What he heard, as he moved toward the porch, he didn’t understand. Out on Bluestone Road he thought he heard a conflagration of hasty voices—loud, urgent, all speaking at once so he could not make out what they were talking about or to whom. The speech wasn’t nonsensical, exactly, nor was it tongues. But something was wrong with the order of the words and he couldn’t describe or cipher it to save his life. All he could make out was the word mine. The rest of it stayed outside his mind’s reach. Yet he went on through. When he got to the steps, the voices drained suddenly to less than a whisper. It gave him pause. They had become an occasional mutter—like the interior sounds a woman makes when she believes she is alone and unobserved at her work: a sth when she misses the needle’s eye; a soft moan when she sees another chip in her one good platter; the low, friendly argument with which she greets the hens. Nothing fierce or startling. Just that eternal, private conversation that takes place between women and their tasks.
Stamp Paid raised his fist to knock on the door he had never knocked on (because it was always open to or for him) and could not do it. Dispensing with that formality was all the pay he expected from Negroes in his debt. Once Stamp Paid brought you a coat, got the message to you, saved your life, or fixed the cistern he took the liberty of walking in your door as though it were his own. Since all his visits were beneficial, his step or holler through a doorway got a bright welcome. Rather than forfeit the one privilege he claimed for himself, he lowered his hand and left the porch.
Over and over again he tried it: made up his mind to visit Sethe; broke through the loud hasty voices to the mumbling beyond it and stopped, trying to figure out what to do at the door. Six times in as many days he abandoned his normal route and tried to knock at 124. But the coldness of the gesture—its sign that he was indeed a stranger at the gate—overwhelmed him. Retracing his steps in the snow, he sighed. Spirit willing; flesh weak.
While Stamp Paid was making up his mind to visit 124 for Baby Suggs’ sake, Sethe was trying to take her advice: to lay it all down, sword and shield. Not just to acknowledge the advice Baby Suggs gave her, but actually to take it. Four days after Paul D reminded her of how many feet she had, Sethe rummaged among the shoes of strangers to find the ice skates she was sure were there. Digging in the heap she despised herself for having been so trusting, so quick to surrender at the stove while Paul D kissed her back. She should have known that he would behave like everybody else in town once he knew. The twenty-eight days of having women friends, a mother-in-law, and all her children together; of being part of a neighborhood; of, in fact, having neighbors at all to call her own—all that was long gone and would never come back. No more dancing in the Clearing or happy feeds. No more discussions, stormy or quiet, about the true meaning of the Fugitive Bill, the Settlement Fee, God’s Ways and Negro pews; antislavery, manumission, skin voting, Republicans, Dred Scott, book learning, Sojourner’s high-wheeled buggy, the Colored Ladies of Delaware, Ohio, and the other weighty issues that held them in chairs, scraping the floorboards or pacing them in agony or exhilaration. No anxious wait for the North Star or news of a beat-off. No sighing at a new betrayal or handclapping at a small victory.
Those twenty-eight happy days were followed by eighteen years of disapproval and a solitary life. Then a few months of the sun-splashed life that the shadows holding hands on the road promised her; tentative greetings from other coloredpeople in Paul D’s company; a bed life for herself. Except for Denver’s friend, every bit of it had disappeared. Was that the pattern? she wondered. Every eighteen or twenty years her unlivable life would be interrupted by a short-lived glory?
Well, if that’s the way it was—that’s the way it was.
She had been on her knees, scrubbing the floor, Denver trailing her with the drying rags, when Beloved appeared saying, “What these do?” On her knees, scrub brush in hand, she looked at the girl and the skates she held up. Sethe couldn’t skate a lick but then and there she decided to take Baby Suggs’ advice: lay it all down. She left the bucket where it was. Told Denver to get out the shawls and started searching for the other skates she was certain were in that heap somewhere. Anybody feeling sorry for her, anybody wandering by to peep in and see how she was getting on (including Paul D) would discover that the woman junkheaped for the third time because she loved her children—that woman was sailing happily on a frozen creek.
Hurriedly, carelessly she threw the shoes about. She found one blade—a man’s.
“Well,” she said. “We’ll take turns. Two skates on one; one skate on one; and shoe slide for the other.”
Nobody saw them falling.
Holding hands, bracing each other, they swirled over the ice. Beloved wore the pair; Denver wore one, step-gliding over the treacherous ice. Sethe thought her two shoes would hold and anchor her. She was wrong. Two paces onto the creek, she lost her balance and landed on her behind. The girls, screaming with laughter, joined her on the ice. Sethe struggled to stand and discovered not only that she could do a split, but that it hurt. Her bones surfaced in unexpected places and so did laughter. Making a circle or a line, the three of them could not stay upright for one whole minute, but nobody saw them falling.
Each seemed to be helping the other two stay upright, yet every tumble doubled their delight. The live oak and soughing pine on the banks enclosed them and absorbed their laughter while they fought gravity for each other’s hands. Their skirts flew like wings and their skin turned pewter in the cold and dying light.
Nobody saw them falling.
Exhausted finally they lay down on their backs to recover breath. The sky above them was another country. Winter stars, close enough to lick, had come out before sunset. For a moment, looking up, Sethe entered the perfect peace they offered. Then Denver stood up and tried for a long, independent glide. The tip of her single skate hit an ice bump, and as she fell, the flapping of her arms was so wild and hopeless that all three—Sethe, Beloved and Denver herself—laughed till they coughed. Sethe rose to her hands and knees, laughter still shaking her chest, making her eyes wet. She stayed that way for a while, on all fours. But when her laughter died, the tears did not and it was some time before Beloved or Denver knew the difference. When they did they touched her lightly on the shoulders.
Walking back through the woods, Sethe put an arm around each girl at her side. Both of them had an arm around her waist. Making their way over hard snow, they stumbled and had to hold on tight, but nobody saw them fall.
Inside the house they found out they were cold. They took off their shoes, wet stockings, and put on dry woolen ones. Denver fed the fire. Sethe warmed a pan of milk and stirred cane syrup and vanilla into it. Wrapped in quilts and blankets before the cooking stove, they drank, wiped their noses, and drank again.
“We could roast some taters,” said Denver.
“Tomorrow,” said Sethe. “Time to sleep.”
She poured them each a bit more of the hot sweet milk. The stovefire roared.
“You finished with your eyes?” asked Beloved.
Sethe smiled. “Yes, I’m finished with my eyes. Drink up. Time for bed.”
But none of them wanted to leave the warmth of the blankets, the fire and the cups for the chill of an unheated bed. They went on sipping and watching the fire.
When the click came Sethe didn’t know what it was. Afterward it was clear as daylight that the click came at the very beginning—a beat, almost, before it started; before she heard three notes; before the melody was even clear. Leaning forward a little, Beloved was humming softly.
It was then, when Beloved finished humming, that Sethe recalled the click—the settling of pieces into places designed and made especially for them. No milk spilled from her cup because her hand was not shaking. She simply turned her head and looked at Beloved’s profile: the chin, mouth, nose, forehead, copied and exaggerated in the huge shadow the fire threw on the wall behind her. Her hair, which Denver had braided into twenty or thirty plaits, curved toward her shoulders like
arms. From where she sat Sethe could not examine it, not the hairline, nor the eyebrows, the lips, nor…
“All I remember,” Baby Suggs had said, “is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Her little hands I wouldn’t know em if they slapped me.”
…the birthmark, nor the color of the gums, the shape of her ears, nor…
“Here. Look here. This is your ma’am. If you can’t tell me by my face, look here.”
…the fingers, nor their nails, nor even…
But there would be time. The click had clicked; things were where they ought to be or poised and ready to glide in.
“I made that song up,” said Sethe. “I made it up and sang it to my children. Nobody knows that song but me and my children.”
Beloved turned to look at Sethe. “I know it,” she said.
A hobnail casket of jewels found in a tree hollow should be fondled before it is opened. Its lock may have rusted or broken away from the clasp. Still you should touch the nail heads, and test its weight. No smashing with an ax head before it is decently exhumed from the grave that has hidden it all this time. No gasp at a miracle that is truly miraculous because the magic lies in the fact that you knew it was there for you all along.
Sethe wiped the white satin coat from the inside of the pan, brought pillows from the keeping room for the girls’ heads. There was no tremor in her voice as she instructed them to keep the fire—if not, come on upstairs.
With that, she gathered her blanket around her elbows and ascended the lily-white stairs like a bride. Outside, snow solidified itself into graceful forms. The peace of winter stars seemed permanent.
Fingering a ribbon and smelling skin, Stamp Paid approached 124 again.
My marrow is tired, he thought. I been tired all my days, bone-tired, but now it’s in the marrow. Must be what Baby Suggs felt when she lay down and thought about color for the rest of her life. When she told him what her aim was, he thought she was ashamed and too shamed to say so. Her authority in the pulpit, her dance in the Clearing, her powerful Call (she didn’t deliver sermons or preach—insisting she was too ignorant for that—she called and the hearing heard)—all that had been mocked and rebuked by the bloodspill in her backyard. God puzzled her and she was too ashamed of Him to say so. Instead she told Stamp she was going to bed to think about the colors of things. He tried to dissuade her. Sethe was in jail with her nursing baby, the one he had saved. Her sons were holding hands in the yard, terrified of letting go. Strangers and familiars were stopping by to hear how it went one more time, and suddenly Baby declared peace. She just up and quit. By the time Sethe was released she had exhausted blue and was well on her way to yellow.
At first he would see her in the yard occasionally, or delivering food to the jail, or shoes in town. Then less and less. He believed then that shame put her in the bed. Now, eight years after her contentious funeral and eighteen years after the Misery, he changed his mind. Her marrow was tired and it was a testimony to the heart that fed it that it took eight years to meet finally the color she was hankering after. The onslaught of her fatigue, like his, was sudden, but lasted for years. After sixty years of losing children to the people who chewed up her life and spit it out like a fish bone; after five years of freedom given to her by her last child, who bought her future with his, exchanged it, so to speak, so she could have one whether he did or not—to lose him too; to acquire a daughter and grandchildren and see that daughter slay the children (or try to); to belong to a community of other free Negroes—to love and be loved by them, to counsel and be counseled, protect and be protected, feed and be fed—and then to have that community step back and hold itself at a distance—well, it could wear out even a Baby Suggs, holy.
“Listen here, girl,” he told her, “you can’t quit the Word. It’s given to you to speak. You can’t quit the Word, I don’t care what all happen to you.”
They were standing in Richmond Street, ankle deep in leaves. Lamps lit the downstairs windows of spacious houses and made the early evening look darker than it was. The odor of burning leaves was brilliant. Quite by chance, as he pocketed a penny tip for a delivery, he had glanced across the street and recognized the skipping woman as his old friend. He had not seen her in weeks. Quickly he crossed the street, scuffing red leaves as he went. When he stopped her with a greeting, she returned it with a face knocked clean of interest. She could have been a plate. A carpetbag full of shoes in her hand, she waited for him to begin, lead or share a conversation. If there had been sadness in her eyes he would have understood it; but indifference lodged where sadness should have been.
“You missed the Clearing three Saturdays running,” he told her.
She turned her head away and scanned the houses along the street.
“Folks came,” he said.
“Folks come; folks go,” she answered.
“Here, let me carry that.” He tried to take her bag from her but she wouldn’t let him.
“I got a delivery someplace long in here,” she said. “Name of Tucker.”
“Yonder,” he said. “Twin chestnuts in the yard. Sick, too.”
They walked a bit, his pace slowed to accommodate her skip.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Saturday coming. You going to Call or what?”
“If I call them and they come, what on earth I’m going to say?”
“Say the Word!” He checked his shout too late. Two whitemen burning leaves turned their heads in his direction. Bending low he whispered into her ear, “The Word. The Word.”
“That’s one other thing took away from me,” she said, and that was when he exhorted her, pleaded with her not to quit, no matter what. The Word had been given to her and she had to speak it. Had to.
They had reached the twin chestnuts and the white house that stood behind them.
“See what I mean?” he said. “Big trees like that, both of em together ain’t got the leaves of a young birch.”
“I see what you mean,” she said, but she peered instead at the white house.
“You got to do it,” he said. “You got to. Can’t nobody Call like you. You have to be there.”
“What I have to do is get in my bed and lay down. I want to fix on something harmless in this world.”
“What world you talking about? Ain’t nothing harmless down here.”
“Yes it is. Blue. That don’t hurt nobody. Yellow neither.”
“You getting in the bed to think about yellow?”
“I likes yellow.”
“Then what? When you get through with blue and yellow, then what?”
“Can’t say. It’s something can’t be planned.”
“You blaming God,” he said. “That’s what you doing.”
“No, Stamp. I ain’t.”
“You saying the whitefolks won? That what you saying?”
“I’m saying they came in my yard.”
“You saying nothing counts.”
“I’m saying they came in my yard.”
“Sethe’s the one did it.”
“And if she hadn’t?”
“You saying God give up? Nothing left for us but pour out our own blood?”
“I’m saying they came in my yard.”
“You punishing Him, ain’t you.”
“Not like He punish me.”
“You can’t do that, Baby. It ain’t right.”
“Was a time I knew what that was.”
“You still know.”
“What I know is what I see: a nigger woman hauling shoes.”
“Aw, Baby.” He licked his lips searching with his tongue for the words that would turn her around, lighten her load. “We have to be steady. ‘These things too will pass.’ What you looking for? A miracle?”
“No,” she said. “I’m looking for what I was put here to look for: the back door,” and skipped right to it. They didn’t let her in. They took the shoes from her as she stood on the steps and she rested her hip on the railing while th
e whitewoman went looking for the dime.
Stamp Paid rearranged his way. Too angry to walk her home and listen to more, he watched her for a moment and turned to go before the alert white face at the window next door had come to any conclusion.
Trying to get to 124 for the second time now, he regretted that conversation: the high tone he took; his refusal to see the effect of marrow weariness in a woman he believed was a mountain. Now, too late, he understood her. The heart that pumped out love, the mouth that spoke the Word, didn’t count. They came in her yard anyway and she could not approve or condemn Sethe’s rough choice. One or the other might have saved her, but beaten up by the claims of both, she went to bed. The whitefolks had tired her out at last.
And him. Eighteen seventy-four and whitefolks were still on the loose. Whole towns wiped clean of Negroes; eighty-seven lynchings in one year alone in Kentucky; four colored schools burned to the ground; grown men whipped like children; children whipped like adults; black women raped by the crew; property taken, necks broken. He smelled skin, skin and hot blood. The skin was one thing, but human blood cooked in a lynch fire was a whole other thing. The stench stank. Stank up off the pages of the North Star, out of the mouths of witnesses, etched in crooked handwriting in letters delivered by hand. Detailed in documents and petitions full of whereas and presented to any legal body who’d read it, it stank. But none of that had worn out his marrow. None of that. It was the ribbon. Tying his flatbed up on the bank of the Licking River, securing it the best he could, he caught sight of something red on its bottom. Reaching for it, he thought it was a cardinal feather stuck to his boat. He tugged and what came loose in his hand was a red ribbon knotted around a curl of wet woolly hair, clinging still to its bit of scalp. He untied the ribbon and put it in his pocket, dropped the curl in the weeds. On the way home, he stopped, short of breath and dizzy. He waited until the spell passed before continuing on his way. A moment later, his breath left him again. This time he sat down by a fence. Rested, he got to his feet, but before he took a step he turned to look back down the road he was traveling and said, to its frozen mud and the river beyond, “What are these people? You tell me, Jesus. What are they?”