eyed with hunger and loneliness, be knocked at the first back door he came to in the colored section of

Wilmington. He told the woman who opened it that he'd appreciate doing her woodpile, if she could spare

him something to eat. She looked him up and down.

"A little later on," she said and opened the door wider. She fed him pork sausage, the worst thing in

the world for a starving man, but neither he nor his stomach objected. Later, when he saw pale cotton

sheets and two pillows in her bedroom, he had to wipe his eyes quickly, quickly so she would not see the

thankful tears of a man's first time. Soil, grass, mud, shucking, leaves, hay, cobs, seashells—all that he'd

slept on. White cotton sheets had never crossed his mind. He fell in with a groan and the woman helped

him pretend he was making love to her and not her bed linen. He vowed that night, full of pork, deep in

luxury, that he would never leave her. She would have to kill him to get him out of that bed. Eighteen

months later, when he had been purchased by Northpoint Bank and Railroad Company, he was still

thankful for that introduction to sheets.

Now he was grateful a second time. He felt as though he had been plucked from the face of a cliff and

put down on sure ground. In Sethe's bed he knew he could put up with two crazy girls—as long as Sethe

made her wishes known. Stretched out to his full length, watching snowflakes stream past the window

over his feet, it was easy to dismiss the doubts that took him to the alley behind the restaurant: his

expectations for himself were high, too high. What he might call cowardice other people called common

sense.

Tucked into the well of his arm, Sethe recalled Paul D's face in the street when he asked her to have a

baby for him. Although she laughed and took his hand, it had frightened her. She thought quickly of how

good the sex would be if that is what he wanted, but mostly she was frightened by the thought of having a

baby once more. Needing to be good enough, alert enough, strong enough, that caring—again. Having to

stay alive just that much longer. O Lord, she thought, deliver me. Unless carefree, motherlove was a killer.

What did he want her pregnant for? To hold on to her? have a sign that he passed this way? He probably

had children everywhere anyway. Eighteen years of roaming, he would have to have dropped a few. No.

He resented the children she had, that's what. Child, she corrected herself. Child plus Beloved whom she

thought of as her own, and that is what he resented. Sharing her with the girls. Hearing the three of them

laughing at something he wasn't in on. The code they used among themselves that he could not break.

Maybe even the time spent on their needs and not his. They were a family somehow and he was not the

head of it.

Can you stitch this up for me, baby?

Um hm. Soon's I finish this petticoat. She just got the one she came here in and everybody needs a

change.

Any pie left?

I think Denver got the last of it.

And not complaining, not even minding that he slept all over and around the house now, which she put

a stop to this night out of courtesy.

Sethe sighed and placed her hand on his chest. She knew she was building a case against him in order

to build a case against getting pregnant, and it shamed her a little. But she had all the children she needed.

If her boys came back one day, and Denver and Beloved stayed on-well, it would be the way it was

supposed to be, no? Right after she saw the shadows holding hands at the side of the road hadn't the

picture altered? And the minute she saw the dress and shoes sitting in the front yard, she broke water.

Didn't even have to see the face burning in the sunlight. She had been dreaming it for years.

Paul D's chest rose and fell, rose and fell under her hand.

DENVER FINISHED washing the dishes and sat down at the table. Beloved, who had not moved since

Sethe and Paul D left the room, sat sucking her forefinger. Denver watched her face awhile and then said,

"She likes him here."

Beloved went on probing her mouth with her finger. "Make him go away," she said.

"She might be mad at you if he leaves."

Beloved, inserting a thumb in her mouth along with the forefinger, pulled out a back tooth. There was

hardly any blood, but Denver said, "Ooooh, didn't that hurt you?"

Beloved looked at the tooth and thought, This is it. Next would be her arm, her hand, a toe. Pieces of

her would drop maybe one at a time, maybe all at once. Or on one of those mornings before Denver woke

and after Sethe left she would fly apart. It is difficult keeping her head on her neck, her legs attached to

her hips when she is by herself. Among the things she could not remember was when she first knew that

she could wake up any day and find herself in pieces. She had two dreams: exploding, and being

swallowed. When her tooth came out—an odd fragment, last in the row—she thought it was starting.

"Must be a wisdom," said Denver. "Don't it hurt?"

"Yes."

"Then why don't you cry?"

"What?"

"If it hurts, why don't you cry?"

And she did. Sitting there holding a small white tooth in the palm of her smooth smooth hand. Cried

the way she wanted to when turtles came out of the water, one behind the other, right after the blood-red

bird disappeared back into the leaves. The way she wanted to when Sethe went to him standing in the tub

under the stairs. With the tip of her tongue she touched the salt water that slid to the corner of her mouth

and hoped Denver's arm around her shoulders would keep them from falling apart.

The couple upstairs, united, didn't hear a sound, but below them, outside, all around 124 the snow

went on and on and on. Piling itself, burying itself. Higher. Deeper.

IN THE BACK of Baby Suggs' mind may have been the thought that if Halle made it, God do what He

would, it would be a cause for celebration. lf only this final son could do for himself what he had done for

her and for the three children John and Ella delivered to her door one summer night. When the children

arrived and no Sethe, she was afraid and grateful. Grateful that the part of the family that survived was her

own grandchildren—the first and only she would know: two boys and a little girl who was crawling

already. But she held her heart still, afraid to form questions: What about Sethe and Halle; why the delay?

Why didn't Sethe get on board too? Nobody could make it alone. Not only because trappers picked them

off like buzzards or netted them like rabbits, but also because you couldn't run if you didn't know how to

go. You could be lost forever, if there wasn't nobody to show you the way.

So when Sethe arrived—all mashed up and split open, but with another grandchild in her arms—the

idea of a whoop moved closer to the front of her brain. But since there was still no sign of Halle and Sethe

herself didn't know what had happened to him, she let the whoop lie—not wishing to hurt his chances by

thanking God too soon.

It was Stamp Paid who started it. Twenty days after Sethe got to 124 he came by and looked at the

baby he had tied up in his nephew's jacket, looked at the mother he had handed a piece of fried eel to and,

for some private reason of his own, went off with two buckets to a place near the river's edge that only he

knew about where blackberries grew, tasting so good and happy that to eat them was like being in church.

Just one of the berries and you felt anointed. He walked six miles to the riverbank; did a slide-run-slide

down into a ravine made almost inaccessible by brush. He reached through brambles lined with blood-

drawing thorns thick as knives that cut through his shirt sleeves and trousers. All the while suffering

mosquitoes, bees, hornets, wasps and the meanest lady spiders in the state. Scratched, raked and bitten, he

maneuvered through and took hold of each berry with fingertips so gentle not a single one was bruised.

Late in the afternoon he got back to 124 and put two full buckets down on the porch. When Baby Suggs

saw his shredded clothes, bleeding hands, welted face and neck she sat down laughing out loud.

Buglar, Howard, the woman in the bonnet and Sethe came to look and then laughed along with Baby

Suggs at the sight of the sly, steely old black man: agent, fisherman, boatman, tracker, savior, spy,

standing in broad daylight whipped finally by two pails of blackberries. Paying them no mind he took a

berry and put it in the three-week-old Denver's mouth. The women shrieked.

"She's too little for that, Stamp."

"Bowels be soup."

"Sickify her stomach."

But the baby's thrilled eyes and smacking lips made them follow suit, sampling one at a time the

berries that tasted like church. Finally Baby Suggs slapped the boys' hands away from the bucket and sent

Stamp around to the pump to rinse himself. She had decided to do something with the fruit worthy of the

man's labor and his love. That's how it began.

She made the pastry dough and thought she ought to tell Ella and John to stop on by because three

pies, maybe four, were too much to keep for one's own. Sethe thought they might as well back it up with a

couple of chickens. Stamp allowed that perch and catfish were jumping into the boat—didn't even have to

drop a line.

From Denver's two thrilled eyes it grew to a feast for ninety people. 124 shook with their voices far

into the night. Ninety people who ate so well, and laughed so much, it made them angry. They woke up

the next morning and remembered the meal-fried perch that Stamp Paid handled with a hickory twig,

holding his left palm out against the spit and pop of the boiling grease; the corn pudding made with cream;

tired, overfed children asleep in the grass, tiny bones of roasted rabbit still in their hands—and got angry.

Baby Suggs' three (maybe four) pies grew to ten (maybe twelve). Sethe's two hens became five

turkeys. The one block of ice brought all the way from Cincinnati—over which they poured mashed

watermelon mixed with sugar and mint to make a punch—became a wagonload of ice cakes for a washtub

full of strawberry shrug. 124, rocking with laughter, goodwill and food for ninety, made them angry. Too

much, they thought. Where does she get it all, Baby Suggs, holy? Why is she and hers always the center of

things? How come she always knows exactly what to do and when? Giving advice; passing messages;

healing the sick, hiding fugitives, loving, cooking, cooking, loving, preaching, singing, dancing and loving

everybody like it was her job and hers alone.

Now to take two buckets of blackberries and make ten, maybe twelve, pies; to have turkey enough for

the whole town pretty near, new peas in September, fresh cream but no cow, ice and sugar, batter bread,

bread pudding, raised bread, shortbread—it made them mad. Loaves and fishes were His powers—they

did not belong to an exslave who had probably never carried one hundred pounds to the scale, or picked

okra with a baby on her back. Who had never been lashed by a ten-year-old whiteboy as God knows they

had. Who had not even escaped slavery—had, in fact, been bought out of it by a doting son and driven to

the Ohio River in a wagon—free papers folded between her breasts (driven by the very man who had been

her master, who also paid her resettlement fee—name of Garner), and rented a house with two floors and a

well from the Bodwins—the white brother and sister who gave Stamp Paid, Ella and John clothes, goods

and gear for runaways because they hated slavery worse than they hated slaves.

It made them furious. They swallowed baking soda, the morning after, to calm the stomach violence

caused by the bounty, the reckless generosity on display at 124. Whispered to each other in the yards

about fat rats, doom and uncalled-for pride.

The scent of their disapproval lay heavy in the air. Baby Suggs woke to it and wondered what it was as

she boiled hominy for her grandchildren. Later, as she stood in the garden, chopping at the tight soil over

the roots of the pepper plants, she smelled it again. She lifted her head and looked around. Behind her

some yards to the left Sethe squatted in the pole beans. Her shoulders were distorted by the greased flannel

under her dress to encourage the healing of her back. Near her in a bushel basket was the three-week-old

baby. Baby Suggs, holy, looked up. The sky was blue and clear. Not one touch of death in the definite

green of the leaves. She could hear birds and, faintly, the stream way down in the meadow. The puppy,

Here Boy, was burying the last bones from yesterday's party. From somewhere at the side of the house

came the voices of Buglar, Howard and the crawling girl. Nothing seemed amiss—yet the smell of

disapproval was sharp. Back beyond the vegetable garden, closer to the stream but in full sun, she had

planted corn. Much as they'd picked for the party, there were still ears ripening, which she could see from

where she stood. Baby Suggs leaned back into the peppers and the squash vines with her hoe. Carefully,

with the blade at just the right angle, she cut through a stalk of insistent rue. Its flowers she stuck through

a split in her hat; the rest she tossed aside. The quiet clok clok clok of wood splitting reminded her that

Stamp was doing the chore he promised to the night before. She sighed at her work and, a moment later,

straightened up to sniff the disapproval once again. Resting on the handle of the hoe, she concentrated.

She was accustomed to the knowledge that nobody prayed for her—but this free-floating repulsion was

new. It wasn't whitefolks—that much she could tell—so it must be colored ones. And then she knew. Her

friends and neighbors were angry at her because she had overstepped, given too much, offended them by

excess.

Baby closed her eyes. Perhaps they were right. Suddenly, behind the disapproving odor, way way back

behind it, she smelled another thing. Dark and coming. Something she couldn't get at because the other

odor hid it.

She squeezed her eyes tight to see what it was but all she could make out was high-topped shoes she

didn't like the look of.

Thwarted yet wondering, she chopped away with the hoe. What could it be? This dark and coming

thing. What was left to hurt her now? News of Halle's death? No. She had been prepared for that better

than she had for his life. The last of her children, whom she barely glanced at when he was born because it

wasn't worth the trouble to try to learn features you would never see change into adulthood anyway.

Seven times she had done that: held a little foot; examined the fat fingertips with her own—fingers she

never saw become the male or female hands a mother would recognize anywhere. She didn't know to this

day what their permanent teeth looked like; or how they held their heads when they walked. Did Patty lose

her lisp? What color did Famous' skin finally take? Was that a cleft in Johnny's chin or just a dimple that

would disappear soon's his jawbone changed? Four girls, and the last time she saw them there was no hair

under their arms. Does Ardelia still love the burned bottom of bread? All seven were gone or dead. What

would be the point of looking too hard at that youngest one? But for some reason they let her keep him.

He was with her—everywhere.

When she hurt her hip in Carolina she was a real bargain (costing less than Halle, who was ten then)

for Mr. Garner, who took them both to Kentucky to a farm he called Sweet Home. Because of the hip she

jerked like a three-legged dog when she walked. But at Sweet Home there wasn't a rice field or tobacco

patch in sight, and nobody, but nobody, knocked her down. Not once. Lillian Garner called her Jenny for

some reason but she never pushed, hit or called her mean names. Even when she slipped in cow dung and

broke every egg in her apron, nobody said you-black-bitch, what's-the-matter-with-you and nobody

knocked her down.

Sweet Home was tiny compared to the places she had been. Mr. Garner, Mrs. Garner, herself, Halle,

and four boys, over half named Paul, made up the entire population. Mrs. Garner hummed when she

worked; Mr. Garner acted like the world was a toy he was supposed to have fun with. Neither wanted her

in the field—Mr. Garner's boys, including Halle, did all of that—which was a blessing since she could not

have managed it anyway. What she did was stand beside the humming Lillian Garner while the two of

them cooked, preserved, washed, ironed, made candles, clothes, soap and cider; fed chickens, pigs, dogs

and geese; milked cows, churned butter, rendered fat, laid fires...Nothing to it. And nobody knocked her

down.

Her hip hurt every single day—but she never spoke of it. Only Halle, who had watched her

movements closely for the last four years, knew that to get in and out of bed she had to lift her thigh with

both hands, which was why he spoke to Mr. Garner about buying her out of there so she could sit down

for a change. Sweet boy. The one person who did something hard for her: gave her his work, his life and

now his children, whose voices she could just make out as she stood in the garden wondering what was

the dark and coming thing behind the scent of disapproval. Sweet Home was a marked improvement. No

question. And no matter, for the sadness was at her center, the desolated center where the self that was no

self made its home. Sad as it was that she did not know where her children were buried or what they

looked like if alive, fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the

map to discover what she was like.

Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could

she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother

knew me would she like me?

In Lillian Garner's house, exempted from the field work that broke her hip and the exhaustion that

drugged her mind; in Lillian Garner's house where nobody knocked her down (or up), she listened to the

whitewoman humming at her work; watched her face light up when Mr. Garner came in and thought, It's

better here, but I'm not. The Garners, it seemed to her, ran a special kind of slavery, treating them like

paid labor, listening to what they said, teaching what they wanted known. And he didn't stud his boys.

Never brought them to her cabin with directions to "lay down with her," like they did in Carolina, or

rented their sex out on other farms. It surprised and pleased her, but worried her too. Would he pick

women for them or what did he think was going to happen when those boys ran smack into their nature?

Some danger he was courting and he surely knew it. In fact, his order for them not to leave Sweet Home,

except in his company, was not so much because of the law, but the danger of men-bred slaves on the

loose.

Baby Suggs talked as little as she could get away with because what was there to say that the roots of

her tongue could manage? So the whitewoman, finding her new slave excellent if silent help, hummed to

herself while she worked.

When Mr. Garner agreed to the arrangements with Halle, and when Halle looked like it meant more to

him that she go free than anything in the world, she let herself be taken 'cross the river. Of the two hard

things—standing on her feet till she dropped or leaving her last and probably only living child—she chose

the hard thing that made him happy, and never put to him the question she put to herself: What for? What

does a sixty-odd-year-old slavewoman who walks like a three-legged dog need freedom for? And when

she stepped foot on free ground she could not believe that Halle knew what she didn't; that Halle, who had

never drawn one free breath, knew that there was nothing like it in this world. It scared her.

Something's the matter. What's the matter? What's the matter? she asked herself. She didn't know

what she looked like and was not curious. But suddenly she saw her hands and thought with a clarity as

simple as it was dazzling, "These hands belong to me. These my hands." Next she felt a knocking in her

chest and discovered something else new: her own heartbeat. Had it been there all along? This pounding

thing? She felt like a fool and began to laugh out loud. Mr. Garner looked over his shoulder at her with

wide brown eyes and smiled himself. "What's funny, Jenny?"

She couldn't stop laughing. "My heart's beating," she said.

And it was true.

M. Garner laughed. "Nothing to be scared of, Jenny. Just keep your same ways, you'll be all right."

She covered her mouth to keep from laughing too loud.

"These people I'm taking you to will give you what help you need. Name of Bodwin. A brother and a

sister. Scots. I been knowing them for twenty years or more."

Baby Suggs thought it was a good time to ask him something she had long wanted to know.

"Mr. Garner," she said, "why you all call me Jenny?"

"'Cause that what's on your sales ticket, gal. Ain't that your name? What you call yourself?"

"Nothing," she said. "I don't call myself nothing."

Mr. Garner went red with laughter. "When I took you out of Carolina, Whitlow called you Jenny and

Jenny Whitlow is what his bill said. Didn't he call you Jenny?"

"No, sir. If he did I didn't hear it."

"What did you answer to?"

"Anything, but Suggs is what my husband name."

"You got married, Jenny? I didn't know it."

"Manner of speaking."

"You know where he is, this husband?"

"No, sir."

"Is that Halle's daddy?"

"No, sir."

"Why you call him Suggs, then? His bill of sale says Whitlow too, just like yours."

"Suggs is my name, sir. From my husband. He didn't call me Jenny."

"What he call you?"

"Baby."

"Well," said Mr. Garner, going pink again, "if I was you I'd stick to Jenny Whitlow. Mrs. Baby Suggs

ain't no name for a freed Negro."

Maybe not, she thought, but Baby Suggs was all she had left of the "husband" she claimed. A serious,

melancholy man who taught her how to make shoes. The two of them made a pact: whichever one got a

chance to run would take it; together if possible, alone if not, and no looking back. He got his chance, and

since she never heard otherwise she believed he made it. Now how could he find or hear tell of her if she

was calling herself some bill-of-sale name?

She couldn't get over the city. More people than Carolina and enough whitefolks to stop the breath.

Two-story buildings everywhere, and walkways made of perfectly cut slats of wood. Roads wide as

Garner's whole house.

"This is a city of water," said Mr. Garner. "Everything travels by water and what the rivers can't carry

the canals take. A queen of a city, Jenny. Everything you ever dreamed of, they make it right here. Iron

stoves, buttons, ships, shirts, hairbrushes, paint, steam engines, books. A sewer system make your eyes

bug out. Oh, this is a city, all right. If you have to live in a city—this is it."

The Bodwins lived right in the center of a street full of houses and trees. Mr. Garner leaped out and

tied his horse to a solid iron post.

"Here we are."

Baby picked up her bundle and with great difficulty, caused by her hip and the hours of sitting in a

wagon, climbed down. Mr. Garner was up the walk and on the porch before she touched ground, but she

got a peep at a Negro girl's face at the open door before she followed a path to the back of the house. She

waited what seemed a long time before this same girl opened the kitchen door and offered her a seat by

the window.

"Can I get you anything to eat, ma'am?" the girl asked.

"No, darling. I'd look favorable on some water though." The girl went to the sink and pumped a

cupful of water. She placed it in Baby Suggs' hand. "I'm Janey, ma'am."

Baby, marveling at the sink, drank every drop of water although it tasted like a serious medicine.

"Suggs," she said, blotting her lips with the back of her hand. "Baby Suggs."

"Glad to meet you, Mrs. Suggs. You going to be staying here?"

"I don't know where I'll be. Mr. Garner—that's him what brought me here—he say he arrange

something for me." And then, "I'm free, you know."

Janey smiled. "Yes, ma'am."

"Your people live around here?"

"Yes, ma'am. All us live out on Bluestone."

"We scattered," said Baby Suggs, "but maybe not for long."

Great God, she thought, where do I start? Get somebody to write old Whitlow. See who took Patty and

Rosa Lee. Somebody name Dunn got Ardelia and went West, she heard. No point in trying for Tyree or

John. They cut thirty years ago and, if she searched too hard and they were hiding, finding them would do

them more harm than good. Nancy and Famous died in a ship off the Virginia coast before it set sail for

Savannah. That much she knew. The overseer at Whitlow's place brought her the news, more from a wish

to have his way with her than from the kindness of his heart. The captain waited three weeks in port, to get

a full cargo before setting off. Of the slaves in the hold who didn't make it, he said, two were Whitlow

pickaninnies name of...

But she knew their names. She knew, and covered her ears with her fists to keep from hearing them

come from his mouth.

Janey heated some milk and poured it in a bowl next to a plate of cornbread. After some coaxing,

Baby Suggs came to the table and sat down. She crumbled the bread into the hot milk and discovered she

was hungrier than she had ever been in her life and that was saying something.

"They going to miss this?"

"No," said Janey. "Eat all you want; it's ours."

"Anybody else live here?"

"Just me. Mr. Woodruff, he does the outside chores. He comes by two, three days a week."

"Just you two?"

"Yes, ma'am. I do the cooking and washing."

"Maybe your people know of somebody looking for help."

"I be sure to ask, but I know they take women at the slaughterhouse."

"Doing what?"

"I don't know."

"Something men don't want to do, I reckon."

"My cousin say you get all the meat you want, plus twenty-five cents the hour. She make summer

sausage."

Baby Suggs lifted her hand to the top of her head. Money? Money? They would pay her money every

single day? Money?

"Where is this here slaughterhouse?" she asked.

Before Janey could answer, the Bodwins came in to the kitchen with a grinning Mr. Garner behind.

Undeniably brother and sister, both dressed in gray with faces too young for their snow-white hair.

"Did you give her anything to eat, Janey?" asked the brother.

"Yes, sir."

"Keep your seat, Jenny," said the sister, and that good news got better.

When they asked what work she could do, instead of reeling off the hundreds of tasks she had

performed, she asked about the slaughterhouse. She was too old for that, they said.

"She's the best cobbler you ever see," said Mr. Garner.

"Cobbler?" Sister Bodwin raised her black thick eyebrows. "Who taught you that?"

"Was a slave taught me," said Baby Suggs.

"New boots, or just repair?"

"New, old, anything."

"Well," said Brother Bodwin, "that'll be something, but you'll need more."

"What about taking in wash?" asked Sister Bodwin.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Two cents a pound."

"Yes, ma'am. But where's the in?"

"What?"

"You said 'take in wash.' Where is the 'in'? Where I'm going to be."

"Oh, just listen to this, Jenny," said Mr. Garner. "These two angels got a house for you. Place they

own out a ways."

It had belonged to their grandparents before they moved in town. Recently it had been rented out to a

whole parcel of Negroes, who had left the state. It was too big a house for Jenny alone, they said (two

rooms upstairs, two down), but it was the best and the only thing they could do. In return for laundry,

some seamstress work, a little canning and so on (oh shoes, too), they would permit her to stay there.

Provided she was clean. The past parcel of colored wasn't Baby Suggs agreed to the situation, sorry to see

the money go but excited about a house with steps—never mind she couldn't climb them. Mr. Garner told

the Bodwins that she was a right fine cook as well as a fine cobbler and showed his belly and the sample

on his feet. Everybody laughed.

"Anything you need, let us know," said the sister. "We don't hold with slavery, even Garner's kind."

"Tell em, Jenny. You live any better on any place before mine?"

"No, sir," she said. "No place."

"How long was you at Sweet Home?"

"Ten year, I believe."

"Ever go hungry?"

"No, sir."

"Cold?"

"No, sir."

"Anybody lay a hand on you?"

"No, sir."

"Did I let Halle buy you or not?"

"Yes, sir, you did," she said, thinking, But you got my boy and I'm all broke down. You be renting

him out to pay for me way after I'm gone to Glory.

Woodruff, they said, would carry her out there, they said, and all three disappeared through the kitchen

door.

"I have to fix the supper now," said Janey.

"I'll help," said Baby Suggs. "You too short to reach the fire."

It was dark when Woodruff clicked the horse into a trot. He was a young man with a heavy beard and

a burned place on his jaw the beard did not hide.

"You born up here?" Baby Suggs asked him.

"No, ma'am. Virginia. Been here a couple years."

"I see."

"You going to a nice house. Big too. A preacher and his family was in there. Eighteen children."

"Have mercy. Where they go?"

"Took off to Illinois. Bishop Allen gave him a congregation up there. Big."

"What churches around here? I ain't set foot in one in ten years."

"How come?"

"Wasn't none. I dislike the place I was before this last one, but I did get to church every Sunday some

kind of way. I bet the Lord done forgot who I am by now."

"Go see Reverend Pike, ma'am. He'll reacquaint you."

"I won't need him for that. I can make my own acquaintance. What I need him for is to reacquaint me

with my children. He can read and write, I reckon?"

"Sure."

"Good, 'cause I got a lot of digging up to do." But the news they dug up was so pitiful she quit. After

two years of messages written by the preacher's hand, two years of washing, sewing, canning, cobbling,

gardening, and sitting in churches, all she found out was that the Whitlow place was gone and that you

couldn't write to "a man named Dunn" if all you knew was that he went West. The good news, however,

was that Halle got married and had a baby coming. She fixed on that and her own brand of preaching,

having made up her mind about what to do with the heart that started beating the minute she crossed the

Ohio River. And it worked out, worked out just fine, until she got proud and let herself be overwhelmed

by the sight of her daughter-in-law and Halle's children—one of whom was born on the way—and have a

celebration of blackberries that put Christmas to shame. Now she stood in the garden smelling

disapproval, feeling a dark and coming thing, and seeing high-topped shoes that she didn't like the look of

at all. At all.

WHEN THE four horsemen came—schoolteacher, one nephew, one slave catcher and a sheriff—the

house on Bluestone Road was so quiet they thought they were too late. Three of them dismounted, one

stayed in the saddle, his rifle ready, his eyes trained away from the house to the left and to the right,

because likely as not the fugitive would make a dash for it. Although sometimes, you could never tell,

you'd find them folded up tight somewhere: beneath floorboards, in a pantry—once in a chimney. Even

then care was taken, because the quietest ones, the ones you pulled from a press, a hayloft, or, that once,

from a chimney, would go along nicely for two or three seconds. Caught red-handed, so to speak, they

would seem to recognize the futility of outsmarting a whiteman and the hopelessness of outrunning a rifle.

Smile even, like a child caught dead with his hand in the jelly jar, and when you reached for the rope to tie

him, well, even then you couldn't tell. The very nigger with his head hanging and a little jelly-jar smile on

his face could all of a sudden roar, like a bull or some such, and commence to do disbelievable things.

Grab the rifle at its mouth; throw himself at the one holding it—anything. So you had to keep back a pace,

leave the tying to another. Otherwise you ended up killing what you were paid to bring back alive. Unlike

a snake or a bear, a dead nigger could not be skinned for profit and was not worth his own dead weight in

coin.

Six or seven Negroes were walking up the road toward the house: two boys from the slave catcher's

left and some women from his right. He motioned them still with his rifle and they stood where they were.

The nephew came back from peeping inside the house, and after touching his lips for silence, pointed his

thumb to say that what they were looking for was round back. The slave catcher dismounted then and

joined the others. Schoolteacher and the nephew moved to the left of the house; himself and the sheriff to

the right. A crazy old nigger was standing in the woodpile with an ax. You could tell he was crazy right

off because he was grunting—making low, cat noises like. About twelve yards beyond that nigger was

another one—a woman with a flower in her hat. Crazy too, probably, because she too was standing stock-

still—but fanning her hands as though pushing cobwebs out of her way. Both, however, were staring at

the same place—a shed. Nephew walked over to the old nigger boy and took the ax from him. Then all

four started toward the shed.

Inside, two boys bled in the sawdust and dirt at the feet of a nigger woman holding a blood-soaked

child to her chest with one hand and an infant by the heels in the other. She did not look at them; she

simply swung the baby toward the wall planks, missed and tried to connect a second time, when out of

nowhere—in the ticking time the men spent staring at what there was to stare at—the old nigger boy, still

mewing, ran through the door behind them and snatched the baby from the arch of its mother's swing.

Right off it was clear, to schoolteacher especially, that there was nothing there to claim. The three

(now four-because she'd had the one coming when she cut) pickaninnies they had hoped were alive and

well enough to take back to Kentucky, take back and raise properly to do the work Sweet Home

desperately needed, were not. Two were lying open-eyed in sawdust; a third pumped blood down the dress

of the main one—the woman schoolteacher bragged about, the one he said made fine ink, damn good

soup, pressed his collars the way he liked besides having at least ten breeding years left. But now she'd

gone wild, due to the mishandling of the nephew who'd overbeat her and made her cut and run.

Schoolteacher had chastised that nephew, telling him to think—just think—what would his own horse do

if you beat it beyond the point of education. Or Chipper, or Samson. Suppose you beat the hounds past

that point thataway. Never again could you trust them in the woods or anywhere else. You'd be feeding

them maybe, holding out a piece of rabbit in your hand, and the animal would revert—bite your hand

clean off. So he punished that nephew by not letting him come on the hunt. Made him stay there, feed

stock, feed himself, feed Lillian, tend crops. See how he liked it; see what happened when you overbeat

creatures God had given you the responsibility of—the trouble it was, and the loss. The whole lot was lost

now. Five. He could claim the baby struggling in the arms of the mewing old man, but who'd tend her?

Because the woman—something was wrong with her. She was looking at him now, and if his other

nephew could see that look he would learn the lesson for sure: you just can't mishandle creatures and

expect success.

The nephew, the one who had nursed her while his brother held her down, didn't know he was

shaking. His uncle had warned him against that kind of confusion, but the warning didn't seem to be

taking. What she go and do that for? On account of a beating? Hell, he'd been beat a million times and he

was white. Once it hurt so bad and made him so mad he'd smashed the well bucket. Another time he took

it out on Samson—a few tossed rocks was all. But no beating ever made him...I mean no way he could

have...What she go and do that for? And that is what he asked the sheriff, who was standing there amazed

like the rest of them, but not shaking. He was swallowing hard, over and over again. "What she want to go

and do that for?"

The sheriff turned, then said to the other three, "You all better go on. look like your business is over.

Mine's started now."

Schoolteacher beat his hat against his thigh and spit before leaving the woodshed. Nephew and the

catcher backed out with him. They didn't look at the woman in the pepper plants with the flower in her

hat. And they didn't look at the seven or so faces that had edged closer in spite of the catcher's rifle

warning. Enough nigger eyes for now. Little nigger-boy eyes open in sawdust; little nigger-girl eyes

staring between the wet fingers that held her face so her head wouldn't fall off; little nigger-baby eyes

crinkling up to cry in the arms of the old nigger whose own eyes were nothing but slivers looking down at

his feet. But the worst ones were those of the nigger woman who looked like she didn't have any. Since

the whites in them had disappeared and since they were as black as her skin, she looked blind.

They unhitched from schoolteacher's horse the borrowed mule that was to carry the fugitive woman

back to where she belonged, and tied it to the fence. Then, with the sun straight up over their heads, they

trotted off, leaving the sheriff behind among the damnedest bunch of coons they'd ever seen. All

testimony to the results of a little so-called freedom imposed on people who needed every care and

guidance in the world to keep them from the cannibal life they preferred.

The sheriff wanted to back out too. To stand in the sunlight outside of that place meant for housing

wood, coal, kerosene—fuel for cold Ohio winters, which he thought of now, while resisting the urge to

run into the August sunlight. Not because he was afraid. Not at all. He was just cold. And he didn't want

to touch anything. The baby in the old man's arms was crying, and the woman's eyes with no whites were

gazing straight ahead. They all might have remained that way, frozen till Thursday, except one of the boys

on the floor sighed. As if he were sunk in the pleasure of a deep sweet sleep, he sighed the sigh that flung

the sheriff into action.

"I'll have to take you in. No trouble now. You've done enough to last you. Come on now."

She did not move.

"You come quiet, hear, and I won't have to tie you up."

She stayed still and he had made up his mind to go near her and some kind of way bind her wet red

hands when a shadow behind him in the doorway made him turn. The nigger with the flower in her hat

entered.

Baby Suggs noticed who breathed and who did not and went straight to the boys lying in the dirt. The

old man moved to the woman gazing and said, "Sethe. You take my armload and gimme yours."

She turned to him, and glancing at the baby he was holding, made a low sound in her throat as though

she'd made a mistake, left the salt out of the bread or something.

"I'm going out here and send for a wagon," the sheriff said and got into the sunlight at last.

But neither Stamp Paid nor Baby Suggs could make her put her crawling-already? girl down. Out of

the shed, back in the house, she held on. Baby Suggs had got the boys inside and was bathing their heads,

rubbing their hands, lifting their lids, whispering, "Beg your pardon, I beg your pardon," the whole time.

She bound their wounds and made them breathe camphor before turning her attention to Sethe. She took

the crying baby from Stamp Paid and carried it on her shoulder for a full two minutes, then stood in front

of its mother.

"It's time to nurse your youngest," she said.

Sethe reached up for the baby without letting the dead one go.

Baby Suggs shook her head. "One at a time," she said and traded the living for the dead, which she

carried into the keeping room. When she came back, Sethe was aiming a bloody nipple into the baby's

mouth. Baby Suggs slammed her fist on the table and shouted, "Clean up! Clean yourself up!"

They fought then. Like rivals over the heart of the loved, they fought. Each struggling for the nursing

child. Baby Suggs lost when she slipped in a red puddle and fell. So Denver took her mother's milk right

along with the blood of her sister. And that's the way they were when the sheriff returned, having

commandeered a neighbor's cart, and ordered Stamp to drive it.

Outside a throng, now, of black faces stopped murmuring. Holding the living child, Sethe walked past

them in their silence and hers. She climbed into the cart, her profile knife-clean against a cheery blue sky.

A profile that shocked them with its clarity. Was her head a bit too high? Her back a little too straight?

Probably. Otherwise the singing would have begun at once, the moment she appeared in the doorway of

the house on Bluestone Road. Some cape of sound would have quickly been wrapped around her, like

arms to hold and steady her on the way. As it was, they waited till the cart turned about, headed west to

town. And then no words. Humming. No words at all.

Baby Suggs meant to run, skip down the porch steps after the cart, screaming, No. No. Don't let her

take that last one too. She meant to. Had started to, but when she got up from the floor and reached the

yard the cart was gone and a wagon was rolling up. A red-haired boy and a yellow-haired girl jumped

down and ran through the crowd toward her. The boy had a half-eaten sweet pepper in one hand and a pair

of shoes in the other.

"Mama says Wednesday." He held them together by their tongues. "She says you got to have these

fixed by Wednesday."

Baby Suggs looked at him, and then at the woman holding a twitching lead horse to the road.

"She says Wednesday, you hear? Baby? Baby?"

She took the shoes from him—high-topped and muddy—saying, "I beg your pardon. Lord, I beg your

pardon. I sure do."

Out of sight, the cart creaked on down Bluestone Road. Nobody in it spoke. The wagon rock had put

the baby to sleep. The hot sun dried Sethe's dress, stiff, like rigor mortis.

THAT AIN'T her mouth.

Anybody who didn't know her, or maybe somebody who just got a glimpse of her through the

peephole at the restaurant, might think it was hers, but Paul D knew better. Oh well, a little something

around the forehead—a quietness—that kind of reminded you of her. But there was no way you could take

that for her mouth and he said so. Told Stamp Paid, who was watching him carefully.

"I don't know, man. Don't look like it to me. I know Sethe's mouth and this ain't it." He smoothed the

clipping with his fingers and peered at it, not at all disturbed. From the solemn air with which Stamp had

unfolded the paper, the tenderness in the old man's fingers as he stroked its creases and flattened it out,

first on his knees, then on the split top of the piling, Paul D knew that it ought to mess him up. That

whatever was written on it should shake him.

Pigs were crying in the chute. All day Paul D, Stamp Paid and twenty more had pushed and prodded

them from canal to shore to chute to slaughterhouse. Although, as grain farmers moved west, St. Louis

and Chicago now ate up a lot of the business, Cincinnati was still pig port in the minds of Ohioans. Its

main job was to receive, slaughter and ship up the river the hogs that Northerners did not want to live

without. For a month or so in the winter any stray man had work, if he could breathe the stench of offal

and stand up for twelve hours, skills in which Paul D was admirably trained.

A little pig shit, rinsed from every place he could touch, remained on his boots, and he was conscious

of it as he stood there with a light smile of scorn curling his lips. Usually he left his boots in the shed and

put his walking shoes on along with his day clothes in the corner before he went home. A route that took

him smack dab through the middle of a cemetery as old as sky, rife with the agitation of dead Miami no

longer content to rest in the mounds that covered them. Over their heads walked a strange people; through

their earth pillows roads were cut; wells and houses nudged them out of eternal rest. Outraged more by

their folly in believing land was holy than by the disturbances of their peace, they growled on the banks of

Licking River, sighed in the trees on Catherine Street and rode the wind above the pig yards. Paul D heard

them but he stayed on because all in all it wasn't a bad job, especially in winter when Cincinnati

reassumed its status of slaughter and riverboat capital. The craving for pork was growing into a mania in

every city in the country. Pig farmers were cashing in, provided they could raise enough and get them sold

farther and farther away. And the Germans who flooded southern Ohio brought and developed swine

cooking to its highest form. Pig boats jammed the Ohio River, and their captains' hollering at one another

over the grunts of the stock was as common a water sound as that of the ducks flying over their heads.

Sheep, cows and fowl too floated up and down that river, and all a Negro had to do was show up and there

was work: poking, killing, cutting, skinning, case packing and saving offal.

A hundred yards from the crying pigs, the two men stood behind a shed on Western Row and it was

clear why Stamp had been eyeing Paul D this last week of work; why he paused when the evening shift

came on, to let Paul D's movements catch up to his own. He had made up his mind to show him this piece

of paper—newspaper—with a picture drawing of a woman who favored Sethe except that was not her

mouth. Nothing like it.

Paul D slid the clipping out from under Stamp's palm. The print meant nothing to him so he didn't

even glance at it. He simply looked at the face, shaking his head no. No. At the mouth, you see. And no at

whatever it was those black scratches said, and no to whatever it was Stamp Paid wanted him to know.

Because there was no way in hell a black face could appear in a newspaper if the story was about

something anybody wanted to hear. A whip of fear broke through the heart chambers as soon as you saw a

Negro's face in a paper, since the face was not there because the person had a healthy baby, or outran a

street mob. Nor was it there because the person had been killed, or maimed or caught or burned or jailed

or whipped or evicted or stomped or raped or cheated, since that could hardly qualify as news in a

newspaper. It would have to be something out of the ordinary—something whitepeople would find

interesting, truly different, worth a few minutes of teeth sucking if not gasps. And it must have been hard

to find news about Negroes worth the breath catch of a white citizen of Cincinnati.

So who was this woman with a mouth that was not Sethe's, but whose eyes were almost as calm as

hers? Whose head was turned on her neck in the manner he loved so well it watered his eye to see it.

And he said so. "This ain't her mouth. I know her mouth and this ain't it." Before Stamp Paid could

speak he said it and even while he spoke Paul D said it again. Oh, he heard all the old man was saying, but

the more he heard, the stranger the lips in the drawing became.

Stamp started with the party, the one Baby Suggs gave, but stopped and backed up a bit to tell about

the berries—where they were and what was in the earth that made them grow like that.

"They open to the sun, but not the birds, 'cause snakes down in there and the birds know it, so they

just grow—fat and sweet—with nobody to bother em 'cept me because don't nobody go in that piece of

water but me and ain't too many legs willing to glide down that bank to get them. Me neither. But I was

willing that day. Somehow or 'nother I was willing. And they whipped me, I'm telling you. Tore me up.

But I filled two buckets anyhow. And took em over to Baby Suggs' house. It was on from then on. Such a

cooking you never see no more. We baked, fried and stewed everything God put down here. Everybody

came. Everybody stuffed. Cooked so much there wasn't a stick of kindlin left for the next day. I

volunteered to do it. And next morning I come over, like I promised, to do it."

"But this ain't her mouth," Paul D said. "This ain't it at all."

Stamp Paid looked at him. He was going to tell him about how restless Baby Suggs was that morning,

how she had a listening way about her; how she kept looking down past the corn to the stream so much he

looked too. In between ax swings, he watched where Baby was watching. Which is why they both missed

it: they were looking the wrong way—toward water—and all the while it was coming down the road.

Four. Riding close together, bunched-up like, and righteous. He was going to tell him that, because he

thought it was important: why he and Baby Suggs both missed it. And about the party too, because that

explained why nobody ran on ahead; why nobody sent a fleet-footed son to cut 'cross a field soon as they

saw the four horses in town hitched for watering while the riders asked questions. Not Ella, not John, not

anybody ran down or to Bluestone Road, to say some new whitefolks with the Look just rode in. The

righteous Look every Negro learned to recognize along with his ma'am's tit. Like a flag hoisted, this

righteousness telegraphed and announced the faggot, the whip, the fist, the lie, long before it went public.

Nobody warned them, and he'd always believed it wasn't the exhaustion from a long day's gorging that

dulled them, but some other thing—like, well, like meanness—that let them stand aside, or not pay

attention, or tell themselves somebody else was probably bearing the news already to the house on

Bluestone Road where a pretty woman had been living for almost a month. Young and deft with four

children one of which she delivered herself the day before she got there and who now had the full benefit

of Baby Suggs' bounty and her big old heart. Maybe they just wanted to know if Baby really was special,

blessed in some way they were not. He was going to tell him that, but Paul D was laughing, saying, "Uh

uh. No way. A little semblance round the forehead maybe, but this ain't her mouth."

So Stamp Paid did not tell him how she flew, snatching up her children like a hawk on the wing; how

her face beaked, how her hands worked like claws, how she collected them every which way: one on her

shoulder, one under her arm, one by the hand, the other shouted forward into the woodshed filled with just

sunlight and shavings now because there wasn't any wood. The party had used it all, which is why he was

chopping some. Nothing was in that shed, he knew, having been there early that morning. Nothing but

sunlight. Sunlight, shavings, a shovel. The ax he himself took out. Nothing else was in there except the

shovel—and of course the saw.

"You forgetting I knew her before," Paul D was saying. "Back in Kentucky. When she was a girl. I

didn't just make her acquaintance a few months ago. I been knowing her a long time. And I can tell you

for sure: this ain't her mouth. May look like it, but it ain't."

So Stamp Paid didn't say it all. Instead he took a breath and leaned toward the mouth that was not hers

and slowly read out the words Paul D couldn't. And when he finished, Paul D said with a vigor fresher

than the first time, "I'm sorry, Stamp. It's a mistake somewhere 'cause that ain't her mouth."

Stamp looked into Paul D's eyes and the sweet conviction in them almost made him wonder if it had

happened at all, eighteen years ago, that while he and Baby Suggs were looking the wrong way, a pretty

little slavegirl had recognized a hat, and split to the woodshed to kill her children.

"SHE WAS crawling already when I got here. One week, less, and the baby who was sitting up and

turning over when I put her on the wagon was crawling already. Devil of a time keeping her off the stairs.

Nowadays babies get up and walk soon's you drop em, but twenty years ago when I was a girl, babies

stayed babies longer. Howard didn't pick up his own head till he was nine months. Baby Suggs said it was

the food, you know. If you ain't got nothing but milk to give em, well they don't do things so quick. Milk

was all I ever had. I thought teeth meant they was ready to chew. Wasn't nobody to ask. Mrs. Garner

never had no children and we was the only women there."

She was spinning. Round and round the room. Past the jelly cupboard, past the window, past the front

door, another window, the sideboard, the keeping-room door, the dry sink, the stove—back to the jelly

cupboard. Paul D sat at the table watching her drift into view then disappear behind his back, turning like

a slow but steady wheel. Sometimes she crossed her hands behind her back. Other times she held her ears,

covered her mouth or folded her arms across her breasts. Once in a while she rubbed her hips as she

turned, but the wheel never stopped.

"Remember Aunt Phyllis? From out by Minnowville? Mr. Garner sent one a you all to get her for each

and every one of my babies. That'd be the only time I saw her. Many's the time I wanted to get over to

where she was. Just to talk. My plan was to ask Mrs. Garner to let me off at Minnowville whilst she went

to meeting. Pick me up on her way back. I believe she would a done that if I was to ask her. I never did,

'cause that's the only day Halle and me had with sunlight in it for the both of us to see each other by. So

there wasn't nobody. To talk to, I mean, who'd know when it was time to chew up a little something and

give it to em. Is that what make the teeth come on out, or should you wait till the teeth came and then solid

food? Well, I know now, because Baby Suggs fed her right, and a week later, when I got here she was

crawling already. No stopping her either. She loved those steps so much we painted them so she could see

her way to the top."

Sethe smiled then, at the memory of it. The smile broke in two and became a sudden suck of air, but

she did not shudder or close her eyes. She wheeled.

"I wish I'd a known more, but, like I say, there wasn't nobody to talk to. Woman, I mean. So I tried to

recollect what I'd seen back where I was before Sweet Home. How the women did there. Oh they knew all

about it. How to make that thing you use to hang the babies in the trees—so you could see them out of

harm's way while you worked the fields. Was a leaf thing too they gave em to chew on. Mint, I believe, or

sassafras. Comfrey, maybe. I still don't know how they constructed that basket thing, but I didn't need it

anyway, because all my work was in the barn and the house, but I forgot what the leaf was. I could have

used that. I tied Buglar when we had all that pork to smoke. Fire everywhere and he was getting into

everything. I liked to lost him so many times. Once he got up on the well, right on it. I flew. Snatched him

just in time. So when I knew we'd be rendering and smoking and I couldn't see after him, well, I got a

rope and tied it round his ankle. Just long enough to play round a little, but not long enough to reach the

well or the fire. I didn't like the look of it, but I didn't know what else to do. It's hard, you know what I

mean? by yourself and no woman to help you get through. Halle was good, but he was debt-working all

over the place. And when he did get down to a little sleep, I didn't want to be bothering him with all that.

Sixo was the biggest help. I don't 'spect you rememory this, but Howard got in the milk parlor and Red

Cora I believe it was mashed his hand. Turned his thumb backwards. When I got to him, she was getting

ready to bite it. I don't know to this day how I got him out. Sixo heard him screaming and come running.

Know what he did? Turned the thumb right back and tied it cross his palm to his little finger. See, I never

would have thought of that. Never. Taught me a lot, Sixo."

It made him dizzy. At first he thought it was her spinning. Circling him the way she was circling the

subject. Round and round, never changing direction, which might have helped his head. Then he thought,

No, it's the sound of her voice; it's too near. Each turn she made was at least three yards from where he

sat, but listening to her was like having a child whisper into your ear so close you could feel its lips form

the words you couldn't make out because they were too close. He caught only pieces of what she said—

which was fine, because she hadn't gotten to the main part—the answer to the question he had not asked

outright, but which lay in the clipping he showed her. And lay in the smile as well. Because he smiled too,

when he showed it to her, so when she burst out laughing at the joke—the mix-up of her face put where

some other coloredwoman's ought to be—well, he'd be ready to laugh right along with her. "Can you beat

it?" he would ask. And "Stamp done lost his mind," she would giggle. "Plumb lost it."

But his smile never got a chance to grow. It hung there, small and alone, while she examined the

clipping and then handed it back.

Perhaps it was the smile, or maybe the ever-ready love she saw in his eyes—easy and upfront, the way

colts, evangelists and children look at you: with love you don't have to deserve—that made her go ahead

and tell him what she had not told Baby Suggs, the only person she felt obliged to explain anything to.

Otherwise she would have said what the newspaper said she said and no more. Sethe could recognize only

seventy-five printed words (half of which appeared in the newspaper clipping), but she knew that the

words she did not understand hadn't any more power than she had to explain. It was the smile and the

upfront love that made her try.

"I don't have to tell you about Sweet Home—what it was—but maybe you don't know what it was

like for me to get away from there."

Covering the lower half of her face with her palms, she paused to consider again the size of the

miracle; its flavor.

"I did it. I got us all out. Without Halle too. Up till then it was the only thing I ever did on my own.

Decided. And it came off right, like it was supposed to. We was here. Each and every one of my babies

and me too. I birthed them and I got em out and it wasn't no accident. I did that. I had help, of course, lots

of that, but still it was me doing it; me saying, Go on, and Now. Me having to look out. Me using my own

head. But it was more than that. It was a kind of selfishness I never knew nothing about before. It felt

good. Good and right. I was big, Paul D, and deep and wide and when I stretched out my arms all my

children could get in between. I was that wide. Look like I loved em more after I got here. Or maybe I

couldn't love em proper in Kentucky because they wasn't mine to love. But when I got here, when I

jumped down off that wagon—there wasn't nobody in the world I couldn't love if I wanted to. You know

what I mean?"

Paul D did not answer because she didn't expect or want him to, but he did know what she meant.

Listening to the doves in Alfred, Georgia, and having neither the right nor the permission to enjoy it

because in that place mist, doves, sunlight, copper dirt, moon—everything belonged to the men who had

the guns. Little men, some of them, big men too, each one of whom he could snap like a twig if he wanted

to. Men who knew their manhood lay in their guns and were not even embarrassed by the knowledge that

without gunshot fox would laugh at them. And these "men" who made even vixen laugh could, if you let

them, stop you from hearing doves or loving moonlight. So you protected yourself and loved small.

Picked the tiniest stars out of the sky to own; lay down with head twisted in order to see the loved one

over the rim of the trench before you slept. Stole shy glances at her between the trees at chain-up. Grass

blades, salamanders, spiders, woodpeckers, beetles, a kingdom of ants. Anything bigger wouldn't do. A

woman, a child, a brother—a big love like that would split you wide open in Alfred, Georgia. He knew

exactly what she meant: to get to a place where you could love anything you chose—not to need

permission for desire—well now, that was freedom.

Circling, circling, now she was gnawing something else instead of getting to the point.

"There was this piece of goods Mrs. Garner gave me. Calico. Stripes it had with little flowers in

between. 'Bout a yard—not enough for more 'n a head tie. But I been wanting to make a shift for my girl

with it. Had the prettiest colors. I don't even know what you call that color: a rose but with yellow in it.

For the longest time I been meaning to make it for her and do you know like a fool I left it behind? No

more than a yard, and I kept putting it off because I was tired or didn't have the time. So when I got here,

even before they let me get out of bed, I stitched her a little something from a piece of cloth Baby Suggs

had. Well, all I'm saying is that's a selfish pleasure I never had before. I couldn't let all that go back to

where it was, and I couldn't let her nor any of em live under schoolteacher. That was out."

Sethe knew that the circle she was making around the room, him, the subject, would remain one. That

she could never close in, pin it down for anybody who had to ask. If they didn't get it right off—she could

never explain. Because the truth was simple, not a long-drawn-out record of flowered shifts, tree cages,

selfishness, ankle ropes and wells. Simple: she was squatting in the garden and when she saw them

coming and recognized schoolteacher's hat, she heard wings. Little hummingbirds stuck their needle

beaks right through her headcloth into her hair and beat their wings. And if she thought anything, it was

No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. She just flew. Collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her

that were precious and fine and beautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them through the veil, out, away,

over there where no one could hurt them. Over there. Outside this place, where they would be safe. And

the hummingbird wings beat on. Sethe paused in her circle again and looked out the window. She

remembered when the yard had a fence with a gate that somebody was always latching and unlatching in

the time when 124 was busy as a way station. She did not see the whiteboys who pulled it down, yanked

up the posts and smashed the gate leaving 124 desolate and exposed at the very hour when everybody

stopped dropping by. The shoulder weeds of Bluestone Road were all that came toward the house.

When she got back from the jail house, she was glad the fence was gone. That's where they had

hitched their horses—where she saw, floating above the railing as she squatted in the garden,

schoolteacher's hat. By the time she faced him, looked him dead in the eye, she had something in her arms

that stopped him in his tracks. He took a backward step with each jump of the baby heart until finally there

were none.

"I stopped him," she said, staring at the place where the fence used to be. "I took and put my babies

where they'd be safe."

The roaring in Paul D's head did not prevent him from hearing the pat she gave to the last word, and it

occurred to him that what she wanted for her children was exactly what was missing in 124: safety. Which

was the very first message he got the day he walked through the door. He thought he had made it safe, had

gotten rid of the danger; beat the shit out of it; run it off the place and showed it and everybody else the

difference between a mule and a plow. And because she had not done it before he got there her own self,

he thought it was because she could not do it. That she lived with 124 in helpless, apologetic resignation

because she had no choice; that minus husband, sons, mother-in-law, she and her slow-witted daughter

had to live there all alone making do. The prickly, mean-eyed Sweet Home girl he knew as Halle's girl

was obedient (like Halle), shy (like Halle), and work-crazy (like Halle). He was wrong. This here Sethe

was new. The ghost in her house didn't bother her for the very same reason a room-and-board witch with

new shoes was welcome. This here Sethe talked about love like any other woman; talked about baby

clothes like any other woman, but what she meant could cleave the bone. This here Sethe talked about

safety with a handsaw. This here new Sethe didn't know where the world stopped and she began.

Suddenly he saw what Stamp Paid wanted him to see: more important than what Sethe had done was what

she claimed. It scared him.

"Your love is too thick," he said, thinking, That bitch is looking at me; she is right over my head

looking down through the floor at me.

"Too thick?" she said, thinking of the Clearing where Baby Suggs' commands knocked the pods off

horse chestnuts. "Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all."

"Yeah. It didn't work, did it? Did it work?" he asked.

"It worked," she said.

"How? Your boys gone you don't know where. One girl dead, the other won't leave the yard. How did

it work?"

"They ain't at Sweet Home. Schoolteacher ain't got em."

"Maybe there's worse."

"It ain't my job to know what's worse. It's my job to know what is and to keep them away from what I

know is terrible. I did that."

"What you did was wrong, Sethe."

"I should have gone on back there? Taken my babies back there?"

"There could have been a way. Some other way."

"What way?"

"You got two feet, Sethe, not four," he said, and right then a forest sprang up between them; trackless

and quiet.

Later he would wonder what made him say it. The calves of his youth? or the conviction that he was

being observed through the ceiling? How fast he had moved from his shame to hers. From his cold-house

secret straight to her too-thick love.

Meanwhile the forest was locking the distance between them, giving it shape and heft.

He did not put his hat on right away. First he fingered it, deciding how his going would be, how to

make it an exit not an escape. And it was very important not to leave without looking. He stood up, turned

and looked up the white stairs. She was there all right. Standing straight as a line with her back to him. He

didn't rush to the door. He moved slowly and when he got there he opened it before asking Sethe to put

supper aside for him because he might be a little late getting back. Only then did he put on his hat.

Sweet, she thought. He must think I can't bear to hear him say it. That after all I have told him and

after telling me how many feet I have, "goodbye" would break me to pieces. Ain't that sweet.

"So long," she murmured from the far side of the trees.