Sethe made two fists and placed them on her hips. "You as bad as she is.""Come on, Sethe.""Oh, I am coming on. I am!""You know what I mean.""I do and I don't like it.""Jesus," he whispered.
"Who?" Sethe was getting loud again.
"Jesus! I said Jesus! All I did was sit down for supper! and I get cussed out twice. Once for beinghere and once for asking why I was cussed in the first place!""She didn't cuss.""No? Felt like it.""Look here. I apologize for her. I'm real — ""You can't do that. You can't apologize for nobody. She got to do that.""Then I'll see that she does." Sethe sighed. "What I want to know is, is she asking a question that'son your mind too?""Oh no. No, Paul D. Oh no.""Then she's of one mind and you another? If you can call what ever's in her head a mind, that is.""Excuse me, but I can't hear a word against her. I'll chastise her. You leave her alone."Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much wasdangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, wasto love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in acroaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.
"Why?" he asked her."Why you think you have to take up for her? Apologize for her? She's grown.""I don't care what she is. Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They getbigger, older, but grown? What's that supposed to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing.""It means she has to take it if she acts up. You can't protect her every minute. What's going tohappen when you die?""Nothing! I'll protect her while I'm live and I'll protect her when I ain't.""Oh well, I'm through," he said. "I quit.""That's the way it is, Paul D. I can't explain it to you no better than that, but that's the way it is. If Ihave to choose — well, it's not even a choice.""That's the point. The whole point. I'm not asking you to choose. Nobody would. I thought — well,I thought you could — there was some space for me.""She's asking me.""You can't go by that. You got to say it to her. Tell her it's not about choosing somebody over her— it's making space for somebody along with her. You got to say it. And if you say it and mean it,then you also got to know you can't gag me. There's no way I'm going to hurt her or not take careof what she need if I can, but I can't be told to keep my mouth shut if she's acting ugly. You wantme here, don't put no gag on me.""Maybe I should leave things the way they are," she said.