ONE
124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children.
For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its
only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away
by the time they were thirteen years old—as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the
signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny hand prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither
boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers
crumbled and strewn in a line next to the doorsill. 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 the one 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 by themselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road. It didn't have a number
then, because Cincinnati didn't stretch that far. In fact, Ohio had been calling itself a state only seventy
years when 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 the reason
she lay still. It was a wonder to her that her grandsons had taken so long to realize that every house wasn't
like the one on Bluestone Road. Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead,
she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past
had been like her present—intolerable—and since she knew death 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 was
especially rough if you had an appetite for color. Sky provided the only drama, and counting on a
Cincinnati horizon for life's principal joy was reckless indeed. So Sethe and the girl Denver did what they
could, and what the house permitted, for her. Together they waged a perfunctory battle against 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 source of light.
Baby Suggs died shortly after the brothers left, with no interest whatsoever in their leave-taking or
hers, and right afterward Sethe and Denver decided to end the persecution by calling forth the ghost that
tried them so. Perhaps a conversation, they thought, an exchange of views or something would help. So
they held hands and said, "Come on. Come on. You may as well just come on."
