He walks to the front door and opens it. It is stone quiet. In the place where once a shaft of sad redlight had bathed him, locking him where he stood, is nothing. A bleak and minus nothing. Morelike absence, but an absence he had to get through with the same determination he had when hetrusted Sethe and stepped through the pulsing light. He glances quickly at the lightning-whitestairs. The entire railing is wound with ribbons, bows, bouquets. Paul D steps inside. The outdoorbreeze he brings with him stirs the ribbons.
Carefully, not quite in a hurry but losing no time, he climbs the luminous stairs. He enters Sethe'sroom. She isn't there and the bed looks so small he wonders how the two of them had lain there. Ithas no sheets, and because the roof windows do not open the room is stifling. Brightly coloredclothes lie on the floor. Hanging from a wall peg is the dress Beloved wore when he first saw her.
A pair of ice skates nestles in a basket in the corner. He turns his eyes back to the bed and keepslooking at it. It seems to him a place he is not.
With an effort that makes him sweat he forces a picture of himself lying there, and when he sees it,it lifts his spirit. He goes to the other bedroom. Denver's is as neat as the other is messy. But stillno Sethe.
Maybe she has gone back to work, gotten better in the days since he talked to Denver. He goesback down the stairs, leaving the image of himself firmly in place on the narrow bed. At thekitchen table he sits down. Something is missing from 124. Something larger than the people wholived there. Something more than Beloved or the red light. He can't put his finger on it, but itseems, for a moment, that just beyond his knowing is the glare of an outside thing that embraceswhile it accuses.
To the right of him, where the door to the keeping room is ajar, he hears humming. Someone ishumming a tune. Something soft and sweet, like a lullaby. Then a few words. Sounds like "highJohnny, wide Johnny. Sweet William bend down low." Of course, he thinks. That's where she is —and she is. Lying under a quilt of merry colors.
Her hair, like the dark delicate roots of good plants, spreads and curves on the pillow. Her eyes,fixed on the window, are so expressionless he is not sure she will know who he is. There is toomuch light here in this room. Things look sold.
"Jackweed raise up high," she sings. "Lambswool over my shoulder, buttercup and clover fly." Sheis fingering a long clump of her hair.
Paul D clears his throat to interrupt her. "Sethe?"
Chapter 72
She turns her head. "Paul D.""Aw, Sethe.""I made the ink, Paul D. He couldn't have done it if I hadn't made the ink.""What ink? Who?""You shaved.""Yeah. Look bad?""No. You looking good.""Devil's confusion. What's this I hear about you not getting out of bed?"She smiles, lets it fade and turns her eyes back to the window.
"I need to talk to you," he tells her.
She doesn't answer.
"I saw Denver. She tell you?""She comes in the daytime. Denver. She's still with me, my Denver.""You got to get up from here, girl." He is nervous. This reminds him of something.
"I'm tired, Paul D. So tired. I have to rest a while."Now he knows what he is reminded of and he shouts at her, "Don't you die on me! This is BabySuggs' bed! Is that what you planning?" He is so angry he could kill her. He checks himself,remembering Denver's warning, and whispers, "What you planning, Sethe?""Oh, I don't have no plans. No plans at all.""Look," he says, "Denver be here in the day. I be here in the night. I'm a take care of you, youhear? Starting now. First off, you don't smell right. Stay there. Don't move. Let me heat up somewater." He stops. "Is it all right, Sethe, if I heat up some water?""And count my feet?" she asks him.
He steps closer. "Rub your feet."Sethe closes her eyes and presses her lips together. She is thinking: No. This little place by awindow is what I want. And rest. There's nothing to rub now and no reason to. Nothing left tobathe, assuming he even knows how. Will he do it in sections? First her face, then her hands, herthighs, her feet, her back? Ending with her exhausted breasts? And if he bathes her in sections, willthe parts hold? She opens her eyes, knowing the danger of looking at him. She looks at him. Thepeachstone skin, the crease between his ready, waiting eyes and sees it — the thing in him, theblessedness, 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 trackand couldn't hear her; that Amy was scared to stay with her because her feet were ugly and herback looked so bad; that her ma'am had hurt her feelings and she couldn't find her hat anywhereand "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 handsare 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 tome in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of yourmind."He is staring at the quilt but he is thinking about her wrought iron back; the delicious mouth stillpuffy at the corner from Ella's fist. The mean black eyes. The wet dress steaming before the fire.
Her tenderness about his neck jewelry — its three wands, like attentive baby rattlers, curving twofeet into the air. How she never mentioned or looked at it, so he did not have to feel the shame ofbeing collared like a beast. Only this woman Sethe could have left him his manhood like that. Hewants to put his story next to hers.
"Sethe," he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody.
We need some kind of tomorrow."He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. "You your best thing, Sethe.
You are." His holding fingers are holding hers.
"Me? Me?"
Chapter 73
THERE IS a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding, holding on,this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind — wrapped tightlike skin.
Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive, on its own. A dryand spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-offplace. Everybody knew what she was called, but nobody anywhere knew her name.
Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannot be lost because no one is looking for her, andeven if they were, how can they call her if they don't know her name? Although she has claim, sheis not claimed. In the place where long grass opens, the girl who waited to be loved and cry shameerupts into her separate parts, to make it easy for the chewing laughter to swallow her all away.
It was not a story to pass on.
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 deliberatelyforgot her. It took longer for those who had spoken to her, lived with her, fallen in love with her, toforget, until they realized they couldn't remember or repeat a single thing she said, and began tobelieve that, other than what they themselves were thinking, she hadn't said anything at all. So, inthe end, they forgot her too. Remembering seemed unwise. They never knew where or why shecrouched, or whose was the underwater face she needed like that. Where the memory of the smileunder her chin might have been and was not, a latch latched and lichen attached its apple-greenbloom 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, therustle of a skirt hushes when they wake, and the knuckles brushing a cheek in sleep seem to belongto the sleeper. Sometimes the photograph of a close friend or relative — looked at too long —shifts, and something more familiar than the dear face itself moves there. They can touch it if theylike, but don't, because they know things will never be the same if they do.
This is not a story to pass on.
Down by the stream in back of 124 her footprints come and go, come and go. They are so familiar.
Should a child, an adult place his feet in them, they will fit. Take them out and they disappear again as though nobody ever walked there.
By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footprints but the water too andwhat it is down there. The rest is weather. Not the breath of the disremembered and unaccountedfor, but wind in the eaves, or spring ice thawing too quickly. Just weather.
Certainly no clamor for a kiss.
Beloved.
The End
