She shook her head no and reached down to take off her shoes.
She pulled her dress up to the knees and rolled down her stockings.
When the hosiery was tucked into the shoes, Sethe saw that her feet were like her hands, soft andnew. She must have hitched a wagon ride, thought Sethe. Probably one of those West Virginiagirls looking for something to beat a life of tobacco and sorghum. Sethe bent to pick up the shoes.
"What might your name be?" asked Paul D.
"Beloved," she said, and her voice was so low and rough each one looked at the other two. Theyheard the voice first — later the name.
"Beloved. You use a last name, Beloved?" Paul D asked her.
"Last?" She seemed puzzled. Then "No," and she spelled it for them, slowly as though the letterswere being formed as she spoke them.
Sethe dropped the shoes; Denver sat down and Paul D smiled. He recognized the carefulenunciation of letters by those, like himself, who could not read but had memorized the letters oftheir name. He about to ask who her people were but thought better of it. A young coloredwomandriftin(was) g was drifting from ruin. He had been in Rochester four years ago and seenfive women arriving with fourteen female children. All their men — brothers, uncles, fathers,husbands, sons — had been picked off one by one by one. They had a single piece of paperdirecting them to a preacher on DeVore Street. The War had been over four or five years then, butnobody white or black seemed to know it. Odd clusters and strays of Negroes wandered the backroads and cowpaths from Schenectady to Jackson. Dazed but insistent, they searched each otherout for word of a cousin, an aunt, a friend who once said, "Call on me. Anytime you get nearChicago, just call on me." Some of them were running from family that could not support them,some to family; some were running from dead crops, dead kin, life threats, and took-over land.
Boys younger than Buglar and Howard; configurations and blends of families of women andchildren, while elsewhere, solitary, hunted and hunting for, were men, men, men. Forbidden public transportation, chased by debt and filthy "talking sheets," they followed secondary routes, scannedthe horizon for signs and counted heavily on each other. Silent, except for social courtesies, whenthey met one another they neither described nor asked about the sorrow that drove them from oneplace to another. The whites didn't bear speaking on. Everybody knew.
So he did not press the young woman with the broken hat about where from or how come. If shewanted them to know and was strong enough to get through the telling, she would. What occupiedthem at the moment was what it might be that she needed. Underneath the major question, eachharbored another. Paul D wondered at the newness of her shoes. Sethe was deeply touched by hersweet name; the remembrance of glittering headstone made her feel especially kindly toward her.
Denver, however, was shaking. She looked at this sleepy beauty and wanted more.
Sethe hung her hat on a peg and turned graciously toward the girl. "That's a pretty name, Beloved.
Take off your hat, why don't you, and I'll make us something. We just got back from the carnivalover near Cincinnati. Everything in there is something to see." Bolt upright in the chair, in themiddle of Sethe's welcome, Beloved had fallen asleep again.
"Miss. Miss." Paul D shook her gently. "You want to lay down a spell?"She opened her eyes to slits and stood up on her soft new feet which, barely capable of their job,slowly bore her to the keeping room. Once there, she collapsed on Baby Suggs' bed. Denverremoved her hat and put the quilt with two squares of color over her feet. She was breathing like asteam engine.
"Sounds like croup," said Paul D, closing the door.
"Is she feverish? Denver, could you tell?""No. She's cold.""Then she is. Fever goes from hot to cold.""Could have the cholera," said Paul D.
"Reckon ?""All that water. Sure sign.""Poor thing. And nothing in this house to give her for it. She'll just have to ride it out. That's ahateful sickness if ever there was one.""She's not sick!" said Denver, and the passion in her voice made them smile.
Four days she slept, waking and sitting up only for water. Denver tended her, watched her sound sleep, listened to her labored breathing and, out of love and a breakneck possessiveness thatcharged her, hid like a personal blemish Beloved's incontinence. She rinsed the sheets secretly,after Sethe went to the restaurant and Paul D went scrounging for barges to help unload. Sheboiled the underwear and soaked it in bluing, praying the fever would pass without damage. Sointent was her nursing, she forgot to eat or visit the emerald closet. "Beloved?" Denver wouldwhisper. "Beloved?" and when the black eyes opened a slice all she could say was "I'm here. I'mstill here."Sometimes, when Beloved lay dreamy-eyed for a very long time, saying nothing, licking her lipsand heaving deep sighs, Denver panicked. "What is it?" she would ask.
"Heavy," murmured Beloved. "This place is heavy.""Would you like to sit up?""No," said the raspy voice.
It took three days for Beloved to notice the orange patches in the darkness of the quilt. Denver waspleased because it kept her patient awake longer. She seemed totally taken with those faded scrapsof orange, even made the effort to lean on her elbow and stroke them. An effort that quicklyexhausted her, so Denver rearranged the quilt so its cheeriest part was in the sick girl's sight line.
Patience, something Denver had never known, overtook her. As long as her mother did notinterfere, she was a model of compassion, turning waspish, though, when Sethe tried to help.
"Did she take a spoonful of anything today?" Sethe inquired. "She shouldn't eat with cholera.""You sure that's it? Was just a hunch of Paul D's.""I don't know, but she shouldn't eat anyway just yet.""I think cholera people puke all the time.""That's even more reason, ain't it?""Well she shouldn't starve to death either, Denver.""Leave us alone, Ma'am. I'm taking care of her.""She say anything?""I'd let you know if she did."Sethe looked at her daughter and thought, Yes, she has been lonesome. Very lonesome.
"Wonder where Here Boy got off to?" Sethe thought a change of subject was needed.
"He won't be back," said Denver.
"How you know?""I just know." Denver took a square of sweet bread off the plate. Back in the keeping room,Denver was about to sit down when Beloved's eyes flew wide open. Denver felt her heart race. Itwasn't that she was looking at that face for the first time with no trace of sleep in it, or that the eyeswere big and black. Nor was it that the whites of them were much too white — blue-white. It wasthat deep down in those big black eyes there was no expression at all. "Can I get you something?"
她摇头否认，又伸手去脱鞋。她把裙子提到膝盖，然后搓下长统袜。当她把袜子塞进鞋窠，塞丝看到她的脚像她的手一样，又软又嫩。她肯定搭了辆大车，塞丝想。大概是那种西弗吉尼亚的姑娘，来寻找比烟草和高粱的生活更胜一筹的东西。塞丝弯腰拾起鞋子。
“你叫什么名字？
”保罗·D问。
“宠儿。
”她答道，嗓门又低又粗，他们仨不禁互相看了看。他们先听见的是喉音———然后才是名字。
“宠儿。你有个姓吗，宠儿？
”保罗·D问她。
“姓？”她好像糊涂了。然后她说“没有”，又为他们拼写了名字，慢得好像字母是从她嘴里发明的。
塞丝失手掉了鞋子；丹芙坐下来；而保罗·D微笑起来。他听出了拼字母时那种小心翼翼的发音，所有像他一样目不识丁、只会背自己名字字母的人都那样念。他本想打听一下她的家人是谁，但还是忍住了。一个流浪的黑人姑娘是从毁灭中漂泊而来的。他四年前去过罗彻斯特，在那儿看见五个女人，带着十四个女孩从别处来。她�