm, shared by some, was muted by
others, reflecting the indifferent sales figures. I may be
wrong about this, but even in the late seventies, acquiring
authors who were certain sellers outranked editing manu-
scripts or supporting emerging or aging authors through
f o r e w o r d their careers. Suffice it to say, I convinced myself that it
was time for me to live like a grown-up writer: off royal-
ties and writing only. I don’t know what comic book that
notion came from, but I grabbed it.
In 1983 I lost my job—or left it. One, the other, or both. A few days after my last day at work, sitting in front of
In any case, I had been part-time for a while, coming into my house on the pier jutting out into the Hudson River, I
the publishing house one day a week to do the correspon- began to feel an edginess instead of the calm I had expect-
dence-telephoning-meetings that were part of the job; edit- ed. I ran through my index of problem areas and found
ing manuscripts at home. nothing new or pressing. I couldn’t fathom what was so
Leaving was a good idea for two reasons. One, I had unexpectedly troubling on a day that perfect, watching a
written four novels and it seemed clear to everyone that river that serene. I had no agenda and couldn’t hear the
writing was my central work. The question of priorities— telephone if it rang. I heard my heart, though, stomping
how can you edit and write at the same time—seemed to away in my chest like a colt. I went back to the house to
me both queer and predictable; it sounded like “How can examine this apprehension, even panic. I knew what fear
you both teach and create?” “How can a painter or a felt like; this was different. Then it slapped me: I was
sculptor or an actor do her work and guide others?” But happy, free in a way I had never been, ever. It was the odd-
to many this edit–write combination was conflicting. est sensation. Not ecstasy, not satisfaction, not a surfeit
The second reason was less ambiguous. The books I of pleasure or accomplishment. It was a purer delight, a
had edited were not earning scads of money, even when rogue anticipation with certainty. Enter Beloved.
“scads” didn’t mean what it means now. My list was to me I think now it was the shock of liberation that drew my
spectacular: writers with outrageous talent (Toni Cade thoughts to what “free” could possibly mean to women. In
Bambara, June Jordan, Gayle Jones, Lucille Clifton, Henry the eighties, the debate was still roiling: equal pay, equal
Dumas, Leon Forrest); scholars with original ideas and treatment, access to professions, schools . . . and choice
hands-on research (William Hinton’s Shen Fan, Ivan Van without stigma. To marry or not. To have children or not.
Sertima’s They Came Before Columbus, Karen DeCrow’s Inevitably these thoughts led me to the different history of
Sexist Justice, Chinweizu’s The West and the Rest of Us); black women in this country—a history in which marriage
public figures eager to set the record straight (Angela was discouraged, impossible, or illegal; in which birthing
Davis, Muhammad Ali, Huey Newton). And when there children was required, but “having” them, being responsi-
 x v i i f o r e w o r d

ble for them—being, in other words, their parent—was as I sat on the porch, rocking in a swing, looking at giant
out of the question as freedom. Assertions of parenthood stones piled up to take the river’s occasional fist. Above the
under conditions peculiar to the logic of institutional stones is a path through the lawn, but interrupted by an
enslavement were criminal. ironwood gazebo situated under a cluster of trees and in
The idea was riveting, but the canvas overwhelmed me. deep shade.
Summoning characters who could manifest the intellect She walked out of the water, climbed the rocks, and
and the ferocity such logic would provoke proved beyond leaned against the gazebo. Nice hat.
my imagination until I remembered one of the books I had So she was there from the beginning, and except for
published back when I had a job. A newspaper clipping me, everybody (the characters) knew it—a sentence that
in The Black Book summarized the story of Margaret later became “The women in the house knew it.” The fig-
Garner, a young mother who, having escaped slavery, was ure most central to the story would have to be her, the
arrested for killing one of her children (and trying to kill murdered, not the murderer, the one who lost everything
the others) rather than let them be returned to the owner’s and had no say in any of it. She could not linger outside;
plantation. She became a cause célèbre in the fight against she would have to enter the house. A real house, not a
the Fugitive Slave laws, which mandated the return of cabin. One with an address, one where former slaves lived
escapees to their owners. Her sanity and lack of repen- on their own. There would be no lobby into this house,
tance caught the attention of Abolitionists as well as news- and there would be no “introduction” into it or into the
papers. She was certainly single-minded and, judging by novel. I wanted the reader to be kidnapped, thrown ruth-
her comments, she had the intellect, the ferocity, and the lessly into an alien environment as the first step into a
willingness to risk everything for what was to her the shared experience with the book’s population—just as the
necessity of freedom. characters were snatched from one place to another, from
The historical Margaret Garner is fascinating, but, to a any place to any other, without preparation or defense.
novelist, confining. Too little imaginative space there for It was important to name this house, but not the way
my purposes. So I would invent her thoughts, plumb them “Sweet Home” or other plantations were named. There
for a subtext that was historically true in essence, but not would be no adjectives suggesting coziness or grandeur
strictly factual in order to relate her history to contemporary or the laying claim to an instant, aristocratic past. Only
issues about freedom, responsibility, and women’s “place.” numbers here to identify the house while simultaneously
The heroine would represent the unapologetic acceptance separating it from a street or city—marking its difference
of shame and terror; assume the consequences of choosing from the houses of other blacks in the neighborhood;
infanticide; claim her own freedom. The terrain, slavery, allowing it a hint of the superiority, the pride, former
was formidable and pathless. To invite readers (and myself) slaves would take in having an address of their own. Yet
into the repellant landscape (hidden, but not completely; a house that has, literally, a personality—which we call
deliberately buried, but not forgotten) was to pitch a tent “haunted” when that personality is blatant.
in a cemetery inhabited by highly vocal ghosts. In trying to make the slave experience intimate, I hoped
 x i x

the sense of things being both under control and out of

control would be persuasive throughout; that the order
and quietude of everyday life would be violently disrupted
by the chaos of the needy dead; that the herculean effort
to forget would be threatened by memory desperate to
stay alive. To render enslavement as a personal experience,
language must get out of the way.
I husband that moment on the pier, the deceptive river,
the instant awareness of possibility, the loud heart kicking,
the solitude, the danger. And the girl with the nice hat.
Then the focus.
One
 b e l o v e d

ness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn’t get interested
in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys.
Her past had been like her present—intolerable—and since she knew
death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left
her for pondering color.
“Bring a little lavender in, if you got any. Pink, if you don’t.”
And Sethe would oblige her with anything from fabric to her own
tongue. Winter in Ohio was especially rough if you had an appetite
for color. Sky provided the only drama, and counting on a Cincinnati
horizon for life’s principal joy was reckless indeed. So Sethe and the
girl Denver did what they could, and what the house permitted, for
her. Together they waged a perfunctory battle against the outrageous
1 2 4 wa s s p i t e f u l . Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the behavior of that place; against turned-over slop jars, smacks on the
house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the behind, and gusts of sour air. For they understood the source of the
spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver outrage as well as they knew the source of light.
were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and Baby Suggs died shortly after the brothers left, with no interest
the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were whatsoever in their leave-taking or hers, and right afterward Sethe
thirteen years old—as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it and Denver decided to end the persecution by calling forth the ghost
(that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints that tried them so. Perhaps a conversation, they thought, an exchange
appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to of views or something would help. So they held hands and said,
see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the “Come on. Come on. You may as well just come on.”
floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the door- The sideboard took a step forward but nothing else did.
sill. Nor did they wait for one of the relief periods: the weeks, months “Grandma Baby must be stopping it,” said Denver. She was ten
even, when nothing was disturbed. No. Each one fled at once—the and still mad at Baby Suggs for dying.
moment the house committed what was for him the one insult not to Sethe opened her eyes. “I doubt that,” she said.
be borne or witnessed a second time. Within two months, in the dead “Then why don’t it come?”
of winter, leaving their grandmother, Baby Suggs; Sethe, their “You forgetting how little it is,” said her mother. “She wasn’t
mother; and their little sister, Denver, all by themselves in the gray even two years old when she died. Too little to understand. Too little
and white house on Bluestone Road. It didn’t have a number then, to talk much even.”
because Cincinnati didn’t stretch that far. In fact, Ohio had been call- “Maybe she don’t want to understand,” said Denver.
ing itself a state only seventy years when first one brother and then “Maybe. But if she’d only come, I could make it clear to her.”
the next stuffed quilt packing into his hat, snatched up his shoes, and Sethe released her daughter’s hand and together they pushed the side-
crept away from the lively spite the house felt for them. board back against the wall. Outside a driver whipped his horse into
Baby Suggs didn’t even raise her head. From her sickbed she heard the gallop local people felt necessary when they passed 124.
them go but that wasn’t the reason she lay still. It was a wonder to “For a baby she throws a powerful spell,” said Denver.
her that her grandsons had taken so long to realize that every house “No more powerful than the way I loved her,” Sethe answered
wasn’t like the one on Bluestone Road. Suspended between the nasti- and there it was again. The welcoming cool of unchiseled headstones;
 5 b e l o v e d

the one she selected to lean against on tiptoe, her knees wide open as the dead one, and her memory of Buglar was fading fast. Howard at
any grave. Pink as a fingernail it was, and sprinkled with glittering least had a head shape nobody could forget. As for the rest, she
chips. Ten minutes, he said. You got ten minutes I’ll do it for free. worked hard to remember as close to nothing as was safe. Unfor-
Ten minutes for seven letters. With another ten could she have tunately her brain was devious. She might be hurrying across a
gotten “Dearly” too? She had not thought to ask him and it bothered field, running practically, to get to the pump quickly and rinse the
her still that it might have been possible—that for twenty minutes, a chamomile sap from her legs. Nothing else would be in her mind.
half hour, say, she could have had the whole thing, every word she The picture of the men coming to nurse her was as lifeless as the
heard the preacher say at the funeral (and all there was to say, surely) nerves in her back where the skin buckled like a washboard. Nor was
engraved on her baby’s headstone: Dearly Beloved. But what she got, there the faintest scent of ink or the cherry gum and oak bark from
settled for, was the one word that mattered. She thought it would be which it was made. Nothing. Just the breeze cooling her face as she
enough, rutting among the headstones with the engraver, his young rushed toward water. And then sopping the chamomile away with
son looking on, the anger in his face so old; the appetite in it quite pump water and rags, her mind fixed on getting every last bit of sap
new. That should certainly be enough. Enough to answer one more off—on her carelessness in taking a shortcut across the field just to
preacher, one more abolitionist and a town full of disgust. save a half mile, and not noticing how high the weeds had grown
Counting on the stillness of her own soul, she had forgotten the until the itching was all the way to her knees. Then something. The
other one: the soul of her baby girl. Who would have thought that a plash of water, the sight of her shoes and stockings awry on the path
little old baby could harbor so much rage? Rutting among the stones where she had flung them; or Here Boy lapping in the puddle near her
under the eyes of the engraver’s son was not enough. Not only did feet, and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out
she have to live out her years in a house palsied by the baby’s fury at before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that
having its throat cut, but those ten minutes she spent pressed up did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in
against dawn-colored stone studded with star chips, her knees wide shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her
open as the grave, were longer than life, more alive, more pulsating wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right,
than the baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil. but hidden in lacy groves. Boys hanging from the most beautiful
“We could move,” she suggested once to her mother-in-law. sycamores in the world. It shamed her—remembering the wonderful
“What’d be the point?” asked Baby Suggs. “Not a house in the soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it oth-
country ain’t packed to its rafters with some dead Negro’s grief. We erwise, the sycamores beat out the children every time and she could
lucky this ghost is a baby. My husband’s spirit was to come back in not forgive her memory for that.
here? or yours? Don’t talk to me. You lucky. You got three left. When the last of the chamomile was gone, she went around to the
Three pulling at your skirts and just one raising hell from the other front of the house, collecting her shoes and stockings on the way. As
side. Be thankful, why don’t you? I had eight. Every one of them if to punish her further for her terrible memory, sitting on the porch
gone away from me. Four taken, four chased, and all, I expect, wor- not forty feet away was Paul D, the last of the Sweet Home men. And
rying somebody’s house into evil.” Baby Suggs rubbed her eye- although she could never mistake his face for another’s, she said, “Is
brows. “My firstborn. All I can remember of her is how she loved that you?”
the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and “What’s left.” He stood up and smiled. “How you been, girl,
that’s all I remember.” besides barefoot?”
“That’s all you let yourself remember,” Sethe had told her, but she When she laughed it came out loose and young. “Messed up my
was down to one herself—one alive, that is—the boys chased off by legs back yonder. Chamomile.”
 7 b e l o v e d

He made a face as though tasting a teaspoon of something bitter. you were feeling. With less than a blink, his face seemed to change—
“I don’t want to even hear ’bout it. Always did hate that stuff.” underneath it lay the activity.
Sethe balled up her stockings and jammed them into her pocket. “I wouldn’t have to ask about him, would I? You’d tell me if there
“Come on in.” was anything to tell, wouldn’t you?” Sethe looked down at her feet
“Porch is fine, Sethe. Cool out here.” He sat back down and and saw again the sycamores.
looked at the meadow on the other side of the road, knowing the “I’d tell you. Sure I’d tell you. I don’t know any more now than I
eagerness he felt would be in his eyes. did then.” Except for the churn, he thought, and you don’t need to
“Eighteen years,” she said softly. know that. “You must think he’s still alive.”
“Eighteen,” he repeated. “And I swear I been walking every one “No. I think he’s dead. It’s not being sure that keeps him alive.”
of em. Mind if I join you?” He nodded toward her feet and began “What did Baby Suggs think?”
unlacing his shoes. “Same, but to listen to her, all her children is dead. Claimed she
“You want to soak them? Let me get you a basin of water.” She felt each one go the very day and hour.”
moved closer to him to enter the house. “When she say Halle went?”
“No, uh uh. Can’t baby feet. A whole lot more tramping they got “Eighteen fifty-five. The day my baby was born.”
to do yet.” “You had that baby, did you? Never thought you’d make it.” He
“You can’t leave right away, Paul D. You got to stay awhile.” chuckled. “Running off pregnant.”
“Well, long enough to see Baby Suggs, anyway. Where is she?” “Had to. Couldn’t be no waiting.” She lowered her head and
“Dead.” thought, as he did, how unlikely it was that she had made it. And if it
“Aw no. When?” hadn’t been for that girl looking for velvet, she never would have.
“Eight years now. Almost nine.” “All by yourself too.” He was proud of her and annoyed by her.
“Was it hard? I hope she didn’t die hard.” Proud she had done it; annoyed that she had not needed Halle or him
Sethe shook her head. “Soft as cream. Being alive was the hard in the doing.
part. Sorry you missed her though. Is that what you came by for?” “Almost by myself. Not all by myself. A whitegirl helped me.”
“That’s some of what I came for. The rest is you. But if all the “Then she helped herself too, God bless her.”
truth be known, I go anywhere these days. Anywhere they let me sit “You could stay the night, Paul D.”
down.” “You don’t sound too steady in the offer.”
“You looking good.” Sethe glanced beyond his shoulder toward the closed door. “Oh
“Devil’s confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.” He it’s truly meant. I just hope you’ll pardon my house. Come on in. Talk
looked at her and the word “bad” took on another meaning. to Denver while I cook you something.”
Sethe smiled. This is the way they were—had been. All of the Paul D tied his shoes together, hung them over his shoulder and
Sweet Home men, before and after Halle, treated her to a mild broth- followed her through the door straight into a pool of red and undu-
erly flirtation, so subtle you had to scratch for it. lating light that locked him where he stood.
Except for a heap more hair and some waiting in his eyes, he “You got company?” he whispered, frowning.
looked the way he had in Kentucky. Peachstone skin; straight- “Off and on,” said Sethe.
backed. For a man with an immobile face it was amazing how ready “Good God.” He backed out the door onto the porch. “What
it was to smile, or blaze or be sorry with you. As though all you had kind of evil you got in here?”
to do was get his attention and right away he produced the feeling “It’s not evil, just sad. Come on. Just step through.”
 9 b e l o v e d

He looked at her then, closely. Closer than he had when she first “Who then?”
rounded the house on wet and shining legs, holding her shoes and “My daughter. The one I sent ahead with the boys.”
stockings up in one hand, her skirts in the other. Halle’s girl—the one “She didn’t live?”
with iron eyes and backbone to match. He had never seen her hair in “No. The one I was carrying when I run away is all I got left. Boys
Kentucky. And though her face was eighteen years older than when gone too. Both of em walked off just before Baby Suggs died.”
last he saw her, it was softer now. Because of the hair. A face too still Paul D looked at the spot where the grief had soaked him. The
for comfort; irises the same color as her skin, which, in that still face, red was gone but a kind of weeping clung to the air where it had
used to make him think of a mask with mercifully punched-out eyes. been.
Halle’s woman. Pregnant every year including the year she sat by the Probably best, he thought. If a Negro got legs he ought to use
fire telling him she was going to run. Her three children she had them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them
already packed into a wagonload of others in a caravan of Negroes up. Still . . . if her boys were gone . . .
crossing the river. They were to be left with Halle’s mother near “No man? You here by yourself?”
Cincinnati. Even in that tiny shack, leaning so close to the fire you “Me and Denver,” she said.
could smell the heat in her dress, her eyes did not pick up a flicker of “That all right by you?”
light. They were like two wells into which he had trouble gazing. “That’s all right by me.”
Even punched out they needed to be covered, lidded, marked with She saw his skepticism and went on. “I cook at a restaurant in
some sign to warn folks of what that emptiness held. So he looked town. And I sew a little on the sly.”
instead at the fire while she told him, because her husband was not Paul D smiled then, remembering the bedding dress. Sethe was
there for the telling. Mr. Garner was dead and his wife had a lump in thirteen when she came to Sweet Home and already iron-eyed. She
her neck the size of a sweet potato and unable to speak to anyone. was a timely present for Mrs. Garner who had lost Baby Suggs to her
She leaned as close to the fire as her pregnant belly allowed and told husband’s high principles. The five Sweet Home men looked at the
him, Paul D, the last of the Sweet Home men. new girl and decided to let her be. They were young and so sick with
There had been six of them who belonged to the farm, Sethe the the absence of women they had taken to calves. Yet they let the iron-
only female. Mrs. Garner, crying like a baby, had sold his brother to eyed girl be, so she could choose in spite of the fact that each one
pay off the debts that surfaced the minute she was widowed. Then would have beaten the others to mush to have her. It took her a year
schoolteacher arrived to put things in order. But what he did broke to choose—a long, tough year of thrashing on pallets eaten up with
three more Sweet Home men and punched the glittering iron out of dreams of her. A year of yearning, when rape seemed the solitary gift
Sethe’s eyes, leaving two open wells that did not reflect firelight. of life. The restraint they had exercised possible only because they
Now the iron was back but the face, softened by hair, made him were Sweet Home men—the ones Mr. Garner bragged about while
trust her enough to step inside her door smack into a pool of pulsing other farmers shook their heads in warning at the phrase.
red light. “Y’all got boys,” he told them. “Young boys, old boys, picky
She was right. It was sad. Walking through it, a wave of grief boys, stroppin boys. Now at Sweet Home, my niggers is men every
soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry. It seemed a long way to one of em. Bought em thataway, raised em thataway. Men every
the normal light surrounding the table, but he made it—dry-eyed and one.”
lucky. “Beg to differ, Garner. Ain’t no nigger men.”
“You said she died soft. Soft as cream,” he reminded her. “Not if you scared, they ain’t.” Garner’s smile was wide. “But if
“That’s not Baby Suggs,” she said. you a man yourself, you’ll want your niggers to be men too.”
 1 1 b e l o v e d

“I wouldn’t have no nigger men round my wife.” Denver stood on the bottom step and was suddenly hot and shy. It
It was the reaction Garner loved and waited for. “Neither would had been a long time since anybody (good-willed whitewoman,
I,” he said. “Neither would I,” and there was always a pause before preacher, speaker or newspaperman) sat at their table, their sympa-
the neighbor, or stranger, or peddler, or brother-in-law or whoever it thetic voices called liar by the revulsion in their eyes. For twelve
was got the meaning. Then a fierce argument, sometimes a fight, and years, long before Grandma Baby died, there had been no visitors of
Garner came home bruised and pleased, having demonstrated one any sort and certainly no friends. No coloredpeople. Certainly no
more time what a real Kentuckian was: one tough enough and smart hazelnut man with too long hair and no notebook, no charcoal, no
enough to make and call his own niggers men. oranges, no questions. Someone her mother wanted to talk to and
And so they were: Paul D Garner, Paul F Garner, Paul A Garner, would even consider talking to while barefoot. Looking, in fact act-
Halle Suggs and Sixo, the wild man. All in their twenties, minus ing, like a girl instead of the quiet, queenly woman Denver had
women, fucking cows, dreaming of rape, thrashing on pallets, rub- known all her life. The one who never looked away, who when a man
bing their thighs and waiting for the new girl—the one who took got stomped to death by a mare right in front of Sawyer’s restaurant
Baby Suggs’ place after Halle bought her with five years of Sundays. did not look away; and when a sow began eating her own litter did
Maybe that was why she chose him. A twenty-year-old man so in not look away then either. And when the baby’s spirit picked up Here
love with his mother he gave up five years of Sabbaths just to see her Boy and slammed him into the wall hard enough to break two of his
sit down for a change was a serious recommendation. legs and dislocate his eye, so hard he went into convulsions and
She waited a year. And the Sweet Home men abused cows while chewed up his tongue, still her mother had not looked away. She had
they waited with her. She chose Halle and for their first bedding she taken a hammer, knocked the dog unconscious, wiped away the
sewed herself a dress on the sly. blood and saliva, pushed his eye back in his head and set his leg
“Won’t you stay on awhile? Can’t nobody catch up on eighteen bones. He recovered, mute and off-balance, more because of his
years in a day.” untrustworthy eye than his bent legs, and winter, summer, drizzle or
Out of the dimness of the room in which they sat, a white stair- dry, nothing could persuade him to enter the house again.
case climbed toward the blue-and-white wallpaper of the second Now here was this woman with the presence of mind to repair a
floor. Paul D could see just the beginning of the paper; discreet flecks dog gone savage with pain rocking her crossed ankles and looking
of yellow sprinkled among a blizzard of snowdrops all backed by away from her own daughter’s body. As though the size of it was
blue. The luminous white of the railing and steps kept him glancing more than vision could bear. And neither she nor he had on shoes.
toward it. Every sense he had told him the air above the stairwell was Hot, shy, now Denver was lonely. All that leaving: first her brothers,
charmed and very thin. But the girl who walked down out of that air then her grandmother—serious losses since there were no children
was round and brown with the face of an alert doll. willing to circle her in a game or hang by their knees from her porch
Paul D looked at the girl and then at Sethe who smiled saying, railing. None of that had mattered as long as her mother did not look
“Here she is my Denver. This is Paul D, honey, from Sweet Home.” away as she was doing now, making Denver long, downright long,
“Good morning, Mr. D.” for a sign of spite from the baby ghost.
“Garner, baby. Paul D Garner.” “She’s a fine-looking young lady,” said Paul D. “Fine-looking.
“Yes sir.” Got her daddy’s sweet face.”
“Glad to get a look at you. Last time I saw your mama, you were “You know my father?”
pushing out the front of her dress.” “Knew him. Knew him well.”
“Still is,” Sethe smiled, “provided she can get in it.” “Did he, Ma’am?” Denver fought an urge to realign her affection.
 1 3 b e l o v e d

“Of course he knew your daddy. I told you, he’s from Sweet “Girl, who you talking to?”
Home.” Paul D laughed. “True, true. She’s right, Sethe. It wasn’t sweet and
Denver sat down on the bottom step. There was nowhere else it sure wasn’t home.” He shook his head.
gracefully to go. They were a twosome, saying “Your daddy” and “But it’s where we were,” said Sethe. “All together. Comes back
“Sweet Home” in a way that made it clear both belonged to them whether we want it to or not.” She shivered a little. A light ripple of
and not to her. That her own father’s absence was not hers. Once the skin on her arm, which she caressed back into sleep. “Denver,” she
absence had belonged to Grandma Baby—a son, deeply mourned said, “start up that stove. Can’t have a friend stop by and don’t feed
because he was the one who had bought her out of there. Then it him.”
was her mother’s absent husband. Now it was this hazelnut stranger’s “Don’t go to any trouble on my account,” Paul D said.
absent friend. Only those who knew him (“knew him well”) could “Bread ain’t trouble. The rest I brought back from where I work.
claim his absence for themselves. Just as only those who lived in Least I can do, cooking from dawn to noon, is bring dinner home.
Sweet Home could remember it, whisper it and glance sideways at You got any objections to pike?”
one another while they did. Again she wished for the baby ghost— “If he don’t object to me I don’t object to him.”
its anger thrilling her now where it used to wear her out. Wear At it again, thought Denver. Her back to them, she jostled the
her out. kindlin and almost lost the fire. “Why don’t you spend the night,
“We have a ghost in here,” she said, and it worked. They were not Mr. Garner? You and Ma’am can talk about Sweet Home all night
a twosome anymore. Her mother left off swinging her feet and being long.”
girlish. Memory of Sweet Home dropped away from the eyes of the Sethe took two swift steps to the stove, but before she could yank
man she was being girlish for. He looked quickly up the lightning- Denver’s collar, the girl leaned forward and began to cry.
white stairs behind her. “What is the matter with you? I never knew you to behave this
“So I hear,” he said. “But sad, your mama said. Not evil.” way.”
“No sir,” said Denver, “not evil. But not sad either.” “Leave her be,” said Paul D. “I’m a stranger to her.”
“What then?” “That’s just it. She got no cause to act up with a stranger. Oh
“Rebuked. Lonely and rebuked.” baby, what is it? Did something happen?”
“Is that right?” Paul D turned to Sethe. But Denver was shaking now and sobbing so she could not speak.
“I don’t know about lonely,” said Denver’s mother. “Mad, The tears she had not shed for nine years wetting her far too wom-
maybe, but I don’t see how it could be lonely spending every minute anly breasts.
with us like it does.” “I can’t no more. I can’t no more.”
“Must be something you got it wants.” “Can’t what? What can’t you?”
Sethe shrugged. “It’s just a baby.” “I can’t live here. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I
“My sister,” said Denver. “She died in this house.” can’t live here. Nobody speaks to us. Nobody comes by. Boys don’t
Paul D scratched the hair under his jaw. “Reminds me of that like me. Girls don’t either.”
headless bride back behind Sweet Home. Remember that, Sethe? “Honey, honey.”
Used to roam them woods regular.” “What’s she talking ’bout nobody speaks to you?” asked Paul D.
“How could I forget? Worrisome . . . ” “It’s the house. People don’t—”
“How come everybody run off from Sweet Home can’t stop talk- “It’s not! It’s not the house. It’s us! And it’s you!”
ing about it? Look like if it was so sweet you would have stayed.” “Denver!”
 1 5 b e l o v e d

“Leave off, Sethe. It’s hard for a young girl living in a haunted “Whitegirl. That’s what she called it. I’ve never seen it and never
house. That can’t be easy.” will. But that’s what she said it looked like. A chokecherry tree.
“It’s easier than some other things.” Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. But
“Think, Sethe. I’m a grown man with nothing new left to see or that was eighteen years ago. Could have cherries too now for all I
do and I’m telling you it ain’t easy. Maybe you all ought to move. know.”
Who owns this house?” Sethe took a little spit from the tip of her tongue with her forefin-
Over Denver’s shoulder Sethe shot Paul D a look of snow. “What ger. Quickly, lightly she touched the stove. Then she trailed her fin-
you care?” gers through the flour, parting, separating small hills and ridges of it,
“They won’t let you leave?” looking for mites. Finding none, she poured soda and salt into the
“No.” crease of her folded hand and tossed both into the flour. Then she
“Sethe.” reached into a can and scooped half a handful of lard. Deftly she
“No moving. No leaving. It’s all right the way it is.” squeezed the flour through it, then with her left hand sprinkling
“You going to tell me it’s all right with this child half out of her water, she formed the dough.
mind?” “I had milk,” she said. “I was pregnant with Denver but I had
Something in the house braced, and in the listening quiet that fol- milk for my baby girl. I hadn’t stopped nursing her when I sent her
lowed Sethe spoke. on ahead with Howard and Buglar.”
“I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing Now she rolled the dough out with a wooden pin. “Anybody
in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms. No more could smell me long before he saw me. And when he saw me he’d see
running—from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this the drops of it on the front of my dress. Nothing I could do about
earth. I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you that. All I knew was I had to get my milk to my baby girl. Nobody
something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much! Do you hear me? It cost was going to nurse her like me. Nobody was going to get it to her fast
too much. Now sit down and eat with us or leave us be.” enough, or take it away when she had enough and didn’t know it.
Paul D fished in his vest for a little pouch of tobacco—concentrat- Nobody knew that she couldn’t pass her air if you held her up on
ing on its contents and the knot of its string while Sethe led Denver your shoulder, only if she was lying on my knees. Nobody knew that
into the keeping room that opened off the large room he was sitting but me and nobody had her milk but me. I told that to the women in
in. He had no smoking papers, so he fiddled with the pouch and lis- the wagon. Told them to put sugar water in cloth to suck from so
tened through the open door to Sethe quieting her daughter. When when I got there in a few days she wouldn’t have forgot me. The milk
she came back she avoided his look and went straight to a small table would be there and I would be there with it.”
next to the stove. Her back was to him and he could see all the hair “Men don’t know nothing much,” said Paul D, tucking his pouch
he wanted without the distraction of her face. back into his vest pocket, “but they do know a suckling can’t be
“What tree on your back?” away from its mother for long.”
“Huh.” Sethe put a bowl on the table and reached under it for “Then they know what it’s like to send your children off when
flour. your breasts are full.”
“What tree on your back? Is something growing on your back? I “We was talking ’bout a tree, Sethe.”
don’t see nothing growing on your back.” “After I left you, those boys came in there and took my milk.
“It’s there all the same.” That’s what they came in there for. Held me down and took it. I told
“Who told you that?” Mrs. Garner on em. She had that lump and couldn’t speak but her
 1 7 b e l o v e d

eyes rolled out tears. Them boys found out I told on em. School- touched every ridge and leaf of it with his mouth, none of which
teacher made one open up my back, and when it closed it made a Sethe could feel because her back skin had been dead for years. What
tree. It grows there still.” she knew was that the responsibility for her breasts, at last, was in
“They used cowhide on you?” somebody else’s hands.
“And they took my milk.” Would there be a little space, she wondered, a little time, some
“They beat you and you was pregnant?” way to hold off eventfulness, to push busyness into the corners of the
“And they took my milk!” room and just stand there a minute or two, naked from shoulder
The fat white circles of dough lined the pan in rows. Once more blade to waist, relieved of the weight of her breasts, smelling the
Sethe touched a wet forefinger to the stove. She opened the oven door stolen milk again and the pleasure of baking bread? Maybe this one
and slid the pan of biscuits in. As she raised up from the heat she felt time she could stop dead still in the middle of a cooking meal—not
Paul D behind her and his hands under her breasts. She straightened even leave the stove—and feel the hurt her back ought to. Trust
up and knew, but could not feel, that his cheek was pressing into the things and remember things because the last of the Sweet Home men
branches of her chokecherry tree. was there to catch her if she sank?
Not even trying, he had become the kind of man who could walk The stove didn’t shudder as it adjusted to its heat. Denver wasn’t
into a house and make the women cry. Because with him, in his pres- stirring in the next room. The pulse of red light hadn’t come back
ence, they could. There was something blessed in his manner. Women and Paul D had not trembled since 1856 and then for eighty-three
saw him and wanted to weep—to tell him that their chest hurt and days in a row. Locked up and chained down, his hands shook so bad
their knees did too. Strong women and wise saw him and told him he couldn’t smoke or even scratch properly. Now he was trembling
things they only told each other: that way past the Change of Life, again but in the legs this time. It took him a while to realize that his
desire in them had suddenly become enormous, greedy, more savage legs were not shaking because of worry, but because the floorboards
than when they were fifteen, and that it embarrassed them and made were and the grinding, shoving floor was only part of it. The house
them sad; that secretly they longed to die—to be quit of it—that sleep itself was pitching. Sethe slid to the floor and struggled to get back
was more precious to them than any waking day. Young girls sidled into her dress. While down on all fours, as though she were holding
up to him to confess or describe how well-dressed the visitations her house down on the ground, Denver burst from the keeping room,
were that had followed them straight from their dreams. Therefore, terror in her eyes, a vague smile on her lips.
although he did not understand why this was so, he was not sur- “God damn it! Hush up!” Paul D was shouting, falling, reaching
prised when Denver dripped tears into the stovefire. Nor, fifteen min- for anchor. “Leave the place alone! Get the hell out!” A table rushed
utes later, after telling him about her stolen milk, her mother wept as toward him and he grabbed its leg. Somehow he managed to stand at
well. Behind her, bending down, his body an arc of kindness, he held an angle and, holding the table by two legs, he bashed it about,
her breasts in the palms of his hands. He rubbed his cheek on her wrecking everything, screaming back at the screaming house. “You
back and learned that way her sorrow, the roots of it; its wide trunk want to fight, come on! God damn it! She got enough without you.
and intricate branches. Raising his fingers to the hooks of her dress, She got enough!”
he knew without seeing them or hearing any sigh that the tears were The quaking slowed to an occasional lurch, but Paul D did not
coming fast. And when the top of her dress was around her hips and stop whipping the table around until everything was rock quiet.
he saw the sculpture her back had become, like the decorative work Sweating and breathing hard, he leaned against the wall in the space
of an ironsmith too passionate for display, he could think but not the sideboard left. Sethe was still crouched next to the stove, clutch-
say, “Aw, Lord, girl.” And he would tolerate no peace until he had ing her salvaged shoes to her chest. The three of them, Sethe, Denver,
 1 9

and Paul D, breathed to the same beat, like one tired person. Another
breathing was just as tired.

It was gone. Denver wandered through the silence to the stove.

She ashed over the fire and pulled the pan of biscuits from the oven.
The jelly cupboard was on its back, its contents lying in a heap in the
corner of the bottom shelf. She took out a jar, and, looking around
for a plate, found half of one by the door. These things she carried
out to the porch steps, where she sat down.
The two of them had gone up there. Stepping lightly, easy-footed,
they had climbed the white stairs, leaving her down below. She pried
the wire from the top of the jar and then the lid. Under it was cloth
and under that a thin cake of wax. She removed it all and coaxed the Bare feet and chamomile sap.
jelly onto one half of the half a plate. She took a biscuit and pulled off Took off my shoes; took off my hat.
its black top. Smoke curled from the soft white insides. Bare feet and chamomile sap.
She missed her brothers. Buglar and Howard would be twenty- Gimme back my shoes; gimme back my hat.
two and twenty-three now. Although they had been polite to her
during the quiet time and gave her the whole top of the bed, she Lay my head on a potato sack,
remembered how it was before: the pleasure they had sitting clus- Devil sneak up behind my back.
tered on the white stairs—she between the knees of Howard or Steam engine got a lonesome whine;
Buglar—while they made up die-witch! stories with proven ways of Love that woman till you go stone blind.
killing her dead. And Baby Suggs telling her things in the keeping
room. She smelled like bark in the day and leaves at night, for Denver Stone blind; stone blind.
would not sleep in her old room after her brothers ran away. Sweet Home gal make you lose your mind.
Now her mother was upstairs with the man who had gotten rid of
the only other company she had. Denver dipped a bit of bread into h i s c o m i n g is the reverse route of his going. First the cold house,
the jelly. Slowly, methodically, miserably she ate it. the storeroom, then the kitchen before he tackles the beds. Here Boy,
feeble and shedding his coat in patches, is asleep by the pump, so
Paul D knows Beloved is truly gone. Disappeared, some say,
exploded right before their eyes. Ella is not so sure. “Maybe,” she
says, “maybe not. Could be hiding in the trees waiting for another
chance.” But when Paul D sees the ancient dog, eighteen years if a
day, he is certain 124 is clear of her. But he opens the door to the cold
house halfway expecting to hear her. “Touch me. Touch me. On the
inside part and call me my name.”
There is the pallet spread with old newspapers gnawed at the
edges by mice. The lard can. The potato sacks too, but empty now,
 b e l o v e d 2 6 5

they lie on the dirt floor in heaps. In daylight he can’t imagine it in “Who Janey tell him the naked woman was?”
darkness with moonlight seeping through the cracks. Nor the desire “Told him she didn’t see none.”
that drowned him there and forced him to struggle up, up into that “You believe they saw it?”
girl like she was the clear air at the top of the sea. Coupling with her “Well, they saw something. I trust Ella anyway, and she say she
wasn’t even fun. It was more like a brainless urge to stay alive. Each looked it in the eye. It was standing right next to Sethe. But from the
time she came, pulled up her skirts, a life hunger overwhelmed him way they describe it, don’t seem like it was the girl I saw in there. The
and he had no more control over it than over his lungs. And after- girl I saw was narrow. This one was big. She say they was holding
ward, beached and gobbling air, in the midst of repulsion and per- hands and Sethe looked like a little girl beside it.”
sonal shame, he was thankful too for having been escorted to some “Little girl with a ice pick. How close she get to him?”
ocean-deep place he once belonged to. “Right up on him, they say. Before Denver and them grabbed her
Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes and Ella put her fist in her jaw.”
floating in light. Paul D shuts the door. He looks toward the house “He got to know Sethe was after him. He got to.”
and, surprisingly, it does not look back at him. Unloaded, 124 is just “Maybe. I don’t know. If he did think it, I reckon he decided not
another weathered house needing repair. Quiet, just as Stamp Paid to. That be just like him, too. He’s somebody never turned us down.
said. Steady as a rock. I tell you something, if she had got to him, it’d be
“Used to be voices all round that place. Quiet, now,” Stamp said. the worst thing in the world for us. You know, don’t you, he’s the
“I been past it a few times and I can’t hear a thing. Chastened, I main one kept Sethe from the gallows in the first place.”
reckon, ’cause Mr. Bodwin say he selling it soon’s he can.” “Yeah. Damn. That woman is crazy. Crazy.”
“That the name of the one she tried to stab? That one?” “Yeah, well, ain’t we all?”
“Yep. His sister say it’s full of trouble. Told Janey she was going to They laughed then. A rusty chuckle at first and then more, louder
get rid of it.” and louder until Stamp took out his pocket handkerchief and wiped
“And him?” asked Paul D. his eyes while Paul D pressed the heel of his hand in his own. As the
“Janey say he against it but won’t stop it.” scene neither one had witnessed took shape before them, its serious-
“Who they think want a house out there? Anybody got the money ness and its embarrassment made them shake with laughter.
don’t want to live out there.” “Every time a whiteman come to the door she got to kill some-
“Beats me,” Stamp answered. “It’ll be a spell, I guess, before it get body?”
took off his hands.” “For all she know, the man could be coming for the rent.”
“He don’t plan on taking her to the law?” “Good thing they don’t deliver mail out that way.”
“Don’t seem like it. Janey say all he wants to know is who was “Wouldn’t nobody get no letter.”
the naked blackwoman standing on the porch. He was looking at “Except the postman.”
her so hard he didn’t notice what Sethe was up to. All he saw was “Be a mighty hard message.”
some coloredwomen fighting. He thought Sethe was after one of “And his last.”
them, Janey say.” When their laughter was spent, they took deep breaths and shook
“Janey tell him any different?” their heads.
“No. She say she so glad her boss ain’t dead. If Ella hadn’t clipped “And he still going to let Denver spend the night in his house?
her, she say she would have. Scared her to death have that woman kill Ha!”
her boss. She and Denver be looking for a job.” “Aw no. Hey. Lay off Denver, Paul D. That’s my heart. I’m proud
 b e l o v e d 2 6 7

of that girl. She was the first one wrestle her mother down. Before Suddenly she leveled her eyes at his. “But who would know that bet-
anybody knew what the devil was going on.” ter than you, Paul D? I mean, you sure ’nough knew her.”
“She saved his life then, you could say.” He licked his lips. “Well, if you want my opinion—”
“You could. You could,” said Stamp, thinking suddenly of the “I don’t,” she said. “I have my own.”
leap, the wide swing and snatch of his arm as he rescued the little “You grown,” he said.
curly-headed baby from within inches of a split skull. “I’m proud of “Yes, sir.”
her. She turning out fine. Fine.” “Well. Well, good luck with the job.”
It was true. Paul D saw her the next morning when he was on his “Thank you. And, Paul D, you don’t have to stay ’way, but be
way to work and she was leaving hers. Thinner, steady in the eyes, careful how you talk to my ma’am, hear?”
she looked more like Halle than ever. “Don’t worry,” he said and left her then, or rather she left him
She was the first to smile. “Good morning, Mr. D.” because a young man was running toward her, saying, “Hey, Miss
“Well, it is now.” Her smile, no longer the sneer he remembered, Denver. Wait up.”
had welcome in it and strong traces of Sethe’s mouth. Paul D touched She turned to him, her face looking like someone had turned up
his cap. “How you getting along?” the gas jet.
“Don’t pay to complain.” He left her unwillingly because he wanted to talk more, make
“You on your way home?” sense out of the stories he had been hearing: whiteman came to take
She said no. She had heard about an afternoon job at the shirt Denver to work and Sethe cut him. Baby ghost came back evil and
factory. She hoped that with her night work at the Bodwins’ and sent Sethe out to get the man who kept her from hanging. One point
another one, she could put away something and help her mother of agreement is: first they saw it and then they didn’t. When they got
too. When he asked her if they treated her all right over there, she Sethe down on the ground and the ice pick out of her hands and
said more than all right. Miss Bodwin taught her stuff. He asked her looked back to the house, it was gone. Later, a little boy put it out
what stuff and she laughed and said book stuff. “She says I might go how he had been looking for bait back of 124, down by the stream,
to Oberlin. She’s experimenting on me.” And he didn’t say, “Watch and saw, cutting through the woods, a naked woman with fish for
out. Watch out. Nothing in the world more dangerous than a white hair.
schoolteacher.” Instead he nodded and asked the question he As a matter of fact, Paul D doesn’t care how It went or even why.
wanted to. He cares about how he left and why. When he looks at himself
“Your mother all right?” through Garner’s eyes, he sees one thing. Through Sixo’s, another.
“No,” said Denver. “No. No, not a bit all right.” One makes him feel righteous. One makes him feel ashamed. Like the
“You think I should stop by? Would she welcome it?” time he worked both sides of the War. Running away from the
“I don’t know,” said Denver. “I think I’ve lost my mother, Northpoint Bank and Railway to join the 44th Colored Regiment in
Paul D.” Tennessee, he thought he had made it, only to discover he had arrived
They were both silent for a moment and then he said, “Uh, that at another colored regiment forming under a commander in New Jer-
girl. You know. Beloved?” sey. He stayed there four weeks. The regiment fell apart before it got
“Yes?” started on the question of whether the soldiers should have weapons
“You think she sure ’nough your sister?” or not. Not, it was decided, and the white commander had to figure
Denver looked at her shoes. “At times. At times I think she was— out what to command them to do instead of kill other whitemen.
more.” She fiddled with her shirtwaist, rubbing a spot of something. Some of the ten thousand stayed there to clean, haul and build things;
 b e l o v e d 2 6 9

others drifted away to another regiment; most were abandoned, left looked for) walked from Selma to Mobile, they saw twelve dead
to their own devices with bitterness for pay. He was trying to make blacks in the first eighteen miles. Two were women, four were little
up his mind what to do when an agent from Northpoint Bank caught boys. He thought this, for sure, would be the walk of his life. The
up with him and took him back to Delaware, where he slave-worked Yankees in control left the Rebels out of control. They got to the out-
a year. Then Northpoint took $300 in exchange for his services in skirts of Mobile, where blacks were putting down tracks for the
Alabama, where he worked for the Rebellers, first sorting the dead Union that, earlier, they had torn up for the Rebels. One of the men
and then smelting iron. When he and his group combed the battle- with him, a private called Keane, had been with the Massachusetts
fields, their job was to pull the Confederate wounded away from the 54th. He told Paul D they had been paid less than white soldiers. It
Confederate dead. Care, they told them. Take good care. Colored- was a sore point with him that, as a group, they had refused the offer
men and white, their faces wrapped to their eyes, picked their way Massachusetts made to make up the difference in pay. Paul D was so
through the meadows with lamps, listening in the dark for groans of impressed by the idea of being paid money to fight he looked at the
life in the indifferent silence of the dead. Mostly young men, some private with wonder and envy.
children, and it shamed him a little to feel pity for what he imagined Keane and his friend, a Sergeant Rossiter, confiscated a skiff and
were the sons of the guards in Alfred, Georgia. the three of them floated in Mobile Bay. There the private hailed a
In five tries he had not had one permanent success. Every one of Union gunboat, which took all three aboard. Keane and Rossiter dis-
his escapes (from Sweet Home, from Brandywine, from Alfred, Geor- embarked at Memphis to look for their commanders. The captain of
gia, from Wilmington, from Northpoint) had been frustrated. Alone, the gunboat let Paul D stay aboard all the way to Wheeling, West Vir-
undisguised, with visible skin, memorable hair and no whiteman to ginia. He made his own way to New Jersey.
protect him, he never stayed uncaught. The longest had been when he By the time he got to Mobile, he had seen more dead people than
ran with the convicts, stayed with the Cherokee, followed their living ones, but when he got to Trenton the crowds of alive people,
advice and lived in hiding with the weaver woman in Wilmington, neither hunting nor hunted, gave him a measure of free life so tasty
Delaware: three years. And in all those escapes he could not help he never forgot it. Moving down a busy street full of whitepeople
being astonished by the beauty of this land that was not his. He hid who needed no explanation for his presence, the glances he got had
in its breast, fingered its earth for food, clung to its banks to lap to do with his disgusting clothes and unforgivable hair. Still, nobody
water and tried not to love it. On nights when the sky was personal, raised an alarm. Then came the miracle. Standing in a street in front
weak with the weight of its own stars, he made himself not love it. Its of a row of brick houses, he heard a whiteman call him (“Say there!
graveyards and low-lying rivers. Or just a house—solitary under a Yo!”) to help unload two trunks from a coach cab. Afterward the
chinaberry tree; maybe a mule tethered and the light hitting its hide whiteman gave him a coin. Paul D walked around with it for hours—
just so. Anything could stir him and he tried hard not to love it. not sure what it could buy (a suit? a meal? a horse?) and if anybody
After a few months on the battlefields of Alabama, he was would sell him anything. Finally he saw a greengrocer selling vegeta-
impressed to a foundry in Selma along with three hundred captured, bles from a wagon. Paul D pointed to a bunch of turnips. The grocer
lent or taken coloredmen. That’s where the War’s end found him, and handed them to him, took his one coin and gave him several more.
leaving Alabama when he had been declared free should have been a Stunned, he backed away. Looking around, he saw that nobody
snap. He should have been able to walk from the foundry in Selma seemed interested in the “mistake” or him, so he walked along, hap-
straight to Philadelphia, taking the main roads, a train if he wanted pily chewing turnips. Only a few women looked vaguely repelled as
to, or passage on a boat. But it wasn’t like that. When he and two they passed. His first earned purchase made him glow, never mind
colored soldiers (who had been captured from the 44th he had the turnips were withered dry. That was when he decided that to eat,
 b e l o v e d 2 7 1

walk and sleep anywhere was life as good as it got. And he did it for put his finger on it, but it seems, for a moment, that just beyond his
seven years till he found himself in southern Ohio, where an old knowing is the glare of an outside thing that embraces while it
woman and a girl he used to know had gone. accuses.
Now his coming is the reverse of his going. First he stands in the To the right of him, where the door to the keeping room is ajar, he
back, near the cold house, amazed by the riot of late-summer flowers hears humming. Someone is humming a tune. Something soft and
where vegetables should be growing. Sweet william, morning glory, sweet, like a lullaby. Then a few words. Sounds like “high Johnny,
chrysanthemums. The odd placement of cans jammed with the rot- wide Johnny. Sweet William bend down low.” Of course, he thinks.
ting stems of things, the blossoms shriveled like sores. Dead ivy That’s where she is—and she is. Lying under a quilt of merry colors.
twines around bean poles and door handles. Faded newspaper pic- Her hair, like the dark delicate roots of good plants, spreads and
tures are nailed to the outhouse and on trees. A rope too short for curves on the pillow. Her eyes, fixed on the window, are so expres-
anything but skip-jumping lies discarded near the washtub; and jars sionless he is not sure she will know who he is. There is too much
and jars of dead lightning bugs. Like a child’s house; the house of a light here in this room. Things look sold.
very tall child. “Jackweed raise up high,” she sings. “Lambswool over my shoul-
He walks to the front door and opens it. It is stone quiet. In the der, buttercup and clover fly.” She is fingering a long clump of her
place where once a shaft of sad red light had bathed him, locking him hair.
where he stood, is nothing. A bleak and minus nothing. More like Paul D clears his throat to interrupt her. “Sethe?”
absence, but an absence he had to get through with the same determi- She turns her head. “Paul D.”
nation he had when he trusted Sethe and stepped through the pulsing “Aw, Sethe.”
light. He glances quickly at the lightning-white stairs. The entire rail- “I made the ink, Paul D. He couldn’t have done it if I hadn’t made
ing is wound with ribbons, bows, bouquets. Paul D steps inside. The the ink.”
outdoor breeze he brings with him stirs the ribbons. Carefully, not “What ink? Who?”
quite in a hurry but losing no time, he climbs the luminous stairs. He “You shaved.”
enters Sethe’s room. She isn’t there and the bed looks so small he “Yeah. Look bad?”
wonders how the two of them had lain there. It has no sheets, and “No. You looking good.”
because the roof windows do not open the room is stifling. Brightly “Devil’s confusion. What’s this I hear about you not getting out
colored clothes lie on the floor. Hanging from a wall peg is the dress of bed?”
Beloved wore when he first saw her. A pair of ice skates nestles in a She smiles, lets it fade and turns her eyes back to the window.
basket in the corner. He turns his eyes back to the bed and keeps “I need to talk to you,” he tells her.
looking at it. It seems to him a place he is not. With an effort that She doesn’t answer.
makes him sweat he forces a picture of himself lying there, and when “I saw Denver. She tell you?”
he sees it, it lifts his spirit. He goes to the other bedroom. Denver’s is “She comes in the daytime. Denver. She’s still with me, my
as neat as the other is messy. But still no Sethe. Maybe she has gone Denver.”
back to work, gotten better in the days since he talked to Denver. He “You got to get up from here, girl.” He is nervous. This reminds
goes back down the stairs, leaving the image of himself firmly in him of something.
place on the narrow bed. At the kitchen table he sits down. Some- “I’m tired, Paul D. So tired. I have to rest a while.”
thing is missing from 124. Something larger than the people who Now he knows what he is reminded of and he shouts at her,
lived there. Something more than Beloved or the red light. He can’t “Don’t you die on me! This is Baby Suggs’ bed! Is that what you
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planning?” He is so angry he could kill her. He checks himself, all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who
remembering Denver’s warning, and whispers, “What you planning, is a friend of your mind.”
Sethe?” He is staring at the quilt but he is thinking about her wrought-
“Oh, I don’t have no plans. No plans at all.” iron back; the delicious mouth still puffy at the corner from Ella’s fist.
“Look,” he says, “Denver be here in the day. I be here in the night. The mean black eyes. The wet dress steaming before the fire. Her ten-
I’m a take care of you, you hear? Starting now. First off, you don’t derness about his neck jewelry—its three wands, like attentive baby
smell right. Stay there. Don’t move. Let me heat up some water.” He rattlers, curving two feet into the air. How she never mentioned or
stops. “Is it all right, Sethe, if I heat up some water?” looked at it, so he did not have to feel the shame of being collared like
“And count my feet?” she asks him. a beast. Only this woman Sethe could have left him his manhood like
He steps closer. “Rub your feet.” that. He wants to put his story next to hers.
Sethe closes her eyes and presses her lips together. She is think- “Sethe,” he says, “me and you, we got more yesterday than any-
ing: No. This little place by a window is what I want. And rest. body. We need some kind of tomorrow.”
There’s nothing to rub now and no reason to. Nothing left to bathe, He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her
assuming he even knows how. Will he do it in sections? First her face. “You your best thing, Sethe. You are.” His holding fingers are
face, then her hands, her thighs, her feet, her back? Ending with her holding hers.
exhausted breasts? And if he bathes her in sections, will the parts “Me? Me?”
hold? She opens her eyes, knowing the danger of looking at him.
She looks at him. The peachstone skin, the crease between his
ready, waiting eyes and sees it—the thing in him, the blessedness,
that has made him the kind of man who can walk in a house and
make the women cry. Because with him, in his presence, they could.
Cry and tell him things they only told each other: that time didn’t
stay put; that she called, but Howard and Buglar walked on down
the railroad track and couldn’t hear her; that Amy was scared to stay
with her because her feet were ugly and her back looked so bad; that
her ma’am had hurt her feelings and she couldn’t find her hat any-
where and “Paul D?”
“What, baby?”
“She left me.”
“Aw, girl. Don’t cry.”
“She was my best thing.”
Paul D sits down in the rocking chair and examines the quilt
patched in carnival colors. His hands are limp between his knees.
There are too many things to feel about this woman. His head hurts.
Suddenly he remembers Sixo trying to describe what he felt about the
Thirty-Mile Woman. “She is a friend of my mind. She gather me,
man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in
 2 7 5

why she crouched, or whose was the underwater face she needed like
that. Where the memory of the smile under her chin might have been
and was not, a latch latched and lichen attached its apple-green
bloom to the metal. What made her think her fingernails could open
locks the rain rained on?

It was not a story to pass on.

So they forgot her. Like an unpleasant dream during a troubling

sleep. Occasionally, however, the rustle of a skirt hushes when they
wake, and the knuckles brushing a cheek in sleep seem to belong to
the sleeper. Sometimes the photograph of a close friend or relative—
t h e r e i s a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees looked at too long—shifts, and something more familiar than the
drawn up; holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths dear face itself moves there. They can touch it if they like, but don’t,
and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind—wrapped tight like skin. because they know things will never be the same if they do.
Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It
is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound This is not a story to pass on.
of one’s own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.
Down by the stream in back of 124 her footprints come and go,
Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere come and go. They are so familiar. Should a child, an adult place his
knew her name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be feet in them, they will fit. Take them out and they disappear again as
lost because no one is looking for her, and even if they were, how can though nobody ever walked there.
they call her if they don’t know her name? Although she has claim, By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the
she is not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who footprints but the water too and what it is down there. The rest is
waited to be loved and cry shame erupts into her separate parts, to weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccounted for,
make it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away. but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather.
Certainly no clamor for a kiss.
It was not a story to pass on.
Beloved.
They forgot her like a bad dream. After they made up their tales,
shaped and decorated them, those that saw her that day on the porch
quickly and deliberately forgot her. It took longer for those who had
spoken to her, lived with her, fallen in love with her, to forget, until
they realized they couldn’t remember or repeat a single thing she
said, and began to believe that, other than what they themselves were
thinking, she hadn’t said anything at all. So, in the end, they forgot
her too. Remembering seemed unwise. They never knew where or