She shook her head no and reached down to take off her shoes.
She pulled her dress up to the knees and rolled down her stockings.
When the hosiery was tucked into the shoes, Sethe saw that her feet were like her hands, soft andnew. She must have hitched a wagon ride, thought Sethe. Probably one of those West Virginiagirls looking for something to beat a life of tobacco and sorghum. Sethe bent to pick up the shoes.
"What might your name be?" asked Paul D.
"Beloved," she said, and her voice was so low and rough each one looked at the other two. Theyheard the voice first — later the name.
"Beloved. You use a last name, Beloved?" Paul D asked her.
"Last?" She seemed puzzled. Then "No," and she spelled it for them, slowly as though the letterswere being formed as she spoke them.
Sethe dropped the shoes; Denver sat down and Paul D smiled. He recognized the carefulenunciation of letters by those, like himself, who could not read but had memorized the letters oftheir name. He about to ask who her people were but thought better of it. A young coloredwomandriftin(was) g was drifting from ruin. He had been in Rochester four years ago and seenfive women arriving with fourteen female children. All their men — brothers, uncles, fathers,husbands, sons — had been picked off one by one by one. They had a single piece of paperdirecting them to a preacher on DeVore Street. The War had been over four or five years then, butnobody white or black seemed to know it. Odd clusters and strays of Negroes wandered the backroads and cowpaths from Schenectady to Jackson. Dazed but insistent, they searched each otherout for word of a cousin, an aunt, a friend who once said, "Call on me. Anytime you get nearChicago, just call on me." Some of them were running from family that could not support them,some to family; some were running from dead crops, dead kin, life threats, and took-over land.
Boys younger than Buglar and Howard; configurations and blends of families of women andchildren, while elsewhere, solitary, hunted and hunting for, were men, men, men. Forbidden public transportation, chased by debt and filthy "talking sheets," they followed secondary routes, scannedthe horizon for signs and counted heavily on each other. Silent, except for social courtesies, whenthey met one another they neither described nor asked about the sorrow that drove them from oneplace to another. The whites didn't bear speaking on. Everybody knew.
So he did not press the young woman with the broken hat about where from or how come. If shewanted them to know and was strong enough to get through the telling, she would. What occupiedthem at the moment was what it might be that she needed. Underneath the major question, eachharbored another. Paul D wondered at the newness of her shoes. Sethe was deeply touched by hersweet name; the remembrance of glittering headstone made her feel especially kindly toward her. Denver, however, was shaking. She looked at this sleepy beauty and wanted more.
Sethe hung her hat on a peg and turned graciously toward the girl.
"That's a pretty name, Beloved. Take off your hat, why don't you, and I'll make us something. We just got back from the carnivalover near Cincinnati. Everything in there is something to see."