It made sense for a lot of reasons because in all of Baby's life, as well as Sethe's own, men andwomen were moved around like checkers. Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn'trun off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged,won, stolen or seized. So Baby's eight children had six fathers. What she called the nastiness of lifewas the shock she received upon learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because thepieces included her children. Halle she was able to keep the longest. Twenty years. A lifetime.
Given to her, no doubt, to make up for hearing that her two girls, neither of whom had their adultteeth, were sold and gone and she had not been able to wave goodbye. To make up for couplingwith a straw boss for four months in exchange for keeping her third child, a boy, with her — onlyto have him traded for lumber in the spring of the next year and to find herself pregnant by the manwho promised not to and did. That child she could not love and the rest she would not.
"God takewhat He would," she said. And He did, and He did, and He did and then gave her Halle who gaveher freedom when it didn't mean a thing.
Sethe had the amazing luck of six whole years ofmarriage to that "somebody" son who had fathered every one of her children. A blessing she wasreckless enough to take for granted, lean on, as though Sweet Home really was one. As though ahandful of myrtle stuck in the handle of pressing iron propped against the door in awhitewoman's kitchen could make it hers. As tho(a) ugh mint sprig in the mouth changed the breath aswell as its odor. A bigger fool never lived.