It began as a little girl's houseplay, but as her desires changed, so did the play. Quiet, primate andcompletely secret except for the noisome cologne signal that thrilled the rabbits before it confusedthem. First a playroom (where the silence was softer), then a refuge (from her brothers' fright),soon the place became the point. In that bower, closed off from the hurt of the hurt world, Denver'simagination produced its own hunger and its own food, which she badly needed because lonelinesswore her out. Wore her out. Veiled and protected by the live green walls, she felt ripe and clear,and salvation was as easy as a wish.
Once when she was in the boxwood, an autumn long before Paul D moved into the house with hermother, she was made suddenly cold by a combination of wind and the perfume on her skin. Shedressed herself, bent down to leave and stood up in snowfall: a thin and whipping snow very likethe picture her mother had painted as she described the circumstances of Denver's birth in a canoestraddled by a whitegirl for whom she was named.
Shivering, Denver approached the house, regarding it, as she always did, as a person rather than astructure. A person that wept, sighed, trembled and fell into fits. Her steps and her gaze were the cautious ones of a child approaching a nervous, idle relative (someone dependent but proud). Abreastplate of darkness hid all the windows except one. Its dim glow came from Baby Suggs'room. When Denver looked in, she saw her mother on her knees in prayer, which was not unusual.What was unusual (even for a girl who had lived all her life in a house peopled by the livingactivity of the dead) was that a white dress knelt down next to her mother and had its sleeve aroundher mother's waist. And it was the tender embrace of the dress sleeve that made Denver rememberthe details of her birth — that and the thin, whipping snow she was standing in, like the fruit ofcommon flowers. The dress and her mother together looked like two friendly grown-up women —one (the dress) helping out the other. And the magic of her birth, is miracle in fact, testified to that friendliness as did her own name.