Beloved

Paul D and Sethe go upstairs to the bedroom to have sex. Feeling abandoned, Beloved sullenly sucks her fingers and tells Denver to “make him go away” (157). Beloved resents Paul D for stealing Sethe’s attention from her. She pulls out a back tooth and feels like physical pieces of herself are falling apart. Denver asks her if the plucked tooth hurts, adding that people often cry from such pain. Acknowledging this, Beloved cries.

This chapter narrates Grandma Baby Suggs’s experiences after she was freed by the Garners. When Sethe first arrived at 124 after giving birth and surviving an arduous journey, Grandma Baby Suggs took her in and considered the possibility that her son Halle might be dead. Stamp Paid, who helped Sethe cross the river to freedom, was so overcome with compassion for Sethe’s newborn that he picked blueberries for her despite enduring several injuries during the task. After Sethe’s arrival, Grandma Baby Suggs hosted several feasts at her house, inciting the ire of her neighbors, who were jealous of her legal emancipation by way of manumission and her close relationship with Mr. Bodwin who owns 124.

The Garners bought Grandma Baby Suggs from her previous owners, the Whitlows, for a discounted price due to her bad hip. This allowed the Garners to afford to buy Halle as well. Halle was Baby Suggs’s eighth and youngest child, and the only one she had not been separated from. Due to Grandma Baby Suggs’s condition, she helped with light chores at Sweet Home alongside her owners. The Garners called her Jenny, and she never corrected them. While the Garners were never brutal like the other slave owners, Grandma Baby Suggs believed they ran a “special kind of slavery” (165); the enslaved people’s treatment on their farm would fail to prepare them for the brutality that existed outside it.

In time, Halle was able to purchase Grandma Baby Suggs’s freedom by working an extra day each week for five years. Mr. Garner took Grandma Baby Suggs to see his friends, the Bodwins, sympathetic white abolitionists. The Bodwins helped Grandma Baby Suggs find a home in exchange for her washing clothes and doing cobbler work. As Mr. Garner prepared to leave, Grandma Baby Suggs inquired why the Garners referred to her as Jenny. Mr. Garner said that it was her name when he purchased her from the Whitlows. Grandma Baby Suggs renamed herself that day after her late husband and the nickname he called her. When Mr. Garner asked if Grandma Baby Suggs lived a good life at Sweet Home, she replied positively but privately thought to herself, “But you got my boy and I’m all broke down” (172). Since then she tried to locate her other children with no success, as they had been sold off. When Sethe arrived, she was elated that a member of her family could experience freedom with her. However, Grandma Baby Suggs could sense that the celebration of Sethe’s arrival also brought in “a dark and coming thing” (173).

When it was discovered that Sethe was residing with Grandma Baby Suggs, the schoolteacher, one of his nephews, a slave catcher, and a sheriff arrived at 124, prepared to bring Sethe and her four children back to Sweet Home. They found Sethe in the shed with her two sons injured and bleeding on the floor. Sethe had also slit the throat of her older daughter. She was about to kill Denver as well when they walked in. Given that the mother appeared to have lost her mind, one child was dead, two were injured, and the fourth was an infant in need of nursing, the schoolteacher decided the family was not worth returning to Sweet Home. The sheriff was tasked with arresting Sethe.

Grandma Baby Suggs and Stamp Paid tended to the two injured boys’ wounds. Grandma Baby Suggs also took the dead baby from Sethe’s arms and had her nurse Denver before the sheriff came back with a wagon to take her to jail. Sethe still had Beloved’s blood on her, some of which mixed with the milk Denver swallowed. As Denver was still nursing when the sheriff returned, Sethe and her newborn were taken to jail together. Devastated that she would lose another grandchild, Grandma Baby Suggs thought of screaming after the wagon, “Don’t let her take that last one too” (179). A crowd of Black onlookers watched as the wagon pulled away. Two white children from the crowd came to Grandma Baby Suggs and demanded that she fix a pair of shoes by Wednesday. Stunned by her recent loss, Grandma Baby Suggs could only apologize and agree to the task.