Chapter 62
When once or twice Sethe tried to assert herself — be the unquestioned mother whose word waslaw and who knew what was best — Beloved slammed things, wiped the table clean of plates,threw salt on the floor, broke a windowpane.
She was not like them. She was wild game, and nobody said, Get on out of here, girl, and comeback when you get some sense. Nobody said, You raise your hand to me and I will knock you intothe middle of next week. Ax the trunk, the limb will die. Honor thy mother and father that thy daysmay be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. I will wrap you round that doorknob, don't nobody work for you and God don't love ugly ways.
No, no. They mended the plates, swept the salt, and little by little it dawned on Denver that if Sethedidn't wake up one morning and pick up a knife, Beloved might. Frightened as she was by thething in Sethe that could come out, it shamed her to see her mother serving a girl not much olderthan herself. When she saw her carrying out Beloved's night bucket, Denver raced to relieve her ofit. But the pain was unbearable when they ran low on food, and Denver watched her mother gowithout — pick-eating around the edges of the table and stove: the hominy that stuck on thebottom; the crusts and rinds and peelings of things. Once she saw her run her longest finger deep inan empty jam jar before rinsing and putting it away.
They grew tired, and even Beloved, who was getting bigger, seemed nevertheless as exhausted asthey were. In any case she substituted a snarl or a tooth-suck for waving a poker around and 124was quiet. Listless and sleepy with hunger Denver saw the flesh between her mother's forefingerand thumb fade. Saw Sethe's eyes bright but dead, alert but vacant, paying attention to everythingabout Beloved — her lineless palms, her forehead, the smile under her jaw, crooked and much toolong — everything except her basket-fat stomach. She also saw the sleeves of her own carnivalshirtwaist cover her fingers; hems that once showed her ankles now swept the floor. She sawthemselves beribboned, decked-out, limp and starving but locked in a love that wore everybodyout. Then Sethe spit up something she had not eaten and it rocked Denver like gunshot. The jobshe started out with, protecting Beloved from Sethe, changed to protecting her mother fromBeloved. Now it was obvious that her mother could die and leave them both and what wouldBeloved do then? Whatever was happening, it only worked with three — not two — and sinceneither Beloved nor Sethe seemed to care what the next day might bring (Sethe happy whenBeloved was; Beloved lapping devotion like cream), Denver knew it was on her. She would haveto leave the yard; step off the edge of the world, leave the two behind and go ask somebody forhelp.
Who would it be? Who could she stand in front of who wouldn't shame her on learning that hermother sat around like a rag doll, broke down, finally, from trying to take care of and make up for.
Denver knew about several people, from hearing her mother and grandmother talk. But she knew,personally, only two: an old man with white hair called Stamp and Lady Jones. Well, Paul D, ofcourse. And that boy who told her about Sethe. But they wouldn't do at all. Her heart kicked and anitchy burning in her throat made her swallow all her saliva away. She didn't even know which wayto go. When Sethe used to work at the restaurant and when she still had money to shop, she turnedright. Back when Denver went to Lady Jones' school, it was left.
The weather was warm; the day beautiful. It was April and everything alive was tentative. Denverwrapped her hair and her shoulders. In the brightest of the carnival dresses and wearing a stranger'sshoes, she stood on the porch of 124 ready to be swallowed up in the world beyond the edge of theporch. Out there where small things scratched and sometimes touched. Where words could bespoken that would close your ears shut. Where, if you were alone, feeling could overtake you andstick to you like a shadow. Out there where there were places in which things so bad had happenedthat when you went near them it would happen again. Like Sweet Home where time didn't pass and where, like her mother said, the bad was waiting for her as well. How would she know theseplaces? What was more — much more — -out there were whitepeople and how could you tellabout them? Sethe said the mouth and sometimes the hands. Grandma Baby said there was nodefense — they could prowl at will, change from one mind to another, and even when they thoughtthey were behaving, it was a far cry from what real humans did.
Chapter 63
"They got me out of jail," Sethe once told Baby Suggs.
"They also put you in it," she answered.
"They drove you 'cross the river.""On my son's back.""They gave you this house.""Nobody gave me nothing.""I got a job from them.""He got a cook from them, girl.""Oh, some of them do all right by us.""And every time it's a surprise, ain't it?""You didn't used to talk this way.""Don't box with me. There's more of us they drowned than there is all of them ever lived from thestart of time. Lay down your sword. This ain't a battle; it's a rout."Remembering those conversations and her grandmother's last and final words, Denver stood on theporch in the sun and couldn't leave it. Her throat itched; her heart kicked — and then Baby Suggslaughed, clear as anything. "You mean I never told you nothing about Carolina? About yourdaddy? You don't remember nothing about how come I walk the way I do and about your mother'sfeet, not to speak of her back? I never told you all that? Is that why you can't walk down the steps?
My Jesus my."But you said there was no defense.
"There ain't."Then what do I do?
"Know it, and go on out the yard. Go on."* * *It came back. A dozen years had passed and the way came back. Four houses on the right, sittingclose together in a line like wrens. The first house had two steps and a rocking chair on the porch;the second had three steps, a broom propped on the porch beam, two broken chairs and a clump offorsythia at the side. No window at the front. A little boy sat on the ground chewing a stick. Thethird house had yellow shutters on its two front windows and pot after pot of green leaves withwhite hearts or red. Denver could hear chickens and the knock of a badly hinged gate. At thefourth house the buds of a sycamore tree had rained down on the roof and made the yard look asthough grass grew there. A woman, standing at the open door, lifted her hand halfway in greeting,then froze it near her shoulder as she leaned forward to see whom she waved to. Denver loweredher head. Next was a tiny fenced plot with a cow in it. She remembered the plot but not the cow.
Under her headcloth her scalp was wet with tension. Beyond her, voices, male voices, floated,coming closer with each step she took. Denver kept her eyes on the road in case they werewhitemen; in case she was walking where they wanted to; in case they said something and shewould have to answer them. Suppose they flung out at her, grabbed her, tied her. They weregetting closer. Maybe she should cross the road — now. Was the woman who half waved at herstill there in the open door? Would she come to her rescue, or, angry at Denver for not wavingback, would she withhold her help? Maybe she should turn around, get closer to the wavingwoman's house. Before she could make up her mind, it was too late — they were right in front ofher. Two men, Negro. Denver breathed. Both men touched their caps and murmured, "Morning.
Morning." Denver believed her eyes spoke gratitude but she never got her mouth open in time toreply. They moved left of her and passed on.
Chapter 64
Braced and heartened by that easy encounter, she picked up speed and began to look deliberately atthe neighborhood surrounding her. She was shocked to see how small the big things were: theboulder by the edge of the road she once couldn't see over was a sitting-on rock. Paths leading tohouses weren't miles long. Dogs didn't even reach her knees. Letters cut into beeches and oaks bygiants were eye level now.
She would have known it anywhere. The post and scrap-lumber fence was gray now, not white, butshe would have known it anywhere. The stone porch sitting in a skirt of ivy, pale yellow curtains atthe windows; the laid brick path to the front door and wood planks leading around to the back,passing under the windows where she had stood on tiptoe to see above the sill. Denver was aboutto do it again, when she realized how silly it would be to be found once more staring into the parlorof Mrs. Lady Jones. The pleasure she felt at having found the house dissolved, suddenly, in doubt.
Suppose she didn't live there anymore? Or remember her former student after all this time? Whatwould she say? Denver shivered inside, wiped the perspiration from her forehead and knocked.
Lady Jones went to the door expecting raisins. A child, probably, from the softness of the knock,sent by its mother with the raisins she needed if her contribution to the supper was to be worth thetrouble. There would be any number of plain cakes, potato pies. She had reluctantly volunteered her own special creation, but said she didn't have raisins, so raisins is what the president saidwould be provided — early enough so there would be no excuses. Mrs. Jones, dreading the fatigueof beating batter, had been hoping she had forgotten. Her bake oven had been cold all week —getting it to the right temperature would be awful. Since her husband died and her eyes grew dim,she had let up-to-snuff housekeeping fall away. She was of two minds about baking something forthe church. On the one hand, she wanted to remind everybody of what she was able to do in thecooking line; on the other, she didn't want to have to. When she heard the tapping at the door, shesighed and went to it hoping the raisins had at least been cleaned.
She was older, of course, and dressed like a chippy, but the girl was immediately recognizable toLady Jones. Everybody's child was in that face: the nickel-round eyes, bold yet mistrustful; thelarge powerful teeth between dark sculptured lips that did not cover them. Some vulnerability layacross the bridge of the nose, above the cheeks. And then the skin. Flawless, economical — justenough of it to cover the bone and not a bit more. She must be eighteen or nineteen by now,thought Lady Jones, looking at the face young enough to be twelve. Heavy eyebrows, thick babylashes and the unmistakable love call that shimmered around children until they learned better.
"Why, Denver," she said. "Look at you."Lady Jones had to take her by the hand and pull her in, because the smile seemed all the girl couldmanage. Other people said this child was simple, but Lady Jones never believed it. Having taughther, watched her eat up a page, a rule, a figure, she knew better. When suddenly she had stoppedcoming, Lady Jones thought it was the nickel. She approached the ignorant grandmother one dayon the road, a woods preacher who mended shoes, to tell her it was all right if the money wasowed. The woman said that wasn't it; the child was deaf, and deaf Lady Jones thought she still wasuntil she offered her a seat and Denver heard that.
"It's nice of you to come see me. What brings you?"Denver didn't answer.
Chapter 65
"Well, nobody needs a reason to visit. Let me make us some tea." Lady Jones was mixed. Grayeyes and yellow woolly hair, every strand of which she hated — though whether it was the color orthe texture even she didn't know. She had married the blackest man she could find, had fiverainbow-colored children and sent them all to Wilberforce, after teaching them all she knew rightalong with the others who sat in her parlor. Her light skin got her picked for a coloredgirls', normalschool in Pennsylvania and she paid it back by teaching the unpicked. The children who played indirt until they were old enough for chores, these she taught. The colored population of Cincinnatihad two graveyards and six churches, but since no school or hospital was obliged to serve them,they learned and died at home. She believed in her heart that, except for her husband, the wholeworld (including her children) despised her and her hair. She had been listening to "all that yellowgone to waste" and "white nigger" since she was a girl in a houseful of silt-black children, so shedisliked everybody a little bit because she believed they hated her hair as much as she did. Withthat education pat and firmly set, she dispensed with rancor, was indiscriminately polite, saving herreal affection for the unpicked children of Cincinnati, one of whom sat before her in a dress so loud it embarrassed the needlepoint chair seat.
"Sugar?""Yes. Thank you." Denver drank it all down.
"More?""No, ma'am.""Here. Go ahead.""Yes, ma'am.""How's your family, honey?"Denver stopped in the middle of a swallow. There was no way to tell her how her family was, so she said what was at the top of her mind.
"I want work, Miss Lady.""Work?""Yes, ma'am. Anything."Lady Jones smiled. "What can you do?""I can't do anything, but I would learn it for you if you have a little extra.""Extra?""Food. My ma'am, she doesn't feel good.""Oh, baby," said Mrs. Jones. "Oh, baby."Denver looked up at her. She did not know it then, but it was the word "baby," said softly and withsuch kindness, that inaugurated her life in the world as a woman. The trail she followed to get tothat sweet thorny place was made up of paper scraps containing the handwritten names of others.
Lady Jones gave her some rice, four eggs and some tea. Denver said she couldn't be away fromhome long because of her mother's condition. Could she do chores in the morning? Lady Jonestold her that no one, not herself, not anyone she knew, could pay anybody anything for work theydid themselves. "But if you all need to eat until your mother is well, all you have to do is say so."She mentioned her church's committee invented so nobody had to go hungry. That agitated herguest who said, "No, no," as though asking for help from strangers was worse than hunger. Lady Jones said goodbye to her and asked her to come back anytime. "Anytime at all."Two days later Denver stood on the porch and noticed something lying on the tree stump at theedge of the yard. She went to look and found a sack of white beans. Another time a plate of coldrabbit meat. One morning a basket of eggs sat there. As she lifted it, a slip of paper fluttered down.
