Summary:
In 124, Beloved is still alive and well, quietly following Sethe around. “Tell me your diamonds,” Beloved says to Sethe one day after Paul D has gone to college (69). Sethe is initially perplexed, then recalls Mrs. Garner giving her a pair of crystal earrings. As a slave, Sethe was not able to have an extravagant wedding when she was about to marry Halle. She did, however, make a wedding gown out of scrap materials. Mrs. Garner surprised Sethe with a pair of crystal earrings as a wedding present when she found out. Sethe waited until she was free to have her ears pierced by Grandma Baby Suggs so she could wear the earrings.
As Denver inquires about the earrings, Sethe responds cryptically that they are "long gone" (71).
The three women run off, drenched from the storm, on another day. Beloved asks Sethe, "'Your woman she never fix up your hair?" as Sethe insists on unbraiding and combing Denver's hair (72). Sethe folds the laundry carelessly as she remembers her mother on the farm where she was enslaved before coming to Sweet Home. Sethe's hair was never repaired by Sethe's mother, as she was needed to work in the fields. Another woman came to nurse Sethe on a regular basis. Her mother took her to a smokehouse one day and showed her a scar under her breast with a circle and cross burned into it. "If anything happens to me and you can't tell me by my face, you can know me by this label," she told Sethe (72).
. Her mother took her to a smokehouse one day and showed her a scar under her breast with a circle and cross burned into it. "If anything happens to me and you can't tell me by my face, you can know me by this label," she told Sethe (72). Sethe did not realize that this symbol was provided by their master as a sign of possession at the time, and she demanded her own mark so that her mother would remember her as well. In retaliation, her mother slapped her across the cheek. Sethe's mother was then hanged and so on.
Airboats and all-terrain vehicles sifted through fields that were strewn with mangled debris, muddy, fetid marshlands and rubble left behind by hurricane elaine.
