"Did you speak to him? Didn't you say anything to him? Something!"
"I couldn't, Sethe. I just.., couldn't."
"Why!"
"I had a bit in my mouth."
Sethe opened the front door and sat down on the porch steps. The day had gone blue without itssun, but she could still make out the black silhouettes of trees in the meadow beyond. She shookher head from side to side, resigned to her rebellious brain. Why was there nothing it reused? Nomisery, no regret, no hateful picture too rotten to accept? Like a greedy child it snatched upeverything. Just once, could it say, No thank you? I just ate and can't hold another bite? I am fullGod damn it of two boys with mossy teeth, one sucking on my breast the other holding me down,their book-reading teacher watching and writing it up. I am still full of that, God damn it, I can't goback and add more. Add my husband to it, watching, above me in the loft — hiding close by — theone place he thought no one would look for him, looking down on what I couldn't look at at all.
And not stopping them — looking and letting it happen. But my greedy brain says, Oh thanks, I'dlove more — so I add more. And no sooner than I do, there is no stopping. There is also myhusband squatting by the churn smearing the butter as well as its clabber all over his face becausethe milk they took is on his mind. And as far as he is concerned, the world may as well know it.
And if he was that broken then, then he is also and certainly dead now. And if Paul D saw him andcould not save or comfort him because the iron bit was in his mouth, then there is still more thatPaul D could tell me and my brain would go right ahead and take it and never say, No thank you. Idon't want to know or have to remember that. I have other things to do: worry, for example, abouttomorrow, about Denver, about Beloved, about age and sickness not to speak of love.
But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left herno room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day. Exactly like that afternoon in the wild onions— when one more step was the most she could see of the future. Other people went crazy, whycouldn't she? Other people's brains stopped, turned around and went on to something new, which iswhat must have happened to Halle. And how sweet that would have been: the two of them back bythe milk shed, squatting by the churn, smashing cold, lumpy butter into their faces with not a carein the world. Feeling it slippery, sticky — rubbing it in their hair, watching it squeeze through theirfingers. What a relief to stop it right there. Close. Shut. Squeeze the butter. But her three childrenwere chewing sugar teat under a blanket on their way to Ohio and no butter play would changethat.
Paul D stepped through the door and touched her shoulder.