at least once a week, she visited lady jones, who perked up enough to do a raisin loaf especiallyfor her, since denver was set on sweet things. she gave her a book of bible verse and listenedwhile she mumbled words or fairly shouted them. by june denver had read and memorized allfifty-two pages — one for each week of the year. as denver's outside life improved, her home lifedeteriorated. if the whitepeople of cincinnati had allowed negroes into their lunatic asylum theycould have found candidates in 124. strengthened by the gifts of food, the source of which neithersethe nor beloved questioned, the women had arrived at a doomsday truce designed by the devil.
beloved sat around, ate, went from bed to bed. sometimes she screamed, "rain! rain!" andclawed her throat until rubies of blood opened there, made brighter by her midnight skin. thensethe shouted, "no!" and knocked over chairs to get to her and wipe the jewels away. other timesbeloved curled up on the floor, her wrists between her knees, and stayed there for hours. or she would go to the creek, stick her feet in the water and whoosh it up her legs. afrerward she wouldgo to sethe, run her fingers over the woman's teeth while tears slid from her wide black eyes. thenit seemed to denver the thing was done: beloved bending over sethe looked the mother, sethe theteething child, for other than those times when beloved needed her, sethe confined herself to acorner chair. the bigger beloved got, the smaller sethe became; the brighter beloved's eyes, themore those eyes that used never to look away became slits of sleeplessness. sethe no longercombed her hair or splashed her face with water. she sat in the chair licking her lips like achastised child while beloved ate up her life, took it, swelled up with it, grew taller on it. and theolder woman yielded it up without a murmur. denver served them both. washing, cooking,forcing, cajoling her mother to eat a little now and then, providing sweet things for beloved asoften as she could to calm her down. it was hard to know what she would do from minute tominute. when the heat got hot, she might walk around the house naked or wrapped in a sheet, herbelly protruding like a winning watermelon.
denver thought she understood the connection between her mother and beloved: sethe was tryingto make up for the handsaw; beloved was making her pay for it. but there would never be an endto that, and seeing her mother diminished shamed and infuriated her. yet she knew sethe's greatestfear was the same one denver had in the beginning — that beloved might leave. that before sethecould make her understand what it meant — what it took to drag the teeth of that saw under thelittle chin; to feel the baby blood pump like oil in her hands; to hold her face so her head wouldstay on; to squeeze her so she could absorb, still, the death spasms that shot through that adoredbody, plump and sweet with life — beloved might leave. leave before sethe could make herrealize that worse than that — far worse — was what baby suggs died of, what ella knew, whatstamp saw and what made paul d tremble. that anybody white could take your whole self foranything that came to mind. not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. dirty you so bad youcouldn't like yourself anymore. dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up.
and though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own.
the best thing she was, was her children. whites might dirty bet all right, but not her best thing,her beautiful, magical best thing — the part of her that was cl ean. no undreamable dreams aboutwhether the headless, feetless torso hanging in the tree with a sign on it was her husband or paula; whether the bubbling-hot girls in the colored-school fire set by patriots included her daughter;whether a gang of whites invaded her daughter's private parts, soiled her daughter's thighs andthrew her daughter out of the wagon. she might have to work the slaughterhouse yard, but not herdaughter.
and no one, nobody on this earth, would list her daughter's characteristics on the animal side ofthe paper. no. oh no. maybe baby suggs could worry about it, live with the likelihood of it; sethehad refused — and refused still. this and much more denver heard her say from her corner chair,trying to persuade beloved, the one and only person she felt she had to convince, that what she haddone was right because it came from true love.
beloved, her fat new feet propped on the seat of a chair in front of the one she sat in, her unlinedhands resting on her stomach, looked at her. uncomprehending everything except that sethe wasthe woman who took her face away, leaving her crouching in a dark, dark place, forgetting to smile.
her father's daughter after all, denver decided to do the necessary. decided to stop relying onkindness to leave something on the stump. she would hire herself out somewhere, and althoughshe was afraid to leave sethe and beloved alone all day not knowing what calamity either one ofthem would create, she came to realize that her presence in that house had no influence on whateither woman did. she kept them alive and they ignored her. growled when they chose; sulked,explained, demanded, strutted, cowered, cried and provoked each other to the edge of violence,then over. she had begun to notice that even when beloved was quiet, dreamy, minding her ownbusiness, sethe got her going again. whispering, muttering justification, some bit ofclarifyinginformationtobelovedtoexplainwhatithadbeenlike,and(some) why, and how come. it wasas though sethe didn't really want forgiveness given; she wanted it refused. and beloved helpedher out.
