Literature Review:
Beloved is a post-modernist novel set in the Reconstruction Era that followed the end of the civil war in 1855. The main action of the novel occurs before the end of slavery, and it focuses on the Fugitive Slave Act. This law allowed Southern slave masters to come north and retrieve the slaves that had escaped from the south.
The events described in the book are fictitious, but Morrison was inspired by the true account of Margaret Garner. She was a slave who escaped from her master in 1856, though her freedom was short-lived as she was quickly found by Slave Catchers. However, Margaret decided to kill her two-year-old daughter rather than have her become a slave. Unlike Sethe, Margaret was taken back to be a slave.
Beloved is a novel that explores the power of memory and history. It seeks to remind the readers about the terrible conditions that slaves had to withstand during that period, and is considered by many to be one of the most powerful commentaries about America’s legacy of slavery.
Beloved begins with the description of a weathered house, 124, on the edge of Cincinnati, occupied by an ex-slave called Sethe, and her young daughter, Denver. Sethe has lived in the house for eighteen years now, and though there had been other members in her family, they have now either died or passed away. The house is haunted by a ghost, and Sethe believes that it is the ghost of her child that had died in the house. She finds Paul D seated outside her house as she is returning home. Paul D had been a slave with Sethe on Sweet Home, a plantation run by gentle slave owners, Mr. and Mrs. Garner. Sethe gladly invites Paul D into the house, and he immediately notes the presence of a malicious spirit, but she assures him that the ghost is just sad. Throughout the book, we learn about Paul D and Sethe’s history in bits and pieces.
Sethe was brought to Sweet Home as a young girl, and she had been the only female slave among a dozen other male slaves that included Paul D. Mr. Garner had prided himself on the quality of his slaves and had fondly referred to them as Sweet Home Men. He had allowed Sethe to make her own choice of a partner from among the slaves, and the men had all respectfully waited for her to do so. Sethe chose Halle from among the sweet home men because Halle had rented himself on the weekends to save up enough money to buy her freedom. His mother, Baby Suggs, had an injured hip which made it difficult for her to work, and so Halle had done all he could to save his mother from the arduous labor of a slave’s life. Sethe remembers the day she had made her choice, but her expectations were dashed when Mrs. Garner laughed at Sethe’s question about her marriage to Halle. Mrs. Garner hadn’t believed that slaves needed to have a wedding ceremony, so Halle and Sethe had consummated their marriage in a corn field. Sethe had two boys, and two girls with Halle but things at Sweet Home began to change with the death of Mr. Garner. He was replaced by a much crueler slave master, Schoolteacher, who treated the slaves more like animals than people. Sethe and the other slaves began to plan an escape, but this plan became complicated with Sethe’s pregnancy. Paul D went on with his plan to escape, but he was captured by Schoolteacher, who decided to spare Paul D but burned alive another slave, Sixo.
Paul D was brought back to the plantation in chains, and he learned that Sethe had managed to have her children escape. Unbeknownst to Paul D, Sethe was then taken into the barn by the Schoolteacher’s nephews, and they took her breastmilk. Halle had been hiding in the barn at the time, and he helplessly watched as Sethe was mistreated. The last time Paul D had seen Halle, he had been sitting next to a churn with butter smeared all over his face and a vacant look in his eyes. Sethe had been warned not to disclose anything about her mistreatment, but she had told Mrs. Garner. The white boys whipped her for telling on them, and finally, Sethe decided to risk it all by escaping. She managed to escape, but her injuries and pregnancy did not let her get too far. A white indentured slave, Amy, found Sethe in the forest and helped her. She helped Sethe deliver her baby, whom Sethe had named after Amy’s middle name, Denver. Sethe and her baby were then brought to 124 by a man named Stamp Paid. Baby Suggs welcomed her daughter-in-law, and Sethe was reunited with all her children.
Baby Suggs waits for Halle’s arrival and has an ill feeling when her neighbors grow jealous over the large feast that she organizes for the reunification of her family. The following day, 124 is visited by four horsemen including Schoolteacher, one of his nephews, a slave catcher, and the sheriff. They come intending to retrieve Sethe but are left dumbstruck when they find that Sethe has killed her baby with a saw as she doesn’t want her children to grow up as slaves. Schoolteacher thinks that Sethe has gone wild and that there is no point in taking her back to the farm. He leaves her, but Sethe is taken to prison along with her infant. She sleeps with an artisan to etch her baby’s tombstone, and the man only writes the word, Beloved. She feels that the word is enough of a reply for all the neighbors that now hate her for her actions. Baby Suggs had been a quasi-religious figure in the community, but she stops her services after Sethe’s incident and takes to bed. She dies soon afterward, leaving Sethe with her children, but her sons don’t stay too long as they are discomforted by the presence of the ghost. Denver remains with her mother, but she misses her siblings and hates being alone. She hates her loneliness so much that she begins to like the presence of the ghost.
Denver doesn’t like Paul D’s presence as she feels alienated by Sethe’s shared past with him. Sethe and Paul D sleep with each other, and Paul D chases away the ghost when it protests their being together. He then insists that Sethe and Denver make room for him in their life, and Sethe gladly does so. They go out to a carnival as a family, but upon their return, they find a strange woman seated outside 124. She introduces herself as Beloved and appears to be sick. Sethe and Denver feel strangely connected to her, and welcome her into their lives. Beloved spends the first few days sleeping, and then she begins to take all of Sethe’s attention. Beloved hates Paul D’s presence in the house, and eventually drives him out of the house so that he begins to sleep in the cold house. She takes pleasure in hearing stories of Sethe and Denver’s past, and she also happens to know many details about their past. Denver is convinced that Beloved is the spirit of her dead sister, while Sethe reaches the same conclusion after finding a scar on Beloved’s chin that mirrors the wound she made on her child when the Schoolteacher had come to 124.
Paul D learns about Sethe’s murder of her own child and confronts her with the information. She tells him the truth, and Paul D cannot bring himself to remain with Sethe. He leaves the home, and Beloved takes over Sethe’s life. Sethe and Beloved become immensely intertwined with one another, and Sethe stops leaving home for work. Sethe grows weaker each day, and Denver decides that she needs to go out to get help. The community members aid Denver by giving her food, and upon learning about Beloved, the community women come out to exorcise her. Beloved appears to the women of the community in the form of a pregnant woman, and she flees when she thinks that Denver and Sethe have abandoned her. Denver begins to work, and study, while Paul D returns to 124 to take care of Sethe.
https://www.sweetstudy.com/literature/beloved
Concept of the Problem
Slave Mentality a Black Psychology Study
In Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” the experience of slavery becomes an overwhelming force from the past. Sethe embodies a traumatic history, reflecting the painful loss of genuine maternal love. The weight of this past diminishes the potential for a meaningful present and a hopeful future. Paul D emphasizes the need for “some kind of tomorrow,” recognizing the impact of the past on their lives. Sethe, burdened with traumatic memories, finds her mind unable to imagine, resulting in a socially and spiritually crippled existence. The haunting memories of infanticide, Paul D’s struggles with emasculation, and Denver’s quest for identity all illustrate the profound psychological wounds inflicted by slavery.
Past
Beloved is more than a ghost from the past; she represents the enduring trauma that haunts Sethe and the community. Beloved’s ghostly presence serves as a metaphor for the lasting impact of slavery, disrupting the lives of those around her and compelling them to face the painful history they want to forget. Through Beloved, Morrison symbolizes the persistent, ghost-like influence of slavery on those who lived through it. Sethe conveys to her daughter, Denver, that “nothing ever dies, and the pictures and images of things remain.”
Dehumanization
The novel vividly portrays the dehumanizing impact of slavery through Sethe’s and Paul D’s memories of Sweet Home. Sethe recounts being likened to an animal by the schoolteacher and his nephews, who even treated her like a cow by stealing her breast milk. Paul D remembers the agonizing experiences of wearing a collar, an iron bit in his mouth, and being chained like a pack animal. Reflecting on his lack of freedom, he compares himself to Mister, the rooster, expressing that the changes inflicted by the schoolteacher reduced him to something less than a chicken basking in the sun on a tub.
Freedom
For those treated as poorly as animals, understanding freedom can be challenging. When Halle buys his mother’s freedom, Baby Suggs believes it “didn’t mean a thing.” After escaping prison, Paul D. finds that simply being able to eat, walk, and sleep anywhere is as good as life gets. While waiting for Halle, Sethe learns to be independent, realizing that freeing oneself is one thing, but claiming ownership of that liberated self is another. Ultimately, Paul D. concurs with Sethe, defining freedom as a place where one can love anything without needing permission for desire.
Family and Community
Slavery’s impact emerges as a disruptive force throughout the novel, shattering the foundations of family and community bonds. Sethe’s decision to prevent her child from enduring slavery disrupts the traditional mother-child bond, forever changing maternal relationships and leaving Sethe to cope with the emotional aftermath. Her sons, Howard and Bugler, ran away at thirteen. Facing Beloved’s spirit, Sethe and Denver undergo a psychological split, embodying both their capable and traumatized selves. Sethe dissociates, while Denver is trapped in a terrifying childhood. The broader community reflects collective struggles to rebuild communal ties post-slavery. Characters like Ella and Stamp Paid grapple with their histories, seeking reconciliation with a shared past marked by trauma. Community dynamics unfold as characters navigate healing and rebuilding trust after slavery systematically tore apart fundamental human connections.
Legacy
“Beloved” carries a heavy load of trauma, evident in the psychological struggles of Sethe, Beloved, and Denver. The family’s traumatization spans generations, a recurring theme in slave narratives. Sethe’s upbringing, marked by her mother disposing of her newborns, hints at the prefiguring of Sethe’s infanticide. Sethe feels a sense of displacement, loving her mother but having few positive memories tainted by fear and resentment. Despite recognizing this pattern, Sethe becomes a victim of the same cycle.
Identity
Morrison explores how slavery affects the selfhood and identity of African Americans. The enslaved self’s connection to the world differs from that of a free self. Paul D describes Sethe’s love as “too thick,” lacking the diluted sense of identity. The master-slave relationship breeds dependence, leaving Sethe without a genuine, independent self. She hesitates to feel or count on anything. The reclaiming of self symbolizes the reconstruction of African American identity and culture, illustrating the acceptance of the past. The novel ends with the hope of Sethe regaining her lost self, recognizing, “You your best thing, Sethe. You are.” “Me? Me?”
https://nibblepop.com/impact-of-slavery-in-toni-morrisons-beloved/
Literature Sample Collection of Chapter 1:
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
124 WAS SPITEFUL.
Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old–as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither
boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the door sill. Nor did they wait for one of the relief periods: the weeks, months even, when nothing was disturbed. No. Each one fled at once–the moment the house committed what was for him the one insult not to be borne or witnessed a second time. Within two months, in the dead of winter, leaving their grandmother, Baby Suggs; Sethe, their mother; and their little sister, Denver, all by themselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road. It didn’t have a number then, because Cincinnati didn’t stretch that far. In fact, Ohio had been calling itself a state only
seventy years when first one brother and then the next stuffed quilt packing into his hat, snatched up his shoes, and crept away from the lively spite the house felt for them.
Baby Suggs didn’t even raise her head. From her sickbed she heard them go but that wasn’t the reason she lay still. It was a wonder to her that her grandsons had taken so long to realize that every house wasn’t like the one on Bluestone Road. Suspended between the nas tiness 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 behavior of that place; against turned-over slop jars, smacks on the behind, and gusts of sour air. For they understood the source of the outrage as well as they knew the source of light.
Baby Suggs died shortly after the brothers left, with no interest whatsoever in their leave-taking or hers, and right afterward Sethe and Denver decided to end the persecution by calling forth the ghost that tried them so. Perhaps a conversation, they thought, an exchange of views or something would help. So they held hands and said, “Come on. Come on. You may as well just come on.”
The sideboard took a step forward but nothing else did.
“Grandma Baby must be stopping it,” said Denver. She was ten and still mad at Baby Suggs for
dying.
Sethe opened her eyes. “I doubt that,” she
said.
“Then why don’t it come?”
“You forgetting how little it is,” said her
mother. “She wasn’t even two years old when
she died. Too little to understand. Too little to talk much even.”
“Maybe she don’t want to understand,” said Denver.
“Maybe. But if she’d only come, I could make it clear to her.”
Sethe released her daughter’s hand and together they pushed the sideboard back against the wall. Outside a driver whipped his horse into the gallop local people felt necessary when they passed 124.
“For a baby she throws a powerful spell,” said Denver.
“No more powerful than the way I loved her,” Sethe answered and there it was again. The welcoming cool of unchiseled headstones; the one she selected to lean against on tiptoe, her knees wide open as any grave. Pink as a fingernail it was, and sprinkled with glittering chips. Ten minutes, he said. You got ten minutes I’ll do it for free.
Ten minutes for seven letters. With another ten could she have gotten “Dearly” too? She had not thought to ask him and it bothered her still that it might have been possible–that for twenty minutes, a half hour, say, she could have had the whole thing,
every word she heard the preacher say at the funeral (and all there was to say, surely) engraved on her baby’s headstone: Dearly Beloved. But what she got, settled for, was the one word that mattered. She thought it would be enough, rutting among the headstones with the engraver, his young son looking on, the anger in his face so old; the appetite in it quite new. That should certainly be enough. Enough to answer one more preacher, one more abolitionist and a town full of disgust.
Counting on the stillness of her own soul, she had forgotten the other one: the soul of her baby girl. Who would have thought that a little old baby could harbor so much rage? Rutting among the stones under the eyes of the engraver’s son was not enough. Not only did she have to live out her years in a house palsied by the baby’s fury at having its throat cut, but those ten minutes she spent pressed up against dawn-colored stone studded with star chips, her knees wide open as the grave, were longer than life, more alive, more pulsating than the baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil.
“We could move,” she suggested once to her mother-in-law.
“What’d be the point?” asked Baby Suggs. “Not a house in the country ain’t packed to its rafters with some dead Negro’s grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby. My husband’s spirit was to come back in here? or yours? Don’t talk to me. You lucky. You got three left.
Three pulling at your skirts and just one raising hell from the other side. Be thankful, why don’t you? I had eight. Every one of them gone away from me. Four taken, four chased, and all, I expect, worrying somebody’s house into evil.” Baby Suggs rubbed her eyebrows.
“My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that’s all I remember.”
“That’s all you let yourself remember,” Sethe had told her, but she was down to one herself– one alive, that is–the boys chased off by the dead one, and her memory of Buglar was fading fast. Howard at least had a head shape nobody could forget. As for the rest, she worked hard to remember as
close to nothing as was safe. Unfortunately her brain was devious. She might be hurrying across a field, running practically, to get to the
pump quickly and rinse the chamomile sap from her legs. Nothing else would be in her mind. The picture of the men coming to nurse her was as lifeless as the nerves in her back where the skin buckled like a washboard. Nor was there the faintest scent of ink or the cherry gum and oak bark from which it was made. Nothing. Just the breeze cooling her face as she rushed toward water. And then sopping the chamomile away with pump water and rags, her mind fixed on getting every last bit of sap off–on her carelessness in taking a shortcut across the field just to save a half mile, and not noticing how high the weeds had grown until the itching was all the way to her knees. Then something. The plash of water, the sight of her shoes and stockings awry on the path where she had flung them; or Here Boy lapping in the puddle near her feet, and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves. Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her–
remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it otherwise, the sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory for that.
When the last of the chamomile was gone, she went around to the front of the house, collecting her shoes and stockings on the way.
As if to punish her further for her terrible memory, sitting on the porch not forty feet away was Paul D, the last of the Sweet Home men. And although she she said, “Is that you?”
“What’s left.” He stood up and smiled. “How you been, girl, besides barefoot?”
When she laughed it came out loose and young. “Messed up my legs back yonder. Chamomile.”
He made a face as though tasting a teaspoon of something bitter.
“I don’t want to even hear ’bout it. Always did hate that stuff.”
Sethe balled up her stockings and jammed them into her pocket.
“Come on in.”
“Porch is fine, Sethe. Cool out here.” He sat back down and looked at the meadow on the other side of the road, knowing the eagerness he felt would be in his eyes.
“Eighteen years,” she said softly.
“Eighteen,” he repeated. “And I swear I been walking every one of em. Mind if I join you?” He nodded toward her feet and began unlacing his shoes.
“You want to soak them? Let me get you a basin of water.” She moved closer to him to enter the
house.
“No, uh uh. Can’t baby feet. A whole lot more tramping they got to do yet.”
“You can’t leave right away, Paul D. You got to stay awhile.”
“Well, long enough to see Baby Suggs, anyway. Where is she?”
“Dead.”
“Aw no. When?”
“Eight years now. Almost nine.”
“Was it hard? I hope she didn’t die hard.” Sethe shook her head. “Soft as cream.
Being alive was the hard part. Sorry you
missed her though. Is that what you came by for?”
“That’s some of what I came for. The rest is you. But if all the truth be known, I go anywhere these days. Anywhere they let me sit down.”
“You looking good.”
“Devil’s confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad.” He looked at her and the word “bad” took on another meaning.
Sethe smiled. This is the way they were–had been. All of the Sweet Home men, before and after Halle, treated her to a mild brotherly flirtation, so subtle you had to scratch for it.
Except for a heap more hair and some waiting in his eyes, he looked the way he had in Kentucky. Peachstone skin; straight-backed.
For a man with an immobile face it was amazing how ready it was to smile, or blaze or be sorry with you. As though all you had to do was get his attention and right away he produced the feeling you were feeling. With less than a blink, his face seemed to change–underneath it lay the activity.
“I wouldn’t have to ask about him, would I? You’d tell me if there was anything to tell, wouldn’t you?” Sethe looked down at her feet and saw again the sycamores.
“I’d tell you. Sure I’d tell you. I don’t know any more now than I did then.” Except for the churn, he thought, and you don’t need to know that. “You must think he’s still alive.”
“No. I think he’s dead. It’s not being sure that keeps him alive.”
“What did Baby Suggs think?”
“Same, but to listen to her, all her children is dead. Claimed she felt each one go the very day and hour.”
“When she say Halle went?”
“Eighteen fifty-five. The day my baby was born.”
“You had that baby, did you? Never thought you’d make it.”
He chuckled. “Running off pregnant.” “Had to. Couldn’t be no waiting.” She
lowered her head and thought, as he did, how
unlikely it was that she had made it. And if it hadn’t been for that girl looking for velvet, she never would have.
“All by yourself too.” He was proud of her and annoyed by her.
Proud she had done it; annoyed that she had not needed Halle or him in the doing.
“Almost by myself. Not all by myself. A whitegirl helped me.”
“Then she helped herself too, God bless her.” “You could stay the night, Paul D.”
“You don’t sound too steady in the offer.”
Sethe glanced beyond his shoulder toward the closed door. “Oh it’s truly meant. I just hope you’ll pardon my house. Come on in.
Talk to Denver while I cook you something.”
Paul D tied his shoes together, hung them over his shoulder and followed her through the door straight into a pool of red and undulating light that locked him where he stood.
“You got company?” he whispered, frowning. “Off and on,” said Sethe.
“Good God.” He backed out the door onto the porch. “What kind of evil you got in here?”
“It’s not evil, just sad. Come on. Just step through.”
He looked at her then, closely. Closer than he had when she first rounded the house on wet and shining legs, holding her shoes and stockings up in one hand, her skirts in the other. Halle’s girl–the one with iron eyes and backbone to match. He had never seen her hair in Kentucky. And though her face was eighteen years older than when last he saw her, it was softer now. Because of the hair. A face too still for comfort; irises the same color as her skin, which, in that still face, used to make him think of a mask with mercifully punched out eyes. Halle’s woman. Pregnant every year including the year she sat by the fire telling him she was going to run. Her three children she had already packed into a wagonload of others in a caravan of Negroes crossing the river. They were to be left with Halle’s mother near Cincinnati. Even in that tiny shack, leaning so close to the fire you could smell the heat in her dress, her
eyes did not pick up a flicker of light. They were
like two wells into which he had trouble gazing. Even punched out they needed to be covered, lidded, marked with some sign to warn folks of what that emptiness held. So he looked instead at the fire while she told him, because her husband was not there for the telling. Mr. Garner was dead and his wife had a lump in her neck the
size of a sweet potato and unable to speak to anyone. She leaned as close to the fire as her pregnant belly allowed and told him, Paul D, the last of the Sweet Home men.
There had been six of them who belonged to the farm, Sethe the only female. Mrs. Garner, crying like a baby, had sold his brother to pay off the debts that surfaced the minute she was widowed. Then schoolteacher arrived to put things in order. But what he did broke three more Sweet Home men and punched the glittering iron out of Sethe’s eyes, leaving two open wells that did not reflect firelight.
Now the iron was back but the face, softened by hair, made him trust her enough to step inside her door smack into a pool of pulsing red light.
She was right. It was sad. Walking through it, a wave of grief soaked him so thoroughly he wanted to cry. It seemed a long way to the normal light surrounding the table, but he made it–dry-eyed and lucky.
“You said she died soft. Soft as cream,” he reminded her.
“That’s not Baby Suggs,” she said. “Who then?”
“My daughter. The one I sent ahead with the boys.”
“She didn’t live?”
“No. The one I was carrying when I run away is all I got left.
Boys gone too. Both of em walked off just
before Baby Suggs died.”
Paul D looked at the spot where the grief had soaked him. The red was gone but a kind of weeping clung to the air where it had been.
Probably best, he thought. If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up. Still… if her boys were gone…
“No man? You here by yourself?” “Me and Denver,” she said. “That all right by you?”
“That’s all right by me.”
She saw his skepticism and went on. “I cook at a restaurant in town. And I sew a little on the
sly.”
Paul D smiled then, remembering the bedding dress. Sethe was thirteen when she came to Sweet Home and already iron-eyed. She was a timely present for Mrs. Garner who had lost Baby Suggs to her husband’s high principles. The five Sweet Home men looked at the new girl and decided to let her be. They were young and so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves. Yet they let the iron-eyed girl be, so she could choose in spite of the fact that each one would have beaten the others to mush to have her. It took her a year to choose–a long, tough year of thrashing on pallets eaten up with dreams of her. A year of yearning, when rape seemed the solitary gift of life. The restraint they had exercised possible only because they were Sweet Home men–the ones Mr. Garner bragged about while other farmers shook their heads in warning at the phrase.
“Y’all got boys,” he told them. “Young boys, old boys, picky boys, stroppin boys. Now at Sweet Home, my niggers is men every one of
- Bought em thataway, raised em thataway. Men every one.”
“Beg to differ, Garner. Ain’t no nigger men.”
“Not if you scared, they ain’t.” Garner’s smile was wide. “But if you a man yourself, you’ll want your niggers to be men too.”
wife.” “I wouldn’t have no nigger men round my It was the reaction Garner loved and
waited for. “Neither would I,” he said. “Neither would I,” and there was always a pause before the neighbor, or stranger, or peddler, or brother-in-law or whoever it was got the meaning. Then a fierce argument, sometimes a fight, and Garner came home bruised and pleased, having demonstrated one more time what a real Kentuckian was: one tough enough and smart enough to make and call his own niggers men.
And so they were: Paul D Garner, Paul F Garner, Paul A Garner, Halle Suggs and Sixo, the wild man. All in their twenties, minus women, fucking cows, dreaming of rape, thrashing on pallets, rubbing their thighs and waiting for the new girl–the one who took Baby
Suggs’ place after Halle bought her with five years of Sundays.
Maybe that was why she chose him. A twenty-year-old man so in love with his mother he gave up five years of Sabbaths just to see her sit down for a change was a serious recommendation.
She waited a year. And the Sweet Home men abused cows while they waited with her. She chose Halle and for their first bedding she sewed herself a dress on the sly.
“Won’t you stay on awhile? Can’t nobody catch up on eighteen years in a day.”
Out of the dimness of the room in which they sat, a white staircase climbed toward the blue- and-white wallpaper of the second floor.
Paul D could see just the beginning of the paper; discreet flecks of yellow sprinkled among a blizzard of snowdrops all backed by blue.
The luminous white of the railing and steps kept him glancing toward it. Every sense he had told him the air above the stairwell was charmed and very thin. But the girl who walked down out of that air was round and brown with the face of an alert doll.
Paul D looked at the girl and then at Sethe who smiled saying, “Here she is my Denver. This is Paul D, honey, from Sweet Home.”
“Good morning, Mr. D.” “Garner, baby. Paul D Garner.” “Yes sir.”
“Glad to get a look at you. Last time I saw your mama, you were pushing out the front of her dress.”
“Still is,” Sethe smiled, “provided she can get
in it.”
Denver stood on the bottom step and was
suddenly hot and shy.
It had been a long time since anybody (good-willed whitewoman, preacher, speaker or newspaperman) sat at their table, their sympathetic voices called liar by the revulsion in their eyes. For twelve years, long before Grandma Baby died, there had been no visitors of any sort and certainly no friends. No coloredpeople. Certainly no hazelnut man with
too long hair and no notebook, no charcoal, no oranges, no questions. Someone her mother wanted to talk to and would even consider talking to while barefoot. Looking, in fact acting, like a girl instead of the quiet, queenly woman Denver had known all her life. The one who never looked away, who when a man got stomped to death by a mare right in front of Sawyer’s restaurant did not look away; and when a sow began eating her own litter did not look away then either. And when the baby’s spirit picked up Here Boy and slammed him into the wall hard enough to break two of his legs and dislocate his eye, so hard he went into convulsions and chewed up his tongue, still her mother had not looked away. She had taken a hammer, knocked the dog unconscious, wiped away the blood and saliva, pushed his eye back in his head and set his leg bones. He recovered, mute and off-balance, more because of his untrustworthy eye than his bent legs, and winter, summer, drizzle or dry, nothing could persuade him to enter the house again.
Now here was this woman with the presence of mind to repair a dog gone savage with pain rocking her crossed ankles and looking away from her own daughter’s body. As though
the size of it was more than vision could bear. And neither she nor he had on shoes.
Hot, shy, now Denver was lonely. All that leaving: first her brothers, then her grandmother- serious losses since there were no children willing to circle her in a game or hang by their knees from her porch railing. None of that had mattered as long as her mother did not look away as she was doing now, making Denver long, downright long, for a sign of spite from the baby ghost.
“She’s a fine-looking young lady,” said Paul
- “Fine-looking.
Got her daddy’s sweet face.” “You know my father?” “Knew him. Knew him well.”
“Did he, Ma’am?” Denver fought an urge to realign her affection.
“Of course he knew your daddy. I told you, he’s from Sweet Home.”
Denver sat down on the bottom step. There was nowhere else gracefully to go. They were a twosome, saying “Your daddy” and “Sweet Home” in a way that made it clear both belonged to them and not to her. That her own father’s absence was not hers. Once the absence had belonged to Grandma Baby–a son, deeply mourned because he was the one who had bought her out of there. Then it was her mother’s absent husband. Now it was this hazelnut stranger’s absent friend. Only those who knew him (“knew him well”) could claim his absence for themselves. Just as only those who lived in Sweet Home could remember it, whisper it and glance sideways at one another while they did. Again she wished for the baby ghost–its anger thrilling her now where it used to wear her out. Wear her out.
“We have a ghost in here,” she said, and it worked. They were not a twosome anymore. Her mother left off swinging her feet and being girlish. Memory of Sweet Home dropped away from the eyes of the man she was being girlish for. He looked quickly up the lightning-white stairs behind her.
“So I hear,” he said. “But sad, your mama said. Not evil.”
“No sir,” said Denver, “not evil. But not sad either.”
“What then?”
“Rebuked. Lonely and rebuked.”
“Is that right?” Paul D turned to Sethe.
“I don’t know about lonely,” said Denver’s mother. “Mad, maybe, but I don’t see how it could be lonely spending every minute with us like it does.”
“Must be something you got it wants.” Sethe shrugged. “It’s just a baby.”
“My sister,” said Denver. “She died in this house.”
Paul D scratched the hair under his jaw. “Reminds me of that headless bride back behind Sweet Home. Remember that, Sethe? Used to roam them woods regular.”
“How could I forget? Worrisome…”
“How come everybody run off from Sweet Home can’t stop talking about it? Look like if it was so sweet you would have stayed.”
“Girl, who you talking to?”
Paul D laughed. “True, true. She’s right, Sethe. It wasn’t sweet and it sure wasn’t home.” He shook his head.
“But it’s where we were,” said Sethe. “All together. Comes back whether we want it to or not.” She shivered a little. A light ripple of skin on her arm, which she caressed back into sleep. “Denver,” she said, “start up that stove. Can’t have a friend stop by and don’t feed him.”
“Don’t go to any trouble on my account,” Paul D said.
“Bread ain’t trouble. The rest I brought back from where I work.
Least I can do, cooking from dawn to noon, is bring dinner home.
You got any objections to pike?”
him.”
“If he don’t object to me I don’t object to
At it again, thought Denver. Her back to
them, she jostled the kindlin and almost lost the fire. “Why don’t you spend the night, Mr. Garner? You and Ma’am can talk about Sweet Home all night long.”
Sethe took two swift steps to the stove, but before she could yank Denver’s collar, the girl leaned forward and began to cry.
“What is the matter with you? I never knew you to behave this way.”
“Leave her be,” said Paul D. “I’m a stranger to her.”
“That’s just it. She got no cause to act up with a stranger. Oh baby, what is it? Did something happen?”
But Denver was shaking now and sobbing so she could not speak.
The tears she had not shed for nine years wetting her far too womanly breasts.
“I can’t no more. I can’t no more.”
“Can’t what? What can’t you?”
“I can’t live here. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I can’t live here. Nobody speaks to us. Nobody comes by. Boys don’t like me. Girls don’t either.”
“Honey, honey.”
“What’s she talking ’bout nobody speaks to you?” asked Paul D.
“It’s the house. People don’t–“
“It’s not! It’s not the house. It’s us! And it’s
you!”
“Denver!”
“Leave off, Sethe. It’s hard for a young girl
living in a haunted house. That can’t be easy.”
“It’s easier than some other things.” “Think, Sethe. I’m a grown man with
nothing new left to see or do and I’m telling you
it ain’t easy. Maybe you all ought to move.
Who owns this house?”
Over Denver’s shoulder Sethe shot Paul D a look of snow. “What you care?”
“They won’t let you leave?” “No.”
“Sethe.”
“No moving. No leaving. It’s all right the way
it is.”
“You going to tell me it’s all right with this
child half out of her mind?”
Something in the house braced, and in the listening quiet that followed Sethe spoke.
“I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms. No more running–from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this earth. I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much! Do you hear me?
It cost too much. Now sit down and eat with us or leave us be.”
Paul D fished in his vest for a little pouch of tobacco–concentrating on its contents and the knot of its string while Sethe led Denver into the keeping room that opened off the large room he was sitting in. He had no smoking papers, so he fiddled with the pouch and listened through the open door to Sethe quieting her daughter. When she came back she avoided his look and went straight to a small table next
to the stove. Her back was to him and he could see all the hair he wanted without the distraction of her face.
“What tree on your back?”
“Huh.” Sethe put a bowl on the table and reached under it for flour.
“What tree on your back? Is something growing on your back?
I don’t see nothing growing on your back.” “It’s there all the same.”
“Who told you that?”
“Whitegirl. That’s what she called it. I’ve never seen it and never will. But that’s what she said it looked like. A chokecherry tree.
Trunk, branches, and even leaves. Tiny little chokecherry leaves. But that was eighteen years ago. Could have cherries too now for all I know.”
Sethe took a little spit from the tip of her tongue with her forefinger.
Quickly, lightly she touched the stove. Then she trailed her fingers through the flour, parting, separating small hills and ridges of it, looking for mites. Finding none, she poured soda and salt into the crease of her folded hand and tossed both into the flour. Then she reached into a can and scooped half a handful of lard. Deftly she squeezed the flour through it, then with her left hand sprinkling water, she formed the dough.
“I had milk,” she said. “I was pregnant with Denver but I had milk for my baby girl. I hadn’t stopped nursing her when I sent her on ahead with Howard and Buglar.”
Now she rolled the dough out with a wooden pin. “Anybody could smell me long before he saw me. And when he saw me he’d
see the drops of it on the front of my dress. Nothing I could do about that. All I knew was I had to get my milk to my baby girl. Nobody was going to nurse her like me. Nobody was going to get it to her fast enough, or take it away when she had enough and didn’t know it. Nobody knew that she couldn’t pass her air if you held her up on your shoulder, only if she was lying on my knees. Nobody knew that but me and nobody had her milk but me. I told that to the women in the wagon. Told them to put sugar water in cloth to suck from so when I got there in a few days she wouldn’t have forgot me. The milk would be there and I would be there with it.”
“Men don’t know nothing much,” said Paul D, tucking his pouch back into his vest pocket, “but they do know a suckling can’t be away from its mother for long.”
“Then they know what it’s like to send your children off when your breasts are full.”
“We was talking ’bout a tree, Sethe.”
“After I left you, those boys came in there and took my milk.
That’s what they came in there for. Held me down and took it. I told Mrs. Garner on em. She had that lump and couldn’t speak but her
eyes rolled out tears. Them boys found out I told on em. Schoolteacher made one open up my back, and when it closed it made a tree. It grows there still.”
“They used cowhide on you?” “And they took my milk.”
“They beat you and you was pregnant?”
“And they took my milk!”
The fat white circles of dough lined the pan in rows. Once more Sethe touched a wet forefinger to the stove. She opened the oven door and slid the pan of biscuits in. As she raised up from the heat she felt Paul D behind her and his hands under her breasts. She straightened up and knew, but could not feel, that his cheek was pressing into the branches of her chokecherry tree.
Not even trying, he had become the kind of man who could walk into a house and make the women cry. Because with him, in his presence, they could. There was something blessed in his manner.
Women saw him and wanted to weep–to tell him that their chest hurt and their knees did
too. Strong women and wise saw him and told him things they only told each other: that way past the Change of Life, desire in them had suddenly become enormous, greedy, more savage than when they were fifteen, and that it embarrassed them and made them sad; that secretly they longed to die–to be quit of it–that sleep was more precious to them than any waking day. Young girls sidled up to him to confess or describe how well-dressed the visitations were that had followed them straight from their dreams.
Therefore, although he did not understand why this was so, he was not surprised when Denver dripped tears into the stovefire. Nor, fifteen minutes later, after telling him about her stolen milk, her mother wept as well. Behind her, bending down, his body an arc of kindness, he held her breasts in the palms of his hands. He rubbed his cheek on her back and learned that way her sorrow, the roots of it; its wide trunk and intricate branches. Raising his fingers to the hooks of her dress, he knew without seeing them or hearing any sigh that the tears were coming fast. And when the top of her dress was around her hips and he saw the sculpture her back had become, like the decorative work of an
ironsmith too passionate for display, he could think but not say, “Aw, Lord, girl.” And he would tolerate no peace until he had touched every ridge and leaf of it with his mouth, none of which Sethe could feel because her back skin had been dead for years. What she knew was that the responsibility for her breasts, at last, was in somebody else’s hands.
Would there be a little space, she wondered, a little time, some way to hold off eventfulness, to push busyness into the corners of the room and just stand there a minute or two, naked from shoulder blade to waist, relieved of the weight of her breasts, smelling the stolen milk again and the pleasure of
baking bread? Maybe this one time she could stop dead still in the middle of a cooking meal–not even leave the stove–and feel the hurt her back ought to. Trust things and remember things because the last of the Sweet Home men was there to catch her if she sank?
The stove didn’t shudder as it adjusted to its heat. Denver wasn’t stirring in the next room. The pulse of red light hadn’t come back and Paul D had not trembled since 1856 and then for eighty-three days in a row. Locked up and chained down, his hands shook so bad he
couldn’t smoke or even scratch properly. Now he was trembling again but in the legs this time. It took him a while to realize that his legs were not shaking because of worry, but because the floorboards were and the grinding, shoving floor was only part of it. The house itself was pitching. Sethe slid to the floor and struggled to get back into her dress. While down on all fours, as though she were holding her house down on the ground, Denver burst from the keeping room, terror in her eyes, a vague smile on her lips.
“God damn it! Hush up!” Paul D was shouting, falling, reaching for anchor. “Leave the place alone! Get the hell out!” A table rushed toward him and he grabbed its leg. Somehow he managed to stand at an angle and, holding the table by two legs, he bashed it about, wrecking everything, screaming back at the screaming house. “You want to fight, come on! God damn it! She got enough without you.
She got enough!”
The quaking slowed to an occasional lurch, but Paul D did not stop whipping the table around until everything was rock quiet.
Sweating and breathing hard, he leaned against the wall in the space the sideboard left. Sethe was still crouched next to the stove, clutching her salvaged shoes to her chest. The three of them, Sethe, Denver, 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 jelly onto one half of the half a plate. She took a biscuit and pulled off its black top. Smoke curled from the soft white insides.
She missed her brothers. Buglar and Howard would be twenty 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 remembered how it was before: the pleasure they had sitting clustered on the white stairs–she between the knees of Howard or Buglar–while they made up die-witch! stories with proven ways of 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 would not sleep in her old room after her brothers ran away.
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 the jelly. Slowly, methodically, miserably she ate it.
NOT QUITE in a hurry, but losing no time, Sethe and Paul D climbed the white stairs. Overwhelmed as much by the downright luck of
finding her house and her in it as by the certainty of giving her his sex, Paul D dropped twenty-five years from his recent memory. A stair step before him was Baby Suggs’ replacement, the new girl they dreamed of at night and fucked cows for at dawn while waiting for her to choose. Merely kissing the wrought iron on her back had shook the house, had made it necessary for him to beat it to pieces.
Now he would do more.
Reference:
https://www.sweetstudy.com/literature/beloved
https://nibblepop.com/impact-of-slavery-in-toni-morrisons-beloved/
http://daydreaminstudios.org/free-library-read/toni-morrison-beloved