Beloved, Chapter 1 @ANNotations-Books

Okay, chapter one. You'll notice in this book there is no table of contents, and these chapters don't have titles. So, it can be sort of hard, I think, to keep track of them. I have often, when I've taught this book, had students write their own title for each chapter as a way to remember what happens. I will also, in the discussion section of every video, do a bullet point list of the main plot points. That will not take the place of annotations because there are so many details in here. But just so you can keep everything straight, I will, um, add those bullet point lists.

So, I want to first start by explaining that this book is what's called a braided narrative. A braided narrative is a story that weaves different points of view and different time periods all throughout, and Tony Morrison does that even within paragraphs. So, we are going to be jumping from one time period to another. Um, there's going to be a story that is what I call the slave story, which is set in 1855. There's going to be the present day story, which is in 1873, which is where we're going to start the book today. There's also going to be, um, some flashbacks to the time period when Sethe, who is the main character, was escaping slavery, and also some periods of time when other characters were escaping slavery. And all of this gets woven in and out, um, as she's telling the story from sort of her present day point of view, which is, um, where we're, like I said, where we're going to begin.

The, um, different perspectives: Sethe, who is our main character, her daughter Denver, and her other daughter, Beloved, are two, are three of the main narrators, uh, throughout the story. We're also going to sometimes get the narration and the perspective of Paul D, who is a friend from slavery of Sethe's, and Stamp Paid, who was another slave.

This, I already mentioned, uh, is categorized as historical fiction in the sense that it does, um, take inspiration from a real story of Margaret Garner, who did actually try to kill her children to prevent them from going back to slavery. It also has elements of magical realism right from the beginning here because we're going to be in a haunted house. And the house itself, 124, this is the address, and it's on Blue Stem Road. This is where she lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. So, she tells us right away it's 1873. Sethe and her daughter Denver are the only victims of the ghost who is living in this house. The house number is also relevant. Sethe had four children. So, Howard and Bugler are the two boys, and they have left the house. And then the third child was Beloved, and that's the child who was killed. And then the fourth child is Denver. And so the numbers 1, 2, 4, notice that the number three is missing. That would be the third child. So, the even the house number has, um, has some relevance here. Also, the house itself is like a character in the story because it is so possessed by this spirit.

We're also introduced to a grandmother, Baby Suggs, who is dead at this point in time. But we will have flashbacks to when she was alive, right within this chapter. Howard and Bugler, the two older boys, leave the house when they're 13 years old because they have had enough of the haunting. They are afraid of the ghost. So, they, when they start seeing the, the floorboards moving and, you know, food being spilled off the stove and, you know, pieces of furniture falling over and mirrors cracking, they have enough and they leave the house. So, within two months, in the dead of winter, leaving their grandmother, Baby Suggs, Sethe, their mother, and their little sister all by themselves in the gray and white house on Blue Stem Road. It didn't have a number then because Cincinnati didn't stretch that far. So, they're living in Cincinnati, Ohio, and they give the number 124 to the house because it represents Sethe's history with her children.

Baby Suggs, um, right before she dies, is apathetic, depressed. She doesn't care about her life. She can't get interested in leaving life or living it. And she doesn't really care about the fact that the two boys have left. She only asks for color. So, as she's near death, she wants to see things that are beautiful. So, Denver and Sethe bring in pieces of fabric, flowers from outside that are pink or lavender or bright yellow. They do whatever they can to bring in things that will make her happy. Um, but they also understand that, you know, the ghost is sort of dominating every aspect of their lives. And that's what's being described here.

Finally, after Baby Suggs dies, Denver and Sethe try to get the ghost to come out, to not be so angry, and to stop bothering them so much. And they say, "Come on, come on. You may as well just come out." And Denver says, "Well, grandbaby, Grandma Baby must be stopping it. Baby Suggs must be stopping the, the spirit from coming out because now she's in the spirit world, too." And Sethe says she doubts that. And Sethe believes that the, the spirit of the ghost is not coming out because it's such a, it's such a baby itself. She says, "You're forgetting how little it is. She wasn't even two years old when she died." So, this child was 2 years old when Sethe killed it to save it from slavery.

Um, as they're talking, a car goes by out front. And every time a car goes by, um, actually, I, it's not a car, it's a horse. So, we have a horse and carriage going by. Anytime somebody goes by, they go quickly because they are afraid of the house. Nobody comes to see them because the whole, it's not even a town really at this point, but everybody who lives near them knows that their house is haunted. And Sethe says that this ghost is no more powerful than the way Sethe loved that child. And immediately she has a flashback. So, we're getting a hint.

"Sethe answered, and there it was again," meaning a memory. "The welcoming cool of unchiseled headstone, the one she selected to lean against on tiptoe, her knees wide open as any grave, pink as a fingernail. It was like a baby, and sprinkled with glittering chips. '10 minutes,' he said. 'You got 10 minutes. I'll do it for free.'" So, this is a memory that Sethe has when she was trying to bury her baby, her baby daughter. She didn't have any money, and she asked the man from the cemetery to carve something into the baby's headstone. And the man said if she would let him have sex with her for 10 minutes, he would do it for free. 10 minutes for seven letters. So, her intention had been to write "Dearly Beloved" on the headstone, which is a very common thing that we see on headstones. But because she didn't want to have to give sex to this man, this stranger for 10 more minutes, she settled for just "Beloved." And so that is the name of the ghost, too.

The whole time, the 10 minutes that this man is having sex with her, against, and I mean, really, it's not even having sex with her, he's raping her, his young child is watching, and there's anger in their faces. And this is like just a terrible experience that she's remembering. "Counting this on the stillness on of her own soul. She had forgotten the other one, the soul of her baby girl. Who would have thought that such a little baby could harbor so much rage? Running among the, the stones under the eyes of the engraver's son was not enough." So, Sethe feels like she suffered already just to get the name on the headstone. But this ghost, her child ghost, really doesn't think she suffered enough because the baby has a lot of fury at having its throat cut. Fair enough, right?

Um, once Baby Suggs, so this is another hint. Baby Suggs is Sethe's mother-in-law. It's not her mother. Baby Suggs had suggested they could move. Um, oh, I'm sorry. Sethe suggests to Baby Suggs that they could move, and Baby Suggs says, "What's the point? Every single house around here is packed to the rafters with some dead negro's grief. We're lucky this ghost is a baby." So, just thinking about the time period in the 1870s, you know, slaves were free. Many of them had come north to be free. And so, they all have ghosts from their past. Um, she also explains to Sethe that she herself had eight children. So, Baby Suggs had eight children, and every one of them had gone away from her. She says, "My firstborn, all I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Eight children, and that's all I remember." So, clearly Sethe is not one of those children. This is Sethe's mother-in-law, as I established up here. Which makes us wonder, obviously, where is Sethe's husband? She's alone. Sethe is alone with her child, Denver.

Um, it talks here about how Sethe's brain is devious. How she can be living her daily life, and then some trauma comes into her mind. So, she might be hurrying across the field, running to get to the pump to rinse the chamomile sap from her legs. Nothing else would be in her mind. "The picture of the men coming to nurse her was as lifeless as the nerves in her back where the skin buckled like a washboard." So, this is an obvious question. The picture of the men coming to nurse her. What does that mean? We will find out, but we're not going to find out right now. The nerves in her back where the skin buckled like a washboard. This we can probably infer is scarring from being whipped. So, she could just be living her life. Remember, she's free in 124 on Blue Stem Road, and she's still haunted by the trauma of her days as a slave. She's like, even when the cool breeze is on her face, you know, these just these thoughts come to her.

"They'll just be like a splash of water, even, and some sort of memory will come. 'Here, boy,' lapping at a puddle near her feet. And suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling out before her eyes. And although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty." So, Sweet Home is where she was a slave. And this would have been back in 1855 and prior, and prior to that. It's interesting. The dog's name is Here Boy. That's what we call a strange dog. We don't know. "Here boy. Come here." That's what they, that's what they call him. Kind of indicates too that there are limited, um, this just like limited command of language, really, that they, they don't think about details like, "What are we going to name somebody or something?" We're just, this is the dog. Um, and it's interesting too that Sweet Home has such an endearing name, but it's a place where there was so much horror. And she even says, "It never looked as terrible as it was," and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. So, you know, fire and brimstone, but hidden in lacy groves.

She describes how beautiful it was there. And then, as she washes the chamomile from her legs, she comes around the corner in front of the house. And there, and we're in the present day for the, for the point of the book, there sits Paul D. Just out of the blue, here shows up one of the slaves from Sweet Home, the last of the Sweet Home men. And although she could never mistake his face from another's, she says, "Is that you?" And he gets up and says, "What's left of it, of of me? You know, how have you been, girl, besides barefoot?" And she says, "I messed up my legs back yonder with the chamomile. I don't know much about chamomile, but it must irritate your skin." Um, he makes a face as though tasting a teaspoon of something bitter. "I don't want to hear about it. I always did hate that stuff." And she says, "You know, come on in. You've got to come in." And he says, "Oh, the porch is fine." He doesn't. He sort of hesitates to go in her house, which is probably smart considering what that house is like. It's been 18 years since they've seen each other. So, that's what also helps us place 1855 as the slave period. So, 18 years she hasn't seen this man. And here he just shows up on her front porch. And he says, "I've been walking every one of them." And he takes off his shoes, too. She asks if he wants to soak his feet, and he's like, "No, no, I can't baby my feet. I got to keep walking." And she says, "Well, you can't leave right away. You just got here." And, um, he says he wants to see Baby Suggs. And she says, "Oh, he, she's dead. She died eight years ago now. So, it's been a while that Baby Suggs has been gone." And he asks if she had a hard death, and Sethe says, "It was soft as cream. Being alive was the hard part." Um, and she says, "I'm sorry that you missed her. You know, is that why you came?" And he says, "Well, that's some of what I came for. The rest is you. But if all the truth be known, I go anywhere these days, anywhere they let me sit down." And Sethe says, "You looking good." And Denver's confusion. He says, "He lets me look good long as I feel bad." He looked at her, and the word "bad" took on another meaning. So, they're kind of flirting with each other here.

Um, he goes on to talk about where he'd been in Kentucky. So, now we, we know also just where Sweet Home was. Talks about all the different men, um, who were slaves there. Um, it says here, "Peach stone skin, straight back. For a man with an immobile face, it was amazing how ready it was to smile or blaze or be sorry with you. As though all you had to do was get his attention, and right away he produced the feeling you were feeling." With less than a blink, his face seemed to change. Underneath it lay the activity. "I wouldn't have to ask about him, would I? You'd tell me if there was anything to tell, wouldn't you?" So, here she's describing Paul. Paul D. Here she's asking about somebody else. And Paul D says, "Yeah, I tell you. I for sure I tell you. I don't know any more now than I did then, except for the churn." He thought, "And you, you don't need to know about that. You must think he's still alive." So, here's another, what, what is the churn? So, Paul D, we can infer, is talking about Sethe's husband. And that will be made clear as we continue to read. Yes, Sethe's husband is missing. Don't know where he is. She's asking if Paul D, who's such a nice, warm, open man, might know what's happened to him. And he says, "I don't know." And then he thinks to himself about this. So, that something happened that was terrible that he's not going to tell Sethe about. Um, and he says to her, "You know, you must think that he's still alive." And Sethe says, "No, I, I don't actually. I think he's probably dead." And he asks what Baby Suggs thought. And he, she says, "Same." Um, that, you know, she, she also assumed that Sethe's husband was dead. And her husband's name was Halle. So, this is an important thing, too.

"1855. The day my baby was born." "You had that baby, did you? Never thought you'd make it," he chuckled, running off pregnant. So, now we're going to get some background about how Sethe escaped slavery. It was 1855. She was pregnant, and she had a baby, too, which would have been Beloved. And Sethe says, "I had to. I couldn't wait." Um, she lowered her head and thought, as he did, how unlikely it was that she had made it. And if it hadn't been for that girl looking for velvet, she never would have. So, again, who are we talking about? You're going to have lots of question marks like this, references to things we don't really understand yet, but we will find out. Kind of reminds me a little bit of Tale of Two Cities. Dickens did that, too. And apparently Sethe escaped slavery all by herself. Paul D was proud of her and annoyed. Proud she had done it, annoying that she had not needed Halle or him to do it, almost by myself. She says a white girl helped me. Maybe that's a girl looking for velvet. Um, so she did get some help from somebody as she was traveling. "Then she helped herself too. God bless her."

"You could say that you can stay the night, Paul D." So, that's a shift, kind of like inviting him to stay. It's pretty bold. "You don't sound too steady in that offer." Sethe glanced beyond his shoulder toward the closed door. "Well," she says, "I hope you'll pardon my house. Come on in. Talk to Denver while I cook you something."

So, this is interesting. As Paul ties the shoes together and walks through her door, he enters a pool of red and undulating light that locked him where he stood. And he says, "You got company off and on," said Sethe. "Good God, what kind of evil you got in here?" So, he recognizes this house is haunted. This ghost is coming for him. And Sethe says, "It's not evil, just sad. Come on, just step through that red undulating light," which is kind of creepy. He looks at her closely, closer than he had when she first rounded the house on wet and shining legs. And he thinks to himself that this is the girl, the one with iron eyes and backbone to match. He had never seen her hair in Kentucky. And though her face was 18 years older than when he last saw her, it was softer now because of the hair. "A face too still for comfort, irises the same color as her skin. Halle's woman, pregnant every year, including the year she sat by the fire, telling him she was going to run." Her three children had already packed into a wagon load of others in a caravan of Negroes crossing the river. So, she sent her other three kids ahead. So, that would have been Howard and Bugler and Beloved, who was just not even 2 years old. And then she's going to follow by herself. And she's following alone because she's pregnant. They were to be left with Halle's mother near Cincinnati. That would be Baby Suggs. "Even in that tiny shack, leaning so close to the fire, you could smell the heat in her dress. Her eyes did not pick up a flicker of light." This is a flashback to the day when she, when she told the boys she was going to escape and follow her children. "Her eyes were like two wells into which he had trouble gazing. Even punched out, they needed to be covered, lidded, marked with some sign to warn folks of what emptiness was held there."

So, this is all a flashback. We also find out that at this time, Mr. Garner, who would have been, um, the owner of the plantation, was dead, and his wife is sick. She had a lump in her neck the size of a sweet potato, and she couldn't speak to anybody. "She leaned as close to the fire as her pregnant belly allowed and told him, Paul D, the last of the Sweet Home men." So, there'd been six of them who belonged to the farm. So, Sethe's the only female. Mrs. Garner, crying like a baby, had sold his brother to pay off the debts that surfaced the minute she was widowed. Then Schoolteacher arrived. So, Mr. Garner dies. One of them had to be, one of the boys had to be sold off to help pay some debts. And Mrs. Garner sounds like she's probably a nice woman, actually, but she can't run the plantation. So, another man, who is the, who they call Schoolteacher, comes to take charge of the plantation, and what he did broke three more Sweet Home men and punched the glittering iron out of Sethe's eyes, leaving two open wells that did not reflect firelight. So, this man was a very bad master, and that's why she's leaving.

"Now the iron was back, but the face softened by the hair made him trust her enough to step inside the door." So, now we're in the present time again. Paul D has remembered back to when they were slaves and what happened that caused Sethe to want to leave. And now he's like, "Okay, I can trust her." The ghost is sad. Um, Paul D assumes that the ghost is Baby Suggs. And Sethe says, "No, it's my daughter, the one I sent ahead with the boys." And Paul D says, "She didn't live." Well, no. I don't think he, he finds out that it's because she killed the child, but no, she didn't live. "The one I was carrying when I ran away is all I got left. The boys are gone." So, Denver is the child she was pregnant with. Um, Beloved is the, is the little one who was sent ahead. And Paul D says, "You're here by yourself. You have no man to help you." And she says, "No, just me and Denver." And Paul D says, "Is that okay with you? Doesn't sound very safe to me." "In 1873," and she said, "It is. It's fine." She says, "I cook at a restaurant and I sew a little." So, she has a little job. This could be a quiz question. And she does a little sewing.

And then another flashback. So, you see how quickly these pop in and out. Paul D smiles and remembers that Sethe was 13 when she came to Sweet Home. And she was a timely present for Mrs. Garner, who had lost Baby Suggs to her husband's high principles. So, this is going to explain that, um, Baby Suggs had basically been bought, like her freedom had been bought. So, she is released, and the other Sweet Home men look at Sethe, who's come in to replace Baby Suggs as like an assistant to Mrs. Garner. They all look at her like, "Oh, I mean, she's like a teenager, like, oh, they, they want to probably get with her, right?" And they decide to let her be. "They were young and so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves." Okay, this is absolutely shocking. This is, this is what you think it is. These young men are literally having like sexual relations with calves because they're so horny and they don't have any women. So, this is one example of many that you will see where Tony Morrison is likening slaves to animals, that they are treated like animals, that they identify as animals. Um, and here this is like a really graphic, um, representation of that. They let Sethe be. "It took her a year to choose." So, they let Sethe choose which of the other men she likes, and she eventually chooses Halle. "The restraint they had exercised, possible, was only because they were Sweet Home men, the ones Mr. Garner bragged about while other farmers shook their heads in warning at the phrase. 'Y'all got boys,' he told them. 'Young boys, old boys, picky boys, dropping boys at Sweet Home, my [ __ ] as men. Every one of them bought him that way, raised him that way, men, everyone.'" So, Mr. Garner was an unusual slave owner in this, in the fact that he expected his slaves to be respectful, and, um, he treated them in such a way that they would be respectful. And, um, the other men would say, "No, you know, a black, a slave can't be a man." And he says, "Yes, they can. If you're a man yourself, you want your slaves to be men, too." So, he definitely treated them differently than, um, others, and so they probably had it pretty good, honestly, for, for some period of time. Um, then there'd be an argument. The men would fight Mr. Garner to sort of prove to him that he wasn't better as a slave owner than the others. And they all have the same name. They all have the last name Garner because he is the slave owner. And they're all named pretty much all named Paul. Paul D, Paul F, Paul A, then Halle Suggs, so Baby Suggs's son, and then Sixo, the wild man. We haven't met him yet. "They were all in their 20s, minus women, [ __ ] cows, dreaming of rape, thrashing on pallets, rubbing their thighs, and waiting for the new girl." So, they're very horny, and this is how they deal with it. "The one who took Baby Suggs's place after Halle bought her with five years of Sundays." So, Halle bought his mother's freedom by working extra, and Mr. Garner honored that and let Baby Suggs go. So, she was released because her son was willing to work extra hard so that would happen. So, Halle's a good man. "A 20-year-old man so in love with his mother, he gave up five years of Sabbath just to see her sit down for a change was a serious recommendation." So, that's why she chose Halle.

And we're finally getting to the rest to the reference to sewing a little. "She sewed her own dress on the sly. She made herself like a wedding dress with scraps of fabric." Um, Paul looks up then and sees that there's a white staircase that goes to blue and white wallpaper on the second floor. Paul D could just see the beginning of the paper, little flecks of yellow and white. So, it looks very innocent and, and inviting, I'm sure. And then down comes Denver. "Every sense he had told him that the air above the stairwell was charmed and very thin. But the girl who walked down out of that air was round and brown with the face of an alert doll." This is Denver. Paul D looked at the girl and then at Sethe, who smiled, saying, "Here's my Denver. This is Paul D, honey, from Sweet Home. Good morning, Mr. D. Garner. Baby. Mr. Paul D. Garner. Yes, sir. Glad to get a look at you. Last time I saw your mama, you were pushing out the front of her dress." "Still is." Sethe smiled. "Provided she can get in it."

So, this is shocking to Denver to have a man there. It says, "For 12 years, long before Grandma Baby died, Baby Suggs, there had been no visitors of any sort, and certainly no friends, no colored people, no hazelnut men with two long hairs, no notebook, no charcoal, no oranges, no questions." Someone her mother wanted to talk to and would even consider talking to while barefoot, looking, in fact, acting like a girl instead of the quiet, queenly woman Denver had known all her life. So, Sethe is kind of being flirty and like relaxed. Denver doesn't recognize her. "The one who never looked away, who when a man got stomped to death by a mayor right in front of Sawyer's restaurant, did not look away. Like, so this is a description that Denver has of her mother. Sethe is tough. When a sow began eating her own litter, she didn't look away. And when the baby spirit picked up Here Boy and slammed him into the wall hard enough to break two of his legs and dislocate his eyes so hard he went into convulsions and chewed up his tongue. Still her mother had not looked away. She had taken a hammer." This is shocking. "Knocked the dog unconscious, wiped away the blood and saliva, pushed his eye back in his head and set his leg bones. He recovered." So, the dog is still living. This is the mother Denver knows, not this like sort of quiet, flirty mom who's talking to Paul D. So, all of a sudden, Denver is uncomfortable. She feels lonely in this situation. She is jealous of Paul. You know, her mother keeps looking at him, even though there's this baby ghost in the house which is creating all this problem. Um, and Paul D says, "You know, she's a fine-looking young lady. She's got her daddy's face." So, he says, "She looks like Halle." And Denver says, "You know my father?" And Paul D says, "Yes." And so then there's, she's kind of interested now, right?

"Denver sat down on the bottom step. There was nowhere else gracefully to go. They were a 'tusome saying your daddy and Sweet Home in a way that made it clear that both of them belonged to them and not to her." So, the way they're telling her about her dad, like they're kind of together, and she feels so left out. "Her own father's absence was not hers," is how she feels. She wishes for the baby ghost to come back. I mean, this ghost is terrible, but like, it kind of is a character in the house, and now she feels so lonely. And so she says, "We have a ghost in here." It worked. They were not a 'tusome anymore. Now they're paying attention to Denver again. "So I hear," he said. "But sad," your mama said. "Not evil." "No, not evil, but not sad either." Interesting. "What then?" "Rebuked." "Lonely and rebuked." I feel like that could be a quote on a quiz or something. That would be something that Denver says. So, Denver knows this ghost better than Sethe. She can give much more detailed descriptions of how that baby feels. "I don't know about lonely," said Denver's mother. "Mad, maybe." Um, but no, Denver knows different. "Maybe something you got at once." And Sethe shrugged. "It's just a baby." "My sister," Denver said, "died in this house." Um, "How come everybody ran off from Sweet Home? Can't you, why can't you stop talking about it? Looked like it was so sweet. You would have stayed." Fair. She's like, why do you keep talking about these other places where you lived? You know, this terrible place where you were a slave. And, um, Sethe is like, "Who are you talking to? What are you saying?" And Paul's like, "Well, she's right. It wasn't sweet, but it, and it sure wasn't home." I mean, again, just the irony of what this name is, the name of this plantation. And Sethe says, "But it's where we were all together, and it comes back whether you wanted to or not." This is important. One of the things that Tony Morrison is saying in this book, throughout the entire book, is that memory never leaves, and memory matters. And this happens to you. Like when you're walking to school, things will come across your consciousness that have nothing to do with walking to school. And this is what's being included in this story.

Um, so now they're going to try and make some food. "Start up the stove. Let's see if we can't make some biscuits." Um, "You know, do you have any objections?" Um, added, as added again, thought Denver. "Her back was to them. She jostled the kindling and almost lost the fire. 'Why don't you spend the night, Mr. Garner? You and ma'am can talk about Sweet Home all night long.'" Sounds pretty sarcastic to me. I mean, she's getting angry now. Sethe took two swift steps to the stove, but before she could yank Denver's collar, the girl leaned forward and began to cry. So, Sethe recognizes she's being a little sassy here. And when she goes to correct her, Denver starts to cry. Sethe's like, "What? What's wrong with you? You never act like this." And Paul D's like, "Well, leave her alone. I'm a stranger. You know, she's uncomfortable around me." And then she just starts crying and crying. "I can't no more. I can't no more. I can't live here. I don't know where to go. Nobody comes. Boys don't like me. Girls don't like me." They're isolated because everyone knows that their house is haunted, and they don't want anything to do with them. Paul says, "What do you mean no one speaks to you? It's not the house." Denver says, "It's us, and it's you." So, there's something else about Sethe that people don't like. Denver, I mean, Sethe is embarrassed and angry, and Paul's like, "Leave it. Leave it alone. You know, it's hard for a young girl living in a haunted house. Life can't be easier." And Sethe is like, "Well, it's easier than some other things." Like slavery would be the obvious thing. And they're like, "We're not moving. We have to stay here. There's no moving. There's no, there's no leaving. It's all right the way it is." And Paul's like, "You tell me it's all right with this child half out of her mind." Um, and Sethe is like, "I got a tree on my back and a hint, which is a ghost in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms. No more running from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this earth. I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D. Garner. It costs too much. Now sit down and eat with us or leave us be."

So, Paul takes out some tobacco. Um, he sits down, doesn't really have any smoking papers, so he fiddles with the pouch. Um, when she came back, she avoided his look and went straight to a small table next to the stove. "I guess things are a little prickly." And he says to her, "What tree on your back? What tree on your back? Is there something growing on your back?" And she says, "No, but it's there." And he's like, "Well, who told you that?" And she says, "The white girl." So, this is the white girl who helped her when she was escaping. "I've never seen it and I never will, but that's what she said. It looked like, a choked cherry tree, tree, trunk, branches, leaves, etc."

Sethe takes a little spit from the tip of her tongue and lights the stove. She runs her hand through flowers looking for mites. She's going to be making some biscuits. And then she explains, she said, "I had milk. I was pregnant with Denver, but I had milk from my baby girl. So, she had these two children back to back. So, she's pregnant with Denver, probably, you know, the other child, Beloved, is like 18, 20 months old, and she's still nursing her. She's pregnant and still nursing. I hadn't stopped nursing her when I sent her on ahead with Howard and Bugler." So, she sends her nursing daughter ahead, and but she's trying to save her milk so that when she gets there, she can continue nursing her. And she told the other people that were, that were escaping, like gave, she gave them like rags soaked, soaked in sugar water so that the baby could suck on something and that it would be able to wait for her. Um, she says, "Men don't know nothing much," said Paul, tucking his pouch back into his pocket. "But they do know a suckling can't be away from his mother for long." So, Paul's like, "You know, those men who were taking care of your children when they were fleeing understood that they had to do it quickly, and that you were going to follow, and that they needed to keep that child comfortable because it was still a nursing child. Then they know what it's like to send your children off when your breasts are full."

"We was talking about a tree, Sethe." He's confused, as we are. What is she talking about? Then we get the description of what it means to have her milk taken. "After I left you, those boys came in there and took my milk. That's what they came in there for. They held me down and took it. I told Mrs. Garner on them. She had that lump and couldn't speak, but her eyes rolled out tears. Them boys found out that I told on them. Schoolteacher made one open up my back, and when it closed, it made a tree. It grows there still." So, she was whipped so badly by the, by the master Schoolteacher that it created terrible scars and killed all the nerves in her back. And Paul keeps saying, "They beat you when you were pregnant." And all Sethe can talk about is that they took her milk. So, they literally milked her like a cow. This is another reference to an animal existence that they, that the white people saw slaves like creatures, not like humans. They, these, these young boys, white boys, probably Schoolteacher's children, um, did this to her for fun. They thought it was funny. And, um, when she told on them to Mrs. Garner, then Schoolteacher punished her. So, this is a terrible thing, obviously, and Paul D feels so much sympathy for her.

It says, "Not even trying, he had become the kind of man who could walk into a house and make the women cry because with him and his presence, they could. There was something blessed in his manner. Uh, women saw him and wanted to weep, to tell him that their chest hurt and their knees did. Strong women and wise saw him and told him things they only told each other. That way past the change of life, desire in them had suddenly become enormous. Like they confessed things to Paul that they would only tell girlfriends. Like these are experiences that slave women had, that they had sexual needs, that they were embarrassed by their sexual needs, that they needed to sleep, that they were worried about their children, anything at all they could tell Paul." Um, he was not surprised when Denver dripped tears into the stove fire or when Sethe wept. Um, he goes behind Sethe, his body an arc of kindness, and he held her breast in the palms of his hands. He rubbed his cheek on her back and learned that way of her sorrow. So, this is not sexual yet. I mean, it will become that way later. But he is just caring for her because this is where she was injured, basically, by, um, Schoolteacher and those boys, and he touches all these terrible places on her back, these horrible, horrible scars where she was whipped. Sethe is crying hard, and he says, "Oh, Lord, girl." So, he's so, he's so kind to her. And literally, her dress is off. So, I'm wondering, where's Denver? Denver is sitting out on the front step. We hope she doesn't come in because here's Sethe with like her dress off basically, and Paul D holding her in, in this way. Um, so there's just this description of how much she treasures him, really, because he's so empathetic towards what she experienced.

"The stove didn't shudder as it adjusted to its heat. Denver wasn't stirring in the next room. The pulse of red light hadn't come back, and Paul D had not trembled since 1856. And then for 83 days in a row, locked up and chained down, his hands shook so bad he couldn't smoke or even scratch." So, this is a reference to Paul's own trauma. We don't know what happened to him. This is part of the slave story. Now he's trembling again, but this time it's because the floorboards are shaking. So, the ghost is back. Denver bursts in into the room with terror in her eyes and a vague smile on her lips. "Hush up!" Paul D is shouting at the ghost. "Leave the place alone." A table rushes towards Paul D. And Paul yells back at the ghost, "She's got enough without you. You got enough. She's got enough." Slowly, the ghost stops causing problems. And it's gone, at least for the time being.

Denver wanders through the silence to the stove. The ashes over the fire. And she pulls the pan of biscuits from the oven. The jelly cupboard is on its back. All the things in the cupboard are on the floor. She gets herself a plate and she gets a biscuit and she goes and sits on the porch. The two of them had gone up there. So, Paul D and Sethe go upstairs. They had gone up the white stairs, leaving her alone. She pried the wire from the top of the jar and then the lid. Under it was cloth, and under that a thin cake of wax. She removed it all and coaxed the jelly onto one half of the half of the plate. She takes the biscuit and starts to eat it. She misses her brothers. Although they had been polite to her during the quiet time and gave her the whole top of the bed, she remembered how it was before, the pleasure they had sitting clustered on the white stairs, she between the knees of Howard or Bugler while they made up die-wedge stories and with proven ways of killing her dead. So, how they're going to get rid of the, of the ghost is what she hasn't has is having a memory from her childhood with her brothers. "Baby Suggs like bark in the day and leaves at night." This is how Denver remembers the smell of her grandmother. Denver could not sleep in her old room after her brothers ran away. So, she misses them so much she can't sleep in there anymore. Now her mother was upstairs with the man who had gotten rid of the only other company she had. Denver dipped a bit of bread into the jelly and miserably she ate it.

So, Denver needs that ghost to keep her company. So, this is just some summary here. 1855 is the slave story. We had quite a bit of weaving in and out. We find out about how Sethe's milk was taken. How she was whipped. Um, how Mrs. Garner was a good woman, and Mr. Garner apparently was pretty good, too, but Schoolteacher was not. The present time is 1873 in Ohio. The house is haunted. Sethe is the protagonist. Sethe's daughter is Denver. She's 10 years old. The ghost is Beloved. That's the dead daughter who's haunting the house, obviously. And Paul D is the slave to Sethe, new from Sweet Home, who just shows up after 18 years to see Baby Suggs, who's dead. Should probably write Baby Suggs down, right? Baby Suggs is Mom and Sethe's [Music] mother. Sorry, mother-in-law. Kind of messy, I realize, but I'm sure you can get it. All right, that's quite a lot for the first chapter.