Beloved (Summary)

Ch. 17
 Here's the thing: Paul D's sure that that isn't Sethe's mouth.
 He's staring at a picture of Sethe in a news clipping, but it just doesn't look right to
him.
 It's hog season in Cincinnati, so every black man can have a job if he wants one,
tending to the pigs heading for the slaughterhouse. It's also the last week of work,
which brings us to Stamp Paid and why he has decided to choose this time to show
Paul D the news article.
 Even though Paul D doesn't read the article, he does know, though, that any time a
black person's picture is in the paper, there has to be something bad going on. And
not just the regular sort of bad, either. Runaway slaves, rapes, hangings—they don't
make the news. Not when it's related to black people.
 The only time that blacks are in the news is when something really bad happens,
something that makes white people excited. Or nervous.
 That's why he doesn't believe that the picture in the news clipping is really Sethe—
because that wouldn't be the Sethe that he knows.
 Stamp Paid looks at Paul D and realizes that he's going to have to tell him about that
day; how it started with him picking blackberries on such snake-infested ground that
even the birds didn't want the berries; but how he picked those berries anyway just
for Baby Suggs and her grandkids and Sethe. And the party too—how there was so
much food so that everyone came. And how he came by the next day to chop wood
since there wasn't any kindling left from all the cooking the day before.
 He's also about to tell Paul D of how, that morning, Baby Suggs was restless; how
she kept looking up the river so much that even he looked up the river—so much so
that both of them missed the four horsemen coming down the road toward the
house. He's pretty sure that this is an important detail: the fact that they missed the
four horsemen in part because the whole town had been at their party and so hadn't
been around to pick up clues about the four horsemen when they stopped in town.
 He's also pretty certain that those people left in town who didn't warn them—they
were born of some kind of meanness that made them ignore the four white men
asking about Sethe and her kids.
 But Paul D still can't believe it's Sethe; he keeps saying so.
 So Stamp Paid figures there's no way Paul D can hack the details of how Sethe
gathered up her children before the men got to the house, flew to the shed, and
prepared to kill her children. Paul D just wouldn't believe it.
  Instead, Stamp Paid begins to read Paul D the article—something Paul D can't do
himself since he can't read.
 When Stamp Paid's done reading, Paul D says again that the woman in the picture
just doesn't have Sethe's mouth. Paul D doesn't believe the article. He can't.
 Looking at Paul D, Stamp Paid starts to wonder if maybe his own memory is lying.
 After all, the man has so much conviction—so much confidence in Sethe.
 Maybe the past didn't happen after all. But of course, everyone knows that isn't true.

Ch. 18
 Sethe's walking around the room in circles and telling Paul D about the past. About
how her first daughter was crawling by the time she arrived at Baby Suggs's house
and how, back then, babies didn't develop as quickly as they do now because they
didn't eat anything but milk.
 Paul D's watching all this circling while Sethe yammers on; the parts of Sethe's
body never seem to stop moving.
 But Sethe doesn't seem to notice; instead, she just talks on about how, back then,
she didn't have any women around her except for Mrs. Garner at Sweet Home (and
how useful could she be? She never had kids). There was that woman Aunt Phyllis,
who helped deliver all her babies (except for Denver of course), but the Garners
only called her when they needed her. So she and Halle—they had to figure out how
to be parents themselves. Suffice it to say, they could have done better if they had
some real guidance.
 But, in any case, Sethe's babies grew up all right.
 Paul D's still listening to her story, if you can call it a story—her words are circling
just as much as her body and they never seem to arrive at a point. He's also
watching and waiting for a smile, one that will match his, one that will show that
she's in on the joke, too, and that it's not her in the article—a case of mistaken
identity maybe.
 Only that smile never comes from Sethe; instead, she charges on and gets to her
defense.
 You see, things at Sweet Home were what they were once schoolteacher got there,
so she had to get out. And when she finally did decide to leave, she hatched a plan
and executed it perfectly—what a feeling, right? Sethe got to feel what it was like to
use her head, be that strong, independent, black woman who could save all of her
children and herself.
 Plus, she finally felt free enough to love her children as if she could actually keep
them.
 Paul D gets it—he really does. Because in Alfred, Georgia, that ability to love big
was a freedom he couldn't feel otherwise it would have killed him. The only way
anyone could love that big would be to get someplace safe, where you didn't need to
ask permission to desire.
 Now Sethe's onto another circle: she starts to tell Paul D about how she'd wanted to
make clothes for her baby girl. She'd even taken a little piece of calico cloth from
Mrs. Garner in order to do so. But she lost that fabric, so when she got to Baby
Suggs's house, the first thing she did was stitch together a dress for her first
daughter.
 Okay, now no one knows what she's babbling about. Even Sethe sees that she's
really not getting to the point and that all her circling isn't going to help her explain
anything. That's because the truth is so simple: she saw schoolteacher's hat coming
into the yard; heard and felt hummingbird wings on her head (hey, the truth may be
simple, but no one said it wasn't weird); and just knew that she had to get them safe.
 She stopped schoolteacher. She took her babies and made them safe.
 Paul D is horrified.
 He finally realizes what Stamp Paid was trying to tell him. It wasn't just that Sethe
killed her baby—it was that she didn't know the difference between safety and
killing her daughter with a handsaw.
 (By the way: that's how the baby dies. Sethe slashes her throat, almost saws her
head off, and lets the baby's blood pump out. We just thought you should know.)
 In fact, Paul D's figured out that that's what 124 is missing: safety. He thought he
had run the ghost baby off when he moved to 124, but now he knows that the ghost
baby avoided Sethe for the same reason any sane person would: Sethe may seem
like any other woman, but she also thinks safety is a handsaw. Definitely not safe.
Definitely very scary.
 Instead of saying all of that out loud though (hey, who knows what could happen if
he did), he tells Sethe that her love's "too thick."
 While he's saying that, he can almost feel her looking at him, through the
floorboards, from above. Who do you think he means?
 Beloved, of course.
 Paul D tells Sethe that it didn't work. How can she say that her children are safe?
After all, one's dead. The boys ran away. And Denver… that's one crazy child.
  Sethe disagrees. She couldn't let her children go back with schoolteacher. And after
all, it isn't her job to know what's worse—life with schoolteacher or death by her
own hand; it's her job to keep them away from what she already knows is terrible
and she's done that.
 You know how arguments go. Now Paul D can't help getting on his moral high
horse. He comes out and says what we all can't help thinking—Sethe's wrong; there
could have been another way.
 But who are we to judge? Well, Paul D doesn't really think that. He goes ahead and
judges, saying the one thing that he really really just shouldn't say, even to a mother
who killed one child and tried to kill three others. He tells Sethe that she has two
feet, not four.
 Go ahead and gasp (we did) because, as far as zingers go, that one definitely hit its
mark. (If it isn't clear already, he basically implies that she acted like an animal
when she killed her child.)
 We're guessing there's no going back on this one. And just to make that crystal clear
on so many levels, a huge metaphorical forest springs up between the two of them,
creating this huge distance.
 What else can Paul D do except get up and slowly leave?
 Of course, he tries to make it seem like he's just going out for a bit, not leaving for
good. (Again, who could blame him? The woman did take a handsaw to her kid.)
 But Sethe knows the truth. After all that she's been through and all that they've just
said to each other? He thinks a simple "goodbye" will break her? Right, whatever.
 In return, she mutters a soft "so long," muffled by the trees of that metaphorical
forest.
Ch. 19
 So this is the start of the second section of the novel. But we're actually still right
where we started: at 124.
 This time though, we're in Stamp Paid's head, and it's definitely worried.
 First of all, he can hear loud sounds coming from 124. He's down the road, walking
toward the house.
 Why is he at 124 at all, though? Well, ever since Paul D left, Stamp's been feeling
like a sneak. And no wonder really: he's been a sneak all his life, basically doing the
opposite of what he appears to be doing (like hiding and transporting slaves or
making private news public).
 He also feels responsible for Sethe and the girls: hence, all that worry.
 He thinks about whether or not he did the right thing, telling Paul D about Sethe's
past.
 After all, when Paul D was around, things seemed better at 124. Calmer.
 The haunting stopped, for one thing. And that's no small thing.
 And now he's gone because of what Stamp Paid told him.
 More troubling, however, is Stamp Paid's memory of Baby Suggs.
 The two of them had shared a lot over the years.
 In fact, the last time he'd been to 124 was to carry her body out of the house and
take it the Clearing. Only he wasn't allowed to bury her there due to the laws of
white people; so, he ended up burying her next to the dead baby girl (not something
Baby Suggs would necessarily appreciate, but moving on...).
 Because Sethe and the townspeople had never reconciled, Baby Suggs' funeral was
a mess of spite and hostility.
 Everything, in fact, that Baby Suggs stood against.
 As Stamp Paid thinks about Sethe and her pride, he begins to wonder if his own
pride (or his need to see Sethe brought to rights) made him tell Paul D about her
past.
 If so, then he's hurt Sethe and Denver for no reason.
 Anyway, back to 124: Stamp Paid can't quite tell, but he thinks that he hears the
word "mine."
 Everything else is a jumble of words that drops to a whisper once he arrives at the
doorstep.
 He raises his hand to knock.
 For Stamp Paid, this is a huge thing.
 And a very uncharacteristic one.
 See, Stamp Paid spends his life helping other people.
 All he asks in return is the right to enter your house as if he's family.
 In other words, he doesn't knock. Ever.
 And standing outside 124, trying to walk in, Stamp Paid has a bit of a crisis.
 Six times he's tried to knock at that door this week.
 He can't enter 124 without knocking. And he can't bring himself to knock on the
door of Baby Suggs's house.
 Finally he admits defeat. Turning, he walks quietly off the porch.
 Okay, get ready, folks: the rest of the chapter moves pretty fast. And it covers lots
of ground.
 As Stamp stands outside the door of 124, Sethe's on the inside looking for ice skates
and trying to follow Baby Suggs's advice: "to lay it all down, sword and shield."
 What does that mean? We're guessing it has to do with letting the past rest.
 Like letting go of the fact that she once had 28 days of happiness 18 years ago,
when she first arrived at Baby Suggs house and wasn't yet a social outcast.
 Or how she had a few months of love with Paul D.
 Maybe that's just how life works; you get a short bit of bliss and then a really long
period of misery. Maybe it's cyclical for her; every 20 years or so she can look
forward to some joy and then it ends.
 Anyhow, now Sethe's scrubbing the floor with Denver trailing behind.
 But she leaves it all behind when Beloved appears with the very skates Sethe was
looking for. (Coincidence? We think not.)
 So Sethe takes Denver and Beloved skating on the ice behind her house.
 They share the one pair of skates and a half (that makes 3 skates by the way—
symbolism alert!) and fall a lot, but they clearly love it. And the best part? No one
sees them fall.
 For Sethe, falling down on all fours gets her to laugh and cry at the same time.
Denver and Beloved understand: they show their sympathy through a touch.
 Walking home, these three are clearly a unit: if they fall, they fall together with
arms around each other's waists.
 Once home, Sethe heats up some hot sweet milk. They all wrap themselves with
quilts and sit in front of the cooking stove. It's like a nice, homey campfire. How
peaceful.
 Until of course Sethe hears the click. And not the click is such a bad thing; it just
signals something falling into place.
The click comes before Beloved starts to hum.
 Sethe remember that moment: she sees Beloved's profile and gets it—Beloved's her
daughter.
 That's how Beloved knows about the song she's humming. Sethe made that song up
for her children and no one else knows it.
 Funnily enough, Sethe's not at all shocked. Or even surprised. And we're guessing
you're probably not all that surprised either.
 See, the thing about miracles is that you tend to know about them all along.
 Sethe's calm now: she takes care of the girls and then goes upstairs to her room like
a bride.
 Outside? It's peaceful too: a snowy winter night.
 Now we're back with Stamp Paid.He's back outside the house at 124.
 In his fingers, he's holding a ribbon that was once on a dead girl's scalp.
 He's tired. Really, really tired. A tired that goes all the way down into the marrow of
his bones.
 As Stamp Paid stands there, he realizes that Baby Suggs must have been this tired
when she stopped coming to the Clearing.
 For years, he's had it all wrong. He thought that she was ashamed of all the violence
that occurred in her house. And that she had given up on God and the Word.
 She did try to convince him otherwise. For her, it had to do with the fact that they
came into her yard. And by "they," she means the white men.
 Stamp didn't get it then. He remembers how Baby Suggs told him that she was just
going to lie in her bed and think about color, especially blue and maybe yellow.
 He thought she was crazy. And okay, we admit, it does sound a bit crazy.
 But now that he thinks about it, Stamp Paid's pretty amazed that Baby Suggs
managed to live for 8 years with this kind of tiredness—the kind that comes with
the white men who were able to enter Baby Suggs' yard without her permission.
 And what about himself? It's 1874 and slavery ended almost ten years ago, but
white people are still loose. They're lynching, raping, burning, whipping blacks. It's
all over the news and in legal documents.
 But that's not what tires him out to the marrow. It's the ribbon in his hands.
 He remembers finding the ribbon floating in the stream. It had a little bit of human
scalp still attached to it.
 Appalled at the memory, Stamp Paid tries to figure out what kind of people could
commit such atrocities.
 Now he knows that he needs to talk to Sethe about what he told Paul D. He's going
to try and make it through the voices coming from 124 in order to knock on that
door.
 And this time, he thinks he knows whose voices they belong to—all the black
people who have been lynched, murdered, raped, and broken by slavery.
 Cue Sethe. (We told you that this was a monster chapter!)
 It's morning and Sethe's perfectly happy. The girls are right where she left them, in
front of the stove—her two daughters together. What else does she need?
 She goes out to collect some wood for the fire and doesn't even notice the man's
frozen footprints—that's how happy she is.
 She's so happy that she even smiles at the shed—that place where she killed
Beloved years ago. She's thinking, wow—Beloved isn't even mad at her!
 (Something tells us this isn't exactly good luck, but moving on…)
 She thinks back to that day when Paul D, Denver, and she were walking down the
lane holding hands. The shadows they cast weren't of them three—it was of "us
three": Denver, Sethe and Beloved.
 They're the family unit of 3 doing everything together. Plus, Sethe's thinking that if
Beloved can come back from the dead, then her boys can certainly return to her
from wherever they are.
 Who cares if she's late to work? If she's late to work for the first time in 16 years,
then so be it. Look at what she has!
 Sethe's absolutely convinced now that Paul D was wrong: there's nothing for her out
there in the world. Everything she needs is right inside this house, with her two
girls. (We're thinking Sethe hasn't heard about co-dependency…)
 After breakfast, Sethe leaves for work, still not noticing the footprints or, for that
matter, hearing the voices surrounding 124 like a noose. Not too observant, that
Sethe.
 But that's only because she's in her own head, so much so that she becomes our
first-person narrator briefly.
 Sethe's thinking she doesn't have to remember any of the bad stuff now that she has
Beloved back.
 Not how Baby Suggs's heart collapses or how Howard and Buglar could never let
go of each other's hands, especially at night.
 Or all those visits Baby Suggs made to see her and Denver in jail. Baby Suggs did
want to take Denver out of that jail, but Sethe wouldn't let her go.
 Baby Suggs was the one to give her all the news, like how schoolteacher left after
filing a claim and how she would be let out of jail for the dead baby's burial
(although not her funeral service).
 She's remembering now about what she had to do to get "Beloved" etched onto a
headstone for her baby and how it really should have been "Dearly Beloved," from
Reverend Pike's sermon.
 Only she's also forgetting—like the fact that she pretty much ruined Baby Suggs's
life.
 The only thing Sethe feels like she needs to know now is this: how bad is Beloved's
scar?
 That Sethe's a mind trip. Luckily, we get to go back to Stamp Paid, who's at 124
again and finally gets up the guts to knock.
 Only no one answers. He looks through the window, sees their backs—those of
Denver and Beloved (only he doesn't recognize Beloved)—and gets pretty furious
that they aren't answering the door.
 What black household would ever dare close its door to him?, Stamp's wondering.
 But Stamp starts to cool down as he walks away. He also starts to get curious: who's
that girl with Denver?
 Since Stamp knows pretty much everyone, it's definitely strange that he doesn't
know this black girl. But if he doesn't know her, then he knows who might: John
and Ella, who have helped him transport Sethe and numerous other fugitive slaves
to safety over the years.
 While he's going to their place, he's wondering that maybe he misnamed himself
because maybe he still has a debt to pay.
 Yep—you're about to get an explanation of how Stamp got his name. Don't you
wish the rest of the book could be this clear?
Stamp was originally named Joshua, but he gave up that name when he "gave" his
wife to his master's son.
 At least he didn't kill anyone, including himself (his wife asked him to stay alive).
 And with a sacrifice that big, he feels like he's paid all his debts.
 Now he extends this debtlessness to other runaway and former slaves by helping
them out. He figures that they've paid life all it could ask of them. Now life owes
them.
 For starters, he heads over to Ella's house to ask her if she knows anything about the
new woman at 124.
 She doesn't, but she does tell him that Paul D is now sleeping in the basement of the
church.
 Stamp Paid wants to know why no black people in the town took in Paul D? What
happened to (Ella's) common Christian charity?
 Ella says that Paul D stayed with Sethe. Maybe that explains why folks aren't so
eager to help him.
 But in Stamp's mind, that's just no excuse, so he tells Ella what we already know:
Paul D left because of what Stamp told him about Sethe's baby.
 Now all of a sudden Ella changes her mind about Paul D, but she's lost Stamp's
respect because, frankly, Ella should be ashamed of herself. And so should all the
other black people in town.
 Ella does remind Stamp, however, that he came about the new girl and that, what
with how strange 124 is, the new girl might not be a "who" but a "what." In other
words, Ella's saying the new girl could be an unholy spirit.
 Being the Christian warrior that he is, Stamp knows she's right, so they make up as
friends and he goes to find Paul D.
And there he is—on the steps of the church, looking exhausted.
 Cutting back to Sethe: her boss Sawyer is yelling at her for being late.
 But white people have put Sethe been through so much that she's not letting her
boss or any white person get to her anymore. She used to be trusting, but no more.
 Then she gets into a small spat with Sawyer about being late and making pies that
are too sweet.
 That blows over quickly (Sawyer's not a bad guy) and now Sethe's thinking about
food: what will she take home? Sausages? Those are gone and so are her pies, but
there's some stew.
 She could eat her meal at the restaurant (it's included in her wages), but she never
hangs around at work to eat.
 She does, however, take stuff like the butter, a little salt, maybe some kerosene,
from work.
 Okay, yes, she steals from work, but she's got a good excuse: she doesn't like the
shame of white people passing and looking at her at the local store while she's
waiting in line outside with all the other black folk.
 She's not proud of stealing, though—nor does she agree with Sixo's philosophy.
 Flashback alert! Sethe's recalling an incident between schoolteacher and Sixo.
Schoolteacher's accusing Sixo for stealing shoat (FYI: a piglet) but Sixo disagrees;
he thinks that he's not stealing because he's actually increasing schoolteacher's
earning.
 Here's his logic: if he eats well, he'll be able to work harder and longer because he'll
have the energy to do so, thereby increasing the wealth of Sweet Home. Labor
rights, you know?
 Schoolteacher thinks his argument's clever but beats him anyway. After all, Sixo's
trying to redefine things and that's not ok since he's the defined, not the definer
(that's a white person's role).
 Sethe sees things a little differently; she traces all the stealing they do at Sweet
Home back to the fact that, once schoolteacher arrived and took away their ability to
hunt with guns, they had no more meat to eat. So you see, they had to steal in order
to round out their diet.
 Again, Sethe's not proud of all this stealing (she's got morals, you know), but it's
still better than having white people stare at her while she's standing in line.
 Sethe's back in the present again and thinking about going home: she just can't wait!
 Sawyer warns her about being late again, but Sethe doesn't really take him
seriously. She's not just thinking of home either; Sawyer used to be really kind to
her and the rest of the help but ever since his son died in the Civil War, she thinks
he blames it on her and her dark face.
 While she's hurrying home, her mind wanders to all the stuff she was supposed to
forget.
 And now we're right back into Sethe's head and narration. Only this time, it's like
she's talking directly to Beloved.
 She starts off by saying that, lucky her, she doesn't have to "rememory" anything
because Beloved knows everything already.
 But of course we don't—good thing Sethe can't help but run through the memories
in her head again. (If you haven't discovered this yet, Sethe's not too good at this
whole forgetting thing.)
 And what a memory: first, Sethe's thinking about how schoolteacher wrapped
measuring string all around her, but how she and the others (except Sixo) didn't take
the measuring seriously. She thinks schoolteacher's a fool with all his questions.
(Little does she know…)
 After he's done, she and her boys head out to garden a little.
 Sethe recalls seeing Howard and Buglar running and laughing up and down the
small hills when they head back to the house. That's a good image for Sethe because
the other image she usually sees is the one where they're walking down the railroad
tracks away from her.
 Anyway, everything seems all sweet, nice and pretty. Howard and Buglar return to
the quarters, while Sethe takes baby Beloved to the grape arbor that with the bad
grapes (they're small and sour).
 It's cool and shady—a nice place for Sethe to get some work done and hang out
with her baby girl as long as she can get a piece of muslin to cover her baby with.
 So she heads to the back of the house to get that muslin.
 That's when she hears schoolteacher giving lessons to the Garner boys. The lesson
is weird though: she basically hears schoolteacher directing one of the boys to
divide her—Sethe—into human and animal characteristics.
 This totally freaks her out: she runs away and it feels like her scalp is all prickly.
 But she doesn't actually know what "characteristics" mean so she asks Mrs. Garner
once she gets into the house.
 Mrs. Garner's sick, so she doesn't answer Sethe's question immediately. Sethe has to
return some soup, fetch some water first. But eventually, Mrs. Garner does tell her
the meaning of the word—that "it's a thing natural to a thing."
 Mrs. Garner's not exactly a Webster's dictionary, but Sethe more or less gets it.
 Later that night, she's disturbed enough about schoolteacher to ask Halle what he
thinks of schoolteacher. Is he like Mr. Garner?
To Halle, the two men are the same: both white.
 Even though Mr. Garner let him buy out Baby Suggs, Halle points out to Sethe that
Mr. Garner more or less profited off Halle: first, by making him work to free his
mother; second, by getting him, Sethe, and their kids in return for his mother.
 Plus, he still owes the Garners even though Mr. Garner's dead. $123.70 to be exact.
 Now schoolteacher isn't letting Halle work off of the plantation to pay his debt. He's
forcing Halle to work at Sweet Home extra and isn't paying him for the work.
 So how is he going to buy his own freedom? Or Sethe's? With his boys?
 They're good questions. And Sethe doesn't have any answers.
 When schoolteacher beats Paul A, the men on Sweet Home decide to run away.
 Sixo has a plan. There's a whole train of runaway slaves they can join (i.e. the
Underground Railroad) to escape.
 Sethe overhears their conversation and asks what a "train" is, but the men just shut
up.
 Sethe remembers that it was a good plan—the only problem was that when the time
came to run, the situation had changed.
 By that time, Sethe was pregnant with Denver. Plus, as Paul D later told her, Sixo
was burned; Paul D was in the stocks; and Halle had butter all over his face.
 So Sethe sent her children ahead without her.
 She also remembers that, when she finally did escape, she ran past bodies hanging
in the trees, one of which had a shirt that looked like Paul A's—only the body didn't
have any feet or a head.
 The only thing that kept Sethe going was fact that only she had milk for her baby.
 And once she got to 124, she had milk enough for all.
 That's a pretty gruesome memory, so once Sethe sees smoke coming out of the
chimney at 124, we get why she's so obsessed with Beloved.
 Beloved's returned, and now Sethe thinks that Beloved never needed the headstone;
her heart never stopped in Sethe's hands.
 She gets to the house and locks the door tightly behind her.
 The chapter doesn't end there though.
 A third-person narrator who seems to know all about Stamp Paid and more explains
that the noises Stamp heard at 124 aren't exactly the mumblings of the angry blacks
who died.
 It's true that no blacks really had a "livable life"—from Baby Suggs to even the
educated black people. In fact, the educated ones not only had to use their heads to
survive, they also had the weight of the black race on their shoulders. One would
need two heads to handle all that pressure.
 What was really awful though is that white people thought black people had a
jungle inside that could hurt white people.
 Stamp didn't think they were necessarily wrong either, but black people spent their
lives trying to convince white people how they weren't like that—how human they
were.
 And all that spent energy just produced a more twisted jungle, one that would end
up changing the white people who created it in the first place.
  As a result of this "jungle" white people imagined, white people became more
violent than they ever intended. That's because this "jungle"—it actually lived in
white people.
 Anyway, the point is this: this white people's "jungle" lived and made noises in
places like 124. That's the racket Stamp hears when he visits 124.
 By the way, Stamp never does enter 124 to see after Sethe. He gave up that time
when the girls didn't open the door for him.
 So now Sethe and the girls are free, free at last.
 Or so they think…only part of that noise at 124? It comes from the unspoken,
unspeakable thoughts of 124's women… and we're guessing nothing good is going
to come from that.

Ch. 20
 Here's where things start to get really interesting. We know. You're thinking,
"What? Things aren't interesting enough?" Okay—maybe what we mean is
confusing.
 For starters, Sethe narrates this chapter, but it's hard to tell whom she's speaking to
exactly.
 At first, it sounds like she's in her own head when she talks about how Beloved
is hers, come back from the dead to be with her.
 She's trying to explain why she doesn't need to explain anything to Beloved about
what happened in the past. But then, she's also willing to explain to Beloved if
Beloved wants an explanation. When she does explain what happened to Beloved,
she's sure Beloved will understand because she understands everything already. (We
told you things might start to get confusing.)
 Basically, Sethe's over the moon about Beloved coming back. She's already
promising to be the best mother ever to Beloved. She even promises that no one will
ever get her milk except Beloved (and her other kids).
 This is huge for Sethe because Sethe never really got to nurse her kids (according to
her); the only time anyone got her milk was when the Garner boys held her down
and drank her breast milk (among other things).
 Of course, as a reader, you might want to wonder about how much she could or
couldn't nurse her kids. In fact, this whole thing about the rape and the Garner boys
makes her think more about how she never got to nurse on her own mother; how she
had to nurse on Nan while her own mother was in the rice fields.
 Sethe points out that she knows what it's like to fight for milk that isn't yours—that's
something she plans on telling Beloved, who she thinks will understand.
 What's Sethe's point? It's simple really—Sethe never got to be a mother to Beloved,
but what really hurts her is that she never got to be a daughter to her own mother.
 Instead, she ended up tending Mrs. Garner as if Mrs. Garner were her mother.
 Okay—now hang on—if you haven't noticed, when Sethe narrates, she gets jumpy.
She's about to get even jumpier. Here goes…
 Thinking about Mrs. Garner makes Sethe think about how she would have stayed on
with her mother even after she died. But of course she couldn't; Nan snatched her
back before she could even check for her mother's sign.
 Sethe couldn't believe it when her mother died.
 She also looked everywhere for "that hat."
 Afterwards, she stuttered. That is until she saw Halle.
 But that's all over. Sethe's focused on the present and on looking at things
(something she couldn't do after killing the baby).
 She gets why Baby Suggs wanted to look at colors at the end—it's because she
never had the time to enjoy them. She also thinks red probably wouldn't have been a
good color to Baby Suggs—for obvious reasons.
 She herself remembers the last color she saw: the pinkish headstone for Beloved.
 Now she's on the lookout, especially for spring. Sethe starts to get a little manic
about all the things that come with spring, like new vegetables.
 Then Sethe switches her audience and focuses on Beloved as "you." All of a
sudden, it starts to sound like Sethe's talking to Beloved directly rather than about
Beloved.
 And she's off "memory"-ing things like:
(1) Amy's (the white girl's) hands and the color of her eyes (gray);
(2) Mrs. Garner's eye color (light brown while well; darker while sick);
(3) how strong Mrs. Garner was in the fields (like a mule);
(4) how Mrs. Garner would call her "Jenny";
(5) why Mrs. Garner thought she'd need schoolteacher at Sweet Home and if Mrs.
Garner lasted;
(6) how her first beating (by schoolteacher) was her last;
(7) how no one could keep her from her kids;
(8) and that if she weren't tending to Mrs. Garner that day, she would have known
what was happening to the men the day of the planned escape;
 (9) Mrs. Garner was sick and cold; she wanted blankets and the window shut while
Sethe wanted the window open;
(10) how she heard what sounded like shots;
(11) how she took her babies to the corn without Halle to meet the woman heading
up the runaway slave train;
(12) how she wanted the woman to wait for the others but the woman wouldn't, so
Sethe sent her kids along without her;
(13) and how, when she returned to Sweet Home, she got whipped so badly on her
back that she bit off a piece of her tongue; although the men did cut out a hole for
her stomach so that the fetus wouldn't be injured.
 We told you Sethe can get jumpy. And there's more.
 Sethe goes on to recall that Denver doesn't like to hear anything about Sweet Home
except for her own birth. (No wonder there.)
 Now she's really acting like she's talking to Beloved. She reminds Beloved about
that day at the grape arbor and how quickly she ran back to Beloved.
 And here's how she would have recognized Beloved as her Beloved, if Paul D
hadn't distracted Sethe:
(1) the sun on Beloved's face the day she arrived at 124 (it looked the same as the
sun on her face at the grape arbor);
(2) her water breaking the very minute she saw Beloved sitting on the stump outside
124
(3) all the water Beloved drank (clearly connected to the spit baby Beloved dribbled
on Sethe when Sethe got to 124);
(4) Sethe's fingernail prints on Beloved's forehead (you know, from when she was
holding baby Beloved's head to her neck in the shed);
(5) when Beloved asked Sethe about the earrings that Sethe used to entertain baby
Beloved with.
 Now Sethe's getting closer to the present. She remembers how Paul D described her
love for her children as "too thick."
 The nerve of Paul D, right? Sethe's thinking: What does he know? Who would Paul
D die for? What would he give up for another? Sex for a headstone carving?
 Sethe's not okay with what Paul D said—that there could have been "some other
way."
 She's pretty adamant about how, for her, there couldn't have been another way; that
there was no way she would let her kids experience what she went through at Sweet
Home.
 That's because when she says "you mine," she also means "I'm yours"—all of which
basically means she can't live without her children.
  Here's where Sethe really starts explaining. She points out that her real plan that day
at the shed was to kill all her children and herself, only they stopped her before she
could carry out that plan. Of course, they couldn't stop Beloved from returning to
her.
 And that's because Beloved's a good daughter, just like how she wanted to be a
good daughter to her mother.
 This gets her started on another memory about her mother's smile. Her mother had a
bit in her mouth so much that she was always smiling, only it was never her own
smile.
 Sethe wonders what her mother and the other slaves were doing when they got
caught. Were they running away? But Sethe can't believe that a mother would run
off and leave a daughter behind. Would her mother have done that even if she didn't
nurse Sethe for very long?
 Sethe's mind returns to her mother's bit and her mother's forced smile. That image
reminds her of the "Saturday girls" she saw when she got out of jail.
 Saturday girls were women who prostituted themselves on the weekend in the back
of the slaughterhouse.
 Sethe was very, very close to becoming one herself. Broken and broke, she left jail
with no way to support herself or baby Denver.
 But she didn't because the Bodwins got her the cooking job at Sawyer's, which gave
her the freedom to smile on her own like she is now when she thinks of Beloved.
 Sethe goes on to explain that she would have prostituted herself or even go into the
grave with Beloved if it hadn't been for the other children who needed her.
 And all those suicidal thoughts? They were due to the fact that her mind was
"homeless" then and that she couldn't "lay down" in peace with her baby girl.
 But now she can because now Beloved's come back to her.
 Although that last sentence? It's not as simple as it seems. Why? Because Sethe
ends the chapter not talking to Beloved, but talking about Beloved. Sethe goes from
"you" Beloved to "she" Beloved (as in "she is mine"). Weird, right?
 Makes you wonder: is Beloved really hers? And is Sethe fit to be a narrator?

Ch. 21
 Okay, we learned what was on Sethe's mind.
 Now it's Denver's turn to tell the story.
 Like Sethe, the first thing Denver thinks is that Beloved is hers. That's because she
swallowed Beloved's blood along with her mother's milk. (Does that seem a little bit
creepy to you? It does to us, too.)
 She and Beloved have been a team ever since she was small, the both of them
waiting for Halle—that is, all the way up until Paul D came and threw Beloved out.
 Why was her father so important to Denver? We find out that Denver's scared of her
mother since her mother killed one of her daughters and just missed killing her
brothers. (Sounds like a good enough reason to us.)
 Her brothers told her "die-witch! stories" so that she could protect herself from
Sethe.
 By the way, about her brothers—they told her that they were going to join the War.
Denver figures it's because they'd rather be around "killing men" than "killing
women."
 Anyway, all of this is why Denver needs to own Beloved. She has to protect
Beloved from Sethe in case Sethe ever thinks of killing her children again.
 Denver's worried that whatever terrible thing that made Sethe kill once doesn't come
from within 124. It comes from outside—out in the world.
 That's why Sethe killed Beloved, after all. Something harmful came into their yard.
 Which is why Denver hasn't left the house for years. She has to watch over the
house and yard so that her mother won't have to kill Denver, too.
 And how's this for vigilance? Denver's only gone out three times: once, by herself,
to Miss Lady Jones' house and two other times with her mother (when Baby Suggs
died and with Paul D to go the carnival). When she came back the second time,
Beloved was there at 124.
 Clearly, Beloved was ready to be protected by someone like Denver.
 And Denver's serious about her job. She thinks again about how Sethe could harm
Beloved. You see, Denver's witnessed her mother go to her dark place; she knows
her mother has it in her still.
 Denver also has a memory of touching. It's not all that clear who exactly is being
touched; only that Sethe is definitely a part of the touching and it's not a good kind
of touching.
 Denver did try to clarify her memory by asking Nelson Lord (a friend?), but she
recalls that she couldn't hear anymore what was said to her in reply. That's how she
got to be so good at reading faces and minds—so that she wouldn't need to hear.
 Actually, that's also why Denver and Beloved get along so well in Denver's mind—
they don't need to talk when they play together.
 At first, Denver did think that Beloved might have come back to hurt Sethe—to kill
her in return—but then she realized that Beloved loves Sethe.
 And that's what has her worried. She doesn't want Beloved to love Sethe too much.
 You just can't love someone who might kill you at any moment. Logical, right?
 And just so she's clear, Denver points out that Sethe did cut Denver's head off—
every night.
 Howard and Buglar told her that would happen and it did.
 For Denver, the head-cutting came from the way Sethe looked at Denver, like
Denver was a stranger to be pitied.
 Then Sethe would take her head and braid her hair. Okay, we hear you—this is
definitely weird because Denver's head, we're pretty sure, is still attached to her
neck. But can you imagine a child's fear of having Sethe, the baby-throat-cutter,
come to do her hair every night? Let's just say Sethe wouldn't be doing our hair.
 The only place Denver has ever felt safe from Sethe is in Baby Suggs's room, which
is a storeroom Baby Suggs built (she was a huge renovator, too; she changed the
house completely by moving the kitchen indoors). That's where she would go to
escape, where she didn't care about not hearing everybody.
 In fact, not hearing things meant that she could dream about her father and wait for
him to come.
 If you can't tell by now, Denver really wants her father; she's thinking he can help
her watch out for Sethe (or Ma'am, as Denver calls her) and watch over the yard.
 Denver learned all about her father (who ends up being a lot like an angel—just too
good for this world) from Baby Suggs. Things like: Halle could get happy over soft
fried eggs; plus, he was smart since he knew basic math (he volunteered to learn
from Mr. Garner) and believed education was necessary for slaves.
 Just so you know, Denver can't think of her father without thinking of her
grandmother, too, which is why Denver ends up recalling not just all the good stuff
Halle did, but how Baby Suggs tried her best not to make her kids go crazy.
According to Baby Suggs, kids go nuts when they see their mothers get knocked
down by white men.
 Since Baby Suggs never got knocked down in front of Halle, Denver believes Halle
hasn't gone crazy and will show up one day, especially since Paul D was able to
make it out.
  Denver's hoping that it can just be Halle, Beloved, and herself one day; Sethe can go
off with Paul D, especially now that Paul D's been in Sethe's bed. Denver's kind of a
moralist.
 But Baby Suggs has told her not to be judgmental about having sex with a lot of
different men. Both black people and white people used to judge Baby Suggs for
having a bunch of kids by 8 different men, but she believed that women should
listen to and love their bodies (that's what she advised Denver to do).
 Baby Suggs also told Denver that Denver was a charmed baby since Denver kept
getting saved all the time.
 Plus, Denver drank her sister's blood along with Sethe's milk. To Baby Suggs, that
meant the ghost would never hurt Denver.
 The ghost was coming for Sethe and possibly even Baby Suggs because they never
stopped what happened in the shed. Denver only had to be careful because Baby
Suggs thought the ghost was greedy for love, which was natural given the
circumstances.
 And of course Denver does love Beloved. She is, after all, Denver's.

Ch. 22
 Now it's Beloved's turn to "talk." Why are we putting quote marks around talk?
Because Beloved's idea of speech is really, really strange. She doesn't use real
sentences and her thoughts are totally disjointed. There are gaps—literally—
everywhere.
 Making sense of Beloved's chapter can be a little like dealing with Swiss cheese, but
it's also totally worth it because Beloved's speech is a lot like poetry or music—truly
beautiful and haunting. Don't take our word for it though—read the chapter for
yourself.
 Beloved is stating the fact that she is Beloved—a bold statement considering
Beloved's supposed to be dead.Beloved also points out that "she is mine," but it's
not clear exactly who "she" is.
 We do know that "she" is stripping leaves from flowers and putting those flowers in
a basket, but not for herself.
 Beloved would help her but the clouds are in the way.Beloved, by the way, isn't
separate from "her." "She" and Beloved own the same face, and Beloved wants to
be where "her" face is while looking at it, too. A little trippy considering we're
pretty certain they're not playing Twister.
 Beloved ends the first paragraph with this one mysterious phrase: "a hot thing."
Hint: this phrase is really important because it's going to be repeated throughout the
rest of this chapter and the next, so keep your eyes peeled for it.
 Okay, moving on. Beloved thinks that everything is now. There isn't any past or
present. It's all happening to her now. And what's happening to her is a whole lot of
crouching and watching, all of which—we're guessing—isn't too comfortable for
her (can you imagine the back pain and muscle cramping? Lucky she's a ghost).
 Anyway, there's a dead man on her face and this guy's face is definitely not hers.
Good thing too—he can't be that attractive if he's dead and face-planted on her.
 But where is Beloved? She doesn't say, but wherever she is, it can't smell nice since
the people around her "nasty themselves"—that's another way of saying they're
urinating and defecating on themselves.
 She herself isn't eating (for good reason, in our opinion).Oh and it gets grosser: the
"men without skins" (interpret this how you want, but we're guessing these are
white men) give Beloved and the people around her their "morning water" to drink
—in other words, their urine. We know. Try not to gag.
 Beloved must be kept somewhere with wooden slats or cracks because her only
exposure to sunlight are the rays that filter through the slats.
 Clearly, this place isn't a five-star hotel. Plus, it has rats and it's cramped. No one
has any space to move.
 The people can't even cry because they don't have enough water to drink. That also
means that they can't sweat or urinate.
 Suffice it to say, this place is pure hell.
 Everyone wants to "leave their bodies behind," i.e., die. Hey, we would, too.
Beloved, however, points out that "it is hard to make yourself die forever," that you
always end up returning after a short while. That's ghost philosophy 101 for you.
 Meanwhile, someone (or even some animal?) has teeth that Beloved thinks are
"pretty white points." We're not so sure that anything with pointy teeth can be all
that pretty—after all, aren't they a trademark of vampires?—but to each her
own. We are sure, though, that Beloved's really into them because that dead man on
her face? He gets pulled away, and, right afterward, Beloved admits that she misses
his "pretty white points." (Yikes…)
 At the same time, Beloved feels someone trembling, someone who's trying to leave
his body. His trembling is like a small bird trembling, but because there isn't any
room to tremble fully, he can't die (according to Beloved). We admit that that's
some weird logic, but what else can you expect from Beloved?
 By the way, everyone is now standing. Beloved, in her ever-descriptive language,
says that her legs are like her dead man's eyes. We think it's safe to assume that that
means Beloved can't stand too well.Beloved can't fall either; there's no room for it.
 Now here is where things really start to get strange (relatively speaking of
course). We know it's loud because those "men without skin" are making a racket.
 Beloved also wants us to know that she isn't dead.On top of that, the bread is "sea-
colored" (or moldy) so that can't be good to eat.
 Beloved doesn't eat it though because she's too hungry.
 By this time, they all must be out in the open somewhere because the sun makes
Beloved's eyes close.
 Near her is a pile of bodies "able to die." But Beloved can't find her dead man in
that pile.That might be because there seem to be quite a few of these dead bodies;
the men without skin actually need poles to push through the pile.
 However, Beloved does spot the woman with the face she wants, the face Beloved
thinks is hers.
 The men end up pushing that woman and the rest of the dead bodies into the sea
(which is, again, the same icky color as the bread).
 Beloved's eyes are sharp enough to notice that the woman doesn't have anything in
her ears. She also imagines what she would do if she had the pointy teeth of the
dead man: she would bite through the "circle" or shackle around the woman's neck
since she knows the woman doesn't like it.
 Since the pile of dead bodies is in the sea, there's now room for Beloved to crouch
and to watch others crouching like her. This position seems to signify the present
tense because Beloved says that this crouching is "now always now inside."
 By the way, that space between "now" and "inside" is straight from Beloved and
typical of this chapter's text. So we're thinking that space, in general, is something
you should really be aware of.
 Oh—and that woman with Beloved's face? She's been dumped into the sea too.And
just so you know, Beloved has been repeating that phrase—"a hot thing"—all
throughout this part. Why? We can't say for sure, but we do think it's interesting that
"a hot thing" seems to describe what Beloved feels when she sees all of the stuff
going on around her.
 Now for a brief interruption from your friendly Shmoop guide: we know you just
want the plot summary here, but it might actually help for you to know a little about
the Middle Passage since there's a pretty good chance this is what Beloved's talking
about.
 The Middle Passage was the journey that slaves were forced to make from Africa to
the Americas. As you might expect, many of these people died on these slave ships
due to truly horrible conditions like the kind Beloved's been describing.
 Okay—back to your regular programming.
 Beloved's really starting to repeat herself now. She's back to the beginning,
remembering that "her" in the first paragraph—the one with the face with whom
she's obsessed; the one she couldn't help because the clouds were in the way.
 The woman she's talking about has a "shining in her ears." Earrings, maybe? Yep—
Beloved's talking about earrings because she goes on to state that, among other
things, the woman with the face wants her earrings.
 There's another beginning, too. In this beginning, women and men are separated
from each other, but the storms that rock them end up mixing the men and women
together anyway.
  It's at this point that Beloved finds herself on the back of the man.
 What man? It's not entirely clear, but his shoulders are wide and Beloved is small.
 Beloved loves this man because he has a song. She remembers his soft singing,
which reminds her of the place where the woman stripped leaves from flowers and
put them in the round basket. Unfortunately, this man Beloved's describing is also
dead.
 The woman, on the other hand, is crouching near "us" (Beloved and the rest of the
slaves?).
 Beloved doesn't see her until the man with the song dies on Beloved's face.
 Okay so now we know, right?
 The man with the song is the same man who has the pretty little teeth; the same guy
whose dead face is planted on Beloved's face.
 Everything gets just a bit clearer (and a bit freakier). Beloved tells us she can't lose
"her" again. She also lets us know that the man who died on her face was actually in
the way: he blocked her view of the woman just like the clouds did.
 Beloved believes that the woman is going to smile at her.
 The woman's "sharp earrings" are gone now, and Beloved's back recalling the pile
of dead bodies and how they're being dumped into the sea.
 The men without skin push her dead man through, into the sea, but the woman
doesn't get pushed; she just seems to fall in.
 Beloved must be torn up about all of this, especially the woman's body going into
the sea, because Beloved's still hung up on her deadened hope that the woman was
going to smile at her (note the shift to past tense here, too).
 After all of this, it's like a variation on a theme: Beloved replays for us the image of
death surrounding her. The fact that she and some of the others are crouching. The
fact that the dead bodies aren't crouching and, instead, are floating on the sea. How
the woman (now with a "dark face") doesn't have her sharp earrings or round basket
when she goes into the sea. And lastly, how she goes into the sea with Beloved's
face.
 But things don't end here. In fact, Beloved keeps telling her story and it's like she's
adding layers to an onion rather than taking the layers away.
 She adds details like the fact that she's standing in the falling rain and how, while
the others are taken, she isn't.
 She also watches "him" eat and returns to crouching.
 And now for something really ominous (if dead floating bodies aren't enough for
you): Beloved says she's "going to be in pieces" and that "he hurts where I sleep."
What does she mean exactly?
 The next line suggests something pretty creepy: the man "puts his finger there."
 Then, Beloved drops her food and she breaks into pieces. Is it rape? Molestation?
Or is it something altogether different? Interpret away. We should add, though, that
Beloved goes back to the woman and states that she took Beloved's face away. That
probably confuses things just enough to unsettle you (and us!).
 Anyway, Beloved now thinks that no one wants her. It's like she's going through an
identity crisis because no one is saying her name.
 Beloved starts to wait: she waits under the bridge for "her," only this water is
different than the sea because there aren't any dead bodies floating in it.
 Only thing is, Beloved's still stuck on the face of the woman who is going to smile
at her.
 Beloved also hears chewing and swallowing and laughter (sounds like a party to us).
It's the laughter Beloved really focuses on—the woman's laugh and the fact that
Beloved is the "laugher." (That's not a typo by the way.)
 But what about that face? Does she ever smile at Beloved like Beloved wants her
to? Since this really isn't a Disney story, you can probably expect that things don't
end too well. Not only is there no smile, Beloved's language gets more agitated. Her
"sentences" are shorter; the spaces between them more frequent and regular.
  More to the point, Beloved becomes even more obsessed with the face that she has
to have. Beloved's in the water with the woman and her face, and Beloved is
looking for the "join" with the woman.
 In other words, Beloved really really wants to connect with this woman.
 But the woman is chewing and swallowing even as she's reaching for Beloved.
 And all of a sudden, Beloved is gone.
 It's Beloved who's swimming away and who's alone.
 Beloved does come out of the water and ends up at a house, but enough beating
around the bush.
 It's pretty clear by now that she's at 124, and the face she so wants is Sethe's face.
 Of course, now that Beloved has rematerialized and has returned to Sethe, Sethe's
face is smiling. Now they can join. But we can't help shaking our heads a little.
 Beloved sure had to go through a lot just for a smile…

Ch. 23
 So just when you thought things were as strange as they could get, it turns out that
they can get even stranger.
 We're back in Beloved's mind for Beloved's story, Round 2.
 Remember how the last chapter was all fragmented and spacey (both literally and
figuratively)? How it was really hard to get a straight story out of Beloved? Think
of this chapter as that last chapter, only all filled out.
 All of a sudden, Beloved's giving us a linear story. Of course, that doesn't mean the
story isn't totally weird because it is.
 Beloved starts this chapter the same way as the last one: "I am Beloved and she is
mine."But now she's giving us whole sentences; she's actually explaining herself.
This is her story:
 Sethe's the one who was picking flowers. She's left them on the quilt where she and
Beloved sleep. Sethe's about to smile at Beloved but the men without skin come and
take them into the sunlight with the dead. The dead get shoved into the sea but not
Sethe.
 Sethe goes into the sea all on her own and leaves Beloved behind without a face.
 So it's Sethe's face that Beloved finds and loses under the bridge. When Beloved
goes into the water under the bridge, she sees Sethe's face rising up and realizes it's
her face, too.
 Beloved wants to join Sethe, but Sethe breaks into pieces and goes into the light,
meaning Beloved's lost her again. But Beloved ends up finding the house (124)
because she hears Sethe's whispers, so that means she does find Sethe.
 And guess what? Yep—Sethe's finally smiling.
 Now Beloved wants some answers: why did Sethe go in the water where they
crouched and why did she do that when she was about to smile at Beloved?
Translation: why did Sethe go way over into the deep end and kill baby Beloved?
 Beloved wanted to join Sethe in the sea but wasn't able to move then; she also
wanted to help out with the flower-picking but the clouds of gunsmoke (aha!)
blinded Beloved so she lost Sethe.
 On Beloved's count, she's lost Sethe three times: (1) when the gunsmoke blinded her
during flower-picking, (2) when Sethe went into the sea, and( 3) when she went into
the water to join Sethe but Sethe didn't smile (instead, Sethe whispered, chewed,
and swam away).
 But now that Beloved's at the house, it's all smiles: Sethe's smiling, Beloved's
smiling.
 Beloved's determined now not to lose Sethe again. That's because Sethe is
Beloved's. (By the way, can you hear the Psycho soundtrack playing in your head
right about now?)
 What comes after Beloved's remarkably clear (if not strange) narrative is basically a
dialogue. The dialogue doesn't show who's speaking, but if you've been paying
attention, it's not too hard to figure out who's who. The dialogue is, at first, between
Beloved and Sethe.Sethe's asking Beloved a bunch of questions like, is Beloved
really back from the dead and does Beloved forgive her. You know, questions you'd
expect to ask your resurrected dead baby girl whom you killed.
 Beloved mostly answers Sethe's questions in the affirmative except for that one
question about whether or not Beloved forgives her.
 Beloved answers that question with another question: "Where are the men without
skin?" Fair enough, we figure. After all, we're not so sure Sethe would really like a
straight-up answer to her question.
 And those four white men "without skin" are arguably responsible for Beloved's
death.
  Beloved definitely seems scared of the men because Sethe needs to reassure her that
the men are gone.
 Then the two of them start to talk about all the things Beloved mentions before: how
the clouds got in the way of the flower-picking; how Beloved would have bit off the
iron circle for Sethe. Beloved even extends an offer to make a round basket for
Sethe. Clearly, Beloved has a lot of time on her hands.
 Anyway, Sethe can't get over the fact that Beloved's back while Beloved asks for a
smile.That sounds normal enough although we'd like to point out that the way
Beloved asks for the smile is definitely important. She says, "Will we smile at me?"
 Of course, Sethe's already smiling, but that's not the point of the conversation really
because, in the end, it's really about the face. Beloved loves Sethe's face and wants
it for her own.
 The dialogue that follows is between Denver and Beloved; although "dialogue"
might not be the right word. Both girls end up retelling their stories, but Beloved
practically ignores what Denver says since she's so obsessed with Sethe. That is,
until they both start to talk about Sethe. Their conversation goes like this:
 Denver's all "we" this, "you" that to Beloved. She describes how they played by the
creek together; how Beloved came to her when Denver needed her; how she's going
to protect Beloved from Sethe; and, finally, how their father is coming for them.
 Beloved, on the other hand, is all "I" this, "her"/ "she" that. She's remembering the
water, the clouds, Sethe's face, her need for Sethe's smile, how Sethe hurt her, how
she loves Sethe too much.
  And then, to really end the conversation, Beloved says her signature phrase—"a hot
thing"—after Denver says Halle will be coming for them.
 What follow the dialogues are, more or less, a chorus and a trio: Sethe, Beloved,
and Denver are all speaking together, but they also take turns.
 They all have their distinct phrases by now. For instance, Denver's the one who
drank blood; Beloved's the one obsessed with Sethe's smile; and Sethe's the one
who is fixated on Beloved's return.
 But they all share a common chorus and that's "You are mine." Obviously, a
possessive bunch, but we knew that already right?
 Anyway, by the time they're done, it's hard to tell whose voice is speaking.

Ch. 24
 So you can breathe a sigh of relief because we're leaving the strange voices behind
for a second and returning to Paul D. Remember him?
 Paul D's sitting in the church, staring at his hands. The church isn't much; it's small,
cold, and used to be a dry goods store. If you want to feel sorry for Paul D, it's the
perfect setting to make you feel that way.
 His tobacco tin (hm… reminds us of his tin-box heart) has spilled wide open and
everything inside is floating freely out.Now he can't stop remembering the past and
he's going way back…
 To his childhood: Paul D never knew his mother or his father. Having never had a
typical family, Paul D always grew up fascinated by large slave families who were
still together: he saw a family like that once in Maryland.
 When he was little, Mr. Garner bought him and his two half-brothers (that'd be Paul
A and Paul F, in case you're wondering).
 For twenty years he lived at Sweet Home, where he had his brothers and his friends,
Halle and Sixo, Baby Suggs, and the Garners.
 The Garners treated them all well.
 And then…Mr. Garner died. And Mrs. Garner got sick. And then schoolteacher
came. You know how that story goes.
 Paul D remembers that Sixo thought Mr. and Mrs. Garner died from other causes (a
gunshot in the ear for the Mr.; bad medicine from the doctor for the Mrs.).
 Apparently, the other slaves laughed at Sixo, but we're guessing they really
shouldn't have because Sixo seemed to know a lot. He was the only one who wasn't
sorry when Mr. Garner died.
 And it was Sixo, after all, who explained to Paul D why schoolteacher came to the
plantation.
 Mrs. Garner couldn't be the only white person on the plantation. That's why she
invited schoolteacher to come.
 Paul D ponders this fact of slavery: everything depended on Mr. Garner. If Mr.
Garner died, then everyone on the plantation would fall apart. Of course, that's
exactly what happens.
 For the longest time, Paul D thought that schoolteacher had it all wrong and Mr.
Garner had it right. It wasn't right to abuse the slaves the way that schoolteacher
did; they were men, right?
 Now, though, he's not sure if there was much of a difference between schoolteacher
and Mr. Garner. Was he only a man because Mr. Garner had said that he was?And
 if that was the case, wasn't he only a man because of Mr. Garner's will—not his
own?
 Paul D realizes that he and his half-brothers had been ignorant at Sweet Home,
unlike Sixo, Halle, Sethe, and Baby Suggs.
 The Pauls didn't think there was anything all that bad about Sweet Home or even
slavery because all they had known were the Garners and their gentle ways.
 So it took them a whole night to decide whether they should escape, again, unlike
the others who knew differently.And then there was his tree—a really young aspen
(not even a sapling, more like a shoot).
 Paul D recalls how he loved that tree, but not because it represented life—in fact,
just the opposite.
 (By the way, if you haven't figured it out yet, this happens a lot in the novel: things
are the opposite of what you expect. The lesson? Expect the unexpected.)
 When he was in Alfred, Georgia, the tree reminded him of "murdered life" because
it had branches that you could use to whip a horse (or a man).
 Things changed though when the Cherokee told him to run toward the blossoming
trees; he just wanted to keep moving after that. Until he finds Sethe, that is.But then
"she" moves him around the house like a rag doll. By "she," we're pretty sure he
means Beloved. Who else has the power to uproot everyone and everything?
 Which brings us and him back to the present… Paul D sitting in front of the church
thinking all these deep, sad thoughts that don't do anything for him.
 What happened to the Plan?, he wonders. How could it all have gone wrong? You
know which plan he means—the escape from Sweet Home.
 Paul D can't help replaying everything in his mind.It starts with Sixo and how he
hears about the group of runaway slaves from his girlfriend, the Thirty-Mile
Woman.
  A woman was going to wait a night and half a day for them in a field of corn; her
sign would be a rattle and she would take them to the caravan of other
runaways.Everyone including Sixo's girlfriend was going to go, except the two
Pauls who couldn't decide whether to take the risk. Sound familiar? Yeah, you've
heard it all before.
 But hold on—Paul D supplies us with some new details like how the two Pauls
debated whether or not to go get Paul F, who had a different master. Paul F lived
with his owner at a place called the "trace."
 When the Pauls decide that they're in, Sixo starts planning everything out for them.
They're going to leave after spring, once the corn grows tall and can provide cover.
They're also leaving at night.
 They prepare all the items they need for the trip: food, knives, blankets, a rope, a
pot. No shoes, though. They observe schoolteacher and the Garners in order to
figure out the white people's habits and schedule.
 In the end, they decide that Sixo and the Pauls will leave after supper and wait for
Sixo's girlfriend in the creek. Halle, Sethe, and their kids will get there before dawn
(just in case Mrs. Garner needs Sethe at night).
 "But." That one word is all you need to know about the plan. Not that we don't
already know the outcome.
 Because Sethe is pregnant, because neighbors keep popping up whenever they feel
like it, because Sethe's kids aren't allowed in the kitchen anymore, because Sixo
ends up locked in the stock, because Halle is forced to work at Sweet Home rather
than get hired out—all of these things make them change the plan little by little.
 They still think it's a good plan, but we know better.
 The day they hear the sign (it ends up being a song), Halle ends up disappearing.
Except for the butter churn, Halle isn't seen again.
 Paul D isn't sure what happened to Halle. He comes up with a few possible
scenarios, but the point is, no one knows why Halle didn't show.
 Then Paul A doesn't show either.
 What happens is that schoolteacher has figured out the plan. Paul D and Sixo are
caught and tied up.Paul D remembers how they set fire to Sixo: they tie him up but
have a hard time making a fire big enough to burn Sixo, so Sixo starts laughing. He
only stops to yell out "Seven-o! Seven-o!"
 They finally shoot him to shut him up.
 As for Paul D, the white men get together and discuss his dollar value.
 Paul D remembers this next part so well that he's recalling schoolteacher's exact
words and tone.
 Schoolteacher is complaining about how Mr. Garner spoiled his slaves by letting the
slaves have all the "freedoms" they got. Now he's worried that the plantation is
going to get worse because two of the slaves (he uses the N-word) are dead and he
can't find Halle. He thinks he can get $900 for Paul D and keep Sethe as well as the
rest of her family. Doing so might help turn the plantation around.
  The men even discuss the possibility of having schoolteacher marry someone,
although schoolteacher is focused on Sweet Home.
 Then they take Paul D back to Sweet Home, where they put a three-spoke collar
around his neck and shackle his ankles so that he can't lie down.
 Sethe finds him this way. She's gotten her children out and has she come back for
Halle, who she can't find.
 Paul D tells her what he knows: Sixo was killed and he doesn't know anything about
Paul A and Halle.
 When he looks into Sethe's eyes, he notices that there are no whites—her eyes are
completely black. Paul D thinks that the boys must have taken Sethe into the barn
soon after.
 When she told Mrs. Garner about the rape, the boys took the cowhide and whipped
her.
 Thinking back, Paul D isn't surprised that schoolteacher hunted Sethe down in
Cincinnati.
 Since Sethe could reproduce without cost, she could generate more income for
schoolteacher. Sick, isn't it?
 Anyway, this gets Paul D to think about how much each one of them would have
been worth.
 More or less than his $900 body?
 Then he ponders Sixo's last words: "Seven-O! Seven-O!" Why "Seven-O"? Because
his girlfriend the Thirty-Mile Woman, pregnant with Sixo's child, had ended up
getting away.
 Sixo's laughter hangs on his mind because it was so full of glee it seemed to put out
the fire underneath Sixo.
 And if you think about it, it is almost like Sixo manages to outsmart the men since
they don't know about his girlfriend or her pregnancy.
 After all that, Paul D recalls Halle with the butter churn and the rooster who smiled
at him as if to say there was worse to come… like Alfred, Georgia.

Ch. 25
 Paul D's still sitting in the church and thinking when Stamp Paid finds him.
 Stamp apologizes for the fact that no one in the community has taken Paul D in.
 He says that all Paul D has to do is ask—any one of the families around will gladly
take him in now.
 Paul D says that he's actually chosen to live in the church even though the preacher
offered him a spare bed. He says he needs some time alone.
 There's a small interruption: a man on a horse comes up and asks where Judy from
the slaughterhouse is.
 For some reason, Stamp (who knows everyone and everything) says he doesn't
know a Judy and leads that guy astray. We're not sure why, but maybe Stamp
doesn't like the guy and is protecting Judy.
 Or maybe he just doesn't like Judy (she's probably a prostitute at the
slaughterhouse). After all, Paul D asks to stay at Judy's house and instead of telling
Paul D where she is, he distracts Paul D by telling him how he changed his name
from Joshua to Stamp Paid.
 Stamp explains that he used to be married to a beautiful woman named Vashti.
 One day the master's son decides that he wants to have Stamp Paid's wife.
 Stamp tells Paul D that he should have killed the man, but his wife had asked him
not to.
 For nearly a year, the master's son sleeps with his wife.
 For revenge, Stamp Paid tells the master's son's wife about what was happening. He
realizes, though, that she already knows. And she isn't going to do anything to stop
it.
 Then one day, his wife tells him she's back.
 Stamp tells Paul D that he broke her neck and that was as low as he ever got. But
then, right afterwards, he tells Paul D that he didn't snap her neck; he changed his
name instead. The way Stamp tells the story, though, we're not so sure that he didn't
break his wife's neck.
 The second thing Stamp tells Paul D is that he was in the yard when Sethe killed her
daughter.
 Paul D doesn't know what to think.
 Stamp Paid tries to explain that Sethe did what she did out of love. She just wanted
to "outhurt the hurter."
 But Paul D is still scared. He's scared of Sethe, of himself, and, finally, of Beloved.
(Smart guy.)
 The mention of Beloved gets them onto the topic of who Beloved is.
  Okay, not that everything in the novel isn't significant, but this piece of information
is really important: Stamp mentions that a white man had a girl locked up in a house
at Deer Creek. The white man was found dead in the summer and the girl was gone.
 So here's our question to you: Is Beloved really Beloved? Or is she the runaway
girl? Or could it be both? Could the girl be possessed by Beloved the ghost? Just
some stuff for you to chew on…
 Stamp Paid asks if it was Beloved that ran Paul D out of 124.
 Shuddering, Paul D realizes that he can't answer Stamp's question.
 Instead, he asks Stamp, "How much is a nigger supposed to take?"
 To which Stamp replies, "All he can."
 The chapter ends with Paul D crying out "Why?" five times. (Hint: that number is
pretty significant. Think about it.)

Ch. 26
 Part 3 begins, and we're back at 124 again.
 Now, though, the house is quiet. Too quiet.See, hunger can make you quiet,
especially if you're saving up all your strength for a battle. And that's what Beloved
and Sethe are doing.
 There's no more food in the house. Sethe's wasting away. She's lost her job at
Sawyer's because Beloved's been consuming all her time and energy.
 Beloved, on the other hand, is getting fatter and bigger and shinier by the day,
although she still keeps asking for sweets and she seems really weak.It's been this
way for a while now.
 For the first month, Denver thinks everything is great. They play games, ice-skate in
the moonlight. Sethe makes them dresses trimmed with such colorful ribbons that
they look fit for a carnival. But then Denver realizes that Sethe and Beloved aren't
including her in their games, so Denver drops into the background and decides just
to watch over Beloved.
 At first, Denver thinks Sethe might be the dangerous element. You know, because
of Sethe's history with Beloved.
 But Denver discovers that Beloved's the problem. Nothing Sethe does for Beloved
is enough; Beloved just demands more.
 Slowly, things change; the atmosphere in the house is no longer loving. Beloved
gets angry whenever Sethe doesn't give her enough of what she wants. And since
 Beloved is basically a bottomless pit of need and desire, Sethe's pretty much
screwed.
 Sethe tries to get Beloved to ease up on her demands by pulling the whole "I
suffered so much as a mother for all of you" shtick, but no go—Beloved doesn't feel
guilty.
 In fact, Sethe's attempt at guilt trips just prompts Beloved to ask that million dollar
question that Sethe probably really doesn't want to hear: how could Sethe leave
Beloved behind?It's like a reverse guilt trip.
 Sethe cries, tries to explain why she did what she did back then, but Beloved's
totally one-ups Sethe when it comes to tragedy.
 Beloved tells Sethe that Beloved was the one who had dead men on top of her; who
starved from having nothing to eat. Oh and here's a kicker that we're just going to
quote outright: "Ghosts without skin [we're guessing white men again] stuck their
fingers in her and said beloved in the dark and bitch in the light." Yeah. Try beating
that for trauma-drama.
 Plus, she was killed by her mother. How does a mother respond to all of that? Sethe
commits to Beloved even more, says she would have taken Beloved's place if she
could (a whole lot of good that does now). She also lists all the ways in which she
was a devoted, attentive mother back at Sweet Home.
 But Beloved doesn't buy any of it. She accuses Sethe of never coming to her, never
speaking to her, never smiling, and—worst of all—never saying goodbye or looking
at her once she leaves Beloved.
 And what happens when Sethe—on occasion—tries to assert her maternal will?
 Beloved throws tantrums that we're betting even Supernanny wouldn't be able to
manage. Basically, Beloved is like the toddler from hell, and, instead of checking
the behavior like a mother should, Sethe just feeds that bad behavior by bending to
Beloved's will.
 Since Beloved takes everything from Sethe, Sethe is left literally scraping the
bottom—of bowls, stoves, jam jars.
 Denver tries to help Sethe where she can.
 Eventually, Beloved drains Sethe and the household so much that the three become
physically exhausted and listless. Denver sees that they're wasting away, locked
together in a destructive love. You know those relationships that your mother tells
you to stay away from? This is one of them, except Denver can't tell her mother
that.
 What does jolt Denver into action is when she sees Sethe spit something up that isn't
food. Sethe's clearly sick, which makes Denver understand that it isn't Beloved who
needs protection, but Sethe.
 So Denver decides to leave 124, go into the community (which—let's face it—is
just like going into the world for her), and ask for help.But she's petrified and frozen
on the steps of 124.
 Okay, leaving your house may not seem like a big deal, but, for Denver, it is. She
hasn't left 124 by herself in a long, long time.
 Plus, she doesn't know who to go to for help. She only has two real options: Stamp
Paid and Lady Jones, her teacher. She more or less settles on Lady Jones.
 So Denver's on the steps, ready to go. It's a gorgeous spring day. But she can't
move.
 Denver thinks back to a conversation between Baby Suggs and Sethe about white
people. Sethe ends up defending (some) white people; she says that not all of them
are bad and some of them have helped her and Baby Suggs out.
 But Baby Suggs isn't so forgiving. In fact, she describes white people almost like
animals: they "prowl at will" and behave in an inhuman way.
 So you can understand why Denver might not want to leave 124. It may be crazy in
the house but at least there isn't the threat of those scary white people, who might be
anywhere out there.
 And then it's like Denver hears Baby Suggs speak to her. Okay, given that Beloved
might be a ghost, it's more like this: Baby Suggs actually does speak to her. Her
advice to Denver? Sure, there's no defense against white people and the rest of the
world. But you "[k]now it, and go on out the yard. Go on."
 So Denver does. She walks, at first with trepidation and then with gradual ease,
down the roads that lead to Lady Jones' house. She discovers that those things that
looked so big to her when she was much younger, like a boulder or a dog, now seem
small.
 When Denver gets there, Lady Jones is pretty surprised to see her, but she
recognizes Denver right away.It's also the first time that we get to "see" Denver. We
find out, for instance, that she has the look of a child about her even though she
must be 18 or 19 years old.
 Through Lady Jones's perspective, we learn, moreover, that Denver was a smart kid
who learned quickly even though other people (not Lady Jones, of course) thought
Denver was "simple."
 What about Lady Jones, though? Who is she? For starters, she's mixed: part black,
part white. She has gray eyes and yellow hair.
 It's her hair that's a sore spot for Lady Jones. Ever since her childhood, she's heard
all the racial slurs a mixed kid can hear. As a result, Lady Jones has grown into
hating her hair.She's also convinced that the world hates her, including her
"rainbow-colored children," born of her union with the "blackest man she could
find."
 Among the other things that happened to her because of her race: she got picked to
teach at a school for black children in Pennsylvania and, in turn, has devoted her life
to teaching the "unpicked" kids in Cincinnati—kids like Denver.
 But back to Denver: Denver's come to Lady Jones looking for work because she
needs to find a way to feed her mother and her sister.
  Lady Jones immediately feels sorry for Denver and murmurs "oh, baby." The
moment Denver hears that word and experiences Lady Jones' kindness is the
moment she gets introduced to not just the world, but adulthood in general. Lady
Jones opens the way for Denver to experience a community again.
 Even though Lady Jones doesn't believe that anyone should hire a person to do
housework, she makes it clear to Denver that Denver doesn't have to worry about
food. Her church and the community can give Denver's family food.Is it pride or
something else?
 In any case, Denver refuses Lady Jones's charity and leaves.
 However, only a couple of days later, Denver finds a sack of white beans on the tree
stump in the yard of 124. That starts things off.
 Women in the community start to leave food at 124. They never come in, but they
leave little notes saying who left the food.
 Although Denver's shy, she does know her manners and so she starts to visit the
women in order to show her thanks. And slowly, Denver becomes a part of the
community.
 Moreover, Denver's continuing her education with Lady Jones. She learns to read
the Bible and even memorizes 52 pages, one page for each week of the year.
 Meanwhile, Sethe and Beloved aren't doing well. Sure, they take the food, but
otherwise, they're pretty much in their own world. Denver's ignored, which, if you
think about it, probably isn't the worst thing in the world for Denver.
 The relationship between Sethe and Beloved has deteriorated so much that their
roles have completely reversed: Sethe's like a baby and Beloved's like the mother.
 Sethe gives everything up to Beloved while Beloved just roams around eating and
sleeping.
 By the way, Beloved's huge now—like watermelon-in-the-stomach huge… catch
the hint?
 Denver tries to take care of Sethe and Beloved (does she have the choice not to?) as
usual, but there's not much else she can do outside of feed them. To her, the
dynamic between Sethe and Beloved is pretty clear: Sethe feels bad about the
handsaw and so she's trying to make it up to Beloved. And Beloved has no qualms
about making Sethe pay for the past.
 Denver's pretty disgusted by the whole deal, but she gets why Sethe lets Beloved get
away with everything: she's like how Denver used to be—scared that Beloved might
leave.
 And not just leave—Beloved might leave before Sethe gets her to understand what
slavery under white people was like; how it could make you so "dirty" that you
forgot who you were.
 Sethe's best part is her children. They're clean and pure and there's no way Sethe
will ever let any of them get dirtied by the stain of slavery.
 Of course, this all goes over Beloved's head. Or rather, she doesn't care. She only
cares about the fact that Sethe was the cause of all her trauma.
 While Sethe and Beloved are embroiled in their obsession for each other, Denver—
her father's daughter—becomes super-practical.
 The girl understands that she needs to find work; charity's great and all but it can't
go on forever. Plus, it's not like she can do anything about her mother and Beloved;
they're beyond help and, by the way, still totally ignorant of all that Denver and the
community have done for them.
 Denver gets it now: it's time for self-preservation. Nelson Lord reminds her of this
when, in passing, he happens to say to her, "Take care of yourself, Denver."
 Ever the smart one, Denver figures that the Bodwins had at one time helped Baby
Suggs and Sethe, so why not continue the tradition and help out Denver?
 That's how Denver ends up at the Bodwins', discussing job opportunities with the
Bodwins' black maid Janey Wagon. Janey's more than that though; she's the
gatekeeper for the Bodwins (who are old now).
 She determines who gains access to the Bodwins.Maybe it's because Denver
recognizes that Janey's not going to help her until Denver tells her whole story to
Janey.
 Denver finds herself spilling her guts to Janey, which basically means that—of
course—Janey's going to help her out. Janey remembers and respects Baby Suggs.
She also seems to know something's up with Denver's "cousin" (a.k.a. Beloved)
because she asks if Beloved's hands have lines (which Beloved doesn't… creepy).
 So she offers Denver a job as a night nurse/maid for the Bodwins. Janey can't do
that job anymore and needs someone to cover her. If you haven't guessed, Janey
clearly holds quite a bit of power in the Bodwins' household; she's kind of like a
cross between a head of Human Resources and an executive assistant.
 Everything seems great as Denver leaves the Bodwin house, except that she sees
something pretty strange. Actually, it's not strange as much as it's a little disturbing
considering the Bodwins are supposed to be the good type of white people: Denver
notices a small figurine of a black boy on a shelf. The black boy has his mouth wide
open, full of money; he also happens to be kneeling. Painted across the bottom of
the figurine's pedestal is the phrase "At Yo Service."
 Perhaps not the most racially-sensitive piece of interior decoration.
 Once Denver's gone, you can bet that her story spreads like wildfire.
 Janey doesn't even bother keeping her mouth shut, but she isn't just feeding the
rumor mill. She's concerned, just like many of the women in the community become
concerned once they hear the full story of Denver's plight.
 Ella (you remember her—Stamp got mad at her for not taking in Paul D),
especially, thinks something needs to be done about Beloved and Sethe. She
convinces a bunch of women that a rescue is in order.
 Why is Ella more concerned than most of the others? We get the sense that she's a
version of your modern-day community activist. She's practical and into
community-building. She also has a pretty bad history herself, with a childhood in
which she was "shared" by both the father of the house and his son.
 Ella was never a fan of Sethe, who turned away from the community after she got
out of jail. But Ella recognizes sense when she sees it, and she sees it in Denver.
 Plus, she thinks the past should stay in the past and the dead shouldn't be in the
world of the living. In practical terms, that means Beloved's whole ghostly
possession act has got to go.
 On the day Denver's supposed to start her job, Ella and about 30 other women show
up at 124.
 The women are a pan-religious bunch; they bring crosses, chicken necks… hey,
whatever works, right?
 Denver doesn't see them at first because she's looking the other way for Mr.
Bodwin, who's supposed to pick her up. She's also shaken up because she's just had
a sad dream about a pair of shoes, running. (You might want to ask yourself what
the deal is with shoes. Or you can just check out our section on "Symbols.")
 Denver finally sees them grouped outside the house. She waves. Some of them
wave back.
 Then the women start to pray. And sing—a song without words.
 Meanwhile, Mr. Bodwin's literally taking a trip down memory lane as he's driving
toward 124.
 He's thinking about how fond he is of 124, so much so that he doesn't mind not
charging much rent (or any) on it since it at least hasn't been abandoned. It's the
place where he's buried his childhood treasures, like a box of tin soldiers and a
watch chain with no watch. His buried childhood treasure makes him think of his
father, who we get the feeling was a tough love kind of dad. But his father also
believed and taught Mr. Bodwin this core principle: all human life is holy.
 Mr. Bodwin has definitely lived that principle. He was, after all, a part of the
Society—an abolitionist group—and helped slaves as much as he could. For
instance, he and his sister were the ones who got Sethe out of jail.
 But that's all in the past. Now Mr. Bodwin just wants the simple things in life, like
knowing where his childhood treasures are; going home; eating supper;
sleeping.Okay, why is all this stuff about Mr. Bodwin important? Where's the good
stuff?
 We promise: this is where the action starts.
 Mr. Bodwin is arriving at 124 just as the women are picking up their singing.
  By this time, Sethe and Beloved have noticed the women enough to go outside on
the porch. Sethe has an ice pick in her pocket because she had been breaking up ice
in the yard earlier. Beloved's feverish and ragged, but, standing on the porch, she
looks like a hot, pregnant Medusa to the women in the yard.
 Then Sethe sees Mr. Bodwin's black hat. Can you guess where this is going? Yep.
Sethe freaks out.
 The white man is coming into her yard; the white man is coming for "her best
thing."
 She hears hummingbird wings. She becomes one with the ice pick and goes
all Basic Instinct on Mr. Bodwin (poor guy—he really wasn't expecting this). Hey,
we can look at it this way: at least she doesn't go for Beloved a second time.
  Beloved, on the other hand, feels loss. She's been left alone on the porch and all she
can think is that Sethe's leaving her again.
 That is until Beloved sees the man without skin (or, in this case, Mr. Bodwin)
looking at her…
 Read on to the next chapter to see what happens (hey, even a Nobel-prize-winning
author needs an occasional cliffhanger).
Ch. 27
 Paul D's back!
 Wait—what happens to Sethe and the gang?! Yep, Morrison's going to make you
work for that ending.
 Meanwhile, there's Paul D, who, by the way, is re-introduced to us, not by name,
but by the lyrics of one of his songs. The one about chamomile sap and his hat. Are
these details actually all that important? You bet they are. After all, he's singing
about a hat—need we say more?
 Paul D is approaching 124 from the back.
 He sees Here Boy the dog asleep by the pump in the yard—that's how he can tell
that Beloved's gone now.
 There are rumors that Beloved exploded or that she's in hiding, but Paul D knows
better, although he does half expect to see Beloved again, to hear her telling him to
touch her, when he arrives at 124.
 Before he actually gets to the main house though, he makes a pit stop in the cold
room, his old sleeping pad. It's empty and benign-looking, although it does remind
him of sex with Beloved, which—if we believe his description—was pretty bad.
 As he leaves the cold room, he looks toward the main house and notices how
normal and quiet the house is.
 It's just like how Stamp Paid said it would be. (Hint: Paul D's about to have a brief
flashback.)Stamp has told Paul D that the Bodwins plan to sell 124 as soon as they
can. (Probably a good idea.) Mr. Bodwin doesn't actually want to sell (what?!), but
says he won't stop his sister, who thinks the place is trouble (smart woman).
 According to Stamp, Mr. Bodwin was staring at Beloved so hard on the day when
Sethe tried to kill him that he didn't even notice Sethe coming at him with an ice
pick. We guess a naked, pregnant Beloved might make anyone stare.
 As a result, Mr. Bodwin isn't pressing charges against Sethe. How could he
anyway? He still doesn't even know the whole story. He thinks Sethe was fighting
with the other black women.
 Janey could tell Mr. Bodwin the real story—that Ella clipped Sethe before Sethe
could get to Mr. Bodwin—but she doesn't want to.
 She is relieved though that Mr. Bodwin isn't dead; she and Denver both need their
jobs.Stamp also reveals that the women can't make up their minds about what or
who Beloved was. What they do agree on was that Beloved looked huge and Sethe
looked tiny next to her—a detail that surprises Stamp because when he saw
Beloved, she was skinny.
 Anyway, Paul D still has a hard time believing Stamp's account of how things went
down for Mr. Bodwin, and we don't blame him.
 How could Mr. Bodwin not see Sethe? She had an ice pick for crying out loud.
 And, in fact, even Stamp admits that Mr. Bodwin might just be in denial or
pretending that he doesn't know what happened.
 Apparently, that's just like something Mr. Bodwin would do. To Stamp, Mr.
Bodwin's kind of a hero and a rock for the black community because he's never
turned down anyone who has asked for help.
 The two men move on to talk about Sethe, whom they think of as flat-out crazy.
Somehow that topic—Sethe as crazy woman—gets them to start making jokes.
And, believe it or not, this whole part of the conversation really is pretty funny. We
suggest you read it just for some comic relief.
 Of course, since this is a Toni Morrison novel, the joking has to end at some point,
and so it does, when Paul D starts to crack a joke about Denver.
 That's when Stamp stops Paul D and defends Denver.
 Denver, after all, has become Stamp's "heart." He's proud of her because, for
starters, she was the first one to wrestle Sethe down when Sethe went after Mr.
Bodwin. According to him, Denver's turned out fine.
 Paul D finds this out for himself when he runs into Denver the next day. She looks
healthy, skinny, friendly—a lot like Halle, with a hint of Sethe around her mouth.
 He finds out from Denver that she's working at the Bodwins' and is on her way to
try for a second job at the shirt factory.
 She's, for the most part, happy. The Bodwins are good to her. Miss Bodwin is even
trying to educate her enough so that she can get into Oberlin College.
 Paul D withholds his negative opinion about white schoolteachers and asks after
Sethe instead, only to find out that Denver feels she's lost Sethe.
 Paul D also asks Denver about Beloved—whether Denver really thought Beloved
was her sister. Denver responds: "At times. At times—more."
 But then Denver turns the conversation around to Paul D and how he had sex with
Beloved. That pretty much kills the conversation.
 Paul D gets that Denver doesn't have a high opinion of what he did with Beloved.
Even though he wants to keep talking to her about what happened, Denver pretty
much shuts him up with an angry look on her face and leaves.
 That means we're still left hanging, like Paul D, about what happened with Beloved.
 There are a lot of stories out there that Paul D has heard. For example, Beloved was
the baby ghost who sent Sethe to kill Mr. Bodwin.
 Everyone does agree on one point, though—that Beloved was there one second and
gone the next, when the women looked up from Sethe on the ground.
 There is a boy who says he saw a naked woman with fish for hair running through
the woods.
 But these are, ultimately, all rumors.
 Paul D decides that he doesn't care so much how "It" (a.k.a. Beloved) left or why.
He needs to figure out for himself why he left Sethe.
 He's confused on this point. You see, he can't figure out who he is exactly since he
keeps seeing himself from other people's perspectives, like Mr. Garner and Sixo.
 Their eyes give him totally opposite views of himself.
 Additionally, there was that time when he worked both sides of the Civil War. He
had run away from Northpoint Bank and Railway to fight on the Union side, with
the 44th Colored Regiment in Tennessee.
 But that didn't work out because he ended up at another colored regiment in New
Jersey, with a white commander who couldn't decide whether or not to arm the
black men. Finally, it was decided not to arm the black men and make them do
menial labor instead. The regiment fell apart and most of the black men ended up
abandoned.
 Then he ended up getting caught by Northpoint again and sent to do slave labor,
until the company sold him to the Rebellers, who had him taking care of the
Confederate dead.
 He thinks to himself that he's tried to escape five times in his life but he's never been
totally successful. This gets him to feel melancholic about all those failed escapes—
how each time he escaped, he'd feel all this wonder about the land he was on and
that he didn't belong to.
 Paul D then thinks back to the time after the War, when he technically became a
free man. You would think everything should have been hunky-dory for him, but it
wasn't.
 At that time, he was in Alabama slaving for the Confederacy. When that was over,
he and a couple of other black Union soldiers walked from Selma to Mobile. Along
the way, there were all these black bodies littered on the ground.
 They also noticed how black people were now working for the Union, constructing
roads that, previously, they had torn up for the Confederates.
 Paul D also remembers how one of his traveling companions, originally a black
Union private, complained about being paid less than white soldiers. Paul D
couldn't believe that black men could be paid to fight.
 He and his companions eventually parted ways, and Paul D made his way to New
Jersey alone, where he got his first real taste of how good freedom could be.
 It was in New Jersey that he earned his first coin, by helping a white man unload a
cab. It was also where he made his first purchase, a bunch of turnips; the experience
made him glow.
 For seven years, he wandered like this until he got to Ohio and 124 Bluestone.
 And now we're back to Paul D—no longer in an extended flashback—standing in
front of 124 and thinking about going in.
 The house is really quiet and full of absence—totally different from how Paul D
first knew it, and yet, just as hard to move through. Despite the difference, the house
still feels weird somehow. Like there's an outside force both embracing and
accusing him at the same time. (Makes you think, doesn't it? Is Beloved really
gone?)
 Paul D finally finds Sethe after wandering through the house.
 Clearly she's not all gone, though, because she responds to Paul D's questions
quickly and sanely.
 She tells Paul D that she's tired. Too tired to get up off the bed.
 It's then that Paul D realizes the problem: Sethe's becoming like how Baby Suggs
was right before Baby died.
 Only Paul D isn't going to let that happen.
 He's about to yell at her when he remembers Denver telling him to watch how he
speaks to Sethe.
  So he takes it down a notch and acts like the supportive boyfriend who wants back
in.He promises to take care of her at night while Denver takes care of her during the
day. Then he heats up some water and starts to rub her feet, just like Amy once did
so long ago.
 All that attention works: Sethe cries and tells Paul D that Beloved left her.
 In other words, the old Sethe's coming back.
  Paul D thinks back to what Sixo used to say about the Thirty-Mile Woman: how
she was a friend of his mind and how she gathered his pieces. Translation? The
Thirty-Mile Woman really really understood Sixo.
 Anyway, what Sixo said makes Paul D recall all the ways in which Sethe did the
same for him, especially the times when she would ignore the collar marks around
his neck.
 His conclusion? Sethe has always let him keep his pride and manhood intact (the
two are, apparently, the same thing for Paul D).
 So Paul D decides that the two of them should stay together. They have a history
together. And now they need to create a future, too.
Ch. 28
 Ah…you thought the book ended with that romantic ending to Sethe and Paul D,
huh? But that would just be too easy, wouldn't it?
 So we have another, final chapter, if you can consider it a chapter (it's only a page
and a half). It's definitely not typical—what is in this novel?—since it has no real
plot.
 But it is clearly about Beloved (and all that/whom she represents).
 Think of it as "Beloved: Where is she now?"And where exactly is she?
 It's hard to say since she has become the stuff of a bad dream everyone has tried to
forget. In fact, the way the narrator writes about her, she's almost more like a sad,
generic ghost story. She's so forgotten that she doesn't even have a name.
 Plus, the narrator keeps telling us that this is not a story to pass on.
 However, there is the sense that she's still around. Maybe it's in a rustle or a brush
along a cheek or a moved picture frame. At the back of 124, in the woods, near the
stream, there are also footprints that appear to fit everyone's feet and that disappear
once a person leaves.
 But eventually, not just the footprints, but even the water, too—even that disappears
from people's minds.
 The only thing left is the weather, as in the change of seasons.
 Oh, and one final word: "Beloved."