124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did thechildren. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughterDenver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard andBuglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old — as soon as merely looking in amirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in thecake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeassmoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the door sill.
Nor did they wait for one of the relief periods: the weeks, months even, when nothing was disturbed. No. Each one fled at once — the moment the house committed what was for him theone insult not to be borne or witnessed a second time. Within two months, in the dead of winter,leaving their grandmother, Baby Suggs; Sethe, their mother; and their little sister, Denver, all bythemselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road. It didn't have a number then, becauseCincinnati didn't stretch that far. In fact, Ohio had been calling itself a state only seventy yearswhen first one brother and then the next stuffed quilt packing into his hat, snatched up his shoes,and crept away from the lively spite the house felt for them.
Baby Suggs didn't even raise her head. From her sickbed she heard them go but that wasn't thereason she lay still. It was a wonder to her that her grandsons had taken so long to realize thatevery house wasn't like the one on Bluestone Road. Suspended between the nastiness of life andthe meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the frightof two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present — intolerable — and since she knewdeath was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color.
"Bring a little lavender in, if you got any. Pink, if you don't."And Sethe would oblige her with anything from fabric to her own tongue. Winter in Ohio wasespecially rough if you had an appetite for color. Sky provided the only drama, and counting on aCincinnati horizon for life's principal joy was reckless indeed. So Sethe and the girl Denver didwhat they could, and what the house permitted, for her. Together they waged a perfunctory battleagainst the outrageous behavior of that place; against turned-over slop jars, smacks on the behind,and gusts of sour air. For they understood the source of the outrage as well as they knew the sourceof light.
Baby Suggs died shortly after the brothers left, with no interest whatsoever in their leave-taking orhers, and right afterward Sethe and Denver decided to end the persecution by calling forth theghost that tried them so. Perhaps a conversation, they thought, an exchange of views or somethingwould help. So they held hands and said, "Come on. Come on. You may as well just come on."The sideboard took a step forward but nothing else did.
"Grandma Baby must be stopping it," said Denver. She was ten and still mad at Baby Suggs fordying.
Sethe opened her eyes. "I doubt that," she said.