124 WAS QUIET. Denver, who thought she knew all about silence, was surprised to learn hunger could
do that: quiet you down and wear you out. Neither Sethe nor Beloved knew or cared about it one way or
another. They were too busy rationing their strength to fight each other. So it was she who had to step off
the edge of the world and die because if she didn't, they all would. The flesh between her mother's
forefinger and thumb was thin as china silk and there wasn't a piece of clothing in the house that didn't
sag on her. Beloved held her head up with the palms of her hands, slept wherever she happened to be, and
whined for sweets although she was getting bigger, plumper by the day. Everything was gone except two
laying hens, and somebody would soon have to decide whether an egg every now and then was worth
more than two fried chickens. The hungrier they got, the weaker; the weaker they got, the quieter they
were—which was better than the furious arguments, the poker slammed up against the wall, all the
shouting and crying that followed that one happy January when they played. Denver had joined in the
play, holding back a bit out of habit, even though it was the most fun she had ever known. But once Sethe
had seen the scar, the tip of which Denver had been looking at whenever Beloved undressed—the little
curved shadow of a smile in the kootchy-kootchy-coo place under her chin—once Sethe saw it, fingered it
and closed her eyes for a long time, the two of them cut Denver out of the games. The cooking games, the
sewing games, the hair and dressing-up games. Games her mother loved so well she took to going to work
later and later each day until the predictable happened: Sawyer told her not to come back. And instead of
looking for another job, Sethe played all the harder with Beloved, who never got enough of anything:
lullabies, new stitches, the bottom of the cake bowl, the top of the milk. If the hen had only two eggs, she
got both. It was as though her mother had lost her mind, like Grandma Baby calling for pink and not doing
the things she used to. But different because, unlike Baby Suggs, she cut Denver out completely. Even the
song that she used to sing to Denver she sang for Beloved alone: "High Johnny, wide Johnny, don't you
leave my side, Johnny."
At first they played together. A whole month and Denver loved it. From the night they ice-skated
under a star-loaded sky and drank sweet milk by the stove, to the string puzzles Sethe did for them in
afternoon light, and shadow pictures in the gloaming. In the very teeth of winter and Sethe, her eyes fever
bright, was plotting a garden of vegetables and flowers—talking, talking about what colors it would have.
She played with Beloved's hair, braiding, puffing, tying, oiling it until it made Denver nervous to watch
her. They changed beds and exchanged clothes. Walked arm in arm and smiled all the time. When the
weather broke, they were on their knees in the backyard designing a garden in dirt too hard to chop. The
