Beloved Page #2

BABY SUGGS:

They'll be all right. I'm surprised they

lasted here this long.

SETHE:

I don't know. Maybe we should have moved.

BABY SUGGS:

What'd be the point? Not a house in the

country ain't packed to the rafters with

some dead Negro's grief. We lucky our

ghost is a baby. My husband spirit come

back? Or yours? Don't talk to me! Ha..You

lucky. You got one child left, still

pullin at your skirts. Be thankful. I had

eight. Eight with six fathers. Every one

of them gone from me. Four taken, four

chased and all, I expect, worrying

somebody's house into evil. My first born

- alls I can remember of her now is how

she loved the burned bottom of bread. Her

little hands..I wouldn't know'em if they

slapped me. Can you beat that? Eight

children and that's all I remember.

SETHE:

(returning to her work)

You remember Halle.

BABY SUGGS:

Oh, I remember bits and pieces of all

of'em I guess..Halle, of course..I had

Halle a lifetime. Almost twenty years...

My two girls, sold and gone before I

could even a heard about it, and them

without their grown up teeth yet. My

third child, my son after Halle...I let

that straw boss have me for four months

so's I could keep that boy. Next year, he

had him traded for lumber anyway and me

pregnant with his child. I couldn't love

that child. I wouldn't. Not any of the

rest either. God take what He

would....and He did...

SETHE:

The boys wouldn't have left if Halle were

here.

BABY SUGGS:

Those boys didn't even know him. You had

six whole years of marriage to my Halle

Fathered every one of your children. A

blessing. I learned hard that a man's

just a man, but a son like that...like

Halle..now that's somebody.

Sethe's mixed feelings show all over her face. Although she

loved Halle, there is clearly something unresolved in her.

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